City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, it's 4.07, and we'd like to call this regularly scheduled Santa Clara City Council work meeting to order. I am Mayor Waite, and with this we have Councilman Kaplan, Councilwoman Burton, and Councilwoman Hinton. We will excuse Councilman Hendrickson. He's out leading a tour for economic development in our city. He'll be back for our council meeting. And then Councilman Pond is traveling with his family. So we'll jump right into our working agenda. Item A1 of our general business is introduction of a new canine unit presented by our police chief, Jaron Studley. Come on up. Maybe introduce anybody else that's with you. It would be good.

JARON STUDLEY, Anybody else? Well, I actually wanted to deviate slightly from this. No raised eyebrows from Brock. So we have Officer Bartriff. He obviously came to us from the city of Washington. And he came with K9 Force, so we're excited to have him. He's our only explosives detection dog in Washington County. And so with that, Lance has a pedigree he'd love to tell you all about, force accomplishments.

My name's Laz Bartriff. I've been in law enforcement for 16 years now. Been with the bomb squad for 10 of those years. We were able to get Forrest to be a bomb dog. He also does guns. So if we have cases where we need to find guns, stuff like that, he's very helpful in tracking that stuff down. So Forrest has been deployed three times to Afghanistan and once to Jordan. So he's done a lot of work. And we're excited to be here.

Can you see him?

Yeah. Council, any questions?

Oh, yeah. He'll walk up and say hi to everybody. And he's one of the police dogs. then you're more than welcome to pet. Better ask everybody that first, but Forrest will let you know.

Please don't try to pet the other one. Please, please, please. But I also wanted to highlight, Mayor, that with the new budget year, we allocated a position for investigations. And I asked Detective Katie Whipple to come here so that she could be seen so you would know who your investigators are with the department. But I don't think she wants to talk, so. Okay, well, welcome. Just say hi. She'd love to say hi. I'll pay for that later.

Hi. I'm Katie Whipple. I've been with the department since April of 2025. I've been in investigations for about a month, so I'm excited to be here.

Okay. Yeah, awesome. We're excited to have her and bring a different perspective to our investigations unit, so... That's all we got.

OK, very good. Thank you very much. And thanks for the introductions. Very good. We'll move on to our next discussion item, which is regarding a wildland urban interface city map presented by Chief Kazir.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. As you recall, we had a discussion about wildlife and urban interface. The acronym is WUI, and as we go through this discussion, just understand that kind of the definition and the reason for this highly talked about area is It's where undeveloped property or wildland property interfaces with developments. And so understanding that there's a risk involved there. Do I need to do something to get this map up there?

Oh, you're saying I need to drag that over, huh?

There we go. Just understanding a couple of things first before we get real deep, because I know that a couple of you probably haven't been through in-depth discussion on WUI. So some large fires across the nation, including California and obviously including Utah as well. There's been some large loss to property and lives as well. And so consequently what's happened is you have insurance companies that are dropping coverage on homes and property. And then the other thing we've seen is these huge increases in the cost of insurance, fire insurance. So the state's insurance division has come up with a statewide map. And obviously that map has affected every city, including Santa Clara. And what the state's hoping to do is they're hoping to have these insurance companies have justification for large increases or dropping coverage. So with that, the cities have been tasked with making a map. We adopted, we early adopted the state map. We realized that it was probably not what was in the best interest of the city of Santa Clara. And a couple of ways. One is we felt like there was areas that were in the map that shouldn't have been in the map. And then we realized there was areas that were left out that we should, on a city level, make sure that we build the homes to a certain standard to prevent, to hopefully prevent damage if there were a fire in some of our areas that do have a lot of risk. So, I mean, the obvious one is Santa Clara River. Lots of growth down there. We don't have the opportunity to go through and mitigate that risk inside the river, but we do have the ability in our subdivisions, our single-family lots to do that. The question you're going to ask is, okay, so now is an insurance company going to come look at our map and decide, oh, you've put this in a high-risk area? The clear and easy answer to that is no, they cannot come use our map to justify an increase or dropping somebody. They're going to go off the state map. But I do believe, and it's common practice to better identify these areas in each city, adopt the map. We know the map's going to change from year to year, or maybe not every year, but from time to time the maps will change. And so what this representation, the red area that represents, is an area that we feel like is a higher risk The interface area is a higher risk, and so the homes that would be built in there, whether it's a new subdivision or a home that's on an open lot not built on yet, would just be built to a construction standard that includes fire-rated assemblies that are roof assemblies and exterior walls. I know that's kind of a lot to try and absorb, but that's really what these maps, the city map, would represent. As you recall, there were a couple of areas in the state map. One was an area that you'll see. Is that my phone? Smarter than I am, apparently.

I don't want to call anybody.

So the water tank and the buffer zone around that was identified as an area of hazard. There are some things up there that we'd like to not burn. I know there's like a power line that is in the area. Obviously that power line itself wasn't identified, but the tank was.

Also a big area kind of on the north end of our city that is in the Black Desert was in there as well.

And so we have elected to pull that out because we don't feel like there's a lot of risk there with the lava and the small amount of natural vegetation. So let's kind of get into the Santa Clara River area, and I want to get some feedback on what the council would like to see there. So what you see here is an outline of the river and an eighth of a mile buffer on each side. So I'll put that in feet. That's about 660 feet either side of the river. common amount of space I see that happening with a lot of cities they decided an eighth mile buffer is the right number we don't have to follow that eighth mile we could get down to a sixteenth of a mile which is 330 feet either side of the river keep in mind there's a lot of homes that are built in this area already there is no requirement of those homeowners to do anything just to recognize that they're in higher risk and hopefully what the end result is is the residents who live in those structures would harden their property on their own. When we talk about hardening, we're talking about removing dead debris, removing fuels that could burn, being smart with plants, they choose to plant in those areas, and creating space between the home and anything that could burn on the property. So when we talk about hardening, that's what we're talking about. Look at my notes here. So with the state, I told you that we had provided feedback that we're pulling some areas away. Still, as of today, those areas have not been pulled out. But you'll also notice that we have not identified those on this map because we don't feel like there's a huge risk there. So let's talk about areas that are not on here that we may look to add. So we look at our washes, so Tuacon Wash, the area of the Arboretum. Let me zoom in on that just a little bit.

Chief, is this map on the website, the GIS maps?

