City Council - Regular Meeting

Madam Chair, we're ready when you're ready.

All right, everyone. Welcome to our Sandy City Council meeting of Tuesday, May 5. You making an adjustment to that? It's 05/05/2026. This promises to be another marathon meeting. I told my cat when I left home, I'll see you tomorrow. So I'm hoping I'm wrong about that. Anyway, we always start our meetings with a prayer and a pledge. Who would like to give us the prayer? Ms. Houseman, would you do that? Thank you.

Our dear father in heaven, as we gather this evening to continue our deliberations over those things that that we need to pursue in the interest of taxpayers, we ask that thy guiding hand will be with us. We ask that we're that our hearts will be filled with gratitude for the opportunity to serve and gratitude for those who serve on a daily basis, whether it goes noticed or unnoticed. We are grateful for those within our various departments who serve so diligently in their various roles and responsibilities and lift where they stand. We are grateful for those within our community who do the same, who are eager to look for the needs of those around them and lift where they stand as well. We pray as we begin the deliberation process for this tentative budget that we will be mindful of each and every member of our community and make the decisions that will truly benefit taxpayers and help us serve to the best degree possible.

We ask that thy guiding hand will be with us this evening and continue with us throughout the process. We're grateful for our savior, grateful for his love for us and for his ability to magnify our talents as we seek to uplift and strengthen those around us. We're grateful for our many blessings of health and strength and we pray for those who are struggling with those those very things at this time. We say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thank you. Will everyone please rise for the pledge. Okay, introductions. Mr. Fratto.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Dustin Fratto. I'm with the city council office. We have another council staff member in the back of the room, Justin Sorenson. And then just as a matter of a note, counsel, Liz isn't here tonight. Cut us a little slack on getting presentations pulled up and such. We're not as quick as her. And also, we have a new well, not new, but an updated minutes software that Chris is taking minutes in. So it might take her a little bit longer than normal to kind of get through that as well. So just give us a little bit of grace tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm Tracy. I'm counsel for the council. And I need a little bit of grace tonight, too.

CHRISTINE Chris Edwards with the council office.

Chris Nickel, District 3. MARCY Hausman, District 4.

Brooke Christensen, District 1.

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

Aaron DeKaiser, at large.

I'm Sandy Mayor Monica Zlotansky.

I'm Shane Pace, city administrator.

Lynn Pace, city

attorney. All right. We have on our agenda tonight fourteen fourteen agenda items. And the bad news is only three of them are consent items. So

we have a

lot in front of us tonight. We'll be hearing public hearing items, information items, consent calendar items, and council voting items. We will have general citizen comment no earlier than 6PM. And then we'll be taking public comment on the public hearing items and the voting item, one council voting item tonight. We will start with public hearing for annexations.

Brian, counsel, the way I will do this is the way we have been. We've got several of them. We'll take them all as one public hearing item sequentially. And so, Brian, if you will present all five of the annexations that are on our agenda tonight, then we'll open up the public hearing and then take action. Okay?

Alright. Thank you. The first annexation on the agenda is the Wilcox annexation. This property is located at 10275 South Alta Villa Drive. This one, as long as all as well as all the other annexations, these are property owners who have signed a consent and are wanting to come into Sandy. And so this particular owner signed the consent on March 25. This is on Altavilla Drive, similar to the other ones that zoned R 143 in the county, and we're proposing it to be R 140 here in Sandy with animal rights. The planning commission has reviewed this request and are forwarding a positive recommendation. Let's see. The second one is Cassell 2.

These are properties located at 28112813, and 2815 East Cassell Drive. The property owner signed the consent on March this year. All three properties are zoned r one ten, so we'll match that same zoning here in Sandy. And the planning commission is forwarding a positive recommendation on these properties. Apple Hollow Cove, this is located up off of Dimpledale Road.

We have 3002, 3014, 3019, and 3020 East Apple Hollow Cove. They signed the consents on March this year. These properties are zoned r one twenty one, so we will zone them r one twenty a here in Sandy. Planning commission forwarded a positive recommendation. Dimpledale Circle annexation located at 30463047, And 3072 East Dimpledale Circle.

They signed a consent on March 26. So these properties are zoned r one twenty one in the county. However, these are smaller than 21,000 square foot lots. So they're legal nonconforming currently in the county. We'll match the same zoning, r one twenty in Sandy, so they will remain legal nonconforming lots in Sandy just like they are in the county. Planning commission forwarded positive recommendation on this one as well. And then the last one is the Van Lleuen annexation located at 9520 South Cassell Drive. Signed a consent on March 29, and this property is also zoned r one ten, both in the county land and Sandy, and planning commission is 40, and a positive recommendation on this one. Happy to answer any questions.

Counsel, any questions for Brian? I see nothing. All right. So we will open the public hearing on all five of these annexations. The way this will work is that I will ask for the property owner input, public comment, if any property owners are here or online.

And then we'll open it up to general citizen public input. All right, better go to the right screen. Okay. First annexation is the Wilcox annexation. Is a property owner here or online if so, raise your hand for the Wilcox annexation and would like to speak to this item?

All right. Number two, we have the Cassell II annexation. Is a property owner either here in the room or online? And if so, raise your hand and would like to speak to the Cassell II annexation. Okay.

We have next the Apple Hollow Cove annexation. Is a property owner in that annexation either here or online and would like to speak to that annexation? Next is the Dimpledale Circle annexation. Is a property owner in the room or online and would like to speak to that annexation? If you're online, please raise your hand.

And lastly, we have the Van Lewin annexation. Is a property owner either here? Okay. Alright. Or online and would like to speak to this annexation.

Okay. No commenters on that annexation. Now we'll open it up to any members of the public who would like to speak on any of these five annexations. If you're in the room, please come down to the podium or hand us your blue card. If you're online, please raise your hand.

I'm seeing nothing. I'll close public comment on public hearing items one, two, three, four, and five, and bring it back to the council for questions, discussion, action.

Madam Chair, I count a total of 12 ordinances. Is that what we have?

It should be just five.

Just five?

Justin, do you want to clarify for us?

Yeah. You you probably may have noticed the intent to annex resolutions that are included when we announced the these public hearings.

Okay.

So, if you'd like, I can tell you what the five ordinance numbers are though. It's ordinance 20 six-forty one for the Wilcox annexation, 20 six-forty two for the Cassell II annexation, 20 six-forty three for the Apple Hollow Cove annexation, 26 dash 44 for the Dimpledale Circle annexation and twenty six dash forty five for the Van Lewin annexation

do you want these separately or altogether

we can do them all together

I'll make a motion to adopt ordinance 2,641, 2642, 2643, 2,644, and 2,645.

I will second

all right we have a motion and a second any discussion on the motion seeing none we are ready for a roll call vote

Thank you, madam chair. Miss Nickel? Yes. Miss Hausman? Yes. Miss Sharkey? Yes. Miss Christianson? Yes. Miss D'Souza?

Yes.

Mr. DeKaiser?

Yes.

Miss Stroud?

Yes. Madam Chair, that motion carried seven to zero.

All right. Thank you. And thank you for joining us tonight. Appreciate you. All right. The next item, next public hearing item, Dan Nelson. We're going to hear from you about surplus property at 8855 South Harvard Park Drive.

Thank you, Madam Chair. These are two city I'd call them remnant parcels. One is part of a former canal, which is no longer in use, and the other was used as part of the Harvard Park Drive. The city doesn't have any use for them anymore and is maintaining them. The thought is to trade them to a neighboring owner who wants to do a subdivision there. And he has water shares that the city is very interested in purchasing. So we've been in discussions, and we think we can do a trade for those two parcels for his water shares. This is an opportunity for public comment. No vote is required here, but I'm happy to answer any questions that the council might have.

Council members questions for Dan on this item? Ms. D'Souza, go ahead.

Thank you. I am just curious for the swap in water rights in terms of being appropriate compensation for the parcels. And what have we done to determine such? And is that the case?

Yeah, I have looked at this. These parcels on their own are quite difficult to use. I've walked both both parcels. The one the only one that really abuts anything else is the one on the west, but there's a significant grade change between this and the houses on the left. Yeah. I don't see you know, I think this is the highest and best use for these parcels.

Miss Nickel.

How many water rights shares?

31 shares.

From who?

The Sandy Irrigation Company.

Okay. Thank you.

Any more questions, counsel? I don't see any. Thank you, Dan. Hold tight for a second. Again, this is a public hearing, which means we'll open this up to public comment. I have no blue cards. If there's anyone in the room that would like to speak to this, you can make your way up to the podium, and we'll hear your comments. And if you could invite our online participants Dustin I'd appreciate it

of course thank you madam chair if you are joining us virtually this evening and you'd like to comment on public hearing item number six, now's the time. Go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen. I'll call your name in the order in which you raised your hand, and you'll have three minutes. Not seeing any hands raised, Madam Chair.

Same. I will close the public hearing on this item. Once again, counsel, we're meeting an obligation for noticing in a public hearing, but no vote is required on this. So thank you, Dan.

Appreciate that.

All right. We have some very, very lengthy items on the agenda. You guys will remember that week before last, we bumped Ms. Nichol because of a very, very, very long meeting where her item got pushed to the tail end. And it's looking like that could happen again. So I would like to move Ms. Nichol's item to this point in the agenda. You are welcome.

Madam Chair, since I have a feeling this is also going to be a very long meeting, can we move a couple of the other people up so they're not here?

I'll take care

of that.

Yeah. You. Thank

you for allowing me to go forward with it and I wasn't prepared so let me grab my notes. So I took some input from council members last week. They had some concerns, and I did go ahead and make those concerns or those changes. And the concern was that we wouldn't we needed explicit approval once the RFP came back to issue the bond and so that's going to happen and just basically what I'd like to do is let the people decide with the geo bond to build a specific use police station. And there is a cost involved and we're gonna have to I don't know the exact amount.

I'm gonna have Dustin explain the amount. He explains it a lot better than I do.

Madam Chair, may I have the floor?

Yes, please.

So notice you may remember from Councilmember Nichols' first reading that we had kind of an estimate. And I mean, that's really what it is. It's an estimate From conversations that I've had with some folks who are maybe in the know, our estimate might be a little high. But I'm more comfortable giving a higher estimate so that we kind of know what to expect. So the way that we came up with that initial estimate was we looked at one of our most recent buildings that we built, which was the fire station.

We calculated the per square foot rate. And we planned for inflation. We added in inflation and that's how we came up with the per square foot rate that's noted in Councilmember Nichols' proposal and the overall cost. What she's proposing is essentially a study. And in the study, what we'll be looking for, one of the deliverables would be estimated cost.

What's the construction cost? And so that's where we would find ultimately what that number would be. And if you do decide to go forward with the GO bond, that's the amount that you would look at. In terms of the cost of the study, again, it's a bit of a stab in the dark. You can research this, and you find that often it's anywhere between estimated between a quarter of a percent of a total project cost all the way up to like 2% of a total project cost.

Range. I would expect that it probably will be a 6 figure cost on a study. But the proposal here, what's being recommended is issuing an RFP essentially. And so we would issue an RFP for someone to do the study. Obviously they would propose here's the cost and that would come back to you and you'd ultimately have to appropriate the funds and decide whether or not to move forward. That's did I cover what you were looking for, Councilmember Nickel? Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. The money is for the needs in a feasibility analysis. And Mr. Pace had some specific requests that we include also the Justice Court Building and a combination of building a new building with that building so if we have a backup if that one doesn't work. And so I put that in as well. Are you okay with the language Shane?

