Town Council - Special Meeting

Mike on it now it's on. Okay, welcome to the Springdale Town Council's special meeting. Today is Friday, May 29, 2026, and the time is 11 a.m. We are at the Canyon Community Center in Springdale, Utah. From the town, we have Rob Totten, Tom Danzy, and Kendall Sagers. Here on the dais from council, we have Pat Campbell, Randy Aton, me, Barbara Bruno, Jack Burns, and Kyla Topham. And I will begin with a motion to approve the special meeting agenda.

I move we approve the special meeting agenda.

I'll second it.

We've got a motion by Kyla and a second by Pat.

Pat, aye.

Randy, aye.

Barbara, aye.

Jack, aye. Kyla, aye.

Okay. And the first item on the agenda is announcements. Are there any general announcements?

We have no general announcements. Actually, no, I do. Sorry, have a general announcement. On June 10th, we will be having a public open house meeting It's more of actually a public input session, not necessarily an open house, for our community engagement regarding trails. We are doing a project to kind of get the feedback from the community about future trail development, where the community would like to see trails, if the community would like to see trails, what types of trails. On June 10th, there will be an opportunity for the community to provide input. That will be from 4 to 6 p.m., and that will be in the gallery space here of the community center. For you astute calendar keepers, you'll know that June 10th is also the town council meeting night, which will start here at 5, so you can kill two birds with one stone. Come to the gallery and give your input on the trails, and then come to the council meeting, and it will be a full, fun evening of town business.

Hopefully very little killing, though.

Is that it? It was a metaphor.

Okay. So the next item on the agenda is a consent agenda, which is formalizing the hires that we made. So number one is appointing Niall Connolly as Director of Community Development, and number two is appointing Kendall Sagers as Town Clerk. Do I have a motion?

I move that we approve Niall Connolly for Director of Community Development and Kendall Sagers for Town Clerk.

I'll second that.

Motion by Kyla, second by Randy.

Pat, aye.

Randy, aye. Barbara, aye.

Jack, aye.

Kyla, aye.

Okay. And the main event is discussion and possible direction to staff regarding the development of a building to house a medical clinic on property adjacent to the town hall, parcel S-137-C. And the staff contact is Tom Danzy, but I just want to start with a little history of how we got where we are. Some of you were around and knew it, and some didn't. So in June of 2021, when we had the flood down Black Swash here, it flooded the little medical clinic out back. And at that time, they didn't know if they could restore it. So Helen McMahon used to work for Family Health Care, and she got a call from the CEO of Family Health Care who asked what they could do to help. And Helen and Mike said, well, you can open a medical clinic in Springdale. We're looking to retire anyway. So that got the whole ball rolling. And Helen and Mike and I, along with Lori Wright, started looking at possible locations for a medical clinic, hoping to find something on SR9. And we had a couple of close calls with private property owners that were very fraught and ultimately thought, why not on town property? The medical clinic is already hosted on town property, so maybe we could do something there. That was obviously five years ago. The costs have more than doubled since that time. At the time, we had a couple of community meetings and the room was full of people who were concerned about the loss of the medical building. the medical facility, and they were very favorable toward bringing family healthcare in. All of the letters that we have received are not favorable about a medical building, and I would like to, as we discuss this, obviously we've all seen all the letters, I would like to understand what, is it family healthcare, is it the building, is it the cost of the building? I mean, I think we're gonna talk about all of that. But I thought that the format I would use today would be that I'll have Tom cover where we are and do his staff report. And then I think the council will check in and see where we all stand now. And then we'll take public comment and then we'll deliberate and make some final decisions. So with that, I'm gonna turn this over to Tom.

Thank you, Mayor. As you indicated, for the past five years, the town has been actively working towards developing an enhanced medical clinic in the town and taking some of the steps that the mayor has indicated. More recently, as the council is aware, we have acquired property adjacent to the town hall with the intent of developing public uses on that property, specifically including a medical clinic. We have also applied for and been awarded a grant from the governor's office of economic opportunity to develop the construction plans for a medical clinic and do the master site planning for the two acre property. And as the council is aware, the council has recently made some land use changes that would facilitate or allow the construction of a clinic and a pharmacy on that property. So we're at a critical crossroads at this point where there's been a lot of momentum built behind the clinic. However, at this point, we've not done anything that binds the town to moving forward with the clinic. We are at a point, however, where future actions will be harder to reverse. The next steps should the council want to move forward with the clinic would be to finalize the architectural plans for the clinic and then to secure funding and ultimately go out to bid for a contractor and actually begin construction on the clinic. So the next steps if the town were to move forward would be very, very difficult to back out of or to reverse. So it's important at this point for the council to have a discussion about the clinic and whether or not there is support to move forward. The mayor has mentioned that there could be a number of reasons why the council would have concerns about moving forward. It could be the provider. It could be the scale of the proposed building. It could be the financial constraint on the town. It could be the need for a clinic in general. Is there even a need? Should this be something that the town should be in the middle of providing medical services in the town? Is there a need for that? These are all concerns that have been expressed in the comment letters. These are all concerns that have been discussed at the council. And so, as the mayor mentions, it would be a good idea to discuss these concerns today and really determine whether or not the council is supportive of moving forward with a clinic. A couple of options for you moving forward. If the council says, we support the idea of a clinic, but we're concerned about the cost, our concern is primarily financial, then you could give direction to the staff to say, we want you to go back and find funding sources that will pay for a clinic and not add a financial burden on the town. And if that's possible, we can move forward. If not, then we won't. That's an option. If the concerns about the clinic are one of scale, you could give direction to the staff to say, hey, we're concerned about about the size or the scale of the structure, we'd like you to continue to work with the architecture team and Family Health Care on reducing the size or scale of the building. That's an option. If the concern is about the operation of the clinic, about, you know, we're concerned about how Family Health Care has been operating, they're only here two days a week in the off season or four days during the off season, you could give direction to the staff on either working with Family Health Care on different operations or trying to find a different provider. Those are all options. If the concern is, you know what, we just don't feel that this is something that the town should be involved in, this is not a priority for the town, maybe it was five years ago, but for these whole list of reasons, this is not a priority for the town and this is not something that we should be providing or expending resources on or effort on, then your direction to the staff is, don't do any of that. Let's change course and not pursue a clinic. And then... the staff would appreciate your direction on what is a priority, what should we be looking for towards in terms of a use for that two acre property. You don't need to make that decision today, but you could begin that discussion and we could start talking about what your priorities are. So those are all various options for the council to consider today.

Tom, I know that you've been having some discussions with the CEO of Family Health Care. Can you, can you, Tell us a little bit about what you've discussed in terms of hours and profitability and that kind of thing, just so we have that information.

