City Council - Regular Meeting

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are we ready to go? Okay, it is six o'clock, so I'm going to call this meeting to order of the Syracuse City Council business meeting. Thank you all for being in attendance. Uh, as we begin this meeting, we will have an invocation given by uh, Council Member Paul. And, uh, we will be led in the pledge of allegiance by Councilwoman Julie.

Our dear father in heaven, we're great grateful for this opportunity. we have to meet as a city council. We're grateful for this wonderful city that we live in and we're so blessed to to take advantage of all the things that come with living here. Please guide us as we conduct the city's business tonight that we might represent our citizens well and we might work in cooperation to get the city's business handled. And we pray for these things in the name of thy son Jesus Christ. Amen. That's right. The flag of the United States of America.

Council, can I get a motion to adopt the agenda as written? Move to adopt. Sorry. I will take one of those as a second. All in favor?

I. Any opposed? Okay. Now we have public comment. Uh this is our opportunity as citizens to bring something to our attention. If there is something that we do not have on the agenda, if you have something on the agenda you'd like to comment that is not a public hearing, this would be the appropriate time. We give you up to three minutes. Um is there anyone here that would like to make a public comment tonight? Sure. Come forward. Please state your name and address for the record so we know who you are. Kendallan Harris from 3176 South 400 East Bountiful and just wanted to say hi. I'm running for county commissioner and I think it's important for us to be aware of what is going on in the cities in the county. So I would love to just observe tonight, see what's on your mind, see what um you guys are dealing with here in Syracuse. But I'd love to talk to you if you have questions, ideas, concerns, and thanks for your service. I know that Syracuse in working with My mom over the last four years, I know that Syracuse is really well known as being fiscally conservative and I feel like that's what we've done in Bountiful as well. And so I really respect and appreciate what you do here and thanks for your time and your service that you give.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to make a public comment? Seeing none, I will close public comment and go into item number three. We have a couple of recognitions for from our fire department. The first would be we'd like to recognize Kyle Nance as the fire marshal and administer the oath of office for our new fire marshal.

Yes, thank you. I just wanted to say a couple things before we do that. Uh and we'll just invite Kyle up. Uh, I did put that in the last manager's report, but um, Kyle's our new fire marshal and uh, he began his fire service career in 1998 as a part-time employee with the Syracuse Fire Department. In January 20, 2006, he transitioned to a full-time position with our department. He's worked with our department, rose to the rank of captain throughout his tenure. He's received specialized training throughout that time in fire inspection and investigation and has worked for both Leighton Fire and South Davis Metro Fire as a part-time fire inspector. He has an associates degree in emergency services for from Utah Valley University and a bachelor's degree in fire administration with an emphasis in fire investigation from Columbia Southern University. We're excited to have him. He's going to fit right in. He's already we've already put him to work, so we got him going. So, we'll go ahead and have uh Cassie the oath of office.

Yep. Raise your right hand and repeat after me. I state your name. I, Kyle Lance, do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support, obey, and defend that I will support, obey, and defend the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Utah and the Constitution of Utah and that I will discharge the duties and I will discharge the duties of the Office of Fire Marshall of the Office of Fire Marshall with fidelity. with fidelity. Thank you. Thanks. Welcome, Kyle. The next item on our agenda, we have a recognition for John Gully. John had come forward.

Yep. And I just want to point out that it is so amazing that we have so many of our firefighters who receive these certifications. I I without a doubt, we have more uh by percentage than any other department in the state. And thank you for all of you who put in the time and uh get these service awards.

Yeah, this is this is great. And I I know that we've got a few more coming down the line, so you'll probably see me over the next several months as well. Uh but tonight is about uh Captain Goalie. So, he's been awarded the Utah Supervisory Fire Officer Designation as outlined by the International Association of Fire Chiefs and adopted by the Utah Commission on Fire Officer Designation. Uh, Captain Goalie has combined hundreds hours of training, experience, and education to meet the requirements for this designation. His hard work and commitment to this process show his dedication not only to Utah, the Utah State Fire Service, but to our city and our department as well. Uh, so they sent along a plaque and a nice little pin. We'll give this to him and congratulations for his designation. Thanks for the time.

Thank you. We are so blessed to have such amazing firefighters. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is approval of minutes. We have two minutes for approval tonight. The first is April 14th of our business session and then April 28th from the council work session. Do I have any changes that need to be made to those or I'll take a motion to approve? I'll make a motion that we approve the minutes as outlined on the agenda. Second. Motion made and seconded. All in favor? I.

Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Now we move into our cons consent agenda. These are things that we have talked about through many meetings and uh have reached a consensus and didn't seem to have any. Just for uh announcement in our rules, any council member, just one can take something off of the consent agenda and we can put it immediately on our agenda for discussion. But seeing how we had consensus in work sessions, these are the items that we'll be voting on for consent tonight. Item A is proposed resolution 2621 approving interlocal cooperation agreement between Syracuse City and Davis County relating to the uh conduct of community development block grant program and for the fiscal years 2027 2028 and 2029. Item B is proposed resolution 26-22 approving an interlocal cooperation master agreement regarding regional dispatch services between Leighton City and Syracuse City. Item C is proposed ordinance uh 2026-8 amending the Syracuse city zoning map for approximately 5.548 acres of real property located at 3000 west and 1700 south from A1 to general commercial. Uh item D is proposed a resolution R26-23 mutual aid agreement for information technology support in the event of a cyber security attack. And item E is proposed ordinance 2026-09 amending Syracuse Municipal Code section 410.130 pertaining to non-gravity sewer discharge. Is there anybody who'd like to remove one of those from consent for discussion? Seeing none, I'll take a motion to adopt all those by consent.

I second. I I need a motion. She said so moved. Oh, so moved. Okay. Moved and moved and seconded. All in favor? I I.

Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you all. Item number six is a public hearing. Uh this public hearing is for council consideration of declaring two parcels of real property as surplus parcels located at approximately 508 West 2700 South and 546 West 2525 South. These are parcels uh just for general public awareness. This is these are parcels that were purchased for road widening. They were amended and now are being put back on the market as non-conforming lots uh with shorter sideyards. Is there first I'll open it to public hearing. Is there anyone here that would like to discuss these parcels? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. Council, is there any discussion on these items? uh these two properties that we have got designated for surplus to go back on the market. Seeing none, I will take a motion uh on these two properties. I move that we declare the two parcels of real property as surplus located at 508 West 2700 South and 546 West 2525 South.

Second. Motion made and seconded. All in favor? I.

Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. The next item is to accept the tenative fiscal year FY2026-2027 budget as set and set a public hearing for June 9th, 2026 to consider adoption of the final budget. Council, to be clear, what we are doing is we are accepting our current budget as tenative. That does not mean we can't make changes between now and then. I want to be very clear about that. It just means that this is what we will put forward June 9th. Uh and we can make amen a motion to amend if that happens between now and then. We will certainly have more discussion at our next work session which will be in two weeks. Steve, are there anything that you would like to highlight since our last discussion?

Yeah, there's a few things I wanted to follow up with with the council from last meeting. Um, in there is a summary of the the changes that were discussed that were added to this budget and the the respective deficit of $330,000 uh proposed in the budget. Uh we did have some comparative is in there for the pickup for the retirement for public safety of the cities that are picking those up versus not. Most of them are picking up the full 5.98%. If you remember, that's the third version or third addition to that um pickup. This year, I think it's 1.25%. Steve, is that considered in the $330,000 deficit?

It is. We also rep prioritized some of our IT projects so we could uh move up the phone system in the budget to get that done in this next fiscal year. In the five-year infrastructure plan, I removed those those 10 or so projects that were on the list, pushed them down to years 6 through 10 to show this the council a snapshot of our uh 5-year uh fund balance and and needs as far as utility rate changes. Those are not proposed in this budget year. That just gives you an idea over the next 5 years. that's there would be a potential shortage or a need of $367,000 or $329 per user per month. Uh there's some also we did some rep prioritization on our 5-year capital and building plan uh to we we pushed some some things out so that we could balance that. If you remember when we talked last we were about I believe $400 or $500,000 in the deficit. So we we pushed some projects to future years. Those included um some fire equipment and um also some police over the police department. There was some renovations, painting um things that we we pushed off a year. Uh those are the highlights of the changes from when we discussed the budget last time.

Okay. And this all came up in work session, but is there anybody who would like to re-engage some of those discussions? tonight.

I I'm kind of concerned with uh the police station not getting the updates that it needs. I I want to go over and take a look myself and walk around that facility, but uh I I have people that I know that work at the department and just the reports that I'm getting from staff is it's uh in pretty big disarray and I think we'd be really remiss to not give the attention to our city buildings to make sure that they're maintained in a manner that we would expect our own homes to be maintained. So, I would encourage any council member to go over there and look at it firsthand. There are parts of the building that are older than others, but we did recently renovate the EOC portion and that's brand new. So, um but that's not what we are talking about on this budget. We're talking about some of the older sections. And so, please go over there before between now and the next uh budget discussion. What was the amount proposed amount for those improvements?

