City Council - workshop

Welcome. It's 5.30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 15th, 2026. The Tooele City Council is meeting in a work meeting that's being held at Tooele City Hall Council Chambers located at 90 North Main Street in Tooele, Utah. We're also streaming this electronically on the Tooele City YouTube channel. We will start with the roll call. Councilman Gossett. Present. Councilwoman Gochis. Present. Councilman Hanson. Present. Councilman McCall. Present. I'm Councilman Brady and I'm also present. Item three is the mayor's report.

Thank you. I just have a couple of things. First of all, I'd like to just publicly thank the staff and volunteers and the community for the support of the Fourth of July activities. Things turned out really great. The concert and the fireworks were really fun, and our fire department did a great job of supervising the fireworks. So it takes a lot of effort to make all of those events happen, and we deserve some kudos here to the to the people who made it happen. Um, and then today, well, um, this week we've had two ribbon cuttings, one for the switch point thrift store rebranding, real grand opening. And today they opened their coffee shop, which is located right on main street and has an entrance right from main street. So if you want to go in and they have coffee and dirty sodas and, um, lemonade and tea and some pastries. So give a chance. If you get a chance, go by there and check out their, um, new store and of course the proceeds they make from these micro businesses go back to help with the homeless shelter so we're supporting two causes in one it's a good thing and then finally you should have each received a sort of thick packet of reading material we didn't want to pile it onto the arty 200 page packet this time but it's the midas some proposed development standards. So if you could, before the next city council meeting, read through that and reach out to John Perez if you have any comments in regards to that. There are some comments on it already, but we want to really go through and make sure that what is in that document is what we really want before we bring it back to a city council meeting for approval. So that's all I have today. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move on to item four, the council member's report. We'll start with Councilman Gossett. Thanks.

Pressure's on now. Gosh, it's been a while since we've been here. So I was looking at my list, attended some of the ribbon cuttings for the Private Links and Soda Bus and Snell Groves, the Arts Festival, 4th of July, and then was able to attend the meeting for the communities that care at the health department and say we're starting to get that up and running again. So that was nice to see that all starting again. I was involved in the communities that care years ago when Heidi Peterson was running it. And so it's fun to see that starting back up. And I'm excited to see what they do with it. Also attended the Arts Council meeting. And a lot of fun stuff still happening over at the Ritz. And other than that, it's a busy month.

Thank you. Thank you.

I also would like to extend appreciation to those who worked to make the 4th of July events wonderful, and I want to congratulate our new queen and attendants that will represent Tooele City. They have done a wonderful job so far. I was able to attend an event at the Ritz Theater with the Tooele Valley Theater Company. It was a lot of fun and support the things that have been going on. I've been out of town for a couple of weeks, so I'm glad to be back, and that concludes my report.

Thank you. Councilman Hanson.

Well, I too was gone a lot of June, so I got here in time for a couple things on the 4th of July, and it was a lot of fun, and the parade was fun, and I thought the jeeps were cool to ride in with the doors off and stuff, and yeah, it was fun. So I enjoyed that, and I got to... work on the city float real quick before the freight. It was exciting. Pressure on, you know. We saved the day. Pressure on to get the ladies back out there, but it was kind of entertaining. And then, let's see, planning commission was, I think it's a new record. I think it was seven minutes last Wednesday. I think it's a new record. It was one thing on the agenda with not much discussion because it was already kind of a set deal, so... Anyway, and then the LHC had, we have a meeting each month with the LHC, but we do one in the evening, and we invite community too. Community can come to all of them, but we do one late so they can come. We had a lot of people from the community and a lot of good input, and the Natsu group did a presentation at it that was really good and talked about their group and what's happening and the more things that are happening with them as they grow in Tuula, so it looks like they're going to, grow a little bit more in Tooele and the things they're doing and lots of good things. So that's the things I attended this last, since the 4th, since I got back. And yeah, that's my report.

Thank you.

Councilman McCall. I did the... Ms. Tooele of City Paget, I attended that. Also, we cooked. We missed you doing the hot dogs. Justin and I took care of that for you. And I also attended the Switchpoint Coffee, as well as their program the other day. And I, too, was gone for a couple of days. And that pretty much concludes my report.

Thank you. I attended similar events. The 4th of July events were all excellent. Thank you to the staff. I know there's a lot of behind the scenes work that goes on and you did a great job and the community appreciated it. I heard a lot of compliments about the fireworks. I think there was probably more people there due to the fireworks restrictions and we're thankful for the community that they respected the no fireworks situation. It was a better time for our fire departments that evening. So that concludes my report. We'll move on to our discussion items. The first discussion is a discussion on proposed amendments to Tooele City Code 7-16-3, Table 1, Table of Commercial Uses regarding the land uses permitted in the industrial, industrial service, and light industrial zoning districts presented by Andrew Agard, the Community Development Director.