Sure. Yeah. So based on my discussions with Lori Wright, first to answer your question about profitability, she's indicated that currently the clinic operating out of the space right now is not profitable. There's a couple of reasons for that. One is they're limited because of the space on how many patients they can see a day. They're limited to about 12 patients a day because of the constraints of the space. In a larger space, they're hopeful that they could see up to 18 patients a day, which would make them more profitable. The big thing, however, in terms of profitability is that they're hoping that if they could operate a pharmacy, that would add profitability to their operations. There's no option to... So those are some of the limitations on profitability, which are impacted by operations. I've asked Lori about, would you continue to operate a clinic here out of this building if the town does not build a new building? And she said, yes, we're committed to Springdale. We feel it's important to be in Springdale. And if you will continue to host us in this building, they'll continue to operate even at a loss. They're a nonprofit, and so they can do that. So in terms of days of the week and hours of the day that they're here, she reported on this to the council last time she was here, that's a demand-driven function. So it's partly, like I said, that she can only see 12 patients per day here instead of the 18. But even at that, if there were demand for her to be here more days of the week, She could do that, but she doesn't want to open up more days of the week if the demand is not there. At this point, under the current limitations of the current building, that demand is not there.

Essentially, what we have is a clinic with limited hours, but when someone makes an appointment in advance, they can take care of their needs here. If it were an emergency and the clinic weren't open, they would go downriver. So it's really, yeah, so that makes sense. And my understanding is that they can see anybody for anything if the person is ambulatory. So if there's a call in the national park and somebody goes by ambulance, they're taking them to St. George. They're not even taking them to Hurricane. So it's just for perspective here.

And let me just kind of add on to that. I mentioned the grant that the town received from the governor's office of economic opportunity. The reason the governor's office was interested in funding that grant and looking at a medical clinic here was really kind of as a, not only a quality of life issue for residents to have enhanced medical care, but also as a kind of frontline a medical response for visitors to Zion National Park. Not necessarily the broken legs that would need to go to St. George, but for things like dehydration or heat stroke or bee stings or sprained ankles, those types of things could be seen at the clinic. That's why the governor's office of economic opportunity issued the grant was to provide a facility that would handle that type of medical demand. Um, in speaking with Lori, she would love to be able to accommodate more and more of those, but that would be, um, in order, in order for that to function or, or happen, she would need a bigger facility and there'd need to be a whole lot more coordination with the national park and with marketing to let people know that if they need that kind of service, that they can come here to Springdale. They don't need to go to the urgent care and hurricane or down to St. George.

Yeah, and I think the lack of visibility to visitors traveling SR9 is one of the issues, but the current facility's kind of seen as many as it can anyway. Okay, so that's good perspective. Any other questions for Tom before we...

I guess a quick question. So are they seeing a patient load of 12? Let's just go on the lower end. Are they even seeing that now?

Not every day. Some days they see 12 patients a day. That's the max they can see, but they don't see 12 patients every day.

And they had 180 visits. So they had 180 residents in 25 that totaled 500 visits. So I guess some residents went back multiple times.

Correct. And then in addition to that, 304 non-residents. So about 800 patient visits to the clinic in 2025.

Do we know how many days in 2025 they operated?

I don't. So Tom, I've got several questions, of course. And just on your first point, 12 patients a day, four days a week is 48 opportunities, right? 18 patients a day, four days a week is 62 opportunities. So it sounds to me like it's less about space and more about staffing. Because if they were open seven days a week, they could see 84 patients a week. But you say that Laurie says she can't do that or doesn't want to do that because she doesn't know she'll get 18 patients a day. Tell me how that reconciles. She says she could see 18 a day if she had a bigger facility, but she's not sure she can see 18 a day.

I don't get it. Yeah, and that's probably a better question for Laurie. But as I understand it, in terms of economics, if she could see... 18 a day, it's more profitable for her to see, rather than opening up an additional day, it's more profitable to see more patients in a day. You only have to pay the provider that one day to be here rather than adding an extra day. They have to pay a provider to come up for a full extra day.

So for her to see 18 patients a day versus 12, she'd need another provider, right?

No, the limitation is not provider. The limitation is space because they can only have, because there's only one procedure room in the current clinic, they can only be seeing one patient at a time.

If they only see one patient at a time anyway, why do they need two rooms?

Because like when you go to the clinic, when you go to a clinic. Sit and wait for the guy to get done next door. Exactly, exactly. They double stack and you go in first with the medical assistant and they do your vitals while the provider's in the next room. And so they kind of double stack so they can move people through more quickly and more efficiently.

A couple questions about the staff report. I'll be as quick as I can. At the very beginning, it talks about conceptually agreed to operate. What does conceptually agreed to operate mean?

It means that we've had discussions about operating the clinic with them. They've said, yes, we are going to want to operate the clinic for you. Their current lease says that if we build a new clinic, that there's an option for them to move into that clinic at a different lease rate. All these things have been discussions, but there's not a contract. There's not a binding agreement. There's nothing along those lines.

And the pharmacy would help alleviate some of the cost of doing the business. Okay. On page two, you write that they saw 180 Canyon residents, but not Springdale residents. So is there a breakdown as to how many Springdale residents we saw? And the reason I ask is because if this thing implodes... The Canyon residents won't be footing the bill. The Springdale residents will.

Yeah, and I don't know what the answer to that is. She just gave us the Canyon residents, which is Rockville, Springdale, Zion National Park.

And she did that, Pat, because we were looking for numbers to look at TRT money, which is to support visitors and not locals. So we could probably break that down more. Yeah, I'll let you keep talking, and then I'll address one other thing that you asked.

Two more things. And this was a point that was made when we were going through the town manager interviews. I thought it was a good point, but I think it's fairly narrow. And that's, and I'm going to quote directly, paying for public infrastructure and buildings through loans and bonds is physically sound policy. It spread costs over time across beneficiaries. So who are the beneficiaries that we're talking about? Park, people that crash in the park, people in Rockville, people in Virgin. Some people here, not many, but some people here. But when we're talking about bonds and loans, the bonds and loans fall on the shoulders of beneficiaries. So when you talk about beneficiaries, who are you talking about there specifically?

Yeah, so really good point. And that goes with kind of the next question. sentence there in the staff report is whether or not that burden, that debt burden is commensurate with the priority that the town puts it on, because you're exactly right. The beneficiaries, the clinic is going to serve a number of beneficiaries, but the beneficiaries that are going to be paying for it are the town residents, right? And so the question is, is that benefit to town residents, does that justify the financial burden that the, as you rightly point out, the residents will be burdened with?

And the last point, and then I'll be quiet for now. You mentioned in the staff report that you've requested more information on their ability to pay increased rent by the time of the meeting. Has that already been covered? Did I miss it?

No, I have not heard back on what their added ability to pay is.

Thank you. But that was the point I was going to make. In theory, the town would not pay for the building. In theory, the rents that we get from the the provider would pay for the building. But if you look at a 20 year bond and you look at a 40 or 50 year life of the building and you charge rent according to the 40 or 50, we're gonna be in a negative for monthly debt service payments. So it's, yeah, in the long run, it's not the residence payment. In the short run, it comes out of town. general fund, I think.

But I also think this isn't coming from property tax. Property tax is not going to build this building. It's sales tax. And while we as residents do pay sales tax, we also get sales tax from visitors. And it's all tax money. So it all goes to the town. But I don't say that it only falls on the shoulders of the residents because that Revenue is coming from visitors, which we wouldn't have what we have without that sales tax and all and the visitors. So I, yeah, I just, you're right, Kyla.

