We have Councilmember Newell, Councilmember Harrison, Councilmember Freeman, Councilmember Stallings, and Councilmember Lockhart.

We welcome all of you.

We're glad you're here.

Glad for all of our staff who is with us today and all of our residents who are here today too to participate.

I've asked Councilmember Newell if she'll offer an invocation.

Our dear Heavenly Father, we're grateful we're able to be here together today as a council and be able to work together for this great city of Lehigh that we live in.

Heavenly Father, we ask that this time to bless our residents with special blessing on our first responders and our public safety that they can be kept safe from harm and be able to have the guidance and inspiration with them as they they keep us safe and keep our our city the amazing city that we all love to live in.

Please uh be with us today as we counsel with each other that we can listen and have an empathetic heart and be able to listen to our residents and make decisions that would have the best impact on our city.

Again, to Heavenly Father, we're so grateful for our this opportunity that we have.

We say Christ amen.

Thank you.

Our first item of business number two 2.1 is the annual audit report from the finance department.

So we'll turn some time over to Dean.

Yeah, so every year we uh we have an uh an audit.

And uh Dana has come here many times, but uh most of you don't know her because you're new.

So I'm gonna introduce Dana Howell.

She's with uh Osborne Robbins Bueller.

And uh she's been our auditor for a little while and she does a great job for us.

And more important, she may be the number one Seahawks fan in the state of Utah.

So my gosh, what a fun weekend.

Yes.

Oh, my boys just went to the game last Sunday.

They love the Seahawks.

I might have been on their plane.

There were definitely a few people on the plane.

So let's go.

It was so much fun.

I'll try to.

I didn't wear a jersey.

I figured I'd try and be a little bit professional.

A little.

So you guys have received a lot of information, I know.

And if you're new to this, it's probably like, what in the world?

So I was told to come give you a quiz.

Not really.

Um the first thing I wanted to do is point out in this big book, the um annual comprehensive financial report.

On page 14, it is our report on the financial statements.

And that's it's it's long, but basically what it's saying is that we've audited the financial statements and that we have concluded that they are materially correct in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

That just means we're looking for the proper accounting treatment of things and such.

It does not mean that we are testing internal controls.

We're not issuing any kind of a report on internal controls.

We're not, it's not designed to uh search out or find fraud or illegal acts or things like that.

We're really just doing tests to make sure that the financial statements are accurate in accordance with what we call GAAP.

And we were that it's a clean opinion.

There's no findings in that opinion.

Like I say, it's on page 14, and it goes over to page 16.

And then the next section of this uh document, it's called management's discussion and analysis.

And it just has a lot of summary financial information, summarized financial statements, and then also just some bullet points that you can look at for different things that are kind of high points that we pulled out.

Those um highlights are on page 17.

And I don't know if we want to read any of them in particular, or if you have, maybe I could just pause and if you have any questions at this point, or we could go over more detail, whatever any of you think.

When um so I haven't read through the whole thing yet.

I'm about halfway through, and I did notice that there was like a finding of sort, but it wasn't major.

Okay.

That might be in the other report.

The other reports, yeah.

So maybe we could move on from the financial statements.

I mean, and there's nothing, I guess the only other thing I would mention in the financial statements.

There's a lot of detail, and it's also it's kind of interesting to report to you in January when these are as of June 30th.

So it's kind of old news, right?

You know, if there was some budget problem or some cash flow problem or something, it would be long addressed.

And so the only other thing I would mention in here is that there was nothing, there were no um variants as there was no expenditures in excess of budget that you would see in these financial statements.

That would actually get reported on elsewhere too in these other reports, but that's just one other thing I thought I would mention.

So to address your question in um we have a packet here, it looks like this it's the single audit packet.

And this has to do with when you get federal funds over seven, well, you spend federal funds over $750,000.

We have to report to the federal government and do what they call a single audit.

And they call it a single audit because you do it kind of at the same time you're doing the financial audit.

And basically what we have to do is we have to go through several steps and figure out what your major programs are.

So the programs that you spent the most money on.

The last several years, all of that has related to COVID money when they just started throwing COVID money at you guys to be able to spend away.

And so the biggest programs for that were the pressurized irrigation meter installation.

And then also it's escaping me the well.

Yeah, the flight park well.

The flight park well.

So we had to do testing on those projects and just and we've we have certain things we have to do, check checklists and whatnot to do.

So we do all that, and as part of a government audit, there's this single audit, and we issue reports on that.

We had no findings on that at all this year, as far as specifically related to the federal grants.

But on a more general level, on page one of this single audit package, um, we do a report on internal control over financial reporting.

And in connection with that, it just describes what we do that the responsibilities we have for learning about your internal controls and for making sure we can see that they're in place.

But again, we're not testing them.

We don't opine on them at all.

And then we also do the same kind of thing for compliance.

And so very like compliance with these federal grants and also compliance with a bunch of state matters, which we can go into in a minute.

Um with regard to the internal control over financial reporting, we did write up a finding that we referred to on page.

We'll see.

Sorry, I should have had that.

So it's actually on page nine, it's the next to the last page.

And it's we refer to it as a significant deficiency in internal control, but that sounds so much worse than it really is.

It's just professional language that we are required to refer to.

And what happened is we ended up with quite a few audit adjustments.

So at the beginning of the audit, the finance department gives us what we call a trial balance.

That's basically the financial statements in unadjusted format.

And as we go through and do our thing, we will find adjustments.

And we always know we're gonna find adjustments because a lot of it is really kind of work in process as we get going on the audit.

This year we just happen to have some that were larger, and based on some calculations we do in our work and these professional standards and how they dictate what we have to report on.

Some of the adjustments exceeded a threshold where we had to report on it this way.

It's not abnormal, it's not like there's some big breakdown in internal control or anything.

So I don't know if you have any other specific questions.

That's that, but that's basically the gist of it.

Just kind of year-end close, and I mean I guess I would elaborate a little more.

All of the adjustments relate to timing issues, like when is payroll recorded, the last payroll of the year, is it recorded in fiscal year 2025, or did it get pushed into 2026?

We might have to shift it around.

Or inventory, same way with the PI meters.

Um, maybe they got they got counted, everything was there, there was nothing missing.

Did it get counted in the financial statements as inventory or as work in process in that project?

You know, it's really just timing and kind of where it's recognized in the financial statements.

It's not like there was all of a sudden, you know, any anything missing or any real errors in terms of we can't figure out something or whatever.

So it it sounds not great, but it's really just not a big deal.

It's very normal.

So that's pretty much where I would put it.

But if you have questions, fireway.

No?

I'd answer mine.

Okay.

So that's basically the single audit.

That's this single audit package, and also in connection with this, this gets combined with the big comprehensive annual financial report in a digital format and gets submitted electronically to the federal audit clearinghouse.

And so that's how it all gets reported to the federal government, and that's just all done and caught up and everything's completed for this fiscal year.

Um I mentioned briefly the state compliance.

There's a shorter letter, it might have a header, I can't remember what yours looks like, but it's a letter about state compliance.

And the city is subject to, we get an audit guide from the state auditor's office saying test this, that, and the other thing to make sure the city's in compliance.

And so we did that.

And this year we had to test your budgetary compliance.

Like I say, there's nothing over budget.

We test fund balance things, uh, the justice court, some controls and things like that on them.

Um we look at restricted taxes and some revenues.

I I think you guys wouldn't have seen the fraud risk assessment yet, but there's a checklist kind of thing that um Dean goes through with everybody at the end of the year about um risks and how the city is addressing them.

That do you want to explain that a little?

Yeah, so we do that every year, but we do it in June.

So we did it last June, and we'll do it this June with this council for the for that year.

And that so you're in compliance with that.

That's just one of the things we had to look at.

And then also some information about fees.

And in all of those scenes, we found we had no findings, everything was great.

So, really, there's nothing to really share or report on that unless you do have any questions.

I'll pause on that one.

No, okay.

Um, and then the last letter I have to share, it is just a basic letter.

We call it letter to those charged with governance, which is you guys.

And it's really just this boilerplate letter, we have to communicate about certain things.

The first part is about accounting policies.

There were no new accounting policies adopted for this year.

Well, no, there actually there was one.

There was a change in how we had to account for compensated absences, meaning PTO and time off, there wasn't a significant effect on the financial statements on that.

And then there's just some other things like if we had had any difficulties encountered in the audit, we would report it, but we didn't.

Um we do mention that we made adjustments, but the management's posted all of them, they've approved them.

Um we didn't have any disagreements, we didn't, you know, there were just really nothing else to report.

It's very boilerplate.

The other audit findings and issues does refer to the single audit letter that we just discussed, talking about the adjustments that we made as part of the audit.

So um really it's pretty it's pretty dull and dull as good.

So I mean that's really all I have, unless you want me to tear into anything in more detail.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Council's good.

I would pause one sec, because I should say that it's really a pleasure to work with these guys.

You don't know it yet.

A lot of you don't know it yet.

But Dean and Karma and Allison are fantastic.

It's a it's like the great gift of clients.

Not all clients are made the same.

And these guys are awesome.

So it's really just a privilege for us to work with everybody here, and everybody's so cooperative and helpful.

It's really awesome.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

Dean, any closing comments after that?

No, we're working with Dan.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll go to 2.2 presentation of Citizen Survival Results, the Y2 Analytics.

So for about 10 years now, we've been working with partnered with uh Y2 Analytics to conduct a citizen survey annually.

That went out this January, and so Karen here is she's gonna hear give us our uh results and kind of walk us through what that looks like.

All right, and assuming technology is still cooperating with us.

I don't know.

Let me try again.

Okay, great.

I love it when things work.

All right, so as Mariah mentioned, we've been conducting this resident survey for several years now.

Um we have some of the data illustrated over time in this presentation, just the last five years for uh ease of legibility, frankly.

But digging in with a few initial findings first and sort of the highlights here.

Um overall, we find that residents are quite happy with their quality of life in the city of Lehigh.

Uh we have seen some fluctuations over time, but in total, we have 78% of residents who currently say that they would recommend the city as a great place to live.

And the average quality of life rating on a zero to 100 scale is 75.

That's pretty consistent with what we've seen over time.