It is on our website, yes. So the area of the Arboretum, so historically the fire department has tried to do some mitigation on a regular basis. It's been about every two to three years is my understanding. And we'll actually burn off the cattails of things that grow right just above Little League Drive down through past the ball fields. And it's been suggested that we do that on an annual basis rather than every other year or every third year. It's been beneficial. It's taken a lot of that dead and dying debris out of there. If we go north into this wash area, I think it's important to understand that there's going to be, the lake work's already started, for a conservation easement. This can encompass a good share of the lava and even over in through the wash area. And so I don't know that we look to add this. I don't foresee anything being developed in there. And so I don't know that we add this to the map. However, we do have an area as we go up to Oconwash, right through here, we're going to develop that. And quite honestly, I don't see a lot of natural vegetation currently growing there. And I think as they develop that area, I believe that we're going to work hand in hand with them to mitigate any issues that we might find on the property. As we go up to Tuakon Wash, Tuakon Wash comes up over this way. The ACE crew has been through there last year and taken most of the native reeds and things out of there that could burn easily. And that area today is in pretty good shape. This wash that we think is a lava flow wash, but we're not sure what it's called. is an area that does have quite a bit of overgrowth in it currently. And we do have fires there occasionally. In fact, we had one there in, I think it was in May, that burned a good share of it off. So it's another area we might consider including in here. The only thing that kind of leads me away from this is that you have a school on the north side and a park on the south side. So we're not going to build in there. But if you feel like it would be wise to add those areas in the Wildland Urban Interface map, we can certainly do it. Another area as we go to the west, another area is going to, is graveyard wash that's going to be a reservoir. And I know that the city is potentially looking to annex some of this property. It's possible, I guess. And maybe at that point in time, we come back and revisit this and update the map. But I don't know that it makes sense to add anything in there. The reservoir itself, obviously, is water. And then we'd only be worried about anything that might be built around the area, which I'm uncertain of what that could look like right now. Moving just a little bit south. And this yellow line represents the city boundaries, but I don't think it's been updated because you've got big rock subdivisions to be built in this whoo area as well as As well as the the rest of their property so it's gonna sit right here and that is and it's it's I think it's important to understand and recognize Especially tonight as we go through that that is in the wildland urban interface zone and we don't anticipate Changing that that will remain inside that zone The only other area that I that I'm back and forth on is our hillside right to the north of Santa Clara Drive that does have some areas that have some natural vegetation overgrowth right there as well. If a fire were to start at the base of that hill, it's going to be to the top by the time we even arrive on scene. So again, those are areas of our city that have been developed. Homes are already there. We don't anticipate a lot of, I mean, obviously the subdivisions are in place. So there might be a home here and there that gets built on a vacant lot, but not a lot. of potential for growth right through there. And you'll see that it does, because of that eighth-mile buffer, it does encompass a little bit of that hillside. So I guess I want to answer any questions you have, and then I want to open it for discussion on just a few of the items we've talked about.

So the red is not currently in our WUI map, or it isn't currently in our WUI map.

So the current WUI map, it ends in this area just inside the city limits. That's the state's WUI map. And as it goes west and into Ivins, it's a lot. Ivins is heavily affected by the current state WUI zone map.

And this is for our city, will we map? It does not do anything to affect the state, will we map?

We don't even share the information with the state. This is on a city level.

And so it would just be our building inspector or whatever who would determine if you've met the standard of?

That is correct.

Roof and walls.

Yeah. And again, maybe I can elaborate a little bit on that. So when you talk about exterior walls and the roof of the structure, There's a material that you would use to sheet the walls and the roof that creates that one hour It's kind of like a one-hour firewall that you might see in different settings, but there is an added cost to that. It's not extreme. It's been projected that most homes would be in that probably an additional $20,000 to $30,000, depending on the size of the home. That's not a hard cost, but that's kind of an estimate that a lot of the builders have felt comfortable in estimating.

And then we don't use these any other time except for new development? Or didn't we use these for fireworks?

So there's a fireworks map that's different than this. Obviously there's some similarities for sure with the fireworks map. But no, this will not replace the fireworks map.

So it will only affect new development, like, for instance, the hill across the street. I can see why you say we wouldn't put that there, because it will only affect new development. Is that right?

New development or an existing developed property that has, like, an unbuilt home. Let's say there's a vacant lot still in a subdivision.

Okay. Or if you were doing an ADU or something with that effect?

ADU, correct.

Okay.

But there is no requirement from an existing home owner to go in and do any work at all. Again, this is, as you know with the state map, there is going to be an annual assessment to properties that are in the state's map. The properties in our map will not be subject to the same inspection.

Okay.

Sorry, say that again. There's an annual assessment or inspection from the state if you're in the state map? That's correct. Okay. State map. I'm just looking at my own home right now. In the hills, the entire hills is in there. The state map, it's not like a portion of the hills is.

Yeah. I should have brought the state map with me. I could pull it up. But my understanding, unless it's updated since the last time I looked, my understanding is it includes some of this area but not all of it. It does come into the hills somewhat. And I did mention earlier that we've submitted changes to the county who's going to submit a county map to the state with changes we felt were pertinent to our city. And then they may be updating it? They will be. I don't have a timeline. They haven't even... suggested a timeline to us yet.

Did it include all this that we're looking at, the red? Not all of it.

OK. As it goes west outside of our city, some of that's in there. Some of it is actually larger than what you're seeing.

OK.

And as I mentioned earlier, as you go into Ivins, it's all along Highway 91 and then, of course, through Kayenta, and it kind of goes literally around their city. One of the important things to realize is or understand with the state map is they've taken historical fire data as one of their factors when they made the map. And so you're going to have larger fires in an area that takes the fire department longer to respond to. And and as well as vegetation that can burn so we've had some larger fires like on the reservation and near the city of Ivins in the past so It's been that's been one of the factors and that's the reason why you see Like Ivins has been hit pretty hard with it If if you'd like I have the state map we can show if you'd like to see that council sure I

That's the state map right here.

And so you'll notice through the Black Desert development area, we've excluded that, or we've suggested that the state excludes it. And we don't intend on putting that in our city map.

And so, again, the impact or the effect of being in the area, if it's with the state, if you're in the state area, they're going to do an annual assessment. When you say assessment, you're not talking about a financial assessment. You're talking about just an inspection.

It'll be a risk assessment, a wildland urban interface risk assessment, yeah. Okay.

And then that's the only impact for the city. If somebody's going to be building a house or building something on their property and it's in the zone, then they'll be required to do the roof and the exterior, right? with this?

And it's, you know, from a building perspective, they call it fire rated assembly, so, and it's clearly defined as exterior walls and a roof. So they're just trying to create a space of time that a fire could be, you know, impinging on the side of your house and that it would give us time to where it wouldn't catch the house on fire as quickly. And there's a lot more to that. I mean, when you stucco a wall, you come down and the bottom of the wall has a piece of J metal on it, right? And so if you have debris up against your house and that starts on fire and burns, that's going to get behind that assembly. So that's where we talk about hardening your home. You get the combustible materials away from your house to where you have a little more assurance that your house won't catch on fire.

So this is a new code for the roof. The building's being built now. That's kind of a requirement.