Thank you, Chairman Brady, members of the council. I hope that I don't bore you to death with this presentation tonight. I don't know if you recall, but I'm thinking maybe eight months or so ago, there was a zoning map amendment that was presented to the council at the time. to change the zoning to light industrial. And at that time, a discussion was raised in regards to what the difference is between the industrial service zone and the light industrial zone. And the council, rightly so, noticed that there was not a lot of difference that many of the uses you can do in the industrial service, you can also do in the light industrial zoning district. And I was asked at that time to look at perhaps making the uses or the list of uses a little more defined. Time gone away from me, another task jumped in front of me, but I was finally able to jump on this. And what I'd like to do is give you a brief presentation on the industrial zoning ordinances, zoning codes that we have, what they are, and then jump into an analysis that I made of our industrial zoning districts, and then obtain some feedback from the council in regards to how you'd like to proceed or if you would like to proceed. As you may or may not know, we have three industrial zones in Tooele City. We have the industrial zone, we have the light industrial zone, and we have the industrial service. The little zoning map to the side indicates where those areas are. They are outlined in the bold red. So we have a large industrial area that is located west of the railroad, south of Utah Avenue. Really a great location for industrial. We can put all the big nasties out there, the Lulu's, in case you wanna know what that's a planning acronym for locally unwanted land uses. So if I bring that up, that's what I'm talking about. The big nasties you don't want near residential zones, you don't want in your downtown. That's a great location for the industrial zone. We also have some industrial zoning north of 112. That's around the Bollander property. There's a pocket of light industrial zone on Flinders Way, which is north of 1000 North, about 80 East. And then up around North Point Medical, there is some industrial zoning in that location. If I could classify the industrial districts, I would classify them in this way. The industrial is what would be classified as a heavy industrial use. As I mentioned, that's where all the nasties go, the lulus that we don't want near our neighborhoods. The industrial service I would classify as medium industrial. So not quite the place where you want to put the lulus, but it's not really light and simple industrial. Then, of course, you have the light industrial zone, which is lesser industrial and what I would classify as heavier commercial. So those are the three classifications we have. In referencing the ordinance, the ordinance actually defines a purpose for each one of our industrial zones. The light industrial is basically a district that provides locations for light industrial assembly and manufacturing uses that produce no appreciable negative impacts to adjacent properties. So they're clean industrial uses. You're not going to get a lot of noise, glare, odors, vibrations, and things of that nature from uses in the light industrial zone. The industrial service zone is a little bit of a step up. The ordinance defines it as being more intensive service type uses. However, it still encourages clean uses which provide employment opportunities. So in similar fashion to the light industrial, not a lot of impacts are going to be generated to adjacent properties from the uses in an industrial service zone. And then I mentioned we have the big guy, the industrial zone, where all the big nasties go. These are the businesses, even though the ordinance doesn't define that, these are the businesses that generate impacts, where you're going to get vibration, truck traffic, noise and smells and glares and things from the businesses. And that's why we want them in these locations. Our zoning ordinance currently lists 90 industrial uses that can occur in these three zoning districts. There's 90. Now, these are not all industrial uses. A lot of them are commercial and professional office, but 90 land uses can occur in those three zoning districts. In the industrial zone, only 11 of those land uses can occur only in the industrial zone. These are uses that are not permitted in the industrial service and the light industrial zone. In the industrial service zone, there is only one land use that is not permitted in the industrial and light industrial zone. And in the light industrial zone, there is only one land use that is not permitted in the industrial and the industrial services zone for a total of 13 land uses. This is a chart that shows the various land uses that I just mentioned that can be permitted in various zones. So out of the 90, we have the 11 in the industrial. They include the uses that you see on the left-hand side. The industrial service zoning district permits one land use that you can't do in the other two, and that is automobile service and repair accessory to a principal use. Why that's only permitted in the industrial service zone, I don't know. But that's the only use you can do in the industrial service that you can't do in the other two. And then in the light industrial, the only use you could do there is a reception center. You can't do a reception center in the other two industrial zoning districts. So 77 industrial land uses can occur or I should change that 77 commercial and industrial land uses can occur in two of the three industrial zoning districts. Those are pretty good odds. So my conclusion after looking at this is the industrial service in the light industrial zoning districts are pretty much the same except for one significant land use. And I think this explains why we have these two zoning districts. The light manufacturing and assembly land use is permitted in the industrial and in the light industrial, but not in the industrial service zone. I was not able to determine when this ordinance or when this zone was adopted or why it was adopted, but I think the reason behind it was they didn't want to have an industrial zone where you could do light manufacturing. And if you look at the location of the industrial service, it's around the North Point Medical, which is some high-quality building architecture. And there's also a mix of commercial activities there. So I think when it was done, they wanted to have the uses permissible in the light industrial minus the light manufacturing and assembly use. Now, that is a very broad definition. So in the light manufacturing and assembly, this is the definition from our ordinance. It's an establishment engaged in the manufacture, predominantly from previous prepared materials of finished products or parts, including processing, fabrication, assembly, treatment, and packaging of such products, and incidental storage, sales, and distribution. Allowed light manufacturing activities will not be offensive by reason of emission of odor, dust, smoke, noxious gases, noise, vibration, glare, heat, and other impacts. So basically that gives a property owner a wide range of types of uses. And often when they come into the city and they say, I want to do this particular use, if it's not listed in the table of commercial uses, we will look at this use and see if it qualifies. So it doesn't define the use and it gives us some flexibility. But it also permits a wide range of potentially impactful development. So I think that's why the industrial service was created and eliminated this use from its list of permitted and conditional uses. So what kind of recommendations do I have for the council to consider tonight? Number one, we could eliminate the industrial service zoning district. Now, what does that do? What kind of problems does that create for the city? Well, we would have to go through and do some ordinance amendments to eliminate the industrial service. We may have to amend the general plan in regards to what falls under the qualification of light industrial land use. We'd have to do a city initiated zoning map amendment to change the properties to that are currently zoned industrial service to light industrial Will that hurt those properties? No, because they'll actually be gaining additional land uses. They'll now be able to do light industrial and Assembly and manufacturing where they are currently if they're is they can't do that the second option is to leave the is zone and the situation as is and Is it really creating any problems for us to have an industrial service zone? Not really. When they come in and their property is zoned industrial service, we look at the table of uses and tell them what they can and can't do. Doesn't really create any problems. So leaving it intact, it just ensures you have an industrial zone that doesn't permit light assembly and manufacturing. The third option would be to continue an attempt to separate the uses. The problem with this one is it's very difficult. I tried doing that when I started this little project. The differences between the industrial and the light industrial are very simple. Does it generate impact? Does it not generate impact? However, there's no quantifiable way to measure the difference between light industrial and medium industrial. And so as I was putting uses into the medium category versus the light category, I kept asking myself, well, why can't this be in the light industrial? Or why can't this be in the industrial? And it just became very cumbersome to try to parse those uses out without being arbitrary. There's just no way to really measure the difference between medium and light. So we could try to do that. It'd be a difficult task. So I'm willing to take on any of these tasks if the council would like to proceed in any way. I'm just looking for some feedback from the city council on if you'd like to proceed or what you think we should consider here.

I know I was on the council when we created the industrial service district, but I can't remember all the details about it. But if I remember correctly, it was because we felt like there was either industrial or light industrial, and we had a business that was coming and was kind of in between that. And so I was trying to find the minutes from that meeting. So I think it was really for that one application that we had. And then since then, I don't know that we've ever

We haven't had any issues with it and I'm pretty sure that was the purpose was to find somewhere in between those two zoning districts But they're very similar and there really isn't much of a difference other than that one use That manufacturing and assembly which really permits a wide range of potential industrial activities so

Any other discussion, questions, comments? I'm not ready to just decide tonight, but I would like to maybe look at it a little bit more and then come back with some input maybe in the next meeting or something, if you don't mind waiting. Now that I have this information and more about it with your discussion, then I understand it a little better. I can come back and say, hey, I think you're good or whatever. So in a perfect world. I'd like to see them do this too. What would you do?