And that was a lot of the letters we got talking about the town pain. We, we collect $80,000 in property tax. So clearly that's not paying for our services or amenities or that kind of thing. But depending on your perspective, it's still town money.

Exactly. It is town money. It's all going into the fund. But it's not all put there by residents. Right. And so to say it's only burdening the residents, yes, because it is going to the town and it is the town's money. But it's not like we only have 500 people contributing or 600 people contributing to our sales tax.

It does take away money from other things we could be doing.

So how much money do we collect annually in sales tax?

The bulk of our general fund is sales tax. So we have three primary sales taxes. One is the local option sales tax, one's the resort sales tax, and one is just the general sales tax we get back from the state. And I don't have the exact figures right now, but we have about a $6 million annual budget and about 80 to 85% of that comes from sales tax revenue.

And the letters, a lot of what was in the letters was purely perspective and people's opinions. But Tom, I do want you to clarify, there was a letter that said we had preselected the contractor. We have not.

Yeah, good point. There's a little bit of confusion. We did do, I mentioned the grant we got from the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity to do the design of the clinic and the master site planning for the two acres. We went through an RFP process to choose an architecture firm to do that work for us. We selected VCBO Architects. That's the firm that is mentioned in the staff report. As part of their contract, if we were to move forward with the clinic, they would be providing construction management, but they would not be the contractor who was constructing the facility. If we were to move forward, we would go through the bidding process to select a contractor to do the actual construction.

And construction management is a typical part of a contract with an architectural firm. So that wasn't an extra. And in fact, it was all priced based on state contract. So just, and we got quite a few responses. What did we get, 12 or 13? So it was a robust process to choose the provider. Any other questions for Tom? Okay, I don't know where we want to start, but I just want council members to weigh in on where they are now. And it may be you're not sure and you want to hear more, but let's just do a little, in effect, a straw poll. And Pat, would you be willing to start or do you want me to start hearing?

Whatever your preference is, Mayor, I don't care. I'm prepared to start if that's what you're asking.

Will you do that then?

I think at the onset, and I wish I could keep this brief and maybe Randy will give me a poke in the ribs if it gets too long. So I wore my bulletproof vest on this side today. I think that the initial question needs to be what is the data supported need for a medical center at all? And there are a myriad of questions. that should be asked and answered as factually as possible before we should dot another I on this. That's my overriding view. Some of the basic, well, hundreds of basic questions, but some of the basic ones would be akin to this. We know, based on this, that 180 Canyon residents took advantage of the medical facility here. but that doesn't tell us how many Springdale residents actually sought medical care anywhere in, say, Washington County. And that information is legally accessible. If you call Intermountain Healthcare, their data analysis, people can tell you exactly how many Springdale residents sought medical care. And that would be, and add that to the total number of Springdale residents that sought medical care here, and that's your denominator in the fraction. Your numerator is how many Springdale residents sought medical care here. So for instance, if we say 10% of the people in Springdale sought medical care here, then clearly a medical clinic here does not make sense. Nationally, and I'm going to quote national stats, somewhere in the 50% range, is where it begins to make sense. For a small town like ours, you've got to get a super majority. 66% of the people that seek medical care at all from town need to seek it here. The other questions that need to be asked is, who is seeking medical care here? Is it people that can afford to go elsewhere, or is it low-income people, or people on Medicaid as opposed to Medicare? There's just a bunch of questions we need to ask to come up with a viable yes or no that we should even think about doing this. We don't know how many patients family health care has turned away. They say they can see 12 a day, but we don't know how many they actually turned away. It sounds like there are some days they don't do 12. Let's see here. You mentioned earlier, Tom, about the injuries that are seen here. Are these injuries that could just as easily be seen down the hill as opposed to here? A broken arm, a broken finger, maybe you can reduce it here, but it's going to have to ultimately be seen down the hill. Is it a bee sting? Okay. I guess I could see a medical center being there for that, but is it worth spending that kind of money? Okay. Also, and again, I'm moving away from the need and now let's say we're going to build a building. Is the building we have something we can expand and just save a bunch of money? Pat, can I ask a clarifying question?

So when you talk about whether we need a medical facility, do you mean really a new one or do you mean one at all?

Okay. I think that's ground zero. I think you start with that. Do we need one at all? And based on a myriad of questions we could ask about that need, then you can decide, well, we need one, and this facility will make it work. But then we say, no, it won't. based upon the need, we need a 2,700 square foot building. But I think if you, it reminds me of someone that builds a cart and puts the cart before the horse. You have a cart, I'm going to build the cart so big, I don't know what I'm going to put in it, I don't know where I'm going with it, I don't know what terrain I'm going to travel, I don't even have the horses yet, but I'm going to build it. And I think it should be the other way around. What do we need here in town? Who would access it? If it's going to be higher-end clients that have obscure diseases, that's silly. If it's going to be fall-down-go-boom type of injuries, then I can see it. But how many of those do we actually see? And that's not HIPAA-protected information. We can get that. As long as the information is de-identified, we can get the numbers, specific numbers. IHC can tell us. Family health care can tell us. These are all FQHC facilities. They can provide that information. In fact, they're required to maintain it and keep it. So I think you start with the data.

So can you net that out? And if you can't yet, that's okay. But net it out. So you're not sure we need a facility at all, a new one or an old one? And you wonder if we could do something with the old one?

Again, if that's what the data pencils out to, yeah, that's what we do. But I think it has to be based on, and again, I say what makes sense, and this is just my research I've done on small town medical centers and large facilities. Intermountain Healthcare, for instance, is building that new facility at the south end of St. George, not because some guy said, let's build it, feel the dreams, let's see if they come. There was data that actually existed that we have a patient load that we can't tolerate at the main facility. When Mike Marriott adds 100 rooms to his hotel, he doesn't do it just because he feels like it. He does it because we had 1,000 people that tried to book here last year and couldn't get rooms. Do we have that kind of data from Family Health Care? We don't. We don't know who they're turning down. We don't know how many people chose to go down the hill because they couldn't get an appointment here. We have none of that data, and it's available. It's not like we can't get it. So that's it. Okay, thanks.

Randy, you want to tell us where you are?

