City Council - Regular Meeting

Madam chair we're ready when you're ready. He said he would be here in a minute. And councilmember Nickel is joining virtually.

Welcome, everyone. This is a Sandy City Council meeting for Tuesday, July 7, 2026. Is that me, Dustin? I know. We start all our meetings with a prayer. Do I have any volunteers to lead us in the prayer this evening? Ms. Houseman, would you like to do that? Go ahead.

Our dear Father in Heaven, we come before Thee in gratitude for the opportunity to consult with one another, learn from one another, and serve the people of Sandy. We are grateful for our employees who serve so diligently and quietly behind the scenes in providing the services that uplift and elevate the experiences of those who live within our community. We pray for thy guiding hand to be with us. Bless us as we deliberate. Bless us as we consider new team members who will be joining us. And bless us to remember that all who serve are doing well. it from a place of engagement within the city and seeking to make the best decisions possible. We are grateful again for the opportunity to serve. We pray that thy guiding hand will be with us, that we will feel thy spirit and thy presence, and that we will deliberate knowing that thou art mindful of our efforts. We say these things in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Will everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. And introductions, Mr. Fratto.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Dustin Fratto. I'm with the city council office. There's one other council staff member in the back of the room, Justin Sorensen.

Hi, my name's Tracy. I'm counsel for the council.

Chris Edwards with the council office. Marcy Houseman, District 4.

Brooke Christianson, District 1. Cindy Sharkey, At-Large. Alison Stroud, District 2. Brooke D'Souza, At-Large.

Aaron DeKaiser, At-Large.

I'm Mayor Monica Zoltansky.

Martin Jensen, Chief Administrative Officer. Ben Pace, City Attorney.

Ms. Nichol, go ahead.

Chris Nichol, District 3.

All right, we've got everyone here with us this evening. So here's what everyone can expect out of tonight's meeting. We have on our agenda an election. We have... seven eight information items. We've got a short consent calendar. We've got a public hearing and we've got a council voting item. We take public comment on voting items. So I'll be calling for public comment on the voting item which is item number 14. We also have a general citizen comment period at or as close to 6 o'clock as we can manage. It won't be before 6 o'clock. It could very well be after. Anyone who would like to speak either at general citizen comment or on our voting item, if you'd please fill out a blue card in the back of the room, tell us which you're going to speak on, and I'll make sure you have that opportunity to speak when the time comes. All right. First item on our agenda tonight is our twice-a-year election of City Council Chair and Vice Chair.

Madam Chair, may I?

Please.

Thank you. OK, so we will hold our election in the same format that we've done in the past. Justin's going to go ahead and pass out our paper ballots. If you could just mark your selection on the paper ballot. At the end, I will count the votes. And if we have an election, I'll let you know. And then we'll move on to the vice chair. Council member Nichols virtually, so she is going to send me her election. I will mark it on a ballot for her. And we'll make sure it gets counted. We do have an election. The next chair will be council member Hausman. And so council, now we'll move on to the vice chair election. We do have an election for vice chair. It will be council member Christensen. And so council now if somebody could make a motion to appoint council member Hausman as the chair and council member Christensen as the vice chair and vote on that motion, that would be appreciated.

Madam chair, I'd like to move that we approve the adoption of the chair and vice chair as noted for council member Hausman being the chair and council member Christensen as vice chair. Second. All in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? Congratulations, you two. Looking forward to that. Marcy, I'm ready to give up my seat if you would like to.

You've prepared for the meeting. You have a plan. If you're willing, please remain. All right. I'll pick it up next week.

All right. Thank you. Okay, moving on to item number two on our agenda, the first informational item. This is advice and consent of city treasurer, Mayor Zoltansky.

Thank you, Council Sandy residents. I'm proud to nominate Mindy Finlinson to serve as Sandy City's treasurer. Mindy is an accomplished financial leader whose career reflects technical expertise, sound judgment, and a commitment to responsible stewardship of public funds. As a certified public accountant with more than 15 years of experience, she brings a unique combination of municipal finance leadership and private sector advisory expertise. She currently advises government agencies on complex accounting standards, financial reporting, and operational improvements. Mindy spent nearly a decade with Park City Municipal Corporation, including serving as finance director and treasurer, where she managed treasury operations, investments, debt, financial reporting, and other responsibilities that closely mirror those of Sandy City's treasurer role. Throughout her career, Mindy has earned a reputation for collaborative leadership, attention to detail, and careful financial management. I'm confident she will serve Sandy City with distinction, and I'm pleased to present her for your consideration and advice and consent as Sandy City treasurer. Mindy, if you'll come to the dais, please. Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome, Mindy. It's nice to have you here with us tonight. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Any comments that you want to add? Maybe you could give us a brief overview of your experience and your qualifications for this position. Would you mind doing that?

Sure. I just really want to thank Mayor Zoltanski and Brian Kelly. Getting to know Brian and the team a little bit more over the past few weeks has been really great. As the mayor has mentioned, I started my career in public accounting as an auditor, so I really got to see kind of how a lot of different organizations work doing that work. and then made the jump to government and have spent almost the last 10 years at Park City. Really enjoyed my time there and just think that I've really found what makes sense for me and where I kind of like to contribute.

All right, this is the opportunity for, sorry, swallowed wrong. Council members to ask questions. Do council members have questions for Ms. Finlinson? Ms. Housman, go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the time that you've spent. I know with more than just me, I know you've had many, many conversations. So thank you for setting aside the time. During our conversation, I mentioned outcomes-based budgeting, priority-based budgeting, and I feel like we had a great discussion on that. I'd love to just hear a little bit more about what that might look like in terms of celebrating things we're already doing perhaps that align. And I know you're not yet on the job, but I'm sure you've studied us. And then maybe what it could look like. What are some additional pieces that we could consider to move a little closer to priority-based budgeting or outcomes-based budgeting, whichever you want to call it?

Yeah, sure. And like you mentioned, we spoke a little bit over the phone about it already, so I might repeat a few of the things that we chatted about. But we talked a lot about how outcomes-based budgeting can really help an organization understand where they are and maybe what challenges they're currently facing and what their priorities are and how we're going to get there. So I think one of the key things is also breaking down that information into data that everyone can understand. So I think visuals and graphs and charts and things that people can go and look at and really break down the information. I don't know very many people that want to go read a hundred page budget plus budget book or not. So really being able to disseminate that information to the public and internally to the city staff as well. And then also you know for internal staff communicating that to the council.

Thank you. I'm going to hold off. I think that's the only one I have for now if I think of another one. But I want to make sure we have time for everyone to ask. So thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Christensen. I just wanted to say hello. We didn't get a chance to talk before, and I'm sorry. I didn't know that was you in the hallway when I walked by. No worries. But great. Your resume looks great, and you've got impressive recommendations, and so I appreciate you being here tonight. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Do you? Go ahead.

Ms. Stroud. Tell us a little bit about your experience with, so Sandy and Mr. Kelly have year over year received awards with putting together our budgets, just the entire department. He does an excellent job. And that's well recognized within the council, within the community, and within the financial world as well. What's your experience preparing annual comprehensive financial reports?

Yeah. So at Park City, I prepared the entire report. So that was something that I took on as the finance director. We apply for the GFOA award every year as well, and that's something that we strive to obtain. So very familiar with the preparation of the statements. And then currently as my role as a consultant, just helping multiple governments kind of get ready for those reports as well.

Thank you. We have a two-page job description that's in pretty small font. There are a lot of things on here. Are there any of the duties or responsibilities in this job description that you have not previously done?

Yeah, I think one of the things that my past experience I haven't directly done is supervise utility billing staff. So I haven't managed the utility billing function at Park City. However, I will say we worked very closely with that team. The finance department did all the receipting for the utility billing cash receipts. And then working through any general ledger issues or billing issues, so we were in constant kind of coordination and contact. So I certainly understand how that function works into the overall picture for the city's financial operations.

Thank you. Ms. Houseman, go ahead.

I really liked what you shared about reports. And so in response to Councilman Stroud's question, so I wanted to just unpack a little bit more. So of all the reports, you know, over the years, you've prepared reports, you've presented reports. Is there a question that you've always hoped the body receiving the report from you would ask that was never asked, but had it been asked, you would have had an opportunity to really educate and stretch the learning of the body that's receiving that report.

Yeah, that's a great question. So I really enjoyed my time as an auditor. So preparing the financial statements is one of my favorite things to do, actually. And I really think the statistical section in the ACFER is super interesting and can tell you a lot about a city. And it actually has a lot of key metrics that I think citizens would be interested about as well. So I think that's a section that kind of gets overlooked, but is certainly very interesting.

Okay note to self ask about that. Thank you.

What other questions council do we have more? I don't see any more questions for you. Thank you for joining us tonight. We appreciate it. And I think you know the way this is going to work tonight was informational for us and we expect to put it on next week's agenda for a vote. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. All right. Mayor Zoltanski, the next thing we've got is advice and consent for the city engineer.

Back to you. Thank you. I'm proud to nominate Richard Benham to serve as Sandy City's next city engineer. Through my interactions with Richard, I've come to know him as a reliable and respected leader. He leads with professionalism, integrity, and sound judgment, and has earned the trust of his colleagues across our organization and statewide. Richard brings more than 30 years of civil engineering experience to the position, including the past 16 years serving Sandy City in several key leadership roles within public utilities. His extensive knowledge of our infrastructure and our organization makes him exceptionally well prepared for this position. He has successfully managed more than $120 million in infrastructure projects while overseeing engineering operations, regulatory compliance, water rights, development review, and long-range capital planning. Besides being a problem solver, Richard is a licensed professional engineer, a recipient of Sandy City's Public Utilities Quality Service Award, and someone who consistently demonstrates a collaborative approach to serving our community. And I have every confidence that Richard Benham will serve Sandy with distinction as our next city engineer. I'm pleased to present his nomination for your consideration.

Good evening. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, for your confidence in the council. I appreciate this opportunity to take a moment to answer any questions. And I look forward to continuing my service at Sandy. It's been a wonderful 16 years. And for those of you who saw the little A little tidbit on the video to Shane. I'm much appreciative of him of taking a chance on me 16 years ago to hire me in public utilities. And it's been a wonderful experience. I really appreciate that and all those that I've worked with. So thank you.

Council, what questions do we have? Ms. Houseman, go ahead.

You look this way, so I'm going to nod. I'm going to. Okay. Richard, thank you. We know your, quote, work product so well, and I couldn't agree more with the descriptive words that were used. Truly a man of integrity and honesty and collaborative and a mind to problem solve. I love all that you brought to our city, so I'm excited for this meeting. kind of new definition of your role. So my question comes from, I recently read a book, Think Again by Adam Grant. And it really caused me to think about leadership and the role leaders have to perhaps slow down and sometimes pivot or change trajectory when the decision warrants it. And so my question would be, as you reflect on your years with Sandy City and you look ahead to the years that are coming, Could you share an example of where you either did think again, like you hit pause and you thought, I think we need to pivot to elevate what we are providing to residents. So, yes, we're on this path, but I think there's an opportunity to think again and pivot and do this instead. That would be in the best interest of residents. So either a time you did do it or a time you maybe wish you would have and what you learned from that.

Boy, there's a lot there. I can think of structurally on ways that we've set up the engineering department and public utilities is my service there, how we've done things and how we changed some things, some responsibilities and how that's worked. However, the last few years, we've really focused on asset management. We took a position and created another GIS person to help us gather the data and analyze it. Sandy is at a point where growth is not exponential, right? It's not like the West Side or Northern Utah County Our biggest problems lie in our aging infrastructure moving forward. And so looking at that need, as you've heard me say in other presentations, we don't need to build any new more tanks. Wells are in a good place. We're going to continue to maintain those. It's really about us switching to looking at replacing our pipes, both water and stormwater pipes that are aging. Of course, that will... That will move forward as my new role in public works to look at the transportation needs of the city and that part of it, too. So structurally, we've made that change. And I do want to say, and it might come up in another question, I certainly don't have all the answers. I really appreciate working with some great engineers, great other professionals in other departments and gathering that information and then making a data-driven decision on which project is the most important one right now? I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Ms. Christensen.

So I love working with you, Richard. The first time we really worked together was when we had a minor water issue in San Diego. And you were really remarkable in the way you organized it and the way you handled the situation and worked with the federal groups and internally and everyone else. And I've been really impressed with the way you work and how you do your job here in the city, all of the different ones I've seen you do. And so I appreciate that, and I'm excited for you.

Thank you. Thank you.

I feel like you are uniquely positioned to be in this position that we're being asked to provide consent for. Because we are merging the public utilities and public works departments and because your background and experience includes both, I'm feeling like you are the right person. Do I have that right, Richard? Tell me. You sounded a little too humble about things to learn, but you have both of those experiences.

I do, but I will not. I'll give you an example. We have a traffic engineer in Ivan Hooper who has 30 plus experience in that. I will not pretend that I know what he knows about traffic engineering or transportation. I sometimes say traffic engineer, but his job title is transportation engineer but I do I started out my career at the Alabama Department of Transportation you know years ago and my first two consultant job were my only two jobs as a private consulting were with firms that did the entire gamut of civil engineering. So I do have that experience. And so that's important to know. But of course, over the last 16 years, it's been focused on water, water resources, stormwater, and those things. But that encompasses, when we do those projects, we do them in roads, right? We have to deal with that. And working closely, we try to get that synergy of a project where we can take care of all the issues on that road at one time. So I do have a lot to learn, but I do have experience in all of those aspects.

One of the things that we are hoping or expecting to see in the merger of the departments are efficiencies. So I'm thinking that you at your position could understand logistically and tactically how to make the two different disparate departments efficient and effective And I know that's... I'm making big assumptions about your abilities, but I do think that that combination of experience is going to be really very helpful. And so I'm looking forward to... your expertise helping make this transition easier for all of us, and I'm sure there will be rough patches, but I think you're well qualified.

Thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else?

Ms. Stroud? What do you see as the biggest challenge or the first thing that you'll be taking on as you learn the, so when we sat down and talked about this, you know everything beneath the road, beneath our surface, the back of your hand, but as you're learning the road and that top surface, what do you see as the biggest challenge and how do you plan to go about learning the top side of the road?

That's certainly a loaded question. The first part about the biggest challenge, of course, there's the challenge of merging the two departments. And I wouldn't want to create a misconception that there is work to be done. And it is essentially the same work, right? There are projects that need to be done. There will be efficiencies in fleet, as Ben talked about, with personnel that can cross-train, those kinds of things. but there are the same work that needs to be done. But we will be working so much closer together that when a road needs a new water line and we know there's deficiencies in the storm drain, we can say, look, it's ready to be repaved, resurfaced, and we can work so much closer together with our inspectors and so forth. the asset management side understanding all those systems work together so much better when we're in one department we have those coordination meetings now but it physically will be together in one place and that will also help with that so structurally it'll be a challenge at first you know there are some engineers that have spent their entire career doing water and doing this and having them work together and and merge those responsibilities. We're going to help our inspectors be able to inspect many things together. There's a lot of cross training that needs to happen there and understanding strengths and weaknesses of the various people in the engineering division. One of the biggest problems overall, I was just talking to Brian about this a few minutes ago, is our city is at a stage where mid-'70s, early-'80s, when a lot of that infrastructure was put in, a lot of that pipe, and that's coming due. That's coming due on whether it's storm drainage pipe, on some of the corrugated metal pipe, whether it's water. that that pipe has a lifespan. And we've seen breaks. Right now, we're at 57 breaks, mainline breaks for the year. the highest number we've recorded in breaks is 81 for the entire year. Now, if you do the math and you think about it halfway through, and that's typically most years we're around the mid-30s. This year we're at 57. So we anticipate if things go like they normally do, that we'll be well over 100 breaks for the year, and that'll be a record. So as we continue to study, whole system the whole road whether with everything and knowing those four of those projects ago we'll we'll probably want to put a priority over knowing that water line has reached the end of its lifespan and when it breaks it causes problems we we don't like making the news with those if we can help it right um but it happens sometimes

I'm talking about that, and this is something that we've discussed as a council within the last year. What is your philosophy of when we're seeing the deterioration of these main lines, of either replacing just in sections or looking to say, you know what, let's go ahead and replace from – 13th East down to State Street or, you know, an entire section. Right. What is kind of your?

Well, there's two things there. There's the criticality of the pipe. How important is that pipe in the system and the condition of the pipe? If it's a pipe, Sunburn Lane project is a classic example. We replaced those pipes down there not because they were costing a lot of money when they were breaking. It's because they were breaking so often, and they were causing the residents to be out of water. And a real problem, you don't like being in the shower and the water turns off because there was a mainline break. And so we realized we needed to replace that pipe. But the breaks were only costing order of magnitude very low, $4,000 to $5,000 apiece. We have a break on Little Cottonwood Road, and it's six figures. And so that criticality is much higher. So we take that into account. And we do look at the age of the pipe and when it was installed, the vintage. We have some pipes in the system that are put in the 1950s. For whatever reason, they built the pipe really good then. And there's some pipes that are that old that are not breaking, that are in really good shape. But you get to the 70s and there's some of those pipes that are falling apart. And so we look at that vintage of pipe. We look at when a neighborhood was constructed, phasing of subdivisions. We try to replace pipe in those sections. We have on SEMA Drive up near Flatiron Park, we just had a bad break a couple of weeks ago, a week and a half ago, and we're looking to replace that section because we've seen how bad it looks and we know that whole piece. that that contractor put in with that subdivision is bad. And we don't need any more evidence to know we need to do it. And thanks to Google Fiber, when the break happened, it unzipped the road all the way down the hill. And so we know it's going to cost us extra to have to repair the pavement because of that break. So there's a lot of things going in there. There's not one, you know, there's the analysis of, Knowing multiple breaks in a location versus the cost of the break versus the criticality. Breaks in UDOT roads, 9,400 south, it causes a huge problem. Traffic-wise, the road is very expensive to replace. And so we try not to have multiple breaks there when we know the pipe is in bad condition.

Ms. Nickel, go ahead.

Thank you, Richard. I want to tell you, you have my full support. You are the consummate professional, whether you're dealing with a resident or city council or other employees, you're just phenomenal. And I think that I've seen your leadership style and I'm proud that you're moving into this position and good luck.

Thank you.

Ms. D'Souza.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I too have enjoyed the opportunity to get to know you professionally through my time here on the council and your time in public utilities. And I do find you very capable and qualified for the role that you've been put up for appointment for. I guess one of the questions that I have for you is, Being that we are merging the two departments and you've spent the last 16 years in public utilities, what do you think, and the city engineer has primarily been in the public works department, what do you see as maybe the most important factor or a couple of factors to get right, right out of the gate with this merge as it pertains to your new scope of work?

Well, organizationally, I hope I'm not divulging anything. The plan is to have a very flat organizational structure where I will have too many direct reports. I'll just say it. At least nine. And I want to get to know all of the engineers You know what their strengths are what their weaknesses are and then we're going to make we're going to reorganize Accordingly from there and be able to get that that cross training because it's very important We've worked we've been all these years We have these monthly meetings and and we'll have a project going where we'll interact some but but but there really has been kind of silos there and we really want to you know you know, not have that and be able to be interactive together very much so. And it will take looking at those projects together way more than we have done in the past and working collaborative together. And there's, you know, I'm not in an illusion that there's going to be some friction. There's going to be some struggles about I do this better, you know, who's doing what and kind of organizing or figuring out those kinds of things. But as I've looked at it over the years, Really, ever since this was proposed, I understood, and I thought, I need to figure out the best way to organize this to be able to get it right and be able to be the most effective way to run the engineering division. Did I kind of answer your question, maybe?

You did. I think that I understand, and I would agree that that sounds pretty important right out of the gate to get right. Thank you.

Any more questions for Richard.

We were easy on you. Thank you Richard.

All right. Mayor Zoltanski the next item on our agenda is advice and consent for our new communications director.

Two down two to go here folks. Rachel Van Cleve. Welcome. It's my pleasure to nominate Rachel Van Cleve to serve as Sandy City's communication director. Throughout Utah's municipal communications profession, Rachel is widely respected as one of the best in the field. She has earned the admiration of her communications colleagues, including our own Susan Wood, and the confidence of mayors, city managers, and elected officials across the state through her professionalism, skill, and integrity. Rachel brings 17 years of communications and leadership experience to the position, including the past eight years serving as communications manager in public information officer for the city of South Jordan. She has successfully guided communications through periods of tremendous growth, major economic development projects, emergency incidents, and some of the most challenging issues local governments face. She believes success is more than delivering a message. It is understanding whether that message reaches the right audience and achieves the intended outcome. She relies on analytics, performance metrics, and meaningful community engagement to continuously improve the way government communicates with its residents. Rachel is president of the Utah Public Information Officer Association and demonstrates a commitment to advancing communications professions statewide. Her MBA accreditation in public relations and advanced public information officer certification reflect her dedication to continuously learning and excelling in her field. Rachel combines strategic vision, technical expertise, and a collaborative leadership style with a genuine passion for public service. It is my honor to present her nomination for your consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Council. I'm excited to be here. A quick summary of that long spiel is I'm a data nerd. I love my numbers. I think we were talking about that on the phone. So, yes, that's me. I love my data, and I love making things happen, looking at the numbers.

Questions, Council Members? No one there. Ms. Hausman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for carving that time out. I probably took more of your time than you were planning to give me, but I appreciate it. And one of the things we talked about is kind of what I'm hoping for you to build upon with everyone tonight. So I'd love for you to think through a scenario where, as a city, we have determined that a video is needed. Um, and if you could walk us through the steps you would take to, to bring together our, our, our soon at some point to have communications, you know, director for our exec for our city council and Susan from the mayor's office. And what would that look like where you would, you would bring them together and, and. co-create this video that would truly reflect the city as a whole communicating with its residents.

I appreciate that question. Thank you, Councilmember Hausman. So I want to take a quick step back, because where a lot of these things come when you're building on a project, it starts with relationships and building relationships with you all, building relationships with the mayor and staff, and building relationships with the communications director that the council will have. So my goal is to make sure I have those in place and those really good workflows together. but I think the important thing is to see what those priorities are from both the Mayor's administration from the legislative branch working with those people working with Susan and whoever that communications director will be and bringing all of that together to come up with a message that will most benefit the residents of Sandy. That's all of our North Star. That's why we are all here, is to make sure our residents have the best understanding possible of whatever we're working through. And I have to do the plug for data again. I'm always looking at data. There is so much of the time that I found in my experience in government that we may have a perception that something is one way, but when we look at the data, it is amazing how much it is not. We all know that there are some of us that have that tendency, the glass half full mentality and the glass half empty. And somewhere, usually reality is in between. And when we have an idea of what that reality is, then we can communicate appropriately to our residents.

Can I add to that? Sure. So in a similar context, It's not exactly in the same lane, but you sparked something else in my thinking. So even though this department is small, it is really a collaborative, like you just described. I appreciate you saying I'm going to start with relationships, and then this will be a shared experience. I'd love to hear a little bit about your approach to leadership, even though, again, it's a small team. It's a team that impacts the entire city. And so that is why this position is critical. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts in terms of leadership growing the people around you, multiplying their opportunities and their ability to have an impact, and doing so by understanding flow, which I bet you know about, but I'm just going to like... clarify my description or my definition. So flow is that excellent state that a leader will help both individuals and teams operate in where there's just enough stretch and pull to grow and learn without topping out at ultra anxiety. And it's not so simple and easy that people are bored. And especially in the world of communications, creativity is so valuable. So making sure that we are sparking creativity so that things are not so boring. We're bringing people in that lovely place in the middle, but also keeping them from the kind of pressure that actually squashes creativity and flow. So talk to me a little bit, or to us, sorry, talk to us. We're all here. What that looks like, how do you as a leader get to understand the people that are helping you do the work and help them operate and flow?

i love that description um preach it i i i as far as my leadership philosophy it's uh i there's kind of two different aspects of it i believe in i have high expectations but i also believe in high support i'm a very hands-on person but also believe in autonomy and empowering people I don't hold on to information. I believe in spreading information and sharing that information and sharing my knowledge and skill sets. I don't believe I should be the only one who knows how to do any number of things. One, if I were hit by a bus tomorrow, that scenario, I want to make sure that everybody that I work with can do my job. And that's what I believe in. I also have experience working with a small team, probably smaller than the one here at Sandy, actually. So I definitely appreciate that dynamic as well. So that high support, also very essential in a smaller team in terms of being hands-on. One of the things that I have learned as a people manager is having immensely clear expectations. I don't believe in holding out the carrot in front of them and just they never reach it. That's not something that I enjoy, and I don't think anybody who's employed enjoys. What I believe is here's the expectation. How do you want to reach that? And then how can I help you get there?

She's read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman.

I read way too many leadership books. It's true.

That was excellent. Thank you so much. I will be quiet now. So good. Thank you.

So I have a question for you. I spoke to Mindy about her job description. Well, yours is even meatier, three pages of this tiny font. So are there any duties or responsibilities in the job description that you have not tackled in the past? Anything new?

I was looking through it after you and I talked, and not really. A lot of it are things I've done at different points during my service in municipal government or before. The only thing was in the miscellaneous duties. There are some committees and types of organizations that I haven't been involved with before. So the sister cities program and various things like that. So those will be interesting and unique for me.

All right. You do? Ms. Stroud, go ahead.

You have a very glowing resume, and our comms team speaks very highly of you, and they're excited to work with you. How did we get you from South Jordan? I mean, other than the obvious, but, you know, that's.

No, I really appreciate that question. And that is the question I've gotten every step of the way. When Susan called me to say, are you serious? You know, and I am serious. I've worked, I've had eight wonderful years working for the city of South Jordan. And the amazing, a lot of you know and have worked on committees with the various council members and mayors and know them very well. It is a great group of people and a great staff there. However, any time you're looking at a move, you're looking at a change in opportunity. And I am at that point in my career and looking at, I don't want to leave municipal government. It's what I love. It's the part where we're closest to the people. With these passionate people sitting in here who obviously care about the city that they live in, that is something that I still want to do. And the dynamic in Sandy is different. South Jordan has been one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. Sandy is a mature city. The dynamic and the issues are different. Richard talked about replacing water pipe. In South Jordan, it's building that infrastructure to begin with. So it's just a different story, a different dynamic, different opportunities. And I am just ready for that next stage, and I hope to do it here and serve the people of Sandy City.