Uh overall trust and approval in elected officials has also trended downward a little bit.

Um this I will say is common across many of the cities we work with up and down the Wasatch Front.

I think it's more of an expression of attitude towards government in general than Lehigh uniquely, but that is something that we want to keep eyes on moving forward.

When we ask residents what they see as top issues or concerns in the city right now and looking towards the future, growth and the impacts of growth continue to be top of mind for residents infrastructure primarily.

When we look at some of the direct impacts or pain points that residents are expressing, we find that rush hour traffic is becoming an increasingly large concern for residents, while road conditions are less of a concern.

So definitely some clear tension there just in terms of overall capacity of Lehigh City Streets.

Probably not a surprise to any of you.

We also ask residents to evaluate a series of city services.

Most of those city services tested above 50 on that zero to 100 scale.

We have nine of our 22, so just shy of half receiving scores above 70 on that zero to 100 scale.

And power services were added to the list this year, and residents are quite happy with the city's power provision, a 79 out of 100.

And then looking at residents' communication preferences.

Overall, residents are inclined towards email communication.

I will say there's a little bit of a bias here because we are conducting an online survey.

Residents are receiving the invitations online.

So we certainly wouldn't recommend that the city move fully away from print media and other opportunities to reach out to residents, but there does seem to be an opportunity to increase the city's level of communication and connection to residents through email channels.

And then some of the topics that residents are most interested in hearing about include contract construction or traffic updates, uh, utility interruptions, or parks, library arts services, and emergency alerts.

A quick look at survey methodology before we get into the meat of things a little bit further.

Uh you can see here that map of resident distribution.

We have a good sample of residents who responded to the survey throughout the city.

They have been grouped into regions here that we've used to sort of dissect things over time.

Uh in the interest of time, I'm gonna breeze past most of those comparisons, but this full presentation will be shared with all of you after this meeting, and we're of course happy to respond to any uh follow-up questions or comments.

Uh the survey this year was in the field for about a week from January 5th to the 12th, and we had an excellent response rate for our panel refresh year.

So we do a little bit of statistical overkill on years where we're looking to refresh that panel, make sure that we have a good broad representative group of residents who are responding to the survey so that in subsequent years we can go back to that panel and have it a representative healthy response rate continuing forward.

And all of these responses have been weighted to reflect the demographics of the city as a whole in regards to age, gender, uh, home ownership rates in the city.

That's a good question about that.

Um I'm just wondering about so are the residents randomly selected?

It goes to the emails.

Do they have a unique code that's assigned to them so they can't then share that survey out and have it accounted?

They receive individual single-use survey links.

Okay.

Yes.

Mr.

Mayor, if I can.

Um just a couple questions.

I think the timing of this was interesting.

I got some feedback from residents, um, especially around the elected officials part because we had already obviously taken office.

Um they're confused.

Are we are we talking about the old council?

Um, I think I don't know if the timing is set.

Because I think this will be a recurring thing for years to come, right?

Yeah.

And again, there's probably little tweaks like that that we could make.

It was just we didn't send it out at Christmas time.

We thought January might get a better response rate.

So yeah.

And I guess if for the future, if we were to do it in the summer or something like that, would that maybe be more effective just because people know their elected officials a little better than we have done it in the summer in the past, but then people don't remember their snowplows score.

So we've we've tried to mix it up in the past because whatever's most recent is kind of top of mind.

Okay.

So I wouldn't take it personally.

I I think this probably more flex the previous officials you guys haven't.

Yeah, I figured.

Yeah, so I wouldn't take it too personally.

And then how do the question how are the questions organized that you could probably answer that?

Okay.

Yeah.

So I I'll speak to a few of those points just briefly.

So we have over the past five years held the survey during the same January-February window to maintain that level of consistency.

Prior to that, it did sort of fluctuate when the survey was fielded.

Um, again, keeping things sort of consistent so that we're looking at apples to apples comparisons of what was top of mind and where residents might be experiencing some pain points is really valuable.

So we would discourage moving the fielding period around again without that sort of asterisk if we chose to field the survey at a different time next year.

Summer happens to be a particularly difficult time to gather responses from residents.

We sort of see people check out when school is out of session through much of the Wasatch Front.

So we could look at a later in the spring fielding or a fall field fielding period if that's helpful.

As far as the organization of the questions in the survey, uh we have we start with sort of a funnel approach.

So we want to ask broad questions about quality of life in the city, overall perceptions and things like that that are pretty general before we get down to specific issue areas or service evaluations.

So starting broad, getting more specific as we go, trying to avoid framing or biasing respondents in as many ways as possible.

Thank you.

Okay, so looking at some of those general questions at the top of the survey here.

Overall, residents feel that the city is headed in the right direction generally.

This has fluctuated a little bit over time.

We saw in 2024 the most significant drop, but we are rebounding a little bit here.

68%, so just over two-thirds of residents feel the city is headed in the right direction.

And again, our overall quality of life rating has remained largely stable year over year.

So you can see the sort of faint dotted lines there, right around 75 represent the average score over the past several years.

Again, 75 on that zero to 100 scale is a pretty positive quality of life rating.

And you can see the most common responses are actually closer to that 80 or 90 range.

So really positive quality of life ratings here.

And when we ask residents whether they approve or disapprove of how the elected officials in the city are doing their jobs, 70% say that they approve at least some at some level.

Again, down slightly over time, but pretty consistent with what we're seeing in most cities up and down the Wattsatch front.

Uh and frankly, still a very positive approval rating.

Two-thirds of residents say that they approve, just 4% strongly approve, but I think the point is well taken that that could be a little bit of confusion following a municipal election year as well.

So the share of residents who say that the city has gotten worse over time has increased over the past several years.

And this is one area where we have a little bit of cause for concern.

You can see that we have 13% of residents saying that things have gotten much worse.

These attitudes are pretty regionally grouped.

Uh and we see relatively stable numbers in that about the same category.

When we're thinking about the overall quality of life rating that residents are expressing, and we see that average quality of life is quite stable.

Um the the interesting dynamic here is that that share of residents who say things are getting worse is just overall getting slightly larger.

Um where we recruited a new panel this year, we don't feel that this is representative of a specific cohort of residents.

We we feel that this is pretty representative of the city as a whole, so it's certainly something to keep an eye on.

Um when we look at the attitudes that are sort of likely to be shaping that, the things that are correlated with that movement, uh, growth is still the number one pain point that residents are pointing to.

Um overall, we have 80% of residents this year who say that the city is growing to some degree too quickly.

You can see that's bounced up and down a little bit over time, but pretty consistently high share of residents feel things are outpacing uh the rate of infrastructure improvements and growth in the city.

Um, really quick.

Sorry, can I ask a question?

Two slides back.

Um you mentioned that um you and maybe I misunderstood that so I just want to ask.

You mentioned that maybe some of this is regionally located, but representative of the of not just one cohort, but and I think that's we maybe where I'm trying to understand.

So if it's not one cohort of people, but you noticed a regional connection.

Yes.

Um which region was it?

And um, could you provide?

And I don't know if it's in further slides.

I I was gonna say, I again, for in the interest of time, have hidden the regional breakouts, so I could pull that up.

No, no, no.

If you want to keep going, that'll be fine, but it'll be in the presentation.

That'll be in the full presentation that you receive, and again, happy to address any uh specific follow-up questions after that.

Okay.

I think the the point that I was trying to make is not that it's necessarily uh resident residential tenure questions.

So it's it's it does seem to be more common among residents who have lived in the city longer, but there are also some regional differences.

Um the residents on sort of the northeast side of the city are most likely to say that things have gotten better.

Uh residents in sort of the older parts of the city are more likely to say things have gotten worse.

Okay, thank you for sharing.

Of course.

Uh again, growth is largely shaping those attitudes.

But when we look at residents' positive uh evaluations or the things that say they say drive them to Lehigh, the reasons that they choose to live here.

Uh central location is and has been consistently the primary driver for residents.

About 45% mentioned something that has to do with the proximity to I-15, the accessibility of the city, uh the sort of central positioning between Salt Lake and Utah County or other cities in Utah County.

Uh family-friendly environment is also a large draw for residents, as is general affordability in housing.

These are things that came up relative to other places that uh residents may have considered living along the Wasatch Front.

And then work and job opportunities and the small town feel of the city.

Again, pretty consistent themes over time.

Uh but these are the things that residents are really attached to, the things that characterize Lehigh in their minds.

And again, coming back to those issues or concerns that residents are expressing.

A majority of residents identified something that had to do with traffic or congestion when we asked what they saw as the most important issue facing the city today.

Growth in infrastructure was also sort of directly related.

Again, a majority of residents citing something about growth in their concerns.

And then high density housing, general affordability, and then water and resources were the other most common themes.

But you can see there's quite a gap between the concerns about growth and those other concerns that residents expressed.

And looking towards the future, residents identify largely the same issues as things that they would be concerned about over the next several years.

So growth, again, mentioned by a majority of residents, traffic by just over a third, uh, infrastructure by about one in four residents, and then housing and water, again, a little bit of a gap there, but the top rounding out the top five issues.

All of that said, residents are still likely to recommend the city as a great place to live.

So we have 78% who say that they would recommend the city to friends and family.

Um this number has stayed consistently high despite a little bit of a decline since 2022, uh, which never ceases to surprise me.

Um we see a lot of attitudes in other cities where it is sort of a last in and close the door behind me sentiment when there are particular frustrations about growth or infrastructure limitations.

And that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Uh we do still have a large share of residents who feel that the city is a great place to live and would recommend it to others.

Um that sort of small town feel or sense of community really shines through in this particular area, I think.

Um overall, we asked residents to evaluate a few different aspects of life in the city.

Uh, 91% of residents say that they feel safe living in Lehigh, again, consistently high over time there.

Uh 79% say that the city is a great place to raise a family, no statistically significant differences in the scores from the last couple years there.

Uh 64% say that the city does a good job managing city services.

That score has declined slightly over time, uh, something that it's probably worth paying attention to, and we can talk about specific city service ratings there as well.

Uh but residents do feel that the city provides all of the services they think it should.

Uh, 62% say that the city has all the kinds of businesses they would like it to have, and that is a statistically significant increase compared to 2025's data point there.

