City Council - workshop

he had no idea he didn't care i tried to tell him like dude you need to get up there's a ram remember grandpa at yellowstone with the buffalo with the oh yeah that was did you see grass so then i scared the ram away and that's the next thing is his brothers came up and helped him up and put his arm around him and they walked up and he summited so It was a good trip. It was a really good trip. I could have spent the week at Yellowstone or the week at Glacier, though. We should have not broken it up to half-week, half-week. Because we did the first half of the week, and then Wednesday we drove to Glacier. How's it going?

Was it nice weather up there?

It was beautiful. It was hot. I love that stuff, though. I love being in national parks.

How hot?

I'm from Arizona, so it's not really fair, right? Like, it was cooler than here. It was probably, like, 80s at the highest, like, 82. And then, like, most of the day, it was, like, high 60s.

It is 6 o'clock. It is six o'clock, so I'm going to call this meeting to order. This is the Syracuse City work session. On our agenda, I'm going to address a couple of things unusually here because we have an early item that involves some of our new friends. We're grateful that you guys all came. What was passed on to me was a request that we have a discussion about what we might be able to allow for homecoming and other events. Because it's a discussion item, that means that we're going to involve you a little bit in the discussion. So you need to, in advance, decide who represents you. It could be an adult or a student. And we'll allow that person to come and join the discussion at the table. But like everything else, we have rules we have to follow. And so, in fact, if any of you ever did Boys State or Girls State, you might have seen Robert's Rules of Order. Our rules of order are pretty similar. And so what it means is you can't just shout out in the middle of a meeting. So your representative will be that person. If you feel like you need to address it in your own way, you may, because our first item on our agenda is public comment. And any member of the public, including students, could take up to three minutes to make us aware of something that you'd like to have in a future discussion. So I make that clear because that way you have full opportunity to take advantage of whatever. So that said, I'm going to open public comment. Public comment is a chance for citizens to bring to the table something that we may not have on our agenda. We cannot discuss it if it's not on the agenda. You might be able to bring up something that you want us to put on a future agenda, or you might bring something to our attention that we may not be aware of. We hope that citizens will do that. We give you up to three minutes, and you need to state your name for the record and address so that we know who you are and if you actually live here. So those are our rules. Is there anybody who would like to make a public comment in general tonight? Okay, seeing none, I will close public comment. Oh, we do. Sorry, we have an email one. All right, so Marisa will read into the record our emailed public comment.

Okay, this is from Eric Wilson. It says, Dear Mayor Mon and members of the City Council, thank you for your continued work on behalf of Syracuse. After reviewing this week's packet, my primary interest is the proposed shoreline subdivision on the former Davis School District property. I appreciate that the concept includes open space, trails, and amenities that appear to approve upon the previous approved layout. Preserving 26% of the property as open space and creating neighborhood connections are positive features. At the same time, increasing the development from 16 homes to 39 homes represents a significant change in density. Before any future rezoning or approval, I encourage the city to carefully evaluate traffic impacts, school capacity, emergency access, long-term maintenance of the open space, and overall compatibility with the surrounding neighborhood. I also appreciate the city's efforts to maintain transparency in the sale of city-owned property by obtaining an appraisal, publicly marketing the home, and accepting competitive offers. That process demonstrates good stewardship of taxpayer assets. Thank you for continuing to involve residents in these discussions and for considering the long-term impacts of today's decisions on Syracuse's future.

Okay, thank you. and with that i'll close public comment again and we will move on to item c which is a request to be on the agenda from syracuse high representatives who would you like to be your voice at the table okay come join us in one of the hot seats here now let me just uh preface this by saying that it was uh requested that we talk about possible street painting And it was mentioned to me that we had addressed this once before, a couple of years ago. At that time, as a city, we were open to street painting on city roads, but the people making the request were only interested in painting on 2000 West, which is a state-owned road, and we have no authority there. We couldn't allow it. We couldn't tell you, no, that's just not our road. So knowing that, that's one of the things. We brought up a couple of other ideas at that time in the previous meeting. One was the possibility of wrapping utility boxes within a process like you would wrap your car. It would be at the expense of the school, so that's just one option, but that didn't seem to apply, and it doesn't have to now. I'm just kind of sharing background on the issue. The other thing that was brought up was possibility of putting banners on streetlights. That's been done in a lot of cities. There are grants that the school could write to get banners, so that eliminates the cost there. For the city, there's a small cost for us to put them up. But once the poles are in place, it's really pretty quick. So it's not a real big cost. As a city council, you can choose to either waive that cost or impose the cost in fairness. I'm not telling you you have to do either one. I'm just telling you that's the background on that issue. And one fourth idea that has not come to the table from the school, but I'm bringing to the table because we thought about this. The question came up once before about six, seven years ago. What would the city be willing to do if we change the name of 700 South to tighten something because it is where the school is. Here's the issue on that. We have researched it and found that we could do a sign that says tighten way or tighten place or tighten run whatever. and then also on the sign put 700 South, that would not affect all of the people who have addresses on there today. So that would be the appropriate way to do that, and I would be more than excited to do something like that. We couldn't officially change the whole city without leaving the 700 South, or every person who lives on that street now has to change their address on every form, their bank, and that would cause a lot of people... Some challenge might be patron or, you know, school spirit, but it's not going to be very easy for all of them to do. So those are the ideas that we brought forward. Introduce yourself. Who are you?

I am Emily Skidmore from Syracuse High School. I am senior class president.

Excellent. Okay, so as the senior class president, what would you like to ask of us? And all I did was throw out the ideas that had been discussed in the past because some of our council members are fairly new.

First of all, thank you for giving us this opportunity to come and speak on this topic. We are proposing to request a temporary spirit week street painting near the school. on 700 South near the school. The reason why we want to do this is because it is the 20th anniversary of Syracuse High School and we're wanting to celebrate the role that the school plays in the lives of students and the surrounding community members. It is our goal to create a spirit of unity between the community and the school and our theme for the year is building the legacy and we want this to be the beginning of new traditions that start every year. In surrounding areas, other schools and organizations have done this, such as Weaver High in Crudefield City and a number of schools in Cache Valley. We know you have your concerns, and we do have solutions to this.

Okay. So you've heard the request. I personally supported this the last time it came around. They just didn't want to do 700 South. So what are your thoughts, Council?

The concerns you mentioned. What are the concerns that you have?

Well, they're saying you might have concerns.

I thought you said we've got some solutions figured out.

So here's the things that I've heard in the past. The city did come forward and say, if we allow it, we have to be cautious that it doesn't detract from any markings on the street that are traffic signals and safety. And I think that that has been successfully adjusted many times in different places. So I'm not worried about that. The The only other one I can ever think of that was a challenge that came to this council was this people wanted to do 2,000 because it's a bigger street. And again, that's off the table.

Cost of cleanup or anything like that didn't come into play?

That's a good question. What is the cost of cleanup? What I know from the research is if you use a regular latex paint, it will pretty much wear off within a year anyway. So you could do... that's kind of a natural cleanup. Some people worry about having it restored to the exact situation. I don't know. I went to Weber High. We used to paint the street back then. It just wore off over time. We didn't care. And neither did the city, as long as it wasn't, you know, it was a city street. So they were the ones in charge. You can decide that it needs to go back to normal. I think that's kind of overkill, but.

Yeah. There are spray paints that you can get chopped kinds of things that are aerosol that will come off in the rain in a very, very short period of time. So, I mean, there is product out there that can be used.

I'm good with latex paint. It will wear off within a few months. It's just life.

I don't have any objection to doing that along 700 South. We used to do it up in Logan when I was in high school. It was fun, builds school spirit. I think we just have to have the parameters and rules of what's allowed, what's not, those types of things worked out, but I don't have any major objection to it.

And obviously I think The rules that we would be concerned about would be things like make sure that it doesn't infringe on the traffic, which I think you're fine with. Make sure that it's a positive message. We're not doing anything like I hate the neighbors or whatever. And we're not doing anything that would be considered publicly offensive, which I don't think any of those would you'd come up with. So we would probably be good to ask that. And I know that they've done this other places. They'll say, give us a concept design, what you want to, do and where you want to put it. And then great. And that's just to do the due diligence. So that if somebody says, hope this week, say, well, right here on the record, went to city and city approved it. Any other thoughts?