MS. Ms. D'Souza.

Thank you. I just have a couple of questions. And so I'd like to understand a little bit more about your approach to the role that you are interviewing for right now, as opposed to the role that you held at South Jordan. And how did you approach the role with South Jordan, it is a different form of government than what we have, right? But still in this role, as a city department leader, you are tasked with communications largely for the entire city. And so how do you approach the differences? What do you see as the differences? How do you intend to approach that?

Yes, great question. So Council Member Sharkey asked, in terms of the actual job description, the individual duty is not different. The position itself is different. It is an appointed position in a different form of government, like you mentioned. And it officially reports to the administrative branch. And that is very different from South Jordan. South Jordan, it is a merited position that I'm coming from that is not as close to the administration or even the council. There's a little bit of a buffer there. However, I do have extensive experience working with the council in South Jordan and with the mayor there and building those relationships and coordinating between the two groups. This is a different dynamic. I'm very aware of how this position is different and it will be a unique opportunity for me to learn about a new type of government, honestly, and to work with all of you. And I'm grateful for that, and I'm looking forward to it. I hope that answered your question. I'm happy to expand on it if you have a follow up.

No, that was good. Thank you. I appreciate the thoughtful approach in your response. I do agree. I think that we are kind of at a moment of, of fresh starts in a way because we've created this new department separate from an already existing department to stand on its own. And in the council, as we've talked about, we are also hiring a communications director. And so I do think from a relationship standpoint, you know, I look at my role as a council member and my role in, you know, some of my private life work as like a relationship. This is a relationships business, you know, and relationships are important with each other, with the employees, with the residents, you know, and other stakeholders. And so I appreciate your importance, the importance that you've placed on acknowledging that relationships are important. And so again, I do think that there's a good opportunity here for this fresh start, for it to be what we all hope that it is with this department. I guess I have another question, and that would be, you talked about being data-driven. And as a council member, I'm always kind of looking for data to help inform the decisions that I'm making. And so from a budgeting standpoint, Data is really important because we want to make sure that the money that's being allocated for the various things serve the residents in some, you know meaningful way and especially when the the budget is is Large and there's always more need than there is money and sometimes there's less money than you know Even the little bit that we had last year, you know the need that we were trying to cover last year we need to be able to prioritize where we spend that money. And so data is really helpful. And I guess my question for you is, what experience do you have in creating or setting campaigns up to elicit the data that is necessary to determine success measures, for example? And was this successful? and not just I had this many views from a social media standpoint, but meaningful types of data. What experience do you have with that, and how do you see that fitting into your role on a day-to-day basis? Is it kind of a here and there where you can, or do you have experience baking it into all of the communications?

I love this question.

I do. This is data. When I say I'm a data nerd, it is an everyday, all the time kind of thing. I don't think you can know where you need to go unless you establish the baseline and you know where you've come from. In terms of experience with this, that you'll notice kind of some of those little letters after my name, right? Those accreditations, various things, degrees. One of those is the accreditation of public relations, which is essentially a strategy and data accreditation related specifically to public relations, working with the public. And what that has taught me and what I've used ever since I got that accreditation is understanding that when we're working with the public, when we're interacting with the public, there are a few things that we're looking for in terms of outcomes. And that is either knowledge change, a behavior change, or a sentiment change. So understanding our public, what their desires are to begin with, is an essential data point for that. So when you know where you start, then you can see where you go and you build your campaigns around those goals, those objectives. So in terms of experience, like I said, I do it in just about every campaign. There's smaller things that I still try to do an objective with a number, you know, the smart objectives every time. But there are smaller ones where maybe here and there I don't. In general, I am a long-term thinker and I build campaigns around that. Just like I said, it's my guidebook. It helps me get from point A to point B and to determine whether I'm successful or not. And if I'm not successful, I have numbers that I can use for the next campaign to determine, okay, what do I need to change and to inform the decisions for the next one.

Thank you, that is really helpful. Communications is different than marketing. I absolutely acknowledge that. I have a background in marketing and there was a lot of data that had to be included in all of our pieces to be able to determine where money should be spent. Obviously, defining success criteria is really important. But at the same time, there are some similarities and overlap in terms of where budget dollars should be spent. And so it's helpful to know that that's important to you. One of the things that I think about from a conversation that's come up recently is, just as an example, is a printed newsletter. and the duplication of the printed newsletter versus online, versus email, versus a text that links you to it, and determining whether or not the dollars spent on the printed newsletter, which can be costly, right? Because printing is expensive, postage is expensive, and things like that. And I think that sometimes it can be difficult to ascertain the engagement with some of those print pieces. And so I don't know, I don't really quite know off the top of my head how that would be done, but I would challenge you, should you be consented to, to kind of think through some of those things to help us provide, or to help provide us with information that may be really useful as we deliberate future budget conversations. Thank you. Totally reasonable.

There were some questions asked that made me think of another one. You cited that you were kind of ready for a change, looking for a change. You talked about Sandy being a mature city where South Jordan is a younger and more growing city. You also talked about there are different forms of government. So what are the biggest challenges that you're expecting in stepping into this job?

In terms of challenges, I think I don't know what I don't know. I feel like I know municipal government and the functions and the purpose of it. When you're talking about a different type of government structure, that is a huge learning curve for me. So, but I also am not so cocky that I think I'm going to know it all right off the bat. I definitely come with a learning ear. I ask a lot of questions and I love to listen and a lot of you probably learned that on the phone calls that I had with you is that I like to hear what you have to say and to learn kind of what dynamics you see. And that's kind of, I'm going to be a sponge. That's kind of how I'm going to absorb things. So really it comes down to, I don't know what I don't know. And so that remains to be seen. Hopefully you don't, that's kind of where I'm at.

Any more questions, council members? I'm seeing nothing. Thank you. Appreciate your joining us. Same thing applies. You'll probably appear on our agenda for next week. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you for joining us. I appreciate it. All right. One more. Mayor Zoltansky, we are looking now at your candidate for our new Economic Development Director. Back to you.

Thanks. This is Carlton Christensen. It's my pleasure to introduce Carlton Christensen, a public servant whose career has been defined by collaboration, integrity, leadership, and a remarkable commitment to building Utah communities. For more than 30 years, Carlton has helped shape our region in transportation, economic development, finance, and public policy. Most recently, Carlton served as chair of the Utah Transit Authority Board of Trustees. Under his leadership, UTA earned the 2025 Outstanding Public Transportation System Award and became a national leader in innovative governance. He previously served in Salt Lake County as the Director of Regional Transportation, Housing, and Economic Development, where he oversaw an impressive portfolio that included economic development, housing, transportation planning, the Salt Palace Convention Center, Sandy's Mountain American Expo Center, and Visit Salt Lake. Carlton's public service is strengthened by a solid foundation in the private sector, spending 15 years with Zion Securities and Zion's Bank, working in commercial development, financial analysis, and community development financing across Utah. Many might know Carlton from his four years, four terms on the Salt Lake City Council during one of the city's most transformational eras, including the 2002 Winter Olympics, the City Creek redevelopment, building of Eccles Theater and significant expansion of the region's transit system. Whether in public office or the private sector, Carlton distinguishes himself and has a reputation he's well-deserved as someone who brings together people, builds consensus, and always puts community first. It's my pleasure to nominate Carlton for advice and consent for the city's economic development director position.

Is there anything you'd like to add, Mr. Christensen?

Yeah. First of all, thank you for the privilege of being before you this evening. I'm here with my wife, Kathy, and Kathy and I, in about a week, will celebrate our 36th anniversary. But our public service really has almost originated just a few years after we were married in some community involvement later as I ran for public office. age 31, and this was a course I didn't anticipate ever remaining in. But public service is a privilege. We serve the public you all have been elected to represent. this role I want to do a job that is reflective of the trust that the public will place upon me and other colleagues that serves any city so thank you for the privilege of being considered today miss Christensen thank you for being here we all know you're very smart and you're very good at your job so what do you see as

the direction for Sandy being?

I'm very bullish on the direction for Sandy for a number of reasons. And I've shared with many of you during my tenure on the Salt Lake City Council, Sandy was our archenemy. because we were always competing really at the ends of the valley, at what was once the end of the valley. But as the Wasatch Front has continued to grow and meld together, what it really reflects is Sandy is well positioned, probably more central to the Wasatch Front than almost any other community. It has a great transportation infrastructure, both in roads and in transit. It has, you know, water and other infrastructure that many communities are struggling to pay for and to actually implement. And so it allows for increased growth in the community. And then last but not least, I would say it's at a prime place for what I would call thoughtful redevelopment. You know, the days of just scraping and starting over again I think are mostly gone, but there is a strategic placement of infrastructure and development working with the plans that you have adopted or may adopt and implementing those and taking advantage of a very diverse city from both the housing and economic commercial side, and being able to magnify that and to take advantage of a lot of those attributes, I think Sandy is well positioned to be successful.

Thank you. Ms. Hausman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Excuse me, a couple of questions. I'm going to borrow the one I asked earlier because I would love to hear your thoughts on that as well. So even though this, again, is a small team, it is a team that affects, there's a citywide impact here. So thinking about flow and your approach to leadership and how do you stretch people enough that they are excited about the work they are doing and yet It doesn't cause anxiety and prevent absolute boredom. So what do you do as a leader to keep people in flow?

I'm a believer in empowering and then also providing whatever tools somebody needs to be successful. I think one of the most telling things for me over the last few weeks is to have hundreds of employees as they were going from mechanics to operators to individuals that worked in the UTA's administrative staff who Quietly came up now. I was handing out soft-serve ice cream. So that probably helped but they all said You've made a big difference in the environment here had somebody who was retiring who had been with UTA for 35 years who stopped by my office one time he didn't want to party and he said You know, we were skeptical of this new governance, but you changed, you helped change, and I say we because really it was all 3,000 employees helped change that environment. And I don't ever really want it to be about myself, because if you do it right, that reflection is just a natural outcome of that effort. I think you do have to hold people accountable, but you also utilize the resources. We belong to Chambers of Commerce. There's larger economic development organizations that We interact with, certainly there's wonderful departments here within the city that we're going to work with. And so if we're ever an island by ourself, we're doing it wrong. So I hope that helps a little bit.

It does. I've got one more question. As you reflect on all of the different ways you've served, I'd love to hear about a truly out-of-the-box project that you were a part of that transformative, there was no plan. You broke the plan, whatever. Truly out of the box. And what went well and what maybe didn't that you've learned from?

Well, I'll use the example, and it may seem like an obvious, but the Eccles Theatre. For four years, I was on the pre-development committee of the Eccles Theatre, traveled around the country, looked at different projects, locations and attributes and what made for a balanced theater between sound and live productions and what might make the best combination. My wife can attest, she had a list of attributes that she was looking for in a husband. After we got married, she showed me the list and she crossed off as a good singer. And so, but I love the arts, and I love music, and I love to listen to it. And that was important, and I also felt like it was important for it to be comfortable if you talked to any of the development team. Every time we sat in a theater, I said, you know, People are getting larger, maybe physically, but certainly taller. And they need to be comfortable in these seats. And they need to be in a way that going to the theater is not a torturous experience. And yet we were fighting through that combination of seat placement. and having the right number of places. But I think in Echols, ultimately, we got to a place in such a way that a year or so after I left the council, they brought me back and they put me in what they called Roe Carlton. It was an emergency aisle in front of us. It was the Roe and Friendly Echols. But they just wanted me to be assured that leg room existed. And many friends who have talked about the experience they have when they go to a Broadway production there have complimented on that. And it seems trivial, but working to have those kinds of involvements and to make a theater that had the ability to have small little productions out on the Main Street was an important piece of that.

Thank you.

Ms. Stroud. Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of questions. What do you see right now that the type of economic development that you would be going after first? What is Sandy lacking?

That's a great question. My familiarity is not enough to give you a concrete answer. I will say, as I look at it, just looking collectively there, that really for the first time in five or six years, There's a real question mark about where the future of office is going and I think corporations in and of themselves are facing the same issue. When I was at UTA we were looking at a new headquarters office because in the case of a severe seismic event the office was basically toast. and we needed a place to go. But as we were looking at how do you make that work and how do you use the private sector to create maybe an office space that is shared by others. I think what it drove home to me is that people are utilizing or taking in office in a different way. And even companies are still figuring that out. So figuring out what that balance is, I think retail itself is, you know, it's changed really. But having enough of an eclectic kind of retail in particular nodes within the community is really important. It's what attracts people to live in neighborhoods. It's why people will locate their businesses nearby because they can go and have that experience for their employees. my UTA experience, you know, which still has a defined retirement plan, but our newest hires, we had to change considerably the dynamics of how do you meet that younger workforce. They, unlike myself, they're unwilling to work long hours of overtime. They want a more interface kind of experience. UTA's average rider was 34 years of age. And so that generational change, we have to look at that and see whether or not how that community and how some of those focal points fit into that. And I think as we look at new opportunities and particular opportunities that we're going to incentivize, we want to take a look at that.

So how would you bring that here to Sandy? What's your plan?

I obviously am going to work with both the planning department and our staff, look at that, look at bringing some private consultants to make some recommendations, and then have a discussion collectively about what that direction should look like. And do I have a completed plan today? No, that would be inaccurate. But it would be one of the early focuses to try to work on.

Another question, I had a chance last week to bump into Nick Dirksen and he's working on things with The Point. They're turning dirt and he was explaining how there's kind of, I guess you count that as the epicenter and how it can bring things to the surrounding areas. He talked of a hotel that they had signed and some housing, some mixed use, and that they're working in, from the inside, working out. How do you anticipate that will impact Sandy? And how can we capitalize on their development and growth to ensure that we are still a vibrant economic epicenter?

I hope I answer this diplomatically. The point is that a great geographical location, it doesn't really have the infrastructure yet. I mean, they're turning dirt, but they don't have it yet. And even on the transportation side, you know, there are plans, but they're not yet implemented. And so, and I've watched both there and at Daybreak, UTA opened up a new station at the South Jordan downtown location. All those developers are struggling, frankly, to find a strong office tenant. And that's why if you look at what they're under construction with, it's residential. And residential is better than not having anything, but what it tells you is that that market is so unpredictable. So I think how do you maximize that in Sandy is looking at The people that are currently there, how do you enhance their ability to stay here? What are the barriers, if any, for them to be able to remain to stay here? And then look at what opportunities that might augment not only their growth, but maybe a lot of times affiliated growth. Companies like to be nearby other companies that they work with just because there is a synergy there for them. And so I would like to take a hard look at that.

Mr. Souza. Thank you. So we, we talk about being able to go out and attract the development that we want, but realistically, you know, the land is privately owned and there are, you know, various things that that landowner may do with it that may not align with maybe what we would like to see. But at the same time, you know, I think that they, I'd like to think that there are opportunities to maybe guide that growth or incentivize or, or bring people to us in some way and, and even if they don't own land, partner with somebody who does to develop something that would benefit our community. How do you see yourself in that role? How do you see the city's role in trying to guide what is developed as opposed to just letting the market

Sure. Well, first I would say is that if there's any public money and tax increment is really public money involved in it, that you take those attributes that you're looking for, help them. And I think we're at a very poignant and realistic timeframe because one of the reasons people have sort of been hesitant or waiting back is that the private lending market has been kind of tough. And so having an incentive or an ability to help them in those overall costs, you should use that as leverage. You're not forcing them into it, but you can certainly invite them into it. and trying to implement the attributes that you'd like to have in that project and in that particular area. And I think how you utilize that can be very advantageous to them and certainly to the community at large. I also think you also go looking for developers. Sometimes somebody who owns it They're not quite sure what to do with it. The timing is not right for them. But if you can find somebody who sees that vision or shares that vision, one of the places that I believe that economic development could be is to introduce those parties together and see if they'd be willing to have that conversation. Somebody might have private equity money or something that they are in a better position to, and the costs of those funds are more advantageous to them. I think trying to be a catalyst in that component might also keep you from having to put any public funds in, or at least very minimal.

Thank you for that. My next question has to do with the RDA. So in your role, there's economic development and then there's RDA, and I know that when you and I spoke, we touched on that a little bit, but I was hoping that in this conversation you could Explain your experience with that and maybe some of the similarities and differences with your previous experience versus now and how you'll approach that.

Sure. I'd probably put it into two aspects. During my service on the Salt Lake City Council, obviously the council was the RDA board. They structure their leadership a little bit different. And the RDA board actually has its own chair and vice chair. And because of the complexities, you serve for two years. I served probably half of my 16 years in RDA leadership. It was actually more fun. The council site was more public, but it tended to be a little more of a pain. And so I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed working with staff and trying to bring projects along. In fact, in many cases, I was pushing staff to move property that we'd acquired. If you're an agency, your RDA property should be the first one that gets developed, and that's why you set the tone for what you want to come around to. And sadly, in some of the cases still, as I've observed them, their property is still undeveloped and it's developed all around them. And if you've done that, then you've really failed. And that's why you take a little more risk on the first project or two. At the county, nearly every city that wanted to do a redevelopment district had to come to the county looking for their participation. In the old CRA scenarios, it required voluntary participation from the taxing entities. So I evaluated with my staff every redevelopment project that came in to us from the county, including pushing back, ironically, on a data center in West Jordan with Facebook that just didn't make economic sense and for a lot of the reasons we've heard recently. We fought that particular one, and it since went somewhere else, and I look back, I think we may have done West Jordan a favor. But on the other hand, there were a lot of projects that moved forward in a productive way, and those communities have implemented them, and they've done exactly, for the most part, what was intended.

Thank you. And I think it went to Eagle Mountain. And I think Eagle Mountain would agree that you did West Jordan a favor. The other thing, I don't have any other questions. I appreciate your responses, and I align philosophically with the responses that you've given. And I also appreciate how you kind of began with public service as a privilege, and I couldn't agree more. So thank you for the years that you've dedicated to public service and the various venues that you have, and I appreciate you in this position as well.

Well, I want you to know that I welcome the critique. And it's together that we make these things successful. So thank you. Thanks.

And Miss Nickel has a question. Go ahead, Chris. Hi, Carlton. Thank you for the conversation that we had a couple of days ago. And a question popped into my mind. So much of what economic development does is market. And how are you going to keep up on the thousands of different markets, retail, real estate, because you need to know a lot of it. And some of the things you've said, quite frankly, are a little bit out of date with regards to market. So how are you going to get yourself up to speed?

Well, I look forward to working with the new communications department as well. I don't profess to be an expert on the marketing side.

No, markets in general. Real estate market, office market, that type of thing.

I think being an avid reader and evaluator of taking advantage of some great resources here locally, not only in ABC Utah, but more importantly, the Kempsey Gardner Policy Institute. I think also the Utah Foundation, which I'm currently chairing, does some work along that line. I also think there's a lot of great commercial firms out here that are well-known and have a good handle on it, CBRE and some others, and I'm not sure what's under contract here at Sandy, but I think taking advantage of some of those resources would be helpful.

Okay, thank you. I've known you for years. You're a stellar individual and a great man. I'm going to support this.

Thank you.

I had posed the same question to you and told you to be prepared to answer it. You do have pretty vast experience. So the question is to, is there anything in the job description that you haven't done? Is there an answer for that?

Yeah, there is. I mean, as I looked through that job description, there are some reporting aspects that I wasn't the one that filed the report. I knew the reports were due. We have a great resource in Rob Sant and some of that I'm going to need to brush up on because it just hasn't been a more recent thing. But I did think about one aspect as you posed that question to me in our phone call that isn't actually on the job description, but I think is part of economic development and that is we're pretty fortunate in Utah that we fundamentally don't have huge natural disasters. But one of the, and we often, when we talk about emergency preparedness or natural disasters, we talk about the immediacy of life safety. But what most communities don't think about, and I've been through some FEMA training along this route, is how do you restore businesses after a disaster? because they're the suppliers for your public works. They're the small retailer who doesn't have the financial resources to float business very long. And heavens, I hope that never is an occurrence here in Sandy, but as I went through those trainings in other communities, People ended up leaving six months later because it was just overwhelming to them and trying to get the community back. Because those are the things that bring the vibrancy back to the community that could be decimated. And I think there's a component to that. It's not what you do on a normal daily basis. But I think from an economic development standpoint, it's a resource that you at least would want to think about and have a plan to put in place that you do a few weeks after the disaster. Because a lot of those businesses, especially the medium to small sized businesses, they don't have the ability to just do something else with corporate headquarters.

In reading the job description, I highlighted something that's in here. It's just the second bullet point, which is that one of the essential duties is to maintain constant communication with the mayor and the city council in order to keep them informed of current economic development matters. We will look forward to that.

Yeah, I look forward to doing that and having those conversations.

I'm also going to look forward to these projects you alluded to that don't take any incentives to get them in. So bring us some of those, okay?

Yeah, I'm a hard nose. I'm not unreasonable. The project really does need to justify why you have some involvement in it that brings an added value to the community.

Anything else, council members? Chris, is your hand back up or up again?

It is back up, but it's not a question for Carlton. Okay.

Okay.

Is it a question for me? No, it's a... So the... About this job position, I wonder what created it, because we had an economic development director in there, so there wasn't an open position, and I was looking at the pay range for this. The economic development director wasn't even making what is proposed in Mr. Carlton's with Mr. Christensen's contract. So there was a person fired, and he was put in the position. So I kind of want to know the thought process around that.

Is that a question for administration then?

Yeah, I guess so.

Martin?

We're happy to talk about personnel matters offline.

OK. think you just got your answer yeah all righty Thank You Carlton appreciate that I don't see any more questions thank you and Kathy for being here this evening thank you for your time yeah all right it is well past six o'clock so we will go to general citizen comment Okay, and I do. So, Patricia Jones.

Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I just want to congratulate council member Brooke Christensen for putting forward her first reading on her proposal to initiate redistricting and council restructuring. This is definitely, for me, it's a step forward for the city if her proposal is adopted by the city council. The advantages in the proposal are well thought out, and without disparaging at large council members, I want to add that one of the disadvantages of having at-large representatives is they may be pulled to focus more on citywide or business interests and spend less time on constituent services in individual neighborhoods. An at-large system may dilute local concerns. seven distinct district representation can better protect minority and local interests. For me personally, the one stated disadvantage, transitioning from status quo can easily be overcome if clear dialogue is initiated with residents and the change disadvantages are clearly laid out. For me, I understand when I'm in a less populated district, I will have a closer connection with my new district representative, therefore overriding not having a secondary at-large council member to look to for help. I'm excited to see how this proposal will move ahead and very much hope the city council will support this proposal. Thank you. Thank you. Dawn Sidwell.

Well the first thing I want to address who puts the agenda together. Could you maybe minimize it or stretch it out so that people can all sit through the whole meeting. I'm here and I wanted to listen to about your vote on the veto which I probably won't be able to stay for. I came to address Cindy Sharkey's comment regarding the newsletter. Where do you think you're going to save money on stamps? It is put in an envelope along with my water bill. I don't think that's costing you an extra stamp. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when I went to school, you're not going to save any money by not putting it in the water bill. No difference in postage. So I'd like to hear a better explanation on that. The other thing that bothers me and why I'm here is also on Cindy Sharkey's comment in the budget period referencing the historic Sandy Barbecue. And you made the comment that you have citizens saying, well, we would like to have a barbecue in our neighborhood paid for. Well, I want you to tell your citizens or ask me when they have the crime that we have. I have to sit on my front porch and watch drug deals go by, homeless people. I had to walk over somebody at 10 o'clock in the morning to take my dog for a walk. So when those people have to live under those conditions, instead of having to go to the Alta Rec Center to have their kids play tennis and swim and communicate and meet under those circumstances before you consider getting rid of the historic barbecue next year. And also, when I retired 12 years ago, it was not my plan to have to sit and watch drug dealers. and crime right in front of my nose. I retire to sit and watch my plants grow and not be the historic Sandy Gestapo. I want to continue with better representation and accurate information coming out of our city council. Thank you.

All right. That's all the blue cards I have for this comment period. Dustin would you invite our online participants if they care to do so.

Of course. Thank you Madam Chair. If you're joining us virtually this evening via Zoom and you'd like to comment on any city business. 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. Madam chair first up is Rebecca Colley. Rebecca I'm going to allow you to begin speaking. Please remember to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes.

Thank you. And thank you very much, City Council. I just wanted to jump on tonight and let you know that I support the council's vote to leave the Central Wasatch Commission. In 10 years of membership, it does not appear that there are any indications CWC has made any headway. So please override the mayor's veto. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Madam Chair, I don't see any other hands raised. Oh, there is one more. Steve Van Maren. Steve, I'm going to allow you to begin speaking. Please remember to unmute yourself, and you'll have three minutes.

STEVE VAN MAREN, Thank you, Dustin. Good evening, Council. Steve Van Maren, resident of Draper. I apologize. I need housing in Sandy that I could enjoy. I want to speak in favor of the Wasatch Commission. They were formed as a result of the Mountain Accord when the mountain accord failed to get the approval of the the uh district recreational district because of transportation cottonwood canyon was insufficient they have been trying to work through that in part the uta took it over yes who we can blame for that sorry not entirely And there needs to be a solution in place before that can be approved. Running from the CWC isn't going to help. On the second item, I've known Mr. Christensen since he joined the county. I've always found him very level-headed. I don't know how he does it. I'm sorry. He's even more level-headed than Martin. Martin does a good job. I'm glad he's on the city. But please hire Carlton. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I don't see any other hands raised. All right. No, there is one more. Good. Next up is Lindsay Nielsen. Lindsay, I'm going to allow you to begin speaking. Please remember to unmute yourself, and you'll have three minutes.

