County Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone. Thank you for coming out tonight. Uh we are located where it is January 20th, 2026. We are located at the county building on the third floor in the council chambers. It is 6 pm. Uh and we welcome each of you joining with us tonight. Uh we'll have a pledge of allegiance that will be led by our sheriff Paul Whammer. You all please rise. If you would all join me in the pledge of allegiance.

I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

Thank you, Sheriff. Uh, as far as roll call, our county attorney, Scott Bridehead, present. As far as council, we have Councilman Hoffman, Councilman Thomas, Councilman Strongberg, Councilman Hamner, Councilman Wardle is on his way. We have from our county manager's office, uh, Andy, county manager, Andy Welch, excuse me, assistant county manager, Britney Lopez, and, uh, Tracy Shaw, our county clerk. Thank you for being here. We'll come down. Uh, public comment. Is there anybody in the audience by raise of hand that would like to make a comment? Seeing one, three minutes.

Sure. Come on out. Will you make sure that's green, Scott? Let's go. Right. Okay. Y got it.

Uh, good evening, council and staff. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. It's been a while since I've been here, so earlier today, I went back and looked at the January 6 meeting, and it caused me to ponder and maybe make some comments and ask some questions. and hopefully later on I I can get some answers. First, I listened to the discussion regarding the road policy. I think Gelle was making some comments on that and I'm not sure I understand how that works as they try to merge the two. Uh, does the policy only apply to roads on county property? That's one question I have. Is is that how that policy works? Is it only on county property? And the reason I asked that, there was some discussion about sometimes we help public or private property owners with roads. So that leads me to another question. If we do that, what kind of the liabilities that put the county in? And more importantly, at least in my opinion, are those folks charged for any work we do on their private property? Because if you're not going to charge them, I might be able to use you. Anyway, uh does those does that policy also apply to county roads that are quote within the county trail system? Because if it does, I got to tell you, there's a lot of work to be done on those roads to make them safe. And I don't know if that the trail system and and those county roads that are deemed also trails is included in that. So, let's couple of comments and questions that come to my mind as I looked at that. Uh, I want to talk a little bit about the Mid Valley Highway. Uh, Councilman Wle brought that up in his comments and how important that was a discussion and I use that almost every Tuesday morning as I go to Salt Lake, go

down 112, cross sheep plane, pick up Mid Valley, connect with I80. It's pretty nice. I like that. question that comes to my mind as we proceed south and I'm not sure where that's going to come out. I've heard by the detention center, but I don't know if that's right. If that's the case, what happens as the traffic comes back on to 36? Are we just like, oh well, Stockton's going to have to deal through that as they come through your town? Okay. So, what's the long-term plan? Does county's obligation end when it connects back to 36? Okay. Uh there's also a comment and I found this kind of interesting that 75% of the workforce in Tula is commuting to Salt Lake. When I go on Tuesday mornings I think 75% of Salt Lake is coming this way. But I'm not sure. But if you reduce that by 1% you're not going to keep up because Tula County is growing way faster than 1%. Uh just a comment. Okay, this means my three minutes are up, but no base here, so I'm in a hurry. I got to tell you, I went through the the uh budget. It's some muddling to me to get through it. So, I just would like to see a summary version of it. Uh and that said, I've looked through it, see where you're going to tear down the jail, $400,000 cost. What's going to go in that place? What's going to happen there? And do we really need to tear it down? A little tiny one that caught my attention was see where the county is paying budgeting 600 $1600 for lights in over. Why when to county school when we disinccorporated up there the school district took that over. Why aren't they picking that up? Unless you guys have got a contract with them. Thank Thank you for your comment and you're welcome to come back and talk with the manager's office and they can get you the answer.

Okay. Or whoever. Thank you. Okay. That will bring us down to uh recognition or presentations. Presentation for um let's see Danny is Danny. Thank you coming out for tax in lie of taxes. Yeah, good evening. My name is Danny Summers. I'm with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. I'm the regional supervisor for the Central Region out of the Springville office. And uh got uh my local biologist Jason Robinson here with me. He works

I know Jason raises uh the wrong dog, but that's okay. We still do. [laughter]

Glad to have him here with me tonight. Um I'm I'm new in this position but uh it's my understanding and I've been doing this in the other counties is uh every every year we present a payment in le of taxes for properties that the division owns uh in the county and uh the so I have here the check uh for for 2025 um for $336.97 and um just also you know as we as we present this just keep in mind I want to keep in mind how important wildlife is for a lot of our constituents and and people of the state. And um that's definitely true here in Tilla County as well. And and this money is is largely comes through uh permits and and licenses from hunters and anglers. And so um and we have a new uh director. He's been there about a year, but one of his main priorities is is our deer herds. And he's uh so it's been our our priority. And so we've included in here just a a fact sheet on some of the the habitat projects that we've done across the state and the funding that's sent there. And I just wanted to give a brief summary of some of the things that are that are going on and we've done here in Twilla County over in the last year. Um, we our habitat group is is working with feeasants forever on the Fitzgerald WMA on on different food plots for feeasants and trying to get better irrigation on on some of those plots next summer. Uh, and uh, we've also working with federal agencies. We help with fire rehabilit rehabilitation, the big springs fire, and I believe they're going to be seating that next week, but we've got the funding and and are working on helping to rehabilitate that. Um, we've been been doing some shrub seeding and seedling plantings uh to help restore mu deer winter range on some of the prop or areas that have burned over the years and on the