If I were king of the world, I'd leave it alone. It's not creating any problems.

To just leave that separate?

It's just, it's, I mean, let's take a private or a public educational facility, for example. If I can permit that in the light industrial zone, and it doesn't generate any impacts, why can't I permit that in the industrial service? Or why can't I put it in the industrial? That's where you get into the difficulties. How do we take particular use and say, this is not appropriate for the industrial service? I don't have a quantifiable tool to do that. It's just arbitrary. So I don't know. But eliminating the IS zone doesn't create any problems for the property owners that currently have that zoning, but it is a little bit of a chore for staff. to make sure everything else is copacetic. The cities that I've worked in the past have always had two industrial zoning districts. Usually they're the M1 and the M2. I've never seen one with three.

I was just talking to Justin. It seems like when Alltech Electric came to us and all them wrecking yards wanted to go there, it didn't apply to the other things, and that might have been when we created that. That didn't really turn out like we thought it would turn out, so that's why I'm not sure if we need to look at that a little better, because that ended up with six wrecking yards in one location.

Yeah, it was really oriented towards service-type businesses. The problem is every industrial use provides a service, whether you're producing concrete or... You know, a medical office, it's a service that's being provided. So how do you determine what is a service versus what is not a service? That's the other issue that I encountered when I was trying to separate the uses. They're all services one way or another.

It's just... When we had that discussion, there was really no place for it. I called it a wrecking yard. It was not a wrecking yard. It was a tow yard.

Yeah, an impound yard.

Yeah, an impound yard. And there wasn't really no place in Tula City for that. at the time, and that allowed it to be there. But then I just wonder if we need to tune it a little bit, because we ended up with six tow yards on the same location.

And I think we didn't want to add a tow yard to light industrial, right? Because then it opened up that option.

That's what I think I just need to, I'm not ready to really decide, but I know that that I don't think it was fair to the other tow companies that we put six tow yards into a city on one lot. So I don't know what we could even change to make that so that wouldn't happen. Maybe that's not even a possibility. That just didn't seem like, it wasn't our intention. When Melody was you on it too? I was on the council. I think you was too.

Yes, and it just allowed more flexibility.

You probably remember this discussion, but yeah. So I really think that's what it was about. So I don't know. Maybe that's something you could think about because I think it was related to that.

I can look into the the origins of it more more in more depth and we'll find the minutes to make sure that's what we're thinking is right, but yeah, I Don't think it hurts the city either way, honestly, I think There's the zones are so close in regards to what they permit what they don't permit Well, and for some reason it didn't permit them into a city at the time.

So that's why we added that I but good or bad, you know? Yeah. Looking back, I don't know if it was good or bad, but yeah.

Yeah.

It's easy to look back and think you did something dumb, you know?

Well, every zoning change has a ripple effect.

Yeah.

And you don't realize those ripple effects until the ripple has gone through.

You've had a few of them that I'm like, oh, well, we did that? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, any other discussion? Does everyone want to see this brought back?

That would remind me of having some discussion to make a final decision. It might just be like you say, you know, just leave it like it is and it's fine. Or do we need to do something different at all? Okay, I can do that. Maybe just next meeting. I don't know. I just don't need too long to look at it. Yeah, just put it on another work meeting.

Okay, we'll move on to our next discussion item, a discussion on adopting architectural standards for all new and renovated commercial buildings in Tula City, presented by Andrew Agar, the Community Development Director.