Good evening, council. My name's Lindsay Nielsen. You know me. I'm the executive director of the Central Wasatch Commission. I am here to speak in support of the mayor's veto and to thank Mayor Zoltanski for issuing her first veto of her tenure as mayor. I can't say anything that hasn't been said already. There have been many, many comments in support of Sandy City remaining a member of the CWC. I will emphasize that all of the good faith requests that I heard from council members in my many conversations, I have offered to meet those requests. presumptive, the candidate for the congressional district one, Ben McAdams, has even sent you all a letter expressing his support for the Central Wasatch Commission and the importance of Sandy's continued membership and partnership with with the CWC and the other member jurisdictions on the CWC. So yes, I am not sure, again, what else I can say other than to please vote to sustain Mayor Zoltansky's veto of this budget amendment and please vote to remain a member, a paying member of the CWC. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Okay this time I do not see any additional hands raised.

I will close general citizen comment period and we will return to the agenda and our next information item this evening is agenda item number six and that is a land development code proposed amendment. So Melissa Anderson.

Yes. Thank you very much, Council Chair, City Council. So tonight is a proposal by an applicant to amend the Land Development Code. The applicant is Jeff Knighton of Knighton Architecture. He represents Dave Hunt, who's property owner that this proposal would affect. Their proposal is to allow for a 35-foot maximum height limit where you have sloped lots and measuring from the natural grade to the peak of the roof rather than the finish grade. Currently, we measure from the finished grade as opposed to the natural grade up to 35 feet, but their proposal would be from the natural grade measured to 35 feet maximum. Now I have more to the staff presentation, but the applicant or the property owner is here, and so I'd like to invite them to come up and present their proposal, and then I'd like to resume with my presentation.

Okay. Thank you.

Madam Chair, the property owner also provided us with some images. Are you okay if I pass those around? We've also sent it to your to your email as well if anybody would like to pull it up virtually including councilmember nickel online All right ready My Are you ready?

Okay, my name's David Hunt. This is my wife, Melanie Morris. There's some background which you may be aware of as far as why we're asking for this code modernization. We sent our direct rep is Ms. Hausman and we sent an email to her last week and my understanding is that she forwarded it to members of the council. I assume it was kind of recent so it's possible that many of you haven't read it. I don't want to rehash the whole thing, but it is important context as to what we're trying to accomplish and why. um first of all just by way of background um section 21 we're we are proposing a change to section 21 20-2 of the sandy city code uh this is residential building setbacks heights etc etc it's actually on page 306 of 660 pages which is section 21 so it's a lot And on the page, I'm sorry you can't see this, but it's a big matrix. And across the bottom of the matrix it says it doesn't matter what area you're in, the height limitation is 35 feet for residents. And then down below it says that there can be exceptions and there can be additional building height due to unusual architecture, roof designs, can be granted by the Planning Commission at the request of the Community Development Director. OK, so right now, as you know, in Sandy City, there's this odd thing that happens. Sandy City doesn't go by original grade. It goes by finish grade. So we live near Wasatch. And if you drive around up there, you see 50-foot tall houses with a bunch of dirt pushed up against them. And so from where the dirt ends up being pushed up, as long as it, on average, measures 35 feet, they're good to go. They're within the building height. Um, just like from, from a view of our house and, and that's the code and we're not complaining. Um, but that's just the current state of affairs. So just from our house, um, we're looking at a lot that we almost bought. We didn't almost buy it, but we considered it and it's basically a cross on the other side of Wasatch and what they did is. It's a little subdivision where a street goes in, there's houses above and there's houses below. Well, the houses above are built on the existing grade. The houses below, the only way they could build those houses was to build a nearly 20-foot retaining wall And then they backfilled it, basically like backfilling the Bingham copper mine. That's, of course, hyperbole. But they backfilled it with tons and tons and dump truck loads worth of dirt to build it up. And then they built their large edifice. So that house sits. I just talked to the neighbor today, actually, who is on the other side of that project. And he understands that they were allowed to do that by law. But now he's got a 20-foot retaining wall. And the neighbors were nice enough to build two step-up retaining walls. So the wall only goes at 10 feet from the two step-up walls. So it looks a little bit closer to natural. But then he looks up at the edifice of that house. So that's what the code is right now. It's not atypical. Now, in neighboring Cottonwood Heights and in Park City, and I think in Salt Lake City as well, on hills, you can build under the code based on the original grade. So what this allows you to do on hills, and if you think of Old Town Park City, everyone's been to Main Street, and you look up and these houses kind of stair-step up the side of the mountain. And the idea there is that the houses fit more naturally in with the land. You're not fighting the land. You're not getting these massive towering houses that have dirt pushed up against them to make them legal. And so that's what we were presenting. Now, we presented that, and I'll back up even more. So the reason all this happened is we started building our house. It was kind of during COVID type thing, and we broke ground in 2024. And we had gone through several iterations of the plan. We actually bought it off of a guy who was a kind of aggressive guy who was pushing all kinds of changes. And he replatted it and was doing all kinds of things. We didn't know the guy. We bought it from him. He decided he was going to build something in Florida. We bought it from him. And we inherited his architect. Because the architect had already done a bunch of work. I have a very close business colleague. He's a personal friend who knew that architect. The guy checked out. He's a great guy, Jeff Knighton. He's the official applicant on this. So I inherit him pay him a bunch more money to finish the plans to our liking. They had had a problem before we bought the lot. They had a problem with the city because they were kind of fighting over elevation. And so there is a whole history on this lot that we had no idea was happening. So we inherit a lot of that history with the staff, didn't know it was happening or had happened. So we finally get plans that are approved by the city. We found a contractor who's been doing this for decades. It was through a person we know who had just finished building a house in Draper that was very similar to ours. It was a custom home on the side of the hill. They had to deal with retaining walls, excavation, windows. It was like our house. And they're like, this guy was great. He got it done. He was on budget. And the guy's building a parade of homes house. Like, he's the man. So we hired him to build. And somehow, and the contract that we have with the contractor, and he's here, by the way, Pratt Diamond in the back, great guy, good contractor. We signed a contract with him, and the exhibit was the permitted plans. We initialed every page. So we have a contract. He's going to build it to code. He's going to build it to plan. And that's what we all agreed to. And so we paid a bunch of money to our architect, a bunch of money to our contractor, a bunch of money to the city. you know, for inspections and whatnot. And somehow, I don't know how it happened, but these plans that were sitting there during every city inspection, the city was there inspecting the framing, I don't know, a dozen times. Sometimes they said, this isn't the code, and then they fixed it. Sometimes they said, oh, you need another shear wall here. You need more tie-downs. These are the plans. They're nice and dirty. They weren't kept in the clean room. They're right there. So in the cities there, I imagine they're looking at these plans, going through everything, looking at the house. So let's put these right here. So these plans. the second to last plans somehow the framer got the second to last plans not the final permitted plans but the second to last plans the problem with these plans is these put the house several feet too tall these plants so the city comes and they inspect the framing repeatedly sometimes red tag it sometimes approve it and eventually they give us a final inspection on framing the exact elevation that we are today Then, as you guys know, with construction, after you frame a house, then you start spending the real money. That's when you put in the floors, the walls, the drywall, the electrical, the HVAC, the plumbing, the roof, and so on. That's when all the money's spent. And so after the city approved our framing, after going there over and over and over, these plans sitting there getting dirty the whole time, looking at them, going through them, et cetera, We put a ton of money in. Now, we've never built a house. We have lived below our means and finally built this thing and we're all happy about it. Then it's Christmas last year and one of the requirements in the permit was that we had to do elevation survey at the beginning and an elevation survey at the end. And so it's almost Christmas. We're ready to move in. The house is done. We get our elevation survey. And the surveyor says, your house is too tall. We're like, what are you talking about? How could it be too tall? It's not possible. And he's like, it's too tall. Well, so we come down to the city, got people coming into town. We come down to the city, and we meet with the assistant building official, Willie Chidester, great guy. And he's like, that's impossible. I inspected this house. I inspected your framing. There's got to be a break. I'd never heard the word break. But he said, there's got to be a break here. So I'm like, OK. I'd never heard the word break used that way. So this guy gets in his car, meets us at the house, just drops everything he's doing. It's like two days, three days before Christmas, drives up there to figure out where our surveyor got it wrong and why the house is compliant. And he can issue us an occupancy and we can move in. He goes and drops a tape measure and does some things and looks at us and says, this is too tall. And there's nothing I can do about it. I mean, I'm just a staffer. There's nothing I can do. Um, go to the city council. I, you know, I don't know. And he was kind of coming up with some clever ideas and, um, none of them seem to be working. He spent, he went down and spent an hour on the phone with Mr. Sorenson had a community development who was on vacation, um, and took the time to speak about this from his vacation during the holidays. Then we met during the holidays with the staff who made time to meet with us with the architect and sat down and did the whole thing. whole thing. And then eventually, so we couldn't move into the house. And the bank's like, we're going to foreclose on you. What's going on? You're way past. The loan's way late. What are you doing? And eventually, the city staff took some mercy on us. And we entered into an agreement on February 5, after weeks of iterations, signed by the mayor, where And it's attached to the email that Ms. Hausman circulated. And this is an agreement to issue a temporary certificate of occupancy. So the main paragraph of interest to us was that you can occupy this place. You have until July 1 to figure this out, as in seven days ago, July 1. And you've got to bring this thing into compliance, either with chainsaws or whatever it takes to get the elevation of the house down. Or you can try to get the law changed. You can try to get the zoning changed. You go to the city council and try to get something figured out. So we chose, after we'd kind of exhausted everything we could do with the staff, we chose fairly quickly to propose this Section 21 change. It's not atypical. I will admit that Cottonwood Heights, who does this, they have a 30-foot limit when you're going against original grade, not 35 feet. But it's not out of the ordinary to do this. And that's why we did it. And the staff said, we're not going to get behind that. Now, I understand. I don't know what the staff's reasons were exactly. Ms. Anderson will probably go through some of those. I have heard some of them since. But I do understand that the council or the city is considering a code overhaul. So maybe this is not a great time to do a code amendment when there might be an overhaul coming. I don't know if that's correct or not. And then we didn't get a red line copy back from the staff. We thought that we were going to be able to work with the staff to get it in a condition that you know, maybe alleviated some concerns. So the staffs, and I'm not going to speak for the staff, but their opinion seems to be that this thing is not ready for prime time, maybe never will be. And we understand that they have those objections. We don't think it's a bad idea. This is not abnormal to have a code that gives this alternative chance. We think it will result in better houses. It's more expensive to build houses this way, but it looks better. There's not a ton of remaining non-grandfathered lots where this will even be applicable. But to the extent it is, we think it is a better and more modern code change. And so that's the context as to what we're trying to accomplish. Just for additional context on our actual house, so where we are now with the council is that if the council is inclined to think, you know, for any number of reasons, we don't want to get behind this code change, we had asked the staff, well, if you can't get behind a citywide code change, would you get behind a zoning change that just applies to our subdivision, which is basically just our house, we're a subdivision of one, could you get behind basically this code section just being a zoning change for us? And we were told, no, no. So we didn't resubmit a zoning change. We didn't want to waste the staff's time with something they already told us in advance they wouldn't get behind. So we've exhausted everything we can do with the staff. We've tried law changes. They didn't support it. And therefore, the Planning Commission didn't support it in a pre-written motion. And we have already been told no on the zoning change. So if these pictures that Justin was kind enough to get printed for us, um it just it gives you some pictures of the house if you want to look at that real quickly these pictures there's five pages and they're actually labeled at the bottom uh the numbers so picture number one so this is the east side of the house and you can see that the house this is built on a one acre lot but it's in the corner the only place we could build per the city because of 30 grade was right in the corner of this thing. So it's very far away from the neighbor to the east. But we're kind of on top of the neighbor to the west, typical suburban type situation. But you can see there was always this retaining wall. You can see the foliage in there. There's always this retaining wall. And we actually cut away. The retaining wall continued to the west, as you can see on the left side of the picture. But we cut that away to put a garage there. And that is the problem. So if we had not cut that retaining wall away and that retaining wall continued where it was before, this house, without changing a single thing, is completely legal as far as height goes. And I'll say another thing. The things that you can see in the picture, none of this is out of compliance.

The thing that is out of compliance is there is, if you can see at the top of this picture,

This right here, it's a 685 square foot loft. It's an office.

It's my office.

As I'm getting older now, I like not commuting downtown. And so I built this house around an office where I'm kind of separated from the rest of the house. And then there's a roof deck, a really unique roof. So the only way you can get to this roof deck is through that 685 foot little structure that is in the back of the house, back toward the hill. That's why what we proposed with the code, it would work because it's not like that tall story comes to the very front of the house. It goes with the land as you go up the hill. And so in this picture, you can see that the current natural grade is 23 feet. I mean, I'm sorry, from the current grade. which was actually lower than the original grade. So this is actually lower. It was actually higher than this. Up to the roof there is 23 feet. So we have a long ways to go to the 35 feet. Um, page two, um, that is the front of the house from the neighbor's yard. So I jumped into the neighbor's yard. This was taken today. You can only see that loft. If you look right in the middle of the picture, there's a chimney that goes up that, that, that dark brick just to the right of that. You can see, it looks like a beam going across. That's the top of a loft. So you can barely see it from the neighbor's house from, uh, basically in front of our house. And there's a bunch of Austrian pines covering their view anyway. If you look at picture number three, that's our neighbor to the west. You can't see the loft from their house. That's from their driveway. You can't see it from the front door because you can't even see our house from their front door. But that's just from their driveway. So I'm trying to illustrate that the loft isn't really that visible, and it's not really blocking much. I will admit that from the east side, our neighbor who is very far away, they can see it from their house. They have a decent view of it. Picture number four, this is the exact east side of the house. And if you look at the roof line, it looks like three triangles. The second two triangles are the loft. That's the part that is out of compliance. And then if you look at the final picture, number five, that's another picture of that same area. And this is measuring from the cement up to, you see that wall keeps going up. Part of that's a pony wall. Around where the horizontal line goes, that's where the roof deck is. And then you can see up behind it is the loft. So that goes up another 10 and a half feet. So you can see that from this grade, which is actually lower than the natural grade, it never breaches 35 feet from there. And if we go from the old natural grade, the roof deck is at 17 feet. And then another 10, it's like 27, 28 feet from the original grade. The point that I'm trying to illustrate here is that it is not like this house is like something that has never existed in the city of Sandy where this thing gets messed up is the very front of the house and I think that it's in picture number two the front of the house from the driveway on up that up to where the where the where the roof starts up there, is a full 35 feet. And then if you go to the back, then that loft goes up. That, according to how the city calculates, takes it out of compliance. In my job, I deal with a lot of codes and stuff like that. When Mr. Chidester, who knows his stuff, tried to explain how they calculate average height elevations, I was so confused. And it's not because he didn't understand it. It's because it's complex. It's a little hard to understand. So we were trying to modernize and simplify. But I will say, here's the situation we're in right now. And the reason we didn't get this done before July 1 is we were before the Planning Commission the first week of June. We thought we were going to be before you in your first June meeting. But it turns out that because of all the budget meetings, we weren't able to get in front of you until today. So right now, we're in breach of the agreement And we had no idea. I mean, it took a while to get through all this stuff. And we had no idea that we were going to push back into July already. So where we sit right now is without a code change or a zoning change or some decision from the council, we're in a world of hurt. Because just construction costs of that 685 feet is like a quarter of a million dollars. Plus tearing it down is going to be pricey. Plus the loss, we can't use the roof deck anymore. The office is gone. The whole point to how the house was designed is gone. So it is massive economic waste. And when you compare the height at any given point from the ground looking up to the house, it actually never, ever, when you're standing there looking at your app, it never exceeds 35 feet anywhere. It's just the way they do this average thing, because that setback loft, the way they calculate it, it's just off. So we believe if there was ever a time for the council to take pity on somebody, it would be a situation where we had no idea this was happening. The city didn't know it was happening. Our contractor didn't know. Our architect didn't know. Nobody knew until two days before or three days before Christmas when they're like, there's something wrong here, to everybody's shock. So we proposed in our letter some potential fixes. One thing that could be done is the council could say, well, Well, the council could, if this code change isn't ready for prime time, and Ms. Anderson's probably ready to tell you why it's not, perhaps the council could table the vote, because this is an information session, maybe table the vote and instruct the council planning people or the development people to deal with this, to come up with something that maybe would make sense short of a full code change. You do have the power to give us a concession here, but we don't want to necessarily get special treatment and then have other constituents come in and say, well, he got that, so we want something But I think it's going to be very rare that you find a situation like this where the contractor missed it, the homeowner missed it, the framer missed it, the city missed it, the architect missed it. When's that ever going to happen again? But if the council feels like it's prudent to take a pound of flesh out of us, we could remove the roof of the 685 square foot area. There is room to cut the top of the building down and not cut into the windows. It would lower it. We could lower it maybe two feet, then put a thinner roof in. And so then if a constituent comes and says, hey, we want the hunt treatment, it'd be like, well, if you can prove that you didn't know, the city didn't know, architect didn't know, contractor didn't know, et cetera, et cetera, and you tear off your roof and you cut the house down a foot or two, then maybe we'll consider giving you the hunt treatment. So that, we would propose considering that. We would propose us working with the staff to get a game time ready code provision change or work that into just a zoning change for our subdivision. So we've laid out many different solutions. We're not just here complaining or breaking down in front of you, asking for mercy. We kind of are doing that, but we're also trying to provide some options. So and I will say one more thing that when the framer was framing the house, they discovered that to make it work and I don't understand exactly what's going on. Our contractor could maybe explain it if you wanted to hear it. But to make each level work with the windows because we have big windows and to make the the floorboards or the trusses or joists or something work they had to build headers on two floors that were about a foot and a half tall and they had to do that to make it work and according to mr chitterster he's like yeah that happens all the time the architect draws it up and the framers like the only way this is going to work if you you put this extra piece in or whatever so thank goodness they submitted it to the city both of those additional headers which raised it raised the elevation of the house by over two feet. So that alone, approved by the staff, that raised the elevation, as far as I understand it, that raised the elevation under the 35 feet. And then you take the fact that the other plans are being used, then it's like ridiculously high. That loft is six feet above how they calculate grade. So that's... That's where we are with this thing. So it's obviously a nightmare for us. It's shocking. It's unbelievable that this happened. The financial impact on us is obviously major. The economic waste is significant. It's obviously dramatic. It's embarrassing. You name it. But if anyone has any questions, happy to answer. Sorry if I bloviated. It's hard to be objective when it's your own deal. And sorry if I went on too long. But are there any questions? Would you like to say anything, Melanie?

I'm pretty settled.

I'm proud. Would you like to add anything? Or you're good?

No, I'm not.

Do you mind if our contractor just spends a couple of minutes or if you guys, Madam Chair, would you like to hear from him real quick?

If you have anything to add, if it's a repetition of what's already been said, we probably don't need that. But if you have anything to add, feel free.

Well, and thank you so much for letting us come up here. Thank you.

Pratt Diamond, I don't know if you want to know where I live or not, but a D ends with an R. It's over there. You might be wondering how could this happen. I've been building for 38 years. So I've been building for a long time. I've never ran into this situation where, in the end, and let's take it back a little bit, I actually took over at the footing stage, so there was a bunch of back and forth and so forth. However, the plans got the way they did. I didn't have access to the Sandy system, so we went with some plans that were provided, and that's how it all started. Never looked back. going to your point about the book of Think Again. I'm not a reader. Luckily, my wife has a book club of one. That's her. And she reads a lot of books. So I texted her when you mentioned that book and I said, hey, here's another one. I get my cliff notes from her. So she reads it and she breaks it down for me. I can't even fathom even sitting there on an audio book. So I just can't focus. But the unfortunate thing is We don't want any homeowners to have to go through this. I didn't mean to come up here and do that. But I go on a journey with people for 9, 12, 15, 24 months. I build about 7 to 12 homes a year. None of them are on an ivory homes type stage where it's just flat land. They're all on very difficult lots. I've built in about 20 to 22 cities. There are some cities I really like building in, and some are really tough to build in. But every single one has a different type of ordinance to enforce, different code. They're always changing, updating. We try to do our best to keep up with them. The great thing about Sandy and your building department, what they have done after this was discovered, which was a survey was required before final C of O, along with Gerald coming out, making sure the fire is OK and all that other stuff. So we passed Gerald. There was a situation with some retaining walls. So we got hold of CMT to come back out and approve those retaining walls. And lo and behold, hey, we can finally have our survey done. So we got the survey done. That's something we wanted, especially around that time of year. And that journey with homeowners, you become family. Sometimes you have arguments. Sometimes you disagree. But in the end, you become that family. And I have so many homeowners that I continue to reach out to and vice versa. So this home, how did this happen? I call it a stack effect very, very simply. It started out with a 30% slope, and I'm going to share a little story about a home I'm building in Pepperwood on the east side about that very thing. It's how that the finish grade is determined. Draper is determined off of how you start, not the finish grade. Other cities, it's different. You have a one-size-fits-all for how these 30% slopes. So I hope you do reach that, get out to your planning department. You have some very good folks in there that can look at it and maybe reassess how that's done. One-size-fits-all does not fit every single lot in this city, especially ones that you have limited. The next thing was the roof is recessed 15 feet off the front. And if I understand it right after reading it, if that roof office, as he calls it, identified as a mech room, it's approved. We could also go up with another 10 feet with a chimney, and that's fine. You can't even see it. You saw the pictures. That's irrelevant because it is built over a certain finished grade height. The next one was a structural revision. So back to your point on think again, there were some red flags in this thing. Both my framer and myself and some other guys, along with David, and then reaching out to the architect, just didn't have, it's like at that moment, we needed to think again and break that down. And we didn't at that time. So one was what he mentioned. We couldn't get the windows to fit. because of certain situations. And it happens. Architects aren't perfect. Structural people aren't perfect. We try to put it all together. So we got the fixes. We had to add a two-foot floor truss in opposition of a TGI and another foot and a half on top of his. So it raised the house two and a half feet. We did our diligence. We submitted it to the city. The building department is not at fault. They just review it. Hey, yeah, this looks good. Go. So that in and of itself put it over two and a half feet. Uh, and that was a structural change that was needed. We couldn't avoid it. We could have stopped and, and, and like, Hey, we can't build this house anymore. We've got to do something different. And then lastly, or some con construction tolerances that always happens, you know, three to four inches in a house, wood expands and so on and so forth. So that's, that's how all that, that came to, to, to pass now. And I'll get this to a close. So I'm building a home. This is, I'm getting very familiar with your code. So if you change it, I'll get very familiar with it, but It's on another 30%. It's on Bent Hollow, 30% lot. Beautiful home, couple's out of Texas. They have some 14-12 roofs, so that's a pretty steep roof. Well, we couldn't get it through the planning because it was over the height. And it's only 28 feet above the road. But because of the way that the finished grade is, so it's also on a slope about 9 feet down, 9 to 10 feet. Because the way it worked around and around it was to put a rock wall in front of their west foundation, and we were able to get it under height because now that is considered finished grade. But again, it's only 28 feet above the road. So the grade, it should be 35 feet is allowable height. Well, you walk out that house, go 15 feet down the road. There's a home that they stare out that's 52 feet in the air. I talked to the builder. I said, how did you get that through? And he goes, oh, we put a bunch of fill on there. And on this section, you can tell it's all fill in order to get it to the finished grade. And they were able to get it. But it's 52 feet in the air. So my point is... I bear responsibility for them. I'll do whatever I can to help them. I'm not asking for a code change or ordinance or interpretation, because that is what it is. But there's no fire danger. You can't even see it from the road. It is built taller than what it is. But the finished grade thing does have to be looked at going forward for anybody here. Any questions?

I have a question for you. This is a very very sad situation and I appreciate getting all this detail from you. Mr. Hunt said something in the end in the beginning that I thought was so important that I wrote it down word for word and he said somehow the builder got the wrong plans. Who handed you the wrong plans.

Boy, man, if I could only turn back time. I believe they were emailed to me. And so that's what we started. I could not get into the Sandy City system. We changed. I did some, you know, life. I have three kids, so we're starting to prepare for end of life, hopefully another 30, 40 years. So we changed the name of our company, so that changed in your guys' system. My son's company was in there, mine was not. So I couldn't get in the system, get the right set of plans. I didn't even have a contractual arrangement at the time. So that's what I believe what happened, and then we were off and running. Again, I took this over at a footing stage. Luckily, for the whole state, the contractor that was originally involved.

So who emailed you the wrong plans?

I believe the homeowner, yeah. He didn't do anything egregious at that time. There was a whole bunch of changes happening. He was going through a contractor change, financial instability. This guy, luckily this contractor, I won't mention any names, is now finally out of business. He took a lot of people for a lot of money, and there's a lot of people out there, but there's a lot of good contractors out there either. But so we rolled with that. But back to her think again and the red flags. There were red flags inside those plans. The best thing that I think the city did, and you didn't require a survey until before CO. Kudos to Willie, whoever changed in the building department. Now, which happened on the Pepperwood home, before you can pass go, you pour your footings and foundation, you need a survey. And then you also, after that, you got to go meet with Gerald. So Gerald comes out on site to fire marshal. And so I appreciate that change because we, as builders, we need fail-safes. We need checks and balances out there. We can't think at all. There's a lot of moving parts in homes, a lot of things you can think of. So we hope never that this kind of a mistake ever can happen again to anybody.

Okay. Community Development wanted us to go back to them. Are there any questions at this point before we go back to Melissa?

No? I have one more comment. Mr. Christensen brought something up. None of you caught it, but I did. I'm like, holy cow. His wife's here, and he knew how many years he was married, and that made me start thinking, well, jeez almighty. I'm not going to ask my wife how many, but it's 36. So you had some great candidates come up here. I hope they go through. So thank you.