I think it's a great idea. I think it's a good idea to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Syracuse high. And, and I love the idea of also a banners and changing the sun or adding to the sign Titan way. How cool is that? So I think they're all good ideas. I'm totally for it.

The Titan whatever sign would be very minimal expense on the city's part, and I'd be willing to donate that if that were okay. That's fun. Would you be interested if we were to change that? Yeah. Yeah, okay. So the question is, is what's better?

All the way down the road.

I think it's not big enough to be classified as a boulevard, but we could do... Tighten Way, Tighten Court. Tighten Court is an option. It's not.

Is that legal for a federal street? It's not. We're not changing the name of the street.

Way is short. It's only three letters, and it sounds cool.

I like Tighten Way. All right. I like whatever the student's like.

If you're good with Tighten Way, then Robert is our public works director. Is there a legal precedent we have to deal with? It's already on there.

So we could we could add it to the 2000 screen.

It seems to me that to change the name of the street, you've got to have an ordinance, if I remember correctly. So maybe that happened already and we just need more signs for a name change that's already occurred. I don't know.

That's a good point. Colin is our attorney. He makes sure we don't do things that get us in legal trouble. All right. So on the street painting. So I think we're good on the sign. We'll do more to emphasize the sign. I'm happy about that. What are you? PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Any other questions about PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Painting the street. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, What I would suggest is that they we put out asked for them to submit a design and a location and will approve it to make just to make sure that it doesn't like interfere with a crosswalk or something like that. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Any other regulations, you want to put out there because a question.

Yeah, I was just going to mention that. I think if you're going to allow this, we have a process of approval. Just so everyone's aware, the reason we need to make sure it doesn't, we don't draw anything on the road that is confusing to the driver. If there is something that is confusing and there is an accident, the city is responsible for the road and what goes on the road. And if something is, if you paint white stripes, for example, That might confuse a driver, and if there's an accident, the city is the one that will likely hold the liability. So we have to prove that your design doesn't confuse drivers.

If you use the Titan Sabre, which I'm all for, it can't look like an arrow telling people to go somewhere. I mean, those are the things that we would be cautious of. But honestly, submit your designs, and I'm good with it. So any other discussion on this? Okay, so we already have a process for submitting approval. So I would say, bring us your approval and your time and we'll help you with it. We're good with it. And on the banner thing, because I know that's come up in other schools. If you want to buy the banners, we can work out. We'll tell you how to get them hung and what we do. Because we have a professional crew for that. That's on the table. You guys talk about it. All right?

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Great. Okay, we're going to move on. So... You are free to leave if you want to stay for the, it's really not something to eat popcorn over, but you're free to stay for our meetings and watch us talk. Thank you.

You bet. Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming forward. All right, the first item on our agenda tonight for planning items is the free application. So I would invite Brandon Wood up and bring Noah to the table. This is a pre-application for the property that was designated to be a school as part of the Shoreline District. Shoreline RPC. So it's already in an RPC. So this is very unusual for us to rezone property within a governing document. What I've asked NOAA to do is give you a brief outline of what is different here and kind of what I'm suggesting because this would not be a zone change. If we were to do anything, this would have to be a development agreement change because this already resides under a development agreement. So Noah, you start out.

Yeah. Yeah. A quick summary, like the mayor said, this is called shoreline as a development agreement. There was a portion of the development that was set aside for a school and now they decided they don't want to have school. So some, some overall facts about it. So the development agreement allows 400 units. It's a big subdivision. Currently, there's 384 of those units that are entitled. There's two builders. There's Woodside on the one side, and then there's Century on the other. There's 383 out of the 384 entitled lots that are built. So it's pretty well built out. And it's just kind of got this last remaining parcel in the middle. I'll let him go over the proposed development, all that. But essentially, under the existing development agreement, there's room for 16 lots. There's some other things in the ordinance. It allows smaller lots, but it requires a lot of open space and trails and things like that. HAB-Masyn Moyer- You guys have driven by there, I think it's turned out to be a pretty good neighborhood and there's a lot of people that have moved in down there. HAB-Masyn Moyer- yeah if you have any questions I have the entire development agreement printed out here. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Any specifics, but otherwise i'll just let brandon kind of do is this thing you hopefully you guys had a chance to see his presentation, it was included in the packet beforehand yeah.

So with that said, what are you asking for? This is Brandon Wood. He represents real estate, the Northwood Group, but this is a real estate transaction for the school district.

It is. I want to be clear that there's not a developer or a builder in the room on this at this point. So this is kind of like Lone Tree, which happened recently. The school districts identified this as excess. They bought it in 2019. Demographics has changed. They're never going to build a school here. And so what we have to do is we have to go out and put it out to the market and solicit proposals from developers. And what we don't want to do is have 30 different developers coming up with different ideas of density for you guys to sort through and try to figure out what the value is. What we did on loan tree is came to you guys said hey what is what is agreeable right let's get on the same page and let's go out this together so that we're all on the same page. and have developers make offers for something that's acceptable to all of us, so that we can evaluate them and we get a product that you like we get one that's marketable for the school district and it makes sense, so on this on the shoreline site. It's really square. We tried to lay it out with 16 lots and you have the plan you could put up on the screen. So, you know, you picture this, right? And if we just line up 16 lots running down here, we get really long, deep, skinny lots that when you see lots like that, you end up with a lot of unkept backyards. It doesn't fit what's there in the market. And we can't sell it with 16 lots at a number that recoups the school's costs. So if it's 16 lots, the school district will just hold it and wait until the market matures to where it's worth more than it is now, or we come back and try this again in five or 10 years or whatever. And so what we tried to do is come up with a plan that honors what people in the neighborhood wanted. We had a school here that was gonna have some open space. So we tried to create a plan that had walking trails, that has lots of open space, that has a playground, similar things that they would have had access to had this been an elementary school, and then have the lot sizes be similar to what is in the rest of the neighborhood. So we are asking for an amendment to the development agreement to get more lots on there, but these lots end up being very similar to what the size lots are in the rest of the neighborhood and that character. and provides a lot more open space and trails to the neighborhood. And so what we're asking for is feedback as to whether or not this is something generally that you guys would be supportive of, because we would then go out to the market and say, hey, we want you to split offers on something generally like this, and then the developer would come make the formal application with you guys. But we don't want there to be a lot of variability in each of these developers' proposals. And so that's what we're looking for is guidance from you guys to say, hey, is this something that you guys feel like you could support? So it's hard to go ask for an amendment to a development agreement for more density. But when you have the context, take it in consideration that there wasn't a school when that 400 units was approved, right? The school kind of came in after the fact, it was plugged in here, and now we're trying to fill in a gap. And what's allowed doesn't make a lot of sense. It doesn't provide any amenities for the neighbors.

I will throw out this caution, Council, and that is that every time somebody resells a development that has a development agreement, we've been asked to change the development agreement. And so I really don't like that approach, but this would be at least the fourth change that we would have made. Because when they sold part of this to Woodside, they came in and said, hey, we understand it was entitled under this agreement. We don't like X, Y, and Z, so we want to change it. When they sold some to Century, they did the exact same thing. They said, we don't want to do what they did. We want to have a third amendment. So this would be at least the fourth, if not even more, to our development agreement. And my worry is, because you don't have a developer, they'll come in and say, OK, now that we haven't been The fourth agreement, we want to do it, get another agreement.

The process, we're not asking for the development agreement now. What we would do is solicit offers. And when we found the developer that we thought was the right one, we would come in before we agreed with them, meet with you guys and make sure we're on the same page as far as what's being proposed before we even entered into a contract with them. So we don't want to do this twice either. That's going to be a big part of our analysis of this developer is whether they're going to make this work, whether they're going to do things the right way. Because as a government entity, we're in the same shoes as you. Like, we don't want to be doing this twice. We want to do something that's right and it's done the right way. But we also don't like leaving it as a field. I know that causes some issues for the neighbors over there. But unfortunately, with the 16 lots, we can't get our money back out of it. And it would be not good use of taxpayer dollars.