I am one of those 180 people that have been to the clinic. I've been multiple times. When I look at a medical clinic, it sounds like the discussions that we've been having, and people are talking about, they think about a medical clinic that got a broken bone, got some catastrophic trauma. I go into the medical clinic because, one, annual visits. I go in there for when I'm not feeling well. I go in there for a lot of reasons other than trauma. And I love the convenience of having a clinic here, of having people staffing that clinic who are seeing me on a regular basis and know my background and my history. If I go down to Canyon, I'm going to see probably somebody different every time. I'm going to, they can, yeah, they can go back and look at my medical record, but I like that aspect of having a clinic here. So I really like having a clinic here. I also don't, I want to drive down to Kenya if I don't have to. So on a personal basis, I really like the clinic here, having a clinic here. When I saw Mike and Helen when they were there and when family health care took over, I started going in there. And I've developed a relationship with, first of all, with... with Seth when he was there and now with Katie was there and I really like having a family doctor in a local place, very local. So that's my view of the clinic. It's convenient for me. It's a small town. It's a local person who, you know, that we have a relationship, that I have a relationship with. I don't feel that when I go down the canyon. So I like that. I'm sorry other people haven't really kind of figured that out. That's one. Two, I've been, I was assigned to be part of the discussions with, about the clinic size, about financing and all that. So I sat in on those meetings and when we first started talking, you know, the first proposal came back with this 4,000 square foot facility and the cost and it's like that just felt like a little too much for what I've seen the clinic and what the data is showing on the clinic. So we talked to Lori, we talked about what do you actually need and And so we got it down to 2,700, which included the pharmacy. Now, I go down to Walgreens, and I haven't had people delivering medications up here because I recognize that that is available. But if there was a pharmacy here, I would go here to save me from having to go down to Walgreens to get prescriptions that I take. So I like that aspect. of the design that came up, which, you know, when we started trying to pare it down, if we were going to keep a pharmacy, 2,700 was about as little as we could kind of get it down to, which did reduce the cost of it about a million bucks, which I thought was a good savings. When I start thinking about and reading the letters that came in from people, the emails about this, the thing that's always been challenging for me in sitting in all these meetings is we've tried to pare it down, I use it, but just thinking about that big a building being open that little or that small amount of time versus, you know, the seven days a week, that was always just made me a little bit uncomfortable. That they weren't open more, that we were going to spend all this money on a building that would be not open even 40 hours a week. That just, yeah, I have problems with that. The other problem that kind of comes to my mind is if family health care decided to pull out of here or be in a nonprofit, if they just decide to close their door, we've got a building sitting there, and it would be not real easy to get somebody else in there and trying to convert what is a building that's built specifically for a medical clinic into something that could be used for something else would be really challenging. It would require a lot of rework and a lot of money. So that was always, that's been a tough one for me. I love having a clinic here, you know, To your question, Pat, should we have a clinic here, period? Yes. That is my definite positive answer to that. Do we need a new clinic building? I'm not so sure about that answer because of the cost and because of how little it would be used. This community center, I remember all the discussions that people were having about when it was first proposed that we were going to build this community center. And there were people in town that were saying, I'm not going to pay for that big building. I will never go in there if Springdale builds it. And yet this thing is used all the time. And this obviously took some foresight to make that commitment by the council at that time, and I wasn't on the council. I was sitting out there during these discussions. It took a lot of foresight, but fortunately those people said, right now it's kind of challenging to talk about spending that much money, and the budget that the town had at that time was a whole lot less than what we have right now to work with. And so... That's something else that always pops into my mind. Can I envision that building really working well? Eh, I don't know. Ten years from now, maybe I would be looking back on if I'm still around in ten years. No, that was a good idea to build that. So I'm really on the... the fence about building this new building. Keeping a clinic here in a town, I absolutely positively want to keep a clinic here. And if it stays in that building and we bump it out a little bit, if we can, or if it just stays in that building as it is right now, I think that is a valuable thing for us to have in this town.

Thank you.

So I'm somewhere closer to where Randy is. We always had a clinic and we go down river for almost everything and I don't want to lose our clinic. And I think part of the charm of this town is that we do have this little clinic. If money were available, And I've talked to the US Department of Agriculture who used to have money for clinics. We've talked to the county where we're scrambling all over the place. If we could fund that whole building without bonding, I'm not sure I'd still be supportive at this point. Because the thought of us acquiring a property to expand our campus to have things that we want and need. And I have your concerns, Randy. What if suddenly family health care pulled out and we've got a specialty building that we wasted space on and we've got this building sitting there? I wish that weren't the reality, but that scares me. I also wanna keep a clinic. I'm also one of the 180 people who uses it for things that I can schedule in advance, like wellness visits. I wonder, I'd like to see family health care have a better experience here. And I think we're the kind of town that can have a medical clinic, whether the statistics play out or not, given the current cost of us. We're in a net positive position on that building, I assume, because we don't have any debt on it and we're making some rent on it. Is there a workaround? Is there a workaround to find a place on the premises where there could be a small pharmacy? Hurricane is only probably 10 by 10 at the very most. It might be smaller than that. So is there a workaround to keep this clinic, to help it be profitable, to turn it into a positive experience for all of us? I don't know. But I'm supportive of a clinic. And this pains me because this was my baby. This was my project. I interviewed Mike and Helen when I was on planning commission and we were writing the general plan. I had the I had the health and wellness section, and I interviewed them. It's when I first met them, and I was so moved by their life work to supporting the community's health needs. We're an elderly population. Not everybody can easily drive, and the road gets crazier and crazier. So I have to say it's hard for me to admit this, but I think we don't have the public support that we had Four years ago, we had rooms full of people who wanted a clinic, and so I don't feel like I can support building that new clinic on town property. It'd be great if somebody could open a clinic that would be profitable on somebody else's property or to rent a building or something, but that's where I am.

Well, first I want to thank the people who took the time to write in and share their comments, because I think they were really thoughtful and meaningful, and they kind of highlighted everything that raised an eyebrow for me, as did the staff report. And so I'm kind of coming around full circle on this one as well. But one of the things that I asked of Tom was, what's the footprint of this room and the room adjacent to us? Just because I'm a visual person, I want to see what 2,700 feet look like. And I was kind of hoping those doors would be open, but the footprint for these two rooms is a little over 2,700 square feet. So that kind of gives you an idea of what that is. Regardless of that, though, and I'd Pat has touched base on a number of things for me that the numbers just don't drive the justification for the expense. I mean, and I think for me, regardless of how it gets paid for, we have a responsibility to spend money responsibly. And, you know, at 800 patients and even on the very low end, I know the numbers are really rough at this point. It does not justify a 20-year commitment totaling over $2 million. And so I can't support that. So for me, the idea of a new building is, I think we need to shelve that idea. I don't think it's all or nothing. I've been here over 40 years. We've always had a medical clinic. It's hard to believe that we would sit here and say we no longer need a medical clinic when our community has grown, our visitation has skyrocketed. And, you know, so I'm not in that ballpark where we don't need a medical clinic. However, I do think that we should work with what we've got. And I don't know if it's in that building or not. I've never been part of a conversation on what's the potential for any type of expansion over there. But I have to admit the one place that I kind of keep looking at is over my shoulder at the building across from us that will be vacated when we have a new town hall and is the top part of that building a potential for a medical clinic? I don't know. Again, I've never been part of a conversation on what's going to happen with that building. But, you know, I won't ramble on. I don't support a new building. I support having a medical clinic here. I would like us to take the time to work with what we've got. I think we need, you know, that's a little bit of an eye-opener for me when I hear that recognizing family health care's limitations, not only on their services, but on their ability to pay more rent. You know, they can't pay more rent in a new facility, so that falls on the town.

They can pay more rent, but... They've clarified they can pay more rent, but not the amount that they would have to pay to fund that building.

I thought staff reports that they couldn't afford much more than what they're currently paying.