stansberries and on also on the sheep rock mountains and uh working with the BLM on a juniper mastication along uh at Johnson Pass. And then uh for some of our our wildlife groups, uh we've done a lot of collaring of of deer and big horn sheep on the Stanbury and ochres trying to help um understand survival and and what what kills our animals out there so that we can help better manage them. Um with these mild winters, we're looking at at good survival this year over winter. Hopefully we get some water. Hopefully this get a winter here. get some water so that we have plants to grow and water to drink for our animals and and beyond this this year. Definitely would like to see that pattern change. Um so if you have any sway there, I we'd appreciate that. Um and then from our fisheries group, they are working on a Creole survey that was done at Settlement Canyon. Um they'll be putting some information together from that and if there's what we information we learn from that if there's ways to change or if the countyy's interested in improvements there we'd be happy to work with you on on ways we can help better manage fishing there. And also one of our our fisheries biologist hiked some cutthroat trout into South Willow Lake helped plant that this last year as well. So, that's just a quick summary of some of the things we do um and we've done in this area and so appreciate the opportunity to just work with you guys and and here to present this check. So,

just a couple questions. Any questions from the council? Would you put some fences up there? That's a complicated issue and it's something that we we Have you uh placed any wildlife in Tula County like uh horn sheep or anything like that? I'm not aware of any transplants other than maybe some wild turkeys. Yeah, we we've removed some wild turkeys from the Wasuch front out here. So,

okay. And then I have a pin maybe I'll share with you that we're up uh Black Rock and there's a guzzler up there, but the we must had heavy rain. It's all mudded over. So, uh, if that's helpful, I'm happy to share that. Absolutely. Yeah. Our maintenance crew help. Do you know which properties this check is for? Includes that down there by Vernon Fitzgerald WMA. Yeah. What other areas? I think uh Tempy Spring. Okay. I would have to look included in that. Okay.

Yeah, I could look for sure, but I think those are the properties we have. Just curious which ones they were. Thanks. Thank you, Danny. Appreciate you. You have it. Good seeing you again. Maybe I'll see you on the trail sometime or Thank you both for being here. Bring us down to um 5B. as Tula County grant updates. LSI Teneresa.

Okay, perfect. Hi. Um, my name is Tanisha Wright. I am a senior engagement lead with LSI and I manage the grant writing contract that Tilla County has with um, LSI. So really excited to be with you guys here today and give you an overview of what we've been working on. Is it helpful if I stand by this microphone?

Okay. I was like I realize I'm not by the green light. Um uh give you a little bit of an overview of what we've been working on the past year and kind of our expectations moving into the new year. So um the first just a broad overview. The purpose of our contract with Tula County is to assess progress, identify opportunities, and align future strategy to ensure we provide the highest level of service to the county um in regards of grants and funding. So, as you can see here, this was our grant strategy overview for the year. So, at the beginning of every year, we have a strategy session with the departments within the county and we talk through um things that have worked, things that don't work, and what budget priorities um are most important for them. Um from that meeting, I work with uh Britney mostly and Michelle to combine the council's priorities as long as budgeted priorities with the priorities we talked about in that meeting to come up with these key focus areas. So for this past year, we had these five key focus areas to work on as we looked for grant opportunities, which will take us into this yeartoday grant overview. Now, this is really small because there is a lot on there, but based on those five categories, we meet with um county members every month and we talk through proposed opportunities that we found based on these key focus areas. So from those key focus areas, we applied for 15 grants so far this year. Um and all of those in varying um industries. So you have a lot of outdoor wreck grants, you have um some infrastructure grants as well as like record grants. So it spans a lot of different areas that we've covered. Um among all of these grants, um you can go to the next one, Britney.

So, total dollars awarded year-to- date so far is about a half a million dollar. Total dollars pending is about $30 million and total pursued was around $31 million. So, as you can see, there's still a lot of money that we haven't been awarded or received confirmation of whether we've been awarded or not this year. Um, a lot of that falls into the federal climate. As you guys know, it's been kind of rocky the past year. So, there's a lot of federal agencies trying to decide how they want to allocate their funds, what changes they're going to be making, and how that structurally will work with some of the grants we applied for. Um, a lot of the grants too have just been applied for in the past six months, and most of these grants take about 3 to six months to get awarded. So, it's just a waiting game at that point. But that's why you see a lot of that money still sitting there waiting to be awarded. So then the next thing, so we meet at the end of every year and this is something that Britney and I and Michelle and I did this year to talk through some of the challenges and opportunities that we saw um over the past year. The first one being communication. So we want to make sure that we are in a constant feedback cycle of communication on what's working well and what needs to be adjusted to make sure that you guys are getting the most out of the contract that you have with us. So, um, some of the things that we've put in place moving forward into this next year is we're having monthly one-on- ones with just the point of contacts for the contract. So, I meet with Britney and Michelle every month as well as our pipeline meetings that we meet with all of the departments and then on a weekly basis I will be sending updates to them to give them feedback on grants that we're working on um the status of those grants and any other information on awards moving forward. Um

the next one is post award support. So with that um we we help a lot in the area of research and grant writing um and we do a lot of post-awward performance work as well. So that's something that we've talked about how to strategically add that in and what makes the most sense um with grants that have been awarded whether that's been written by us or that you guys have applied for yourselves. Um the next one is the federal grant climate. So, as I mentioned, it's been a lot of up and down. Um, but one thing that we're really proud of this contract year is the proactive approach that we've been able to partner with you guys on to continue to apply for grants. So, with twothirds less funding, we still applied for more grants than we applied for in the previous year. So, there was a lot of adjustments that we made to make sure that we were still being proactive in making sure there was funding that we could go after. Um, and we're starting to see more opportunities come out on the federal level, which is great, and we're really excited to see more of those keep coming down the pipeline. And then lastly, just um, same back to that communication, a process continuation, looking forward to moving into a strategy session this coming year and seeing what the priorities are moving forward. And that is all I have for you guys. And we'll welcome any questions.