Yes I reviewed it. I appreciate that very much.

Okay thank you. And our legal departments, both of them reviewed it. Lynn didn't send me anything in writing. Are you okay with it? Okay, I got a thumbs up. And Tracy's written responses in the packet as well. So what I'm just looking for is a motion to proceed to the next step which is issuing the RFP. And I'll take questions.

In here it says June 9 is that enough time?

We did change the dates because we were basing the dates on the last time so all the dates are appropriate and adjusted in there now. Right, Justin?

So you've got to remember we went over this with some folks in the administration a couple of months ago. And I passed along the understanding that the dates were potentially movable if needed. So we had it set to May. So I would suggest maybe posing that question. If the council is open to adjusting dates, That June 9 date isn't necessarily a date that they've said, hey, no, let's move forward with that. It's just our best estimate with an understanding that we might be able to move around a little bit if needed.

Is that okay with you guys? I don't want to move around too much, but I think within three weeks is an ample range that we can get things done in a timely manner.

Okay. So just making sure I totally understand. This would just be for the RFP. Would issue the RFP hopefully getting back that and then we wouldn't be spending any other funds until we see the RFP and look at actual costs and decide if this is something we actually want to move forward with in terms of a GEO bond and doing the RFP.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah. No. Yeah. The GEO bond goes out to the public. The public would decide about the building. And yes, we're not spending any other money until we need to needs analysis and feasibility. That's what we're spending money on right now.

MALE Madam Chair, may I speak to that just as a follow-up, Madam Chair? I would say that the RFP isn't a council decision. It's not going to come to the council. What I mean is you're not going to see you're not going to pick who's going to do this. That's an administrative function. What you're saying is we are interested in this. We're authorizing you to issue an RFP. We would like to see the results of that. And so it is your authority to appropriate funds. And so the administration would issue an RFP. They would review it. They would say, hey, this is what the cost will be. And then at that point, the council would say, are we going to appropriate the funds to pay for this? So Speaking thought of the study

thought we put in there review and approve before we go forward as the council review.

Yes. Would vote to go forward by appropriating funds. But selecting a if you're wanting to

No, we don't want yeah.

Don't want to be involved in

the RFP or choosing that, no.

No, yeah.

But that will come back to us for it. It says review and approval. Yes.

So no actual funds will be spent until we the RFP is chosen and then we would have to vote or allocate money in a vote by the council to fund it. But until then, it would be some staff time but no funds Correct. The bad way. K. Thank you.

Miss D'Souza. Oh.

Sorry about that. Saw your hand earlier and thought, oh, I took the attention away. Okay, thank you. Councilmember Nickel, so I have a question. I was reading and I was thinking about the amendment that was requested by the administration for the Justice Building.

Wondering if it might be appropriate to also consider the Arbor Building. And I think that because the Arbor Building was purchased with the idea that we could move other departments into the Arbor Building and free up other space that we have access to for the police department to expand. And so my thought is if there is this idea that we'd like to move forward with a Justice campus or whatnot then and the Aubrey Building isn't included in consideration, then we may have more space than we actually need with that building. And depending on what the feasibility study suggests or costs, obviously there's costs with the purchase of the building that are being taken care of. But at the same time, I think it would be interesting to know how that building factors into all of this in which option should we choose to move forward option considering all of our capital assets that may be appropriate and cost?

Initially, I didn't want to put the Arbor Building in because we're going to be paying on it for twenty years. And we'll be paying on that specific use Class A or Class C office for twenty years. There's not a lot we can do to that building in the meantime. That building would never be suitable for a police department. Chief Arnold and I had a conversation about it. In all honesty, I was told that the Justice Court would be almost impossible to retrofit a police department in there as well. So I'm not willing to put in the Arbor Building right now because it will be the same use for twenty years while we're paying on

it. So

I hear what you're saying. And my thought was to expand a little bit more was let's just say that we do this study and we get some let's just say crazy costs. I don't even want to give a number but let's just imagine what that is for each of us right and with it. The cost for like paying the bond off and maybe retrofitting some of those areas may be considered reasonable considering some of the other options. So that's why I'm thinking it should be included. Because we were told that we Brian, can you correct me if I'm wrong? We can pay the bond off early without penalty. Is that That's correct.

So it doesn't

have to be a twenty year thing. But right now, it's planned to be. And so that's why I was wondering if we could maybe just include the consideration of this in that study.

If other council members want to talk about the Arbor Building let's see how much interest there is including that.

Ms. Houseman.

Thank you Madam Chair. Mine is more of a just confirming what I heard here to make sure I connected a dot that I don't know that we connected. So the approval is to basically say we're doing an RFP. What I want to make sure that I heard correctly was we're not moving from RFP to GEO Bond. We're moving from RFP to decision about the study, the feasibility.

So the decision first we will face will be are we going to fund the studies they'll be folded together but are we going to fund them now that we know what the costs are. Correct. Then there will still be another decision relative to now that we've conducted the study and we have that information are we moving forward with the GEO bond or not. Right? Yes. So we're not. Okay. That was. Just wanted to kind of connect that dot. And now I'd like to I'd like to just share I'd be I would be actually interested in kind of exploring that.

I'm of the mindset I think it's really important to study things. I think we owe it to taxpayers to really understand the full breadth of possibilities. So I'm always eager for all of the possible information and I hadn't really thought about that as another piece of information. If we're doing a study why not consider some additional buildings and how that might fit for the sake of having all the information we need to then make the best decision possible. What would a study cost us if it included kind of like do you remember when we were doing all of that work with the now Sandy Recreation Center and we asked for modular that modular approach to not only funding it but building it and then we kind of played with all these modular pieces I think that was really helpful information and I know it made the process a little more time intensive and a little more complex.

But I feel like there was so much value in thinking about modular pieces and how we could build in units. And so I would I would invite maybe some consideration of that based on our history with with that that kind of thinking so I would be I would be interested actually in that because I I support the first step of of putting out an RFP and seeing what the cost would be and I'd like the cost that comes back to us to reflect all of the various pieces so I'd love I'd love what and I know we can't direct Dustin just told us we can't direct the RFP but what I would be looking for would be that kind of information certainly holistic cost but if there was an opportunity to understand units of cost so that we have all of the possible information because I want to make sure we understand all of the different ways potentially to achieve the outcome you're after and it could be that all things point to Geo Bond but I would like all information possible.

I understand that the purchase of the Arbor Building was never for me a substitute for this building I think the police department needs a specific building built for their specialized needs. They're so on top of each other. We have satellite offices. We have multiple storage areas. I think that the desire is that they will all departments need to be under one roof. They need to feel secure and they need secure areas as well. Else interested in putting the Arbor Building including it? And the more that we put in it, the cost will go up as well.

I'm very interested in adding the Arbor Building to it. Let me tell you where I am on this. And I am really liking this discussion. I, too, am very hungry for information study analysis, especially on something of this kind of magnitude. So I would absolutely be in favor of a study consultant engagement.

I'm going to kind of dial back just

a little

bit in time. So in January well, I'll dial back even further. So we all most of us sat on a council six years ago where we talked about all the needs of the buildings. And I remember clearly the mayor at that time telling us, don't kick this can down the road. Other councils have.

It can't be kicked down the road anymore. And boy, have we dug in. And seems to me like buildings have kind of come into two categories either buildings that needed replacement because they were very old and maintenance had skyrocketed to the point where the cost of maintaining a building, one could question whether it was better to just buy or build new. And then we had instances where the square footage we had outgrown buildings. We have that to look at as well.

When it comes to police, here's what we got. So in January, we began getting presentations from the administration on building study and needs. What we got out of that first meeting in January was that in terms of police, the police needed this is a January 13 meeting 9,892 square feet. That the deficit in police was that they needed more space. So that was a big part for me of the catalyst in buying the Arbor Building.

We bought and boy, I just got to give all the credit once again to the administration on leading us through a process to acquire a 66,000 square foot building at no cost to taxpayers. I don't know whether that kind of thing has been accomplished before. I certainly support what we did and why we did it. And there's no question in my mind that it gives us the opportunity to expand our square footage without a cost to the taxpayers. I feel like we haven't tested that theory yet to make sure it works.

We haven't. We're still just was last week, the week before, where we debated what departments or employees would go in that building in order to create this additional space for police. Could we? It's a very, very provocative comment by Ms. D'Souza and by Ms.

Hausman, could we change the game plan? Could we decide that rather than leasing the building out and earning income in order to pay the debt and occupying part of the building, could we flip the script? Could we decide it's a government building instead? And then we have to figure out a tax increase in order to cover the cost of that. I think that's a really, really interesting concept.

As we evaluate now potentially three options, a brand new building, 47,000 square feet, whatever it is. We have to remember, too, that if we build a new building, we're vacating 30,000 square feet of office space inside City Hall. So what are the needs of square footage? If we vacate space in City Hall, I'm not sure that that's beneficial. We'd have to look into that, right?

It seems to me accept that it's true that neither the Justice Court Building nor the Arbor Building would be suitable as is without remodeling. It seems to me that a GEO bond is the most expensive option of all. Is that the one that the council would decide, even despite that, to put in front of the voters? Maybe. Maybe.

These are decisions that we make as a counsel by majority. I feel like I like the bones of what's being proposed the study and analysis, bring in a consultant. I just feel the timing I'd like to put it off. Feel like even though I realize I read your report realize that the timing is to build in inflationary costs for future time. But I still feel like if we put this off for a few years to figure out how the Arbor Building is working out, is it satisfying any of our needs?

Is it releasing that pressure valve on the square footage needs that we had? How effectively is it doing that? This is all information that I'm hungry for. And I feel like without putting the Arbor Building to the test, seeing if it's meeting our needs, I figure that's a component that we won't find out from a consultant, but we'll find out internally. So I support the whole idea.

But for me, it's a matter of the timing. I just feel like it's too early. Especially for putting the Arbor Building in the hopper for consideration, I feel like we need a little bit of time under our belts to figure out if that works effectively or not at all, and then begin the process of deciding if we have a goal to reach, which is accommodating police, what is the best way to do it and how. So definitely would want Arbor Building included. That could be the least expensive option of all and give us the most square footage.

But it's timing for me. I love all the ideas. I love the bones of all this. I just think a little bit down the road. That's where I am. Mr. DeKayce.

Oh, I

would like to speak to your comments a little bit. The 4,000 square foot number you're referring to was brought to us in a package that included the purchase of the Arbor Building. The study I'm referring to that they need 42,000 square feet is a building study done in 2025, I believe. And it showed that they need 47,000 square feet. And I just got to tell you, either way we remodel or build a building, we will have to bond.

So that building study estimated at roughly half of the cost that I've estimated here it would take to remodel and build an addition on the justice court, still not meeting the need. And that need would be about 13,000 square feet shy of the actual need. And then I'm sorry sixteen sixty square feet shy of the need. And the City Hall limitation with 4,000 right that we say we can give them 4,000 that's still $12.05 12,500 square feet that they still need so they would need a lot of this building so that's that's just kind of my thought process going forward on that.