So in similar fashion to the previous item, I'm just looking for some feedback from the city council in regards to how to proceed with this. This actually stems back to when our mayor was on the city council. She has suggested that we should look into doing some design guidelines. Now that she's the mayor and my boss, I'm moving it forward through the process. And actually, I don't mind doing this. This has been a fun little project for me to work on. So let me explain to you the current conditions in Tooele City. We do not have any architectural design guidelines for development in commercial zoning districts. None. So when somebody comes in with a new commercial building, They even ask us, can you provide us with your architectural standards? And I tell them, we don't have any, so I can build whatever I like. I say, well, you have to meet building code, but you can design it and have it look however you want. It can be pretty much as ugly as they want it to be, or they can be as beautiful as they want it to be. It doesn't give any consideration as well to, It doesn't give any consideration to some of these issues. Number one, it doesn't give any consideration to building appearances from the public rights of way. What do people see when they're driving through the city? What is the impression they get of Tooele City when they look at the buildings? And I want to emphasize, there's nothing wrong with the development and the way the city is developed. The buildings in the city look really, really good. Developers have done a good job in designing good buildings. This isn't in response to any problems that we're having. But Tooele City is growing, and we're at a point now where we really need to consider locking in some standards so that we can at least maintain what we have and not regress back into things that we don't want to see in our prominent corridors and so forth. So don't get the impression that there's something wrong with what's been done. The buildings that they're putting up are nice buildings. But there's things that we need to consider, and Paul will attest to this, that when we're reviewing site plans, there are some problems that we wish we had ordinances to give us some teeth in regards to correcting. And I'll touch on those. But without architectural standards, there's no consideration to appearance of buildings from public rights-of-way. There's no consideration of building appearance from residential neighborhoods that may be next door to those properties. And it doesn't give any consideration to building appearance at the entrance points into Tooele City, which we want to consider our gateway. It doesn't give us any regulation on location and appearance of dumpster enclosures. It doesn't give us any ability to regulate screening of rooftop mechanical and wall-mounted mechanical equipment. And it doesn't give us any of the ability to regulate the appearance of detached accessory structures. So they can just throw out a Connex container in the back of their building or in front of their building. And it just doesn't look good. So I took some time to put together this ordinance. I've been working on it for a couple of months. And what I did is I drove throughout the city and I did a visual inventory of the architecture in Tooele City and what's been built recently and what was built a couple years back and so forth. I also researched some other architectural ordinances from Salt Lake City, Draper City, and of course my previous employer, Riverton City, and I tried to incorporate these into the ordinance. And my goal in what I'm presenting to you tonight isn't an ordinance that becomes more cumbersome to a potential developer, but basically is preserving what we currently have in the city. So I don't want to make it more onerous or difficult for developers or more costly, but based on what they're building, I think that this would be a good fit. The following standards shall be applicable to all new or amended development in the general commercial, neighborhood commercial, regional commercial, regional research and development, but also the mixed use general and the mixed use Broadway zoning district. And I put those in there because they allow a lot of commercial uses. So they need to also have some consideration. The ordinance is just two pages. It's not too long, but it does include the following language. Number one, four-sided architecture. I think that we should have the ability to give consideration to sides of the building that are adjacent to neighborhoods, that are adjacent to public rights-of-way. And so what section one would do is that it would require the buildings that are adjacent to these other land uses to give equal consideration to the front of their building. Make that make the other sides look as good as the front number two, which is bulk that refers to the size of the building and the variations in architectural elements on the facades of those buildings and We would like to see architectural wall variations every 50 feet in linear width. So if you have a 150 foot wide building, you'd have to provide some variations listed in the ordinance. Some of those would be primary exterior wall material change to a different exterior wall material. So you could go from brick to stucco or from stucco to concrete paneling of some sort. You could also shift the wall facade so that it's perpendicular to the primary wall facade. Cantilever wall sections, add some columns and pilasters. And then you could also add other architectural features that satisfy this requirement. Here are some images that I found that would kind of illustrate what we're looking for. And again, I don't think this is anything above and beyond what we're currently seeing in Tooele City. These images show columns. They show different materials being used on the facades, the columns being capped with decorative pilasters. You also have some decorative parapet walls and so forth. And then, of course, the materials have a wide range. Section 3, roofline. Commercial buildings shall be designed with a vertical height variation of the roofline every 50 feet. This is in there to avoid just long, straight roof lines. We already have this requirement in our multifamily residential design guidelines, and the way that they could accomplish this would be to change changes in vertical height of the roof of at least 18 inches, doing a pitched roof, decorative parapet walls, overhangs, arches, stepped roofs, faux windows, and other similar elements. And again, some examples of what could be done. There's a building there with a pitched roof, the parapet walls on the right, and then you have some parapet walls that are stepped to break up those long expanses of roof lines. And then exterior building materials. Exterior building materials shall be considered any material that comprises the exterior of the building and shall be limited to no more than five and no less than two types of materials per building. And then it goes through a list of materials of what you could and could not install on the building. One of the things that we did do is glass. If you have a wall facade that is entirely glass, that would be considered an exterior wall material. However, if you have a brick building with windows and doors, the glass that's in the windows and doors would not be counted towards your exterior materials. Again, this is pretty similar to what we're seeing in the city, but you'll note that these facades all have at least two or three exterior materials. There's plenty of flexibility there for architects to do their thing and to design the building as they'd like. All staff would have to do is just look at the plan and say, yep, they've got three materials, and they should be good to go. There is a list of prohibited materials. Materials such as pattern stucco as masonry substitute Wood as a primary exterior finished material wood does not keep up. Well, it doesn't last Vinyl or aluminum siding those are more of a residential type of exterior use uncolored and unfinished CMU cinder block unless approved by the Planning Commission as an accent material and And then precast cement panel walls, unless the following treatments are applied and approved by the Planning Commission, they're either covered by brick or stone veneer or contain scoring or integrated masonry patterns. And then number six, mechanical equipment. We would like to see measures or have the ability to require measures to screen rooftop mechanical equipment from view from the public right of way. And there are some things listed here regarding the types of materials that could be used for rooftop mechanical screening. And then also for attached exterior utility boxes, equipment, roof drains, conduits, piping, maintenance stairs, ladders, the ordinance would require that they paint those or otherwise texture them to be consistent with the underlying exterior materials. And this is some examples of ways that rooftop mechanical can be screened. You have some fence screening located at the top of the building. On the right, there's parapet walls that are screening. And then they have many different types of decorative fences that can screen the ground equipment. Dumpster and trash enclosures, as I mentioned, we don't have any ordinance regulations for dumpsters and trash enclosures. And we'd like to have some because they often come up in our site plan reviews. What we are proposing with this is that they shall be located as far away from the public right-of-way as possible, as well as from residential districts. And they shall be enclosed by a masonry wall that meets the following. One is painted to match the building or composed of similar materials and includes a solid metal or vinyl enclosure gate to help screen the dumpster from public view. And this is the kind of dumpster enclosure that

I would envision with this ordinance.

And then just some other housekeeping things that I think should be included in that. Properties located within light industrial zoning shall also comply with the requirements of this section. The reason that's in there is there are many commercial and professional office and medical uses that can occur in this zone in similar fashion to the commercial zones. And then residential development in the mixed-use zone shall be exempt from the requirements of this chapter because they have their own standards they have to adhere to and other codes. And then, of course, there's always going to be some differences in interpretations or introduction of new architectural elements that we haven't considered before. I think there should be an appeal mechanism whereby if there is a difficulty with some architecture, we just take it to the Planning Commission and ask them Give them the authority to grant appeals for that. And then a section of failure to act. If they do not comply with the requirements of this chapter, then they would not be able to receive site plan approval. So those are the architectural standards that I've thrown out there for your consideration. I would definitely appreciate your feedback, thoughts, rebukes, or rebuttals.

Any questions, comments? I like it.

I do, too. I feel like we do need to unify our codes so that they match this, locking in those standards. I think that we need to ensure that we have exterior materials that are durable. so that they don't wear down over time and then degrade their appearance. Yeah, I really like all of the comments that you had mentioned, so the dumpster enclosures, roof wall equipment. We do have ordinances regarding connex boxes, so...

We do for residential zones.

But not for commercial. Not for commercial. Okay. Something that definitely needs to be addressed because that's just an easy fix for storage that's, you know, kind of affordable that maybe isn't as permanent as what we would like to see in a commercial district. So, yeah. Yeah.

When I put these together, again, I'm not an architect. It's not my intention to design a building, and I don't think any of you want to design buildings as well. So I wanted to make sure there was enough flexibility in there that they can do pretty much what they want, and the review from staff is fairly simple. We just verify that they have the number or that they have a percentage or they have enough variation in the review. It's a very simple review. So I don't know if it accomplishes that, but... I guess if it gets adopted, we'll see.