How many additional units are we talking?

So this would plan us 39 total lots versus the 16, which is allowed in the development agreement right now. And this is a maxing it out. If you max it out according to what was there, you know, we have people throwing out plans with the engineers throwing out plans, you know, 50 plus. But this is like a very scaled back version, expanded open space. We're not trying to come in and ask. This is probably the minimum we need to be able to get in order to get the money out of it to make sense to sell it now.

And how's the green space going to be maintained? Is that going to be under an HOA? Yes. This is what we're doing. That's what we think it will probably end up being. Is there already an HOA in that community?

Yes. So this would be an oddity because are they going to create their own HOA within an HOA? Or are they going to be adopted into an HOA? And can they even be? I don't know.

We'd look to you guys for guidance on how best to structure that.

If they were adopted in, I think they'd have to have whatever existing HOA agreed to that.

Yep.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Which could be challenging. Well, that would seem preferable. I think just because PB, Harmon Zuckerman, All the homes will benefit from that open space, not just these. Yeah, right.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, What are some of the PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Pros and cons to the city. I mean, I feel like the pros are pretty obvious me of like having land that can be developed and allowing more families into the community is a pro right having the green space for that community is a pro. What are some of the cons that we're looking at as a city as far as strain on resources that we would be responsible for? Like, is the road going to be private or is that going to be ours? It would be ours. Yeah, there's always impact development.

You know, obviously, you need to know this. What they've drawn here with the two different categories of lots in the same small neighborhood, we have never allowed that. You're opening a door if you allow that here.

What are the two categories that we're talking about?

Well, you've got the blue would be more like an R. Well, it would be this would be a PRD, but you've got two distinct sizes. We have not allowed them to intermingle like these lots do. We have said you've got to have neighbors that are, you know, at this street, they change. We have not allowed them intermixed like this ever. And if you do that, you could start to have people say, I want some are one lot, some are two lots, some are three lots.

We're not married to the size on these. That's an easy fix for us to make if that was a big deal. We're not tied to this plan. Our intent is to say, hey, what can we get on the same page with that works?

And just for the councils, make sure you know, you're not deciding on this.

Sure.

You're just deciding on the number of units. That's it.

But what we would do, though, is in our marketing material, we actually would include this plan and say this is something conceptually that has not been voted on, but this is the direction the city is looking to consider taking to a vote. But we don't want a lot of variance from this. We don't want to recreate the wheel with everybody that we have. It makes it hard for us to compare one offer to the other. It's hard to be fair. We're dealing with taxpayer dollars. We want to be as clear and fair with everybody that we possibly can.

When you're looking at a neighborhood design, a mixture of lot size is actually desirable because you get different product types. It's what you don't want. 50 acres of the exact same house. That creates a certain... It's actually good to have some variety and that's what the RPC zone does too. There's different density classes.

This would fall into two of those classes is what I'm pointing out.

No. Okay, yeah. There's a small... John Gerstle, Category in the RPC that's all the way down to 3500 square foot this the smallest one and in this proposes 57 so it's it's within the middle rung of the of the density of the RPC. John Gerstle, yeah anyway.

John Gerstle, You what else is going to go there.

John Gerstle, And it's.

John Gerstle, I don't know what else would fit.

I mean I. I would like less density, right? But if that's what the neighborhood already is, is very similar to that, then it makes it really hard for me to say that we need larger lots and the different sizes. I guess the only thing that I have that's adverse that I would put publicly out there is that if we have a developer comes in, it says, well, I want to put high density in here. My answer would be flat out no. Yeah, so this looks more like medium density to me, but I'm not an expert.

What does 39 bring it to? What density is 39?

Well, it's not the 39. It would bring it to, so the maximum in the whole subdivision was allowed for 400, which means that they have developed 384. So that would leave as many as 16 left. On this, if we were to do the maximum density size, you'd probably get a little over 20. but you wouldn't get 39. And my concern on that is you already said you can go higher density somewhere else because this is not going to be lots. So you've traded away some of that to begin with. I think somewhere in between this, if 39 is your minimum, I don't know how that works well for the city.

And it might not now, right? It might be better to revisit this in five years and let it sit like it. We might not be there yet. But if I look at the pros and cons, I think that if I'm in this neighborhood, rather than having the empty build, I really like this plan. But I feel like you also have to deal with the residents who are gonna hear additional density and that's gonna put pressure on you guys, which isn't gonna be fun without understanding the context or being close to it. But I think those are a lot of the pros and cons. But if I was living in any of these houses next to it, I think I really like this.

I think the mayor's wise in, in making sure that the city's looking at the, at this as an entire neighborhood, you know, obviously the school district owns what they own, but we're looking at an entire thing. And I did look at the, through the development agreement, it's 112 acres. Uh, and it does say a maximum density allowed of 3.56, 3.56 units per acre. Overall density is, is not high, not even medium density. Um, like as far as densities are concerned, if you're starting to get like a townhome development is like, well, 15 apartments are like 20, 25, 30, you know. So 3.5 units per acre is not considered high density in any planning circle. And if they were to get, if they were to amend the development agreement, it went from 400 to 425 on the same acreage, you'd be looking at 3.76 units per acre. So it would bring it up from a 0.5 to a 0.7. So overall, looking at the neighborhood overall densities and open space, I don't think that it's necessarily a huge impact if we're looking at the entire neighborhood.

If I were voting on this, I would lean towards, because this has already been built out with the different density categories that were agreed to in the agreement, I would suggest that this remaining 11 acres has to take the higher rung, which would be 8,000 square feet or more. And we wouldn't allow the lower rungs because those have already been maximized according to the standard that was in the RPC. We already got 3,500. As many as we would allow happened. They're built. As many as the minimal distance was allowed, it happened. So in my mind, we would allow to go over the max, but only at the higher rung of the development that's here.

What would that put them at as far as number of units they could develop on this?

They'd have to go on the street a little bit in the open. Modify a little bit, yeah. Yeah, you'd have to modify the street a little bit and the open space a little bit. But you'd probably lose eight units or so is my guess. Noah's going to figure it out right here and do math in public.

I love it. Well, their smallest lot is 57 units. So I was just looking at about 8,000 lots. I don't know exactly. They'd have to look at it, but they may not even have to change the road, but I don't know how many lots that that'd be up. It would impact the school based off of what they're trying to do, but I'll be up to them to decide.

My guess is they lose eight to 10 lots. Yeah.

Cause I don't know what else is going to go there besides family homes. I tend to agree with, the mayor that yeah we've already given up density and other areas of the development knowing during the process yeah during the process so i i tend to lean more towards so there's making them meet the the yeah and throughout the whole part of the city we have allowed a limited number of 8 000 units

John Gerstle, You know, in exchange for giving up some 5000 square foot units, so my point is to allow more 8000 square foot units is going to be in harmony with this whole area.

So looking at the RPC zone, there's three density categories. The lowest is 3,500 to 5,599, so six. Or 56, I mean. And then it goes 56 to 69, and then it goes seven and above. But if you guys wanted the eight.

Maybe the 8,000 is from Stillwater, which is a state builder.

The eight is our three zone. So this one, the larger rung is 7,000 and above.

Even if they were at least 7,000, so it's the largest rung in this one. Yeah. That would make more sense to me.

John Gerstle, If, in order to get the unit count that makes us make sense, and we do have a little bit of flexibility in the open space we don't want to take up a ton of that, but if the plan modified a little bit to reduce a little bit of that open space or you open.

John Gerstle, Something along those lines, I think if this were treated again. There's open space a lot of other places. So I think the overall open space still works. If we were to treat this as a PRD, I think it would be a 20%. You're at 26%. So you could lose 6% and still fit other guidelines that we kind of have ruled as standard.

Well, it's more of, I think it's less about hitting a guideline and less more about making it something appealing to the neighbors and to, to what you guys want to do so that you're providing something nice. You know, that's.

I would, I would suggest you go back and see what, how many you can get with the idea of 7,000 square foot lots or more.

Yeah. I would be, I'd be interested in looking at that. Yeah.