Um, so positive development in terms of economic growth and businesses.

Uh and then uh dip again in the share of residents who agree that they trust city officials to be open and honest compared to what we saw last year.

Um again, this could be due to some confusion following the municipal election.

It also does just sort of fit the broader narrative that we're seeing around trust in government generally up and down the Wasatch Front.

Looking at residents' specific evaluations of city goals, uh, overall residents have positive attitudes and feel that the city is doing a good job focusing on having a family-centered community and providing diverse opportunities and a high quality of life.

Uh, residents react really positively to that.

And that is the largest share of residents that has expressed sort of positive evaluations or agreement with that sentiment over time.

So the goal has been shifted slightly year over year.

The wording has been tweaked a little bit, but this particular mission statement or direction of having a thriving family centered community, providing diverse opportunities and a high quality of life is something that resonates with a larger share of residents than we've seen in the past.

Looking at the specific points in that overall mission statement or goal, we have a total of 67% of residents who would give the city an excellent or good rating in providing a family centric community or developing a family centric community.

Similarly, 67% in total would give the city an excellent or good rating for providing a high quality of life in the city.

So really high marks there.

The area where we see a little bit more division is when it comes to diverse opportunities in Lehigh.

So we have 47% of residents who would give the city an excellent or good rating there, but a large share of residents who would put things at fair, so maybe a little bit more opportunity for education or additional outreach when we're thinking about the types of opportunities that are available to residents, whether that's different recreation opportunities for different shares of the population, different arts and culture opportunities and events that might reach different audiences.

Looking at our specific city service ratings, you can see our fire and emergency medical services stays at the top of the list here with the highest rating overall, 85 on that zero to 100 scale.

Garbage collection comes in second with 82 on that zero to 100 scale.

Again, pretty consistent hierarchy here.

Power electricity services provided by the city coming in fresh and taking our number three spot for the highest satisfaction rating.

And then police services right there at 78 out of 100 as well.

Rounding out our top five, we have culinary drinking water in the city at 77 on that zero to 100 scale.

You can see a lot of these ratings really positively clustered.

Again, almost all of our city service ratings are above that sort of, if we were to look at it like a letter grade, we have all passing scores, certainly.

But when we look at some of the lower ratings, we have development permitting at the bottom of the list here, 42 on that zero to 100 scale.

There's also a large share of residents who are declining to express rating for development permitting.

And I conjecture we've sort of changed the framing or the wording for that particular department over time.

At one point, it was planning and zoning services, development planning, zoning, anything that has those words in it tends to conjure attitudes about growth.

Frankly, so in this case, I think we've seen in the past that planning and zoning has been the scapegoat for complaints about growth in the city services section.

Development permitting seems to still hold that position here.

Mr.

Mayor, may I ask a question?

In the survey, are you offering an opt-out when rating these services if they've never participated in them?

So theoretically, these responses should be from people who have participated in the permitting process.

Theoretically, yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, there is a not applicable option for all of the services, so residents don't have to express an evaluation if they don't have any experience with that department or service.

That said, I think we have seen over time that this tends to be a little bit of an outlet for those attitudes about growth in the city.

Looking at residents' attitudes toward traffic conditions, again, this is something that we know is top of mind for residents and is a particular pain point.

We have a large share of residents who work outside the city, 46% this year.

That's a pretty consistent split between those who work inside Lehigh and those who commute out of the city.

But that is certainly a factor when we're looking at those traffic concerns.

And the things that are most likely to be considerable concerns or pain points for residents are evening and morning traffic on those major thoroughfares.

So 45% of residents say that it is a major or significant concern to them, or it affects them personally when we're looking at evening traffic, morning traffic on those major thoroughfares, slightly less of a major impact on residents, but still we're looking at more than a third who say that that is a pain point for them.

It directs directly impacts them.

And then about one in four residents who say that evening traffic on freeway exits and on ramps or morning traffic on freeway exits and on-ramps are particular pain points for them.

When we're looking at daytime traffic, we see significantly fewer concerns or direct impacts to residents, and traffic in residential areas is slightly less of a concern than again those sort of major commuting pain points.

We also asked residents whether the conditions on these different roads and access points are having a direct impact on them.

And we see a pretty substantial share, about one in five residents say that the track road conditions on major thoroughfares directly affect them.

But significantly fewer residents say that the road conditions in residential areas or on freeway exits or on ramps have affected them directly in the past year.

And you can see those ratings have fluctuated a little bit.

So last year we had a consistent 16% of residents who said that residential area road conditions were affecting them directly, but that's down pretty substantially from 2023 when that was a larger pain point.

Major thoroughfares are a larger pain point now than they have been in the past, and those freeway exits and on ramps have sort of bounced around a little bit, but 14% of residents say that that has a direct impact on them this year.

And then a few other potential traffic impacts or transportation considerations.

27% of residents this year say that the accessibility of mass transit has an extreme or major impact on them directly.

So it's something that a larger share of residents than ever before say is affecting them.

We also have about one in four residents who say that the accessibility of safe walking routes is something that affects them personally.

Bike lanes are the least common concern for residents overall.

And the last section that we'll delve into here is just looking at residents' preferences for information and communication from the city.

Overall, we have the largest share of residents sort of coalescing on one channel, saying that they currently get most of their information from the city through social media.

The city newsletter and word of mouth are the next most common information sources followed by emails from the city.

When we look at the channels that residents would prefer to use, we do have a larger share of residents, again, who participated in an online survey, saying that an email from the city would be their preferred mode of contact.

But we find that the city newsletter is sort of meeting the needs of those who would prefer to use it.

We have a good amount of parity there.

A smaller share of residents would prefer to rely on word of mouth than currently do.

So again, some opportunity to redirect attention to some of the more city official channels.

And then social media as well.

Still a large cohort of residents who would prefer to stay on that channel and continue to receive communication or information from the city that way.

Some of the topics that residents find particularly valuable, majority of residents say that updates about road construction, traffic, and infrastructure projects are useful to them.

Utility and service interruptions, parks, recreation, library services, arts and culture opportunities in the city, and emergency alerts and public safety notices, sort of rounding out that top tier of notifications or types of communication that residents find especially valuable.

City events and community programs, land use development and planning zoning notices are the next most common.

After that, we do sort of dip into a smaller share of residents with a longer tail of issues here.

But buzzes tax budget taxes fees and capital projects, neighborhood specific updates, elections and voter information, and city council meeting agendas, decisions and public hearing notifications are important to about one in four residents respectively.

And when we look at the channels of communication that might best serve each of these needs, again, email sort of topping the list across the board here, whether it's traffic and construction or political updates or development projects.

Residents find email to be a particularly useful channel for these updates.

Text alerts for infrastructure and road project notices would be especially welcome, while the city newsletter seems to be a better channel for political updates, whether that's council decisions or hearings, development projects going forward, and some of those community events.

Overall, we have a pretty consistent share of residents who would like to receive some degree more communication from the city.

So just shy of two-thirds of residents would like to see a lot or a little bit more uh information through the city again through some of those channels specifically.

Uh and when we look at the ways that residents say the city could improve communication, um looking at multi-platform options, so seeing uh reach to different demographics and parts of the city by utilizing those text alerts and emails and social media.

Um I think this is something that again represents more of an opportunity for education and outreach to residents than a particular need that the city isn't addressing.

Um the level of awareness there is obviously going to be pretty uh important when we're looking at how effectively we're reaching residents through those various channels.

Uh we do have a large share of residents, one just over one in four who say that email communication could be better utilized, uh, more social media engagement, timely information, and then detailed and transparent communication were the other common themes that we saw in those responses about how communication might be improved.

Uh we also asked a series of questions about the Everbridge Alert system.

Uh we have about 49% of residents who say that that's their preferred avenue for receiving emergency alerts.

Uh, just over a third of residents say that they have signed up.

Uh and when we ask residents who haven't signed up for those alerts, why not?

Uh what we see is that there's a large lack of awareness there.

Eight out of ten residents say that they had never heard of this system.

So definitely an opportunity to increase awareness and engagement there.

Uh and then about one in four residents say that they're not sure how to sign up.

So, again, uh certainly an education opportunity.

And that concludes our brief review.

Again, there's more detail in the slides that we can send around after this meeting.

But based on what we've covered here, any additional questions?

Yeah, I have a question.

Um, so I think it is good to do it in January, especially as it kind of um maybe helps us make some decisions budget-wise and what's priority.

Um I'm kind of wondering again, along council member Harrison's question is when was this scheduled to be like when did the previous council make a decision to send this out?

Was it is it just like standard?

It's just that the staff would make the decision when to send it out, the council.

Yeah, we just try and get it ahead of the budget retreat.

Okay.

Just with again with three new council members and now and four, really, with four new council members.

Um I think all of us who were in the election the last year, we this this really just validates what we were all hearing from residents.

So anyways, uh, and I don't know, probably not gonna say what the cost of this is, but to me it is kind of unfortunate that it was uh and it's not it's not you, but just as just overall statement that this was done with all these new council members here, and we're it's confusing whether it was reflecting the previous council, the current council, um, and with all that, and especially I mean, most of us talk with thousands of residents, so this is confirming what we were talking about.

And if I may, and I I don't want to downplay your concern, but really that's one or two questions out of many, right?

We're we're trying to get a uh rating on how the city services at large are doing, not necessarily how the elected officials are performing.

So I I I validate your concern, certainly, but I think we still get a lot of value out of doing the survey when we did uh uh out ahead of the budget retreat.

So that's really the the long and short of it.

It's not it's not your report card.

I I hope you don't take it that way.

It's more our report card, if you will.

Yeah, no, I don't I don't take it personally.

I'm just considering cost and the residents, you know.

Yeah, and and I guess we'll help me understand that concern.

I don't I don't understand the cost being a concern to do that.

Well, if it's not completely accurate because we have this transition period, sure.

Um, you know, that's I I would like to get the best bang for a book if we're spending the money on it, just like how the ratings went down after the election two years ago, probably reflective of that election.

Um, you know, that's just something to think about when we have a municipal election where there's a especially a large overturn.

I I just don't want the perception to be that we wasted money on the survey because certainly we got a lot of valuable information out of it, but certainly to the point of the elected officials, perhaps another timing in the year would be better.