And I like the idea of having some say on what the back of those buildings, when it hits residential, because they're going to want to go as cheap and easy on the backside to save money. And then somebody's left looking at it. Yep, and they do do that.

Yeah, I think you got it good.

You did good.

Yeah, I think so as well. I agree with what's been said. My only question is, can we retro this? Can we back it up a ways? I mean, I'm talking years.

That's a good question for Mr. Johnson over there.

Because the placement of the dumpster down by Panda Express is like horrible.

I don't think you can go back.

I know you can. I mean, those developers are long gone.

How does that apply to the historic downtown? Because I know on the Downtown Alliance at a point in time when Main Street America came in and they were talking about what the facades would end up looking like in the historic downtown. This is for new builds, but if somebody were to go in and renovate, does this apply to that area as well?

The renovation would have application to those older buildings, but I think there's enough flexibility there that they wouldn't have any problems with complying. And, you know, like I said, if there's an issue, we could take it to the Planning Commission, and the Planning Commission could grant an appeal to that. Okay.

Because I thought, in my mind, the... the guy that was handling the architecture for the historic downtown, he kind of had a distinct look that he wanted. Like my building didn't fit it because it had that cement siding on it where I think he was hoping for more brick, and I just wondered if it needed to have one more layer that said in the historical parts it requires something different.

You could look into that. There are some... There are some unique codes for the downtown overlay district. Let me look into that. They might actually have some language already in the overlay.

Who was doing that, Ed? Was it John Clough and who else?

That's who was working on it.

I don't know if that ever finished. I think they did end up meeting with somebody because I know they came out with some renderings of what... It would look like downtown. I don't care. I'm just wondering if that ends up being like a separate district, if there should be line items that just discuss that certain area or Broadway or whatever it is that is in that area.

Definitely worth consideration.

Are there any applicants who are building right now that you feel like wouldn't meet this code?

No, the only buildings that I can think of that recently have been constructed that wouldn't meet this code, one of them would be the Napa building. If you look at the Napa building, it's just a box, cinder block box. The old Allen's flooring building, I don't know if you noticed that one, they did a really nice front facade on that, but then the other three are just metal walls. And then there's that retail strip where all they have is glass fronts right across from the Cafe Rio. Those buildings, plus they have the really long roof line with no variation. Those are some buildings that I can think of that would have not complied with this proposed ordinance, but... Most of the other ones that you see, they've done a good job with their buildings, and I think that this wouldn't add any additional burden to them.

But it would improve those three. If we could go back.

Yeah. If we could make them retroactive, that'd be interesting. We'd have a real fight on our hands, though.

But if they renovated those buildings, they would have to comply with these requirements.

Of course, when they built most of them, most of those was built, it was nothing down there, so it was really no one in the back of them. But now, as we know, things are moving up.

There's a lot going on.

Mm-hmm.

I haven't assigned any ordinance numbers yet, but just for your information, if you want to move forward with this, I would be inserting this ordinance in our site plan review ordinance because that's the ordinance that governs our commercial site plan review. So I would attach numbers and codification numbers and stuff before I bring it back to you.

I think it's a good idea. Yeah. Okay.

Well, it sounds like I've got your blessing to move forward, so I'll keep working on this and keep it moving. Okay. Thank you, Councilman. I appreciate it.

We'll move on to discussion item C, a water reclamation facility oxidation ditch discussion presented by Nathan Farrer, the Public Works Director.