Yeah, just to clarify. So the mayor mentioned if you take the total cost of the building out for a 40-year lifespan and figure a monthly rent based on that, that turns out to be like $5,000 per month. Family health care has told me, no, we cannot afford $5,000 per month. They currently pay $1,170 per month, so that would be a nearly five times increase. They said, no, we cannot. That is something we cannot do. They said, yes, we have some ability to increase the amount of rent we pay. It's not going to be $5,000. It will be somewhere between $1,170 and $5,000. Again, they haven't gotten back to me yet, so I don't know exactly what it would be. But even, so, sorry, just to further clarify that, that $5,000 per month, that's amortized out over a 40-year lifespan of the building for the total cost of the building. Again, however, over a 20-year loan payment, that $5,000 a month does not cover the debt service on a 20-year loan payment. So there still would, in that first 20 years, there would be a subsidy from the town to cover the loan payment. It would cover maybe a third of maybe a half to a third of the loan of the debt service, even if they were able to pay $5,000 a month.

I think as far as their need for expansion at this point, I don't know if the numbers even drive that. If they are saying, we're turning people away, and I don't know if I've heard that, then maybe we need to have a serious conversation on what we can do with that building in the interim But I think we have time to actually put some more thought into this. And I agree with the mayor in that I think we should create a work environment for them that all of us would like to work in. Is it a new building? I don't know. But I've only been over there once. And the first thing that I immediately notice is there's absolutely no privacy. You know, my conversation with the curtain drawn was totally heard by the staff and everybody else in the room adjacent to me. So that's an issue. We can certainly do better there. But anyway, knowing a new building, let's see what we can do with what we've got and then see what our other options are moving forward with a new town hall and what potential we have with the building next to us.

Okay. I absolutely agree that we should keep a clinic in the town. And I will say I do go to family health care. My kids go there. I have been turned away because they're full. So that's just a little anecdotal piece of data. And when I think about what, as a town, what do I foresee Springdale needing, Somebody made a comment, this was a while ago, in one of our bigger public meetings that was like, well, I think of a village as having everything that you need. And we talk a lot about village character, but what does that actually mean? And a village being kind of a little, you know, everything you need is here. We will never be self-contained, but we can make effort and make strides towards having what everybody needs, and I think medical care is one of those things. So I am absolutely a proponent of keeping a medical clinic here. I don't know that I fully agree with the way the medical clinic is shaping up and the price tag. As much as, you know, my comments a minute ago were, I don't feel like it directly falls only on the residents as a burden, as a tax burden. It is, you know... They are the ones here for longer periods of time. So we do need to spend the money wisely. And the $2 million, $3 million price tag feels really large. With that said, I'm going to pivot and say anything else we do on that property will only fall on the residents. I can't think of anything else that we've considered that would have rent. income associated with it. So I think on some level, we as a council have to decide to utilize that property, money will have to be spent. And what price tag are we comfortable with? And if it's a medical clinic, I think partially a medical clinic could be subsidized with rent, but also would be subsidized by us because they could never afford the rent. I'm a little shaky about the relationship and, you know, as everybody said, it's used, is it used enough? You know, getting data from Intermountain, I wonder if they could piece out, like, I'm definitely going down the hill to see specialists. You know, my neurologist is not going to come up here to see me. And I can absolutely respect that that will never be something that this village has. I also wouldn't want every specialist visit to be counted against having regular daily care or maybe even some minor emergency urgent care things counted, you know, those visits counting against the visits that are needed up here because when your kid has an ear infection, and they can squeeze you in, you bet you'd rather go three minutes down the road than 30 minutes down the hill plus an unknown four-hour wait at Intermountain Urgent Care. And that's maybe on a good day. So I really love the convenience. I think it's a great asset for our community. I think it's a great asset for people who are visiting us. I would like to see it continue. I do think that maybe we should open our minds up to possibilities of, you know, is there a different kind of modular system that could go over there that could replace the modular building that's there now? I don't know what the answer is to that per se. I would also like to add that I really do appreciate the comments that we get. I think it's great when people take the time to write us a note and let us know what they're thinking. As Barbara mentioned earlier, we previously, when the tone of the message going out was we are going to lose the clinic, the room was full. We had great turnout a few different times, if my memory serves correctly. When people thought the message was we're losing the clinic, they showed up in support. And when people think we're supporting a clinic and going to spend a lot of money, the message is that they don't support that. So I'm wondering, and it has been five years, so maybe people are changing their minds, which is absolutely because we're all allowed to do that. I'm wondering what is the real community sentiment about medical, the medical clinic as it is or whether we keep it and is the sentiment that just that we don't need to spend the money or is the sentiment that we can't support a clinic at all? I don't, we haven't had great luck with surveys as of recently, but I'm wondering if this would be a good topic to send out a brief survey on to see what the majority of people are thinking. And maybe we wouldn't get like a response directly to the message that's being put out, but more like some overall information about the way that the residents are feeling about a medical clinic. And let me look at my notes really quick. Oops. Okay. I think that that was essentially all I wanted to say. I don't know that anybody else has really addressed this, but I would not be opposed to the new parcel. If a small medical clinic could be included in whatever other bigger plans we come up with, I wouldn't be opposed to that. But I think it needs to have more than one use, if that makes sense. Excuse me.

That it? Okay, so I appreciate all the comments. I think that there are similarities and differences with where we are. I'd like to open the room up for public comment. Please make sure that you've signed in at the back of the room if you want to make a comment. Stand up and state your name, and we are taking comments only about the medical clinic today. We'll have general comments at the next meeting, but this is a time to tell us what you think, and then we'll deliberate afterward.

Hi, Gil Kiefer. How you doing, Randy? Good. I said that.

Yeah, I get it, doctor.

Anyway, in listening to the comments, they pretty much, from the council, they pretty much follow all my neighbor's comments about the clinic. But I'm wondering if we need to look at This has a bigger picture. By that I mean look at the parcel rather than just the clinic. And by looking at the parcel, as you know, I ride into the park every day. I talk to a lot of people. I'm now a volunteer at the park. The most comments that I get from visitors is it took me two hours to find a parking place. Can we look at that parcel as an interim parking area, turn it into a parking lot? Save its two acres, you can park about 125 to 150 cars per acre on a lot. That brings in quite a bit of money. I think the town is currently charging $20 per car to park on Lyons. The equivalent to parking on Lyons, you can park about 100 cars to 125 cars on one mile of roadway, one side. You pretty much would double or quadruple the parking that you currently have on Lyons Boulevard. Now what could you do with those fees that you charge for that? Could you supplement or could you subsidize the clinic with the parking fees that come out of that lot? Either maybe put the clinic on a quarter acre or even a half an acre of that parcel. and use the rest for parking. That still gets you quite a lot of fees to offset some of the cost of the clinic. In the interim, until you make a decision about what you're going to do about a clinic, do you want to just turn it into a parking lot I think that could happen. I would love to see it happen before the 4th of July. The park is planning on having three free days, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of July. It's going to be a zoo around here for trying to park.

Just a correction. It's not the park. It's the park service.

I think it working if you'd like you could set me loose I could I could talk to Alan Lee see how fast he could get something to happen on that lot To turn it into a parking we could probably have it open by the 4th of July so Just make myself available If you have any questions, please let me know Thank you.