You're talking about the new code? So the WUWI code is requiring it, and it is new. The code itself isn't new, but it wasn't required to be adopted until last year. And so we've adopted it last year because we need to stay compliant with the state of Utah So if there was a fire in our city and we use state resources, we're responsible financially to pay for that if you're not compliant.

Okay. What's it called again? WUI? What?

You're talking about WUI? Yeah. Wildland Urban Interface. It's where the wildland and your city meet.

Okay.

So do you like an eighth-mile buffer or would you prefer something smaller? Does an eighth-mile seem reasonable? It's hard to picture what the difference is. I know.

I don't know.

So your property, most properties in an R110 zone have 100-foot frontage. So, you know, you're looking at between if a road were to go into a zone, like into like perpendicular to the river, do you want it to be three houses or do you want it to be six in a traditional R110 zone? Now, if you look at properties south of the river, they're not the traditional 100 feet of frontage. Some of those lots are square. Some of them are not.

Council, yeah, any particular ideas? Or do you want to see what it would look like with a smaller distance?

Yeah, can you zoom in? I couldn't find it online. Can you zoom in on ours? Like on Benelli Drive along the river, something that's a good one to look at? And going up Vernon Street or.

But he wants to be on.

I'm just curious how far in that goes under the current one. I guess if you could switch over to the other. Yeah. The city map.

All right. You want me to zoom in a little more? Is that enough? If you could zoom in a little bit more, my eyes aren't there. Sometimes when you zoom in, it zooms a lot. So here's Benelli. And then Vernon's right there. So it's going to encompass the space from the river to the road and then probably two more homes.

Which in this case where that is, it's roughly one home. Yeah, you're right. It's roughly one home because it's on a large lot.

Because those are larger lots.

Those are half acre? Yeah, it was like two half acre lots combined. So it's roughly one home. Looks like.

And so what our decision ends up affecting is new builds, if they're in that zone, whether they'll be required to have the fire, whatever you said. Fire rated. Fire rated assemblies, yeah. Fire rated assemblies. That's all it's going to affect as far as people building a home? That's correct.

OK.

And if you look at there on Minnelli Trail, there's I think two or three lots there between Vernon Street and Galland Road that are unbuilt. No homes are on that, so they would be required to meet the new code.

And they're currently required because this went into effect a year ago?

So they're currently not required because the whole Louis code went into effect a year ago, but the map itself we used up until currently has been the state map, which did not include the Santa Clara River. And I don't think anybody will argue that there's a risk. There's a fire risk inside the river and adjacent to the river.

So those homeowners, I mean, I guess you're not the insurance expert, but do they typically get a break on their homeowner's insurance if they have the fire rated assemblies?

So what'll happen, so I think this, you're more speaking to the inspections, or the, I call them the assessments. So every home that's in the state's WUIMAP that gets inspected, going to fall into one of three categories, from extreme risk to the lower end of high risk. So depending on what category your home is in, not the subdivision, not your neighbor's house, but your home, probably will have an effect on your fire insurance.

The category. But if I build my home and I have a fire rated roof and fire rated walls, does that?

Yeah, you'll fit in the lowest category.

Then I go into the lowest category rather than a higher category.

Yeah.

OK.

Yes.

And is your recommendation the eighth of a mile? Or what's your recommendation?

I was leaning towards 16th of a mile. We did 8th of a mile just to show you what it looks like. But I think even if we go to a 16th, I don't know that it changes anything on Benelli or Oak Farm Road. I think it's still going to include the front part of those properties, which would put them in the zone. I think those are the ones that are undeveloped right now, right? Or unbuilt is those two corner ones? I think so. I think when you look at the overall.

Sounds good to me.

I think when you look at the overall cost of a building to build a home in a development like that, I'm not trying to downplay this at all, but those are huge homes. And I don't think it's going to discourage somebody from wanting to build on a home. And it only hardens their house anyway.

So sorry, you may have answered this already. Are there landscape requirements within this as well?

There's landscape suggestions. And then if you're in the state WUI map, then the more you do to harden your home, the better your overall score is going to be. So there is a list in the WUI code of suggested plants. And they're all firewise type plants, things that won't burn easily. That's kind of the challenge we find with some of our rivers You'd think when things are green, they don't want to burn, but it's exact opposite. Some of our things that are in the rivers actually burn better when they're in the middle of summer.

Well, if you're looking for direction from me, I think based on your recommendation, I'm good with the 116th.

That's where I'm leaning as well, the 116th. Because this is also used just kind of to help somebody if they're looking at moving here and buying a home. They could just check the map and be like, oh, I'm going to have to be a little more careful with my landscaping. It's going to be used for that as well, right?

That's correct, yeah. And that's how I look at it as a resource to members of our community.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, any other feedback or any other questions you have for council? Any recommendation on the two-o-con wash? Do we leave it out? Do you guys want it in?

I think since there's not going to be any building there, it makes sense to leave it out. I mean, any new homes built there.

I agree. Yeah.

Yeah.

So there is a subdivision going in that might benefit from just knowing that they're in the zone and others that could follow. Brock, I might need your help. Is it right here? In this, I think it's right in this corner.

That one, that's where Solis.

Yeah, so I think, you know, that wash is running right through their property. It has been, it has been grubbed out by the ACE crew and right now it's in really good shape and it doesn't make any sense to include it today. But if it doesn't, if we don't do regular maintenance on all of our washes, that will end up growing back.

So maybe that one makes sense then to keep in.

Maybe. I don't know what our plan is to ensure that we don't have a bunch of overgrowth. It's also a place that tends to collect trash. When it blows, it ends up in the bottom and cardboard and papers and different things.

In those Solis townhomes, the wash intersects the phases. Phase one, that's on the west side of the wash, those are already being built. They're probably getting relatively close to completion. The ones on the east side, I don't believe they've started that construction yet. But the west side, they'll probably be close to CO in the next month or two, I would guess. So then you really are talking about just the east side.

Gotcha. Yeah, council, do you have a particular view on that area?

I'm just not very familiar with the wash right there. That's in the state one right now? No. No, that's not.

That's not, OK. We'd be recommending it go in at some point.

Yeah, that's more local intel.

Local. If it's just for informational purposes, then maybe it's a good idea because I don't think we can guarantee that we're going to be maintaining it the same way in perpetuity. Correct.

And I'm not sure it makes a difference for this development. They're moving forward already. It's not defined today in our map. I don't know that we have any teeth to make it happen, but I don't think it hurts to identify it if you'd like it to be identified in the map.

I'm good with that. Yeah.

Okay. All right, any further question or comments?

I just have a question on the hills, the entire hills and the entire, like all the farms and stuff right there are all included in our map. And I'm just wondering what accounts for that and not just one eighth of a mile.