Council, any questions? No. So with twothirds less funding than from the federal government, is any of that money is it just completely stopped or are they shifting any of that to the states? Do you know or other places? Or is it just because we keep hearing from NATO that they're going to push a lot of these responsibilities down to the local governments? Yeah. [snorts] And so I don't know if that means it's coming with funding or not when we hear those kinds of things or not.

Yeah. No, that's a great question. So from the twothirds funding that we saw less of that was essentially just the pause on all the programs and we don't know exactly like where they're planning to funnel that but I can make a note of that and go back with my team and make sure that I get an answer to you on what they're seeing because we do like a weekly federal update internally so I can get that and then pass that along to you as far as how that funnels down into the states. But as far as I know, a lot of the federal programs that we've worked on, they're being combined and then they're changing names to use the funding in a different way.

The other thing, can you help us get funding for daycare centers? Those are pretty hot right now. Oh my gosh. I mean, we can [laughter] come across the internet this afternoon. [snorts] Uh the I've seen on the internet some funding about where the that funding is being directed. Yeah. And it's going to be for the purchase of Greenland. Oh my god. I'm like really?

No, you've been working really hard. Thank you for that. Um obviously we have transportation issues in our county and so we're looking at roads and road repairs and road updates. Um where we can get that. So, I know that you're you've been I've been in on some of your meetings where you've really looked hard for that and trails have been really good. So, congratulations on that. Chair recognizes Councilman

Ward. I think one of the things about the presentation tonight, we first we thank you, your company, Michelle, Britney, and our county team. Uh there's an incredible return on investment when you when you really go after it in grant funding. And I think anytime that we can multiply the taxpayers dollars exponentially, it is absolutely worth it. So we appreciate what what you're doing, what's happening and and I think we've seen the fruits of that over the last few years. So thank you.

Yeah, of course. Thank you. And to echo what you've said, you guys have an incredible team that we've been able to work with. So you're definitely um well equipped here at the county and it's been a pleasure for us to get to work with the team that you guys have. Is there any ones that you that we've done in the past that you see that's not happening this year or that's going away?

So to speak to your infrastructure development grant, two of the grants and those were really high dollar grants that we applied for last year were part of a program called build. Um and that's one that they are moving into a different program. And so we are just waiting on those ones to see if the grants that we applied for will filter over into that same program. But that's one of the large ones infrastructurally. Um that is a year-over-year grant that they've always done that they're kind of trying to figure out where the funding is going to go. They're just renaming the program as of right now, but all of the grants that have been applied for are still on hold until they decide how they want to allocate them. Wonderful. Thank you.

Yeah. Anything from the manager's office?

Um, first off, thanks Tissa. Your team has been great to work with. Um, later in the meeting, you're going to see that we'll have the contract for LSI to be renewed. And I think one thing that's kind of cool to call out is, you know, we're what 20 days into the month and we already have four application, four grant applications out. So, what what's been good about working with LSI over time is that we've been able to hold grants aside that we weren't able to apply for because we didn't have matching funds for. And so, we reallocated our projects differently knowing when those grants were going to come available that we may have uh potential uh grant funding opportunities. So, we already have um some quite a few applications out only being 20 days into the year. So,

okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. [snorts] Uh, that will bring us down to minutes. Oh, I [snorts] Katie, I tried to skip over you and it's water. We don't want to skip over water. Thank you, chair and council members. I'd like to introduce Katie Jacobson. She's with Hansen Allen and Loose. They have been hired by a grantf funded contract to write the water element of our general plan which is required by the legislature last year. So, she will present to you the draft. It will be back before you at your next meeting for adoption. Tonight's just the presentation. Has this gone through planning?

Yes, it has. Okay.

Okay. Um, yeah. I'm Katie Jacobson with Anson Ellen and Loose. Um, the legislature has become pretty waterfocused in the last five years, as you you may have noticed. Um, so a couple years ago they passed two bills that require all counties and some cities to do this water use and preservation element of the general plan. And so this is an opportunity for the county, especially the planning department to really consider water as they do land planning. Um, it's a planning document, not not a prescriptive or permitting document. And uh I think the foundation of it is the state saw that at some some places in government people weren't considering water as they did land planning. So they mandated it for everybody. Uh it's organized into several topic areas that you see here including water resources, agriculture, drinking water and stakeholder coordination. Uh so when we look at water resources, they ask us to look at the effect of permitted development on water demand and infrastructure. And so there they're asking for a water budget, which we'll look at in a second. Uh they asked us to look at the effects on Great Salt Lake and regional conservation goals. So, first for the water budget, what the state would really like is an accounting of all water uses from all users, private or public, across the entire county, supply versus demand from here into all time. And of course, um that wasn't funded uh to do a study of that magnitude. And so, what they mandated for this first year um is to focus on the unincorporated part portions of the county. So specifically public water suppliers in the unincorporated area. Um you don't have that many public water suppliers in the county and so we were able to include all of them whether incorporated or unincorporated. So for example our data when we start looking

at data will include Tilla City, Gransville City and so on. Um but to do this water budget to come up with something to satisfy this requirement, we looked at the difference between supply and demand and the water use for a couple different land use types. Uh so here we we show in the boundaries of the public water systems population in the top line and then retail connections in the bottom line and you can see that it's growing and then we've got our supply and demand over the past few years. So again top line is supply. So how much those water systems report that they are producing out of wells or from surface water or wherever they're getting their water from springs or wells anything. And then the bottom line in red is the demand. And you can see generally it has a little upward trend mostly due to population increasing. We have some high water years. 2020 and 2024 were pretty dry and so those were years that more water was required of the systems. Um and that that kind of that kind of ends our um focus on that. And then to come up with the with the water use per uh by land use type, we relied on a lot of GIS data from the county and state. And so what you're seeing here is land use throughout the county. And then we'll zoom in here on the municipalities uh south of Great Salt Lake. And we can see different land uses including agriculture, urban, uh, and another takeaway is that a third of the county's area is military. And so this plan doesn't have any information about that military water use. We encourage the county to continue to work with military planners to look at that as needed. And then this slide illustrates the the relative difference between urban and agricultural usage. And again we've we've restricted this just to the boundaries of public water systems. Uh