I I think part of it to look at too that so little is of it is about who's in office right now.

You're seeing consistency of who no matter who's in office, it's the same kind of concerns that are consistent over time.

We're saying those things.

Maybe there's a lack of being able to under address the amount that the city can actually influence and impact those areas.

Um maybe those kind of things are handled.

But I think for the most part, some of these things like public safety, those are things that we need to know.

What is the residents, how do they feel towards public safety?

That really has a little to do with you know who just was elected.

I think those things are really key when we go into um budget, and some of these other things probably can't really be impacted because you know the officials are the officials, you know, that's who's been elected.

But these other parts with what departments are doing well, where can we improve, where can we improve the um communication?

That's a lot to do with kind of how this council now is going to derive decisions that if we didn't have this data, we may not be making it.

We'll just, you know, kind of shoot from the hip.

So I would I would agree with Jason on that.

Like take anything when it comes to that might be a reflection of counsel with a grain of salt and um focus on the other parts of it.

Any other comments or questions?

Thank you.

I'll throw one comment there.

I know I got mine on the sixth right after I was uh sworn in, so I spoke very highly of the city.

So we can throw one of the however many there was out.

Thank you.

We appreciate it.

Thank you so much for your time.

I think data's good.

Any data in uh versus data out helps us.

Um I think we we can be aware of those things though uh in the next coming couple years as they come up, maybe offset that a week or two, but uh it's good information.

Uh item number 3.1, uh police department staffing discussion.

Chief Paul turns some time over to you.

Thank you.

Uh I want to thank the mayor and council for taking the time to let us come and have a short discussion on police staffing.

Uh in preparation of going into the budget season.

And I I will say the the surveys are valuable for us because it looks like the can what's on everybody's mind is kind of what's on our mind, and that's growth and traffic, which are really the two biggest drivers for us and and the needs that we have right now.

Um got the uh growth analysis, the the staffing study that we used last year.

I actually I know all of you did.

I sent it out recently.

And I know there were some questions about that.

We are using the same study this year to re-evaluate where we're at now.

And we'll have the advantage is it'll give us last year's data plus this year's data.

I unfortunately I can't give you any hard results right now because we're still vetting the information and we're going through and finding that.

We did get your email that outlined some of your concerns and the questions that you wanted to address.

And those are the things that we're also trying to address right now.

But just out of uh wanting to be as completely accurate as we can be, we we don't really have any hard data right now to report, but we're happy to answer any questions relative to the study and uh you know, maybe talk that way.

And I also want to thank Mariah while I'm up here because Mariah has spent a lot of time going through our data and and sifting through a lot of stuff to get the most accurate information.

And she may be in a better position to explain the methodology, but I'm happy to um address any questions you have right now or or talk about that.

Yeah, mayor, if I may.

Yeah.

Um, thank you, Chief.

Uh I had a really good experience during the ride-along a couple weeks ago from about 7 p.m.

until midnight.

Um just thoroughly impressed with your officers, and so thank you for that opportunity.

I know um Councilmember Stelling's had a very similar experience.

Um the the one thing that sticks out to me, and I appreciate the studies that you sent, especially the one specific to Lehigh around the peak workload analysis.

And um it talks a lot about the saturation index, which for those um who haven't seen this study, it's it's basically wanting sixty percent of the time that an officer is on duty to um respond to calls and and so forth, with the other 40 percent being discretionary, uh so they can proactively patrol and be available.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that's that's correct.

That this study does this study says that 60 percent of the officers' time should be committed and 40 percent should be discretionary, or it it could be that they're in court or they're in training or they're on vacation and they're simply not available for calls.

So that yeah, the study says that, and moreover, it says sixty percent of your total sworn officers should be dedicated to the patrol division, where it that's your most calls for emergency response and uh you know those immediate calls for service.

And I can report that 60 percent of our workforce is in the patrol division, 62 percent right now.

So we're we're very good there.

The other side of it, the discretionary time and the saturation stuff that you're talking about are are the things that we're still trying to analyze based on uh new data from you know, even changes from last budget to this budget.

So and the one uh I really like the study because it goes through the 24 hours in a day starting at midnight.

Um and out of those 24 hours of needed staffing versus current staffing.

Um there are two hours, so uh 12 a.m.

and 4 a.m.

we're right on par, right?

Um I think there's one hour at 6 a.m.

where we we have an extra officer.

Um but every other hour, so the the remaining 21 hours we have anywhere from needing an additional one officer to meet that um that good point of staffing to I think the most was at 8 p.m.

22 officers understaffed.

Is that is that correct?

Yeah, and that's that's what the study shows, and that's quite concerning.

And that's the stuff we're trying to address.

And and I guess our hope and my hope specifically is that through this analysis, it's very likely a bigger number than we can make up in one budget cycle.

And so to develop a five-year strategy, four or five-year strategy, and I noticed that was a concern that the council expressed too.

So our hope is that through this in-depth study, we can we can develop a plan to uh build it, build it out, you know, four or five years and hopefully close that gap.

Um the advantage, you make a good point.

The the advantage on this study versus a simple ratio, uh population ratio study is not only does it tell you what you need, but it also tells you where your deficiencies are in the time of day, and so you can allocate resources that way.

And that's something that we we started doing a couple of years ago.

Um before we looked at it this way, we had teams of you know, six officers that just rotated through the schedule, and then we realized that it would be more effective to put more officers on at high volume times.

So that's when we adjusted that.

So we have more officers out at peak times.

And then that I know another question that came up was the shift differential, and that's what spurred that was because everybody didn't rotate equally, uh, we started to consider maybe a shift differential to offset the those that are are stuck on a less desirable shift simply because of uh seniority and stuff like that.

So we're we're looking at staffing needs, uh time of day, and then also fair compensation for those that work those off hours.

Mr.

Mayor, may I?

Um I'm just curious to know when we raised taxes several years ago to um my understanding, I wasn't on the council at that time, but that was to help with hiring more officers.

Um how how many more officers were we able to hire based off of that tax increase?

Uh and that might be a question for Dean.

Yeah, it might be.

I I know that last year, which this last year we hired three that that the city funded, and then we were also given two by a grant.

Now that grant was delayed a little bit because of the government shutdown, you'll remember, and we weren't actually able to hire them until January of this year.

But they're now uh on the staff, and we added them.

I'm I'm trying to uh recall the year before.

I honestly I don't remember if it was three officers or two officers or nothing.

Okay, go ahead.

Take it away.

When I I'll look I can look it up, but I don't I think in 2022 it I think the tax increase ended up being about 350,000 dollars.

I think it was two officers and maybe a parks person.

In 24, I don't know that it was new officers, it was really we had some salary studies come back where we were deficient in wages in both police and fire, and that's really what that went for.

I don't think it was for officers.

I think it was for pay.

Okay.

Okay, that's a great clarification.

Thank you.

Um and then those two officers from the grant program, that's not a the my understanding and I would love to understand it better from you.

The grant program essentially helps us onboard an officer over a series of years, but eventually the city assumes the full cost once the grant runs out.

Yes, the and and it's a three-year uh onboarding.

And I believe the city has the option to pay it all, you know.

You have up to three years to pay that off.

Okay.

And it also doesn't cover the complete cost of an officer.

It either covers the uh equipment or the wages.

I can't remember which.

I I think it's the wages.

And actually, Matt is Matt here.

Matt can Matt Matt wrote the grant, and he could probably answer better.

Okay.

Yeah, so we pay for the we have two officers over the next three years.

We pay a decreasing amount each year.

So I think we've got 250,000 over three years to help onboard these officers.

So maybe the first year we get 100,000, and it drops down each year until it's depleted.

Okay.

And I think the the point I'm making or the point I hope to understand would be that grant funding is not a sustainable model for growing a police department because eventually the city will assume the full cost.

And I I just want to draw that as we head into budget season, making that very clear that while it's a it's a help to us, it's not a sustainable.

We can't rely on it fully for the growth of the department.

Is that correct?

Correct.

And it's expected as part of the grant that you do keep them on board after the three years have has expired to fully fund them.

So thank you.

Appreciate the clarity.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Yeah, so I I appreciate the study.

And it it's great to, you know, make sure our decisions are data driven.

So and um one thing I noticed that really alarmed me.

I mean, I know we're understaffed, um, but looking at that that threshold and how far beyond that threshold we are in just throughout the day, 8 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

And um it's like 70, 80 percent and above, up to over a hundred percent.

I'm I'm guessing because the time to respond to the call exceeds that hour.

Um but that worried me too, is that and then going on the drive along, I know how busy they are.

One car, uh one called to another car, and they were such different.

It was an incredible experience.

I mean we did everything to help somebody unlock a car door to respond to uh potential domestic violence situation.

So um it that was very helpful, and I recommend all the council to do that when they can.

But so it's not just um yeah, so I yeah, I I'm just amazed at how incredibly busy you are in Lehigh.

Yeah, and you keep us safe, and I just don't want to fall behind.

I I I appreciate that.

And and the numbers can be alarming, but again, this is w this is one theory or one method of staffing, and and there are others.

Now, with that said, this is a one of the most thorough and well thought out uh methods that I've ever come across, and I'm glad we're using it.

But it still kind of talks in general terms that may or may not be straight applicable to Lehigh.

But uh no, I do appreciate you know, you you talk about all the things you did from unlocking cars.

You know, it's not strictly crime rate.

A lot of calls for service are not really criminal in nature, they don't result in an arrest, but it's just a service that we offer to the public.

And so sometimes people will look at crime rates and say, well, we have a low crime rate, we must not be very busy, but crime rate is one small part of of what we do too.

So I guess my point is there's so many factors to consider.

This study is really thorough at trying to capture everything and and be data-driven.

But with that said, too, there's there's uh not flaws, but but there are things that don't necessarily translate to Lehigh.

So it's it really comes down to once we do the analysis, what we're comfortable with, which again, if you go back to the citizen study or survey, you could say, you know, we're at 78 percent favorable.

Would we like you know, we'd like to be up around 90 or 95, but um you know it it it kind of helps us gauge too how the citizens feel about the services they're they're getting.

And I'll just uh put a plug in for the officers.