So you look at the fields themselves, and they probably won't burn. But you've got the river that goes kind of, you know, halfway, like it almost encompasses the whole field and so you take that eighth of a mile and you buffer it out and that's what you end up with. The hills itself has quite a bit. It's not very thick and it's not very tall, but there's a lot of natural vegetation out there. The other thing you have to understand, recognize that as the city grows and as these areas get grubbed and developed, the map's going to change. And we'll see these areas get smaller. As we go south, you're going to see the risk less and less, or the map is going to move away, you know, further and further away. Fire is going to burn uphill a lot faster than it comes downhill, so risk is much greater on the top side of the hill than it is at the bottom. And I think it's important to recognize, too, this map is a work in progress. I hope you don't feel like what I'm presenting today is a finished product. It's far from it. What's the timeline for each product? We can have it done in a week or two with your recommendation. It's not hard for him to update. It's just getting it on the list and prioritized and completed. We will be coming back to adopt the map as a city map.

But yeah, I'd want to see how making it a 16th of a mile, how that would affect the hills. Because it's probably going to be a lot different, I'm guessing. But it is tricky where the river just goes around it.

Yeah, I think there's one unbuilt lot along the river and the hills. I guess there's a couple right there on the edge. There's one kind of in the middle that's unbuilt that I'm curious if that falls in.

And honestly, now that I'm looking at this a little more in detail, I think this is further than we had asked for. I think what we wanted was this line to come closer to the line that is dark right through there.

Gotcha.

Yeah, I overlooked that. I apologize. Okay.

Yeah, so that'd be my only question. And then I think the 116th instead of the 108th. Yeah.

And that wash up in Solis, I'm indifferent personally.

Our big fires where there's a big loss happens in certain conditions. So on Friday, last week Friday, Washington City had a fire that started between a home and a garage. People who own the home were gone at the time. It burned long enough to get both the home and the garage on fire. It wasn't really windy that day, but it was just windy enough to where it picked up embers about two blocks away, started another house on fire, and burned another garage down to the ground. So when we come to you with these concerns, that's what we're trying to avoid, is we're trying to avoid fire spread. So whether it's coming from the wildland itself into a home or whether it's going from home to home, that's what we want to avoid. So by making these zones smaller, it does increase our risk. But I think it's minimal. I'm perfectly fine with a 16th of a mile.

OK. Sounds great. All right. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. All right, let's move on to our next item, which is discussion regarding resident communication strategies presented by Lance.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I kind of wanted a discussion around how we reach out to residents when there are emergencies, power outages, water, and whatnot. Right now, obviously, we have our Yopify, which sends text messages out, and we have Facebook. Those are our two primary mechanisms for reaching out, which both have pros and cons. Texts are great because they're immediate. Everybody kind of sees them, assuming your data is up to date. But when we lead into Later hours, I think one time we had water problems at 3 in the morning. Obviously, we wouldn't want to send a text out at that time. Facebook has a great reach. A lot of people see it. But the problem is there is that's not necessarily an authoritative source. And there are people who don't have Facebook, don't want Facebook. And so we've been trying to figure out a way to, how do we bridge the gap? And what's the best way? And what do you guys feel is the best way to reach our residents? Kind of solicited some feedback from staff. I think the general consensus of an idea is more going to the website. Right now we don't really post those things on the website at all. But developing kind of a here's emergency notices or imperative notices, whatever. We'll find a good word for it. And then teaching the residents, sharing that this is where you'll find it no matter what. If the power's out and you want to know why, instead of, oh, I didn't get a text, or let me go check Facebook and figure out where that might be with the onslaught of comments, it'll just be on the top. Now, I'm not saying that we would get rid of texting and all that as well, but it would be kind of, here's a text saying, hey, we're aware of this. Please check the website for further information. And then my thought was kind of like a news article when they update it. It would just be scrolling history with the most recent at the top, and you can go through and see. And so really just wanted to get your feedback on that kind of an idea, or if there are other ideas out there that just how can we do better with communicating with residents? Because as much as we try, there always seems to be holes we find as we go down. Like maybe we could do better with this, or how do we make sure that mainly the most people who can see it are able to see the message?

It's interesting that you brought this subject up. There's a person in, I think it was up in the hills, but he said he didn't understand why we couldn't push out emails. And I'm thinking, OK, a lot of people get too many emails, and it's not a good way to get communication. But some people still use them and like emails.

And actually, I forgot, we do email as well. When the Shopify goes out, it's both a text and an email. But we're syncing up with it. And that's where part of the problem is, is we have a system that's kind of disjointed from where our authoritative source of information is. We try to use what is in Polaris, our accounting software, building software for utilities. So part of this may also be not just messaging, like, here's where you can find things that are going on with the city when you need to, but maybe more outreach on that as well as saying, like, hey, make sure you're calling in. And if you're not getting these kind of bulletin, you know, this information, you're not getting the text, you're not getting the emails, you know, let's get your information updated because you should be if you're a resident. Those should be included in there. But I know we've had some issues. across the board, really, on making sure that that data that's in Polaris matches what's in Yopify and all the other systems out there. Because everybody's got a small crew. When it's 10 o'clock at night in power, it's generally Gary calling me or whoever. So it's how do we make sure we cross all of those and get all of those out in the right way. But email is included. But it does get lost in the mix.

So I think you could funnel to the website, but I still think there's value in the texting, like you talked about. And I still think Facebook, I mean, I'm of a certain demographic, but if something happens in St. George, I look at St. George's Facebook page or their police department Facebook or Instagram to get kind of in real time what's happening, or at least the quickest update, in my opinion. I like how they update it, even if you then funnel them to the website and say, check back the website for more information, or information will be updated there. I feel like they update as well, those posts, as new information comes in. But I wouldn't discount, you say that it's not the authority, but you have the city website, or the city Facebook page, which is the authority. The city Instagram account, same thing, is the authority. I would still use both.

Absolutely have both. We were kind of thinking one post that links to the website. And when I say on the Facebook, what I noticed last time is based on their algorithms, certain updates were pushing to the top that weren't necessarily the most recent. Not the latest power outage, but the one before that. Somehow the first one kept being the, you know, what is the most recent status when I would go look at it. But I'm the one that posted it. I know that actually this other status that said, hey, we're going to be cutting it out at 10 and going on.

But it might look different for everybody, too. Right.

And it does. And that's where it gets confusing when we're trying to figure out the best way to do that. Do we do multiple posts? Do we comment on a post? Do we have one post that says, here's on Facebook. It links to the website. Go here. I want to eliminate that kind of confusion on what is right, what's the most recent, what changes have happened.

I mean, would we have the budget or a desire to boost it, then, or kind of amplify that post?

If it, we'd have to have a policy on what deems Important enough to boost boosting actually doesn't cost that much. I mean you could do it for five dollars. I'm sure Brock can find the money He always does but maybe that could overcome the algorithm whatever we could do that And that's a quick and easy fix as well on the Facebook side.