So in terms of process, um, Are you wanting to see before we push this to see a new plan? Maybe at the next meeting with 7,000-foot lots, are you saying, hey, if a plan similar to this works, but the minimum lot size is 7,000 feet, we think we would be agreeable to that? And obviously, there's a lot of things that we don't know yet as you try to do this, right?

In our process, just to be clear, We only allow for one pre-application process. So you're here now.

We're kind of making up stuff anyways. We're not even applying.

The feedback is really that I think what I'm hearing consensus is we would allow a 7,000 square foot lots and higher, which would be the higher rung for this already development agreement. We would certainly consider how many that adds to it. Maybe what would be easiest for the school district is to advertise the city sees this as 7,000 square foot lots and higher with a 20% minimum green space. See what they come back with. I mean, put it on the buyer at that point, because maybe they can look at road configurations or something that makes more sense to them. I don't know that we would have, you know, we wouldn't entertain this again until we saw an application. And that probably comes from the new person. But I guess the feedback that I'm gathering here is we're looking at the higher end of this type, not two levels.

So 7,000 and above, 20% open space. HAB-Jacques Juilland- I will probably draw another plan and just send it to you guys to look at to see if there's something else that you hate.

HAB-Jacques Juilland- If anybody has a big issue.

HAB-Jacques Juilland- It doesn't. It does help like on loan tree when I included the plan that you guys liked. I think it helps guide people in the right direction, but maybe somebody has a better idea than we have. So yeah, that makes sense. HAB-Jacques Juilland- Okay, and then depending on what the unit count comes back. I will let you know whether we're going to pursue it or whether we'll pulled off on it. So I appreciate you guys looking at it and taking some time in an unusual process.

It is certainly an unusual work. Did I hear you say that if you don't switch to it, it sits for five years?

I'm making up five years. But it sits. It sits when the value for the 16 lots can be more or maybe at a future date when you guys are open to considering some more density, right? Like there's no magic to that data. I just don't know what that is. Okay. Yeah.

And, and to be fair, Graham, that's not, that's probably not your call. It's the school district.

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the representative on the real estate. Yeah. Yeah. Well, those are the conversations that we've had with the board.

Yeah. Well, I think, I think we definitely would like to see it develop and not sit. I think, I think that that's the way that I feel, but we, we, I, we just ran through an election, so I'm pretty in tune with what the constituency wants in the area. and high density is a big deal. Totally good. And, and I get, this is not high density. That was good to have that clarified, but that, that is the community. Not everybody's going to understand that. Right. You know, so it's, it's weighing out what the constituents want and what they're entrusting us to make a decision. But I think all of us here probably don't want it to sit for five years for sure. If that's the conversation you're having. So, but, uh, well,

I would push back on that one thought that there's a lot of land in the city that's not going to be developed in the next five years. So it wouldn't be the only parcel. That's true.

And we have a lot of stuff coming. Already entitled that hasn't even started yet. That's high density. That's not a huge proposal. Hundreds and hundreds. It's not even started.

So it's not whether, you know, there's going to be parcels somewhere in the city, whether it's this one or others that sit undeveloped.

Yeah, the only push, I think, for this to happen sooner would be the neighbors down there dealing with the build, but it's not a big deal.

Okay.

Awesome. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's move on to the next item, which would be item D2, is recommendation from the Planning Commission to amend the Syracuse Municipal Code, section 8.38. And 10.20.140 pertaining to final plat approval.

Noah, give us an overview here. Yes. The state passed a law that says they're trying to expedite the creation of lots for the affordable housing crisis. And so they passed a law that said I think it was December of last year. As of that date, cities are not allowed to take run of the mill subdivisions to planning commission or city council for a final plat. We deal with the subdivisions all the time. It is our practice to take a final plat to planning commission. So we are in violation of the state law. And so to come into compliance with said law, we need to make an amendment. So that's what this is about. So this would, instead of a planning commission, this would put the final plat burden on staff, a team of staff, rather. It's the city engineer, city planner, and fire marshal. So between those three, they'll review it. In all reality, most of the action on a subdivision happens at preliminary plat. There's public hearing. And between preliminary plat and final plat, very little usually changes on the subdivision. It's more about refining things and getting it ready to be recorded to county with the final plat.

And the planning commission is probably reviewing the notes from the development review committee anyway on the final plat. Yes. Brett KenCairn, Is all they're doing.

So I think that the curious part here is that we still have the right to have a public hearing and it's necessary by law, which I agree with. Brett KenCairn, And it's already going to be reviewed by the Planning Commission. I think that the question I have is Brett KenCairn, Do we have the right to say a If staff, if internally, this is fundamentally a whole different plan, you can reject it because so many times you get almost the same thing. And that does seem like a wasted step when we go back to another meeting to say, yep, looks the same to me. I'm okay. I get that. That makes sense. But we did have one, at least one particular one that stands out in my mind and has forever. where somebody came in with something that was night and day, not even the same number of units, not the same street layout. At that point, I think there has to be some protection for cities to say, well, this requires a new review because this is not at all the same.

No, I mean, the zoning approval is when you give them the density.

Yeah.

You know, they're entitled to the zoning, which will have a maximum units per acre. And it will also have a minimal lot size. So we control density in two ways since they're zoning. They can't exceed the allowed zoning. And if they, between preliminary and final, they take a left turn somewhere, like, no. And we're still protected. Yeah, you have protections. They can't just go do something else. If they might see through their site investigation or study, they might need to shift some lot lines or maybe a road kind of gets reconfigured to miss something. But from my experience, there's very little change between preliminary and final.

99% of the time, that's true. I'm just thinking of the Jackson Court incident where the guy came back. It was like had some cross multiple ways out of the subdivision. He came back with a one entry, circle loop inside it and added like eight units had never been seen by anybody. And he said, no, it's the same zone, right? And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. And we had endless fights about what constitutes a secondary access for emergency use. But the point is the roads laid out different and it did fundamentally change what was approved. In that case, I believe it should have had to start the process over. In the case of what Noah's saying, maybe you have to move the road over a little bit. Maybe you shift some of the side yards, whatever. That's not a change. I mean, that's compliance with what staff has drawn up. 99% of the time, that's the case. But I do worry about that one example. If that were to come forward today, I would expect it to go back

Yeah, they can't. They can't make any serious changes between preliminary and final.

Okay. Then I think this is one that we don't have much choice on, Council. Does anybody feel any different? All right. So I'm going to go ahead and move this forward to the consent agenda for our next business meeting. And let's move on to D3, which is recommendation from the Planning Commission to amend Syracuse Municipal Code section D20.70. pertaining to zoning revision. Noah.

Yes. So the idea of having a zoning that reverts back to a previous zoning or a sunset or something like that, it's not a new concept. Some cities do that. The attached is some proposed language that would do that. Planning Commission reviewed it. they're forwarding a recommendation for approval. This would give two years after approval. So it's an expiration. If they don't, there is some technicalities there where state law requires that if a city changes their zoning, there has to be public hearing. Uh, so technically we'd be changing the zoning and if it expires in a reverse back, we have to hold another public hearing, but it, it will trigger the process that's already stated in that same section. It's just up higher. So we put a reference into that other section of how we initiate a zone change.

So, so two years, this came forward because I talked to some other mayors that were, uh, we had talked about a problem about. John Gerstle, zoning and being entitled for years and years and years, which has been an ongoing theme throughout Davis county. John Gerstle, And apparently half the city's already do this, some of them are even 18 months or even one city I heard of, as you have 12 months to initiate at least filing for a permit or you lose your zoning. I don't know if it has to be 12 months. I'm not saying it needs to be two years or 18 months, but it made sense to me because we have at least one subdivision that waited eight years to file for a permit. And that was on our books as in perpetuity, we have changed a zone where it could change hands, it could change ideas. My thinking and the logic here is if it expires within a couple of years, you have to be serious about coming to, you're not entitling this to sell. And that's where I think that this motivated other cities to the south. They said, we had people coming in trying to entitle a more dense lot so that I could sell it higher with no intention to actually develop it. Well, that burdens the city because now I've obligated certain numbers to And we have no idea what i'm looking at, so it made sense to me to just have an expiration on this and it's been done throughout several cities in the county so and I don't know how many utah but it's a concept that made sense, so what do you think.