the exact numbers are uh some are calculated so they're not actual for the for the agriculture is is estimated based on GIS. Uh but it al illustrates the difference that agriculture is still a huge driver even within these public water systems and it continues to deserve a big focus. Uh for the rest of this water budget, we looked at the land or the water use by land use type and we looked at agric agriculture and urban. So urban that row is based on the actual amounts reported by each of the agencies. They have to report to the state each year and then the agriculture row is based on calculations. So we took that GIS layer. We have a GIS layer that shows crop type. Um and it is based on field surveys. So they go out and check and see what kind of crops are being grown. And then we looked at the published water requirements for those crops. So it was not the actual amounts reported. Uh for urban, as we saw with the graph where we had some spikes, there's some high water years, but generally it's about one acre foot per acre in urban land use. And then for agriculture, it was about two to two and a half acre feet per acre. So on a per acre basis, urban water usage actually showed a little bit of a decreasing trend. Of course, with the caveat that there are still some years that it can spike up quite high. And the other takeaway here is that if agriculture is to uh convert to urban, then your overall water demand would decrease. However, if you're if you are converting agriculture to urban, uh the indoor water demand for urban land use needs to be high quality treated water or groundwater, spring water. It can't just be surface water or a lower quality water. And so that has to be taken into account as the county grows. Conservation can help sustain what supply you do have. And we'll talk about

that in a little bit. uh we went over agricultural use will remain a big driver and for the agriculture side there are programs through the state to help farmers with efficiency improvements and crop selection strategies could be used if needed um to meet demand in the future. Uh the next we looked at the regional conservation goals. So the state has established some conservation goals for each region and Tilla is part of the Salt Lake region and so that region's goals is 187 gallons per capita per day by 2030. That's the orange dashed line at the top. And then 178 gallons per capita per day by 2040 is the next the green dashed line. And then blue is again our actual water usage reported by your public water systems. And so you can see they are on track to meet those goals and conservation will help in ensure that these trends continue and that they're still trending toward meeting those goals in the future. Potential conservation measures that the county could look at. Um this was one of the interesting things about the element is they required this but you don't have a lot of control over most of the county. So, uh, this is kind of for now focused on the things you do control. So, on county managed lands, you can up update land use regulations. You could reduce lawn and turf in areas where it's not being used for, you know, for play or pets or purposes like that. Increase the efficiency of irrigation systems for properties you do control. Look at any evaporation control if that's happening anywhere that's uh that's losing water. Uh and then the the final item is you could consider water-wise landscaping concepts and that could be for new development uh throughout the county. So there's no ordinance like that currently in the county, but that's something the

county could consider doing. Okay, then we move on to agriculture. So we talked about the volume of water for agriculture. This section of the report was more about protecting agriculture. So they asked us to look at protection areas at efficient efficient irrigation practices and protection of irrigation and canal companies. So we again pulled from that GIS data. So we've got the agricultural protection areas here within the county and you've got conservation easement area up in the northwest corner of the county. We have some mapping of canal and irrigation companies. It's not super comprehensive, but we have put into the report anything that's available. And the way that the county protects those systems where you have control is when developments come in, the applicants are required to work with those companies to make sure their facilities are protected. And then moving on to the drinking water section of the report, we were asked to look at the source and storage capacity of all the public water systems in the whole county. So that's listed in the report and we were asked to look at the benefits of regionalization. And so the way that we've defined regionalization in this report and recommended in the report is just emergency interconnections between public water systems. Those can be helpful to maintain the independence of each system. So we're not talking about consolidating systems, but it can help them back each other up in times where they one might need water from another. And that's already happened with uh Stansbury being able to deliver some water to Ochre Mountain last summer and then Ochre Mountain was able to deliver water back to Stanberry to kind of do a trade. So we recommend that.

That's because they have connectivity, right? Yeah. Yeah. They already had two interconnections set up already that were in place. Yep. Very wise.

Yeah. And then the report also lists a few plans that the county has done in the past for sewer or water planning. uh sewer is not part of this but we listed those in there just to uh bring them to mind that those do have good information about water and sewer needs throughout uh going into the future. And then finally finally the last requirement from the state was on coordination. Uh we sent the plan to all the public water systems and to all the canal and irrigation companies that we had contact information for. We received a few comments back and incorporated those. Um, and that that's the end of what I have. Do you have any questions? Questions, council?

Sure. So, still uh agriculture is using the lion share of the water in Tilla County. Um, yeah, within these with these Yeah, within the public water systems, which is where the most most of it would be. Yeah. And there's there's groundwater studies that show slightly lower numbers for agriculture. So this slide is mostly just meant to illustrate the relative difference, not the exact number, but yeah. Okay. Chair recognized Councilman Hoffman. So I was on a a public lands meeting today and they were talking about bills that they're watching. Several of them are in regards to water that are just happening with um up at um the Capitol. House Bill 155

is I guess one where there's a lot of debate about where they're looking at the state is looking at like controlling the pricing going to tiered pricing or something like that. Have you heard anything about that and how that might impact things? And then the concerns about it, there's there's disagreements on the counties in the c within the counties of whether we ought to support this or not because some people say it's going to the state will take over control over it and then um