So yeah, that's an option I just know I know I'm of a different demographic than a lot of people in the city, but My first thought is not to go to the website My first thought is go to the social media because that's most easily updated or at least it seems it is. I

And it seems like the younger generation all use the Facebook. A lot of people that are older are not going to have a Facebook account.

I'm the same way. I look on Facebook normally, but it's kind of, I had a resident, he actually told me that, you know, I'm an adult. I don't have Facebook. So it's like, well, I'm not sure what to do here.

Well, I think Instagram hits a younger demographic. Facebook hits an older. The website is the good source of truth if you have a lot of information or always people can go back to it, I think. And then the text, I just think you have to hit all those boxes. I don't think you can choose just one. Is that the question?

Not necessarily one, but more being OK with, so say we have another power outage. We send a notification that goes out across all platforms. But that notification is essentially like a link. Like when we post an article on our website right now, it goes to Facebook. But when you click on that, it actually takes you back to the website. Similar to that, to where we're going to go through all of them, but you're going to get one, one on Facebook, one via text. All of the sources. When you go to that, you just click it. It's like, OK, the most recent status is. Because, again, we do have things that happen after hours. And some may be OK getting a text at 10 PM. Others may not. And it's trying to bridge that gap of how do we make sure that if somebody wants to know and we have the means to give them that information, we're doing it but not being too obtrusive at the same time.

But if it's an emergency, I don't think most people would care about getting a text late at night if it's an emergency.

And we were just talking about that today, too. Also, where's that line of what is a true emergency? If power's out, especially across Washington County, does that constitute a true emergency where everybody needs to be notified right away? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. A water line break, it depends. If it's affecting a few homes, it Is it worth that effort in terms of sending out that text at 3 in the morning? That's difficult.

Well, for the whole county, that would have been pertinent. So is there an opt-out at the end of our text messages on Yelpify?

Not as clear as it probably should be, but all carriers, if you reply stop, they'll just stop.

So what if our text message was, we're aware of the power outage, basically check the website for updates, and that's where they're all posted. And then it's just the one communication, and then people can continue to go back to the website if they want more.

Exactly.

Same on Facebook?

Mm-hmm. The other challenge is we're just limited on staff. So it's hard to, it's already a game of telephone because we don't have everybody that has access to all platforms. Yachtify is easier because we can give access to a good number of people, but Facebook's a little weird in how they manage that. So we have to kind of maintain control of who has access to that without, could give it to everybody, but there is a risk with that as well. Not anybody doing anything bad, but just remembering who you are at the time. changing in check. Because I've seen, I've accidentally posted as somebody else when I was there. I was like, OK, caught that. So there's a bit of a risk there, too. And that's why we're trying to simplify how we get those out. And if we go to a kind of unified system, then it's really just posting on the website, which would automatically trigger all the others without having to Right now, if the power's out, Gary calls one of us. So I can do Facebook and website, but I'm not necessarily Yopify, so I go to Christelle. She does the Yopify. It's very kind of disjointed, and when we're trying to get things out quickly, it really just slows it down.

I like the idea of having it on the website and having that as the primary place, and the text or the email or whatever drives them to the website.

Right, and it would be, the end goal is it's all automated. Whoever posts it and actually gets it out there, all they have to do, they go to one place, they go to the back end of our website, post it, select the right kind of whatever category we're going to call this, a public alert. And when that happens, OK, that drives all of the other actions to come out of that. It'll send a text. It'll send Facebook, Instagram. All sources are hit all at once. And then maybe some rules on texting. Maybe we do say, OK, if it's whatever, after midnight or whatever, we don't send a text. But we'll still send an email on Facebook. That way we can kind of, we'll never make everybody happy, but we can try and see if we can cross over as many as we can so that it's like, okay, we've hit 90%. They're okay with our communication. We'll try our best to get the other text. It's really hard or challenging to get all of them.

When you post to Facebook and Instagram, can you post so that it goes to the story as well, not just a post? Because a lot more people will see stories, I think, than posts.

I don't know. I will look at that. That might be an option. We haven't done that in the past. The stories you see when we do post, those are manual actions. We can look into that for sure.

I think those will be a lot more visible. And then you won't have that algorithm problem of the others popping up. It will be the most recent.

Stories go up at the top. That's a good idea.

Mayor, can we hear from? You just need to come up to the mic.

So you need to come up to the mic so we can get you on the minutes. You just have to say your name.

Bottom line is this. I was in the middle of the great blackout of 2026. I immediately hooked up my generators and went next door to my 86-year-old neighbor and her partially paralyzed daughter. and helped out. Now, initially, we did get messages. People were on Facebook and stuff. And the first messages everybody was coming across were saying, oh my god, a plane ran into the thing. So everybody's like, oh, this is going to be down for two days. The most effective message came from our public works department, which came over Messenger and basically said to everybody, things are going to be down until late in the morning. The problem with going to the website and Facebook is that there's so many people on the phone networks, you can't get a hold of the internet. You can't use AI either to connect up because the system is dragged down by the amount of usage of everybody on their phones. So you necessarily can't go to the website. But it was a wondrous moment when we did get that message and everybody was like, okay, things are going to be back to status quo. That's the take I want to have. Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

So, Lance, the other concern that I have is making sure that people can enroll in that. Because if it's just the Yapify and it's just connected with the original phone number, I think, Krista, we were talking about it was your... Well, I haven't been getting notifications for a while either. So able to opt in... add our number or email so that we can?

We're looking at that as well. And that's kind of what's driving this too, is what's our best source. Right now, with all the systems being separate, we're also looking at, can we just, same thing with our newsletter, just all one system. Maybe it looks at Polaris, but it isn't that. You can have people that come in and say, And maybe they're here for a little while, but they're not permanent. They want to get these notifications too. Or they have family here. My parents love to know what's going on here. Maybe they want to sign up and see that just so they know. There's all kinds of situations that aren't handled just with that. So yeah, we can look at that as well, try to figure out the best way, and then also start reaching out more to say, hey, make sure that your information's up to date, similar to how, if you look at Washington County and the reverse 911 system, they'll send it out. You need to go sign up. You need to make sure your information's up to date. A similar kind of messaging campaign to make sure that they are double checking and that the right numbers are being contacted. Because I know that some numbers in there are still landlines.