Karen Hollweg, It gets a good idea to make some amendments to that language, so that we can safeguard against squatters or whatever. Karen Hollweg, You know that we are aware of projects they don't pop up in 10 years and just to help guide our growth, because we have a plan.

Hal Hallstein, that's a good point, and I would add to it that you're asking future city council's to make a decision. seeing something next to a vacant land and having no idea because you weren't here then that something was already entitled to be much more dense next to it. So it's got the idea that if we're not seeing the whole picture.

And I don't mind reducing it down to two years because then I get that one year extra also. I mean, we're back to three years. Anyway, I wouldn't mind going back to one year with the one year limit, the one year extension.

I like the one year with a year extension because they have to act. If they just refuse to do anything, we're safer. That's what I'm thinking. But you tell me.

I'd probably go somewhere. I'd probably go closer to 18 months and then a one year extension.

I think it's three now plus the one year extension. It's four.

We don't have anything. We have nothing. They're in perpetuity right now.

The other cities that you've looked at, are they at two years or what are they?

Well, like I said, there's one I know of that's 12 months. There's a couple that are 18 months. There's a couple that are two years. And there's others like us that have nothing. And what the other mayors mentioned was, if we have nothing, this is a good point, because if we have nothing, then they are shopping something that they entitled with the intent to make money on the entitlement process. But you have no idea what you're buying as a council because the next guy comes in and says, well, it was entitled as a PRD. So it could be anything I could imagine because site plans are not set in stone with entitlement. They still could come back with a new plan.

Is the extension process prohibitive or is it a pain in the butt?

And the order just says a written request may be submitted the city council prior to expiration of the result for an extension of up to one year. Okay. So the city council has such an extension where good cause can be shown. Uh, I wouldn't go much under 12 months, which is because we do require, depending on where the project is, sometimes they have to do like well-in delineation and they have to do, um, groundwater monitoring and geotechnical studies, wellness studies, stuff like that. It just takes time.

But they're active on it, right? They could show process that they're actually...

If they requested an extension. But I don't know if you guys want to be bombarded by extension requests.

I'm just worried that after a couple of years, if they haven't touched it or done anything. I'm okay if they're actually in the process. I don't worry about that up to two years, but if they're not, if they've done nothing.

That's why I say do like 18 months with the one-year extension. And then when they come and ask for a one-year extension, then we can review and see where they're at and what they're actually doing, if anything.

What does substantial progress mean to you?

They did some stuff. It's what Noah says it is.

Whenever we interpret it to be at the time of the extension.

Do you have to specify? That would be a good idea.

Well, we did discuss this and debate it. It was three years, and it did say to get a building permit, which is a higher bar to clear, because if you're getting a building permit, you've not only recorded you've not only done the studies, but you've also built some roads and infrastructure and you're ready to build something. So this is a substantial progress towards the intended project as presented to city council at time of approval. So if they came in and sold you on something, we want them to actually do that and not something else.

But using a more vague term of substantial progress, PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Progress gives city council more leeway in determining whether or not to grab the extension or if we tie a metric to it then if that metric were automatically obligated to offer the extension.

Or automatically obligated to turn it down because they didn't meet that. I think that most city councils, even though the shifting goes around about people's opinions, you want people to progress and do something. I think they just need to come in and say, look, hey, we did this study, we did this application, or we show you that they're still active on the property. The ones I have a problem with are the people who have done nothing for years. They just entitled the property and sat on it because then we're all making decisions on who knows what.

And we have a few of those. And just as a clarification, we couldn't go after those ones that have already done it. Right. Because they've already been entitled. They're through the door. It'd be like pulling the rug out from underneath them.

So there's a date there. We can't put a clause in there that says anything that's been done, you now are in the two-year time clock. If we said two years, you're expired. You were there, now you've got two years or you're expired and you go back to the original. That's an interesting question.

You started their clock today. I think we could. You couldn't retroactively run their clock. You could start a forward year in the same boat as everybody else. You could do that. And Brett's right, substantial is a very vague term. It would have to be determined on the facts of each and every application. Who decides that?

We do.

It would be the city council.

You do, Brett.

You're the decider.

We trust you. In other words, it's language where attorneys make their money.

i mean that's true that's true i mean if there's a if there's somebody who's developing property and they say well we have taken substantial progress with this and the city you're telling me no that's a fight yeah yeah i don't think this is meant to be a fight this is meant to be a prod to say you have to actually do something there are some properties in the city that have

Like Noah said, there are a couple that have sat there for years and years. And what's really sad is we get other inquiries from people and say, oh, could I do something with this property or do something different? And somebody's just sitting on it because they're waiting for the market to give them a better sale price. That's hard on the city because you don't know what you're actually going to get.

We have done, I think, at least one where we did have a time frame, but it was by agreement out of Google.

That's a good point. If you have a development agreement, you can put... You can put time blocks. Not all rezones have development agreement. I know a lot of cities are actually going towards everything they do is a development agreement. That's true. That would be bigger than just the amendment. This would be kind of reworking in the way our zoning works.

That is true. There are a lot of cities who, because of the changes the states made... in order to have more authority because where the state took away authority, they've now said every zone has to have a redevelopment agreement so that they can put those things back in that they lost. I don't like the idea because it's like we're just playing games with the ecosystem.

Yeah, as far as the timeframe, this ordinance would just make it automatic. It would make it automatic, yeah.

And I like that because it seems to be working for other cities, but what it would do is it would trigger the reversion process back to the virus. We did look at it, I looked at a couple that said it just automatically happens and there's no point about no you have to have. Public hearings to change itself, so this would trigger that process to start the reversion so do we think we need to change the word substantial to more defined or. Here's my thoughts, Paul. If you'll think of the hot triangle, we built bars into there. You've got to do this by this date, and this by this date, and you've got to do this by this date. When we're talking about a specific development, it's much easier to establish those bars and to try to find reasonable times to accomplish those. Where we're looking at a citywide ordinance, and we don't know what the project's going to be three years that's going to be presented to us, it gets very hard to define objective criteria that would that would constitute what is substantial so i'm not fond of the word it's extremely vague it will probably result in a fight or two but i don't know how else to do it typically in those spikes does that not usually typically fall back to the default of the city that's been my experience the city council government usually the government wins those fights the city council gets great discretion huge amounts of discretion from the courts it's not perfect and if somebody has done next to nothing you're not going to have a fight if someone has done 30 percent of what they think is substantial and we say no that's only half of substantial that's where you'll get your fight but uh John Gerstle, The ones that we're going to actually revert back without giving them a. John Gerstle, Once I just didn't do anything at all or right next to nothing.

John Gerstle, It seems to me the bigger risk, maybe if a Council beats applicants differently like they hold one applicant right to a high level of substantial our next step comes in that's a low level. That seems like it would be more.

And that's where consistency comes into play. You can say, well, you have shown progress and we consider that adequate. It's when you say, well, you showed a lot of progress, but you not so much. So I'm throwing you out. I think as long as the council's not punitive and they're just like proactive, like, hey, we're trying to say you need to keep going or you lose your

status yeah for sure another thing i'll add too do we take the word substantial out well then you have to define it there's utah cases i don't know whether we put that in there or not but i think what we do is if someone comes in and asks for the one year so if you decide on a one-year extension is the right amount they come in and ask for that and you say okay oh, we really don't know that you're substantial, but I'll tell you what, we'll give you the year if you'll do this and this and this. Then the next time around, we have objective bars that they have to meet. Yeah, substantial isn't the best choice, and I don't know what is, but it's better than nothing, and I think it solves most of the problems.

It gives you the chance to talk about it again, which I think is the right thing. It means that they can't just ignore it.

I was going to add, and I think you guys already know this, but the city council is in charge of its own zoning map too. So as long as it's not considered to be a spot zone where we're kind of picking on one specific landowner that everybody else enjoys the same zoning, city has control over their own zoning map. We, as a practice, we always... Generally wait until somebody applies to change the zoning on the property that they're interested in buying work controls. But the city could actually just change their zoning map to whatever we wanted it to be based off of our goals and our vision for a city. But so like if we if there's a unless we had a development agreement that was most of these projects are but if there would say there was a project that stalled. And it was just a general old, you know, R2, no development agreement, what we call a buy-right zone. So you can just go and rezone it back to A1 if we wanted to. I don't see any problem with that. It's just sometimes we forget because we always wait until somebody applies, but the city's in charge of our own zoning.