it's going to make water a lot more expensive potentially as well. Have you have you heard anything about that and how that could impact this potentially? Yeah, tiered water rates do tend to be one of the the most effective ways to reduce usage. And so when we've worked with uh with clients who have gone to those, the base level is still the same amount or less that less than people are paying now. And that's plenty of water for human health and safety and even a small garden. Uh we recommend looking with GIS capabilities this these days. This is not as hard as it seems, but tying the land use of each user to the acreage of their parcel. And so if they have some acreage and there's some amount that they're allowed to use, they have their own rate structure for their size of parcel. Uh so you can even go to that level where obviously a larger parcel would have more that they're able to use, especially if they've paid in for that by impact fees or some other method. Um, but yeah, it tends to be one of the more effective ways to reduce water usage. So, I think the takeaway is to keep that base level really low priced. So, if somebody is on a budget, they can just elect to have less landscaping or more water efficient landscaping. It can still be nice landscaping, but just use less water and they can still still have the amount of water or they need for that landscaping at a relatively low cost. And then as you get um up into the upper tiers, the costs tend to be exponential. So if you want somebody that really wants to have two acres of grass, they can do that, but it's going to exponential costs as you go up, not not just linear as [clears throat] you go up in more water.

Okay. So if this passes, is that going to impact this study? Are we going to have to make changes to this or potentially?

No, I think this these are at this point this is the first year that this water element has been a part of the requirements. So, I'm not sure if they will modify them as it goes. The the code for this watermel element is really funny because it goes from like the broadest thing like how will this affect the Great Salt Lake down to don't put grass in a park strip. So, it reads like a hodgepodge of people's pet ideas. And so, I'm I'm sure it may have changes as we go. Uh, but the element itself is very general and conceptbased. And so tiered rates is something that you could use to help conserve water. And so that fits within within this element as written. [clears throat]

Hey, Mr. Katie, you did a nice job at planning and zoning last week. And again, it pretty much the same, but the good discussions that uh planning and zoning, that's a good board and they're very they ask good questions and and thanks for coming out and help us understand what's up and what we're up against in the state and Tai is very involved with the that committee. So, thanks Ty. Yeah. But thank you for coming out. Okay. [snorts] Thank you.

Thank you. It will bring us down to our minutes on December 30th, 2025 council me uh meeting minutes and also January 6, 2026 council meeting minutes. Is there any corrections or additions to the minutes? If not, chair to entertain a motion. So move here. A motion for approval on both. Councilman Thomas. Is there a second? Second. Hear a second from Councilman Strungberg. All those in favor say I. I.

All those may oppose say nay. That is adopted. Check registry. Um again that is on our website if anybody would like to look at those. Uh chair entertain a motion on check registry. So moved. A motion. Councilman Hoffman. Is there a second? Second. A second with Councilman Wle. All those in favor say I. I. I. All those may oppose say nay. As adopted. That'll bring us down to number eight on contracts purchase of a man lift 450 AJ. Boom. Wayne Anderton.

And I recognize Councilman Thomas is going to have a comment that it's already in the budget. And that's just a com just a comment before Wayne makes another good presentation. [laughter] There are six items under this number eight contracts. Four of them have been approved in the budget process. We [clears throat] just finished so that we go just want to bring that to the front and I wouldn't be surprised if all six of them were and discussed by it. The other two were kind of it just an observation I want to to share with you. So

I don't know why the hell we're doing it again. So I I guess my question is then is there a proposal in the next couple of meetings to go in and look at that part of our purchasing policy to change it or just put it under the cap or do we want we've been accused of not being transparent by people. Is this transparency? Well, I got an answer for ties. I I like Scott's where we're going to work on it. Come to the damn meetings. How many people do you see here from the public? The answer to to your question, Councilman Wortle, is that we are looking at the purchasing policy and amending that. Thank you,

Wayne. Good evening, council. Wayne Anderson, salt waste director. Uh, as Councilman Thomas did make the comment, these were vetted out through the process in the budget. They are in government contract and they were secured during that process to avoid any potential change in price or potential tariff. And so these uh two pieces of equipment that we have the lift and the front end loader uh are what we have up today. Yeah. If there is there any questions or comments? If not, chair to entertain a motion. So moved. I've looked at them. I'm fine with them. Looking at uh hearing motion Councilman Hoffman. Is there a second?

Second. Hear a second. Councilman Strumberg. All those in favor say I. All those may oppose say nay. Thank you. Thank you Wayne. Right. That was just the vote on the first one because there are two items. Did you make a motion for both of them? Well, he talked about both of them so I thought I did. You want to vote? You want to vote on each? Do you want to separate? Yes. Since they're separate items in the in the agenda, go ahead and make a motion we approve both of Wayne's purchases for the landfill. Hearing a motion and a second for clarification, Mr. Chairman, that would be items A and B, the Volvo loader and lift.

The lift. Yes. Just for the record. All those in favor say I. I. I. All those oppos say nay. As adopted. That'll bring us down to the LSI Grant Writing Services. Britney Lopez, first off, thanks for approving that man lift. We've had two employees stuck in the air on the old one that we have. So, that'll be really good. We'll be more productive. So, good job. Stairway to heaven, right, [laughter]

council. Uh, I've present to you tonight a renewal contract for LSI. This is for uh the for 2026 year. Um, we would be in the point where next year we would have to put this contract out to bid. Um, but we have worked with LSI and they have a list of grants sitting aside waiting for us to apply for and so we'd like to continue uh through 2026 with their services and I really do appreciate Tana coming out tonight to present to you and we can do that more often if you guys would like to know where we are throughout the year as well. Sure. That's always nice. Is there any questions on the new contract? If not, chair to entertain a motion.