OK, very good. Hopefully that's in good direction. I also like the idea of a unified way to just post on the website and then send out to other mediums. I think that makes sense. OK, very good. Thank you. All right, our next item is discussion regarding proposed provision of construction design standards to coincide with the new sensitive lands ordinance presented by Casey.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. In last week's meeting, during Rick's presentation, he spoke to changes that we were going to need to do to our construction design standards to coincide with the new sensitive lands that's being created. Those changes are needing to happen to 3.4 of our design standards, which is the drainage and flood control design. The main changes that are needing to happen are a lot of the direction that this section gave to developers was being affected by our 100 year flood zone and those were the main areas being affected. With the new sensitive lands ordinance, that is where the developers will be directed and that's what will set what the new requirements are for their permits and approvals through the city. If you go through this new one, You scroll up to the top. So a lot of what is happening in the changes is cleanup and removal of those sections that referred to the 100-year flood zone. And in its place are just the new sections for addressing the sensitive lands. The spaces that you can see, the large spaces between paragraphs are where we have removed something in the current set. That first space was just a cleanup. It's just a removal of a sentence that was almost the exact verbiage of the first sentence of 3.4. So it's just a cleanup of that one. When you start in 3.4.1, the city right now is currently updating our city stormwater master plan. So we have added in mid-paragraph the word current city stormwater master plan, just so it brings their attention that there is a new version in case anyone is holding onto an older version of that. can look in reference to the new version of that when we get it completed. The second big space is just the removal of a short paragraph that was addressing the 100-year flood zone. Each development should handle its stormwater runoff in such a manner that no increase in the 10 or 100-year peak storm runoff. That is going to be addressed in the sensitive lands zone and isn't needed in this section here. In general, it's also addressed, we've changed a word in this next paragraph, Drainage from sheet flow to point discharge flow while the amount of water may be controlled the effects of all Point discharges must be handled to ensure no detrimental effects to downstream properties the previous Version is a paragraph just addressing those downstream properties The next large space is Another removal of verbiage about analysis needed based on the 100-year flooding. Scroll back up just a little bit, please. So in lieu of the 100-year flood zone, We've added in this section that is instead including wetlands, intermittent streams, washes, drainage basins larger than 0.15 square miles. And then we are directing them to the Santa Clara City floodplain development permit, including all applicable permits from the Utah State Engineer, FEMA, and the Army Corps of Engineers. is all added in and that will coincide with the sensitive lands. The next space. Yep, right there. This paragraph that's being removed was just stating what needed to happen for any modifications to a drainage channel. And all of those are now addressed in our sensitive lands maps. And they will have to go to that committee to get any kinds of approvals and permits for changing any drainage channels. In 3.4.2, we have new standards for low impact development. Any property exceeding one acre has to abide by the new LED standards. So we are adding that in here. This section before was named an erosion control, is what 3.4.2 is. verbiage is almost the same other than now they have to abide by a higher standard of the LID and we do have that broke out in our construction design standards. 3.4.3 irrigation ditches used to be a lot longer section. We're leaving the first line of it in just for any existing ditches that may exist in the city still. But there was a 3.4.3.1 that we're removing, which is how you can use those ditches. None of them are in use anymore for any kind of irrigation. So we felt like it could be removed. And then there was a 3.4.3.2 section, which is a requirement to give the irrigation company approval to use any of those ditches, which isn't really needed anymore. The rest of 3.4.4 follows exactly the current standards. That's the only proposed changes that we're proposing for 3.4. Any questions?

Council, anything you'd like to discuss?

Sounds good.

I think it's pretty straightforward. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation All right move on to item number five which is discussion regarding the Spence gun improvements presented by Ryan Good afternoon mayor and council I Don't know when the last time was that any of you are up at Spence gun field, but hasn't changed much.

I Fencing and lighting, I believe, is the original fencing and lighting when that was built 300 and some odd years ago. So it needs to be updated. It needs to be replaced. The lighting, obviously, you need to replace with some LED. Something that works better, is more efficient. Fencing, other than being in bad shape, isn't adequate. It's a safety concern. The backstop isn't tall enough or wide enough to protect spectators or cars. The outfield fence, I believe, is somewhere around five feet tall and directly outside left field. You've got the trail, and then you've got substation. So I just imagine riding my bike or walking down that trail during a game and getting hit in the side of the head with the baseball. Probably ruin your day. So yeah, if you've been around, you know in the last few budget retreats, this has been on our list. And we just felt like this is something, the revenue we bring in from all our tournaments is something we should go after the county, try to get some TRT funding to help with the project. So that's what we did this year. And with the help of Lance, we put in a request. So they have a 50% match, which... be somewhere around a hundred eighty thousand dollars that's what we asked for we were granted a hundred thirty five thousand which isn't what we're aiming for but it's enough that we fear we need to get this off the list and get it done so that's what we're planning on doing one of the bids i used was for the fencing was three years old so we're gonna have to go get an updated bid and that also didn't include the And we'll show you on a picture in a minute how high we wanted to go on the outfield fence. We decided that afterwards. So I just wanted to let you know with this picture right here, we searched far and wide, and we couldn't find anybody that could do an AI picture to give you a good representation. So we finally found a guy here in the building. His name's Brock. say, hey, let me give it a shot. So this is what he came up with, and it's pretty dang good. So anyway, what we want to do from left field at least to right center, if not all the way, is 15 feet high. And at the recommendation of our former mayor, Rick, he wanted to look like the mini green monster out there. So that's where the green rendering is. And you've got options. You can paint it, but you can't really tell. Most likely what we'll end up doing is doing green slats down through the chain link if we decide to go this route and give it that green look. It'll look sharp. The lighting, we're cutting down. Right now we're using, we have eight poles with lights on them. The schematics we got from must go, drop that down to six. So it would go from four in the outfield just to two. And then two on the left field side, two on the right field side. And those, I don't know if you're familiar with Musco. So Musco, we have other places in the city we use them. Pickleball is probably the main one we deal from the most. Whenever there's something wrong, their system detects before we do that there's a problem, whether it's a bull bout. It just detects, hey, something's wrong. So they'll send us, myself and Dane and Ryan, an alert, and then we go investigate. And if it's something we can't do, if it's a bull bout, then they hire a company to come out and fix it. It's all under warranty when they do it for several years after they're done. So right now, when something goes out, we have to call Port Eric and Get them out there at the boom truck, and it's a pain. So anyway, it'll be much better, much more efficient. It won't bleed out into the neighborhood like the ones do right now. The lights we have right now, we turn them off and try to turn them back on. It sometimes takes an hour and a half to get back on. It's usually around half hour, but sometimes it can take a while. We learned that with Murray in the car show when he had turned off for the drone show, and it took a lot longer to come back on than we expected. So anyway, we just wanted to let you know what we're doing and get your thoughts on what we have planned. Also, the fences going down from the dugout all the way down to the outfield fence right now, those are, I believe, five feet tall. We're going to raise those to at least eight. Get them tall enough to where... You have to really try to get in the field if we have it locked. So when we go prep all our fields for tournaments, if we've got a tournament starting tomorrow, we've got the fields prepped, we lock them, let people know we can't get on them because we've got a tournament tomorrow. Little league, we can't keep them off. Those fences are so short. If they want to get on, they're going to get on. Same thing with here. So there's no way we can actually keep them out if they want to get on, but at least deter them a little bit. Make them where they have to climb and think about it. But also for protection, people standing down the sidelines and watching the games. Taller the fence, the more protection they have. So any thoughts?