Uh the carpet was 130,000, the paint was 50,000. Those were moved into next fiscal year or pushed back a year. So a little over 200,000. And then there was also some equipment uh for fire with a life pack monitor, extrication equipment, transport ventilator. Those were all pushed off a year as well. So just so I'm clear then, uh that 300 some odd dollar 300,000 some odd dollars was pushed to next year. Is that correct?

It is. And it it and when we talked about this at the previous meeting, we showed a number that were about $3 million short on our five-year plan. Uh 300,000 of that was in this fiscal year. So we pushed that off a year. So, it would aggregate into the next and future years. That $3 million deficit would then be shared over a four-year period or we would continue to push those things off as funding is not available. But for next fiscal year, that 300,000 would then push the capital improvement fund up to close to a million. Is that right?

Yes. So that million dollars based on the numbers as I understand from uh page 91 of the uh packet that in order to cover that we're looking at uh $627 per $50,000. Is that right? Yeah. So, in the general fund, for every $50,000 uh would be a 1% increase in property tax. That would be on the average user $6.27 on the property tax bill or about 20% per million is what that equates to.

Correct. So, and again, I realize we're going to have another opportunity to discuss this, but just in this one fund, then if we were to push it off and fund it next year, we're looking at roughly a 20% increase. Is that fair based on the numbers in this packet? Yeah, that would be a million dollar one Yeah. onetime uh expense that would be needed. Correct. And that would be without funding any kind of new staffing uh other kinds of things as well. We would if there's new staffing, there would need to be some other money found for that too. Is that correct?

Yeah, that is correct. If you look in the packet on page 188, it does show a summary of all of our capital improvements, capital equipment. The items in purple are vehicles or equipment that were requested with new staffing. Uh so if they were not funded in this budget, you will see in the very right hand column, those those numbers went away. But for the two park maintenance workers, those are two additional trucks that were not on rotation previously. So in future years, if there's additional requests for new positions, more often than not, those do come with equipment or vehicles or other things that would would come with the position. Well, I I think I know where this is going tonight and I don't have an objection for me personally to approve a tenative budget, but I do think we have some work to do. And I renew my concerns that by continually pushing us at least part of these items down the road that we're setting ourselves up for more problems in the future.

I I appreciate that a lot. Um I I would don't know is it appropriate for me to ask staff uh the department heads to come to our meeting next the next uh business meeting that we have prepared with which items on those lists that we pushed off that they feel are the most critical for their department. Yeah, they're all expected to be there and they are all expected to have that uh ready. Yeah. Uh in terms of timing, it might might be better to have that at the work session. Yeah, later this month. Okay, I

think that's what the agreement would be is that that'll be our next discussion is the work session. Al uh department heads are expected to be there and you can certainly ask them at that time

just just critical items uh for for their departments that that are maybe being pushed that they would want to echo back to us that might not be pushed. And I I mean I trust that they're going to look with a uh with a very conservative lens of what's most important and and then I would love to get with with all of them and give some time this week or next week uh when they have availability to go over those things in person um so that I can be better prepared for our business meeting. But I I have no objection with approving uh the budget has

go anytime to to meet with them. any council member anytime. Just to be clear though that we have been I mean every year we do this. Every year I understand we talk about whether this is essential for this year or whether this can be pushed. Um you know it doesn't hurt to ask that every year we have to make some decisions that what doesn't fit in the budget. Um I think that we talked about a few critical things at our last meeting. That's why we put like the phone system back in there because that could be an outage. We're we're at a point where, you know, three years ago we kept pushing this off saying, "Well, we're going to eventually have to do take care of this." But now we're to a point where that went down, we would have no service.

Correct. It's not savable. Where some of these things are replacements for things that maybe we can stretch a year. Uh we talked about that in our meeting. You know, I I often use my computers longer than the recommended replacement because they tend to last. Um but um I understand these are these are the choices we make. It's tough. It is tough. I don't like it. Welcome to the council. I quit. Okay. So, does anybody else have anything else they'd like to talk about specifically knowing we are going to have another work session?