I heard that. I'm not asking for money now, but I will in the next meeting, so... Not for the oxidation ditch. The reason for this presentation today was to kind of get some information out in front of you to prime the pump a little bit. We're going through some challenges, especially with our growth, with how much wastewater we're receiving at the plant and the challenges that it's posing to us in treating that water. And we wanted to get... some of those challenges out in front of you. But in discussing this with Mayor Manzion, we realized that our treatment plan operator, very capable as he is, has a hard time getting the words out in a way that helps people who don't work in this industry understand it clearly. And so I wanted to put this together. My wife likes to say that this is on a preschool level. She's a first grade teacher and she wants to make sure everything is understood by the lowest common denominator, which is our youngest children. So I'm going to try and do my best to make this very easily understood. I'm not trying to diminish your mental capacities at all, but I definitely... It fits me perfectly. If you have any questions at any time, please stop me and ask. I'm very happy to explain anything. So if we go to the first slide. Thank you, Clarissa. In introduction, this is the timeline for our current wastewater treatment facility. In the year 2000, it was brought online. We had a population in the city at that time of 23,123 individuals that were contributing to that treatment plant. The capacity of the plant was rated at 2.25 million gallons a day. And our average annual flow was 1.4 million gallons a day. So we were very well able to handle the load of wastewater that was being delivered to us from the city. In 2008, we recognized that there needed to be some upgrades. So we changed some of the filters. We added aeration to the oxidation ditch. And I will explain most of this in just a minute. if it's sounding like Greek. We added a new clarifier and then we installed new influence screens to try and get rid of some of the stuff that was coming down the lines that we didn't want to have to go through the process. It increased our treatment capacity to 3.4 million gallons per day and our average annual flow increased to 1.67 million gallons a day. So we went up just a little bit. 2020, you see there's a big gap there, and I'll explain that in a minute, too. Our new treatment plant operator came on board and kind of cleaned up some processes and made sure that we were running the plant the way it was supposed to be run. And our population at that point in Tooele City was 35,742. Our treatment capacity remained the same at 3.4 million gallons a day, but our annual average flow was now over 2 million gallons a day at 2.15. So we fast forward to 2024. Oh, sorry, we'll go to 2022. At that time, a new wastewater master plan was authorized. We went and looked at our collections system and our treatment facility and tried to figure out where we needed to put our resources to anticipate future growth and the wave of new people coming to Tooele. At that point, again, 3.4 million gallons is what we can treat. Our average annual flow at that point was 2.2 million gallons a day. Now we're into 2024, we got our new headworks building. That is a big significant upgrade for us. It allows us to receive nearly eight million gallons a day. That creates a bottleneck for us though because we're still only allowed to treat and have the capacity to treat 3.4 million gallons a day. So we have not increased our ability to treat wastewater, we can receive more at that headworks building. Our population has now increased to 40, at least as of 2024, to 41,000 people. And our average annual flows is 2.79. You see a pretty significant increase at this point. As of today, our population estimated 43,530. Our treatment capacity is still at 3.4 million gallons a day, and our average annual flows is 2.9 million gallons per day. So we're creeping up on that 3.4 million gallons a day. And in a significant point earlier this year We did have one day where we spiked at three point six million gallons in one day Which is alarming for our plant because we're not built to or equipped to handle that much water all at once and When we have those kinds of spikes, it really disrupts our ability to treat the wastewater we have too much food for the for the process to handle and then again too much bio waste on the backside to be able to do anything with it and so Fortunately, we've only seen one or two days that have been above the 3.4 at this point, but those are coming more and more often, and we need to take some steps to get that treatment process fleshed out through the entire thing, not just at the head works. Let me go to the next slide. So here's some definitions and some things that may help understand this a little bit better. Our influent flow, that's just what the wastewater we receive from the collection system. Right now it's 2.88 or 2.9 million gallons a day, which is the same as 4.36 Olympic-sized swimming pools. So the Olympic-sized swimming pools, roughly 164 feet by 82 feet by six feet deep. And so if you can imagine having four of those every day coming down those lines, that's what we're receiving. Our mixed liquor, and you may hear this term as we go, you know, we talk about wastewater treatment. This is the water including all of the biological components. I lost my train of thought. All the biological matter that comes with wastewater. It represents a concentration. So most of wastewater is water. We have this little amount that's the waste. And the waste includes bacteria and other things that will take care of itself, but it also includes all the other stuff that you associate with wastewater or sewer. And so we want our wastewater to be in the 3,000 to 3,500 parts per million of organic matter to wastewater ratio. And so parts per million, if you can imagine, if we want to talk in jelly beans, which is a lot more pleasant to talk about than wastewater, but if we take a crate of jelly beans about three feet by three feet by four feet, we can fit about a million jelly beans in a crate that big or one of those liquid containers that you see on the back of farm trucks every once in a while. One jelly bean in that container would be one part per million jelly bean to rest of the container ratio. But for this intent, we want about 3,000 to 3,500 parts per million of biological material in that water to be able to treat it effectively. Right now we're sitting about 4,000 to 4,400 because of the concentration of the food and other things that the process is creating based on that waste. And so we're a little higher than we would like to be because of our limitations on treatment available to us with the amount of water we're receiving and the limitations on our treatment capacity. The other limitation is our dissolved oxygen. Dissolved oxygen is just the amount of free oxygen gas available in the water. You may have heard this when you've talked about fish. I know when my son was in the fourth grade, they talked about fish hatcheries and things like that. The fish need the dissolved oxygen in the water to be able to breathe. It's the same for our bacteria and other microorganisms that treat our wastewater. They need this this oxygen. We want our oxygen to be about 1 to 1.5 parts per million. Right now we're having a hard time keeping that up because of the amount of wastewater that we're receiving. And then finally, equivalent residential units is probably a term you're familiar with. That's just the living spaces that we account for as far as homes and apartments and things like that. The table that you're seeing here represents the projections from our 2022 wastewater master plan. And so if you look back at 2022, the top line there under total ERUs, we were right around 14,000 ERUs. They expected at that time for us in the year 2030 to be at 18,517, which is currently tracking pretty close. We may be a little higher than that right now, but if you look over at the projected average flow in million gallons per day, you can see where at that time 2.4 was right on where we were considering the last slides that we looked at. And then 3.1 in 2030 is what they were projecting at that time where we would be. As of right now, we're right there. So we're kind of following the projections fairly closely. We may be even exceeding those in the not too distant future. We just received word from one of our developers today that they're handing off development to another home building company that may increase their output by quite a bit. we're getting a little nervous as to how much wastewater we're gonna be receiving and what we're gonna do with it once we get it. So you can see then in the last year, 2060, if we get up to the 4.2, we'll be well over our capacity to treat unless we take some steps to upgrade the treatment plant. So these are the good guys, bugs. You'll hear treatment, wastewater treatment plant operators talk about bugs and it's just the single cell and multicellular microscopic organisms that feed on the wastewater. We want these guys in our wastewater. We have to give them food to eat and we have to give them oxygen to breathe. Right now we're recovering from a major kill. So our mixed liquors, our MLSS was kind of wiped out. We don't know what happened, but we lost our ability to treat the wastewater because all of our bugs died. And so Troy has done an excellent job down at the plant of replacing them. He went and got samples from other wastewater treatment facilities. He's made room for them and tried to deliver to them as much oxygen and food as he can. And we're right now getting to a point where we're back in business, although rather tentatively. And we had some panic moments in the last couple of weeks where we thought we needed to do some emergency action to get some more air in the ditch, which thankfully you all approved over email. And then once we got that approval, things kind of mellowed out and we were able to kind of hold that in our back pocket as an emergency stop gap if we need it. But as of right now, we're seeing the process will start off with the bacteria on the top I guess that's the top middle column. And then work its way through the ciliates. We have swimming ciliates, walking ciliates, and then stock ciliates on that one side. And then up to the amoebas, the flagellates, rotifers, and if you've seen Ant-Man, you remember the water bear or the tardigrade right there. They're the cute ones. And then the worms at the very bottom. As they proceed through the treatment process, and we'll go through that in just a second, We want to see a healthy distribution of these creatures so that we know that the process is working. We're providing them with everything they need to do their jobs and the waste treatment process works correctly. They are the good guys, okay? So this is a very simplified version of what happens when we run wastewater through an activated sludge treatment plant. It comes in through our inlet as raw sewage. We screen out large solids, you know, rags and sticks or flushable wipes. We're going to put that in quotations because you can flush a cue ball, but you're not supposed to. We then go, then the water goes through a grit chamber where we take out even more fine particulate like eggshells or other, you know, sand or different things like that. And then the water, as clear as we can get it at that point, goes into our ditch. And in the ditch is where the bugs get to do their job. And as we circulate it through the ditch and put oxygen in there for them to breathe, They eat as much as they can. They have families and make colonies and do different things to break down the waste. And then once they're done, we send them to a clarifier. And the clarifier is where we can separate the biomatter from the water. The water rises to the top and the sludge goes to the bottom. The sludge though is still valuable at that point. We can use the sludge to kind of repopulate the ditch. And so we'll take some of that sludge and run it through the return activated sludge line and put it back in the ditch where it continues to grow and thrive. But once its useful life cycle is done, we will take it and send it through our sludge treatment. Our sludge treatment then takes the water out as much as possible and dries it, and that's how we get the biosolids at the end. That's our greenhouse project that will be coming up here soon. And so then we can use that as fertilizer or send it to different farmers to use as land application. And then the clear water goes through a treatment process. Right now it's UV treated. We are gonna upgrade that system as well, but then we send it out to the ponds on the Overlake Golf Course. So the next slide will show our first stop on the Headworks tour. Our flow comes in those three pipes on the bottom. You can see the core screening machines are kind of those ones that stand up straight. They're just a conveyor belt with a mesh conveyor belt that pulls out everything and then sends it on a screw press over to the next room over on each side that just goes into a trailer where it will be hauled off to the dump. The water then from that point goes into those two circular pipes portions in the very back of the room. That's where the grit is kind of cycled out in a cyclone motion. And then there's pumps that will take that grit and push it into the same room as the screening material goes into after it's washed. And we take, again, that to the dump. It just goes to the dump for that. So once it gets through the headworks building, we've got some water without a lot of big particles in it. goes into the ditch. The ditch is the octagon. Is that octagons? Anyway, those weird shapes there. You can see the bubbles on the outer edges of those two shapes. We're getting a lot of good air in those areas. The areas that we need to get air are the two middle sections, where you can see it kind of flat and brown. We're not getting enough air into those sections and so the bugs are having a hard time doing their job in there. And so that's where the next air supplies are gonna need to go so that we can keep the bugs alive longer and use them for the amount of water that we're receiving until we can add another one of these ditches. That's gonna be a big project and a very expensive one, but that'll be in the next three to five years. It's not something we can address right now.