Sorry, the height on each side, how tall were you saying? We're looking at eight feet. Eight feet? Yeah. OK, so eight feet on the sides, and then 15 feet left and center, maybe all the way around.

Yeah, at least to right center. And that's going to depend on, they might have to put in different poles to go up that high. If they do, we're not going to go any further than right center. And then drop down to 10 feet. eight to ten feet, probably ten feet from there to the corner. So, I mean, that's how a lot of baseball fields are. If you look, they kind of drop down in right field. That's why I'm glad my son's a lefty. He has a better chance. He doesn't play baseball, but he missed his shot.

So the total cost is about $360,000. Ask for $180,000 from the county. They're giving $135,000. They did $135,000, yes.

And the bid I have from – and I – So from allied fencing from three years ago, it was 123,000. And again, that was 20 feet in the outfield fence, but I believe half of that was netting, because that was their cheaper option. And so it's obviously going to go up a little bit. But if what we got from the county will pay for the fencing, then that's great. We got two for, you know, we can do the lighting. The bid from Moscow for the lighting, we got two bids from them. Approximately $150,000 just for all the materials, lights, poles, and we install everything. And I had them, hey, what would it cost you guys to do everything, sub it out? And it was around $210,000 for them to do everything, installation. and that's going to be running a lot of conduit because up there, there's nothing in conduit. All the sprinkler line and everything else is all done by volunteers. Every time we run a trencher through there, we rip out sprinkler wire. So that will all have to be run conduit for the wiring. It will be a project. It needs to be done.

Okay, yeah, council, any feedback?

Sounds correct to me.

I was going to add Melody Finlinson that's helping out with the sensitive lands. She lives on the kitty corner from the ball field. She says she has a bucket of balls that they make it all the way to her yard. I don't think a taller fence would even help with that. But yeah, I think the out here looks good.

I've gotten a few calls from people that live right across the street asking if we could put up some netting or something, because those foul balls go right in and hit their cars. The backstop taller, backstop wider, it would definitely help with that. It's not going to stop them all, but it'll definitely help. That's, I guess, one of the risks of living right next to a ball field.

Yeah. OK. Anything else, council? All right. We'll look forward to a more fleshed out design.

All right. Thank you.

OK. Very good. We'll move on to item number three, our staff reports. And Chief Studley, would you mind starting?

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Two weeks ago, we met with the Public Safety Work Group and felt like it was really productive. I want to report again, Officer Bartrop is off of field training and he's now working a shift. Officer Brayton Tobler is in the middle of field training, but on, what day was it? Last week, he gave birth to their first, his wife gave birth to their first child, Beau Tobler, so we're pretty excited. This is the fourth, but we'll have five baby boys born from individuals in our department or their wives, spouses. So it's been pretty neat. We did an active threat training at Rocky Vista for their staff. So it's pretty cool to identify some of the things we need to train on in a big facility like that. And then just upcoming this month, we have Heritage Day, Swiss Days, and the PGA event, which we're excited about. And that's all I got.

Okay. Council, any questions? Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

I have a question. What was the name? I forget the name of the K-9 officer. What's his name again?

Lance Bartruff. And the K-9 is Forrest with one R. Totally odd to me.

Okay.

Lance. L-A-Y-N-C. And then Bartruff.

Bartruff.

B-A-R-T-R-U-F-F.

OK, very good. All right, Lance?

Really don't have too much this time. Still working through a lot of our migrations. We're about 80% done with getting what we had on cloud back on prem. Just pushing full steam ahead, because the sooner we get it done, the more money we save. So almost done. We did get Ivan's fully migrated onto our ArcGIS, so that headache's kind of over. So we'll just keep pushing through. Any questions?

Thank you. Thank you much. All right. Ryan?

It's been a minute since we've had an update. Yeah, it's been about a month, I think. Yeah, a lot's been going on. Pickleball courts, we have one court down. We have a problem up there with players tightening the nets themselves. So you've got a contraption on there, the wheel, we've taken that off, but it leaves a nice square. If you had a crescent wrench, you can still do it, and they bring their own tools. So they get them so tight that the poles are in a sleeve down through the post-tension concrete. And it finally puts them in a bind where it bends that pole. And then the net sags. You can't tighten it anymore. So this is the second time we've had it. And it got so bad, they had to cut it off. Clint's sport court's been working on it. They had to cut it off a core grill, get it out, put a new one in, and pour concrete back in to fix it. So we think we've come up with a way Make it so they can't tighten them anymore. Figure we'll drill a hole right through that square and put a lock on it. So, so far it's working.

We'll see.

But he's hoping to have that done tomorrow. New pole in there and we'll have the net back up. Stillson and Gooch, if you remember, we had two more courts to resurface. They are going to be here, if not next week, the week after. They've got a big project up north they've got to finish up and then they'll be down here. So we'll get those last two refinished. Ivan's reached out to us. They have an intern, and he has to have a project for part of his course, and his project is to do a pickleball league. So they want to know if they can use our courts at Goobler. The reason they want to use our courts, they have their own courts, but they don't have any with lights. So they can't do anything in the evening. And this will be, they want to do it Monday nights, only Monday nights for about six weeks. And so we met with them to see what we would charge them to rent the courts and everything. So they're going through all the logistics to see if it works. And if they get a league going, they'll let us know. So if they do, it'll be Monday nights. If you want to play on a pickleball league, it's going to be by skill level. I guess there's skill levels. I don't know. It's not ages. It's skill levels. So if you're into that kind of thing, keep an eye out for it. They're going to advertise if they do it. Other than that guys finished up the overseeing project Had some strategically placed storms that helped out nicely should be a good year for the grass up there And now they're just down here trimming branches down Santa Clara Drive and City Hall getting ready for Swiss days and they'll be touching up the benches outside and Get ready for Swiss days That's all I've got any questions Do you want to share maybe where you had some mowers down and what's going on with that? Oh, yeah, so I passed, no, overseeding takes its toll on our mowers. But other than that, we already had two mowers down when we started that project. We've been down four mowers the past few weeks. Both of our big mowers and two of the little ones. So the guys have been trying to do everything with the two little mowers. So they've been behind and got two of the three of the four back. So now they're catching up. So if you've noticed a couple things maybe didn't get mowed one week, that's why. Not because they decided not to. They were just trying to do what we can with what we had. But they're fixed. We should be getting the last one back next week and good to go.

OK. Any questions for Ryan? OK. Thank you very much. Gary?

Good evening, Mayor and Council. first item I have is just the Rocky Mountain power outage that we had on the 27th of August. I appreciate Lance and working for, working all the communication efforts to get the word out a little bit better. That outage was just a little bit different where the whole county was out and that, what was your name again?