There is one city that says that if their process, as it was explained to me, If you don't take action within 18 months, it reverts to A1. I thought, well, that's kind of weird. Why do you want an A1? Because it's the zone that you can do the very least in. It's pretty common.

It's like the base.

It's like what grants you the least amount of rights. I don't know if I like the idea. I'm just telling you that's one way they addressed it.

But we're having it revert this stage. Which I prefer. Even with the vagary of substantial, I'd be okay with this with an 18 month initial timeframe and up to a one year extension.

And I think the other thing you talked about Only if you've got agreement on this is that existing properties would begin. Oh, man.

I think we need to add some. All right. So I've seen general consensus for that. We'll move this to the business meeting. It won't be on consent because we're going to clear up some of this. But we'll move this to the business meeting.

Can I say just one more thing on that, too? Yeah. HAB-Jacques Juilland, It'll trigger a process to revert it to what the previous zoning is but since the city's in charge of the zoning. If you guys were debating it as properly noticed, you could change it to a one or whatever others wanted to at that time. Once it's open. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Sure.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, Good. Do we have, do we need language in there that says that make HAB-Jacques Juilland, So already in case you already have that authority.

Okay, good.

I don't feel like I have that authority, but thank you.

All right. We're going to move on to D4. Now this is an interesting one. So, and I'm going to ask you to call up a map while we talk about this. So we have this EDA, which is one of our oldest economic development zones in the city. This is due to expire in 2028. And we've looked at it. It's mostly built out at this point in time. Since it's mostly built out, we tried to brainstorm the different things that we could possibly do with the money that we will gather within the next couple of years. And keep in mind, the option is we could always close this at any time, but it will close in three years. we'd kind of probably like to close a little early, but that means that we need to decide what we're gonna do with what it is. So here's some of the ideas. Now, I want you to keep an open mind that one of the things that comes here is because of the money this has still got to generate, we probably can do multiple. So the price point of these, we're not limited to one thing. The first and most obvious would be to put a trail to connect the area between where the school is and the economic zone is. I'm not sure if this is really that important because they are very different land uses. But on the other hand, almost everything else we do would cut the cost of doing that down to almost nothing and probably make it really easy. So if we do any work in that area, putting a trail between the power corridor and and that crosses that, it's probably going to be a minimal cost. It's the power corridor? The power company. So we'd have to have permission. We don't necessarily have permission, but we assume that we could get it because it would just be a walking trail connection.

If I could add, like, however you decide you want to spend the money, the baseline is it should support the purpose of the project area, which economic development area is for jobs. And so the justification for a trail would be there's people who live in the houses and they might work over there and they might want to walk safely over there because there is no sidewalk on the south side of 193.

So it could be a safety issue and it could be easy to justify. And I will say this, some of the ideas that came up we couldn't justify so they're not in the packet. So that was one of the criteria and I'm glad Noah brought it to the table. If you'll scroll up to the next one. This one is the idea is this intersection has been a little bit tight and it's probably going to get even more use once the business area to the west starts to develop. So the idea would you put a small roundabout and this would not be a large one. Think more like one thousand and one. Robert V Jones, 2700 then like something like one of the bigger ones that we do, but what it does is it helps the traffic flow a little better. Robert V Jones, We. Robert looked at this and designed it on the concept that we don't want to take any land from any of the owners if we can help it. So it would be minimally invasive. It's probably one of the higher cost items of the ideas, but it's probably more significant to developing business access and supporting these businesses that we have there. So that's one option. Let's scroll up to the next one. What's this? Oh, so this option is US Cold Storage has planned expansion of their warehouse. That lot that is a pile of dirt today has always been planned, and they've even told us that they are going to do this. But they haven't acted. The thought is, Because it will face a major road, we could incentivize them doing something sooner if we put out that we would help that facade be a better facade than just the side of a warehouse, because traditionally they have been a very uninteresting building. And this is a part of a main drag between our city and another one. So that's one idea. I'll just tell you that they will build eventually. And it will be a big vacant wall. And I keep looking at it as we could possibly get grant money because there are grants for murals. And that would be a separate fund. That wouldn't be this fund. But there's another way to achieve making that interesting. So let's go up to the next one. This is based on something that we've done in this space before. So the other buildings, city council voted to incentivize, meaning they would subsidize some of the rent to help those get leased sooner. The fact of the matter is that right after we agreed to incentivize them, they all leased without the incentive. So I'm not sure it's necessary, but it is an option that would be legal is to help fill up these buildings faster. So it didn't prove necessary in the original three buildings that were there, but it is part of something that we've done in the past. Let's move up to the next one. This is a really interesting one because we have some issues here with this is the idea is that we would add a parking lot to SAA because they struggle when they have big events out at the amphitheater and they even struggle to park their faculty. And certainly when they have parent nights or events, they can't park everybody. that means that that pushes parking out onto the street or into the neighborhood. And that becomes kind of a conflict. Here's one of the interesting things. I've already approached the director of SAA, and we're having a conversation that if the city were to do this, would there be some other things the city might be able to get back than the city needs. It's not a real direct trade. We would be doing this for the purpose of helping business, which is parking more people means these businesses are more viable. But the side effect, it has a lot of value to it too. So we got to keep that open. And it'll improve access to the trail too. It will. This will almost automatically give us trail access. So, all right. So that's the last one. So council, we can actually do almost all of them. There's one more, sorry.

I missed a slide and it was posted to the packet folder. Whether or not you want to allow it, it's on topic. There's another option, a sixth thing, which would be a road overlay on the eastern roads. And so that's an option. You can always invest in infrastructure. And those roads are about a decade old. And so you could extend the life of the pavement by doing like an overlay. And Robert says that would be about $600,000 for that. Sorry, I forgot that one.

Well, I saw the next item. I'm like, I thought there was one more.

Yeah.

John Gerstle, There is alright so Council, which of these options, do you think. John Gerstle, Are your first choices your second choices because they're probably going to be able to do most of them, but what are your thoughts.

I like the road over way. John Gerstle, Okay, that a lot, especially with a long conversation about roads, the expense of them to save that money, I think I like that a lot, and I like the parking lot a lot.

The only one that i'm not a fan of is number four. HAB-Jacques Juilland, That's the incentivizing where we didn't do it in the past. HAB-Jacques Juilland, I agree. I just HAB-Jacques Juilland, I actually agree with you. I feel it gives that whoever owns those a little bit of an unfair advantage in the marketplace and has us. HAB-Jacques Juilland, A little bit picking favorites, but most of the other ones. It sounds like we could probably afford and I think they're good ideas.

The other one that I would put as a low priority is the Cold Story. Because it is their building. And I think that there's a good chance that we could fund something interesting another way. And then we would get that too. We just don't have to take it out of this fund.

Yeah, we can't park on the side of a building.

Yeah.

You can't?

I like the parking.

So, I mean, I think the first priority for me is the roundabout, and it eats up a good chunk of it.

But the others, we may be able to fit in there anyway.

So...

We'll just have to start that roundabout project. We're about to get back into school.

Yeah, it'll probably be the next summer. I don't know what we want. No. It would be planned. The idea here is if we settle on some things, then we can start putting this into a process where over the course of the next year, we put packets together, we bid some things out, and then probably is the next build season because we still, so it would be built in 2027, which is on time for the 2028 expiration. We don't want to not do anything planning-wise in 2026 that would make us past the 2028 deadline.

It's surprising that we're government and we're thinking ahead, but that's what we're doing. It's kind of crazy.

So I don't have to go to the parking lot. Do we foresee any kind of abuse to that parking lot, such as, I don't know, a truck stop? A truck stop. A truck stop.

I think where it's a school, it probably wouldn't happen.

And who would be responsible for maintaining the parking lot?