Mr. DeKeiser go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with what you're saying. I think the timing's interesting with the recent purchase of the Arbor Building. And I hadn't even considered flipping the script, which for me is bringing up all kinds of questions. I wanted to add, though, too, with our new interim chief Niebuhr, I would like to see some more time in how his management of the department is going and allow some more time to see his input on how things are working as well, which brings up the question, where in line is the police department for our studies? How far out are they in line?

I don't have the resolution, but I think actually up next, which would be not next year but the year after.

So would there be some cost efficiency in adding this building study to that instead of just doing it separately?

That's a completely different analysis.

I understand the analysis is different.

I'm saying

if we were to add this to that, if there would be some cost savings in doing that.

It's a good question. I don't have an answer for you. Maybe.

Well, those are my thoughts and comments. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. Straub?

Lots of great, almost like these tangents coming off. I had originally thought about that as well. I was looking and saying, Okay, we've got this next management study that's coming up. Could that be a part of it? Understanding the question here of, well, do we add Arbor, which was initially back with the building study that was done a year and a half ago.

Looking at all that, Right now and I was just trying to clarify this moving forward, there's no money spent. It's just staff time to look at that. So I don't have a lot of stress over that. I like the idea of being able to look at the department as a whole. And I think that their physical needs that's what happened with the fire departments.

They looked at their physical needs. And that was very beneficial for me as a council member to see what potentially down the road the fire department needed. And I can see how this is connected with the police department looking at that. The Arbor Building just kind of coming into this, that has a unique perspective as well. Maybe a study would come back and say, use this as just income property.

Then some of the departments we were thinking of putting him over there, well, you keep him here in City Hall because now you have a Justice Building. And so you've freed up space here. I think that there's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of possibilities to look at that. So I think looking at an all encompassing building study would be beneficial, would be helpful.

What do you mean by all encompassing?

I think just and including

the Oh, Harvard Okay.

Yes. And including that in there to say, Okay, we've already had items brought forward by administration by saying, these are the departments we're thinking of going over there. Well, if we ended up moving police out, would they then stay here at City Hall? And what do we do with that? So I think that that kind of weighs in and some interesting I don't want to say complications, but some interesting layers that it could be adding to that.

But if we're looking at this here, then that's maybe something that the administration's kind of giving that input on. We're not spending any money at this point. They're just coming back with saying, this is what we're thinking. I do have concerns about a geobond period. 24,000,000 of them exactly, if we're going count a rec center, a 40 year old building that we leveled. We knocked it down. Because at 40 years old, we did not maintain it.

Councilmember Stroud.

Now, we move fast

that and just talk

about this. Well, I think even the geo bond and going that route concerned with it. That's having money, ongoing money, to take care of a building.

The last geobond at the fire station, it was overwhelmingly supported by

the Oh, I

100 Percent.

So don't have a doubt. And with an educational program being pushed out from the city, I think it'll be a good time. And there'll be Zero concerns with that. Okay.

Cool. Zero concerns with that. It's more of the ongoing after that. How do we maintain something that we've built so that we're not knocking it to the ground in a couple of decades. That's my concern with it. That's kind of later. That's the process that you're following there. That is my concern later, as there's not ongoing money for when something does fail. But right now, this is just staff time to come back. So I don't have a problem with that. Although I think some of these other encompassing things, that would be good to include.

Okay.

The building study that I'm referring to in my proposal is the police is the priority. It's priority one on that building study as well. So I just wanted to clarify that information.

And I totally agree with that. I mean, I sat down with Chief Severson a year and a half ago and just, I mean, two pages front and back, walked through, I mean, over canine things to get back to the SWAT area. Going through the armory and just sliding through and looking at I mean, have definitely outgrown that portion of the building. We need to do something. And that's I mean, you bring up the satellite locations.

I mean, it's probably even as you go in there and you see that. I mean, for the public to be in there when you victims and they're in giving their statements and you have possibly their attacker, their perpetrator that's walking by that same area, we have problems that we need to be addressing to better help our public and to better support that department. So I mean, love that. But I do think that there's some other areas to maybe look at. Some great ideas have been brought up.

So I'm Okay with including the Arbor Building on it as well. I think that's a reasonable ask. Thank you for pointing that out.

Ms. Houseman, go ahead.

Just one final thought. I already reflected kind of on our process with the recreation center, but I'm also remembering our process because you pointed out the overwhelming support from the public, which reminded me of how very intentional we were along the way with our fire station. And because we were very intentional and thought very carefully, we have what we have now that and we've all seen how much that has really impacted our fire department and so I think this deserves that same even though we all agree like there there we need to do we need to do something I think we do it but go slow to go fast do it do it in the right at the right pace to ensure it we do provide the police department with the with what they truly need and deserve but I don't want to rush the process so I think I think what you're proposing is is that in action. It is a very methodical and Exactly which I very much appreciate. That's all I had.

Thank you.

All right. This is a council voting item. So we will open this up to the public for public comment. I have no blue cards. But if anyone here in the room would like to speak to this item, including a person at the back filling out a blue card right now. Do you want to talk on this one, Pat? No? Okay. All right. So I see no one in this room. But if anyone would like to come right up to the podium, Dustin, if you will go ahead and invite our online participants to be involved, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you, Madam Chair. If you're joining virtually this evening and you'd like to comment on item number 13 on tonight's agenda, go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen now. I'll call your name in the order in which you raised your hand, and you'll have three minutes. Madam Chair, Steve Van Maren has his hand raised. Steve, I'm going to allow you to begin speaking. Please remember to unmute yourself.

Thank you, Dustin. Good evening, counsel. Steve Van Maren, Draper resident. I know I don't have much weight with you anymore, but you can't keep building things on parking lots, because you're going to build a new building, you're going to need more parking, you know? So I don't think this is the right solution either. I can appreciate the arbor might be a good solution, but firstly, I'd like to build it on the American first test field over there across the street from the police department. Thank you.

Thanks Steve.

Madam chair I don't see any other hands raised.

Same. I will close public comment on this item and we'll bring it back to the council.

Madam chair I'm ready with the motion. I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 2655C, including including the Arbor Building in the

study. I will second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Is there discussion to the motion? So I'm going to add my discussion. I'm torn on this. Because I like the idea my only I'm going to kind of brainstorm this out loud, right?

I like

the enhancement, the modification. I like the concept. The timing is an issue. Is that a reason to vote against it? No.

What I hear council members saying is, hey, there's no harm in moving forward because we're not spending any money. So what we're going to do is put out an RFP and find out how much we have to spend for this. And then at that point, we decide. I guess that's something good to know, right? That if and when we are ready, that we know what the cost is going to be, at least today's cost.

Anyway, I guess that's a long way of saying I'm still a little bit undecided. But I'm not a no and I'm not a yes. But I can go along. There's no downside to going along, right? At least we get some more information to chew on. All right. We have a motion and a second, and we're ready for a roll call vote.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Nichol? Yes. Ms. Hausman? Yes. Ms. Sharkey?

Yes.

Miss Christianson? Yes. Miss D'Souza?

Yes.

Mister DeKaiser?

Yes.

Miss Strap? Yes. Madam chair, that motion carried seven to zero.

All right we're just past the 06:00 hour and so this is time for general citizen comment I still don't have any blue cards oh yes I do All right. Ms. Jones, come on down.

Good evening, everybody. I didn't come prepared to make a general comment, but I just thought about it. And so I hope I can express myself clearly and properly. Recently, there's been exchange on Nextdoor about property tax. So property tax is something that is I mean, generates a lot of anti feelings from the citizens wherever.

So what I would like to propose is I don't know whether it's possible, but I hope so can we have you have done several workshops now. Can we do something like a workshop so that every council member's position on property tax, how to approach it, one is saying that we should have it broken down into small increases every year. Another one is saying that we don't really have to consider doing that, but we should consider about where the needs are. So perhaps it's something that and the general public can also participate with their opinions of how it will affect to them. So is this something that the council can consider, holding?

I don't know whether it's going to be should be in the form of a town hall. You are the experts and with our executive director here and the administration. So something's just that we can talk about this and not springs it up, then all of a sudden we're going to have an increase. How do we approach it? It's like you're building projects, right? This is just my thoughts. So I hope that it's something that is worth considering. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, Mr. Butters.

Thank you everybody who have called me back and talked to me about my concerns. I wanna come and report to you guys the dog problem. I went down and talked to the main boss down there, and it had been solved. And it no other dog catcher can come to my house, only the one of the there was that situation that was done. Another concern I have, and I hope something can be done about this, is everybody knows I'm a truck driver.

But here here's one thing. I have someone in my neighborhood. That's all I'm gonna say. It smokes the lovely weed. I don't care if you do it, but don't let it leak into my house. I have called the police, reported it. I just talked to the sergeant on it last the cop that's on it right now, and he said, we can't do nothing about it. How would you feel if that was at your house, your house mayor,

or

anything like that? I'm a CDL driver. I get a dirty UA. It's my livelihood. It's down the drain in two seconds flat. Flat. The law says you can't smoke marijuana. Something needs to be done about it, and that's how I feel. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. That's all the cards I have. If anyone else would like to speak at general citizen comment on items other than those on the agenda, free to come up to the podium. Dustin, if you would invite our online participants.

Of course. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, if you're joining us virtually this evening and this time, if you'd like to comment on any city business, go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen now. And I'll call your name. Madam chair I'm not seeing any raised hands.

All right we'll close general citizen comment. Okay let's do this. There are certain things on the agenda we need to keep together to make sense So let's finish the agenda with the RDA. And then we'll circle back to resuming our point on the agenda where we left off. So I will make a motion that we convene a meeting of the Sandy City RDA.

Second.

Is that a second? Okay. I heard something. All right. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Casey, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening, RDA board members. I'm not sure how much detail I'm going go into this. We've talked at length about this project. And let me start over and say, it's just the one item on the agenda tonight.

This is the summit development update and a proposed omnibus agreement to help move this project forward. So speaking of the summit project, I'll just give a real high level background for those that are present or watching online. As a reminder, like I said, we've talked a lot in length about this. The Summit Project is a development that the RDA entered into an agreement with Mr. Ron Radden, who's here tonight, about six years ago, seven years ago.

It was amended in 2021, and then we had a subsequent agreement in 2022. This development is actually just to the south of us at the very end of the promenade where the wetlands are and the vacant parcels on the east and west side of Monroe Street. We entered into an agreement with Ron, the RDA, to develop that property. He had a concept proposed on that property, was looking to move forward with that, actually had financing to start the first phase of the project back in 2022 to move forward on the mixed use residential and retail in the parking deck. When Ron found out there was an easement on the wetlands on the title, long story short, Ron himself and us, myself, staff worked with previous mall owners Pacific Retail to try and help clear this easement.

It's a storm drain easement that they own that allows them to release storm drain water into the wetlands. And basically as long as that easements in place that property can't be developed. So unbeknownst to Ron and staff at the time we didn't know that. So we've worked diligently and specifically Ron the past few years to try and clear that easement. We've been unsuccessful with the previous owners and we've been unsuccessful up to this point with the current owners.

The current owners aren't saying they don't want to move it but they just don't know what to do. They don't know what they want to do with the easement yet until they understand and have a better understanding of what they're going to do with the concept of their property. So in the meantime, Ron hasn't been able to move forward on the development. So the development's basically come to a standstill. And I know myself on the city, and I believe yourselves would like to see that developed.