Jared.

Jared. Like you mentioned that the Cell towers were just overwhelmed, and we tried to get another Yopify message out, but Jamie wasn't even able to hardly get enough cell service to get onto the site to send out another notification just because it was just overwhelmed. But anyway, I think it went fairly well for as wide an outage as it was that we got the power on as much as we did. Having the generation down there really helped. We were able to get more on. all at once. The other cities, they don't have the ratio of generation to load. So we were able to get all of our residents on pretty much at the same time, with the exception to Councilman Chaplin's area. That took a little longer. We had a switch that malfunctioned a little bit. So we figured out where it was and got that switch closed in again. But anyway, overall, I think it went pretty well. My guys did a great job. We had another dig in, a subcontracting crew that's doing work for CenturyLink, putting in fiber and they just, their boring machine hit some cables last Thursday night. Thanks to Casey and his crew for sending out a couple of guys in their vac truck to help with the excavation because there was a lot of communication cables and power cables in that trench. They were there until about 3 in the morning, Friday morning, getting that fixed and buttoned up. Crew's been busy doing preventive maintenance work, pulling wire into the Black Desert's phase of Silver Reef. They're just about done with that by, I think, around the 22nd, 23rd of the month. They should have everything done up there. One thing I want to mention is about the power bill that we got in July. I don't know if some of you have heard how high it was, but it was probably one of our highest we've had. It was over about $900,000 for the month of July. A lot of that was hot, but a lot of it is the transmission costs, and that and through EDAM, their charges, the KISO charges. I did just forward you the memo from UAMPS kind of explaining what's included in that bill and what's still to come from that bill because there's a lag in getting all the transmission and KISO charges added to those bills. And they actually have two years to go back and true up anything that they've missed or miscalculated. So it can be kind of a mess for a while until they get it all figured out. So anyway, if you have any questions on that, just get with me on that power bill. I've got more questions for you, Amson, on why it was so high that month. But a lot of it is the transmission charges and that. Our generators are all running good. We're still running them a bit, but we're starting to slow down a little bit on the run time, so with the cooler temperatures. One thing about that generation building, it has its own transformer. The generators generate at 7,200 volts. It goes through a transformer backwards. So what's using it is a step-up transformer. It comes out at 69,000 volts to go out on our transmission line. That transformer is failing. We do oil tests every year. And there's the gases and stuff that are in the oil kind of tell what's going on inside. And it looks like some of the insulation is deteriorating and failing in that transformer. We have no idea how long it's going to last. So we're looking at getting that one rebuilt. One option we have, if we add another generator, that transformer is not big enough to handle it. We'd have to get a size bigger transformer to handle another generator. And so our thought process is ordering a bigger transformer to handle one more generator and maybe two, depending on what council wants to see down there. And then have that 10 MVA rebuilt and keep it as a spare for our other substations. Our other substations are all 10 MVAs, and you've got to match that same size so you can tie them together if needed. So I'll have more on that when that time comes. But I'll be looking at getting some bids for a bigger transformer probably. But I'll bring that to you in a work meeting with some more information. Just wanted to give you a heads up of what we're looking at. And a transformer, they're almost $1 million right now. So it's a big expense. But if that transformer fails, we don't have a spare to put down there to run our generators. The UAMS conference went really well. There was a lot of good information. I think we plan on for a work meeting on the 23rd to give you a more formal update. I've downloaded all the PowerPoint presentations that the presenters had, and I'll get those together and email them out to you. So if you want to view them, you can. But I will give you an update on that on the 23rd. Any questions?

Okay, I think we're good. Thank you. Casey?

The crew, they've been busy out replacing sidewalks. We had ended up with a longer list than we like of sidewalk panels that were pulled to do water leaks. So they've been trying to get caught up on that list. We started a project down at Little League that we've been working with Councilman Hendrickson on to remove a little bit of the soil behind all of the back stops and replace that with asphalt rotomill with our paver. With a little bit of heat and rolling it down like asphalt, it'll set up very hard, almost as good as asphalt will. So it'll help eliminate mud issues that we've been having when it rains down there. It'll buy us some time on the part. We have the bid packet ready to send out to build grade control structure in the river behind Swiss Village. So probably in the next two to three weeks, that'll be going out to bid. Month or two you might see equipment down in the river behind Swiss Village and they're just going to build. A check down system there so that any future flooding can't cut a channel. In the river anywhere above there. Any questions?

OK, very good, thank you. Chief.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Just for an update on our wildland deployments, we're on our 13th deployment right now. Our crew is in Texas. And it looks like about 95% are sure they're going to do what's called a crew swap, so they'll get extended on the fire. And we're seeing activity statewide kind of dwindle just this time of year, storms that have come through, cooler temperatures. Don't really know if we're going to go out again this year or not, but we're still available. Of those fires we've had this year, I told you that we've done 13 deployments. And we've been on 14 major fires, big, large fires. Probably another 18 to 20 smaller fires. And this does not include any fire within our jurisdiction. So busy, busy year. We advertised last week for our part-time admin assistant for the fire department. As of Thursday, we had a couple of applicants. And then Tia's off this week, so I don't really know how many we have today. But I know it's more than two. Super excited to get that position filled. Lots of events this time of year, Heritage Day, Swiss Days, PGA. Friday is 9-11. And there's a few events in the county, probably more than a few, but we're going to do a couple local just inside of our two city boundaries. So Rocky Vista University is doing a flag ceremony there. We're going to get involved in, there's a few other, like I said, a few other things too. So crews are busy doing that. I'm not sure if I've given you an update on our grants, but We have a major grant that's come available in the last couple months. We have most of that submitted. It's a five-year grant, so most of that information has been submitted. And just trying to tie it up and get it done. It's due, I think, in two to three more weeks. But the value of that grant is over $1 million, $1.2 million, I think. So super excited for that possibility as well. And we're still in the waiting game on the safer grant. Maybe in the next three to four weeks, they'll start issuing awards on that. So again, super excited for that one as well. That's all I have for now. Do you have any questions?

OK, thank you.

Brock? Quickly, so you know, auditors are here with their annual audit. We will have that back to you before the end of the calendar year. And then the other thing is Utah League of Cities and Towns, October 27th and 28th in Salt Lake. If you plan to attend, please let me know so we can get registered as well as accommodations.

What's the dates again?

October 27th and 28th. That's a Tuesday, Wednesday.

I'll be going.

And I know Councilwoman Hinton will be attending as well. She'll be getting sworn in. Appointed or whatever it's called. President.

We'll see what happens. Never know.

I should be there, but I'll confirm with you shortly. OK. All right, that's it.

OK, very good. Selena, anything? Okay, very good. All right, with that, we will adjourn. I'll be back here at six for a regular meeting. Thank you, everyone.