They do incredible work.

They they're very professional.

We're very uh picky about how we vet our officers and who we bring in here, and we've had great success um bringing people in and they they love working here, they love working for the city, they love the community support.

And I I do feel that it's important that we get them enough help that they can do it safely and and go home to their families, and that's what we're trying to do.

Yeah, and that's one thing I noticed.

Uh one call we had to wait a while for backup, so that is a concern.

But uh can I get your opinion?

So I you I you're I agree there's a lot of different models, and I looked at them while and um all the studies kind of point to this one as like the gold standard kind of thing.

But so the 60 percent threshold, and it's not a hard and fast number.

It's kind of generally should be in close to that range.

How comfortable are you looking to do a 60 percent and then a 40 percent more proactive policing?

Or I mean, obviously we've got a five year plan, so we gotta be a little flexible there.

But what what is your comfort level?

And then also um again, I talking to the officers, we want to stay ahead of things.

We're gonna experience a lot more growth, right?

And so I to me personally that proactive policing um is very essential, right?

Um officer initiated, you know, activity, that kind of thing.

So what is your comfort level?

Um what do you see as uh good proactive policing?

And then another thing I wanted to talk to you about really quick is just what can we do in that interim till we can get up to where we need to be.

Are there things um I you know I've talked to some residents who volunteer with VIBs via VIPs?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um would that be helpful?

Are there other things we can do in the meantime to help officers out?

There are some things we can do.

There are things that we are doing that that kind of help that.

Uh I'll first an answer your first question about 60 percent.

I I mean I would love to be at 60.

Um if we were at 70 or or so.

Uh, you know, I I don't know.

I I I'm I'm concerned about how fast we're growing and how fast our call load is increasing, but I don't see it as critical, maybe as much as somebody else right now, as long as we're closing that gap.

And there are things uh like I said, we're we are um we've we've reallocated and put our officers out at our high crime or our high activity times.

We've also recently gone to an online reporting system, which there are a lot of calls for service that people don't necessarily need to see an officer face to face.

They just they can they can access it through our website, they can get all the information they need, it'll generate a case number for them, and then we have an officer that's assigned to direct those where they need to go.

And so that saves response time and sending an officer out for every every call that might come through.

So we're we're doing that.

Um of the other things we we have hired uh uh a part-time officer right now that uh we we don't incur the same cost of all the benefits and all that stuff, and we we plug him in uh when we have guys in training and stuff like that.

So there are little things we can do.

Um but yeah, we we just need to be aware of the growth.

So we also uh one more thing that just came to mind, and this is exciting for me.

So the Utah Department of Public Safety has a information, a uh SIAC center.

It's it's a it's a data analysis center that and they operate for the whole state.

And this helps primarily with investigations, not so much with our our calls for service immediately, but it'll sh it'll uh make our our investigation time more efficient.

Anyway, they do it for the state, and they're they're housed up in Salt Lake, and they service all of uh law enforcement in the state, but we reached out to them after going to some training about the possibility of opening up a Utah County substation, and we happen to have space in our building, and the only thing that we have to do is provide them work space.

And so we have analysts that are coming in and they'll be able to sift through data and information that our investigators are are uh researching and looking into.

They'll be able to do that much quicker, and we've already seen some benefit.

They they haven't officially come into the building, but they came and toured it, and we happen to be working on a case that was tying up a lot of resources on our property crimes team, and they took that information and identified the suspect real quickly, and we were able to go pick them up.

So I think even as as simple as bringing in data analysts and crime analysts uh in the building and helping us sift through information quicker will will also help.

Mayor, if I may just one more question.

Like if there's a suspicious person walking down the street and then it's you know, the cop drives by, there's nothing there, they move on.

That may not count as a call in one city, but it may call count as a call in another city.

Yeah, it's it's not completely standardized.

What you might be thinking of is what generates a case number versus what's a call for service.

Okay.

I mean, any any time somebody calls dispatch for an officer and the officer responds, that that's a call for service, but it may not trigger a case number.

You know what I mean?

If if no one's being arrested, if no crime is being committed, if it's a you know, a suspicious something suspicious in a neighborhood and it's delayed.

You know, the the somebody calls it in, the officer drives through the neighborhood, doesn't really observe anything suspicious.

There's really nothing to report and generate a case number, but there is a CAD number that's captured that accounts for the time responding to that.

So that that may be what you're thinking of, and there's no there's no each agency has their own triggers, what generates a case number versus what's just a CAD call.

Okay.

Thanks.

So to follow up on that, when you say we Lehigh has 45,000 uh responded to calls, is that case numbers or is that an officer's response?

That that's calls for service.

Okay.

Yeah.

Actually our case our case numbers are around 26,000.

Okay.

So you can see there's a lot of work they do that doesn't necessarily generate a case number, like unlocking a car door, that will generate a CAD call, but it it may not generate a case number.

Um I think this is super helpful.

And just speaking with you and kind of how we ended up and the pattern of three a year and also I can just see the growth in Lehigh in all areas is disceeded what we thought it would be.

Like you look at where our projections are when it comes to MAG and they're way beyond where they should be.

So it makes sense that we can no longer follow that same pattern that we've had in 2015, and we should have adjusted this earlier.

Um something that would be helpful for me, because I know you're talking about that this is one data point, but also so many other data points out there.

Um did a study in 2022.

It wasn't with ICMA, but it was with another one.

Um I haven't seen that study, but it might be good to kind of like where were the comparable population sizes to be able to gather some data points from them too and kind of because I think that might help us make sure we nail down what that um increase per officer per year is kind of based on surrounding area.

I know we're different demographics, different call volumes and stuff, but at least that might be one comparison point, and they've been super helpful with me trying to understand um this better too.

Um and then uh it would be helpful to have this like even more of a a breakdown when it comes to like on on the report where it has like your needed staffing, your current staffing, but also have that breakdown of what the shifts are like where we have 72 officers, but how does that actually break down during the seven-week period?

Yeah.

And just be able to really narrow that down.

Um I'm passionate about how incredible our experience forces and wanting to make sure that we take care of them, making sure that we have really great experienced officers having their back.

So it's like I know that's just so much to balance to make sure we don't lose officers at the same time.

We're increasing and making sure that we're getting to that number that you need.

So thank you.

I I can definitely reach out to uh Orum and and see kind of what they they use as well as a comparison.

The other the other thing that I think will be helpful, and this is some of the questions that the council asked, is I can give you a kind of a breakdown on the high priority calls or the dangerous calls that require multiple officers or or more backup and stuff like that.

I can kind of give you a breakdown of an increase that we're seeing in those type of calls as well.

So I I should be able, I'm I'm hopeful to provide you some very good uh information as you may have.

I I would love that because last budget season that was my concern is when it was a three plus two, so a five versus but you were asking for nine, and that was my question.

Or do we ever have officers alone on these dangerous calls?

And something else that's you know been brought up too is like if we have so many officers that are on these dangerous calls, are other calls being like delayed that are also dangerous because they're not being able to get to.

So I think those are really important data points that we can make a really good case for.

The like the Y2K analytics, it said like 78% citywide, but police was 91% is like favorable.

So that's what like the but that we want to do.

I thought that was fire.

I think it was police.

It was public safety.

Yeah.

So I know.

I think they were.

Look, if all we had to do was put out fires.

Oh wow.

Oh yeah, I would say the robust approach to it.

And also just having that, you know, what's what's it really like where officers are having to go into these dangerous situations that we never want to have on officer alone.

Yeah, and I'll say this too for for the extremely dangerous calls.

We have a real good working relationship with our neighboring agencies, and it's not uncommon to send more backup from neighboring agencies.

It's not we don't want to have to rely on that, but we commonly go and assist on high priority calls and they help us you know back as well.

So we have a pretty good working relationship with all the departments in the in the county.

And um I guess I I am so grateful for the information and the data.

I think this is gonna really help us move forward and help us support you.

I'm also concerned though that as we dig into the details, we're essentially broadcasting to anyone who wants to do something not so great in our town, like where when our officers are there and when they're not and things like that.

So I want to be really cautious and I appreciate the transparency you're bringing, but I also want to make sure that we're we're not by by doing this, we're not doing anything that would um compromise the safety of you and your team.

So um I appreciate it, and I just am wanting you to know that I'm aware of that and I'm trying to do everything we can for you without compromising um what makes you guys great and safe.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Chief, we appreciate you.

You know that.

Uh thank you for the information as we move forward.

Uh we'll work together and make sure we can continue to build your department.

So thank you.

Appreciate you.

Thank you.

Also, thank you, Chief Craft.

91 is pretty good.

Okay.

3.2 Mayor and City Council committee assignments.

Mayor Pro Tim stallings.

Welcome aboard.

Okay, um Tisha's gonna help me with this.

She there was I got a call even today that there's some concern about understanding what the different assignments are, what they entail.

And um did the rest of you get to send out an email.

Did you that was kind of late in the day, but you can yeah, you should be able to pull it up now, and we're gonna pull it up on this screen as well.

And we can kind of walk through the different committees and explain those in more detail.

Okay, let's do that and have Tisha talk about the committees and ask her any questions.

Sorry, can I just ask?

There's one more item after this, right, Mayor?

Oh, just wondering how much time we would have about approximately, so we can stay on that.

Just wondering.

We should be fine.

We'll also we have some closed stuff that has to be done today, too.

So we're all right.

We'll go quickly.

I'll go quickly through this.

Um so Mariah's helped me put together the spreadsheet in a way that's uh more organized, um, hopefully for you to see and understand what cities we have or what uh committees we have in the city, and also just the committees that are in our community that we're also involved in.

Um so we have uh different tabs down at the bottom.

If you'll if you have that in front of you, um we have uh organized these in a couple different ways.

We have committees that are uh sorted by municipal code.

So these are all the committees that are established in our code, and therefore they have to be subject to the open public meetings act.

Um so that's why those are kind of pulled out and separate, but you can see kind of all the committee members that are on that board.

These are mostly residents, uh, with a little exception to the land use uh hearing authority.

Um the other tabs, let's see, the liaison info if we want to jump over to that one.

Uh these are ones that are traditionally uh reserved for council assignments.