I think we would turn it over to them to answer. And my guess is we do this if we have some negotiation that we are mutually benefit from the situation. And so I would encourage us to continue to pursue that. I started that conversation and it's going well. What are some of the benefits that you're hoping to get? Well, we already use their facilities in a variety of ways. Like our arts council uses their facility for the junior musical. We pay a rent fee for that, but maybe that would be waived in a mutual amount. in a mutual agreement where we say, look, we help you with this, you help us with that.

We brought in like arts in the park, you know, bands and performers.

I love it. Yeah. Whatever you can get is great.

It also really benefits is that the amphitheater has limited use right now because of the parking. If we get more people there, we probably get more people using our businesses as well. And that would be a significant change.

Yeah. I'm happy to do it without any benefit, actually.

And they don't use their school, obviously, during the summer. And we pay rent at the high school to do a show. So maybe if we, you know, switched locations because of our investment in them, they don't pay or charge us as much or less. Those are fair trade-offs. Yeah, that's a song for second or third.

So yeah, what's your first most... Everything but the wall and the rent. I think we all kind of feel that way.

Is the roundabout something that we would have to address anyway to kind of shore up that... We're anticipating that it's going to be needed, but... That's what I'm saying. We'd end up paying for it somehow and finding funding.

So I think that would be my... And we could try to find funding another way. That's actually something that we could... apply for a third quarter grant or a WFRC grant. But would it come? It's less likely because it's not at a major intersection. It's kind of on our private road. So it would take a lower priority.

So we're not skipping a great funding opportunity with that.

It'd probably take us years to get through one of those other sources because it's off of a main road.

Yeah, and that intersection will start feeding not only the businesses next to the funeral home, but also the medical office that's going to be built. Yeah, the hospital that's planned.

It's anecdotal, but I have been to the businesses on the east side during school drop-off time in the morning. Traffic is backed up all the way to the major, 93, already.

It would help that.

It would help that. Yeah.

The other thing that we could consider, Andrea, and I think would be a good idea, is if we put this on an agenda that said, hey, we're going to pay for 75% or 80% of it, we might be able to get a smaller grant from one of those sources to finish it off, freeing up maybe enough money to do one more project here. Even if we just got a half million, we'd be able to do one more project. So that's a thought. Okay. John Gerstle, You know, if we were saying we're going to do 75% match and they only have to pay 25 it's almost a shoe and we get a third quarter for that.

John Gerstle, So yeah i'm i'm here and I mean we can try it we're going to try to do it all, but i'm hearing roundabout parking lot. John Gerstle, overlay overlay in that order yeah yeah.

Okay.

One, two, three.

All right. So this is not going to a vote. This is, it will eventually when we spend money, but right now we're just going to continue the planning process based on your feedback. Everybody good with that? Yeah. Okay. So let's move on to D5, which would be discussion regarding possible amendments to Syracuse Municipal Code pertaining to drone operation in city limits. This is really exciting. So we've been approached by a group that would like to start doing drone delivery in the city for one of our retailers. So it would be a major support to a retailer. We don't have any ordinances that pertain to drones or this type of service. So we need to create one. This is being done quite a few places. So we're not, but we would be maybe the first in Utah or maybe second or third, who knows. They're proposing to multiple places. It's not done yet, but I mean, the retailer is Walmart. They want to be able to do drone delivery. They will, put it in their parking lot. We asked a lot of questions when they proposed it and they all seem to come back as possibilities. This is not where you're going to get your weekly groceries from. This is things that are like under five pounds type, you know, last, hey, I forgot, I haven't run out of eggs and I need eggs. You know, you could get them in 10 minutes by drone delivery and there would be a fee for that or a few items or something like that.

It's just like a pilot program.

No, they've been doing it in Texas for a couple of years, and they've done it in Tennessee. They showed me a list of some sites. They have not done it in Utah yet, but they are planning to do a few in Utah, and we're one of the selected sites. I think it's a pretty cool idea.

Over-the-counter medications, yes. Controlled substances, no.

How do they control the theft on that?

Are there cameras all around the drone that are taking pictures?

Well, that's interesting you should ask. Here's how it works. When you go to order something, the drone service already has mapped out the entire city using the stuff that's already available government service you'll be able to pick a drop site on your map they'll have two or three places near your on your lot you can say i want it dropped in my backyard you could say i want it dropped at my front door and they will drop it where you tell them and they will you'll obviously know that it's coming within the next 10 minutes and Like your pizza, there'll be a countdown thing. I looked on their app. There's like five minutes to delivery. So you could be there when it drops. There is the question. Eggs, get out there. It'd be fun to go out. They actually lower it on a string. And it's not like it's just dropped.

And then it hangs the dog.

And the drone does not come that far down. But we worried about it being in traffic. It actually flies quite high and only comes down for delivery and landing.

Quite interesting.

Went through all of this. It sounds really solid, actually. Cool. The company that does it is called Wing. Full disclosure, I applied for a job there. I haven't gotten it, but I did that this morning. So this was all separate. I just happened to see that.

I think it's a fantastic opportunity for Syracuse to be on the cutting edge.

I like that. Like you, I want to be one of the first ones. We'll make everybody jealous.

That's kind of our drone expert. Do you have any concerns?

Well, I mean, we went through it, and the primary concern would just be where they were located on the lawn and the noise.

You're not concerned about the Air Force Base?

It makes almost no noise.

...plans anytime that they're going to launch a drone, and it would have to clear through that airspace.

What about when the machines eventually take over? Yeah.

Skynet.

Yeah, Skynet. Wing. Not big enough to pick up small children, so I think we're safe.

Oh, right. So you could probably take one of these drones. I'm just saying.

The phone, you looked it up.

In an emergency, Grady asked a question in an emergency, what does it do? It finds a safe place to land until its owner comes and finds it. But really it's, yeah, it's sit down in a park and wait for Walmart to come pick it up. I'm not one to stand in the way of industry.

Does it have like any safe, like if it dies, does it have like a parachute or something that it deploys or?

Apparently, that's not an issue. They've approved that.

They've had like... The liability's not on us, though.

It is still unable to land. Then they do safety checks each morning. Allegedly. Sure, there's stuff that happens.

I'm just excited. I can just see it in my mind, our imagery, like a winged bison.

We promote it. That's right.

That's right.

I say we expedite this and push it through as fast as we can so they can start because they're really, they're actually anxious that as soon as we could pass an ordinance that allows them to be here, they would.

Great.

Thank you.

A couple of things that I failed to mention and just came up in conversation. They actually do a kind of a see-through fence so that people can't get to the drone, but it makes it almost invisible because you don't see anything. You see through the fence to the parking lot. So they put up and they have a small... shed where they put the drones at night. It just sits in the Walmart parking lot. It's not a big deal. It doesn't take up much space. How many drones will they have? It depends on how popular the service is. They can launch multiple at a time. I think it's going to work.

It's like 100,000 drones.

All right. So we're going to pass that. If nobody has any issues with that, put that on consent.

They're going to be knocking at your door.

Maybe. That still needs to go to planning commission.

Oh, no, they're going to shoot it down.

Oh, all right. All right. Well, let's get it through before our next meeting so we can put it on our next meeting. All right, now, Noah, you're done. Next is item E, request from the Syracuse City Fire Chief, who is here. We're going to talk about ambulances. Now, Council, so that you're up to date, we've talked about this a little bit before, where we have to order pretty early to get fire trucks and ambulances. So this is a repeat of something we've already had to address before your time. So go ahead, Aaron.

Yeah, we're going to. We're going to take you on a little time travel trip here. 88 miles an hour, 1.21 gigawatts. We're going to head back to 2019, 2020, back in the COVID years there. Some industries have never quite recovered, but the lead times are slowly starting to come down. There was times that we were waiting four to five years for apparatus. And so they're slowly recovering ambulances right now are between 12 and 18 months out.

Wow.

That's really the last one we ordered. We didn't wait for almost three years. So, so here we are, we have 2015 ambulance that based upon our fleet assessment, we replace our ambulances every 10 years. Um, several years back, uh, this council had decided to extend a lot of the fleet an extra year. And then we added, um, Just another year on top of that. So this one is a couple years over overdue and we're ready to move forward with an order. What we need to do is place the order now. It would be ready for next fiscal year. So we wouldn't need to spend the money then. The order is in. The price of the ambulance is guaranteed from the time we place the order. So any increases they have throughout the year, which they typically have every year, sometimes a few times a year, where we are contracted in at this rate. So we'll be good to go. Really that's just all I have. If you read the factual summation that I put in there, if you have any questions, let me know. But this is something you guys are in agreeance with. It would go to the next meeting.