Thank you Other comments

Hello, my name is Dean Alger and I live in Springdale. You know, this gets said a lot, but it's really important that this is great that you're doing what you did today. This is kind of what I hear from town, is they would love to hear you guys be able to talk about things and kick ideas back and forth. rather than just being an agenda where it's like, okay, we did this, this is what you thought, let's go. So this is fantastic. More of this would be wonderful, and you did a great job today, I thought. So thank you. When I look at the medical clinic, I ask myself, what's a problem we're trying to solve? Now, I happen to be a left-wing liberal who would love government to pay for all of our medical bills and provide us those services. We're not doing that. That's not what we're talking about. It's largely a measure of convenience. That's all you're really dealing with. All of these services are available in what any bigger city would be a reasonable driving distance, time-wise. This isn't real far away. And if you talk about, well, I get my services in town, ask yourself, do you do all your grocery shopping at Soul Foods? Do you get your car serviced in town? Do you not go down the hill on a regular basis once a month, twice a month, three times a month? And if you're doing that, you can coordinate these trips. So it seems like we're dealing with the fact of we've always had one. Therefore, we should always continue to have one, which is the worst way to make any decision possible. And we're not looking at, really, we can't afford this. You know that your capital project will come out at 150 to 200% of what you think it is because you're not in control of that. That stuff's going to go up. You know that the estimates from the family health, you're never going to hit those targets. It's going to be lower, and you'll be talking about, well, we had planned originally when we built it to get this, and we're not seeing that. In a pharmacy right now, you call down the hill, and sometimes those pharmacies will say, your prescription is on hold because we don't have it in inventory. You're not going to be able to have an inventory at a pharmacy here that's going to rival the inventories down there. So you're still going to be waiting days for pharmacies. So really, I can't understand anything besides convenience, and we've always done it, for why you'd spend this kind of money. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other comments?

Well, can I follow up real quick? Just a quick question for you. So, I mean, you don't think we need a medical clinic at all? If we just kept everything as is, you don't think we need it?

If I'm allowed to answer, yes.

This was a comment period. Oh, sorry. I don't think we need a medical clinic at all. I think actually hurricanes are getting better. Now they're talking about putting in a hospital. I'm not going to switch my doctors to Springdale. If if it's there, if I can have doctors there in Randy, I don't know where you're going for medical work, but I see the same doctor every time when I go down the Hill. I don't see different doctors just because there isn't only one there, so I go to my doctors appointments. To see that doctor.

Which, of course, would be one of the things you would data mine. How many people go down the hill versus how many people would use this, right?

Well, how many people are never going to go down the hill again? We're going to put in a clinic, and then they're going to be three months and sit down in St. George? I don't think so. I think they'll still be down there for everything else they need to go down there for.

Bettina Lindsay, and I am for a clinic. I came to Springdale in the 90s, and I have not had any health insurance since I was 44 till I was 65, and I'm 80 now, and I rarely use my health insurance, my Medicare, but I was very well provided for by Helen. and her husband in our small clinic and in the one that we have right now. And it meets my budget. And so I would also like to say, And I presented this to Tom a few years ago, but when I came here, there was just a small mobile unit that was our town hall. And Faye Cope was the one who started building our town hall that we have now. I also know that projects, public projects, cost usually lots more money than private projects. And I suggested to Tom that Max Gregory had hoodoos on sale, for sale. And in hoodoos, there are two buildings down on that side. One that's a market, and one could be a clinic. One could be a post office. And he also has, in his development, affordable housing. And if the town had looked at that a few years ago, I think it would have been more cost effective than what the town, little by little, you get a little bit of money. And I talked to Max Gregory. He doesn't want to sell that development to outside developers. But he said the town never made an offer to him. And all the town needs to do is maybe lease some of those buildings rather than build a clinic. You could lease one of those buildings down there for Max. You know, you could negotiate a lot of good things. And as far as parking goes, I'm not going to touch that at all because I know you've spent hours and hours and hours on the parking in Springdale. And we, I think, have moved more Springdales for the people that live here, not so much for the tourism. Thank you.

Thank you. Other comments? Looks like not. So we'll close the public comments and we'll go into deliberation. Kyla, I... I liked what you said about are there other modular units? Are there modular clinics that are available where you get some privacy and you get some extra space and would it fit on the footprint or nearly the footprint of what we have? That was something I had thought about too and was going to bring up and I love that you brought that up because And if it's modular, then in theory, it's not permanent. And if family health care pulled out, I mean, if that building hadn't been purchased by the town, we would have had it moved off our property. So just something to think about. But where are we now? Are we somewhere different than we were? We got comments that both supported and didn't support what we're talking about.

I have a question for Tom that might help us kind of decide. This grant that we have, if I remember correctly, it comes with a timeline, like two years? We have to be wrapped up in two years?

Correct. Yeah, it's, yes, there is a timeline on it. I don't recall exactly when the end of the timeline is. I spoke to Colette Cox several times in the past week. She's our contact at the governor's office. And she's willing to work with us on the grant. If the council wants to move forward, she's willing to work with us on the grant.

And Tom, did you find out from her whether anything we don't use for design could be rolled into the project?

Correct, yes. So it can? Yeah, so the way we applied for the grant, we proposed the entire project, which is about, at the time, we were anticipating about a $3.3 million project, which would have included all design costs and construction costs. And the grant that we applied for was 10% of that, so about $335,000. And we can use the grant money for any part of the project, design and or construction.

Okay, so I think that Tom and I are exploring some money options. But for now, I think we're making a decision about what to do about a new building. And I feel like that's all but made. And then we would, so we'll talk about that and we'll make that decision. And then how long, when does the lease expire on the current building? It's not like we could just give that up right now. They've got a lease over there.

Yeah, we entered into that lease in 2024, I believe, and I think it's a five-year lease. So we're about halfway through that lease.

And they have an option to renew. I think we could not renew. But I think that whether we keep that clinic is off the table right now because we have a lease and they're there. Is that a fact?

Correct, yeah. The lease is what it is. Okay. Right.

So let's make a decision about a new building, and then from there we can have a conversation about what we might want to explore in terms of a new modular building. Because, Jack, your question about doing something with this building, it's a 50-year-old modular building with not very good bones.

I hope we're not going to bulldoze it.

Well, I don't know what we would do, but if we could find, if we could afford and find a better modular solution, that might be, but that's not, I mean, we need to explore.

I think there's tons of options as far as modular. You know, that's really come a long way. I mean, just as an example, like on large wildland fires, I mean, they basically move in a small town of modulars. that become office spaces and all kinds of uses. So there's lots of options.

And we could look into what the cost is and all that kind of thing.

And it kind of sounds like, unless I am misunderstanding, that maybe this grant money could be potentially to explore and or configure that option, right? Yeah, that's exactly where I'm going. The campus, where it is in a... less permanent or less expensively?

Yeah, that's exactly where I'm going. And if we decide that's what we want to look into, we can do that because we haven't exhausted all of our potential Tom's got a meeting next week where we're going to know a little bit more that we can't discuss just yet. But for now then, let's make a decision. It seems to me we've made a decision not to go forward with the new building on the lot next door. Is that correct? I don't know if we need a motion. Let's take a straw poll. Who wants to go ahead with the new building?