Ms. Sharkey, can I address that real quick on that email, just because you wanted to ask? So I had another contractor, and they ended up going out of business. And I had Mr. Diamond, I was talking to him before because of the people that had referred. So in the fall of 2023, I emailed those plans to Mr. Diamond and said, And in my email, I said, these still aren't approved. And so he had those plans. And then we didn't start with the other contractor. We didn't actually start until the following March. So that was March of 2024. And so he had those plans that were unapproved. We entered into our contract. The house was already started, and I had to let the other contractor go because nobody was showing up. I had given him a quarter of a million dollars up front. They weren't showing up. And everybody was saying they weren't getting paid. It was a big disaster. Again, they eventually went out of business. So Mr. Diamond had had those plans, the unapproved plans, for like eight months. And then somehow, I won't speak for him, but somehow he forwarded those plans the framer. Now, he may have forwarded those to the framer six months prior, and the framer had them, and the framer just printed off the wrong plans. But nobody noticed that. It was astonishing. You saw those dirty plans. They were just sitting there. So that was the history of it. And I don't know how the framer or the contractor took plans that had been sent eight months prior and printed them off. You know how that happened, but like Mr. Diamond said, he didn't have access to the city at first. We entered into our formal contract after the framer was already on site. And so we signed the correct permitted plans. But I think the framer already had those original plans. So that was, I mean, that was, I don't know whose fault that was. But anyway, just to be clear, that's what happened. And again, I don't know what happened between the framer and Mr. Diamond. So thank you.

All right. Melissa, back to you.

Thank you very much. So I wanted to review what our current code says and what the proposal, the basic language of the proposal. I'm not sure why this is not forwarding.

It does tend to be slow. It's not going at all.

I'll try it. Hold on, Melissa.

Okay. Thank you. Should I try again? OK. There we go. All right. We're on a roll. So our existing code states that the maximum building height for the primary dwelling is a maximum of 35 feet. And that height is in all of our residential zones. And building height is defined as the vertical distance between the average finished grade surface of the building to the highest point of the coping of a flat roof or the top of a mansard roof, top of the ridge for a gable, hip, or gamble roof. The illustration shows how that's measured. So another word for that is from the midpoint to the peak of the roof. So that's the way we measure it. We review plans according to that and we've administered that for many years. So the proposal in sum is to change the code so that the applicable residential properties where you could apply this is where the predominant slope within the building envelope is 30% or greater. That's the actual language that's proposed. This would be an alternative method for measuring building height, but is optional for an applicant if they're in a steep sloped area. The maximum building height as proposed would be for the habitable portions of a dwelling to be no higher than 35 feet and measured from the existing or natural grade as opposed to the finished grade This is just an illustration showing where That portion of the home is exceeding the the building height this comes in a little closer and staff had proposed or had a negative recommendation to the Planning Commission the Planning Commission had also forwarded a negative recommendation their recommendation was unanimous the reasons In the staff report you could go into lots of detail but the basic fundamental I would say policy reasons why you would or would not want to propose an amendment of this nature, of this specific code change, is that one, it would allow for taller homes. The proposed method of measuring building height would enable taller homes to be constructed in steep sloped areas than is currently allowed because the result of as proposed up to 35 feet measured for the national grade is allowing for taller building. And another is equity or lack thereof. If proposed or if adopted, the applicant would be able to have a taller building while existing homeowners have not been allowed to use the same methodology for measuring the building height. have complied with the code and also another reason is enforcement and inconsistent enforcement because the previous cases there have been new homes that were constructed taller than the code allows and but they were required to physically correct the situation to meet the code. Lastly, another fundamental reason is that several revisions would be required for it to actually be able to work within our code, to be integrated, to make sure we're touching all other related sections, how we define building height. For example, one of the properties Some of the language in the proposal is to measure habitable portion, but we Don't measure from the habitable portion. We measure from the physical top of the physical structure and we It's we can't really enforce in areas that we can't verify meaning is it habitable or is it not habitable? There's other reasons to of the various things that would need to be changed. But that's another basic reason. So those four fundamental reasons, because I think you could go down a lot of rabbit holes of analyzing this or that, but I think these basics are fundamental to why one would or would not want to have a policy change to amend the code as proposed. This would allow taller homes. equity issues or inequity related to other homeowners that have complied, enforcement and the inconsistency of enforcement, and then we would need to make several changes for this to actually work to amend the code correctly. And so both staff and the Planning Commission are forwarding a negative recommendation to the proposal as presented by the applicant to change the building height to measuring from the natural or existing grade to 35 feet. And so that's the basic presentation that I have. Did you have any questions for staff?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for that explanation. I'm wanting to go back in time a little bit and clarify one thing and ask a question. The clarification is relative to the framing. So The applicant indicated that there were multiple visits around framing and ultimately approval given and that's when all of the significant cost of building occurred. So was the framing of the home approved?

Go ahead.

So you're referring to when the inspectors go out and inspect the framing? Correct. So let me go back just a little bit further on the set of plans, because I've had some questions from other on a set of plans. So when we do a set of plans, yes, the set of plans is stamped as the approved plans from the city. If they're not using those plans, they're not using the right plans. We always give a stamp plan. It's signed and given to them. And however they mess, whatever they did to mess that up, I do not know. But they always have a correct set of plans from the city that are signed. On this particular home, we did require, this is something we've started adding because the hillside development is difficult and it's getting more difficult to determine heights and keeping the heights in the correct limits because everybody is trying to max out the height. It used to not be that way. People would build within that limit. Everybody's trying to max out their setbacks. They're trying to max out the height and go as high as they can. So one way that we've looked at that, trying to correct that, the building official has, is to do surveys. There is an issue with the surveys. They're pretty expensive. So we are requiring a survey. And on this home, we required a footing and foundation survey. That's to make sure that the homes are placed in place and that the footings and foundations are not too high out of the ground, which automatically will start the home in a bad position to be too high. After that, they'll build through the process and we are also starting to correct. We didn't want to do this because every one of them, you know, by the time you get through that, you can add $10,000 to the cost of a home for requirements to verify the height restrictions because it's very difficult. Not a lot of people are wanting to build within the 35 feet. They all want to go higher. And so when we go out and do our inspections, yes, they can go out and say, yeah, that works for now when we're doing a four-way or when I say a four-way, electrical, plumbing, heating, and framing. When we go out and look at that, they say, yes, that works for now. But if you ask Willie, who has told me, they gave a specific warning on this, that this is looking like it could exceed your 35 foot limit. They give a warning at that time. And if it's going to do that, then they need to come up with something to fix the roof line, do something to bring it down to meet. We've done this on many homes. In fact, not more than three weeks ago, there was a home within the roadshow that was getting ready for that. They overbuilt by 2 and 1 half feet. Well, they came in. It didn't meet the survey at the end. They were required to scrape 2 and 1 half feet. They re-angled the roof to meet that requirement. And they brought it down. And within a couple of weeks, they were in compliance. So it's nothing. that we haven't done before. It's something that we look at consistently. But yes, we will give a warning. But we cannot sit there and hold their hand through an entire project. They have a set of plans. They are expected to look at it, and they are expected to follow it. We go out, when we're called out to do surveys, when we do a footing and foundation, we go out and we do a four-way, which includes framing, and we can say, yes, this looks good. We can't stop the home because you're in compliance right now with the framing. If the home looks like it's going to have a problem, we'll warn them that it's going to have a problem. Then we rely on the final survey by their own engineer to tell us whether it is within the requirements or not. But if we had an inspector for every home that we build in the city, yes, we could do a 24-7 compliance and look at everything they do. But we have four inspectors to cover the entire city. So obviously, that's not possible. We'll tell them it's that way, and they are expected to fix it, and they are expected to follow the approved plans. The approved plans on this one were at 35 feet. they are expected to follow and to make sure their home is 35 feet.

So my second question is the applicant indicated they brought forward a lot of potential solutions, which I think is something to be appreciated. Yes, sure. I like solutions first thinking. And one thing they recommended or ran by staff was a zoning change that would in essence be applicable to a one-house subdivision. But they were told no.

They were told that's something we would probably recommend. If that's a spot zone and for one home on a thing, that would be very difficult to do. Everybody else in the city who did not meet this code would ask for the same thing.

And if we rezone into another residential zone, all the residential zones have the same height limits.

They all still have 35 feet. The other thing that we looked at with them, it wasn't that we weren't trying to help them. I mean, we were trying to look at alternatives, and they asked for a variance. They asked to go, and that would require them to go to the Board of Adjustment. The problem with that, when we looked at that, that would be very difficult to do because the Board of Adjustment has five criteria that is set by state law, not by us. One of those criteria is that it cannot be self-imposed. And if it's self-imposed, they will not approve it. So it's highly unlikely that if this went to the Board of Adjustment to get a variance, which sounds like a very easy thing to do, let's just get a variance for this one and call it good. It's not an easy thing to do because state law doesn't allow the Board of Adjustment to approve a variance unless the applicant can show that it wasn't self-imposed. So that would be very difficult to do in this case. They have every right to try and go to the board, but it's highly unlikely that they would be able to approve that. But if they wanted to try that mechanism, they are free to try. There's nothing we could do to say you can't do that, but we could say what the law says, and it would be fairly unlikely that they could make that decision based on state law.

I think those are all my questions. I've got comments, but it's more to share with my colleagues, Madam Chair, than questions here. But I do have more to say. But I'll wait for further questions.

Ms. D'Souza. Thank you. I had a question. I have a couple of questions. But one of the ones that popped up was when Melissa was explaining that you couldn't calculate off of habitable because you don't know. But don't the building plans tell you the areas that are habitable?

But what Melissa was discussing is how the home is built It may have been varied on the interior, meaning they may have used a different truss, they may have used a different system at the actual construction. So defining a height based on a habitable space I don't think is a good regulation. It's not easily enforceable because our observance is based on exterior observance. That's what you're administering in a height. You could have a home that didn't have you could have almost unlimited space of a roof structure that's uninhabitable then if your building height is based on habitable space. That's the unintended consequence, I think, of doing that. I don't know if they meant to only exclude a chimney or something like that or an architectural appurtenance of a cupola or something like that. But that's already addressed in our code. But to finished parapet, finished pitch or peak of roof is what's observable. Because that's what you're regulating, right? You're regulating the structure of the home, the impact of that home to the surrounding property owners.

Sure. And I was just mentioning that as an example of something that would need to be addressed in terms of correcting code that could actually...

Sure. I just wanted to understand, and you've given me more information, so thank you. Okay. So how long has the code in its current form existed?

Decades.

Okay. And what was the – was anybody – James, were you around when this was done decades ago? So my question is going to be, does anybody understand maybe what the goal of the code, what they were trying to accomplish or prevent or mitigate against? Help me understand that.

Sure, it's about building form and urban design. Limiting the impacts of what one property owner can do on their property that does not create undue burden on their neighboring property owners. That's why we have building height limitations so that it's not, someone can enjoy their property up to a certain point They can't can build up to a certain size. They can build up to a certain height and have setbacks that are appropriately distanced from one another. And that's the purpose of zoning in general.

OK. Well that's helpful because I guess you know in those decades it sounds like there are people have have found loopholes in terms of Retaining walls and and things of that nature to build up the grade over a greater portion to get a different average right and so You know is it so I guess that's what I'm asking is are we are was the intent maybe to prevent these seven-story monstrous apartment houses or whatever in a neighborhood. But at the same time, because I can't imagine that that would be very desirable by the surrounding neighbors if not everybody were similar in that way. But on the issue of the retaining wall, I don't know that looking at a 20-foot retaining wall is necessarily my idea of enjoying my backyard and the potential view. And so I guess, and I understand where the staff Is coming from with this because this is what the code says and there isn't a lot of leeway You don't have a lot of tools to address the situation with with how it's written And so, you know, I I don't fault anybody for you know, how we've gotten to this point You know comment wise like wow This is a nightmare for the homeowners I'm sure you know and the builders and you know the city and everybody trying to figure out how to I think everybody ultimately has the same goal in resolving this issue in a way that works for, you know, all parties given the code that we have. And so I don't know that I have any more questions right now, so I'll save more for discussion. But thank you for answering those.

Ms. Nichol, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to explore a little bit of the zoning issues portion of the request. And I think this is a Lynn Pace question. Now forget, please correct me if I'm wrong, but spot zoning is illegal.

Not necessarily anymore.

Not necessarily?

No, it's not. OK. It used to be illegal. It's generally a bad practice. I will say that. It's not a good practice.

OK. And to the height issue. I feel for you and this is such a tough situation. But we do have to think of other people. And when people want to come in and build homes, they are going to know that you built higher and they are going to want that. And that does affect the people around them. It doesn't sound like you have neighbors that are affected necessarily now. But it's a big ask, and it's a tough situation. I just want to share that for now.

Is there a situation in which we have allowed this increased height? Or in every case that you know of, have we required a modification to come into compliance?

I can only speak since I've been the director. And in every case since I've been the director, we've required a modification. Only because that's what the code reads, not from any interpretation or anything like that. We've simply just followed the code.

Ms. Houseman.

I don't have a question. Okay.

Ms. D'Souza.

Thank you. Sorry about that. So, James, just to follow up, has it occurred in a similar state of completion where somebody has had to cut off and deconstruct?

Yes, because usually if they're really close, it will be determined completely through the survey at the end. And the survey at the end will show what it is and if it meets or if it does not meet. I mean, it's a different story to be six inches off because that can be a natural mistake from an arch or something like that or a foot even. But eight and a half feet is pretty far.

So can I just, sorry, I have some more questions as I've been thinking. The total height. of the house from garage to top?

It's sort of average finished grade.

So you're meaning if...

Okay, what is the average finished grade height?

Currently or as approved?

No, currently. How far out of compliance is it?

It's about 43 feet roughly.

And that's OK. I will say that I'm having a difficult time even wrapping my head around how to imagine what that would be on a 2D drawing with the slope in a way.

The highest one I've dealt with outside of this one as far as it's come through my department on height has been about three and a half feet over.

Can I chime in real quick just for clarity? Forty three is the height from the average of the slope so driveway to top is like it's more. Yeah. OK. Thank you.

Brooke they told me to think of it like it's in whole extra story of the house on top. OK. That helped me.

On the one side. And I think it does matter, because it is on a slope. And I'm thinking about the context of my grandparents bought a lot of U-Lot in Cottonwood Heights above Wasatch on the Kings Hill area. And they developed that from the roadside, It's one story, it looks like a rambler, but it's actually three stories that tears down the slope there and exposed that way. And so in terms of when the surveys are done, is there maybe a better process or timing of the surveys to help prevent something like this? Because this is pretty... pretty incredible. I can't imagine an honest mistake happening and thinking, oh my gosh, I just spent x amount of dollars and now I have to rip it off and do more.

We can't, you can't just eye it and make sure you're correct as one of the inspectors. We have to have documentation and we want it filed on paper through a survey. And that's the most accurate and the most sound way that cities are using to verify The only thing we can do more is we can add another survey, and we have, and we can add it at four-way. And so that's just one more cost to the overall. So we hate to do that, too, because it raises the cost of a home. But if it provides further protection for the height and for compliance, that is what we've required. So now we have three surveys on a home.

So the first survey, what's the purpose of doing it at the point that it's initially done?

The first survey would be foundation. That's to make sure that they've correctly placed the foundation. Because a lot of foundations, if they bring them up too high, that automatically puts the home at a disadvantage for too high of a home in the end. Because they're coming out of the ground too high, and it's above already the grade which they've measured from on the 35 feet on their plans. Awesome. And for steep driveways, yeah, that can only be 12%. That's another reason.

OK. I may have more, but I'm OK for now.

And just to clarify, I wouldn't say it's probably 50 feet. It's probably a little bit less than that as far as the overall height from base of driveway to the top of the parapet of that fourth story. But I think that, and I will also clarify from the very beginning, our code isn't designed to allow for four stories on a home in general. Because they used a flat roof and they reduced their floor to ceiling heights, that's how they ultimately got an approval on their plans. Because the initial plans, as they were drawn, was always too tall. And that was our initial conversation with the architect and the designer of the plan, that they could not make this work and get this four-story on there, this bonus level at the very top. Their creative solution to that was to reduce the floor-to-ceiling height amongst all of the floors. That's where I think going off another version of the plans led to this issue of not meeting the floor-to-ceiling heights and then pushing everything up higher. And as James said, it is on the owner and the developer and the builder to follow those plans, and that is their responsibility. We go and check and make sure that those things are eventually going to be in compliance, but it's their job to ensure that they are following those.

Ms. Hausman.

I don't have any more questions. You're welcome to stay at the mic or not, but more questions. I'd like to share some thoughts with my colleagues. Thank you, everyone, for all that's been presented. I add to what's already been said. This is such a difficult situation. So here are some thoughts in response to kind of what I've heard tonight. I really liked the description of the cascade effect. I think that's an appropriate and descriptive description. Language I guess around what has happened to bring us to where we are I think it's appropriate to sort of understand the history and and the cascade effect of this happened and then this happened but the reality is with this is where we are and this is a really really difficult situation. I also appreciate the reference to the book I mentioned earlier, Think Again. I hope that we, I know what staff has shared and they are absolutely doing their job, which is interpret the code and share their recommendations, which have been negative. Planning Commission, has done the same thing. I get that. They took the recommendation, negative recommendation from staff and sort of upheld that. I would like us to think again. I would like us to give this some time. I would like to think about spot zoning. I understand we clarified it is not illegal to do so. I also hear clearly that staff has said it's not best practice. But this is... This whole experience is certainly not best practice. And I don't believe that a cookie cutter approach to what is before us is right. I don't know that we have fully asked the questions we could ask. And that's the value of think again. What have we not yet thought? And thank you, James, for spelling out things you have thought about. But you said it. You were interpreting the code. I don't know that the way the code currently reads because it's decades old, is necessarily worth us just turning this away. The need for building in Sandy is critical. And yet there is so little opportunity to build in Sandy. And when people build, it's likely going to be on very challenging lots, often with slope. And I think part of thinking again is, What does that look like? Or if we have, maybe it's time to revisit. But this argument that's been brought to us, I think, is worthy of consideration. Is it natural grade or is it finished grade? I think that's a worthwhile question. Let me see what else I had here. OK. So I understand, and I'm just referring to my notes, make sure I don't miss anything. I understand the concerns that have been raised. I'm not saying they're not. But as I think about where this homeowner finds themselves and what a difficult situation it is, I can't help but, and I shared this with all of you, but I'm now sharing it publicly as well. I can't help but remember our discussions around Kuwahara. Those discussions were intense. And those business owners slash homeowners, because it was such a really odd situation, they were woefully out of compliance. And this is after... lot of Collaborative support from the city and a lot of hand-holding and what they were out of compliance with was actually quite dangerous And I remember vividly conversations around equity which is at the heart of some of this conversation What would other businesses? think. They had to be in compliance. They had to follow fire safety code. And yet we were sort of not requiring that of this one business. So I believe this is reminiscent of that. And we worked extremely hard with Coahara. many, many, many meetings and a lot of conversation. And I don't know that we've given this particular challenge the same due process that we gave Coahara. I would like to invite us to think about stretching this process and thinking again and really asking, What questions have we not asked? And if we have asked them and they've been answered, do we like the answer? Is there a different way of thinking about the answer? I want to really wrestle with this to the degree that we did with Coahara. We found a way to help Coahara keep stay in business. And I understand they may still not be fully in compliance, but we wrestled and we found a way to help them navigate this. And I believe that this issue deserves the same due process, the same wrestle, the same really get outside the box and think. So that's what I'm asking is that we ask staff to come back with more than just we don't agree that this amendment should be made. And we all might agree with that. We might all agree this code amendment is far too, it would have far too much of an impact to actually change the code. So what does a spot zone look like? Even if it's not best practice, is there an opportunity to think about a very intentional effort to support this particular challenge? I don't think we have wrestled with this enough to have this come back and vote on it. And because of that, I would ask that we extend the – and it's been very merciful. I want to acknowledge that. There's been grace extended. But this is the first time it's coming to us. And so as a council body, I would like us to think about extending that grace for occupancy for longer and give us time to wrestle, give us time to really think again.

Mr. Souza. Thank you. I have another question for the planning staff. I'm thinking about this in terms of the rule and the exception. And to me, this aligns with this is kind of an exceptional situation. This isn't something that probably happens on a regular basis. I think that we do a good job of putting systems in place and checks and balances to prevent these situations from happening and, you know, regardless of the best efforts, you know, sometimes stuff happens. And I'm thinking about the exceptional aspect of it, and is it, am I correct to think that, like, variances are built in to kind of help in these, and not maybe in this particular situation, just in general, with exceptions to the base rule? Is that what a variance kind of does?

Well. Do you want to speak to it, or do you want me to?

Well, it's a deviation from the standard.

Yeah, but there's specific criteria for a variance, and it's established in the state law, and it's very specific. You have to meet all of the criteria. So even if you met 95%, of those, but you couldn't meet one of them, you can't approve it, or the Board of Adjustment is likely not to approve it. And so one of those criteria is self-imposed. It has to be inherently part of the land as to why you need this adjustment to the code. So variance does address unique circumstances to the land. Maybe there's a big boulder that is just really dramatically large, and so you can't meet a setback on one side, so you needed a reduction of maybe two feet.

So speaking about variances, are variances something that the state defines? Yes. The city cannot, does not? That is correct. OK. Well, that's a no.

Those are those five criteria that we've mentioned. So it's an unreasonable hardship, special circumstance, an essential property right is being preserved through that, and there's no substantial impact. on the public interest or general plan, and that substantial justice is of help. Those are centrally the five criteria.

Well, that helps me clarify. Because in my mind, I'm thinking that the state actually defines what the variances can be. But you're describing the reason, the ways that somebody could apply for a variance. And so it's left to the city planning department, I assume, to interpret whether or not those conditions exist.

It's the Board of Adjustment, actually.

Yeah. So the Planning Commission doesn't ever do variances? No.

No. That's the Board of Adjustment's role. Okay. To hear variance requests.

Now, we do analyze it. Okay. And we analyze it, present findings to those criteria, present a recommendation. Okay. And then the Board of Adjustment has a public hearing and reviews all the information presented by the applicant and the staff analysis and then makes a determination. That determination is based on that state criteria.

And I'll clarify that the unreasonable hardship that's being complained of is specific to not being self-imposed or primarily economic in nature. So just because it's going to be expensive or because I made a boo-boo or I screwed up somehow, that's not a reason to grant a variance. Those are expressly excluded from the criteria.

It's defined that way.

It's very specific.

OK. Thank you. And I guess I'm just trying to think through and ask the questions to really understand you know, the situation. And, you know, I can't imagine that you guys are all able to regurgitate every single conversation or thought that anybody's ever had. And so this is my opportunity to, you know, do that with you now. So thank you for allowing me the time and answering my questions. You know, Council Member Hausman brought up Kuwahara. I also think of Red Feather. Is that Red Feather in the decks? Okay, so this, to me, feels similar. We are rewriting code, you know, and maybe there is an opportunity to more fully consider what our height requirements are in this and the way that it's calculated, not what they are, but maybe the way that it's calculated because that seems to be, inconsistent among you know various cities to consider whether or not it warrants a change that the council would be interested in making like council member housemen now I'm in the comments I'm done with questions if you want to sit you're more than welcome I I get where everybody's at, and I get where the staff is at. I get it. I get where the homeowner's at, and how do we come to some amicable resolution that overall works? And I hear that we have been in these situations in the past, and the homeowner or whomever chose a different path. They chose to comply. One of the options is to come before the council and the planning commission and this process is an option, right? And other people maybe haven't exercised that option first. And that's a decision that they made. And I don't know, I'm sitting on the council now and I wasn't then. And so I feel like now I have an opportunity to review the situation. It does seem like an honest mistake, regardless of whose mistake it was. I can't imagine that the homeowner would intentionally put themselves in the situation that they're currently in. I don't think that I need to get into it, but I imagine that there's financial hardship and not just the cost, but maybe the current financing and some of the issues pertaining to being able to move forward. As a real estate agent, I've I have been hired to help clients with very difficult situations, such as not quite this by any means, but that their financial situation would have put them in complete ruin, and they would have lost everything over $15,000 in one circumstance. I do believe that there is maybe more conversation to have and some way to figure out and resolve this issue without saying that we have to be super sharp and cookie cutter and one size fits all and black and white. I am definitely open to exploring what other options may reasonably exist. Okay, those are my comments right now, thanks.

Ms. Christensen.

Okay, I just want to make sure that I'm hearing everything I'm supposed to hear, and I'm looking at you three. So our options, so basically, a variance won't be approved because the code doesn't meet the requirements, so that's not an option. So we come to the point where we can enforce the current code, We can spot zone it, even though we know that is the hated option. And does it open us to legal issues with other people if we don't agree to spot zone them? It's a question I've got.

Council has discretion from making this decision to rezone or not to rezone and you create the district So that district can be broad it can be narrow, but you define the district and once you create the rules Just because you create one set of rules for this district doesn't mean that you can't create a different set of rules for another district So I think there's very little risk of the council very risk of legal action against the city if you decided Even if the districts one house, right?

Okay So that's an option or another solution. But my understanding is that staff does not have any other solutions. They've given their solutions. It's not a bad thing. I'm just saying it out loud to make sure. Other solutions would have to come from us, the council. Right? Yeah, please.

I think what we're saying is we've looked through this and we have went through it and we're trying to stick with the code and applying the code. What the code requires us to do is follow it and that's what we're trying to do to the best of our abilities. So the recommendation we've given you are our recommendations. I can't come back with a different recommendation every time that we review this because our recommendations are based on the code.

Yeah, so hold on a second. So solution would have to come from us. So those are our three options. And then unintended consequences, we've talked a little bit about this, but if we don't spot zone it and we change the code, which I do not want to change the city code. I'm not a fan of four-story houses in Sandy, especially since this would apply to our sensitive overlay zone.

Could I just mention something about the sensitive area overlaid zone. So I mean for me and I don't know how others feel but if we're going to do something I would rather be extremely limited than I would clear across because this could have great effect for everywhere along including Pepperwood Hill. Any undeveloped piece of property what you do in this situation could affect all that. And I would hate to see higher homes be allowed across our whole east side.

Yeah. I'm very concerned about that. And warnings were given throughout the process from staff that there was concern about the height.

And it's their responsibility to make sure they meet them in the end.

And they happened at the four-way?

Well, you can talk with our chief building official. No, I'm just asking. Yeah, no, I'm just responding to someone who said there wasn't one. But we give warnings the whole time that you have to meet the 35 feet. If you're following the plan, the plan says 35 feet, you know what it is if you have the correct plan.

So like the four-way and at the beginning, those, I mean, we're saying we.