As a resolution to be adopted and then we would we're committing to next year purchasing an ambulance. Basically, are we all good with that needs to happen. Yeah. So we'll just have to go that in advance. We're putting that in the budget. All right, let's put that on the next agenda.

Thanks, Aaron. Thanks.

That was a quick trip. PB Harmon Zuckerman, All right, I don't have his discussion and review of proposed ordinance requiring detective headgear when operating he bikes and he scooters on public property. PB Harmon Zuckerman, This was pretty important. Robert, are you taking this winter. Oh, Alex is Alex the chief. Yeah. And I think this is a pretty important one at this point. PB Harmon Zuckerman, Is we're seeing a rash of these vehicles.

Yeah, so the ordinance would allow for enforcement of the state law that was recently adopted that require persons under 21 to wear protective headwear while in our city parks, on our city trails, because now it's defined as the roadway, and the roadway doesn't include our other city properties such as trails, sidewalks, parks.

We can't require them to do it in their backyard, but you know, every evil can evil or, you know, it's their own problem.

Yeah, this is a great, I mean, it's important. Yeah, agree.

Before Brett asks me about the arbitrary fine amounts, we stole those from state law. Those come right out of the state law and we figured it was good enough for them. It's good enough for us.

Do we have liability as a city if someone crashes on city property without wearing a helmet?

except for they're technically not supposed to be in city parks already.

It depends on the reason for the crash. I mean, obviously, there's a broken sidewalk, and it's jutted up, and we know about it, and we don't fix it, and they go over that like they did in Salt Lake City a few years ago. Yes, there could clearly be city liability, even if they were not wearing a helmet. So it's not so much the helmet versus non-helmet. It's the condition of the roadway or the sidewalk or the trail.

I guess I'm trying to understand why we're... Why we need a city code in addition to the state law?

State law only applies to highways, which is back of sidewalk to back of sidewalk.

Okay.

So for trails, parking lots in parks or other public areas, parking lot out here behind this building, state law does not apply. It only applies to highways, which is basically roads and sidewalks. Well, this covers the gap of the other public areas where they might be right.

So do you see a lot of opportunity to enforce that?

Well, yes and no. I think when the law was established this year, there were major issues that cities are facing, and primarily those stem from the e-motorcycles. But we're also seeing a lot of these bikes, these higher-powered bikes that are difficult to determine whether or not they're actually legal on the roadway based on the wattage or the speed that they may travel. So the enforcement of the helmet allows us to address those other issues too, where these bikes that shouldn't be on the roadway are on the roadway, but otherwise we don't identify them. And then certainly there was the safety factor of it. I think most persons would agree it's reasonable that someone in the age of 21 maybe isn't making the best decisions and this law forces them to wear a helmet from a safety perspective. And again, it allows our officers to address these issues when they see them on the trail. And I'm not saying we're taking some heavy-handed approach where these kids are getting a citation right off the bat, right? But it allows us to contact them and address some of those other issues that maybe you're lingering.

So there's no other manner for you to enforce e-bikes not being on a trail other than a helmet?

It would be difficult. You'd have to develop, you would have to have some expert knowledge. Okay, I'm familiar with that bike. I know that it exceeds, it's a class two or class three bicycle.

I would also look at it as just one more tool, one more way that they can, you know, sometimes you need more opportunities to, it's like broken tail light gives me a reason to pull somebody over when they may debate whether they were swerving or not, you know, I don't know.

And I look at it as generational education. When you and I were all growing up, cars had seat belts, or maybe they, some of us are old enough when we didn't even have seat belts. But now 90% of the drivers and the passengers in cars in Utah wear seatbelts. And how many years did it take? It took 20, 25 years to get there. So maybe 10 or 15 years from now, this is no longer something that parents and kids even think about. They just strap on the helmet. And if that's all we get out of it, I think that's a good thing.

Yeah, they can educate those that they talk to and even give them resources where they can get a free helmet. Sure.

I'm old enough that when I first got a bike, I didn't have a helmet. It wasn't a thing. Now it's like, if you get a bike, you have to have a helmet the same day you buy the bike or you're an irresponsible parent for giving your kid a bike without a helmet. So yeah, we're going to learn. And right now we're at that phase where I gave my kid an electric motorcycle and not a helmet because nobody thought about that part of it.

And we're not even talking about electric motorcycles. We're only talking about scooters and bikes.

Yeah, well, it would fall into the electric motorcycle.

Yes, that's a whole different.

Motorcycles, you've got to wear a helmet in it.

That's a whole different answer. It's already cool. We're addressing scooters where, you know, the children ride it.

Gives them reasonable suspicion to make the stop to go, oh, that is a motorcycle and you don't have an endorsement.

My personal guess is within a couple of years, we're going to just call them all motorized vehicles and not worry about which is which. But today, we've got several classifications. I mean, there was a time when certain vehicles had different classifications and rules. Now they're all just vehicles.

And this will not address dogs and pigs riding skateboards. Without a helmet.

But squirrels.

Maybe. All right. Hey, I'm going to move that to, that doesn't need a public hearing, does it? No. Okay. So then I'm going to move that to a consent agenda because I think we all agree. Now we have discussion of real estate purchase contract for city-owned property at 508.

Steve, where are we? All right. So this is the first of the two homes that we have up for sale. We put out for 30 days as as the Council requested. That closed on the 19th of July. Just a little back history you can see in the packet. We bought this home in 2019 for $271,000 with the intent to widen Viper West. We appraised back in April for $344,000.

We received 12 offers.

They were all actually the top tier four or five offers are all pretty close. But the highest and best offer that we deem the best is off of 376,000 minus all the fees and we collect $353,734. The purchaser or the offer came from the LeBaron family. And the council tonight just has to acknowledge with the Utah code that he must determine the sales in the public interest and complies with the laws and ordinances. Hal Hallstein, Also must disclose the purchaser and the purchase price which i've just done the Council meeting and then tonight in the special meeting. Hal Hallstein, you'll have to approve the home for so they're up see so they're up see is attached as all the requirements in there. And if you have any questions, let me know.

No, it's all right. I just want to clarify, this is an individual by itself, right? This is not a corporation. Correct. Because I did receive a few emails of people concerned that we would sell this to a rental corporation, and that's not the case.

I noticed in the REPC, I think if I read it correctly, that one of the commissions is the home has to appraise for the offered amount. Is that going to be a problem since it appraised for $344,000?

I don't think so. I think our realtors here, you can probably speak to as well. But I think when it's a couple months old, they won't have a problem with that. Okay.

Any other questions, counsel? All right. So this will go on our next meeting. Or no, this doesn't. Tonight. Tonight. Yeah. So let's recess from this meeting and open a special business meeting. In our special business meeting, I do need to adopt the agenda. So can I get a motion to adopt the agenda?

Motion to adopt the agenda for a special business meeting.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We need to open a public hearing. This public hearing is regarding authorizing administration to execute real estate purchasing contract for city-owned property at 508 West, 2700 South. I will now declare us in public hearing. Is there anyone here in the room that would like to speak on this issue? Seeing none. Is there anyone online indicating that they would like to speak on the issue? And I see none. So I will close our public hearing. Counsel, do you have any reason for us to discuss this any further? Or can I get a motion to authorize administration to execute the contracting?

I move that we authorize the administration to execute the real estate purchase contract for the city-owned property located at 508 West 2700 South.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the next item on our agenda for the business meeting is to go into closed session. We do have a closed session item. This is when we deal with things that are personnel or... HAB-Jacques Juilland, Legal contracts that we don't need to disclose the public. This one is a personnel issue. So we need HAB-Jacques Juilland, Aaron here and I don't think anybody else so HAB-Jacques Juilland, I don't want to be here. HAB-Jacques Juilland, All right, so now I need a motion to go