We're trying to do things in the Cairns area to see these developments happen and go vertical. So we sat down with Ron to come up with a way to move forward. And without going into all that detail, because we've talked a lot about it, that's where we're at. And that's where this agreement has been formulated working with Ron. What it does is it really moves the previous agreement and a lot of those terms just up to today's date with the key factor of Ron.

Instead of building on the wetlands, he will shift his development to the West. That will allow him to move forward, still with everything in place, the previous incentives with the RDA. A new incentive with the HTRZ still has the state infrastructure bank loan in place. But this really allows the opportunity for Ron to finally move the project forward. And I'll stop there. I can go into any more detail you'd want. But I'll stop there and keep it simple, as we've talked a lot and linked about this. And I'm happy to address questions, go into more detail. And I know Ron's here to and he'd be happy to answer questions as well.

Counsel, do we have questions for Casey? Casey, I'd like to have an understanding of and if you are answering it or Ron's answering it, I don't care. This is a project that we were all very enthusiastic about. And we have a lot of experience working with Ron Radden in Sandy. And we know the quality of his work and all of that.

But if we were at one time talking about three parcels that he was going to build across, and it sounds like now we're talking about two, I know that what follows is a new concept plan. But can we kind of get an idea of if Ron would like to come up and talk, I'd kind of like to hear from Ron, if you don't mind, about what's happened and why we need to recontemplate this. And without any specific ideas, what we are to reimagine in terms of a project that we all have really, really, really embraced. So whether it's you or you or whomever

JAMES Yeah, I'll address it first, and then Ron can go into more detail. Mean, he's the developer. He's the one that's invested a lot of money in this project trying to move it forward. But I think the two key things that we've discussed, and as a good reminder, is there's been the easement. And then something called COVID happened.

And then the market has just not been cooperative in the meantime. So not only the easement stopped the actual project from moving forward, but then the economy's changed quite a bit since then. So that's really changed the outlook on this project. So what Ron is looking to do is shift everything, like I said, to the West. One of the key components in here is he's willing to he has to come back to you as an RDA board and the administration, the mayor, to let you know the concept of what he's going to build.

And Ron, you can come up and answer this better than I can. But Ron is still planning on doing the mixed use, the residential with the parking, mixed use commercial on the bottom, potentially hotel or office, depending on what the market is there. And then on the West Side Of Monroe Street, still doing the office building, but actually even increasing the opportunity for the development with designing the possible future pedestrian bridge into that development. But I think that's really key to understand is not only that easement, but there's been a lot of things changed because Ron hasn't been a developer, but in that time because the market's changed. And Ron, I invite you to come up.

And if you want to add anything on that, I mean, the developer. Like I said, you know it better than anybody.

Mayor, madam, chairman, council, thank you for the opportunity to come and try to push this thing through. As you know, I've been working with Sandy City for over forty years. Started out with The Bluffs, over to Lost Canyon to the Boulders, Union Heights down here. We've been working on this thing for almost eight years now. Been in front of you several times.

Appreciate the opportunity tonight. We're trying to get the amendment pushed through. What we ended up doing is and you all know, we've had the apartments, the hotel, and the office building out on the freeway. COVID hit. The office building settled into the ground. The hotel hasn't nothing's been built since COVID. There hasn't been a hotel, a four story hotel since. We still have it in play. The apartments, we put all the work into the apartments. We worked through COVID.

Went as far as we designed the plans. I worked with the staff for almost two years. We were at the DRC meeting every week for almost two years. Totally got it completed. Put the plans to the city. The city had, I think, three reviews of Jim McClinics here I didn't see, but it went through review. We have probably another couple reviews to get through, but the plans for the city. We bought the pipe to put the storm drain in. We bought the bonds to do it. We wanted to close the property.

We got it financed. A couple simple things like an easement and then that stopped the whole thing. The banks wouldn't allow it. Casey, the group, the city, the mayor, everybody's been they went over to Pacific Corp and worked with them. We had several meetings on Zoom at the time because it was COVID, Teams meetings.

I went over there and met with them. They were in the process of selling the property, which you're aware of. I think it's a blessing that SEG bought the property. I think it's gonna be very substantial in the future. I've been in front of SEG three times. They've been very gracious to meet with me. Mike, I've called up, went through the staff. I've met with him three different times, showed him the problems we were having with the easements. He wants to be a good neighbor. He wants to work with Sandy City.

The problem is it's just not him. It's a huge corporation. They're working. They just couldn't get it taken care of. Slang words. Excuse me. They've, I've been working with the mayor and the staff for over a year now trying to figure out what to do over two years. But the last year, we've been working diligently on it, and we thought the best thing to do is to try to move the project to the West. We call it a flip. I know that's not the proper word for it.

We're gonna take the apartments, move them to the West, which works out. They fit. We've already done the due diligence on it. We've done the engineering. We've done the civil engineering on it to try to preserve all the money because we spent millions of dollars on the plans and everything else to move them to the West.

We've done a small concept plan to make sure that it would work. Nothing that I could wanna bring to you for attention tonight or any approval, But it leaves the opportunity to be able to still do the bridge, the pedestrian bridge over to an office building slash medical slash whatever it's gonna be, and we're working with several different ones with the bridge still over Monroe to another office building slash medical slash hotel. I mean, we're still under the HMA with the hotel to the apartments. By getting this motion approved, which I know you're not doing tonight, it'll be next Tuesday night, allows us to at least continue and go down that Road. And like Casey said, he's he's worked with SEG.

He's worked with Pacific Corp. We've done everything we can. I've exhausted the ability to try to get it done in a timely manner. So this way, it eliminates that problem. We can go forward.

Since you're standing there, Ron, it was really nice for you to wait till Chris and I came back to finish this. I wanted

to say, welcome home.

But once okay. So I'm excited. I'm more than ready for you to do this. How long do you think it will take to bring back a a concept for approval once this gets

We've already drafted something that we want to bring. I ask for a year because we don't know. We're trying to make it to where it's feasible to do it. We've already been bidding it out. I'm way ahead of the game. We even came to Sandy City and tried to move the property lines, and everybody grabbed my reins and pulled me back and said, wait. Let's try to get this thing pushed through first. Don't wanna say a month or two, but we're close to bring it back and show you where we're headed with it. Nothing's changing on it with an exception of we're pulling it across the street, and it's tightening the parking structure up, but it's still got the parking structure. We still have the height.

If I get my way, if the numbers and everything comes in, it'll be exactly what you've already approved on the apartments, and it'll pull us probably about 300 feet, not quite 300, 200 feet to the west on the parking structure. And if we have to go a deck higher, we might have to go a deck higher to get the parking structure in to be able to finish, you know, like we're doing across the street. To give you an idea and an example, the office building is sitting on a four deck parking structure to bring in 350 parking stalls. So it appears that it's a 10 story office building, which you guys want, and that's what the Karen's requirements were always trying to get was the height out here in Sandy. And nobody's tried harder than that than I have with the hotel, putting the condos on the hotel, And we were there.

And it wasn't just a pipe dream. It was done. Same with the apartments. We were there with the apartments. It was financed, the plans for the city, COVID hits. And anyway.

So, ideally, like, I know this is, like, jumping ahead a few steps, but, like, when would you like to start, like, break ground on the project if

Tomorrow. Awesome. The good thing is the plans are at the city. I've talked to Jory Walker. I've talked to AWA to take the same plans that we have, move it a couple 100 feet we need to get across the street. We gotta do a complete new civil because, you know, inches mean a lot, but to a civil engineer to us, it's just like, yeah. Just bring it over and pull it up there. They're both saying four months, we could possibly be able to go back to Jim McClinic, the boys, and try to get the the footing and foundation approved. And it'd be the same set of plans. I don't know how we'd even do it other than bring it back for the review for everybody to see what we're doing.

Great. Thank you.

Ms. Nicholl?

I just want to say thank you to Ron for being so flexible and being able to adapt. I don't know if a lot of businesses could do that. And I really appreciate what you've done and your partnership. It's a true partnership with Sandy. And I'm looking forward to the building, I can't wait to break ground on it.

Yeah. Nobody's been waiting harder and longer than I am. Thank you.

Miss D'Souza.

Thank you for I know

you got a big night ahead of you. Thank you.

No. We're there. Oh, I have a question. We haven't yet become That's right. Become very acquainted, so I thought I'd take the opportunity. I was a member of the public sitting in the audience when you presented to the council, I think it was like 2017, your concept. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, this is fantastic. I still feel that way, just so you know. I am familiar with other projects that you've developed around the city and in the Southeast End Of Draper. And I appreciate the way that you as a developer partner and work with cities and government entities to collaborate and work together.

So thank you for that. I do have a question. I do have I did have a concern that I had raised in a more casual conversation about this. And it has to do with the in the summary that we received, Parcel 3 remains city RDA ownership and will be preserved for public use. And I'm hoping that there is an opportunity to amend that to be less permanent but also considering where you've been for the last nine years on this. And I don't know is there a more appropriate way to address this? Are you familiar with this particular concession?

I am. And you pack a pretty big bet. Casey was saying that, you know, that that you were talking about a ROFO to only go out right now. We've got it for the forty years. And totally understand and agree with you that, you know, forty years is a long time to hold a city council or an entity never to be able to build on it, but that was the intent that if I gave it up, they would go to public use.

In other words, you would take the promenade and just extend it down that next block is what we're doing. Right? And we were talking, and that's you know, Shane, all of us were talking about maybe a ROFO and take it out for that couldn't be ever be sold for less than, like, ten years, at least give us that time. And then after that, the other thirty years would just have a ROFO on it. First right of refusal to buy it back to be able to develop it if the city ever wanted to say, okay. We don't like green space anymore. Then we want to build an office building on it or whatever we're going to go with it. And then I'd have the right to buy it back. It's called a ROFO, first right of refusal.

And so I understand that. And the way that I was looking at it just to make sure that you know since I was the one that kind of brought up this concern that you understand how I was thinking about it. But was more in terms of the city at one point had decided that we were okay to develop that parcel hence you know this conversation right now. Right? And in the event that we shift the focus to those other two parcels and this parcel remains vacant and open that you know I have no idea what the future holds.

There's been no conversation outside of the development with you on what that parcel looks like. But you know to me I also am in real estate and I'm an agent and preserving options you know. The city doesn't hold the land the RDA does. And the RDA has a very different purpose in the land that they hold than maybe the city would right. And so it just to me made sense that the city preserve our ability to make decisions on that parcel in the future should we want or need to.

And maybe it is an extension of the promenade and green space and maybe it's not. And so I personally didn't like being held to anything that doesn't you know that's less flexible in our RDA responsibilities with that kind of development. And so you know my thought was the right of first refusal for you considering what you've already done should the city decide to develop the land that you would get the first opportunity to develop it. And so that was kind of my thought and consideration. And that's kind of where I am on this.

Other than that I I can get behind everything and really like and appreciate again everything that you've done and how you work. And Anyway, those are my comments.

Thank you.