We have a survey at the beginning, and we have a survey at the end as well.

where they were, it's a crappy situation, there's no getting around it. But okay, so I just wanted to make sure I'm understanding the options and what's happened so far correctly.

That's correct.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, any more comments? This is an information item, no action is required tonight. I think we're ready to move on.

Thank you. In my letter, there are a couple of other solutions.

She said no. Thank you.

If I could, Madam Chair. So Mr. Cadell, Councilwoman D'Souza mentioned Red Feather, and she and I worked together with... Residents in that community and mr. Cadell was super helpful with that. So he he's had some experience helping us think through Difficult situations how we've gotten there what we can do and and I would love just your thoughts on tonight's discussion and and and thank you for spelling out like where we are is where we are and likely A resolution will have to come here because they're simply interpreting code. So I'd love your thoughts on this.

I'm happy to offer my thoughts. I have the advantage of actually being a member of the Board of Adjustment. I don't know if you knew that. I was on the Board of Adjustment here. And we're guessing as to how the Board of Adjustment might handle this particular situation. I mean, we don't know. But when you look at the code, Most of the people just come into the Board of Adjustment and they say, they basically do what the applicants did today. They talk about the parade of horribles and everything that's going on and how difficult the situation is. Therefore, I need a variance. And it's really complicated because not only do they have to check all these boxes, they also bear the burden. They have to prove to the Board of Adjustment that they meet all the criteria. So most properties do not meet the criteria, especially if it's a situation that you've created. And it can't be economic, right? So it could be a crazy amount of money. But that's not a factor we can consider. It's usually something like there's an odd parcel of property that perhaps might not meet a setback perfectly, because it's just an odd piece of property that is difficult to develop, for example. person who bought that didn't create that problem, for example. So they're welcome to go through that process. I think the planning staff probably saved them some time there. I know you don't want the Planning Commission throwing cold buckets of water on creative ideas, but I think they were really honest about what would happen in that environment. Secondly, I think it's really put the planning staff in a little bit of a precarious situation when the applicant, as a matter of law, has a right to come in and petition you, which I like. Obviously, it's excellent public policy to come in and seek redressability in front of you on how to fix it. The problem is the planning staff stuck with two things. A, what you've already told them to do. And it wasn't you. It was your predecessors. But you've told them what the rules are. And then they came in with a set of rules that they didn't help craft. So what are they going to say? Well, we're following your rules. And number two is, the way that this has been proposed by the applicant doesn't really fit. So I would say, if you're serious about looking at this, I think you ought to ask the professionals to look at it. Ask them to be creative and ask them to come back and say, does this still make sense? It did 20 years ago. Does it make sense now? Councilmember Hausman brought up a really good point, and that is that we're increasingly limited on where homes can be built. So does forward-thinking people still believe that the rules that were imposed by somebody like my dad 30 years ago, is it still relevant? That's a good question. I don't know that you ought to decide that from the dais without asking the professionals to look at it for you and come back and see if they can give you something that might work. If they can't, well, then you can look at other options. But I don't think you've unshackled them to be creative yet. And perhaps you ought to do that and see if they can come back with something that could work. Now, maybe they won't. Maybe James and his team will look and say, look, there's darn good reason. We think it ought to be this way, and here's why. It's worked for 25 or 30 years. But maybe they'll come back and say, look, it was a good time to do a review. We put our best people on it. And here's maybe some new or fresher way of looking at it. Perhaps they could look at some of the modern literature and see how it really works. That's my recommendation. and let the professionals do their job and see if they can come back and propose something that could work. And not just for this property. I think the question that you have, council member, is, is our policy good public policy? Or just because we've always done it, is that good enough? And to me, that isn't good enough, right? So we ought to at least review it. And maybe this is a time to do that. table this matter and see what they can bring you back. And I think that we could probably, I mean, look, I think the administration's been kind to work with the couple on their home. It's an unfortunate situation. But the council has, at times, worked with people who've been in a difficult situation. Council Member Christensen worked with a pretty difficult business owner not too long ago, and was patient. And of course, my father worked with the same people 10 years before that. They're still not compliant, but that's not necessarily relevant for the discussion. So that's my best thinking. I think you ought to task James and his team to go back and have them commit to you that they'll take a fresh look at it. If they come back and say it doesn't work, well, then you can go from there.

It seems to me that that was what the Planning Commission was asked to do. They weren't asked to decide whether this homeowner or builder was compliant. They were asked whether the code ought to be changed, and their recommendation to us was no. Now, it was specific in the code change request. It came from the property owner. Yes. But, you know, I did watch the meeting. I did listen to it. They did talk about other scenarios. They, too, shared concerns, sensitivity about what happened and asked the question, is there anything else that could be done? The only question that came up was, so we have a horrible situation. Because of a horrible situation, should we change the law? I think what I'm saying and what they said is no. Should we change the law for this one property only? Because we don't want to change it citywide. Should we change it for this one property only?

I don't think you should do that, Madam Chair. I think that would be- Okay.

Well, thank you for that.

I think that would be a dumpster fire.

I'm thinking we have, if on a situational basis, we're going to make a decision that says, we'll change the law in your case under your circumstances, but not in yours, and okay in yours, and I kind of don't want to get into that, right? What I was looking to do in my questioning was to try to dig in on fault, and if any of the fault was ours, that might change my point of view. But I'm convinced that it wasn't. Do we take it back? Now we also, here's the question too. We were already told that there's a timeline and we're already out of compliance and there's a problem and so does the, it's the applicant who's asked us to do this. And now, and for a yes or no. So does the applicant want to change the timeline? Does the applicant want to withdraw it? Does the applicant want to start all over? These are questions that I don't want to seize it out of their hands and say, we're going to handle this now. It's up to them. What do they see as a solution? What would they like to do?

Madam Chair, may I just offer one other point of view? You've been on the Planning Commission. I haven't been. I also know that the Planning Commission has a tendency to lean heavily into the professional advice they're given in real time.

Disagree.

Well, you've been a member of the PC. I haven't. I disagree.

That assertion, I disagree with. Yeah, I was on the planning commission for three years. We did not rubber stamp the staff recommendation.

I didn't say rubber stamp.

Although I always agreed with you, Mike, didn't I? Like 100% of the time. He knows that's a joke.

My suggestion to you isn't certainly, my suggestion is to say, look, It doesn't really necessarily matter why it's in front of you. Look, it's in front of you, right? Do you think that the policy is good in and of itself? Or if you do, great. And if you don't, then have the staff go look at it and come back and give you some recommendations. That's all I'm suggesting. I'll shut up.

Ms. D'Souza. I'll try to be quick. I know this has been a long item, and I know we have more to go. This is an information item, and I do think that we need to maybe, I don't know, I know that as a council member, I'd like to kind of understand what to expect going forward. You know, under the current situation, this is slated to come back, and we're going to make a decision on the code that was proposed. I want to kind of rebut a little bit of what you said, because I understand it a little differently. And the Planning Commission didn't make a decision on whether or not we should change the code You know unlimited it was based very specifically on what was put forward by the yeah Yeah, right like they're not they're not trying to determine whether or not we should change code that wasn't presented by the applicant and so and to Mr. Cadell's point, you know staff didn't write this update of the code and so maybe there is an opportunity to ask staff to go back and and look at what, to review on whether or not there may be appropriate changes. I don't know that I think, I'm not somebody who thinks that just because it was done 30 years ago that this is the way that it always should work. And I think that it's these types of situations, and this isn't the first, we were told that there's been in the past. They've just chosen different paths, potentially, than what this applicant has that raise the situation to a level of maybe reconsideration. I don't necessarily know that that's where we are, but I don't. I don't know that we aren't there. Personally, you know, I would be open to An SD zone for this one house to solve this problem in the absence of having staff maybe provide feedback on Other on whether or not we should look at the the code in general we are in the process of changing of updating all of our code because Sometimes it needs to be updated. Thank you.

Miss Nicola's had her hand up. Go ahead Chris Thank you

I didn't know, who brought this forward? Was it you, Marcie? MARCIE METZL- The applicant. Oh, the applicant brought this forward. Lynn, if at anything, do we have to act on this or hear this again? What is the proper way to?

Sorry, Madam Chairman. Sorry, Chris, I didn't mean to cut you off there. You can't make a decision tonight because it's just listed as an informational item. I think as a general matter you don't have to vote on it, but you should at least let the applicant know whether or not you're going to vote on it or not so that they know how to proceed. So they just need some kind of direction as to whether or not the council is interested in pursuing or exploring a solution for them.

Okay, thank you. I also want to, I mean, I hope I'm not sounding too constitutional, but we are charged with obeying and defending the laws of Sandy City, and that can't be forgotten either. So it's definitely a tricky situation, but I just didn't want to forget that we have a responsibility to adhere to the law.

Mr. DeKaiser.

Yeah, I just want to share that it's obviously unfortunate that the applicant's in this situation, so definitely feel for you. It's not great to be in this situation as a council member because we want to help them, but we have our responsibilities. I just want to let the council know my perspective. I seemingly agree with most of what the chair has said, and I just wanted to disagree with the cascade effect framing because I think from the beginning this home was an issue. It was constantly pushing the limit of what was acceptable. The fourth story, everything wasn't to the correct plans. The question about who is at fault I think is important. And so I think the true cascade effect would be a spot zoning decision or a special district and what's to come in future development. in Pepperwood Hills phase three, et cetera. So yeah, as unfortunate this situation is, I didn't have much sympathy for the guy who had extra sheds. And this is just a really sad situation. But I think I would be reluctant to make a specific change.

So the question as to whether we're going to vote on it is up to the applicant. It's on the agenda for a vote next week. If they want to remove it from the agenda, they have the right to do that. If they want to move forward with the proposal as is and receive a council vote, it's on the docket for next week.

Ms. Trapp. Thank you. I put in my input as well on this. This is an unfortunate situation. The house was built. I am reluctant. I think staff has brought forward what they've kind of provided some information. Ms. Christensen, you gave us those possibilities as well. I did a very, very superficial search throughout the county. I mean, Salt Lake City has a cap of 30 feet. West Jordan, Draper, Cottonwood Heights, Holiday, Murray, South Jordan, Riverton, Harriman, West Valley, and Magna all have 35 feet as well. Mill Creek has a height of 32 feet. So Sandy fits right in, and that is very superficial. I could be inaccurate. I then extended down a little bit into Utah County, Looked like your Facebook page said you were based down in Utah County. I could be incorrect on that or Knighton. And Provo is 35 feet. American Fork is 36 feet. Orem is 35 feet. Lehigh is 40 feet or two stories, so not even four. And Provo, let me make that correction, 35 feet or two stories as well. So looking at, I think that we are right that there are a lot of cities, a lot of municipal governments that have looked at this in the past. If this is something that we wanted to look at, I think it would be something that would come with a code rewrite. But I do think throughout the city, 35 feet, that seems to be very common throughout the county. you know making an exception for one home at a time I can't imagine doing this on a regular basis you know for somebody that comes forward and says you know what we missed the mark by eight and a half feet that's a that's a pretty big mark to miss you know I I don't want to assign fault or blame to somebody. It does not sound like that it falls on the city. That was a concern that I had as well. If this was something that we messed up on, I would have some more struggles with what to do. But I think that if we are, well, we haven't requested, but staff has provided the alternatives. You know, this is, it is very unfortunate, but I don't think I would be open to looking at something to say, well, on a one-on-one basis, you know, every time somebody has an issue that they can bring it forward, we can look at this and to discuss that every single time. That would be cumbersome for staff. That would be very time consuming for us to look at for homes, for businesses, for anything. to be able to bring that forward. So I am less likely and not leaning towards the point that we need to look at something other than it doesn't meet our building requirements. And once again, eight, eight and a half feet, that is significant difference at some point I think even for me I would be looking going I think this house is getting a little too tall you know maybe we should be looking at this and understanding that all the other houses in the area are also a certain height and we are adding a complete additional story to it you know at what point do you stop and say let's make sure that we are doing what we're supposed to do you know an experienced builder doing something you know homes 7 to 10 or 7 to 12 I think is what you had said a year and looking at the pictures here they look like very high end high quality homes so I think that you have that experience that I'm surprised that somebody didn't stop and say let's just double check so I'm sympathetic to the position, but not looking at moving to making an exception.

Ms. Housman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I understand you said to the applicant. I was apologizing to her. We're skipping over her. No, no, you're good. So you said to the applicant that the ball is kind of in their court in terms of.

We can pull it off the agenda.

We can pull it. Okay, because I'd like, I understand, I sound like I'm a little outnumbered here, but I think this deserves the same support that Councilman Christensen gave to the business we mentioned earlier, and I'd like to I'd like to take that on and perhaps work with Mr. Cadell. I understand that we may not come back with something that you all could get behind, but I believe due diligence is required here. This is a really difficult situation. We have worked through difficult situations before. I'm not ready to just let it go. So given that, if the council would be willing, I'd be willing to take that on. Mr. Cadell, if you'd be willing, we could explore. I understand it sounds like you're not willing to ask staff to do that because you're not sure they would come back with anything different. I think there are things that we could do that have not yet been explored, and I'd like to just at least unpack them. So I know it's in the applicant's court. but I offer that if we are able to remove this from next week's, I don't think a week is enough time to have what we need to, in my opinion, make an educated vote. I also recognize, though, that that is asking for something that we cannot do. That would be administration needs to approve the extension. What was given was July 1st, so I know that is something that, I would need to ask administration and staff to consider working with the applicant on if we are going to sort of table, to use Mr. Cadell's word, this vote for a bit and see if we can do a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking. So I offer that even though I know I'm a little outnumbered based on what has been shared tonight.

Can I see that as up to them? They have the right to move forward on their application, but if they choose to take another route, we can definitely remove it, and you'll be in charge of the agenda, so you can find out from them when they're happy to bring it back. All right. Anything else? We have a lot more. I'm going to keep going, you guys. If anyone needs to take a health break, grab a snack, a drink, whatever, do it while we are rolling. We're on to another information item. Jake Warner. We're looking at a general plan amendment application. Jake, are you going to handle seven and eight together, or are you going to handle them separately?

Madam Chair, I just recommend that we do that, that we handle those two items together. They're closely aligned, and I could do the same presentation twice, but I think I can do it all in one presentation.

I don't think we'd notice. Go ahead. Let's go ahead and combine them.

So I'm excited to be here. This is historic. You guys might not be as excited as I am about this, but this is the first general plan amendment to revise the future land use map of Sandy City that has ever occurred. This is a common occurrence in other cities, but it is the first for Sandy City, as Sandy City did not have a future land use map until it was adopted as part of the general plan a year and a half ago. Let me give you some context. The Boyer Company has submitted applications for a general plan amendment and a rezone affecting property at 825 East, 9085 South, approximately 7.5 acres. The property is better known as the CTEC facility for the Canyon School District. and the Canyon School District has found other property, another location for that program, for those facilities, and they have put the property for sale. The Boyer Company has the property under contract, and they have come forward with a proposal. The applicant has met with staff over a significant period of time, going back approximately a year to come to this point. The property is currently designated as institutional in the future land use map of the general plan. Institutional because of the school facilities. If you recall, we have residential designations, low, medium, very low, high density neighborhood designations. Within those, we do count small school facilities, small religious facilities as part of a neighborhood. But for larger properties, whether they be educational or religious in nature or other institutional types, we did designate them separately on the future land use map of the general plan. Anyway this property is designated as institutional on three sides. It does have a medium density neighborhood designation and then it also has some high density and some limited commercial designation as well adjacent to it. The property is currently zoned R18. Educational facilities are allowed in residential zones so it is consistent with the R18 zone even though that is a residential zone district. The property is surrounded by PUD 10, PUD 7, PUD 6, RM 12 and then a convenience commercial zone as well. So the applicant is proposing a housing project of approximately, well, as per their concept plan, 86 units. Again, that's 7.2 acres, so that does equate to approximately 12 units per acre. So I failed to mention that on the future land use map, it's hard to see in this image, but the transition corridor overlay designation is also applied to 90th South. If you recall, that overlay designation is to open the door to introduce alternative housing types, kind of missing middle type housing. So the frontage of that property does have that transitional corridor designation. So there is an argument through the general plan that it already supports some type of medium density residential in that area. It was staff's position that just because the frontage, there may be an argument for some of that housing along the frontage, that we did not want to assume that that automatically applied 500 feet deep across the full depth of that property. So in discussions with the applicant, we felt like it would be a more open, transparent public process to also amend the underlying land use designation, that institutional land use designation. again that provides a clear record if approved that would that would be that would align more directly the general plan specifically the future land-use map with the proposed project if you were to approve the rezone as well so the rezone would be more aligned with the with the general plan in the transition corridor overlay and also the underlying land use designation. And the applicant's concept plan would be consistent

Sorry, it's struggling again.

The transition corridor overlay does allow for up to 16 units per acre. The medium density designation that they're requesting allows for up to 12 units per acre. Again, over the entirety of their project, it averages out to about 12 units per acre as proposed. They do anticipate having some bigger units, some more intense units along the frontage. And again, that would be consistent still with the general plan in that the transition corridor is applied to that frontage. Okay. So with that, as mentioned, the applicant is requesting the medium density neighborhood future land use designation as the general plan amendment. And they are requesting the PUD 12. as the zoning with the rezone. This did go to a neighborhood meeting and has been presented to the planning commission in a public hearing. The planning commission forwarded positive recommendations on both the general plan amendment and the rezone. And as a legislative item, the Planning Commission is mandated by state code to hold that public hearing. And then it is required to come before you for a final decision. And it is before you tonight as in both applications are before you tonight as informational items. And it is scheduled to come back to you next week on the 14th for action on these two applications.

The applicant is represented here tonight and staff is available for questions Miss Christensen So I know C tech had some issues and the neighbors seem happy to have a different development there instead of C tech from the neighborhood meeting right for both the neighborhood meeting and the Planning Commission public hearing

did not hear anything but positive comments from the neighbors about this proposal again we it was limited the number of people that spoke in both the neighborhood meeting the Planning Commission so I don't want to assume that that you know that that represents everybody's feelings but from those that spoke they were in favor of the proposal okay

The only way I personally am okay with this, which it's not a bad plan, but is if we have an agreement where these are owner occupied and we put they're required to live there X amount of years like we've talked about in our other missing middle developments. DEV restrictions. Thank you. I couldn't think of it right that second. So that's otherwise, if that's not an option for me, then they might as well just make them R18. So that's my opinion.

We had a similar discussion around that with the Fortner rezone. If you recall, developers usually see those DEV restrictions as a little more burdensome on them than requiring a for-sale product. On the Fortner rezone, there was a development agreement that required the units to be subdividable so that they could be individually sold. And so that was what was imposed on the Fortner rezone, just as a refresh of how that was handled.

I want... And I can let the applicant speak to their feelings on that. That they have to be owner-occupied for X amount of years, like we've discussed.

If we really do want to...

Sorry address the missing middle piece of our city then we and we want to grow our residents we need people who have to stay here for a while and so and I will say that staff is aware of the council's feelings The applicant originally came to staff with a more dense project proposal

as a for-rent product. They have stated that their intent is to make these a for-sale product. So we have made it clear our understanding of your position on these issues. And there has been some movement there. But again, they can speak to their position on all of this. Yeah.

And I appreciate that. I just don't think for-sale addresses my concerns to get Residents there for a longer amount of time to be it have it be a more stable neighborhood and help people buy homes So just my opinion Mr. Sousa Thank you, okay, so I have a question kind of following up from councilmember Christianson's question is this plan to

Is this going to have an HOA? Is there a plan for an HOA?

Well, it would have to. There's common area. Usually that has to be managed by an HOA.

And who writes the CC&Rs for the HOA?

The applicant or the developer typically would do that.

Okay, so I have that done I'm trying to like creatively think through other alternatives outside of just deed restricting because that's a very specific mechanism that you know has other implications and You know if there if there is an opportunity to consider for sale and to maybe not put the the restrictions on deed but to put them in the CC and ours which you know again goes to the deed that I that says that they can't be rented for a couple of years. I'm just thinking of Daybreak. Daybreak's master HOA has rental prohibitions for a period of at least 24 months that an investor can't come in and purchase it. But it can be maybe rented out in the future by the homeowner has a different situation kind of a thing. But there's maybe a few different ways to address that, depending on tolerance and willingness, I suppose. Can I say one thing to that?

And I'm not totally opposed to that. I just, Farnsworth Farms just like jumps into my brain and that's what we were agreed to and then it never happened. And so that's the only hesitation. If we can find a way to make it... stick, then I'm all for a different way.

OK. And I don't necessarily have any comments. I just wanted to provide maybe another way to think about how to accomplish the same thing that may not be as burdensome, maybe more palatable. I don't know. But just wanted to throw that out there. I do have a question about the transit corridor. Remind me what the intended future use of those transit corridors was. Was it just housing?

So transition corridor.

Transition, thank you.

Again, the idea was to open the door to alternative housing types along infrastructure where additional traffic and so forth could better accommodate more traffic, more density. I was thinking about this as you were speaking with Carlton Christensen earlier. This is going deep into the general plan, but part of the purpose of updating the general plan was to look at revitalization of some of our older commercial areas. Some of our consultants told us that Sandy City has done a great job of developing commercial space, but some consultants have said it's almost overdeveloped. We have a lot more commercial space than some of our surrounding cities, relative to some of our surrounding cities. And some of... Sometimes the new up and coming commercial area can cannibalize existing older commercial areas. There's also the transit supportive approach that Carlton mentioned focusing more on specific nodes in the city. And so the idea is to open the door to alternative housing types and maybe encourage more commercial to go to those nodes to not be in the mid block span of some of our corridors to encourage more commercial development redevelopment in those specific nodes that we've identified in the general plan. So the transition corridor doesn't prohibit or discourage necessarily commercial explicitly. If you look at the dashboard for it, it does say a certain percentage will probably still be commercial. But it definitely encourages some of that missing middle development along those mid-block corridors.

I love that you read my mind. You're really good at that in this particular instance. I don't know where you were going, but I was just expressing. The commercial aspect, because I guess my question is, I get really nervous about utilizing all of our larger lots in these projects for only housing. And I get that that's kind of where the need is, and in some ways where the money is, because as Carlton just was saying, I understand that office space and retail is kind of difficult. But at the same time, that's where mixed-use development comes in. really like the idea of mixed use development, um, in these areas. And I just want to make sure that we are not, you know, giving away all of our opportunities for those types of development, which I think personally are, you know, future looking. I think that is ultimately what this valley will potentially look like largely in some period of decades down the road. And so let's be thoughtful about that as opportunities come up. But at the same time, I know where this is. It is mid-block and trying to think about what maybe would fit and whatnot. I don't know, but I felt like it needed to be said. Thanks.

Ms. Nichol. Chris, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Hey, Brooke, I thought when you said long-term stability, I thought of another idea along with it. It's not necessarily a deed restriction. It would be in the CC&Rs that a certain percentage, maybe say 5% or 10%, can be rentals. That's a good indicator. That would prohibit it becoming all rentals as well.

Yeah, something like that would be great or that way or a legislative development agreement with the council like any of those options Yeah, would be I'm just one, you know, I want to make these projects viable too.

And when you have a deed restriction like right off the bat it sometimes affects the market and in that effects of the market effect of the project too. So just another thing to look at. I'm all on board with the development agreement as well. One other thing that I'd like to mention is I'd like the exterior units that back existing residential to be single level. Right now they're two level. That's just a little note for the developer.

finished thank you thank you miss housman thank you madam chair um i stepped away for a bit so i might have missed this i missed some great comments by myself Okay, well, you'll have to repeat yourself. In explaining the surrounding properties and everything we've been doing with the master planning, we're talking about transitions, we're talking about all of that. But if I understood correctly, the surrounding area is certainly already PUDs, but this would be the most intensive version of a PUD. as compared to around, right? They're asking for PUD 12. And is it the most the next most intense PUD 10?

Yeah there's some PUD 10, PUD 6, PUD 7 around there. Some RM 12. I do think that the homes to the south may be two stories. They are small single family but I think they are two stories. But this would be I guess from the general plan perspective this This would be that next step in the transition. You've got some R18 further to the south. You've got some RM12, some PUD6. And then this would be the next step. And then within their proposal, you've got bigger units, larger setbacks around the south and east perimeter. So that is a step in that transition. And then as you move further to the north, they're a little bit tighter units. And then right along the corridor there would be they're proposing three-story units along the corridor and a little tighter there as well. So it does transition within the project, but it also transitions naturally from what is existing.

Thank you for that. And then I also want to echo what Councilwoman D'Souza said. I love the idea of mixed use. I understand that that's not necessarily what's being presented to us tonight. This is straight housing, which, of course, is needed. And to add upon what Councilwoman Christensen said around owner-occupied housing, You read that right. You've communicated that well on our behalf, that that is definitely a priority, is owner-occupied. But I want to add that I recognize, and I think this is what Councilwoman Nicole was sort of getting at as well, I recognize that in order to get that, if that is our priority, and James Sorensen has said this very clear as well, if we're going to make that our priority, we are going to have to think about incentives that we might allow to enable that to be attractive. And so I felt like there's an opportunity to bring in that piece of the conversation we've been having because I am interested in, you know, perhaps I know maybe there's some other things we can explore, but if we look at deed restrictions and that does make it more of a challenge, what incentives might we consider to sort of equalize that? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Well, I mean, maybe the most straightforward is density. The applicant had been looking at a few more units, maybe a four-rent product along the along the frontage there. So there's some things there that they had desired, expressed a desire for some additional units, some additional intensity along the corridor. But other than density, a lot of times it comes down to financial incentives, which is tough as well. you know, there are situations, you know, RDA housing funds and stuff have been used in situations like this. I can think of a project in South Jordan where that was done, where, you know, there was a certain amount of funding given to restrict a certain number of units, deed restrict a certain number of units. I think in that case, I think it was an affordability component along with the owner occupied component. So those are my thoughts off the top of my head.

That's helpful. I want to make sure that all of the tools that you have taken the time to teach us about fold into the conversations we're having as these things come before us. And so I had not yet heard incentives brought up, and I wanted to bring that up because I agree with so much of what's been said is we need to use the tools we have available to encourage homeownership. But we also need to recognize the burden that could come with that. So what...