Go ahead. Is there air supply already in that location? There is.

Would you go to the next slide for me? Okay, you're going to answer. Yeah, right there. No, yeah. Good question though. We had had some concerns and questions about this initially because as you can see on the left there, those lines that are coming off the sidewall have been removed and we think it was because they were collecting a lot of this material and causing some problems with positioning. But these are fine air diffusers. They will put in microscopic air bubbles to allow the water to actually absorb the oxygen rather than just let it pass through. And so we do have these on either side of those ditch. That's where those air bubbles are coming from. The challenge that we had was we didn't know if they were working correctly or if they were clogged. And so we had a technician come out. He opened up an airline and said, if there was air, if there was a sludge coming out of this, we would know that they were broken. There was air coming out. So he's fairly confident that they're working. we would just need more air is the only problem. We've got way more sludge and other stuff in there that we need to kind of break up with air bubbles and give the bugs more food with. So yeah, we do already have air supply in there. We just need more.

So would you go back one slide real quick?

There we go. Then you can see the circular clarifiers. We've got three of them working right now, clarifier one, two, and three. We can route all of the sludge and the water from each of those clarifiers either back into the ditch or down the line into the next processes. So we would, with the new ditch, once it comes, we would probably need to add at least one or two more clarifiers too. So it'll be a pretty extensive process. And then one more, thank you. So our biosolids processing is probably the next big project that's coming relatively soon. Right now, the middle picture with the big tubes, the sludge will come into the standup tube and then flow into the two late tubes that are on a diagonal. There's some brushes in there that will press the sludge as it goes up those tubes and slowly push the water out of it. Once it gets to a certain point at the end, It's about 12 to 20% water at that point. So it's still pretty wet. It goes into a conveyor belt and then as it comes out, you can see across the greenhouse, we've got it spread out pretty good. There's a conveyor belt on one end that drops it periodically on the floor. And then those big machines will turn it just kind of all the way down the greenhouse and the greenhouse will dry it out on the floor. in the warmer months, but the project that we're undertaking in the next few months is going to rip out two of those floors and put heated piping underneath them so we can create the class A material that we can sell year round rather than have to haul it off to the dump. So we're drying it out. We're using it as a land-applicated fertilizer. And as soon as we can do that, it will save us quite a bit of money. I think right now we're spending over $200,000 a year to dump stuff that we can't dry out enough. So that'll help us a ton, okay? So then after we get through those processes, the water that comes through the plant gets treated. You can see these squares that are in the floor are actually light banks that are in a ditch. The water passes through and the UV light will kill any residual bacteria or other microorganisms and give us a standard that will allow us to use that water as irrigation. So the first... The square-ish pond you see is our reject pond. If we can't meet standards and disinfect it clean enough, it goes into that pond to then be recycled back through the plant to be treated again. Most of the time, we're not filling that pond. It's the middle pond that we're going to when we can meet standards. That is the bluer of the waters. That's our cleaner stuff, and it will then flow by gravity through a pipe into that far pond, and that's the one the golf course takes from to water with. So we pump from that pond up to the top of the golf course, and then they can use it from either one of those ponds to water. So in conclusion, we're playing a big game of catch up. We have from 2008 to 2020, there was a 12 year period where not a lot of upgrades and improvements were made to the wastewater treatment plant. And so we're kind of behind the eight ball a little bit. We've had some good progress since 2020, but there's still a lot to do and we need to kind of make some hay while the sun shines, I guess. Our population from the year 2000 to now has increased by 189 percent. Our flow has increased by 205 percent. So there's definitely some projects coming up that we will need support for and funding for. We're working on trying to find alternative solutions for funding through federal and state grants. But we could also use support from the council and the citizens of Tooele City to make sure that we can successfully treat the wastewater that we're receiving. You can see our next projects coming up, the biosolids upgrade, our UV disinfection upgrade. We have two sewer line projects that will be coming online here soon that will help us with capacity on the collection side. And then we will need aeration sublimation as soon as possible. And then our second oxidation ditch and the clarifiers. So I don't want to sound doom and gloom, but I also want to make sure we all understand the serious situation that we're in. So I thank you for your time. And if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. What kind of money are you talking? Well, the original estimations on the oxidation ditch alone are going to be in the $30 to $40 million range. So we are going to be bonding for the biosolids and UVA disinfection in the two sewer lines this year, and it'll be right around $10 million for that.

And then from there, the other building, the other headworks building?

Headworks is done, so we don't have to worry about that.

Yeah, we're done with that. You mentioned earlier we needed a second building or something.