So

Ron, I think I want to make sure you understand that we know that every curveball in the book has been thrown at you, including a one hundred year pandemic. So no one is blaming Ron Radden at all for the fact that development hasn't happened there. And I clearly remember all the enthusiasm over your project. And when I think of the buildings around Sandy, some of my favorite buildings, especially in the downtown district, are buildings built by you. And so I know your reputation precedes you in Sandy.

And we know you live here, too. And this is your hometown. And there's nothing better than a developer who feels like they want to do right by their hometown. So I think we have that in you. So we are looking forward to well, maybe the council needs to speak for themselves.

So this is a voting item only because we had to vote to have a meeting, an RDA meeting. But we're not voting on this tonight. But we probably would want to give Ron some kind of idea, if we do have one, of where we might sit, what else we might want to know, what we might want to request for when it does come back for a vote, if anyone has any input that they want to give in anticipation of another meeting where we do have a vote, I'm open to hearing that.

The only thing that I would request is that it goes on next week's meeting.

Do we have it on there already? Real

quick, next week on the twelfth, I was one of the founding. We called us Fab Five back in the late seventies, early eighties when we built created the honorary colonels in Sandy City, Dewey Blue, Dick Adair, Barbara Sadler, Don Potts, myself. Anyway, about twelve years ago, I created the honorary colonels in Draper City, and our, big meeting, our appreciation party is the twelfth. And I sure don't want to be sitting there knowing you guys are making a motion without

me

because I'd like to make the motion now if I could. Anyway, I'm not going to be able to be here on the twelfth.

Chair? Yeah.

Can we vote tonight?

It's not noticed for that. We haven't put it. We haven't noticed it that way. It's not on our agenda that way.

We don't have the resolution isn't attached, the RDA resolution, so it's not in front of you.

I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Just let you know I'm all

in. Wish

you all in.

It doesn't mean you'll get a

All right. Any more comments or questions or anything? Casey, anything else to add?

I do have a question, Madam Chair. I just need some clarification as far as if we need to well, two things. Let me bring up because I forgot. There was one mistake that actually the chair caught in the agreement. It's under section 2P. It basically says within ninety days of the date, the buyer will submit a preliminary subdivision flat with subdivides. And it says Parcel 1 and Parcel 3. That should be Parcel 1 and Parcel 2. So that'll be updated. I just wanted to bring that to your attention.

And then my question, Madam Chair, is the thought of I need to see if there's support or not as far as Board Member de Souza's proposal as far as a right of first refusal or not, or if we are comfortable just moving forward as the current agreement was included in your packet tonight.

Meaning that in the current agreement there is

There's no right of first refusal. In the current agreement, basically, the wording is, is it the Parcel 3 that will be retained by the RDA will just stay as open space?

Yeah. No, I'm 100% in favor of keeping it open space.

So I just need some direction on that.

Can we vote on can we make that a secondary item?

As far as can you clarify?

Two items on an RDA agenda. I think there's probably favor for one.

Yeah, I can have that.

I don't want to jeopardize this development, though.

Yeah, I mean, we can bring that back and have a resolution or an option A and an option B with it or with that.

Can you make it two items?

Yeah, I can.

Thank you. I don't know that it can be two items.

Maybe I'll ask Lynn.

Because you can't vote for the resolution and then have Yeah,

you're right.

Is there

so I think having option A and option B. But it sounded like in more casual conversation that maybe there was an opportunity to strike an agreement.

So you just want to straw poll whether we're okay. So I already said I'm fine with it being open space.

And do we have one bring it to us both ways?

Madam Chair, I think if you structure it right, you would just reverse the order, make a decision about the open space right at first refusal, and then depending on what your decision is there, then your second vote can incorporate that decision into your

approval or decision on the project.

Okay. I

can do that. Yeah, that provides direction.

So are you still wanting input from us on whether you write it that way with a right of first refusal or if you don't?

I can bring both back with a vote next week, and then you can decide with a vote.

All right. Thank you, Ron. Appreciate you being

here I follow your party.

All right. I'll make a motion to adjourn the RDA meeting and reconvene the city council meeting.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. All right. Where were we? Let me get back to where we were. Okay. So we are on item number seven, public hearing to consider the tentative adoption of the fiscal year twenty twenty six-twenty seven tentative budget. Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Good evening, counsel. Good evening, Sandy residents here and online. It is my honor and core responsibility as mayor to present the mayor's tentative budget for fiscal year twenty twenty seven and to deliver the mayor's message on the budget. First, I'll say it's almost a $200,000,000 budget this year.

Just a few dollars shy of 200,000,000. And as such, it requires months and months of preparation, internal reviews. And as you will see in the coming weeks as we present the mayor's tentative budget, we've carefully assessed both revenues and economic forecasts and costs along with methods of continuing the delivery of top notch services from your constituent services that Sandy residents expect and deserve. We in year in fiscal year twenty twenty seven are building on the successful progress of our infrastructure development in the city from Fire Station 31, the the public works maintenance facility, the new Sandy Community Recreation Center, the establishment of the new wetlands. And we now turn our attention to really growing the growing the local economy and development, realizing the promise of our Sandy Central core area, new housing in the Cairns District, and maintaining our services, maintaining our workforce, and strengthening the health of our local economy.

I've worked with department heads over these many months and our administrators to follow our guiding principles to protect our Sandy residents, to connect our Sandy residents, and create new opportunities for our residents and businesses. My budget proposal lines up with these priorities and with the priorities outlined by the city council and the budget meeting of setting council goals and priorities. I have prepared a brief video that outlines my approach and I ask the council to roll the video that contains the mayor's message that is less than three minutes long.

Madam Mayor, we have discussed this, that's been decided. So we'll go ahead and finish your presentation and move on to Brian Kelly.

A point of order, Madam Chair. This is a duly noticed item. I'm interested in seeing the video. So I would think that we play it. If not, have a vote on it.

Madam Chair, is the guess video is not noticed. So the video is not noticed on the agenda.

It's part of the presentation. But regardless, I'd like the counsel to vote on whether or not we see the video. I'm unclear about what the objection is.

Happy for the mayor to release the video. The problem is that we have a very tight schedule tonight. A video is not required for presentation of the tentative budget to the council.

Nor is it prohibited in fact the mayor has a statutory requirement to present the mayor's message with the budget with the tentative budget under Utah code 10 dash six dash one eleven a one eleven excuse me subsection one a and subsection two it is the mayor statutory duty to prepare and present the tentative budget along with the budget message at or before the first council meeting in May and tonight is that meeting and I am here to fulfill that legal obligation. The council has received the opinion of the city attorney earlier today, which is clear. The council chair may not prescribe to the mayor what she may say in our budget message or the manner in which she may present the information. So the budget message, including the video, is part of my duty, madam chair, and it is intentional, substantive, important that the people of Sandy have this information as part of the official record of the mayor's tentative budget and that it be included as the public part of the public record in the minutes of this meeting as it contains policies, priorities, economic conditions, and planning that went into this budget proposal.

And any attempt to restrict or alter this presentation interferes with my ability to carry out my statutory duty.

The council is providing no inability for you to provide your duty. You certainly you are invited to and welcome to provide your message. Go right ahead in doing so.

So Madam Chair, council members, I'm going to be very clear about where we're at. If I'm not permitted to complete the budget message as prepared with the video, then I am being prevented from my duty of fully carrying out my statutory obligation under Utah law. That unfortunately leaves me few options to proceed if I'm not permitted to complete the budget message as prepared and under these circumstances I will be unfortunately and reluctantly required to proceed the only way available for me to remain in compliance with my statutory duty I will conclude this verbal presentation direct my staff to withdraw and submit the entire tentative budget and accompanying message in writing as the council is insisting. Now this is not my preferred course Madam Chair. It eliminates the opportunity for in person presentations on the budget going forward inhibits staff access to the city council except for in writing and it impedes public engagement But I will not proceed in a manner that compromises my legal responsibilities.

So I'm going to pause briefly to allow the counsel to reconsider before I proceed in that direction.

Can you be clear about what you're threatening, please?

Well, it's not a threat. It's how I need to proceed to complete my statutory obligation.

So you're saying there is no way for you to present your message without showing a video. So you are unable to deliver a message verbally. That is impossible.

The message is contained in my video, Madam Chair. That is the mayor's prerogative. It is the mayor's responsibility. It is not unprecedented. There is no statutory prohibition. And we've already taken more time to discuss this than the video runs.

That is not lost on me. I have been asking you to proceed ever since this started. And you have been declining And I wish to to do proceed.

The council staff has the video, just needs to hit play. It's up to you.

Chair, raise a point of order. If we could have a vote, please.

There was no second. There's a motion.

Anyone care to second the point of order that we vote on whether or not the video gets shown? It's just a matter of time. We've already exceeded that. I'm not sure why we can't show the video. This is silly.

There's

no second. We really would like to have a presentation on the budget. That is the purpose the main purpose we are here tonight. Agreed. And before

I can proceed I need to deliver the budget in the order with the mayor's budget message in which I prepared it. Seeing no change I have no option but to conclude this presentation, I will follow-up with the counsel with a written submission of the tentative budget and accompanying message. And I'm going to excuse my staff and my self.

You. Mr. Kadell, could you please weigh in on where we are? So

Madam Chair, the way that it works in our form of government is you, as the chair, have issued a ruling or you've issued an order. If any member of the council doesn't agree with that particular order, the option, of course, is that a council member can make a motion. And if that motion is seconded and there's a vote on that motion they can the council can overrule the order that you have made. If you if I think that's what mister Duke Kaiser was was attempting to do there. If there isn't a second, then your order's the order.

There's it's an interesting question. Lynn and I talked a little bit about it. I think the mayor's perspective is that this is this is the way she's decided she wants to present this issue to the council. And, of course, the mayor does have a right to come in and present to the council on the budget. My position as your attorney is that you choose the format for that type of presentation.

You're in charge of the meeting. You're in charge of procedural issues and procedural questions. And that is not any member of the executive branch's decision on how you proceed. So if you decided that you wanted to hear the report from the mayor, then of course you should do that if you want to. You shouldn't feel compelled to do it if you do not believe that you want to hear it.

That's really up to you. We've had more than a 100 budgets passed in Sandy's history and we have not heard or seen a video up until this point. So there's precedent for you not receiving a budget message that particular way. It's really interesting because this is a fight over a couple of minutes in a video. But that's really I I understand the counsel's position isn't so much about a video.

It's it's about separation of powers and how important it is for both branches of government to stay in their lane. An argument can be made that the mayor's speech shouldn't be restricted in this particular form. And of course, we don't want to restrict the mayor's speech. Right? I mean, in our branch of government, we don't want to do that. But it is totally within, in my opinion, within your prerogative to determine how you receive the information. If you don't want to hear it in a video, that's really up to you. That's my view.

What I'm hearing is something more than that, which is a refusal to present the budget and a refusal for administrative staff to support the council in our perusal, deliberation, and consideration of the budget as well.

That's true. It's helpful to take a step back. And that step back is, remember who the budget authority is. It's you. So if the executive branch of government decides they want to submit it in writing, remember they prepare the mayor and her team prepares a tentative budget.

You're the budget making authority. So if you feel like you can get the information you need in a written form then in order for you to adopt the final budget then that's fine. If you think that you need more than that then the decision sounds to me like the mayor's going to insist on you showing the video. So if you feel like you need more than that then your option is to have the mayor show the video and make the presentation and have the staff make their presentation. If you feel like you can go forward without that kind of presentation asking questions dialoguing with the administrative staff papers that decision is for you to make as the budget making authority for the city.