Second. Here a motion from Councilman Stroberg, second from Councilman [clears throat] Wardle for approval of the LSI grant writing services for 2026. All those in favor say I. I. All those may oppose say nay. That is adopted. We got you for another year and you got us. Thank you guys. I'm excited about it. Awesome. Uh Soul Source. Uh well, okay. Nathan, you you're Scott Persons. Scott's out sick today. Oh, I thought he was just uh coaching basketball for that. I mean, if you listen to the Hogans, the the coach for Twilla isn't that great. So, [laughter]

and here we go. I can take a dick at him. He's not here. Um, but I'd still say it to his face. Um,

I love [clears throat] talking basketball trash. It's It's my favorite. Anyways, the item before you is a sole source PaloAlto uh support contract. Um Tula County IT is requesting the approval for this contract to enter. It's a three-year one with PaloAlto. Um it is quite a significant upfront cost, but he has budgeted this. It's $684,283, and it was approved in the last year's budget. But by doing so, this does save us about $400,000 by entering this three-year contract uh for them to keep servicing our servers. I believe is our firewall or firewall. Yeah. [snorts]

Council, this is uh these next three are with Scott. Do you want to take each of those individually or do you want to My suggestion would be at least take D because of how much money it is if you want to group the other two, but We can do each one. Do each one. Well, we'll do each one. I like the one where you have down here. It over the years. Yes, it is a a larger portion up front, but we're saving $400,000 in the next three years on this versus paying year by year. Correct. Correct.

So, is there any questions or comments on D uh with Paulo Alto? Is there if not chair to entertain a motion? Make the motion that we approve the contract with Palo Alto and know that it is a sole source. That's a sole source. Correct. Yeah. Second. A motion for Councilman uh Stroberg. Second from Councilman Hoffman. All those in favor say I. I. All those may oppose say nay. That [snorts] is adopted. That will bring us down to E. Soul source support contract. Uh Tula County it. Go ahead.

Yep. So, it wants to enter into a 5-year contract with Cisco for software support. It's going to be paid annually at a cost of $71,332.88. And again, [snorts] by entering into this longerterm contract, we're going to save around $136,000 over that 5-year term instead of doing a year-to-year contract. Wonderful. And I know everybody's looking at the cost of these its but if you don't have that that's how you get um taken over and your websites are taken over and costs are lost there.

So it's the 71,000 per year. Do we have to pay that every year or we just pay it all up front to get the discount? Do you know Nate? It says this contract will be paid annually at a cost of 71,33288. So I assume that it is every year. Correct. Correct. Okay. [snorts] Chair to entertain a motion. So here a motion. Councilman Thomas. Is there a second? Second. Hear a second from Councilman Strumberg. All those in favor source uh support contract.

Just just one comment real quick and and we talk a lot about budget and I don't mean to disrupt the vote, but we just showed a savings of $536,000, a half million dollars. And I want to commend our our IT department, Scott's leadership in that, the management's office, because this has been a consistent [clears throat] process and mode of operation over the last few years. We're seeing these savings over and over. And again, that goes back and benefits the tax dollar and the the citizens tax dollar over time. And that time value of money, you just can't really put it. I mean, you could quantify it, but we're putting a a price there that that is very measurable to our citizens. So,

can I just add one thing to that? It is important for us for cash flow purposes to have enough cash to be able to enter into contracts like this and to have a fund balance because if our fund balance was too low, we wouldn't be doing this. But we're in a position where we could take advantage of some of these discounts. And so, that's why we need to have a decent fund balance so that we can save some money. Quite honestly, savings like this is what Yeah. causes the county not to raise taxes. Absolutely. And because we're looking [clears throat] ahead and working ahead on that. I have a motion in a second. All those in favor on the soul source uh support contract say I.

I. I. All those may oppose say nay. That is adopted. Number F that soul source backup server. Nate,

again, it is requesting uh to purchase a new backup server. Uh the cost is $74,72763. The reason this is before the council tonight because it does fall under the purchasing thresholds is that it is a sole source. Um and so it comes before the council to be approved instead of just going through Andy. um this is a piece of critical, you know, backup like infrastructure that the county needs and so that's why they're requesting it. Thank you. So, uh with that, any other questions or comments from the council? If not, chair to entertain a motion.

Motion to approve the backup server as a sole source. Hearing a motion from Councilman uh Stroberg to approval for the uh soul source as a backup server. Is there a second? I'll second that. Hearing a second from Councilman Hoffman. All those in favor say I. I. All those that may oppose say nay. That is adopted. Thank you. And Nate, you can tell um on these three. Scott, you you hit a home run. That's not basketball. It's baseball. No, that was baseball. Okay. Understand? [snorts]

I wouldn't understand that. Resolution uh 2026-01 amending section 1 uh6 finishing of section 3.11 temporary employment of uh personnel policy manual. Nathan,

thank you chairman. Um so the resolution 2026-01 amends the the personnel policy to give um some really good guidance to our department heads and people who are running departments uh within the county. One of the things that has come to uh Andy's attention and mine as we've kind of been working through this 1099 process over the last few months is the classification of employees or 1099 contractors within the county. And so what we've done is we've added um a definition for a contracted services meaning an independent contractor that is a non-employee individual or business engaged under a services contract to deliver defined services or outcomes. And then we've included a new definition for a temporary county employee meaning a W2 employee a county employee for payroll/tax purposes engaged for a limited duration intermittent or on an on call need. basis. Um, the importance of classifying people correctly as either a 1099 contractor or a W2 employee um has legal ramifications that could fall back on the county if somebody is improperly classified. If somebody is quote unquote hired as a 1099 employee, but then the county treats them like an employee. If that is uh reported uh the state can ask for back taxes as can the IRS and we would be responsible for that. And so what the purpose of this resolution is uh it is to give guidance to help department heads and elected officials who are hiring individuals in their departments. The criteria some of the criteria that that they can use to determine if a 1099 is appropriate or not. Um, so when we talk about 1099, really what we're