The second building would be the oxidation ditch. Oxidation, okay. Yeah, the second oxidation ditch would be the... Once we get the oxidation ditch done, we should be able to handle everything that Tooele would then be built out at. I don't anticipate us getting any more flows than the 8 to 10 million that we would then be rated at a capacity to treat. So that might be a lifetime deal. It might be a lifetime. Yeah. I think at that point it would just be a matter of, you know, whatever the lifetime of the plant would be. And then we'd have to kind of re reevaluate once we hit that lifetime limit.

So do you have to increase the capacity of the pond since you have more, that may be an issue too.

We do have three ponds right now that are out of commission because they leak and we can't use. So we would just need to realign those initially. Um, but then we would probably want to either consider digging new ponds or figuring out another or, Repairing our secondary system to be able to handle additional water flows mayor does a okay.

Yeah, I Was wondering what caused the you said that there were a couple of times that you had alarming spikes of wastewater that you were receiving What caused that was that weather related or was it we don't think it was weather related It was on some weekends that we couldn't identify anything, you know, like if it was 4th of July that would be pretty obvious but it was

a week before Father's Day. And so we didn't really identify anything specific. We are undertaking some monitoring activities that we're hoping to be able to identify maybe some unauthorized connections or some businesses that are discharging to us when we're least expecting it. So we are looking at flow monitoring in different areas. We're trying to trace back to different sections of the city to see if we can identify where this water is coming from, because there was a two week period where we were fine. Then we had the spike and then another two week period and we were fine. another spike and so we think there may be someone who's discharging large amounts of water to us that we need to try and identify because We think that could be a potential for why our ditch was killed But it could also be a reason why we're receiving these large blasts of water that we we really don't anticipate and then

Do you purchase the bugs? You can. And I'm looking forward to our tour. Yes. I really appreciate that. Being able to see it firsthand is going to be really helpful. And I've been there definitely before.

And we wanted to give you guys some education beforehand so that when Troy starts talking about things, you have a better understanding of what we're talking about. But when we go to somebody else to get bugs, usually they're willing to just give them to us because it's just a matter of scooping up something out of their ditch and taking it back with us. Yeah, it's not necessarily anything we have to purchase. That's not a very fun job, I'm sure. Yeah.

Do you ever get too many bugs? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And if we get to that point, we think we may have, before this period, we may have had that very problem where we had such a concentration of... of our mixed liquor that we were so high that it wasn't treating anything and we were just continuing to cycle it through. And so we definitely have to find that balance. And as we find that balance, it's really, it can, the hot weather can cause problems, cold weather can cause problems. It's really just a, you know, we have to really keep a close eye on things.

Do we have sufficient land to do all that needs to be done?

I believe we do.

We need the new ditch in three to five years. We're growing. We're expanding. Do we have sufficient land?

I believe we do. I think right next to the current ditch, there's enough space to put one more. And then we also have some space that we can put a couple more clarifiers. And so I think we're okay as far as land goes. And if we did need to find any more, I think it would be available to us. I think we would be okay that way.

I mean, it would be really nice if we could look forward to a great big storm. You know, we haven't had those big weather events, but just in case we do, you know, are you anticipating, you know, some kind of a contingency if we were to have like a, you know, a thousand-year storm? I just know that we've had those.

We did, and then even the one in October was enough to really wash us out a little bit. And the ditch actually, our treatment process actually responded really well. We did get it overwhelmed with water, but it turned out okay. We were able to recover fairly quickly, but yes, we definitely are looking forward to that kind of event. We've identified that the flows do spike, but we haven't been able to figure out where that comes from. We don't think we have a big infiltration problem, but I think we might have an inflow problem. Maybe if it's just from manhole lids or the way that our storm drain system is configured, it might be dumping water into our sewer system.

And then I did have a couple of questions regarding the wastewater that's going to go to the... to the links. Is it still called the links? The overlay golf course. Yeah. Yes. So the water is going to pump into one pond and then we're going to transfer that water into another pond. So, you know, can you kind of explain that process?

Yeah, sure. So it goes into pond four, which is the very bottom. And then there's a pump house that takes it from four up to 17, which is very top. And 17 is supposed to flow from 17, 16, 15, 14. And then I think four is supposed to, there's some gravity flow issues. I'm not real clear on which way they're supposed to go, but I think it's four, five, and six are the ones that are leaking. And so we've got some issues to try and figure out where water's supposed to go, but we are in talks with the golf course about installing a line to come back from line and a pump to come back from 17 to 4 because we don't have a way to get water back once we've put it up there other than letting it go through all the the ponds and so we do need we do recognize that it needs to some upgrades and some better design because right now it's pretty basic and I don't think it's been very well taken care of because it's kind of been an afterthought so we really We really have recognized that we're at a loss because we are required to provide the golf course with water as long as they're a golf course. And if we have upsets like this at the plant, it really curtails our ability to give them water and we don't have very many other options. And so there definitely needs to be either a redesign or some collaboration with the golf course to figure out how to better fill those ponds and keep them in water when they need it.

And do they use that water from the ponds for watering the grass?

Yes, they do. Yes. In fact, I think the last numbers that Troy gave me from the meters that we have, he said they were 1.7 and 1.4 million gallons out of each of those ponds. Respectively and so they're using a quite a bit of water each month to keep that golf course going and when we we weren't able to fill those ponds up once we were rejecting It really put them at a loss We were on the phone a lot with them to try and figure out how to get them water to keep the greens green and the grass from dying so Thank you, thank you Okay, any other questions or comments?

No wonder Troy looks so stressed out all the time.

We've been trying to get him to take a vacation for a while, but he's dedicated.

He looked really eager to get us to go and visit the plant.

Yeah, and we opened that up for tomorrow, so if you can make it tomorrow, great. We will offer another time if that's better, more convenient. We've opened it up to staff, too. We want to make sure everyone understands what's going on down at the water treatment plant. Great. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll move on to item six. We do have a closed meeting tonight to discuss litigation and or property acquisition. I will entertain a motion.

So moved. I'll second.

We have a motion from Councilman McCall and a second from Councilwoman Gochis. We'll take it to a vote. Councilman McCall. Aye. Councilman Hanson. Aye. Councilwoman Gochis. Aye. Councilman Gossett. Aye. I'm Councilman Brady and I vote aye. That passes 5-0. We will recess here and re-adjourn in the large conference room.