So that's just a technical question. If you feel like you can do it in papers then fine. If you feel like you need more than that then perhaps maybe you need to listen to a video

Madam chair the budget has been submitted to the council it is part of the packet it has been submitted I have fulfilled the submission of the budget as my statutory duty requires It's the mayor's message that is yet to be delivered.

So can we move on to the presentation of the public works and public utilities presentations

once we hear the mayor's message on the budget because that is part of the whole budget presentation.

It's three minutes. So Tracy, can decide the method in which we receive the information from the mayor, why can't we decide how we receive the information from staff as well?

Every member of the staff, a few of us, work for the mayor. And if she it's her decision. If she decides that her professional staff are not gonna report today, she could clearly do that. That's clearly within her wheelhouse. Since we're talking about the separation of powers, you can decide perhaps how you want the meeting to go tonight, but the mayor can decide which members of her team she wishes to report. That is clearly in her wheelhouse. Now, if you want me to give the presentation on the budget, I'm happy to do it. But I don't think it would be very helpful. So, yeah,

I I'm mean

not so sure. We're not getting a presentation right now. So if you were to take over, it might be

So it might help us

So you have to

make a decision. It sounds like I hear the mayor loud and clear. She is saying that she is not going to give you

a

presentation and she's not going to let anybody else present and she can do that unless you play the little video.

Which I am asking respectfully. Again

though, this is not so much a question of a video. It's a question of separation of powers. I understand that. It's an interesting legal question, actually.

Well, also, it's a question that we're independent, but we are codependent. We are interdependent. We need to work together. And obstructing something that you wouldn't you would allow from an outside third party without a second thought to prevent the mayor from presenting, it makes no sense. There is no precedent for that. It's to put the kill switch on the mayor's presentation on the budget over something for the That That isn't

is right. Just want

to point

out that when you present the budget, you present it to the residents. Yes. Right? And so I think you're letting down the residents if you continue to dig your heels in the ground.

Will continue

to present to the residents.

You know, I'd like to speak to your counsel for a second to make sure there's an understanding of how this started, you guys. So anyone who attends agenda planning meetings has known for weeks and weeks and weeks that our meetings were getting overloaded. And it's evidenced by the fact that our meetings have been going until nine or 10:00 or even later. So all along, I've been saying, we're going to keep these meetings short. We're going to keep these meetings short.

We've been trying to keep things off the agenda. There are times when we have said, this agenda is closed. No more items. And then an emergency comes our way. Prior to being asked by the mayor's staff never the mayor, but by the mayor's staff to play this video I had already turned down a request tonight by someone else to play a video.

I am not being inconsistent. There were three videos that were asked to be played tonight, and I said no to each one of them and so treated each one of them the same way in the effort to keep the meeting as short as possible. And here we are. And the irony of this is not lost on me. My intention all along was just to move through this meeting as expediently as possible with the goal of sharing all the information of 14 agenda items as thoroughly and as completely, but as succinctly as possible for the goal of not being here until 11:00 at night once again.

The mayor has never spoken to me. What I got from the others was a willingness to email the video to us so the council would have the ability to see it, but not during the course of a meeting. The mayor is completely free to do that, too. I've also seen the mayor's social media post already giving the message to the public. So here we are tonight as a council just wanting the details and the information to start the process that is the most important one by far that we undertake.

And what I'm hearing is a refusal to do so. So counsel, I just want you to know, because you are my colleagues, and it's important that you understand that this was never personal. Their request has been made by several people.

Hang on.

If that doesn't stop, we'll remove you from the meeting. It is not personal. Everyone that posed the same question to me got the same answer, period. That is where we are. Yes, Ms. Houseman, go ahead.

I have the information I need. I think it is there are many avenues for this video to be shared. I think it's redundant. I think it's unnecessary and I have what the information I need to to move forward. Tonight's goal is to adopt the tentative budget. Correct?

Yes if we so choose

I feel I have the information I need

Ms. D'Souza go ahead

thank you I want to say how disappointed I am with the way that the mayor and the administration are handling this. I want to I feel that at this point if after almost five years in this role that it's important to express that this is not the first time that behavior like this has happened. It usually happens in private meetings and conversations and emails that aren't public. And the counsel trying to be the adult in the room usually gives in and relents giving up some of our power in the process. This had nothing to do with a video or the mayor's message.

It's never been done before like councilmember Sharkey said. But instead you know we are wasting so much more time and staff resources. The mayor has reached out to had had how many people have reached out to you to in the week between Susan and Shane and the city attorneys have weighed in on this? Like it has been absolutely ridiculous. And so at this point, for me, I have all of the information I need.

And I feel concerned that if we give into what I feel is another temper tantrum that we are losing our ability to do our legislative job because we're giving that to the mayor. If the mayor would like to make the choice to to conduct herself in the way that she has, then there are also consequences to be considered with that. And the same that you're you're kind of, you know, informing us. So I feel like I have everything that I need at this point. Thank you.

This is foolish and reminiscent of last night's Box Elder County where the commissioners had terrible judgment. I still don't know the reason. If the reason is time, we're on sixteen minutes. And that there's not a second for the courtesy point of order on, council members.

It Okay.

Hang on. Everybody in the audience, if you have something to say, you need to go out outside to say it. Okay? Because what's really important is the political speech of the elected officials has to be uninhibited. Okay. So no cheering, booing, no heckling. None of that can happen here in the council chambers. If if you do that, you'll be found out of order and you'll be asked to leave.

I would like to respond if I may. I do not appreciate disparaging comments and I'm taking this job very seriously as the chief executive of the city elected just months ago with a large majority. People are interested in the mayor's message in Sandy. It is my job to produce it. If you don't want to hear it tune it out. But I need to proceed for this budget presentation to proceed in an orderly fashion. If you want to do everything in writing, we can do it that way too. It would be unfortunate, regrettable even, not my preference. But my job is to meet my statutory obligations. So you might not like it.

We have different roles. I respect the counsel's role. Please respect mine. And let's do it without disparaging one another.

Well, I feel that that's the way we're being treated. We are not impeding you from performing your statutory duty. In fact, we are inviting you to do so. And from what I'm hearing from our attorney, you don't get to make the rules about how you do the presentation. The council gets to make those rules. It is called a city council meeting for a reason. We are inviting you one more time, I will invite you to conduct the public hearing to present your tentative budget. We're happy to hear from you. And if you refuse to do so, we'll move on.

I'll give you one other option that could solve it. Open up the public comment. I'll use my three minutes public comment to produce my video. That way, I've got the video on the record, and we can move forward. How

do you intend to produce your video?

I'm just going to hit play on my computer.

So let me find it. So if we the mayor is indicating that she will only perform her duty under certain circumstances. And she's refusing to do so under the circumstances that the counsel is affording her. So what happens to this public hearing agenda item? Tell me about that. Do we still need to take public comment on it? Do we skip over it? What happens now?

Madam chair.

I'm waiting for an answer to this. Hold on.

Oh, I thought you were asking a legal question.

No, I'm asking. I looked in this direction.

Madam Chair, have noticed this is noticed as a public hearing to consider the tentative adoption of the mayor's budget under item seven. It's noticed as a public hearing. So you noticed it. So your options, of course, are you could table the entire matter and re notice everything, which I don't think that you want to do that. You can proceed with the hearing and then proceed to know the resolution 26 dash 57 c adopting the tentative budget and then any interested person who wishes to speak can speak during the during the public hearing.

Now to my knowledge we've haven't ever had anything recorded that was presented during the public comment portion of the meeting. We haven't had anything recorded on a phone or on a computer or on a device. I don't know that there's a specific prohibition, but we wouldn't limit we would never limit anybody who wanted to speak, whether it's the mayor or any other interested person.

Right.

We can't re notice this. Don't we have a responsibility to do this tonight by state law?

Madam Chair I am ready with a motion so we can move forward with this

and we talked about tabling it. So the question is can we even table it. That's the question.

Do you mean table table adopt table the hearing or table adopting the

I know we can table adoption. We don't have to do that tonight. Can we table the hearing?

I would not table the hearing.

That's what I wanted to get from you.

So just in order to move things along take our public comment and just go on to the next item I will make a motion that we adopt resolution 2657C. It's adopting the tentative budget. Second.

All

right we need to take public comment on this so We have a motion and a second. And so we will take public comment on item number seven, is the adoption of the tentative budget.

And Madam Chair, would you also declare that this is a public hearing?

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. This is the public hearing, and I'm opening the public hearing for the adoption of the tentative budget. Thank you, Tracy. Lynn, was there anything else you felt you needed to add before we move along?

No. Well, I'm trying to

look at the code to see if there's

a mandate that you vote on

this tonight. But you're moving forward, so go ahead.

Yeah. All right. I have no blue cards on this item. At least not at this point. Okay. Come on down. We're looking for public comment on item number seven on the agenda, the adoption of the public hearing to consider the twenty six-twenty seven tentative budget.

Don Sidwell, I was here last year during the budget meeting. And I watched you, Sharkey, miss Sharkey, do the same thing last year as you did this year. Anything to contradict what the mayor wants. The time wasted on what you were fighting was a time wasted of we could have all seen that video. I have no idea what the video is.

But you're bound and determined to do anything to be against the mayor. I got up here last year and spoke against you. I'll do it every year. And, hopefully, someday out there will realize the council has many, many all signing up together. I called that the mean girls. And I still state that statement.

Okay. Monica Zoltansky. Yeah. Yeah. You have three minutes.

Gonna

present the mayor's message by video starting now.

Let's

see. Katie, I need help with the audio.

And this has not been put on social media. Anyone who's walked down the grocery store aisle or filled up their car conference knows that

things are just getting more expensive, whether it's our household budget or the city budget city budget. None of us are insulated from rising costs due to inflation, tariffs, interest rates, or global conflict. And when budgets get tight, there are just two things you can do. Can increase revenues and decrease expenses by making cuts. That's the choice we had this year.

First, I want our residents to know we've looked at both options. We studied revenue and expenses and scrutinized every line item to test whether spending fits with our community expectations and the city council goals goals. I'm happy to announce that in the mayor's tentative budget for fiscal year twenty twenty seven, it does not call for increase in city revenue through a property tax increase. Instead, just like many of us at Sandy, we're choosing to cut back on our expenses in order to make ends meet. In this year's proposed budget, you'll see that I'm placing the spending focus on our city's number one priority, public safety, while we're also making strategic cuts to consolidations throughout the city to achieve savings.

Way, we can meet our city's needs without raising taxes. For some departments, this year, may mean postponing the purchase of new equipment. For others, it means the elimination of some full time positions. Perhaps most notably, this proposal will save money by merging two of our biggest operations departments, public works and public utilities. These are the departments that provide road improvements, sanitation services, street lighting, snow plows, and water systems.

Cuts and departmental restructuring will likely create challenges for our city officials and staff, but I know we are off to the test. As mayor, I acknowledge that these cuts are difficult and cause hardship for some of our employees, while I also acknowledge that many Sandy residents are also having to make significant cuts to their household budgets. We're all in this together together. Our goal is to maintain a fiscally conservative budget without decreasing the quality core services we provide to our residents. It's a strategy that aligns with the Sandy Rising model.