And these are discussions we're also having with our consultant on the code rewrite, too. How do we introduce, how do we codify some of these things in the code so we're not having to reinvent the wheel every time a project comes forward? The incentives are there. If they meet certain triggers, you know, they get the, anyway. So we're having those conversations. We'll see where that goes.

Yes. And we can have them here, too, right?

Yep.

But I appreciate it.

I'm saying I hope we have better tools in the future.

Yes. Right?

As staff. I mean, we saw that with the last... Application right the better tools their outcomes. Yep. We hope that's That's the outcome of the code rewrite is we have some better tools for stuff like this.

Perfect. Perfect I think that's all I just sort of wanted to make sure you I added upon other things I'd heard so Jake the change in the future land use map

from institutional? Did we only designate it institutional because the school was there and we didn't want to create a non-compliance?

Not being able to foresee every change. We anticipated that there would be revisions to the future land use map and we actually encouraged that again as part of the open transparent process of making these decisions.

So I'm totally fine with the change on that part of it. So going to the density, you know, I did do a drive-through. All the housing developments adjacent to it are all two-story. They're PUDs, PUD 6 and PUD 7. We're proposing PUD 12 here. You know the only PUD 12 that we have in Sandy right now is a development off 78th that I refer to as slot canyon of garages. Yeah. It just. It's very dense. It's very narrow. All you see are garages. There's a carve-out where two doors are right next to each other, so there's like this little indent. It is not hospitable. It is not nice. I remember at one time someone in planning saying, we made a mistake on that one. I'm looking at this one, and what I'd like to hear from the developer is how I can concede that maybe the layout could potentially alleviate that problem. And so I'll be looking for signs that that won't be the case here. But, you know, it's R18 now, which is basically maybe you could get five units per acre out of an R18, and this is more than double that. I don't begrudge the ask. I'm a little concerned about the density and what we're creating, and so I want to get more comfortable with that aspect of it. Like I said, we only have that one, and it is – It's not good. The common areas are kind of between the buildings, so you don't really see them. It's just not a great development. It is not the building of a community. I think the people that live there do not get together. There's just not a way to do that. And so anyway, I'm hoping that this development creates a little self-contained community and has all the amenities needed for it to produce that. And I'm worried about a PUD 12. So I'll be looking to gain some more comfort in that. Go ahead, Ms. Christensen.

Random question. The development behind the DI, how dense is that? Yeah.

fairly dense. I calculated that at one time. I think a couple of his projects are fairly dense.

Because I consider that a pretty dense neighborhood, but I don't. It's not 12th. That's what I'm wondering. I don't think it's.

I'm just comparing. Mike's on it.

Because I think that's a really well-done neighborhood that creates the more inviting atmosphere of neighbors. And so.

I can tell you that the PUD zone is the only residential zone that we allow for rear-loaded units. And if you do that, they have to front on what we call a pedestrian view, a minimum of a 23-foot wide green space. So on this particular concept that they've provided, we've worked with them quite a bit. The main road there running east and west, those would have front loaded units on it. The yellow ones would be front loaded. All the rest in there are alleyways that would be rear loaded. A lot of that gives You know, the aesthetic from 90th South, is it Charlene? I'm not sure how I, it does give a better aesthetic because they would be fronting onto 90th South and the other road there. And then internally, they would be fronting onto Green Quartz. But if you're driving through the alleyways, you would be seeing the rear of the units.

So it doesn't give that neighborhood feel.

From a car, it doesn't. If you're walking through the neighborhood, you would be walking through those green courts. That's where the pedestrian access is focused is on the green courts.

Yeah. So to answer your question about the Brad Reynolds development behind the DI, it's zoned MU, which doesn't have a density limit. It's more based on design. Their proposal considered 10.4 units per acre based on the total acreage. But there is some additional land area dedicated to roads that don't have any units fronting it. So it has some other pieces. So it's actually a little bit more dense when you look at it. just within the box of the development, not the roads extending out. So it's probably closer to 11 or 12. OK. And I will say, Mr. Sharkey, that there are several other developments that are PUD 12 in the city, not just the one on 78th. I think she was referencing that the council was approved in the last several years. Okay. Sorry.

There's been some RM12s approved. There's only been one PUD 12.

What other PUD 12s are there?

There's several others. Riverside, over by the golf course, has areas of PUD 12. Some older developments along 78th. But there are other areas of PUD 12 that have a variety of different design outcomes because the PUD allows a lot of variability. It doesn't have a predicted development outcome. It allows for a lot of creativity and flexibility that Is why you get a variety of different housing types out of that?

So I will say I appreciate the fact that it's Proposed as a PUD rather than an RM to me.

That would be a problem There are more design controls in a Pewdie than there are an RM Mr. Sousa Thank you.

I have a question. It just kind of dawned on me. I think I interpreted the picture wrong and On 90th South, the darker orange, where their rear load, the 90th South facing, that's the front, right? Correct. Like a front door would be there?

As they are proposing here, yes.

Okay. Okay, so here's my thought. The speed limit on 90th. Do you know what the speed limit is? Anybody? 40. And is that the same on 7th? Yeah, it's 45 on 7th. Okay.

I was going to say, because... You wouldn't want your kids coming out of that door.

Well, when the orchard was built... I remember being a little taken aback by how close the front door seemed to the main road. And just from a safety and speed standpoint, I don't know. I just wanted to make sure to call that out. And I am assuming that the plans are going to be drawn to the minimum setback. But I would really... If this is approved, consider the safety of those units and their occupants along that main road. It is a pretty main thoroughfare through the entire city and is probably more heavily trafficked than 7th.

just just to point out the city does own a sliver of property between the sidewalk and officially the Canyon School District property so there is a little bit of air kind of it's technically not right-of-way but there would be some additional property there that they would not be able to build into unless the city were to sell or relinquish that property okay I just remember thinking when when orchard was done maybe that considers a relook at what those setbacks are in these situations

So that was my my thought going. Oh my gosh. Those are you know really close I still feel that they're pretty gosh darn close to a more heavily trafficked higher speed road That's those are my comments Other comments

Does the applicant want a chance to speak tonight.

Thank you, counsel. I'm Spencer Moffitt with the Boyer Company. This is Jim Wright. He's our consultant and legal representation. I won't take much time. I know it's been a long meeting. It's been an interesting meeting, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of the counsel. Just to maybe address a couple of the questions, I know this is more of a fact finding mission. It's fact finding for both of us. It's helpful to get some of this feedback and understand some of the directional guidance. As was alluded to, we did spend some time on this plan. It's certainly not set in stone. This is a concept plan. We're obviously asking for a you know, general plan amendment and a rezone. So, you know, there's some flexibility here. I do want to say we did spend quite a bit of time. And a couple of things to highlight. You asked what does this look like. We just completed a project very similar to this on the old RC Willie site in Murray across from Wheeler Farm. That would give you a good comparable. That's 12 units to the acre. It would be similar to this, although not exactly. it will give you a sense of what that density looks like, kind of how that lives and how that feels. So that may be a good comparable for you to drive through. It also will give you a feel for what type of work we have done recently. You know, and just one thing that is very important, we've made a lot of mistakes along the way. We hope to, you know, we've talked about things that you've learned in lessons. One of those is parking. Parking is always a big issue, especially when you get in these townhome communities. We know that Like any other homeowner, a lot of these residents will have visitors, family members, friends come over. They'll fill their garage with stuff and need somewhere else to park. So we've planned for driveways in each one of these, a two-car driveway in addition to a two-car garage. So our intent is to have these feel and live very much like a single-family home, and I think you'll see that in Murray. They're larger units. that feel more spacious, and these are places where people can settle in and feel like they don't have to move out the second they move in. And then just amenitization is really important. We've found it doesn't have to be big, but it has to be thoughtful. We've found, and I think I forget his name, was it Carlton Christensen, talked about the changing demographic of younger homeowners and users of these properties. Our number one amenity, believe it or not, is gig internet. That's the first question they'll ask is how fast is the internet? Up and down. Number two is do you have a pickleball court and can I bring my animal? They want a community where they can have animals, dog parks, and different things. So we've learned these lessons. We've tried to incorporate it. By no means is this plan perfect, but it's something that we'll refine it and get better. As far as mixed use, I appreciate that. Scott, who is here with me, that's all Scott does is retail. I think he still has battle scars from Cory Bend 20 years ago, so he's reticent to come up here. But I don't know. We would love it to be a mixed-use community. We would love to have a retail component that is one of our core businesses and perhaps our core business above and beyond residential. We looked at it initially for that use. It just doesn't work for that use. Being mid-block, you alluded to that and just what's around it, and there's already that core residential at at Corrie Bend. And so this is a little bit hard from a traffic pattern perspective from a mid-block location. And so we pivoted from that point to the residential. So just kind of that thought process. We did look at that. We did evaluate it. We would love for that to work. For us, I'm not saying that it wouldn't work for someone else. But for us, that wasn't an option. And then to the deed restriction point, that's something We could certainly consider that would be really challenging. I'll be candid with you We were selected on this property because we offered the most money to the district They needed to use these funds to relocate to their new facility. And so You know, we were the ones who paid them the most money And so there's some challenges economically. That's not an excuse. It's just a challenge as a potential property owner here, our cost basis is extremely high. That's not your problem, but implementing a deed restriction and restricting what we can sell or do on these would be very problematic and remove a property right for us that would be hard for us to continue. Just in the interest of transparency and candor, that would be something that's difficult, but we're open to have discussions about different options. We recognize the need for housing, and especially that middle housing, it is a significant issue that we see not only here, but across the Wasatch Front. So those are kind of just to talk through some of them. On the ownership, we're open to the ownership. One thing we have said to staff along the way is markets change. to restrict property use becomes very difficult for us as a developer. We will develop it, and it'll be a long term, it'll be two to three years before it's finished. When we're finished, we don't know what the market will look like. Interest rates are at 9%. No one can buy a home. We would like to maintain some flexibility to perhaps do rentals or do other options. I'm not saying that we're coming in to present a rental project. I just want to be transparent that we want to preserve Options and we're happy to have discussions with the council and with staff on different different things and what that would look like We understand the need for for sale product and we're open to that. We will plat these individually So that that is an option. I just don't want to do a bait-and-switch I know there's been a bad experience with another developer and our intent is to About just keep our options open. We're very early in this process. We don't know what it will look like down the road and construction costs, interest rates, demand, pricing and everything else. But we've heard the message loud and clear that the preference is for ownership opportunities and we're certainly open to that and we've done that in multiple communities that were developed. We're not coming in with a set agenda of what we need to do. So I just wanted to put that out there. Everyone know that's where we are and I've taken enough time.

Well, what form did that take in those other communities with the ownership? Was it through the CC&Rs?

Yeah, well, no, just for self-product. When we developed it, we just sold it to individuals. So that was the ownership opportunities. We have also done for rent, and I will tell you, This is calculus that we've been through in other communities. The cost to buy a townhome and pay a mortgage on a townhome for 6.5% for a $600,000 townhome, they're at a $4,000 a month payment. It's very, very expensive. We have seen a pivot to the for-rent product. Because we're able to borrow more cheaply on institutional debt, because we get some economies of scale, and because we can manage it ourselves, we're able to get rental $1,000 to $1,500 below that. So we provide rental opportunities. that have a townhome in a good area, and there's significantly less than an ownership opportunity. And I think you're seeing that in several cities across the Wasatch Front. I'm not saying that's the right way to do it. I'm just saying that's one of the things that's happening in the market. And I'm not saying that's what we'll do for this community. It's just a changing dynamic of the housing market across the Wasatch Front. And so in some instances, we've elected to go that for-rent route, and we have We are kind of meticulous about controlling. We found often that when we sell communities to individuals that it becomes de facto rentals and they pay a mortgage rate so they try to rent it out at that $4,000 a month rate plus a little bit and it becomes very expensive. They don't care about it. They own one unit in a community of however many it is. And so when we control everything, we're able to be more thorough on tenant evaluation, on screenings, on income verification, on just maintenance and everything else. So we have some of those communities. Not all of our townhome communities have been for rent. We've sold a lot, too. So we have both options at our disposal. I just want to be transparent on that.

Ms. Straub, when did you purchase this?

We have not. We're under contract. So we're still in due diligence with the Canyon School District.

I was curious with the purchase price on that, on them reinvesting into eBay. And I think a lot of the questions that have been brought up I think it was maybe December that I met with you guys, uh, you know, zoom call zoom class, I think. Yeah. At school over lunch. Yes. Um, and, and just about everything that the council has brought up, you know, I brought up at that time as well, you know, looking at for sale units, um, you know, the question of density on that, um, you know, and that's an, and you brought up as, you know, bringing back that, well, you know, here's the rental here's for sale. you know, looking at things like that. You know, the other questions that I brought up, you know, for the council, you know, just kind of consider, you know, is looking where it looks like that corridor. And I did bring up actually Farnsworth Farms, you know, and the concern that I had with them. And them going from for sale to for rent without letting us know and just moving in that direction. And then also that those were very, very close to Seventh East. After we met, I actually, either that night or the following, drove by Farnsworth a couple of times to look at it. And nobody was out front. Nobody was on their porch. And I think it's more of just aesthetics of what it is. You enter, you come from the back. You're not going to go out to Seventh East where it's loud, because you just can't hear. It's not a friendly place to have a conversation. It's not applicable to it. So it is more of just aesthetics. You know, a concern that I brought up is that it started to look, you know, right down 90th, which is a very busy road in Sandy, is it just started to look because we do have two very significant apartment complexes right along 90th that it just started to look like a tunnel. And actually maybe that was Jake, I think you and James, that I brought that up with after. You know, but, you know, breaking those up a little bit helps. You know, the... Just to the east, they have a gated community. And that community, I think, a little bit of a buffer. And we talked about this on that east end up there where you have just the four units and then some more of that grass area. So it does give a little bit of a buffer to those homes that have that gated community. In that area, they're ready for CTEC to move on. They've had their challenges with things that are left behind, walking through the multi-use path that they have, even just east of that between the church. And I also, I think when I brought up with you guys, concerned about that density as well, that it is very dense. that many housing units, because not only do we have Alpine Meadows and then Rockledge, which are the four-story apartment complexes, but then up with Corrie-Bent, with the significant amount of townhomes that are up in there, plus another smaller apartment complex. but you know it's I did not bring up a multi-use primarily looking at the size of it and trying to figure out parking additional parking that to bring in commercial use on that but you know it's a it's a tough area, I think, to match something, just busy with 90th South. I can appreciate what you guys have done and brought this forward. I do like the for sale. And I understand what you're saying, the rental for sale. But that is something that we are trying to provide. And I mean, $4,000 a month is a lot of money. That is a lot of money. But looking at units that people can say, Sandy is my home.

For sure. No.

And that's not just my, well, that's just my apartment or where I'm at for now. But this is where I'm landing for quite a while. So I do like looking at that, whether it's through CCNR, whether it's a percentage of it. But I would like to see all. or at least a significant amount of them for sale. And looking at that, I know we talked about Dog Park, and you brought up internet, and I was surprised that was one of them, and Pickleball, and I could see that you have Pickleball up there, hopefully a dog friendly community but a lot of this what was brought up you know and you listened on that and then following up a little bit with community development I think the community itself in that area we do have a bit of a buffer you know with with the homes because they back up to it so you know it's it is a little more concise but it also is just a community in and of itself I love the discussion of where we're at and what we're thinking on this. I think if we move forward with adjusting general plan and then also looking at a rezone is that we would want to, what I'm hearing with the council is want to look at something of ensuring at least a significant amount of it as for sale units.

No, I appreciate that. And that's a helpful dialogue for us to have. Just curiously, on the 90 South, would you prefer that the homes back against 90 South?

No. For me, aesthetically, no. I mean, I think for a homeowner, then possibly them looking, saying, well, then I'm not, if I'm sitting out on my porch. But for the aesthetics and the beauty of the city, we have a lot of people coming up 90 South. And to see a bunch of garages. in the backyard, or even trying to back onto 90th South.

If you back on, you're just going to see the backs of people's homes with a lot of garbage and different things out there.

Whether it's, yeah.

So we're open to either scenario. I would agree with you, though, that having the front of the home just from an aesthetic perspective would look a lot better for those coming up and down the street. And that is, you're right, a busy street. But I think the setback will be very important. I agree with that.

Definitely. Definitely. And I wasn't sure about the city portion on there, but yeah.

That's great. Really great feedback. Thank you.

Mr. Sousa? Thanks. Really quick, I just wanted to throw out maybe one more idea. Something that you had said about the cost and the reality of it from a for sale product kind of made me think. And so here's just something else that I'm going to throw out in terms of like a for sale product. It sounds like at this point you're planning to offer all of them for sale.

We, we, we candidly, we have not decided. I mean, we will build, we, I mean, we're still, as you know, we have the, this process, then the preliminary, then a final, then architecture, then everything else. So we've heard that the preference is to do for sale and we will plat them individually. And we, we understand that there's strong preferences for sale.

Okay. Cause I was going to say, you know, we talked about, you know, like the data restriction and we talked about, you know, limiting and CC and ours, but at the same time, From a realistic standpoint, the cost to enter from a for-sale product is a lot more. The rental prices have come down. And I hate to say this as a realtor, but it costs more money to be a homeowner right now than it does to be a renter. And so at the point of purchasing a home, if there is a willingness to offer them for sale, The cost alone mitigates the risk that somebody's going to purchase it to turn around to be a rental, because for the most part, you're not going to be able to rent it out for what you owe for it unless you bought it free and clear. And even that doesn't necessarily make financial sense.

You're spot on. I mean, even right now, rentals would be challenging because of Corey Bend. If you go across the street, there's townhomes for rent there that are significantly below what we could potentially rent these for. So the market is going to solve a lot of these problems. The challenge is that the market is the land cost and the construction cost. That's what we're solving, too. And so I wish we could bring home prices down. Me too. I really do. It's really challenging. But I totally agree with you.

Well, and I wanted to make that point just to kind of give people ideas on, you know, obviously whatever everybody's tolerance level is, and that may be different, but that's just another way to maybe naturally mitigate for some of the concerns, assuming that there's a willingness to at least offer for sale. That's all I had. Thanks.

Anything else, counsel? Anything else, Jake? Thank you so much.

I appreciate the feedback. That's really helpful.

You're done? Okay, where are we? All right, Ms. Christensen, up to you.

All right, so we have, this item is a first reading. It's a proposal to explore whether our current representation model for our city council is fitting the needs and the best way to serve our residents. I don't want anyone to take this, especially if you're in an at-large position, personally, because that is not how it's meant in any way. I'm primarily looking at this from a District 1 lens as I started going through this process. OK. Let me pull it up guys so I can make sure I hit all the spots. So if you gave a positive recommendation to move forward with this, it would mean that we would be looking at If our districts are split evenly, I'm trying to gauge your interest in possibly adjusting the number of districts we have. This memo is a proposition to look at a seven-district model. I'm open to other options if everyone needs other options to be looked at, like a 5-2 or a 6-1 or... different things like that. And even as I've talked to some of you possibly just readjusting the district's boundaries, because there is a bit of an inequity at this point in time. The current District 1 size is 27% of the city. D2 is 24%, D3 is 25%, and D4 is 24%. So they're not huge differences, but there is at least a 3% difference in sizes when you, and I'm looking specifically at District 1 right now, when you look at District 1 from one side of the city to the other, you have neighborhoods that have two Title I schools, they have Four or five trailer parks right there. They have a lot of apartments and rentals. They have Really large roadways and intersections They have a lot of like business and public service and then you go to the other side of district one and there are Houses for sale over four million dollars right now in multiple neighborhoods. It is a vastly different demographic and And that's where the first ideas about this came up in my mind. So that's what I would like to look at. I know you've all seen the memo. There's pros and cons. The biggest con in my mind is that it's a change, and changes can be a little scary or different sometimes, depending on the change. And so other than that, I really feel like the representation of someone directly in a closer proximity to your neighborhood helps represent those neighborhood issues that are important to you. And I know when we have out large, and everyone on the council is really good at doing that, of representing the entire city, but I think that in general you don't run for city council just for your neighborhood. You run to help the city be better, and so I think that that's something that might be a concern but isn't a huge concern for me. So what questions do you guys have or feedback on this if it were to go forward?

Mr. Sousa, I'll start just for the sake of time too and you know, we've got other items and I appreciate Your your statement that it's not meant to be personable personal or divisive And you know, I I feel that I believe that I think that we can have this, you know conversation So question really quick in terms of I like your statement that district one is X amount bigger than other districts. Are you talking about like land size? Population. OK. OK. Because we did do the redistricting when the census came out and following that in the early 2020. Those are 2020 census numbers. Yes.

But it's still that with 2020 census numbers.

OK. And so, thank you. One of the conversations that came up during that process was exactly what you're proposing and a couple of different iterations of it. Ultimately, that conversation didn't move forward and we looked at just adjusting the boundaries. And the boundaries that were proposed by, I think it was staff trying to be very unbiased and create these evenly sized districts from a population standpoint, presented some options. And there was maybe an option that would have affected District 1 and 4 more that was looked at but not heavily considered because, especially at the time, the district rep that was serving in District 1 lived in the area that would have districted that representative out of District 1 for the next election, right? And so I think that there may be opportunities to mid-census look at maybe redistricting, or excuse me, looking at the boundaries and do they still make sense and maybe what other options may make sense. Understand the argument about you know demographic and similarities and you know representations and things like that. I Think it's important I Don't know that I have any interest right now to revisit the whole let's change the entire makeup of the City Council districts and at-larges I think that that would be a more appropriate conversation at a redistricting time when that's more of a planned, known, kind of regular occurrence. But for the sake of considering some of the changes that weren't, some of the options that were presented that weren't selected, I think that there is an opportunity to maybe consider what that looks like. If that's something that you're interested in moving forward, I could support looking at that. That doesn't mean that what comes back makes sense ultimately, but I could support maybe looking at that. I do think that there is value in at-large council members. I know I probably sound like a biased person because I'm an at-large council member. But thinking about the districts, every single area of the city does have district representation, right? And so I think the argument that is being made is maybe those districts are too large to feel that everybody is adequately represented. I don't know that I agree with that, if that's the basis for that argument. Thinking about while I represent the city at large, I live in District 4. And I'm thinking about the entire area of District 4. I know it well. I ran there once. And I live on one end. My child goes to school at the other end and has friends kind of all around the schools, which basically encompass almost the entire district. And so from a representation standpoint, understanding the demographic and makeup and the needs and the challenges of the area, I personally feel that the current District representation is adequate for closeness. So that's one of the reasons that I'm not Feeling that the argument to create additional districts is as impactful for me right now And you know that the idea that an at-large councilmember and I know that you're not saying that right I'm but the state for the sake of the conversation and kind of getting it all out there you know, I I would say that then, you know, does that mean that the mayor can adequately represent the entire city? Because the same situation applies, elected official, different role, but, you know, same representation. So I do think that there could be a lot of stalemates or conflicts of interest among only district representation that could make Some decision-making more challenging because sometimes people are too close to be able to see the bigger picture in those situations But anyway, those are my comments. That's what I would be open to explore at this time.

Thank you I appreciate that and that's why I also brought up the 5-2 option as well because I mean if we're just looking at like representation and another just fact to throw out there is that we have eight elected officials in our city and one of them lives below seventh east and i'm not saying you can't represent it if you don't live there i'm just saying geographically one out of eight members lives below seventh east and that's 31 of our population lives below seventh east and if we look at below 13th east then you're up to two council members that live below 13th east in our city and we're up to 54 of the population and so another asset to come from, perspective to come from as well. But I appreciate that. Thank you.

Ms. Stroud.

Oh, I have lots of comments there. It's, you know, I think I think having district representation. One thing is to consider that even with our districts, there's seven of us, but I still represent one seventh of the vote. And 24% of the population has an opportunity to select the person that's going to make one seventh of the vote. And for me personally, I have done things in other districts. and I have I mean I have voted for things I've gotten things right you know one that really comes to mind is you know Aaron you know like a year ago or something I remember you sending me a text and you said oh my gosh you got something done and I think it was district 4 and it was something that's supposed to be done I know I know I knew I knew exactly what was I wasn't sure if you want it yeah you know there's a sidewalk item that was scheduled to be completed in a few months and through working with Public Works, we got it scheduled for the next week. And that was something that, you know, but then, you know, there was a need for it. It was a safety issue. It was by a school. But that was something that then bumped it forward. And that was something I did for District 4. I think it was in 4. I don't know if you remember exactly where it was. I think it was District 4. But there's been other times that I have done things for other districts as well. And so I do work for the entire city, even though District 2 Those residents are the only ones that are voting for me. So I think to say, well, I mean, my my home you know lives with district 2 I'm mostly I'm more familiar with that and the challenges of that area but I I can see a need in another part of the city and make sound decisions for that and I have done that multiple times I've done that in district 1 and I've also done that in district 3 so you know it's I like the ideas of the districts you are more in tune to it but can understand that that could also pose a challenge with maybe it's I think actually Mike Applegarth used the term of carving people out of their districts and it wouldn't necessarily be districts but it could be creating a district that doesn't have an official member Yes, you know, they'd have to be an at-large but you know looking at possibly a 5-2 Something like that. I you know, it's it was something before when we did this we had a fair amount of of pop-ups and doing this educational process. And it was a little tough because everything had to twist. We had to move and realign. And I think it was one and two that were significantly higher than three and four to try to alter that. So I don't know we'd be doing this again in five years. know when it pops up and maybe that's the time that we're looking although it's promoting the idea of creating more districts but realigning right now maybe it is just going to five and then we see how that's you know what what the discussion looks like here and then possibly looking at seven and five years I mean there's a lot of possibilities to look at this and I think you've done a great job of outlining pros and cons to both as questions pop up I think we just kind of take a look at it but you know I'm always willing to to take a look at maps to take a look at ideas to kind of see where we're moving beyond that because I I don't have the same concern but I've only been a district representative so I haven't been an at-large member but I welcome looking at something else but also understand

you know that maybe it is something that we're waiting that four years as well so if this went forward you'd be comfortable looking at options for five and two or seven and one or boundaries yes okay always willing to look at things thank you thank you madam chair great discussion I think it's always important to to think about representation and

like we said earlier, think again. I think it's always worth checking why we do what we do, what have we not considered. So I think it's worth it. The things I would add to kind of what's been already shared, I don't want to be redundant, so I think what I've not yet heard is the public approach. Like if we are potentially the body that then determines the districts and all of that, and we do it exclusive of voters, that could feel odd. So I don't know that you can spell that out as much.