discussing is control over schedules, right? And control over work and control over how they perform their duties. If we are hiring an individual as a 1099 contractor, but then mandate that they come in for certain hours, mandate that they do a job in a certain way, mandate that they use, you know, our equipment or our office space. um really there's a bunch of factors that could be that they really aren't a 1099 contractor and they should be classified as a W2. And so we've created this other mechanism for temporary W2 employees so we can be withholding taxes so we can be making the right designation. Um if you look in 3.11-2, right, it goes through the core rule on how to determine the correct type of engagement. And again, when these situations do come up, uh, you know, I would encourage the the hiring manager to talk to HR if they have questions. Uh, Matt Fleigger, our HR director, knows quite a bit about this. If they want to ask me, they're hap, you know, I'm happy to help them work through this process to find the correct classification. Um, we also include an approval and process requirement to help, you know, make sure that HR is involved in the process as the manager as well as the manager. And then we also included do not do this rules um to help give guidance say do not, you know, seek to set uh hours that this individual is working. Do not mandate that they must come to training. We have these rules to help as guidance. Again, this is going in our personnel policy, but it really is to help clarify when a 1099 contractor should be used versus a W2 employee.

Can I add just one one thing to that? One other thing that it does say is is somebody as a department comes in, if they ask for a position and you say no, they can't turn around and then hire somebody as a 1099 or as a contracted service. That's kind of that kind of defeats the whole purpose of that. And so we just want to make sure that that's clear. If you're not approved, we may need a list of all of those contract employees contractors to make sure that they're they were approved. And so we may have to do some more due diligence on that line item just to make sure. But we don't want people end going around a decision of the council to not approve a person and they hire them as kind of as an employee, but as a contractor. So we just want to make sure that's clear and the rules are clear. There are IRS very specific rules that we we looked at that we just have to follow. There's just and so what this is really doing is just making sure that we're consistent with the and that we're all aware of these rules.

Yep. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the council? cleaning up and clarifying those. So, they're going in.

I I actually have gotten feedback on this over the last three days, which shocked me, four days, because it it's a house cleaning item. Former county employee said that this had been a an issue that they had talked about with the commission over the last 20 years. How do we just how do we look at these items and how do we clean it up? I think it's always best when we're looking at practices to use best practices that [snorts] if necessary leave very little ambiguity in the law especially when there are penalties attached. So I appreciate doing this

with that. If uh no other comments chair to entertain a motion second motion hearing a motion for Councilman Thomas a second with Councilman Wle. Uh all those in favor say I.

I. All those may oppose say nay. That is adopted. Thank you Nathan. That brings us down to proposed uh board canvas dates. Tracy. Um, yes, council. We do have county elections here in 2026. And as part of your ongoing uh determination for scheduling your council meetings, I wanted to point out that we need to add a board of candid states to your lineup as well as perhap potentially consider a a change in your schedule for March 17th where that is caucus night as well. That's not listed on the agenda, but something to be considering as you're making plans for that. So, I've presented some proposed dates for the canvas dates. Um, I've outlined there on the agenda for you that the time frame that we're legally obligated to hold that board of canvas meeting and should we have a primary election and for sure a general and so I leave it to you to determine what's best for you. I will show up when you um decide to have it.

Any issues on the dates? March 17th for sure that for a couple reasons. Do you want do you want to move [clears throat] that meeting to the next Wait a minute. What is it? So that's the that's the caucus July 7th. March March 17th. Sorry, St. Patrick's Day. Yeah, it's not on there. That's just one that we just found out about today. Okay. I cannot attend on March 18th. Okay. Why don't you move it back a week? What I think we ought to do. We need to in March. We can bring that back to you if you if Yeah. You uh go the 24th.

Do we all have to be on that? Yeah. Or I think it gives you uh you can have a substitute, right, Tracy? Yes, we can um use alternates and we would just utilize those as needed if one of you could not be in attendance. So really we need we can come back tomorrow. We really just got to check the July 7th and November 17th. I will be out of town tentatively the first through the uh let me go back and look at this. the 1st through the 7th of July of July. So if we could do it on June 30th, I can be there.

Is June 30th okay with everybody else? Tuesday does not work for me. Okay.

So may have to have an alternate then. Yeah, we can use an alternate for either one. Either. Yeah, actually I'm thinking the week before. June 30th does work for me. It's the week before that. That's bad. Okay, that works for all of you then. Yeah. So, is June 30th okay? Yeah. I was looking at the wrong date. Yeah, I'm good. Okay. June 30th. Still have time. Then uh November November 10th. Are you serious? It's my birthday, man. We don't want to do that. [laughter] November 17th is the proposed date. 17th is I'm just kidding. Right. Yes.

So we could do it on the 17th, which is currently a meeting anyway. Okay. Is the 10 uh 17th Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay. November 17th. Thank you. Okay. Uh, board vacancies. I don't think we have a vacancy open for the audit committee. It's down here. So, it's done now. We can mark that off. Strike that one. Strike that one. I think Ty got his vacancy done.

Yes, he did. And I actually have um I'd like to recommend a somebody for the uh tourism tax advisory board. So we have a new tourism director, Chris McCormack. Um he comes with 17 years of experience in the tourism running different facilities, not resort hotels. Um he's also worked with uh Chamber of Commerce down in uh Cedar City for quite a few years. Um comes with a breath of uh experience and education on that background and he's uh going to be the tourism director for Twilla County. Um so like to propose he wrote up an application propose him for the tourism board. Is there any questions I can answer for you? If not, then that's my motion. Is there a second?