So we have the Alpine Aspen Peak School District one, Heather's been serving on that.

Um is there, I guess maybe for the sake of time, are there any on this list that you have questions about that I can I can address?

Or I can go committee by committee and explain what they do.

I mean, I guess I would have a question of what is the um I don't know the not the requirement, but kind of the you know, like maybe when they meet, like what is the commitment there for some of these, right?

Yeah, sure.

We can yeah, we can go through some of that.

And we do have a couple council members that are serving on some of those boards, and so I may defer to them.

We also have staff that are involved in these boards, so I may defer to them as well.

But um, the archives committee is closely associated with the um historic preservation commission.

That should probably be the same person.

Michelle, do you want to explain how often those two committees meet?

Good question.

So the historic preservation committee is once a month.

Trying to think if it's four or five Matt No.

The first, third.

First search they said at four or five, I don't have four o'clock.

Okay, I just go by what my calendar says for the day.

Yeah.

So we usually do that, but the the archives, historical archives is also once a month, usually the third Wednesday at six.

Um, but that one is especially now.

We do a lot with historical markers, so that's once or twice a month, and helping prepare for those things, and then heritage days and preparing for that.

Um, so we those meetings are typically once a month, but there's always other things to help with with and as part of that.

So Mr.

Mayor, if I may, I agree with Rachel.

It'd be great if there was a column that said like how often they meet in the days and times, and that way it's we all kind of process through things.

Not sure if you if that's easily accessible for you guys to add, or if every staff member could add it in for what's relevant to them.

So we are working on that.

In fact, if you want to hop over to the other committees tab, um, that's probably where the information is.

We um we're still gathering some information, but I think is that up to date with what the answers that we received today from staff.

Um at two o'clock.

As of two o'clock, okay.

I think that's most of them.

So you'll see that some of those boards maybe I'll just go through that list first.

Maybe that will be the most helpful way to do this.

Um budget audit committee.

Um that uh dean kind of coordinates that it's just a semi-annual meeting, possibly could be a quarterly meeting, and they work uh closely with the audit the audit report, so they would be in communication with like the auditor that was just here today.

Um chamber of commerce board, Marlin serves on that.

I don't know if Marlon's here.

Um, but I think that we prefer, I think they said that we would prefer that staff stay on that board.

Um so Civic Improvement Association, this is the rodeo committee, they're a 501c3 committee, so they are separate from the city.

They do not have anyone, they do not have a liaison from the city.

They're they are their own board and they are just their purpose is only to put on the rodeo, so they are the rodeo production.

Um you might have heard heard them refer to as the CIA.

Um they actually they actually just changed their name to the uh Lehigh Roundup Rodeo Committee.

Uh that was kind of the Civic Improvement Association or CIA was creating some confusion.

So that's um, yeah.

So it's now just the Lehigh Roundup Rodeo Committee.

And as far as the rodeo goes, they are always looking for community volunteers to help to help put on the rodeo.

In fact, they read all of their um members are volunteer, no one's paid on that committee.

Um council of governments.

That's a mayor, that's a mayor assignment.

Some of these committees that are assigned to the mayor is because the committee requires that it be the mayor that serve on on that board.

That's the case with the council of governments.

Um arts council.

Heather, do you want to mention that one?

Arts Council meets, it's now the first Tuesday at eight o'clock.

Um, and it's Kurt Ellison who's the director instead of Jean.

Oh yeah.

But that's really old.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Some of this is really old that we're still working to update.

This is yeah, this is definitely a work in progress still.

Um Curtis Center, that one we no longer need, so we can we can actually delete that one.

Um environmental sustainability committee.

That one is monthly.

Um we have staff that organizes that committee.

Uh they primarily do education and outreach for uh things like recycling and water and energy efficiency.

Umvision Utah board, that's the mayor's committee.

However, we can have an alternate on that committee, and so um that is important, and we've noted that back on the liaison info sheet.

Um Vision Utah Board.

I am trying to recall.

I think that's maybe a monthly meeting.

We can't.

Yeah, it's not very frequent.

It's not a frequent quarterly.

Okay, so even longer.

Yeah, so that's just a quarterly one.

Um, Fox Hollow Golf Course Board.

This one is really unique.

Um it's an interlocal between the cities of Lehigh Pleasant Grove and American Fork.

All three cities own the golf course.

So each city has three representatives that can serve on the board, and that can be anybody.

Uh so currently, right now we have Ryan, he's uh staff, and then we also have Johnny Revel and Max Powell, and those two serve as residents.

So uh the other cities you'll see a mix.

Sometimes it'll be a council member, sometimes staff, sometimes uh residents.

And uh those all three of those positions we do need to appoint need to be appointed.

So yeah, when we decide what to do with with those, we'll have to put those on the council agenda for a resolution.

Um, and that meeting is once once a month.

Um I think it's the third Thursday.

Yep, third Thursday of the month.

Thanks.

And usually it's very helpful to be a golfer, it's not required, but it is helpful if you know about golf.

Um let's see, the IHC community outreach, that one's just that one's a mayor board, inner faith, that one's also the mayor board.

IPA, uh that one is Joel.

Uh Iron Horse District, this is a Boy Scouts of America committee.

This is I believe a quarterly meeting.

It's not it's yeah, the time commitment I know for that is minimal.

Um irrigation company board, uh Dave serves on this, and we we do need to have a council member on this board, and they meet once a month.

Let me see.

I might actually have the days typically the first Monday of the month, it looks like okay.

John Hutchings Museum Committee, uh, they are uh currently redoing their bylaws right now, so but I think most of for the most part this will stay the same.

But this this committee is a little bit different in that when their bylaws were originally created, the Hutchings Museum was just a another city department, and so it functions differently than some of these other boards.

Uh they've since become a separate, completely separate 501c3, but their bylaws still require that a council member serve on that board as a voting member.

Um we also have staff on that board, uh Steve Marchbanks, and there's also some requirements for uh the Hutchings family heirs to serve on that board as well.

However, all appointments are made by the mayor and confirmed by the council.

Jordan, Jordan River Commission.

This one is monthly, and it's uh kind of a regional commission just formed with um with cities that have the Jordan River located within their boundaries.

Um they focus on uh just improving Jordan River conditions and river sustainability mag of these mag committees, those are all requirements that the mayor serve on that.

Uh Metropolitan Water District.

I don't know anything about this board, Lauren.

That's your board, but uh yeah, that's mostly staff, and then we have two residents on the board.

Is that sound right?

Yeah, it's just an independent, and then it's appointed by the mayor.

That's right.

And uh then they have their own function.

Yes, in fact, I think they're they are also subject to the open public meetings act, but yeah, but not under the city's umbrella because they are separate.

Did you say the irrigation company?

That's an independent one too.

Lehigh organization.

Oh, yes, yeah.

Yeah, that doesn't require a council member.

We have put one on in the past.

Oh, is that the one that Paul Hancock was on?

Okay.

No, he will his term will be up next year, so that might be something to consider.

Okay, we might need to look at the bylaws and see it.

It's an independent okay.

Ums Lehigh.

Do they show me on that board?

Yeah, metropolitan.

I'm now a member of the board.

Oh yes, that's right.

Thank you.

Uh Ms.

Lehigh, we just have um there are in also an independent 501c3.

Melanie uh serves with that board or works with that board.

The North Point Solid Waste Special Service District.

Uh this board meets monthly.

And yeah, it's just a special service district.

Let's see, I might have the actual dates on that one.

I think just monthly.

It's during the day though.

Do you know?

Oh, are they, yeah, both?

Do you know when they meet?

Yeah, that's typically the last Monday of the month at 9 a.m.

That's probably why we have staff.

That's why we probably have staff on that board right now.

Um Mr.

Mayor, if I may.

Um I just as a disclaimer for what I'm about to say.

This is not a reflection of any member of staff.

Um I'm not calling anybody out.

Um not tonight.

But um I pr out of principle, I believe that if any of these committees have taxing authority that we should have an elected official on them.

And I know that right now that that's not fully like I I think I think that's maybe not how we do it now.

Um, but something to chew on that the council might want to consider is if these entities that have taxing authority, um, we should have an elected official present.

Yeah, I actually highly support that.

I think we could have both staff and an elected official if possible.

Is that something that would be able to be done if if the council feels stronger than that?

I guess it would just depend on the board.

And you may not be able to have more than one official person, but certainly we could have a staff assigned to to help with the technical stuff.

Yeah.

Or what if, you know, there was a council member who was like CC'd on items or something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

But typically they'll have one person who votes our interest in on the board.

So yeah, and I think the point I'm making is just as elected officials, it's our our duty, you know, to oversee like the taxing and and ultimately we would be the ones being held accountable for some of those taxes that if they get uh changed or anything like that.

And so it's just something to think about.

You you can agree or disagree, but it's um just kind of a principle that if if an entity is taxing you, you should have accountability there.

Not and again, not a reflection of staff and the efforts made.

I'm sure you guys are awesome and great.

It's just more sort of a thing of principle.

Mr.

Mary, can I add something too?

I I think it might help to differentiate between liaison and board on some of these two.

Some of them you're talking about they're on the board.

A lot of these that we do, we're liaisons.

We're not on the board, we don't vote, we don't make motions, we're just there to support.

Um so that might help to differentiate on those as well.

That's a great point.

It's a great point.

Yes.

Um and we yeah, and we are actually working on that.

We have a box there for voting members.

Oh, perfect.

Okay.

Um yeah, that's a really good point.

I think that is really important to have.

Um North Utah Valley Animal Shelter Board.

Uh, right now we just have uh Chad Ray, he's on he's a uh police officer.

Um more of an internal that functions as more of an internal committee.

So uh Melanie is obviously she's in charge of the special events, and then she has residents that volunteer for that, and that makes up that committee.

So quite so question that's separate from the Lehigh Roundup Rodeo Committee.

That was just yes renamed from the CIA.

Yes, correct.

So this roundup committee, yeah.

So the Roundup Rodeo Committee is completely separate.

This roundup committee is just the celebration.

So everything that happens during that week except the rodeo.

Thanksgiving point advisory board.

Uh Jason is serving on that one right now.

Uh TSSD.

Oh yeah.