Yeah, there is a public input steps required by law, right? Law. it is actual so we have to go through a public input process and there's like requirements for that piece of it as well so it would definitely have public input okay okay and maybe i missed that in the in the memo so thank you for that um let's see

So you mentioned I think in the memo a work session Or is that what this is are you know?

I would say like a work session once we actually have Like if it got to the point like if we bring this back I would expect that I would need to have GIS work on maps with the population and have them do it and then we would have to like talk through it and get feedback and see if this was something that would work for us in terms of like a second work session like that would I would second work session second reading to discuss it however we want to like couch that okay I I would imagine this would be a lot longer process I at least that would be my recommendation not just a first reading and then yeah I think the tentative timeline goes for like Four months? Five months? Yeah, it's like at a very aggressive pace, which is what the tentative timeline in there is. It goes through the end of September, but that's highly aggressive.

Yeah, I don't want to be highly aggressive.

No, it would be if we did something where we changed it, we would just need to make sure it's in time for... Before January? When do we do? Dustin, correct me. It's when we put out the announcements for the next election so that people understand exactly what their, that might be the end of this year, right?

I don't recall the deadline.

So that they know that if you're going to run for an office, the two seats that are up next year, three? How many seats are up next year? I don't know. but that they would have for, thank you, that they would know that their boundaries have changed if that was the case or there was additional boundaries opening up to them. So I think it's, I want to say it's the end of the year, but I'll double check on that.

Part of my reluctance around an aggressive timeline is I think there's a little fatigue around boundary changes right now. I really think there is... still a lot of concern statewide around. And I think I support what's been shared in terms of it's the right conversation perhaps to explore. It's the wrong time. It would need to coincide for me with a logical, hey, we have another census. And the public process would need to start

well before that, like... And to be sensitive to other areas, but with the state requirements for us, unincorporated areas to be incorporated into cities, that is an actual... It might push us over the allowed limits in the next few months by October, if once those people are brought into the city or whichever cities they are, so... What do you mean by allowed limits? Not allowed, but you don't want your districts to be 3% to 5% out of whack. You want them as close as possible. Yeah, it's legally. They have to be within 3%. And once some of those new areas come in, it's possible that we will be out of whack and have to do this anyway.

Well, we can do analysis.

No, readjust the boundaries.

Oh, I know. But the data for...

adjustment we could start that analysis as soon as we know what that looks like and if it's even a problem and then the public process could begin and say here's why we just couldn't do it for the next year for the elections if that was the case i think i'll double check for sure but i think we'd miss our deadlines for the 2027 elections

And I think what you're raising now are things like what a work session really would need. I would need legal to weigh in. And so I feel like... And I have all that information.

I just didn't want to spew too much if no one was interested.

Yes. I... I am of the camp of I need a catalyst for the change so that the public is part of the process and there is some rationale. I know you've provided some rationale, but it is a significant disruption, and that's why I want to be sensitive because the recent boundary – And it's been very political and very disruptive. I think we want to be careful to not put a lot more disruption. Now people are like, wait a minute, I thought Marcy was my person, or I thought Brooke was my person. And then I'll share the other perspective. I think I'm the only one who currently, there's been other council members, but I think I'm the only one who's done both. where I've served at large and then I've served as district. Um, and I, I really feel there is value in both. I, I think some, some numbers have been shared, but, but what I, what I would like to just sort of add is kind of accountability is a little different way of saying what councilwoman D'Souza said, which is, um, when we think about accountability to voters, and their opportunity to have a voice in who represents them, currently they get to vote for four people who will represent them. And they will hold four people accountable for the decisions that are made on their behalf. And that to me is significant voter voice. And so I, and I, and I've, again, I've been at large and now I'm district four. I would say I get the same amount of outreach. And, and I, I, I feel, I don't feel like my representation was diminished enough. by serving the whole city versus serving a smaller part of the city. I think it just looks...

Different.

Yeah, it just looks different. So that would be one thing I want to make sure we weigh is the voices of the voters and how they are able to hold us accountable and the voices they are given in selecting representatives. So I want to make sure we... We think about that, and we want to be careful that we don't fall into the trap of I do a favor for you, you do a favor for me, which is if we were, for example, seven individual districts, there could be a whole lot of that bargaining happening. which I think we would want to avoid. Now, I'm not saying that's what would happen, but just something else to come into play there. So I support the idea of doing some analysis, balancing, especially you make such a good point around these unincorporated areas, which are still in transition, where there's a lot for us to learn from when that happens. settles. So I'm open to the analysis. I'm open to studying it in a workshop. I am not open to an aggressive timeline. I want to be mindful of a lot of turmoil that people have experienced recently. And I'd like it to align with a catalyst. Does that give you feedback? Absolutely. Thank you.

Mr. DeKaiser.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We spoke about this, Council Member Christensen, many weeks ago. And I was supportive. And so since I've further delved into the research, and I've kind of landed on I like where we're at. I think it provides good balance and that it's good for the city. A lot of what Council Member Hausman said I agree with. I had a point about how part of my understanding of the history of it getting set up was that you can lobby for council members. So that expands the voter voice. Just for example, today I got an email from someone saying, hey, I'm not happy with my district council member. I'm so glad I can reach out to you. But without rehashing all the other stuff, there was a public comment made tonight about how it's so great there's so few disadvantages. So I just wanted to add some perspective. I think that in an all-district setup, we would lose potentially citywide perspective. The question came up for me, what happens if the district representative goes against the wishes of their constituents? There's no at-large backstop. I think at-large seats hedge against gerrymandering potential, which was discussed earlier. A disadvantage could be costs in terms of the GIS mapping, legal review, consultants, the entire public engagement process. And then finally, the kicker for me, which I didn't think about on the phone, is the disruption mentioned of the controversy of mid-decade redistricting. So yeah, not that I couldn't be persuasive to go to a 5-2. I hear your point that what is the best way to serve our residents? And so maybe, as Councilmember Hausman is saying, if there's more of a catalyst or more of a need to have better representation, the points you're making about how five of us are east of 13th, I'm really sympathetic to that. But the next level would be like, why? Does that mean six of us, whatever the layout is? What are some examples of where our residents have lost representation because of that?

You don't want me to answer that question, I promise.

Well, we can talk more about that later. We can talk offline about that. I'm just saying I could be flexible, but that's where I'm at now.

Okay, so the possible boundaries then and five to consider looking at.

Yeah, maybe. I mean, I haven't thought much about 5.2. I'm open to discussing it, but yeah, like I said, I think right now, I think the current approach is pretty balanced.

Okay. That's fine. I'm just surprised, honestly, because before when we talked, you were all over this idea about lowering the barriers to entry for people to run for office and to spread out representation to smaller communities. That's okay. I'm just surprised.

No. Like I said, we could have talked more about it, but I did some more research and looked into it, and there were some things that I hadn't considered. And so, yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

I'll go next and then I notice council member Nichols hand is up too so Chris we'll go to you in a second. I too like the current configuration and I feel all the advantages of it go to the residents and the voters. In the configuration that we've got, voters get to vote, every voter gets to vote for four people on the council. Whereas if we went to seven districts, every voter would only get to choose one. So any voter has, I like all the points that Mr. DeKaiser made, very direct points. They have recourse. If their district rep doesn't see things their way, they have three at-large reps to go to. They have a quorum to lobby with for their point of view. I do want to say, and I'm sure this is true of everybody, there is no part of the city that I don't have outreach from. There's literally no part of the city that hasn't reached out to me to say, I have a problem that I'd like you to help me address. I do think that if we got into an all-district model, it could be a fight for attention, resources, funding. I do think that at-large reps bring a mediating factor to make sure that there's equity, that one part of the city isn't getting all the funding, but that everybody who needs it is considered. I also think that going to an all-district model could disenfranchise candidates, meaning that any candidate in any district can choose to either run for the district or at large. So if there is a district opening an interested candidate could run for that. If there is an incumbent in the district role they could choose to run at large. It doesn't mean that they can't run or that they They could have an even better chance to be elected if they chose to run at large. I want to make sure that any decision we make doesn't take us into consideration but focuses entirely on the residents, the voters, but not us. I do remember when this came up before, and we voted it down. We took a look at a map, and we plotted where all of the existing elected officials lived. And to see how, if we did create all these districts, how would we do it? And the advantage would have gone to me, because mine was the obvious place where there was only one person there, and hey, you could create a district there. So I would have like one-twentieth, one-fifth of all the effort there. BECAUSE IT IS A LOT OF WORK TO RUN CITYWIDE. AND IN RECOGNITION OF THAT, IF YOU LOOK AT THE COUNTY COUNCIL, THEY HAVE THEIR AT LARGE REPS SERVE LONGER BECAUSE IT'S SO MUCH HARDER, SIX YEARS INSTEAD OF FOUR YEARS IN CONSIDERATION OF THE FACT THAT IT'S SUCH A BIG UNDERTAKING. I'M NOT RECOMMENDING THAT. I mean, it is a big undertaking. It's brutal. But all advantages to the voters, right? If somebody isn't doing a good job, vote them out in four years. You don't have to wait till six, right? And so I really think that all the advantages go to the voters and therefore the residents in the model that we currently have. I think we all do understand citywide issues. I have no question about that. And so having expertise in one part of the city, wow. It's, you know, fixing potholes or missing sidewalk sections or whatever. That is an important part of what we do, but we're also deciding highly impactful budgetary things and taxes and stuff like that. And so... I do like and support, and for lots of reasons, the model that we currently have. We will have to redistrict yet again, and in that time frame, we will have a bunch of new residents because July of 2027 has come and gone. And so I think the next redistricting will be we'll have a lot more to chew on and to think about than we did the last time that we did it. But I'd hate to create new districts or even new boundaries five years ago and then now and then for sure in another five years and just moving voters into different districts. Let's avoid that. I don't think the need catalyst. I don't think the need exists right now, but boy, it really will the next time that redistricting is required. So yeah.

No, I appreciate your feedback. And just so we all know, of the last three times that they've redistricted, none of them have been at the census time. So they've all been in off-census times, other than the one that you guys did during the census. So the other two were not in alignment with the census time.

OK, Ms. Nichol, your turn. Thank you, Madam Chair. When you said them, do you mean Sandy redistricted people twice at a different time?

Yeah, the council, yeah.

OK. But we stuck with the census on the last one? Yes. Right. So my biggest problem is the timing on it. I think that doing it at the known time where everybody expects it is during census. And I watched the videos of how the boundaries were drawn up. And I do believe there was, it's exactly like someone said, there is a district person that was gonna be districted out. And that's the only reason why that boundary was drawn like that. So I'm not willing to look at changing up the council mix right now, but I'm willing to look at the district's boundaries.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

I feel like that's it. Do you too? Did you get everybody?

So it sounds like I'm coming back with looking at the boundaries for sure, but there's not a very slim chance of the 5-2, but not a great one. When I bring this back to you guys to look at GIS from what I count, but mostly boundaries.

Do we feel a need to look at boundaries right now?

Madam Chair, I forgot to mention one thing.

I'm sorry, Chris. Say again.

I'm sorry, Madam Chair. I forgot to mention one thing.

Yeah, go ahead.

And with Granite becoming a part of Sandy City, I think that waiting is even a better idea because we don't know how many households are there yet and how the timeframe within that, but I think it'll be right around the next census that everything is buttoned up. So that's another reason why I, you know, representing District 3, it's a possibility I could be representing some of those people and I would really want to get that right for them.

Okay, so I have five people that are willing to look at boundaries from my notes. Am I wrong?

I'm willing to look, but it's probably going to be a no for me. That's okay. Okay.

I've got Brooke, Allison, Marcy possibly, but not... Yes, but we need to go through the catalyst, and then Chris and myself.

Can I just clarify one thing for myself? Yes, I said that I was if I was willing to look at anything it would be adjusting the boundaries however I'm still open to look at that But I don't know that I would hate to spend like a lot of staff time GIS time to do something like really in-depth Initially, yeah, we've they've so they've already given us approval to look at this they I they've drawn maps for all the scenarios which are not anything but numbers and so just based on the inequality in district one being so much larger than the rest and continuing to grow okay and and so like adjusting boundaries with our current makeup i'm i really am not interested in five two i think council member sharkey um kind of had a really good point that i was thinking about from a you know if if you if you're district only or you have majority districts then you have to wait four years to potentially run again in that scenario, right? Because there's no other option for you to run, where right now, there's almost two seats, and depending on the district that you're in, with the cycle that has the two at-larges, there's like three opportunities to choose a seat to run in in that cycle.

If 5-2 happened, which obviously doesn't sound like a will, but if it did, there would be one at-large in each cycle.

right but but i guess what i'm saying is so there'd always be an option for an out large person to run every election okay and i was kind of talking about the whole district thing but anyway okay i'm not interested in five two so i won't spend a lot of time there um but the the unincorporated areas that have to annex into sandy in 2027 like the only thing that i don't want to happen is to go through this process change districts for this one and then couple of you know a year later have to change district boundaries again to accommodate the growth that we know we're going to get we just they would already be in the these boundaries GIS already has knows what who's coming like based on the applications and yeah that's so it's a known item to be included in this it just makes me a little less comfortable in changing but at the same time I'm willing to hear that argument but that's as far as I'm willing to go okay

Thank you. All right. We have a consent calendar of three sets of minutes. Somebody make a motion. I'll make a motion. I move that we approve the consent calendar. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. What? We're good to go. Yeah, yeah.

I was wondering if we were going to defer, so I wasn't sure.

All right, Madam Chair, thanks for allowing me here. I'm just going to present on our federal JAG grant. I know you guys are all fairly aware of what the JAG grant is, so I apologize if I repeat anything you already know. But just for those online, too, I just wanted to kind of give a good overview of what the JAG grant is and what it does and what it doesn't do, and also provide just kind of, over the last five years, what we've spent that money on and what we've received. So the JAG Grant is the Edwin Bryan Memorial Justice Assistance Grant or the JAG Grant. It's a federal grant program and it's provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. It supports local municipalities and police departments. It supports county police departments and state police departments as well. And provides extra funding to purchase certain things and certain guidelines, and it's all based off of population with the amount that we get. So obviously Salt Lake City is going to probably get double what we get because we're about 100,000. They're a little over 200,000. Just to kind of gain some perspective in a big city like Denver, I'm sure it gets a pretty sizable amount. So what's the purpose of the JAG grant? It's to improve public safety within our communities, strengthen criminal justice, support technology and efficiency and equipment and things that we need to do our jobs, and keep our people safe and reduce, to an extent, the burden on our local taxpayers. So what can we use the JAG grant funding for? By far, number one use here in Sandy City at the police department is law enforcement equipment. We buy cameras, computers, laptops, and just realize that Equipment is becoming more and more expensive. For example, our G-Tech laptops cost $3,000 a piece to be able to purchase. Our vests that we wear for safety are $1,500. So sometimes the dollars don't stretch very far, but that's by far what we use this money for is equipment. It can also go to officer training, crime prevention, community policing. Mental health is by far the second thing we use that for. So counseling for officers that go through significant situations like shootings or deaths or witness something where they need mental health and crisis response stuff. That's by far the second thing we use it for. We can also use it for technology upgrades. RMS systems or we can use the money towards our Versa term is what we use or you can use it towards others Victim and witness services and drug treatment and intervention programs as well. So those are kind of the guidelines for the jag grant What are the benefits just public safety services to our city and to our citizens on technology and equipment like I mentioned before officer training efficiency And again, it just gives us access to federal funding to purchase certain items. I just want to walk you through real quick. We've purchased over the last five years. Kind of give you an idea of what we do. And again, that equipment and officer wellness, you're going to see themes there, which is what we typically spend it on. In 2020, we were a little over $22,000. You can see how much we spent. Handheld radios, public order unit gear, that's the crowd control unit. We needed gear that year to be able to support our guys. Officer wellness training, which from what I'm understanding was for our peer support team. And then also officer wellness counseling services. Again, that's where the officers can take advantage of that counseling service if they've witnessed something. difficult while responding and on duty. 2021, you can see it fluctuates a little bit. It went up to a little over 27,000. That year we bought a fingerprint machine for a little over 18,000, some vehicle radios, airsoft guns for scenario training. In 2022, it was a little bit below that. In 26, again, we bought body armor and officer wellness counseling services as well. It was the majority of that. And 2023, it went up even more at $32,000, and we bought laptops. And I didn't put the amount of the officer wellness counseling services in there, but that was the remainder of the money that year that we used that for. And I can't see that slide for some reason. There we go. In 2024, we were at 26. Again, we bought laptops, and at $3,000 a shot, you can kind of see that that money doesn't stretch super far, but it does give us some ability to buy some extra equipment and officer wellness counseling services. In 2025, so the interesting thing about this grant is it's a year behind, so we are actually receiving the money right now for 2025, that $27,000. So what we're going to plan on spending this year is a computer equipment for the RTCC. And that is because just with all the software they deal with, Live 911, they need a little bit more robust of a computer with more RAM to be able to process all that information that's coming into the RTCC. So that's why we're buying that. And then body-worn cameras in a transfer station. We're looking at adding some additional body-worn cameras to our detectives that do not have them. Patrol has body-worn cameras, but some of detectives do not. And we learned kind of this year that our animal services are being put into situations with homeowners and pet owners that have kind of gotten a little aggressive. So we're trying to get our animal services officers with body cams as well. And then the transfer station is the docking station that you plug the camera into and it downloads the video and sends it to the cloud, so that's what that is. So our 2026 application, again, that's a year behind. It was supposed to open this spring. It's been delayed, so it probably won't be able to apply for it until this fall. I'm not sure if that's because of the government shutdown stuff or however that worked out, but they are delaying that just a little bit. So as soon as that opens, we'll apply for it, and we'll see again how much money we get and kind of plan for next year and what we would spend that on. So that's kind of, I know, a quick summary of the Jagrant, kind of what we spend it on, but just wanted to be transparent on everything that we've purchased up to this point. And that's all I have, unless there's any questions.

Any questions? All right. Doesn't look like it. This is a public hearing. So I'm going to open the public hearing for this item and take public comment. I don't have any blue cards on this item but if anyone in the room would like to make a comment please make your way down to the podium and anyone online who might want to comment on this please raise your hand and we have that. So Dustin will you take care of that.

Of course Madam Chair so we've got Kelly Forbes with her hand raised. Kelly I'm going to allow you to begin speaking on item number 13 which is our JAG grant public hearing. Go ahead and unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes. We're not able to hear you Kelly.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

OK. I jumped the gun and raised my hand a little too soon. But this all sounds good to me, so carry on.

Thanks, Kelly.

All right. That's the only comment so far. Anyone else? Go ahead and raise your hand. All right, I'll close the public hearing on this item, and thank you for your presentation tonight, Chief. All right, moving on to the next item. This is a council voting item. This is on the veto, and Dustin, I'm introducing you.

Thank you Madam Chair. I'll be really brief just because you know this isn't an item that we hear very often. I have a quick statement just on how to move forward or how you might move forward that I'm going to read. So let me just read that really quickly. Council members, this agenda item is the reconsideration of the line item veto issued by the mayor on June 30, 2026 regarding resolution 26-61C, our final fiscal year 2026-27 budget. Specifically, the mayor's veto message targets the $93,100 appropriation that the council allocated to water capital outlays. Pursuant to Utah Code Section 103B2043, because this is our first meeting following the veto, the council is required this evening to formally reconsider this vetoed appropriation. Your focus tonight is procedural. You have two options under the law. You can take no action, which allows the mayor's veto of the water capital outlays funding to stand, or you can vote to override the veto by adopting resolution 26-76C. Per state statute, overriding the veto requires a two-thirds majority vote of the full council, which would be five members. And with that, I'll turn the time back over to you for discussion and a motion. Staff is available should you have any questions about how to proceed.

Council, do we have any questions for staff? Marcy, go ahead and make your comment.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be brief. I want to just point out what tonight's discussion is really about and what it's not about. Utah law gives us the power to appropriate, to set aside funding in the city's budget and decide where those public funds go. When the mayor vetoes part of that budget, the same law directs us to reconsider that at our next meeting, which Mr. Fratto just explained. That's what tonight is about and nothing else. The discussion tonight, in my opinion, is about the veto and our role as to whether or not we will override that. So I want to make sure that we understand for the public that's watching what a veto is. It can feel a little bit complicated. So it's appropriately a check on the council. A veto is... an appropriate tool for checking the council, lets the mayor strike an appropriation, and send it back to us. What a veto does not allow a mayor to do per Utah law is to add or move money. That stays with us. That is our role. And because that is our role, it is, I believe, an expectation that residents have of us to exercise our authority. So this veto moved money, $93,000, into a line the council had not funded. Whatever the intent, that goes beyond what a veto does. And having reconsidered it as the law requires, I am voting to override and reaffirm the budget that we adopted with a 5-2 majority, a supermajority. That's the whole of it. That is what tonight's vote is about. It's not a vote about any single program. It's a vote about keeping the power of the purse, the budget, the taxpayer dollars, whatever you want to call it, where the law places it. And that is with us. And so I intend to vote to support the override.

MS. Ms. Nichol. MS. You said I'm ready for a motion. So I'll make a motion to adopt Resolution 2676C.

We can make a motion. We'll be going to public comment, but we can make a motion. All right.

I will second that motion.

All right. So if there are no more comments or questions at this time, we'll go to public comment on this. You guys good with that?

OK. Madam Chair, I'd like to be recognized on this motion.

OK. Go ahead.

So before the council considers this motion on my line item veto, I just have a brief remark. I want to explain why I exercise the veto and the authority to do so. When I was elected to represent the people of Sandy and to protect our community's long-term interests, that includes ensuring Sandy's voice, that it remains strong in decisions affecting Little Cottonwood Canyon, our primary drinking water source and our watershed. As a proud founding member of the Central Wasatch Commission, Sandy has helped lead regional partnership dedicated to protecting the Central Wasatch and advancing federal protections, which its primary focus is now in developing transportation solutions through collaboration rather than division. I believe abandoning the Central Wasatch Commission is the wrong decision for Sandy and defunding it does just that. During my administration, our participation in the CWC has strengthened Sandy's influence and established trust among our regional partners. Defunding the CWC weakens that leadership. It damages the trust that we've established with our neighboring communities and organizations we've worked alongside for years. And it is especially troubling to me as mayor that such a significant defunding decision was made so abruptly with only about two weeks notice to the organization we helped found. This is not the time to step away from the Central Wasatch Commission and its work. In fact, recent developments since the council's vote make this the time to lean into our work. Ben McAdams, the likely next representative for Utah's new congressional district one, has publicly committed in writing to me and to all the council members that one of his top priorities if elected would be to sponsor and pass federal legislation that would permanently protect the center of Wasatch. That includes Little Cottonwood Canyon, which is part of his district, his future district one. That present did not exist on the day of the vote. for our budget. And it's an opportunity for Sandy and everyone who cares about protecting Little Cottonwood Canyon. So rather than withdrawing our support, we should be doubling down today. We should be strengthening our commitment to the Central Wasatch Commission. There was some discussion that we could just go it alone. Sandy could just manage it through our own lobbyists. The council hasn't funded any lobbying effort or doesn't have a strategy for doing so. What we can accomplish together with our neighboring cities and local governments, watershed advocates and stakeholders is far beyond what we can accomplish independently. My authority to issue the line item veto is established under Utah law and exercising that authority on June 30th, I reduced the water capital fund by $93,100. and restored the same amount to the grants line item to fund Sandy's membership in the Central Wasatch Commission. The effect of my veto is to restore the funding contained in the tentative budget the city council unanimously passed and adopted by this council on May 5th. And for the legal explanation, Of the operation and effect of the veto, restoring to the line item under the tentative budget, I want to ask City Attorney Lynn Pace to address that item to the council. Lynn?

Lynn, go ahead, and then I'll call on Tracy.

All right. I don't need to be long winded on this. The question is the effect of a veto on when you have a line on appropriation. And the mayor asked me for a legal opinion on that. I know I shared that with the mayor. I shared it with Aaron. I don't know if anyone else has seen it. But there's an open question as to whether that line item appropriation simply deletes the appropriation and puts that amount in fund balance or whether the line item veto eliminates the change made by the council and reverts to the tentative budget previously adopted by the council. In the mayor's veto message, she clearly indicated that she intended to veto the change and revert to the tentative budget. So I did some research on that. There's some case law to support that, not from Utah, because there's not much Utah case law on the issue, but from other states that clearly indicate that when there's a veto of a change, the previous appropriation from the tentative budget controls. I also look back on what the city did five or six years ago whenever it was I Wasn't around when mayor Bradburn X exercised his veto and in that context the mayor beat exercised a line-item veto to Because the council had reduced Compensation from the full amount proposed from the tentative budget to only 25% in the final budget the mayor vetoed that and And the consequence of that veto, which was in that case not overridden, was that the full compensation was restored. The veto did not drop the amount of the compensation into fund balance. It was restored as per the tentative budget. So as I have said before, absent evidence to the contrary, I'm generally assuming that what the city has done in the past is legal and consistent with state law. I wasn't here then, but many of you were, and Tracy was. So I don't know what the discussion was at the time. But my point to you tonight is that there is case law and past practice that suggests that the veto of a change reverts to the tentative budget. Now that's piece number one. Piece number two is what's the effect of the mayor's veto? And there's lots of case law out there that suggests that the mayor's veto is entitled to a presumption of validity until It is either overridden by the council or until it is invalidated by court. So in all of the communities where I have dealt with this issue, it never ends up in court. You just either have an override or the veto stands. And so that's really the issue before you tonight. Do you want to override the veto? If so, you have the right to do that. But under the law, the mayor's veto is presumptively valid, just as the adoption of the budget is presumptively valid until it's challenged or altered by future decision. So I don't know if that answered all of your question, but I think that's the gist of the legal research.