Okay. So, there's a motion from myself, second from Councilman Thomas. All those in favor say I. I. I. All those may oppose say nay. Uh, human uh service advisory council. You want to Is that you, Kendall? Yeah, I can make the appointment. Okay, this is Marjorie Parker Parker. She's currently working with she's been involved in she has a nice resume and so she is going to be well to serve on that. So I'll make that hearing a motion from Councilman Thomas. Is there a second?

Second a second from Councilman Strumberg. All those in favor say I. I. I. All those may post say nay. Okay. She is adopted there. Uh is there any other? I don't see any other ones. So we still have a couple vacancies on the tourism tax advisory board. Um so keep those learned. A couple people there. Wonderful. And there's on our website. You can certainly go to the clerk's office and there's applications there fill off online or print out. With that, we'll go to the council updates. Councilman Wardle,

I have none. Okay. Councilman Stroberg, Councilman Thomas, Councilman Hoffman,

I'm just gonna go over these this the um just a review of kind of what happened in the public lands meetings and the bills that they are watching and that they want UAX to monitor or support or whatever. So, House Bill 60, it's one that they're we're they want to monitor, but this expands the state engineers um discretion about water rights, and so they want to see how that all develops and what what that's all about. Um House Bill 63 is also um one that they want to support. It has to do with watering livestock and making it easier and better for that. So, a lot of the counties are asking for support in that. House Bill 78. Um this is a follow-up from um 249. This is to create the nuclear energy regulatory office for the state. They're asking for support in that and I think that's a good one that we ought to get behind. I mentioned about House Bill 155 earlier, which is um the tiered pricing for water. Um this next one is kind of a big one. Um House Bill 165. This has to do with critical infrastructure. They want to monitor monitor it for now, but they're trying to keep foreign adversaries out of contracts and state cover state contracts, government contracts. And this is one that um could put some fiscal burden on us, but they want everybody to start reviewing their contracts and make sure that it's not any of our enemies that are trying to do any of this kind of stuff, China, Iran, things like that, because we know that they try and do stuff like that. But it could be if this goes through, there could be some expenses to us to go through and revisit all of our contracts and see who's involved with those and do a bigger deep dive into those companies and things like that. Um,

let's see. Senate Bill 53 adding two positions to the sit advisory board. That wasn't a very big one there. They didn't have any any recommendation on that one. One person would be from UWAC. Senate Bill 135, this is a nuclear processing. Um, this would be require Utah nuclear fuel recycling program. They're looking for UWAC and the counties to support that one. House Bill 238, Utah Energy Generation and Transmission. They're looking for counties to support this one as well, which could be both these could potentially benefit our counties. Um, Senate Bill 146 is an industrial byproduct um, waste management one and basically we they're just kind of monitoring that one at this point. Okay. Another big discussion was about the Wu or however you say that the Wu for WOI. Thank you.

And the controversy around that. That's this is House Bill 48 and this is has to do with fire suppression and the issues with that and the cost for that. And um some counties have already said that they're seeing insurance companies pulling out because of this bill and not um insuring people for fires and stuff like that because this bill is already being introduced and the state has already kind of broken up all the counties as far as what they think the fire risk is. Wildire

wildfire. Yeah. So this will be an interesting one. Right now they're just asking us to monitor it, but they think we are g they want us to push that hard to oppose that in the future because it people probably will not be able to get um insurance [clears throat] for their homes if this goes through. Yeah, the state just released their wild the new map I when we were at UAC. They just released that this last week I believe and so if you'd like to look at that I can get that to you.

So um and that is it for now. Thank you, Councilman Hoffman. Hey, I just want uh council to be aware that I was nominated by the UWAC, the governor's office, and they called and um appointed me to the recreation mitigation board uh that was newly created for the uh new TRT money that comes out for mitigation. So, I had to take my oath of office there. And so, we have a board of five that will start hearing applications for th those monies. gave me a reminder about day.

The day on uh the county day on the hill is tomorrow. See you all up at the Capitol bright and early 8 a.m. Am I right? Yeah. Okay. Second thing is um there was a big game yesterday and uh IU is national champions. I just wanted to make sure we all knew that. I absolutely loved how their coach made sure that Texas's coach knows that you can go undefeated still today. Yeah. Our purchasing director went to the University of Miami. He came in sick today. So Oh, well, let's have a discussion with Daniel. [laughter]

Okay. Uh manager's update.

I can just mention a couple of things. Um, one, um, I think you received an email from our auditor today about the board of equalization training. I know some of you signed up to go out of town. There will be an online option that only is two hours versus two days. And so, I'll leave it up to you to decide what you want to do. Travel out of town and go to two days of training or watch it online after I think you have to select after July 1st. Those who have selected out of town, let us let Megan know. I think she was working on your working on that. So, if just let her know and I just recommend doing the online for two hours. Um, but I think that'll be available after July 1st of this year. Um, one of the things that um, as we're presenting some of the items on our on the agenda when we pass the budget this year, I kind of accumulated a lot of the projects and equipment that we're purchasing this year and it's over 90 distinct items or projects. Now, that includes an F-150 truck and Desert Peak, which is a much bigger project, but we have 90 projects and we're well on our way already within the first two or three weeks of this new year. We're we're going down that list pretty fast actually. So, credit to all of our departments and kind of getting started quickly on those. And then the last one, Michelle may have to bail me out, but UD had a meeting today and one of the things they said, this is what Jed told me, you correct me if I'm wrong now. They said they expect I80 to be three lanes and the on-ramp to be two lanes by the end of this month. So they'll have that part. They won't have

end of January. End of January. So they won't have 36 done. Now 36. They're going to have to wait until the weather's better and it's warmer temperature before they can do that. Do that. Yeah. Do that part. But I 80 should have the three lanes and then the two rain lane onramp by the end of the month. So that is good news to finally get to that point. So that's all I that's all I have. Okay. We don't have any items for close session. So I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. Swim move.