So while we tighten our belt this year, we are also strategically investing in our city's top priority like public safety, economic development, and our transportation infrastructure. I encourage all of our residents to get involved with this year's budget. Read through the proposed budget, and if you have questions, reach out to me directly by calling my office or even the mayor's hotline at (801) 568-6060. There will be several city council meetings in the coming weeks dedicated to discussing the budget before the council gives its final approval. I encourage everyone to tune in or attend those meetings in person, learn about the many issues impacting our city, and share your thoughts Thank you.

Appreciate it. Your three minutes is up. Thank you. Next speaker is Laurel Rivasite. Laurel, please come on down.

Sorry. A little intimidating. Can you hear me? Yes. We can. Okay. Well, she did it. So I'm glad. That's all I was coming I'd really like to understand why you you know that Blackburn or Kurt is no longer the governor because, or not the governor, but the mayor, a lot because of this. Do you know that? Do you know that's part of why he quit? Did you know that?

This is not a question and answer period. This is a public comment period. So we're happy to listen to your comments.

I'm asking you a question.

It's not a Q and A period.

I'm glad she just took the permission upon herself to come up here and show the video. I don't understand. Maybe you can answer the question as to why what was your objection to it? Why weren't you letting her do it? I mean, suppose a three minute video, this whole thing would have been done in three minutes. That's it's really hard. I mean, is only the second meeting I've been to. But you can just see it. You're just you lost. And just don't make the whole city council against the mayor.

That's not how city council is supposed to work. City council is supposed to work for with the mayor to get things done. Okay? You lost. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. That's all I need to say.

All right. Colette Ingle.

I just want to make a comment that I think Sandy City has gone through a lot of changes over the years. And I think you all can take credit for a lot of the good things that have happened. I know that you all work really hard. I personally, as a citizen of Sandy, I am glad that I got to hear the video. I would like to see the video.

I'm interested in the budget and what's going on. And I just would ask that moving forward, if you all would work together, I think sometimes respect has been lost. That's what I see. Would really like to see you all respect each other. That's

all. Thank you. All right. That's all the blue cards I have here. Dustin, let's invite online participation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. If you're joining us virtually this evening and you'd like to comment on public hearing item number seven, now's the time. Go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen. I'll call your name in the order in which you raise your hand, and you'll have three minutes. Madam chair I don't see any hands raised online.

Same I will close public comment on this public hearing item. We have a motion and a second. Ms. Edwards. Can we have discussion on the motion? Yeah, we can have discussion. Thank you. Yes.

So we just watched the video. Can we hear the presentation now? And I know you guys

CAROLINE We don't need to see any presentation in order to adopt the budget. We need to adopt it.

No, I would like to hear what they have to say. And this is purely self serving for me. I mean, that's my time. I'm trying to catch up on some emails that were sent out earlier regarding this item that I missed. I mean, time is super structured during the day. I don't have time to I mean, would like to it's forty five minutes. I'd like to hear it. I mean it's I'm sorry what's that?

I didn't mean to interrupt. I just was saying isn't that more at the mayor's discretion because I thought that she pulled that option from us which is why we had to move forward with the procedural motion. So I am personally not opposed to hearing it but I was under the impression that the mayor pulled that opportunity from us.

And that's and then I guess we saw the video. Have lots of questions about how all this has kind of gone down. But I'll wait on that. And so that's why I was wondering. I mean, can we hear this? I value every presentation from staff and department heads significantly in helping me to better understand and then even to develop questions that I may have in the future. So I mean, I'm hoping that we can still get that.

You are absolutely right. There was a refusal to present it, A refusal.

So am I being invited to continue with my presentation?

You refused to present it. The question is, are

you changing your mind on that? I said I would be satisfied to present the mayor's budget message which is the official message with this tentative budget which I have now presented although I had to do it from the dais with some feedback but that's been now submitted as part of the city's public record I'm satisfied and able to proceed and move forward with the presentations if that's what the council would like. I'm able to continue and introduce Brian Kelly who will kick off kick off the presentation.

There's a motion on the floor.

There is motion. And so we will act on the motion. A yes vote would I want to be clear on where we are in the expectation to make sure that council members know. A yes vote would mean that we skip a presentation and go directly to adoption of the tentative budget. Is that what you're expecting?

No, my vote is simply to adopt the budget. If we go back to an item a presentation we can't but I just want to get the public hearing closed and the tentative budget adopted right now what goes on after that I don't care.

Madam Chair, maybe I could help just a little bit there. So you have to adopt a tentative budget, right? There's actually some cities that adopt the tentative budget and get the reporting afterwards. You have to adopt the budget that the mayor and her team have prepared, a tentative budget, so you have something to have a conversation about. You can't have a conversation about nothing.

And once you've adopted the tentative budget, now you have something that's tangible you that can discuss right. And then there's legal implications if you don't adopt a final budget. You don't have to necessarily talk about that today. But there's you of course could get the presentation now. You of course could proceed with the motion and second that council member Nichols has discussed or you can or and then you could ask the mayor to give that presentation after that vote or at a subsequent meeting.

You've held the hearing. So if you want, could table this resolution. But there's already a motion second. You have to vote

on it.

And then you can decide whether you want to hear more today and ask the mayor if she'll, as a courtesy, provide that. If not, you could discuss it with her making a presentation in subsequent meetings. Or you just proceed on papers.

Yeah. All right. Thank you for the clarification to your motion. And thank you for the clarification that we don't necessarily have to proceed in sequence on what is typical or what is normal, because that's already out the window tonight.

Today is a normal matter.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we're going to take a vote on adoption of the tentative budget. Are you clear? Everybody clear? Anyone need any more clarification? Okay all right

and just to clarify miss nickel was the motioner miss houseman was the second miss nickel yes Miss Houseman? Yes. Miss Sharkey? Yes. Miss Christensen? Yes. Miss D'Souza? Yes. Mister DeKaiser?

Yes.

Miss Stroud?

Yes.

Madam chair that motion carried seven to zero.

Thank you. So then I will ask the council as the chair does the council want to hear the presentation from staff on this agenda item? I really appreciate that. I'm getting mostly or totally nods. So we would like to hear from Brian Kelly and then from Katrina Frederick on this agenda item, which is number seven.

Madam Chair, it's my pleasure to introduce Administrative Services Director Brian Kelly, who will outline the mayor's tentative budget.

Okay. Thank you, mayor and council. Thank you for pulling up our slides, staff. Thanks for adopting the tentative budget. So you've already taken care of that part of business. So I will go through and outline, give a broad overview of what's included in the mayor's proposed budget. And just for the public's recollection and yours, we did a preview of this several weeks ago. So some of this information we've talked about already. Then I'll turn the time over Katrina Frederick who will go more in detail of our compensation plan that's part of the proposed budget.

Madam chair can we give questions during the presentation?

Is that okay Brian? Sure.

Okay thank you.

So some of these slides like for example just to give context for the public and everyone is we have a lot of guiding principles. We have a vision, a mission statement. We have foundational values that have been worked on between the council and administration in years past and are up to date. So we have a lot of foundational background that we use in preparing the budget. We don't, we aren't just pulling things together on a whim.

We're following this framework and it helps us guide us through the process. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. We've covered these a lot in other meetings. But I just wanted to remind people that we have these that we follow as we work together to put this budget proposal together. Here are some of the ways that we serve as staff and as elected officials of the community.

And these are our guiding financial principles. I'm not going to read through all of these, but I wanted to have them part of the presentation and for the public to review. We're here to meet the needs of the citizens and we exist here to serve them and to serve the businesses. We have revenue policies that we keep up to date and adhere to. They guide us as well as we put together the revenue expectations and projections.

This is our consolidated financial structure. Put circles around a couple of things here that are potentially going to be changing. We did add the Sandy City Arbor Building, the one that was talked about earlier that was purchased recently. It's a special revenue fund. So we'll be able to track and account for all of the revenues and expenses in a separate fund for that building.

I've circled the Sandy Recreation Center. That was prior to the Alta Canyon Sports Center. So we've renamed it. And we have an intention that we're working through to combine that in with the recreation fund under special revenue funds and we are most likely going to bring that to you before final adoption we feel that those could be combined the board is no longer in place you act as the board it doesn't meet all the qualifications and requirements to have it as an enterprise fund any longer so we feel like we could combine that into one fund We can still track the expenses of the center separately through our accounting system. We just set it up as a separate cost center but within the same fund so we can track the revenues and expenses.

But we're going to propose that we combine that into one fund. There's a few other changes. And just as a matter of logistics, you all know that we put this presentation I had this in the packet on Friday. Our team worked all weekend to get you the budget today. You received the final document today. So there are a couple of minor changes that occurred over the weekend that I'll point out to you in my presentation. One of them is on this chart, the CDBG fund. With our new system, we're going to be calling that the operating grants fund. And it will be a cost center within that. So I'll have an updated chart for you.

And then we're also breaking out community arts into amphitheater and arts guild. And so I'll have an updated chart for you showing that as well.

Just curious why the reason for the change? I think that the Arts Guild and the amphitheater makes sense but why rename CDBG?

We will still have a cost center called CDBG but we have we're just putting it under an umbrella of other operating grants. We have other grants that we have like the medically vulnerable housing grants we have those are operating grants. So structurally with our new system, we have more capability and flexibility. So we can have an umbrella of operating grants. And then under that umbrella, we can have separate cost centers and still track it separately. So it's just an internal, a better way to do it for us that we'd recommend.

Okay, thank you. And what we have doesn't reflect that?

Right. I'll provide you an updated chart. It's actually in your budget document. It's just not I didn't have it updated on the presentation. Yeah, so if you look at the page in the summary section of your budget document, it's updated in there.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah. Hey, Brian. I just want to make sure I understood you correctly on the Sandy Recreation Center. We are the board, but we're still tracking the income and expenses separately. And we're going to report them separately, right, as its own enterprise fund. So we'll be able to compare the revenue to the expenses and gauge it for the Sandy Recreation Center as a separate cost

It will no longer be an enterprise fund so instead of being there on the green side under proprietary funds will combine it will shift over to the blue side it'll be a special part of a special revenue fund called recreation

as long as we can isolate

it we will have it broken out separately in a separate cost center we'll be able to track revenues and expenses

Thank you.

Okay moving on now that we've kind of covered that summary background so these are a lot of the challenges we're facing. These aren't new challenges but as we're trying to put a new budget together, you're aware of these meeting the citizen service expectations that we hear all year round. Sandy City's life cycle stage, we're in more of a mature city our revenues are flattening and maturing that's a challenge we have pressure on our general fund for core services you know that I've been talking to you about this for years that we have been the general fund has been in a lot of pressure over a long period of time. And we have done many structural changes. We have stopped subsidizing some of these funds that we've talked about like storm water, like street lighting, like waste fund.

We have tried to pull back in a lot of ways how we have been using the general fund because it isn't under so much pressure. Our revenues are not growing at the pace they were in the '80s and '90s and early 2000s. So that's a challenge that we've had. We have public safety needs that are being continuously changing and increasing. Inflation has been a challenge in recent years.