Tracy.

I'd be happy to weigh in. I've thought a lot about this over the last several weeks. Dustin asked me to start looking at it back in May. The line item veto is a very powerful tool that our mayor has. You remember back in the 90s, President Clinton was pleading with the Congress to give him the line item veto to try to slash some pork barrel spending and things. And he did get it. And he began to use it. And the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that, no, that's a legislative function and stripped it away from him. Our legislature has decided that the mayor can veto in part and veto line item by line item. But the power just isn't an unlimited amount of power. It's limited to certain things. It's limited to financial, like the budget, for example, and ordinances, the law says. The mayor's veto power isn't unlimited, meaning that the mayor can't just veto resolutions, for example, unless it fits in the specific category allowed and contemplated by the statute. And so I have a different opinion than Lynn's. I think that there's not any authority for what the mayor did. Lynn cites case law outside of the state of Utah. Well, it's interesting because when I really thought about this, I looked at the Holiday City versus the Larkin case. And in that particular case, it was about, actually, probably Lynn knows more about that than anybody in the room since this involved his city. And he was really involved in those days. But the Supreme Court goes through 16 paragraphs trying to make sense or to find some authority for the mayor vetoing this particular resolution. And the court concluded we just can't find it. And so the line item veto, if you just think about it in simplistic terms, let's just say we have a spreadsheet of the budget laying in front of us. And the mayor pulls out a red pen, and she can just start striking it. She has a tremendous amount of power when she does that. But that line item veto power doesn't give her the authority to re-add things into the budget. That's a legislative function. So the question, of course, is if she strikes it in this instrument that you are using for a legislative purpose to ultimately adopt the budget, Does she have the authority to take that red pen and slash a couple of lines from the resolution that ultimately led to the passage of the budget? Can she do that? The answer to that is no. She doesn't have the authority. She could strike it in the budget itself, but she doesn't have the authority to strike just any resolution, I don't think. And so it's a difference of opinion. I don't think that, I certainly don't think that the mayor at all acted in bad faith by doing it this way. Of course I don't. I think there's a good faith argument to make. But I think it's a stretch. When you think about what the line item veto is, it's to remove items, right? And remove it from the budget. And the intent And the mayor's veto is to add money back in to the CWC, which the council specifically discussed and talked about not wanting to include it. So let's just take this to its logical extreme. Let's just say that the mayor does have that authority. Well, that means that she could strike. A tentative budget could be passed. and she could just strike anything that she wants, and then all that tentative budget becomes the budget without any legislative consideration whatsoever, that certainly is not what's contemplated in the code. And so I think it's like Lynn and I talked just briefly before the meeting. And he said it best. He said it's an academic discussion, right? It was a really interesting conversation. And I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I know Lynn did too. And it doesn't really matter what we think, because this ought to be solved not through a legal process, but through a political one. And if you disagree with what the mayor did, then you have the ability to override it. And it doesn't matter what Lynn and I think. But I do think that it's a good legal question. I personally do not think the mayor had the authority to do what she did. I think the effect of what she did essentially strikes, I think she got it half right. I think she could strike the funding from the water allocation that she made. But I don't think she can add money back in. But that's all academic in Lynn's vocabulary. I think that if you don't like it, let's not fight over it legally. Let's just politically fix it if you want to fix it. If you don't have five votes, then we can talk about what it all means. But if there's five votes to override it, then I burned a lot of bandwidth on this question. But it was good exercise.

All right. Thank you for that. So I'm going to go to public comment on this item. I have one blue card and that's Patricia Jones. Patricia come on down.

It's interesting that I put myself into a position as this one. I have already sent email to all of you, but I want to make it official. And by the way, first, I want to apologize for that. I did not realize that I learned something, that when you turn the volume down on the phone, it does not turn the alarm off. I now understand, so I apologize for that. Very embarrassing. But I want to make it official by standing and saying this publicly. I have heard the budget amendment proposals. I have heard the arguments. I have heard all of your counsel, each and every one of your comments on this subject. I have listened to the public comments. I went back to the recording and I listened to it again. And I say that I support what the council has voted on. I appreciate and I really recognize, I honestly recognize our mayor's position that she has the right and the authority to do this, the veto. I respect that. And it is wonderful that we have a government in our city, in our sandy city, that has the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. I absolutely honor that and appreciate that. So I am speaking on behalf not just myself, but for my husband as well. And thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Diane Long.

I'm here tonight because I don't think you as a city council are doing your job. There's been a lot of talk with the redistricting tonight about how you are here to represent us, the citizens of Sandy, the voters of Sandy, and your constituents. And you are not here to represent your own personal or financial interests, or to preserve your power to control the budget. What a load of crap. I'm sorry. I think you're full of it. You said it was an academic discussion. Your job is to represent the interests of your constituents. And every poll I've seen has said that Sandy residents, the majority of Sandy residents, do not support a gondola. Little Cottonwood Canyon. We all want to preserve our precious watershed, and the CWC is a big part of that. I haven't seen any polls that say the majority of Sandy residents want the gondola. Not a single one. I don't know what you're shaking your head at me for. In my opinion, when you voted to defund the CWC, You went against the interests of the people you purport to represent, the citizens of Sandy, that have continuously said, we don't want this gondola. We want the watershed protected. We want the canyon protected. So tonight, I'm asking you to do your job and represent us. I'm proud of our mayor for vetoing this. I don't think she's trying to take control of the budget. I think that's a huge stretch to have a reason to overwrite her very important veto. So I'm asking you to think about what your constituents want, what people you purport to represent want, and let her veto stand.

Thank you. Danny Richman.

I'll be brief. I'm a resident of Sandy since 1978. I've been in the ski industry. I'm currently a member of the Stakeholders Council, Central Wasatch. Your discussion about representing Sandy citizens last meeting, it was overwhelming support to keep the funding with Central Wasatch Commission. And I would urge you to be leaders and be a part of Central Wasatch Commission. by participating and being leaders. The next year, there's huge opportunity with Ben McAdams coming in, with very likely the passing of the Central Wasatch National Conservation and Recreation Area. You know the initials. that this is a time for Sandy City, for you, to be leaders, to be participants, and Central Wasatch Commission is an excellent opportunity for that participation and that leadership. So please stay in Central Wasatch. Restore the funding. Thank you. MS.

Thank you. All right. Let's go to our online participants.

Okay Madam Chair and just so you're aware I have three written comments that were asked to be read into the record after these ones. If you're joining us virtually this evening and you'd like to comment on item number 14 on this evening'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. Okay Madam Chair up first is Kelly Forbes. Kelly I'm going to allow you to begin speaking. Please remember to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes.

Did that work? Can you hear me? We can hear you. Oh, okay. So I also am here in support of staying with the CWC. I was online at the last meeting and did make some comments in support of this organization and our participation in it. I'd first like to state that I'm really, really disgusted at whoever put this agenda together to put this at the very end of the night when people have to go home to families or take care of animals and things like that. That was really inappropriate, in my opinion, and not very considerate. And we as citizens are watching you guys, whether you think we are or not. And I can tell you right now that there is a loud voice that is starting to arise that is not very happy with what you as a council are doing. I urge you to stay and not override this veto. I think whether it's a veto to reduce or whether it's a veto to include something that should never have been eliminated, I think it is appropriate. Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't see any other online commenters, Madam Chair. Is it okay if I go ahead and read these into the record? Please do. Okay, I've got three of them. I'm going to set a timer here. Just out of fairness for everybody. Please read my comment out loud for the record of the council meeting on July 7th. Hi Sandy City Council. I'm in class otherwise I would be here in person tonight. I urge you to please uphold the mayor's veto of Resolution 2661C regarding Sandy leaving the CWC. Can you please tell us the exact number of emails you've received asking you to have Sandy stay in the CWC. I don't know the number of emails but during the June 9th and 16th council meetings I counted 26 public comments in favor staying in the CWC and only one public comment wanting to leave the CWC. The conversation online has also been overwhelmingly in favor of Sandy continuing its membership and in favor of the mayor's veto. With Mayor Zee as a commissioner on the CWC and with Ben McAdams looking like he's going to be elected to Congress, we have some real momentum on our side with getting the CWN CRA passed. Sandy is a founding member of the CWC. It would be horrible timing to abandon it now. I'm going to share this quote from Ben McAdam's letter. Stepping away from the Central Wasatch Commission is also a win for the Little Cottonwood Canyon gondola. I unequivocally oppose the gondola. I do not believe it is the right solution for the canyon for taxpayers for watershed protection. or for the many Utahns who use Little Cottonwood Canyon for more than access to two ski resorts. But opposition alone will not stop it. The only realistic path to stopping the gondola is to unify stakeholders across the Wasatch Front behind better lower impact transportation solutions that reduce congestion, improve safety, protect watershed values, and preserve the unique environmental character of the Central Wasatch. That is why reinvigorating the Central Wasatch Commission matters. If Sandy City and other affected communities step back from this process we are effectively ceding the field to the gondola. Some of you were endorsed by Friends of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Some of you had no gondola signs on your websites. Please uphold the veto. Jude and Gracia Sandy resident. Okay this next one is from Cindy Wright. Dear Sandy City Council please do not override Mayor Zoltanski's veto. Sandy needs to support and keep the CWC. You must unify stakeholders across the Wasatch Front to protest building a gondola in Little Cottonwood Canyon. There are better lower impact transportation solutions that reduce congestion improve safety protect watershed values and preserve the unique environmental character of the central Wasatch. I represent the voices of the great majority of Sandy citizens who visit and love Little Cottonwood Canyon and who drive up this canyon for many other reasons than to access the ski resorts. Please read the statement aloud so that the voices of Sandy citizens can be heard. Thank you sincerely Cindy Wright. The final one is from Leslie Nelson. To all council members especially Brooke Christensen I am strongly opposed to dropping our cooperation and participation with the CWC. Number one I feel as though we were lied to and given information before casting our votes. Remember lying through omission is still lying. Number two the candidates when speaking to their constituents were very compassionate and empathetic. towards issues that affect all of Sandy City telling us that they were on our side. I'll protect your senior citizens. I'm only a phone call away. I hear you. You are the most important people right now and I will serve you and not special interests. Number three this feels exactly like a Trojan horse scenario. Seriously I feel gut punched. Number four when our watershed issues come under attack We will have no capital in the conversation at all. We will have no voice, no one fighting for us. It is dereliction of duty. Number five, I'm requesting that all emails be tallied and revealed before public comment voting tonight. I request that as many as possible, especially mine, be read aloud so they will be entered in the meeting record. I want the real numbers of emails. I will be there in person, and I want transparency. Everyone in Sandy does, and we're demanding it. Number six, we voted you in. We can vote you out. Unfortunately, you can do a hell of a lot of damage in the meantime. Is this what you want for your legacy? Who's paying you to do this? You had this all planned before the election, didn't you? I've about had it with corruption and backroom payments. We know that not all of you are clean whistles. We know all about some of your spouses etc. Hence this move is more than suspicious it's diabolical. In summary how dare you. P.S. Come at me. I don't care. I worry about the next generation not myself. Leslie Nelson. Madam Chair that's all that I have.

All right. I'm closing public comment on this item and bringing it back to the council. We have a motion and a second. Do we have discussion on the motion? Ms. Nichol, go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to address some of the personal feelings that I have with regards to some of the stuff that's going around on social media. And if I can honestly say if CWC had any clout, any clout, any chance of stopping the gondola board. The executive director herself says that the CWC has no, has nothing to do with the gondola and they don't have a supportive option. That was one of their tasks and they haven't been able to do that. So if anybody would like more reason behind why, my reasons are sound. And they're solid. And what you're seeing online is pretty one-sided. And I just want to say that. And I am ready for a vote. MS. Ms. D'Souza? MS.

Thank you. I, too, just wanted to make a couple of comments because of the conversation that has been entered into online initially and primarily by the mayor. in support of her veto. I've received a little bit of outreach. All of us have. And I've drafted a response that I just want to read really quick because it kind of encapsulates my position in this particular vote. I want to preface it with the conversation that took place between this council was on the budget amendment that is the subject of the veto was a good public conversation. We did that in a lengthy discussion. There was a lot of discussion. There was a lot of reasoning that everybody put into all of the decisions or the reasons that they voted. And it's publicly available in the record if anybody would like to go and really understand why the council decided what they decided. So I want to start with that. The comment that I wrote that I want to read says, based on the claims that have been made by connecting CWC funding, To continued participation in the organization, watershed protection, canyon protection, and future federal legislation, I can certainly understand the concern. Protecting Little Cottonwood Canyon and Sandy's drinking water supply is of vital importance to me as well. The budget amendment approved by the council did not withdraw Sandy from the Central Wasatch Commission, nor did it remove any existing protections for the canyon or our watershed. Claims that Sandy is abandoning the canyon or forfeiting existing protections are simply false. and do not reflect my viewpoint or the decision that was before the council. My vote was a budget decision about whether continuing to appropriate approximately $100,000 annually to the CWC was the best use of taxpayer funds. In a year when the administration laid off employees to balance the budget, I believe it was even more important to carefully evaluate every expenditure. After reviewing more than a decade of the organization's work, priorities, budgets, and results, I concluded those funds would be better directed towards Sandy's water infrastructure and the direct protection of our drinking water system for our residents. I support protecting the canyon, protecting our watershed, and pursuing meaningful legislation that benefits the central Wasatch. What I do not believe is that continued funding of a single organization is the only way to accomplish those goals. Sandy will continue working with the agencies, jurisdictions, water providers, elected officials, and community partners that have direct responsibility for these issues. And I also want to add, the inclusion of the gondola with the CWC, I am so disappointed that the gondola seems to continue to be made this boogeyman for, I'm going to say, to me it appears like personal political gain. The CWC director, Lindsay Nielsen, when she was here, it is in record. You can go back and watch that conversation. She made a public comment and stated that the CWC was neutral on the gondola. So this is not a gondola conversation. Unfortunately, it's tried to transition that way, and I can only guess why. Secondly, the vote, like I said, does not automatically withdraw us from the CWC. I took some time to go through the Mountain Accord information interlocal agreement. And then I followed it through to the final Central Wasatch Commission interlocal agreement to understand the termination and withdrawal conditions that are in contract. defunding at this point does not automatically conclude withdrawal. And so I don't know if anybody caught tonight, but Lindsey Nielsen also made public comment again. And she was going to say, I can't remember exactly, but something along the lines of, Sandy being a member, and then she said a paid member, because there's an incredible distinction there that is validated in the interlocal agreement. So if anybody would like to see this or understand or acquaint themselves better with it, to more adequately and accurately inform the public, I have it here for you. Anyway, those are my comments. And if anybody has any questions publicly, I really welcome the conversation. I do want to say that the email response that I drafted and sent out did generate really awesome opportunities for conversation and not just one-sided, I say this and you say that. And so that was really great to see. Thanks.

Ms. Housman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was only going to share what I said earlier, but I want to echo what Councilwoman D'Souza just shared and say it just in my own way as well. I would, if I were CWC leadership, I would be alarmed by the claims that are being made that the CWC is the tool for fighting the gondola. I served on the CWC for two years representing Sandy and The commitment was real. The commitment was bring parties together, have collaborative conversations, remain neutral on transportation solutions for the canyons. The goal of the CWC in terms of... convening people was so that all people had a voice. Everyone on both sides, on all sides of a discussion, knew and felt that their voice was honored and mattered and being brought together. So I'm not going to relitigate. I've shared the concerns I've had about outcomes not being achieved, but that is one thing that I feel I need to add to what Councilwoman D'Souza just said, which is people claiming that the CWC is a tool for fighting the gondola, I would be alarmed if I were the CWC leadership that that claim is being made out in public.

You know, I know we're headed to a vote I just want to say a couple of things that I have said before. It is my wish, my hope, that things that people hear at a city council meeting that they can trust that they are true. That doesn't always happen in Sandy. I'm not talking about opinions. People can step up to the microphone and give whatever opinion they want to. That is completely fine. Yes. CWC's executive director stood here in this room and said that they are not about a gondola. And then we have Sandy representatives who are saying that it is. That is not true. We have to be factual. The information that we disseminate at city council meetings has to be true and accurate. This isn't about $93,000. This is about 13 years and nearly a million dollars. Sandy has been involved in this organization for 13 years and taxpayers have paid nearly a million dollars. If you go to the CWC website, you see a list of 14 goals that were established 13 years ago in Mountain Accord. Five of them have been accomplished. In 13 years, five of the 14 goals have been accomplished. And those include things like creating an online dashboard, morphing from Mountain Accord to CWC, It doesn't say anything about accomplishment of saving the watershed, saving, the most important goals have failed to be achieved. We are not abandoning those. That we are just, we're making the calculation that CWC, at least currently, is not the vehicle to accomplish these very important goals that we all share and are completely committed to. Council member Monica Zoltansky sponsored a budget amendment in June of 2020 to defund CWC. That was narrowly defeated by a four to three vote six years ago. Six years ago. In that six years, by my calculation, not that much has happened. So even when she herself brought forward a proposal to defund CWC that was voted down on a four to three vote. Here we are six years later. I ask you, what are the accomplishments that would be the argument in favor of continuing to stay? We can always get back in. That option is always available to us. But what CWC has, it's gone from being an organization of big ideas to an organization of small grants. That's what is happening right now. 80% of the income that they collect is spent on staff salaries, overhead, meetings, professional services, insurance, office space. 20% of their take goes to grants. Is this the kind of organization we want to support? If anything changes, I'm good to get back in. Bring me data. Bring me good data that says things are happening. All I'm hearing is stay in. We're sure it's going to happen now. I don't know. My ears are always open. Give me a good argument to revisit this. I'm happy to reconsider. If it can be proven that things are happening and it needs Sandy's participation, then I'm very, very open to reconsideration. But there is nothing other than lack of accomplishment failure to achieve the big goals that were the initial foundation of the formation of Mountain Accord and CWC. I do think that we're better on our own and I'm willing to reconsider if any good data is brought forward but at this point I do not see it. Ms. Nichol, go ahead.

Yes, I was asked today by a constituent if there was any, we tried to negotiate with the mayor with regards to benchmarking, that type of thing. I said yes, there absolutely was, and she said no. We could have worked out a deal, but the benchmarking was the deal killer. I have to think that she doesn't think they're gonna get it done either, but I could be wrong and I'm not speaking for Monica. These are my feelings. So my feelings only. And I listened to the budget meeting the next day and they did approve it. They approved it without Sandy's participation and their staff also got raises and they are going to move on and move forward just as they always have. So they'll be fine. And if they start to make momentum, I am absolutely 100% willing to hop back on board with them. But they just have not been able to do it.

Mr. DeKaiser.

Well I think it would be a grave mistake to override the veto and in my efforts talking to council members about this it was recommended that I find out what Ben McAdams is up to and also how the Curtis campaign feels so I got the letter from Ben McAdams which I wanted to read a portion of really quickly. He states, stepping away from the Central Wasatch Commission is also a win for the Little Cottonwood Canyon gondola. I unequivocally oppose the gondola. I do not believe it is the right solution for the canyon, for taxpayers, for watershed protection, or the many Utahns who use Little Cottonwood Canyon for more than access to ski resorts. But opposition alone will not stop it. The only realistic path to stopping the gondola is to unify stakeholders across the Wasatch Front behind better, low-impact transportation solutions that reduce congestion, improve safety, protect watershed values, and preserve the unique environmental character of the central Wasatch. That is why reinvigorating the Central Wasatch Commission matters. If Sandy City and other affected communities step back from this process, we are effectively ceding the field to the gondola. If we want a better outcome, we need the Central Wasatch Commission to reconvene the Mountain Accord stakeholders, rebuild consensus, and advance a credible alternative rooted in conservation, recreation, watershed protection, and responsible transportation planning. I am calling on the Central Wasatch Commission to reconvene the Mountain Accord stakeholders to revisit the federal legislation, assess what changes, if any, are needed, and to prepare the Central Wasatch National Conservation and Recreation Area legislation for introduction into Congress in 2027. So if you are a council member who campaigned against the gondola or had given me your word that with these efforts you would support the veto I hope you will adhere to that. Thank you.

Miss Christensen. I know that's directed at me and that's fine. I did. agree to support the override if three items were obtained. And as the mayor well knows, only two were. And also, there was another agreement, in addition to the one Ms. Nichols was talking about, to come up with an alternative solution without a veto. And that also did not get support. although there were four council members willing to support it. So I would say all efforts have been made to try and make this happen as much as possible.

I have a legal question. Lynn, you don't need to answer this tonight. But if a veto on an adopted budget reverts to the tentative budget, can we not adopt a tentative budget? I've been a council member for seven years. We have never not amended a tentative budget. So if there's a catch-22 where America go through and veto everything that wasn't in the tentative budget to get back to the tentative budget, can we not adopt the tentative budget and simply just adopt a final budget at the end of budget season?

Good question. The statute is drafted so there is a safeguard in case the city reaches an impasse. So the code requires the council to adopt the tentative budget, but the council is also free to amend it before adoption. So be that as it may, you're shaking your head at that. Is there a further question there?

Well, it seems like that's... That puts us in a bind then. We have to adopt a tentative budget, one that we don't want.

Well, it says that you shall adopt a tentative budget, as may be amended by the council. So the mayor presents the tentative budget. The council has the ability to modify that as they choose before adoption. But yes, the law requires the council to adopt it.

OK. Mistra. I said a follow-up question. Is there a date that we have to adopt a tentative budget by?

Yes, but I don't remember exactly what that is. I have to look at the statute. It's the first part of May.

Because I know it comes to us and it's presented that first Tuesday in May, but I was wondering, I mean, typically we do adopt that evening, but is there, I guess I'd just be curious on when that date, if we had time.

I would have to review that. I don't recall, but I think there is a deadline for adoption in there.

I'd like to call the question.

I haven't had a chance to talk.

I feel like we're going down an unrelated thing.

I think my question was actually going to be helping Ms. Sharkey. I wanted to address some of the things. The continued participation in the CWC, for Sandy's participation, that is up to them. I don't think we are saying we are withdrawing. I would hope that they would look and say this directly impacts Sandy, whether there is some funding, full funding, no funding, is that they would realize that our voice is important. So I would hope that they would continue with that. They do contribute some payments to the police department for canyon closures. It hasn't been a significant amount. This last year was zero. But it's been anywhere between $10,000 and $70,000 over the past three years. I think it was brought up, Lindsay Nielsen, at 9.04, I think, somewhere in my notes, that she did get up and say that it was responding to a statement that I had made, that the CWC has not come out and said, we are opposed to the gondola. And she gave a reason to that, that they are representing several municipalities and need to remain. They have said some things that have not been gondola friendly, but they are not taking an official stance on that. And that needs to be made very clear. There are several emails that have directly alluded to the gondola. There's phone conversations that I've had. There's been public comment. But even Lindsay Nelson has said they have not said we are opposed to the gondola. And that, I think, could be very impactful if they had made a statement one way or the other. The let's see I you know a couple other little things You know why this was placed at the end of the agenda and I know ma'am, you know You got up and spoke to that and this was because this was not presented to us until you know, fairly late, and I made a request actually to administration to see if some of the items earlier that had been brought up, some of the interviews, if they could be delayed a couple of weeks trying to get this bumped a little bit earlier, and that was declined. So I mean this was just in the order And and looking at things so it was just placed in the order that we had received it I don't believe that it was you know deliberate, you know I don't think any of us wanted to be here until 11 p.m. At night, you know, so it was just something that that had happened You know and I'd like to and I've had on other occasions, you know to remind everyone including us That we're all doing what we think is best you know trying to make decisions with the information that we have that that's going to align with with some residents and it's going to disagree with others but we are trying to make decisions that we think are best the a couple of concerns that the CWC hasn't made a significant amount of progress. They've also stated in there that part of it is to minimize the amount of roads, which goes in direct contrast to a phased approach. Phase two of that is looking at, OK, well, what do we do? We need to widen roads. So I do have some concerns. It seems like the anti-gondola momentum would be, well, increase the busing, start tolling, and then possibly widen some roads. But part of what they're doing is advocating for minimal amounts of more asphalt being poured up in the canyons. And I can respect that. My primary concern, and I've stated this before, and this was actually part of a budget amendment that I brought forward, was trying to get $50,000 to help with some of the water conservation efforts. And I do feel that the CWC does have a vested interest and works hard to make sure that water quality is a forefront in that discussion. And we live in a desert. We're in a severe drought. The governor was announcing that last month. So I do feel that they have some benefit. Is it 93,100? No. No. That being said, You know I'd like to find some middle ground in this discussion. You know I get very disheartened when I see things at the federal level that are very here and here. I do think that there is some middle ground that there is some benefit that the CWC has. I don't think it's ninety three thousand one hundred dollars worth but I think there is some middle ground. I don't view this as an all or nothing proposition. You know, there are concerns, and I know this is, it's deviating a little bit, but for that reason, you know, I can only support overriding the mayor's veto if the council agrees to open the budget in the coming weeks in order to partially fund the CWC. and that would be for a one year with some possible metrics that they need to meet and we'd be looking at this and i think we would be looking at this anyway in a year that the funding request would come back in the 28 fiscal year anyway but you know and i i'm pretty sure i know where this is headed um and i think that there are council members and and a mayor And once again, we're here and here. I'm really trying to find something in between and I feel that it is a water quality because it is not a gondola issue for me. I have heard that loud and clear from the CWC themselves. So this is a water quality, a water conservation and a water awareness issue, something that directly impacts me, my children, future grandchildren and everybody else here at Sandy. So I'll either be abstaining from a vote because I'm not happy with the two very polarized positions, which is not something that I'm super pleased to do or you know if you know needing that support to override the veto would give if the council would agree to look at this in the coming weeks to partially fund and I don't know if that's just needs to be head nods.

I'd like to call the question.

So you are making a motion to call the question. I'll second. All right we have a motion and a second on calling the question. Roll call vote.

Ms. Houseman? Yes. Ms. D'Souza? Yes. Mr. DeKaiser?

No.