Okay, so that's nobody.

So Tom, do we need a motion?

Um, you don't, I mean, there's, you don't need a motion.

Would you like a motion?

Yes.

Okay.

I think, I think it would be good to memorialize your decision so that it's on the record. Okay. And so that there's no question on what the council's decision is.

Okay.

What should that be included? Like what other stuff, what other direction, or we just want the motion and then we can consider other things.

I think we want some findings too, probably.

Yes, some findings, and Kyla, yes. I think the main help for staff at this point is a definitive direction on the new medical clinic. If you want to have additional discussion afterwards, that's fine, that's great, and that would be helpful as well, but a motion that says we as a town council for these various findings have decided not to pursue a a new medical clinic would be helpful just given all of the steps that we've already taken leading up to that so that we can understand on the record and looking back, you know, why we did all these things and all of a sudden we didn't, whoa, what happened? We have that decision memorialized.

But if we're talking about potentially one of the ideas which i really like of maybe bringing in a new modular medical clinic that would be a new medical clinic so should we make it more specific that the building that was designed by bcbo uh we are you don't want that yes great great point thank you randy it would be

helpful to say yes, the council is not moving forward with a new site-built 2,700 to 4,000 square foot building. That's off the table. We may look at other options, but we're not, we are no longer heading down that direction of a new purpose-built 27 to 4,000 square foot building for a clinic.

We can add to it.

I make the motion that we not build a new medical clinic building as shown in the VCBO sketches that we had for a 4,000 and 2,700 foot building on the property next door. And as a findings, we found that the overall cost of the building and the potential rent that we could get for that would not justify with the visitation that we're seeing at that building, would not justify that cost. But I'm open to other... Any other findings that anyone would like to add to that?

I'm going to, just so it's memorialized, say, but we are interested in pursuing options of modular... type buildings or other ideas that would be on the same campus as the current medical building.

So the findings we have are what so far?

So the cost doesn't justify, given the rents we could get, in that we would look at other options. Those are our two findings so far.

Yeah, pretty much the data doesn't support the cost.

So the data part is in there, and we don't have the data?

Yeah. Carla just added the data doesn't support the building in that building. And I think we could also add a finding that the residents of the town seem not to support the expense of a new building such as that. And that might be enough. Do you think so, Tom? Great. Okay. We have a second?

I'll second it.

We've got a motion by Randy and a second by Pat.

Pat, aye. Randy, aye.

Barbara, aye.

Jack, aye. Kyla, aye. You know, I'd just like to say one more thing. Because I worked on this for a while, I was very much in favor of building this clinic building. And I want to say that the responses we got from the residents, which I really appreciated, got me thinking differently. So it just highlights the importance of getting feedback from the community on items like this. So I really appreciated the thoughtful responses we got from residents. They brought up a lot of really good points, some of which I just either glossed over or not thought about. So I appreciated that.

Which is a good segue into a conversation about what our priorities are. So as we all know, we acquired that property to expand our municipal campus. I don't believe we have the option of turning it into a parking lot if we wanted to.

Can I ask a follow-up question just about that? Tom, can you help me understand? Let's just say we could do a parking lot. We don't care about ordinances or whatever. We're just going to turn it into a parking lot, and we're collecting money. Can that money go anywhere, or we are bound to spend parking money on parking issues?

Yeah, great question. So it is, and it's It's complex. So the parking money that we collect on SR9 is required to go into our transportation fund solely for transportation purposes because that's a state highway and revenue generated off the state highway has to be directed to transportation uses. It's been our practice to also put all of the other parking money that we receive into that same transportation fund and only use it for transportation purposes. We feel like that's part of the reason why the paid parking program was initiated in the first place was to help provide transportation amenities, to help mitigate some of the transportation impacts caused by visitation and parking. So we think that's an appropriate and justified use. And so that's been our practice, and that's what I would recommend you continue to do. However, legally, it's not required. The short answer to your question is no, you wouldn't have to dedicate that parking money to any restricted use, but my recommendation that you continue to do so.

Some of you don't know that recently, Justin Mabee, the owner of the property that includes a parking lot, contacted the county commissioners about them buying that property and building a parking garage. We, under our current ordinances, do not allow a parking garage. Just my feeling on that is a couple of things. One is that when a municipality provides parking, it's typically so that people can park and go support their businesses and spend money at their businesses, not so they can leave and go somewhere else like the National Park. And people who come into Springdale with a car are a problem. So Tom worked really hard on a park and ride down in Virgin so people can park down there and ride a shuttle in, and that keeps oversized vehicles as well as cars off our road, and that's a win for us. The fewer cars that drive into Springdale to park or to go straight through to the national park, the better. If they're coming here, we wish they'd stay in Springdale and they'd park their car once and they'd ride the shuttles and that kind of thing. I personally could not support adding any more parking for people to leave Springdale and go somewhere else. That's just my philosophy on that. But we also acquired the property with a purpose of expanding, and we all know that we need to free up this community center. Other municipalities have been building new city halls, and I'm not sure our residents have an appetite for that, but if we could build a building next door where we could have council meetings and some staff meetings and get people out of this room and let this room be used by the community, that'd be a win. Now, the downside of that is You're right, Kyla, there's no rent. We bear that whole cost. But isn't that what our revenue is for, is to provide those kinds of things. So we provided this community center to the community, and now we use it for the council. It would still be a gift to the community to free up this room. And so personally, my priority would be some kind of a, let's call it a council chamber or a civic center, but somewhere where we could hold meetings and certain kinds of things that are currently taking up this space.

Well, May, if I could just add to that, I agree with you. That would be my option. I think maybe the first option might be to ask the people that live here what they want to do with it. Just try that out, see what they think. They may not think so, but maybe there's ideas out there that I haven't thought of. But on the notion of a civic center, and I'll just take a moment reading what I've wrote here, a town hall, community center, and a wellness hub. So you'd have... I'm sorry, what was the last... What was that last thing you said? A wellness hub. Okay. A recreation center, an auditorium for public meetings, a learning center. The wellness hub would be for, you know, periodic screenings like blood pressure stuff and tele-sessions, things like that. A fitness studio. Not necessarily a gym, but maybe something for aerobics, Pilates, yoga. Something that we could use year-round indoor. and then use this space for its intended purpose. It sounds like it was originally intended as a civic area, people to use it for events. But I think a better use, a use that would benefit more of the public here would be a town hall, maybe a town civic center that had a lot of components to it, and some components that I probably haven't even thought of. That would be my reference.

And I think it's just important, though, to keep in mind, I mean, you know, I'm just reflecting a little bit back on the sticker shock everyone had on the rec center. And so, I mean, it's along the same lines as that all of that sounds great, and you even may have community support for it. It really kind of comes down to how much do we saddle this community for literally decades in the future

Because that's a $20 million project, right? That's a $20 million project, not a $3 million.

So anyway, I mean, it's just something that everybody needs to keep in mind. That might be something. The cost associated with doing what would be really nice to have versus it's a must-have for this community.