We have an old fleet that we've been trying to update. And we've made a lot of progress on the fleet. That's a continued challenge. We're still trying to build out our infrastructure and repair and replace things. We still want to maintain our fund balance and this budget does keep that at 12% and the bond rating agencies really like and I know this was discussed last week but they like how we can maintain it consistently.

And employee retention and recruiting is a huge challenge that we have. You never arrive at a destination where you've achieved it. It's a continual progress target to go after and try to keep it year after year. But most of our services are based on our employees and so it's very critical for us to have quality staff that take care of the needs of the citizens and the businesses. And so that's something we're trying to address here as well.

This is a picture of all of your priorities as a council that you've brainstormed over and come up with and we've taken those into account economic development quality of life infrastructure community safety fiscal health so as we've tried to craft this and the mayor's proposed budget we've taken those as a priority as well This is some information I reviewed with you a few weeks ago but our revenue growth was about 3,300,000 we had 5.8 of needs requested from departments we had a funding gap of two and a half And we also set aside some $7.80 I have on this slide. It actually ended up being closer to 900. We're putting ongoing money to one time items. General revenue one time sources. Have question.

Yes.

What was the amount of the, oh never mind. I just, thank

you. Okay. On our one time sources, had $4,800,000 of revenue available. We had 10,800,000 in needs requested. So we had a funding gap of $6,000,000 And in restricted revenue, this is primarily impact fees and road funds that we receive from the state that are restricted for those purposes.

We had $6,200,000 The majority of those are road fees, road revenues that we receive from state and county. And you can see 5,600,000 of that's being allocated to transportation funds okay so our major themes in balancing this budget is as the mayor already talked about it it's presented to you without a property tax increase so that's a huge win nobody likes property tax increases we're able to balance this budget presented to you without that So in order to do so we've had to streamline and cut costs where feasible so that we can save now this coming year and also a lot of the things we're doing are going to help us save in the long term as well.

Question, where are the barriers with public safety? It says there's reducing barriers to improve service. What are the barriers that you see?

That's not necessarily referring to public safety specifically, but maintain high service levels. It's referring to that part of the heading. And what I'm referring to there is with the merger of public works and utilities, some of the silos that were in place with permits and development community coming and having to talk to separate engineering groups and teams, inspection groups. And with the merger that we're going to be proposing, there would be one unified team that they would have to come to. So that's what I'm referring to.

So we want to keep our service level very high. We want to keep working on infrastructure improvement and reinvesting in our fleet. So here's a couple of the details at a very high level. As you know, each of the departments are scheduled to come to you. And we have public works coming to you tonight.

So they'll go into more detail on this. But at a high level, we did ask all our departments as part of this process to look at identifying cost reductions, 2% across the board, 4% across the board. They submitted those ideas to us as a budget committee and we reviewed them all. The departments, I want to commend them because they did a lot of work and it's rigorous and painful. There's not a lot of places.

There's not a lot of line items to cut. Pretty much all of these scenarios involve staff because we are very service oriented and staff oriented. It was not easy, but they did a great job of trying to identify some ways. In the end, we pursued a targeted approach. We didn't go do across the board cuts.

Some of the big themes are a public works and utilities department merger. And I'm talking just about general fund here in saying that with that effort we're going to save $450,000 this year. Some other general fund reductions we're doing are saving us about 340,000. We also reduced the transfer out to the Arts Guild by 100,000 because we feel like they're doing well enough on their own that they can function without that. We still are transferring money to them. It's just we reduced it by $100,000 Also, we're reducing the information technology charges by $75,000 for the IT fund.

Brian, a question for you. Public Works and Public Utilities merger producing a savings of $450,000 to the general fund. I had trouble coming up with that number. Obviously, we'll be going over those departments tonight. And whether you can help by explaining where those are coming from or where they can be pointed out in the departmental presentations, I want to try to track, if I can, where $450,000 in general fund savings are.

Yeah, I can tell you now because it will be a little difficult to see. They're in the personnel pay line items. So but what happens is we you know most of that savings is coming from staff reductions but we also as you see that you see the end number in the budget book so we also have comp plan increases so the increases are offsetting the reductions so you see a bottom line number so they're embedded in that number so it's gonna be but I can tell you what they are it's $396,000 is coming from redistributing between the merger. As we take the employees, the FTEs that are working in public works and utilities and allocating their time of what we're estimating their time working in those departments, there's a shift. Because part of the idea of this and I'll go over this in more detail.

For example, we'll have one director. And right now, have two directors. With the change, we'll eventually have one director. And the director's time will be split roughly half and half between what is traditionally public works and what's utilities. And we went through each of the staff. And we estimated the amount of time they would be spending on traditionally public works and Pogue utilities operations. And so there's a redistribution of the time and the cost. And that equates to just under $400,000 in savings to the general fund. And then some of that is a staff reduction as well. So.

So these are theoretical savings not actual savings?

No they're actual savings but this is common that we do this right now with employees just like we've had these discussions in the past with the waste fund and the public work streets workers where they split their time between waste work and streets work so we allocate the amount of their cost to those to waste into streets so there's a distribution between the costs and that's what's happening here so we're calculating 450,000 in savings to the general fund based on the merger for the staff allocations.

Madam chair can I ask a quick follow-up question about that?

Sure.

Brian is the general fund savings is it any of it I'm trying to think the best way to say this is any of it just being reallocated to a different fund?

Yes, that's what I'm explaining.

Marcy, go ahead.

Just on the heels of that I and maybe you're getting there so but I'm going to share it anyway. So in thinking about this projected $450,000 what are we doing in terms of measuring outcomes? Are there going to be benchmarks that will help us verify that that is indeed the savings that we've achieved? Or is that part of the roadmap for measuring if we hit that target?

Yes, and as we've talked, this is going to take place July 1, but it's a process. This is all coming upon this is a new proposal and decision that we've developed in the last two months roughly that we've been working on. But it's going to take time to flesh it out. These are our preliminary estimates, but they'll be refined over time. And the managers in the department that are managing the field workers, they'll be coordinating.

And we'll be working with them from the finance department to see how much time are they spending on these different types of functions. And these are estimates right now. But I'll tell you they will be refined. We'll be working on it. We'll be seeing the outcomes. And next year we may come back with some slight adjustments to it.

If possible, could we somehow have there be some kind of a cadence where you are sharing updates on that? Like where are you seeing alignment to what you predicted would happen? I'd rather not be till a year down the road to see if we actually achieve the outcomes and

Yeah, we could, I don't think we'll have great data until a year because some of the functions they do are cyclical throughout the year. And until you finish a whole cycle, a yearly cycle, you're not going to see the whole picture. We can provide whatever you're asking. But if we come to you in the fall with the first quarter, you're only going to see that quarter you're not going to see a full year cycle so I think the data will be incomplete at that time. We could share with you what we have.

Yeah I don't I don't necessarily think incomplete means bad information. I think it's it's information at that point in the year that could be explained and and and aligns to a prediction. I'm just I'm just asking for some some reporting on that. I think it's going to be critical that the council sort of be even if you're saying I wouldn't recommend the first quarter but let's go.

Yeah, it's six months, yeah.

I just I want to make sure we are receiving some updates.

Yeah we can do that and we definitely want to track it on our side as well. We want to make sure that this you know we're going to monitor this decision make sure it's still making sense but as we've talked to you in the past we're asking for some patience and understanding that this is going to take some time. And we're asking the staff the same thing. Because Ryan Kump, the new director, his assistant directors, their managers, crew leaders, there's going to need time to cross train employees. It's not going to happen the first month.

It's not going to happen the first three months. It's going to be a process of time of training people and cross training them. And to see this, really, the full benefits of this merger are going to take some time. So we would hope you would understand in that and not expect, oh, this outcome by six months after the merger takes place because it is going to take some years. And some of the savings we'll talk about in equipment, fleet, it's going to come to the end of the life cycle of that equipment and those fleet before we and we're not going to have to replace as much as we did in the past. But it's not all going to come the first year. So we hope you'd understand that. But we're happy to monitor and report on that.

Thank you. I'm not in any way doubting course, will take time. Guess more of, I think, you've set a goal here of $450,000 So that's our goal. We could exceed that. We could end up finding efficiencies that we didn't predict.

So I'm just asking that when you set a goal you definitely want a backwards map what measures you know that you're going to use for evidence of success. Like we'll know we're on track when we hit this or when we hit that. I don't know exactly what that looks like and I'm not saying that it's bad if we don't hit it I just want an idea of what we think some benchmarks some measures of success along the way could look like rather than just going blind for a year and then we get an update at a year where you know we either met it or we didn't. That's all I'm asking and I know it's unlikely that we meet it on the dot. But we don't know that we're making progress towards this 450,000 unless we have some benchmark check ins.

For sure. Yeah, agreed. We need to monitor the performance and measure performance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So before you move on, sorry. I wanted to kind of follow-up on what Councilmember Hausman was saying. And this is a big deal right like merging these two departments are very large. It is a big deal. I do think that it would be helpful if you could share the projections or assumptions that you utilize to come to some of the goals that you have or the projections that you have, it would be helpful to understand more insight into the benefits that you discussed in leading to the decision to merge those departments.

I think it would be helpful too to kind of allow us to the opportunity for that oversight as the merging and training and cross training develop over a length of time. Would you be able to provide more information on those assumptions and projections?

Yeah, we can do that. It gets pretty into the weeds and technical. But we can it's just a lot of spreadsheets and numbers, but we could review those.

Well, maybe there's a way to dashboard summary it or something. Summary some of it.

And I will be reviewing as part of the public works, I will be reviewing the org chart. And I can talk about it a little bit on that. I've highlighted some of the positions, the field worker positions that have been identified to cross train. So I can talk through some of those concepts.

It would be helpful for me to have some you know something documented that I can refer to over time or throughout this budget process because again you know this is this is a tentative budget a proposal to the council and to help me facilitate my process in here it would be helpful to have some of that more documented and then supplemented through conversation as we progress.

Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions on this slide? So with some of those savings we're achieving there's a reprioritization that we're trying to affect here in this proposed budget. So first of all is retaining quality employees through a competitive compensation plan and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the amounts and stuff here I'll have Katrina go through that but we're putting an emphasis on maintaining our existing employees and we feel like that's really important you always have the question do you just cut back on the compensation plan and keep the status quo or what we're trying to do is right size the organization for the needs of the community now and if we don't stay competitive in the compensation plan we've seen and we'll show you in the turnover statistics what can happen is turnover can start to get out of hand because we're not competitive.

And then it becomes very, very difficult to try to play catch up. And we've had to do that at times for some of you that have been here for a while. It gets very expensive and a lot harder and a lot more costly if you're playing catch up as opposed to just trying to stay on top of things and stay competitive. So we have reprioritized some of those savings into the comp plan. Also public safety is a huge priority.

We're putting a lot of the resources into police, 405,000. Fire, over 100 15 thousand. We're proposing to give more compensation. Some extra market adjustment to public safety would be both police and fire officers, another 600,000. And then like I mentioned, fleet replacement, our risk charges our information technology charges the risk and IT charges are contractual arrangements we have and cost of inflation insurance those types of things where we've tried every avenue to reduce those but to maintain the service levels where we need them those are costs that are going up that we feel like we have to address.

So here's a little bit more detail on the comp plan And again I'm not going to spend a lot of time because Katrina Ms. Will into

Helsman has a question and then Ms. Nicholt.