One other thing I just want to mention, mayor, is um with the AI AI reporting tool we have have in the proposed budget uh that's in the police um line item for subscriptions, memberships. It's $44,000. That will that is the full cost of that new program. We will have $11,000 in grant money that we've been granted that will come back to us in this fiscal year to help offset that cost. Great. We always love that.

I I do think it would be helpful to me at least to have some sort of idea of projected revenue at least over the next couple of years from sales tax. I realize that that is just a an estimate, but I do think that impacts decision making on what uh might occur this year uh to make sure that we're not digging ourselves a larger hole.

Yeah, we can do that. Any other discussion? Okay. So, at this time, what I need is a motion to accept the tenative budget that we will put on the June 9th uh discussion. It is not final, but I do need us to pass a tenative budget tonight. Can I get a motion for that? I move that we accept the tenative fiscal year budget for 2026 2027. Moved and seconded. All in favor? I.

Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. At this point, we're going to move into uh council reports and announcements. Uh Abe, we'll start with you. Um so, planning commission met on Tuesday. Um a big point of discussion was a public hearing for the signage um in the triangle right there off of Analopee and the new Davis corridor. Um, we had one member of the public come in and oppose uh having signage. The city planning commission couldn't come to a consent consensus of of whether or not to recommend to the council to adopt a signage um city ordinance for um near the freeway. U I mean they got into the weeds about gore area and height of signage and into all the things. Um it it it raised my my concerns to be able to go and look around. I I I can say that I I feel very in favor of adopting an ordinance uh the way staff has draft the ordinance. It looks like we would just be adopting an ordinance that would allow pretty much that one particular parcel to be the only one that be able to have a sign above what our current ordinance is. Um, and just from my research this last week, I would be in favor of doing that. But the planning commission has held it over and asked the developer to come back with uh some more information on what does 50 ft really look like in a realistic sense. Um I I think uh their feeling was that they're concerned of what that's going to do to the skyline and not wanting our city to look similar to some of our neighboring cities that have tall signs by restaurants um that go really high. Um so that that's kind of the big thing.

Everything else on planning commission was pretty straightforward. Nothing really else to report. That was the big one that they really went over. um for the Miss Syracuse Scholarship Pageant. You may see them around town at different ribbon cutings and things. So, they are active and doing good for our city. Um we do have something coming up for them. It's um the Miss Syracuse Princess Party. So they'll be they'll be doing that for the the youth in our in our in our city May 30th. So that's that's going to be fun for the younger um kids to get with the Miss Syracuse pageant winners and participate in that and learn what it means to be a princess. And then I will meet this week with the mosquito abatement district and hopefully bring you a report next time we meet and see how our mosquitoes are, if they're healthy.

Hopefully not. I think they are great. Thank you, Paul. I don't have any updates. Okay, from me. Thank you.

Okay. Uh I do have a couple of updates. Um just let you know that Wasuch Integrated Waste has gone through uh some deep budgeting and we have challenged them to do uh some work that would help uh make make uh it more affordable to be at the dump site and more safe. So that's in process. Um our Syracuse Arts Council is uh underway with their production of The Wizard of Oz that will happen in July. uh uh get that on your calendar. Um I want to remind everybody about our America 250 events that we are hosting here in the city for heritage days. We have the freedom run which will be a great relay race. We're looking forward to teams. Please encourage others out there. I did send out a message asking for all council members to reach to the schools that you are liaison with about the memorization uh pin that that students can win. I hope that you made contact with your schools. Now is the time. Teachers are looking for extra projects and extra credit. This would be a perfect learning experience. So if you have not made contact, please do so this week. um the youth brigade. If you have not made contact with your local uh ecclesiastical authority to excited to support this and I think this is a great thing. Um so uh and I have also this uh past two weeks has been very busy on our uh veterans memorial uh announcement that came out at the first of the month. I have had many veterans reach out in support of this project and um ask where they can uh contribute.

Right now, I've told them all that what is the greatest con contribution is a letter of support so that we can reach out for these grant funds so that we can bring some of that federal money back into our city. So, I wanted to get you aware of all those. Um, and that's all that I have on that. We do in Syracuse have a second public comment period at the end of our business meetings in case there's anyone who arrived late and would like to comment on anything that was on the agenda or would need to be on a future agenda. Is there anyone here that would like to make a public comment? Seeing none, I will close our public comment and I will take a motion to adjurnn.

I move that we adjourn. Do I have a second? Nobody wants to go home. Second. Seconded. All in favor? I. We stand ajourned. Thank you all. If you uh just another thought, if you didn't see some of the cards, we had some cards uh given by