That might be something that is asked. Do we want to afford it?

But a council chamber of some sorts could be done pretty modestly, and it could free up this room because they do classes in this room. I think anything that we do that could give this community center back to the community affordably would be great. The other thing about having a real council chambers is that, you know, if you go visit Virgin's new town hall, have you seen their council chamber?

I know I want to pay tithing.

I know. They don't have to set up the room. I don't know if you're aware of how much time our staff spends setting up this room every time we have a meeting like this, and also just the arrangement of the people in the room where we're experimenting with seeing each other. We could solve that problem at that space. We could do trainings there. I mean, it could really take care of a lot of issues, and again, it could be fairly modest, so... I'd like to see us exploring something like that. And Gil, you might be interested in this. We didn't just plan a medical clinic over there. We had the architects do a master plan. So I think it's all in public information on the website. But there was a medical clinic, which was originally 4,000 feet. There was a town hall. And the town hall, we couldn't size it big enough with one building, so we talked about what if we separated the chamber, the council chamber, and that's where we started thinking about the idea of freeing up this room with that. Then there was a placeholder for a post office, and then there's a solar, an emergency, what are we calling that, the charge west end?

Resiliency hub. Resiliency hub.

Yeah, the resiliency hub. And then there was landscape, and there was some plazas. There's a really nice plan that isn't cast in stone, but we didn't just look at one piece of that. We did a master plan, and that was covered by that grant. So we have a little bit of that started already.

And I think when you start talking about a council chamber, we have a planning commission We have an arts council. We have a number of different...

Historical society.

Historical society that could meet in that chamber, which I think would be great. And then, Pat, when you talk about a wellness center and a... in this community center, this could be that. I mean, right behind those screens right there, we could set that up. They have yoga classes, they have Pilates, those sort of things in here. And once we get this stage and all this stuff out of here, it would definitely free up that room. And then in that other room back there, we could start thinking about how we can use it more efficiently for those kind of things. I agree with the cost of building something like that.

But as Jack suggested, then you take this building and repurpose it for some part of a medical clinic and then get the police out of the basement.

Well, we need to get the police out of the basement. And we're busting at the seams even upstairs there. But realistically, we're years away from a new town hall. We could get to a new council chambers pretty quickly. at a lot lower cost, so I think these are all great ideas. Yeah, it could be, I mean, it probably would have to be, because when we were designing the new town hall, in order to fit people, the people that we already have, and that didn't include the police department, they would stay in the old building to fit the people we already have, let alone future growth, um, the building would have had to go bigger than we want to see and taller than we want to see. And so we talked, we started talking about maybe it's a separate building, which other communities are doing too.

I mean, I kind of think this is a great conversation to invite our residents to be part of, you know, to try and think about, okay, now we're going to step back and rethink what we're going to do with that new parcel.

Yeah, we could do, I mean, we've got some residents in the room, but we could do something more of a survey of the wider.

I guess for me, you know, as long as people keep in mind that, and I appreciate that our residents are concerned about how the town spends money, but there's just that realization, anything you build, it's going to cost money, and nowadays it's going to cost a lot of money.

And we have revenue. I mean, our visitors, we have a lot of revenue because we have a lot of visitors and we might as well, I mean, I'd like to see the dialogue be that because we have so much visitation, our inconvenience is countered by the revenues that we get and we should have some amenities to with those revenues. We wouldn't have the parks we have without the revenue we have because of visitation. So let's, they're coming anyway, they're not going to stop. So let's do some good things with the money that they bring in, including freeing up the space for the community. And when we do a survey, I think we wanna be real clear that we're not just trying to build a building to build a building, we're trying to build a building to free up this building. Because otherwise it's just a, oh, build a building for yourselves. And that's not what we're trying to do at all.

Yeah, exactly. And I think because of that kind of sentiment, calling it a council chambers, it's just semantics. But I think the first thought people will potentially think when they hear council chambers is that's a building for yourself. But that's not at all. We need to come up, whether if it's a civic center or public meeting space, I don't know exactly what we call it, but I think council chambers has a very self-fulfilling tone.

Yes, although that's what every other municipality is calling their council chamber, but still.

I know, and really, as much as it would be a place for us to meet, it would be a place for anybody to meet. The trails meeting that's going to be happening, any other type, and we're constantly having things and conflicts in here. And so it would need to be made what everybody would be made aware of the fact that regardless of what it's called, it is approved for us to host, get together, have meetings so that this can be more recreational.

I like what you said, public meeting space, because that's really what it is. It's not just for council. It's for public meetings. So anyway, we can get something out. But I think, unless anybody has anything else, we can't make a decision on that today because it wasn't noticed, so.

No, but we can give that direction to staff that maybe we do kind of need to work on a survey. Like I said before, we haven't been really getting good participation, but maybe this is something that residents would want to chime in on their ideas. how they could receive a public meeting space, an additional public meeting space.

Or what to do with the space next to us at all.

Exactly. Like, come to us with your ideas. Here are a few of our ideas. We could provide the information that we already have about what has been drawn up for us in the past, the little exercise that was done.

The master plan?

The master plan. Talk about... foreseeable cost. I mean, it's going to come at a cost.

Well, but we do need to, even so, keep in mind that we will need a new town hall. We do want to get the police officers out of the basement. We are already out of room there. So it's not like that whole two acres is up for grabs. Oh, I want to build an amusement park. We acquired it with the purpose of expanding our municipal campus, and that's what we're obligated to do.

Yeah, and as, right, like, parking is a controversial topic, and it would, you know, I've heard that public housing could be put there, and, you know, some really out-of-the-box ideas that we haven't really been discussing. But maybe opening up the dialogue will create some different... And public housing is tricky because we wouldn't own that. Exactly, and we're doing that in other places, and we're not quite sure how it's working yet.

And I still think we need to kind of keep a place over there for potentially a post office. Yeah, for sure. Because that is... They've... They're bulging at the seams with where they are right now, even with the other issues. And the buildings. And the other issues, yeah, and the buildings. Termites are holding it up, I think.

I think so. One UPS truck away from falling.

Yeah.

Actually, the trucks keep hitting the building. Okay, well, I think, do you want anything else from us, Tom, before we adjourn?

Just a quick clarification. You mentioned a survey, and I would maybe suggest that what you're really looking for is some type of public engagement effort, whether it's a survey or something else. And as you mentioned, Kyla, we haven't had super great responses to the past several surveys we've put out. Maybe there's another public engagement technique that we can employ to get the community's input. So just clarifying that that's your intent, not specifically a survey.

Well, we did have quite a few people show up for the River Park exercise that you put on. Something like that. Correct.

Yeah, so we could work on something like that.

Yeah, and don't you, aren't you forming a new community engagement committee?

We are.

So that would be a good project for them to think about how we might get input.

Great suggestion.

Okay. So I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

I make a motion we adjourn.

Second. Second. We had a motion by Randy. I think Kyla got the first second in.

Pat, aye. Randy, aye.

Barbara, aye.

Yeah, Kyla.

Kyla, I am. Wow, write it down on the books. That's the first time that has ever happened. Never. We never get people to stay for the whole thing, even.