Um TSSD, that's our uh sewer district that involves um several cities in North Utah County.

Uh Dave Norman currently serves on that.

T should can I break in for a second?

Sure.

So with TSSD, kind of with Emily's point, they don't charge taxes, but it is well as a special the charge fees, I guess.

We did you we used to have uh council member liaison.

Um the past council staff would be better.

So if you want to go back, that's something you can consider too.

Talk, you know.

That's one board.

I respect what you guys are saying and where you're going.

That's one board though, that's so technical.

I would strongly recommend that we leave Dave there.

And yeah, from what I understand, most cities have staff members.

I think Alpine still has a council member there.

But yeah.

Just throwing it out there.

Yeah.

Uh UAMPS board, that's that's a similar, that's a similar situation.

Um you don't want to go to those meetings.

And yeah, Utah League of Cities and Towns, yay, that one is done.

We have that one actually done and assigned out.

No take backs on that one.

Yeah.

Uh UTA, yeah, UTA Advisory Board, that's the mayor.

Uh station area, UTA station area plan.

Did we say this one had been completed, or is this still ongoing?

I think this is still ongoing because we'll have multiple or we'll have future ones coming forward.

So Utah County Winter Task Force Committee.

Uh this is also the mayor.

Utah Lake Authority Commission, that one is actually established by state code, and that is the mayor.

Utah Valley Clean Air Task Force.

Uh looks like they meet monthly.

And this is more regional and it's focused on improving the air quality in Utah County.

Utah Valley Dispatch Special Service District.

So this is uh Lehigh City combined with some other cities that make up our dispatch.

Uh Bo, when are when are those meetings?

That's a great question.

I actually Scott serves on that board now.

I'm just an alternate.

So I don't have those dates.

Scott Samson.

Scott DeBell.

Scott.

Okay, thank you.

Um, uh that one is also the mayor's Wasatch Front Regional Committee.

That one is also uh required to have the mayor on that.

Fresh look transit study, that one's actually done.

So we can we can remove that committee.

And then we have the youth council, and that functions as an internal committee as well.

So we have um staff that manages that with um Heather, you're um the liaison right now.

The alternate, okay.

And they yeah, usually meet with Chris.

Yeah.

Yes, that's right.

They usually meet like a couple times, a couple times a month.

Yeah.

So okay, so that's it.

If we want to go back over to the liaison, the liaison info tab.

So these are just kind of the traditional ones that have been assigned to the council.

And actually, most of them, even the staff ones.

We included a lot of the staff ones on there too.

Uh Michelle, how do you do you want to kind of lead the discussion on how to assign some of those?

Do you um I want to hear from the council if you feel comfortable talking about deciding tonight on the assignments, or do you want more information or how do you feel?

And then the other question is I know some of you brought up um maybe adding some new liaison assignments.

Um I know I think Rachel visited the senior center and they were interested in having a council member kind of yeah, I think they used to have a liaison, and then when they were put under the with the recreation or you know, with the legacy center, they don't have a liaison anymore.

And they would appreciate more attention from the council.

Um and James, I think you mentioned um the small business commission.

I don't know what it's called.

Yeah, for I mean, that's still in the works with staff to kind of develop the the outline of that, but I think that would be a good idea for sure.

And I have the same um input from the senior center, so I'd support that.

Were there any others?

New creations that anybody was interested in or did you have any mayor?

I thought I remember you having a different all of mine.

Like, well, I get it.

Okay.

Okay.

Um I I do like Rachel's idea of like getting all the times and stuff.

I think I'd be more comfortable making a decision on our assignments once we have all of the times and everything, if that's something you're comfortable with.

I'm fine.

I want you guys to have good information.

Um I also have have seen some cities have a liaison for to planning commission.

I don't know if that's I don't know how people feel about that.

But I have seen some cities do that.

I'll I'll just say I know that is not fine.

Being on planning commission I think because planning commission is a recommending body when council members are there seems to be like a appearance of influence that you know this we're here to then give that council member what recommendation we think that council member wants.

So I don't I don't know if we're trying to like try and be unbiased and give them just the ability to give us what they you know the planning commission is really going through does this meet the code you know and we have a much more wider discretion on what we do with that.

So that would be my only concern is like I would expect all of us are essentially liaisons in that we're watching planning commission that's really important valuable information to us.

I don't know that I'd have another council member report to me on the planning commission.

And that's what I would think like a liaison position would do.

Yeah and if I can chime in Mr Mayor I think of it from the applicant's perspective so if an applicant is coming in with like a legislative item and they are presenting to the planning commission while knowing that the final stop is sitting right behind them potentially having influence on those recommending to that final stop which is this body I I want the applicant to feel like they get a true fair shot at every step along the process.

And so yeah that I just think that there's a good division of responsibility there.

Mayor may I ask a question of staff.

So Kim you've been around a while so I guess in the past years ago we did have the city did have a council member that was over the planning commission.

What what was his role in that I think it changed a little bit over the years.

Originally it was as somebody who can relay information but I think because of the nature and even in the state code I think they're intended to be separate bodies we don't we don't want somebody from the council that might the planning commission might feel like there's undue influence on them.

So I think we've tried to purposely keep that separated and I think we we'd want to continue to do that would be a from a maybe even a legal standpoint that because the whole the you know premise that the reason the planning commission exists is that they're an independent body they provide recommendations outside of any other influence other than public input as they hold public hearings.

So anyways I I think that's why we discontinued that was just so that there was no influence from the council you know they get their kind of bite at the apple so to speak then those action items come to you for your final decision.

Okay.

I I do know other cities have that and I know we used to but yeah I get that so um so am I hearing that do you want more time is that great to get the scheduling information.

Yeah and I just have some more questions about some of them but I don't know if we want to get into now or what the future date that's fine with me.

If it's something that requires us to do research maybe it might be good to know.

It might be good to know now but or not I guess that's up to you.

Well I'm just I'm looking at the so the municipal code um committees these are all appointed by the mayor is that what I understand?

Yes.

Pretty much all these okay so there's a looks like there's an opening in the park yeah some of those some of those we're still working on updating some of those terms we know have expired and we're we were just kind of waiting to see what you guys decided to do with some of the positions.

And then once kind of all the assignments are made we can catch up on what we need to do with the mayor's appointments.

Okay and I'm just wondering who golfs here I mean I was captain of the golf team in high school but I'm pretty sure you were I don't call how'd you top golf Ryan would golf I'm sure Ryan's much better than me though.

So pretty sure Vin's golf weekly can ask you a question.

So on the the ones that are stabbed established by code the mayor appoints those so is that something we discuss as a council or do we let the mayor decide yeah so that's kind of up to you and the mayor to decide how you want to make those appointments.

Every mayor that I've worked with has done it differently.

Okay.

Um but at some point I think the code requires maybe yeah Ryan can answer of that.

So unless there's something in bylaws or you know that says differently, but I think that's generally the pattern that we've followed.

Okay.

And that these are things that would take a formal vote then.

Okay.

I feel like I I never got the formal vote, so I'm wondering if I actually And again, maybe maybe there's a specific one you have in mind that that doesn't.

It's just like hey, who wants to do this?

Okay, the mayor appoints them.

Yeah, a lot of it depends on the depends on the committee's bylaws and especially if it's a separate committee.

We don't always have um access to those bylaws, so it's easy for those to kind of fall through the cracks sometimes.

But yeah, like I know we need to catch up on yours, Michelle, with the Hutchings Museum, assuming that you stay on that committee, that's one that we need to clean up.

So there is like a lot of cleanup that we need to do.

Okay.

And since we're here talking about the board things for the disclosure, the conflict of interest disclosure, my understanding is that we need to disclose that we serve even on non-paying boards.

And that's why I want to make sure I'm official.

Do I re you know uh disclose it?

Yeah, you can disclose it.

You can also submit an amended report at any time as well.

So just kind of disclose what you have, what you're doing right now.

Um maybe you're not officially appointed, you are connected to that board still, so I would still disclose it.

Okay.

And then after these assignments are made, if you want to submit an amended report with those assignments, you can.

And then are there other boards that would need that to include that as well on disclosures?

Like um probably the mayor.

Um I think that's why it's important to have that distinction between the liaison and the board member.

Because I think for council it's only the Hutchings Museum that you're actually on the board.

So it's like the arts council, the historical side, you're not on the board.

You're not appointed to the board.

Well, you're just a liaison.

Jordan River Commission.

Okay, so we need more information.

That that's voting.

They're voting on budget, so that one would be two.

So I think that that if we tile those up, yeah.

Okay.

So let's postpone this discussion.

That's probably a pretty good guide as to which ones need to be officially voted on.

Like if the mayor is appointing a board member, then that probably requires the you know the official the the formal advice and consent of the council, whether that's just a legal liaison, you can just probably decide between yourselves who wants to fill that role.

It doesn't require a vote.

So a lot of the committees or boards will reach out to us and say we require that you need that you have this passed by resolution.

And so yeah, we can we can make a lot of these updates and maybe if we have time during the budget retreat, we can we can have more discussion.

Okay.

Can I s and more one more question?

And then I'll I'll wait till the budget retreat.

Um for under other committees, and then at the top of some of them it says fiscal impact.

Can you explain that?

Where some, you know, like Cultural Arts Council says 70,000 a year.

Right, yeah.

So fiscal impact, some of these committees, even though they're 501c3, like the arts council, we do um make it the city does make a donation to help support them.

Um so in the yeah, in the case, so that's not the case with every committee.

Um so like the the CIA, the Roundup Rodeo Committee, the city doesn't make a uh monetary contribution to that 501c3, but a lot of the other 501c3s the city does.

Thank you.

Okay, we will postpone until we hear we have time.

Some of the So you put together that list, and then that'll help I think us make start reaching out and getting those assignments made.

Thank you.

This was helpful.

Thank you.

Okay, item 3.3, 1900 South right away uh presentation by Mr.

Kinison.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Can you hear me okay?

Um Tisha, can you help me present?

Uh good evening, Mayor and Council.

I just I've we've been asked to present some information related to the um 1900 south or the Pony Express Parkway corridor.

Hey, Brad.

Yeah.

Do you mind moving that cord up that's in front of the story?

Just have it behind.

Thank you, sir.

I'm just gonna wait for the break and just try to crazy.

Perfect.

Well, so um I'll try to keep things brief.

I know I know you have just a limited amount of time, but let me go ahead.

Um so just uh so you're aware.

Um so I've sat on the MagTAC committee for 17 years since I've been here at the city.

And we generally every two years we have an opportunity to ask for more money for roadway and or um active transportation projects.

Um that round of funding is coming up again this year.

But um this project, the Pony Express Parkway extension project was um we requested funds for this project in 2022.

Just to give you a quick idea where this is shown on the map, it's this section that's shown in orange, uh which extends 1900 south, which uh now is kind of more being called the Pony Express Parkway because Pony Express Parkway extends all the way into Eagle Mountain.

Um anyways, that would extend from uh on 1900 South from Center Street in Lehigh and until about um 700 west in American Fork.

This is the area that was uh conceptually approved.

The area shown in yellow, this yellow dashed.

Um we show currently that our roadway would end at a the approximate location of the extension of the Vineyard Connector, which is a UDOT um funded.

It's a project to be funded by UDOT and constructed by UDOT.

So I'll just go on.

I just wanted to give you a little bit of history.

Uh first of all, this roadway has been planned uh in the city for many, many years.

It first showed up on the master plan transportation plan in 2001, so 25 years ago.

Again, like I mentioned in the spring of 2022, um uh seeing the need um to get some make some progress on this project.

We uh requested six million dollars worth of Utah County corridor preservation funding uh from uh MAG and for Utah County, and that was approved.

That same year we proposed um as part of our funding request that year um the design and construction funds for that project.

Um 12.69 million dollars uh were granted in that fall, um and those funds are typically not available for three to four years.

And so they were we knew that they were able to be start we could start using them in 2026.

Um just to kind of give you an idea of what that cross section looks like.

Um we as part of our concept plan we proposed to purchase the entire right-of-way for a five-lane cross-section, but um because of financial constraints we have to limit our asks with MAG to in order to be able to get projects.

Um in this case we we um asked for a hundred and five foot ride-of-way road, but it was to be designed and constructed only as a two-lane roadway.

That roadway would be widened to three lanes when we come to intersections.

Uh so it's a two-lane pioneered road um with widening at intersections.

We've done this in the past.

Uh we did Ashton Boulevard was the same way.

We pioneered the road.

Um 2300 West was the same way also.

Um, you know, between third and ninth, it was a road that we brought in.

So um just to give you an idea, the funding that we received from MAG, um, the city pays uh 6.77% because this um if you look on uh if you look on this map again, this project is pretty much equally split 50-50 between Lehigh and American Fork.

So we entered into an agreement with American Fork that we would split those funds.

So in essence, our uh Lehigh's responsibility is about 430,000, and American Forks is the same.

Um just moving on, because we could not actually spend funding until 2026.

We we sought ways to do as much as we could possibly worked with Tim Panoga Special Service District, and because they're currently in the process of expanding their sewer line, which runs much along the same corridor, they were willing to pull funds forward and pay for the wetland study.

So we coordinated with them, they paid for the wetland delineation study, which was ultimately approved this past December.

We also couldn't move forward with corridor preservation funds until we have kind of an approved corridor through the core.

But we um well, like I said, we do have that now, and so we can move forward.

Also, we began uh in the fall of last year, um, our botanical evaluations, which evaluates for threatened and endangered species of plants.

That's a botanical evaluation.

In particular, this plant here is the lady tress.

Um the evaluation of that plant, it only blooms every three years, and so we started that evaluation last fall.

And um the evaluation that they came up with is they didn't see any evidence of that of that flowering plant, but they have to wait for the other two years to confirm that that's the case.

So those will those uh evaluations will continue.

Um I'm going the wrong direction, sorry.

Uh just to kind of also give you a history, knowing that this funding was coming due, you know, that we could start spending the money.

Last um summer we worked with Utah County.

This will be Utah County funding, so it's administered through MAG, but that funding comes through Utah County, and uh we brought a contract to the city council in June for that for that 12.69 million, I think it was.

Um so that came in June, was approved.

Then we also worked with American Fork and uh because we're we're essentially managing the project, but they're paying for half of the cost, so we had to have an interlocal agreement with them, and we signed that, or the council signed that back in August.

We're currently moving forward to select a qualified design and environmental engineer.

Um we as we do that, we go through a process to to determine which uh engineers are qualified.

We expect to have that engineer selected by March and bring a contract to you to start that design.

Essentially, we can start up to a million dollars worth of design now, and that but the construction money follows later.

We can't actually start with construction until 2027.

Um just giving you a little bit of information that's some recent information that's happened, some recent things that have happened.

I guess that doesn't show up very well, but the you see these areas shown in red.

That area shown in red is all located within within Saratoga Springs.

Saratoga Springs has also received funding from MAG to widen 1900 South or Pony Express Parkway to five lanes.

Just a month ago, the mayor sat in his MPO meeting and and they were approved for five lanes.

They that was an extra two or three million dollars that they requested to widen to five, so they did receive that request or that extra money, so they're going out to bid within the next month to start construction within their section.

They are intending to uh take two years for that construction, so within this year and next year.

So by next by the end of next year, they exp we expect that they will have five lanes up to their boundary, which is the Loch Lummon subdivision.

We've uh worked with our um streets department.

We currently have enough pavement width in this uh smaller blue section here, which is another quarter mile worth of property.

We have enough pavement with currently that we can uh we'll probably go in and chip seal the roadway and then repaint it so that we'll have five lanes also, at least within the blue section.

Uh how much then would be left of uh Lehigh that would then not be the five lanes then.

What's the so that the remaining section is this section that's kind of highlighted in this little little yellow bubble here?

That section was not included as part of the concept plan.

However, I work with MAG and Utah County this week, and they're willing to extend our contract to just do design and right away as part of the same design.

So we can essentially purchase the right way and do the design for that extra, I think it's about 900 feet.

Um so we would have the design and right away for the entire roadway cross section as part of this contract.

Thank you for doing that.

That's that's awesome.

Um I don't want to cut you off.

Are you do you have more questions?

No, that was my thing.

Like I'm I'm having heart palpitations about Saratoga Spring coming through with five lanes and then filtering into our neighborhoods.

So yeah, that's I'm glad to do this.

Yeah, and I know that's not an easy thing to do, so thank you for doing that.

Um I I just want to kind of repeat back to you to make sure that I'm following correctly.

So the corridor preservation, it was done for five, but we're only gonna build three initially, and similar to 2300 West, at some decade or two down the road, we can come back to widen it to five, but we do have the corridor preservation for five.

That is correct.

As part of this project, we will purchase the right-of-way for the entire five-lane section.

But it's just too it was too much of an ask to ask for $35 million from MAG back in 2022.

Yeah.

Uh quite honestly, I thought it was a very good what we did is we kind of pooled our resources, American Fork and Lehde.

This was the only project that we proposed in 2022 because we felt that strongly about it.

And so we were awarded that project, plus we received the extra six million in corridor preservation.

So they will still funnel down into three, but we we'll have the right-of-way for five.

Uh it actually funnels down into two.

And then at the intersections, it's wherever we have an intersection, we'll widen it out to get three lanes just so we have turn lanes.

Okay.

And where are the homes that have come into the right-of-way space that we did not preserve?

I think there's what, ten?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Ten home uh so all of the homes.

So this is the Spring Creek um, can you see my mouse?

Right here.

The Spring Creek subdivision, which sits right here.

It uh this roadways below the Spring Creek subdivision.

There are no homes that I am aware of that are would need to be removed or anything.

There are some homes in in this yellow section that we would be purchasing their frontage what to widen the road, but there are no homes that I know of that would be removed as part of this construction.

Okay, that's good to know.

Because my understanding was that there was a section right at the border of Saratoga and Lehigh, where it was pretty obvious, at least on imagery, that there was right-of-way preserved in the Saratoga side, and then the Lehigh homes were much closer.

So I didn't know if that was still if we'd if that requires eminent domain or or if there's enough space to squeeze in the right.

Let me bring over my Google Earth that I can kind of zoom up on this a little bit better.

So the homes within so you are correct in that there's a bigger space.

You can see within Saratoga, there's this wider space right here.

So Saratoga is bringing in uh a cross section that that's wider than ours, has more landscaping, and also has bike lanes.

So for the roadway itself, just the travel lanes for five lanes, we have it looks like the road's all taken apart here.

It's because Tempanoga Special Service District came through and Rutler sewer lane in.

But um essentially we have enough room to widen the roadway, but the bike lanes or any trail infrastructure that we may choose to build along this section, we we would have to do some work there, right?

Whether I don't know whether it would be homes, we need to decide what that cross section would look like, whether we would just take the bike lanes to the back of the curb.

Um, you know, maybe we take out the planner strip in the curb and gutter and reconstruct it as a bike lane.

I'm not sure.

Uh but most of the work that I'm talking to you about right now is just related to getting the vehicular travel lanes.

Okay.

So that's great to know.

I think I mean I for one wouldn't want to exercise eminent domain to put in bike lanes, but um but I'm glad there's enough space at least for the the traffic.

Yeah, the road's already built at that uh uh width that we can stripe it for five lanes up until um you can well you can see where the um up until where the subdivision ends right here.

And then like I said, we I I worked with Mag in Utah County to get funding to purchase this property here and do the design.

That's great.

Thank you.

So Brad, it we're a couple years out just doing the design on the remaining unbuilt section.

Is there any way we can do the five lanes from the get-go or oh, is it um well so in anticipating in anticipation that you may ask me this question?

I I ran some quick costs to what I thought it would be extra.

I think that we're looking at um well let me I I have a slide here right here.

Okay.

So I think the extra cost to do this.

This is an addition would be 15 to 20 million dollars to just widen this section from center street from our center street to American Fork's 700 West.

I personally see a few challenges with that.

First of all, um we already know that America American Fork has some concerns with how this road ties into their city.

Um they're worried about it tying in uh everyone knows that their second south, which is the road that runs just south of their of the park and ride is in severe repair, and the the mayor has already expressed his concern with bringing all of this traffic to them.

The other challenge is if we were to widen this to five lanes, where would the traffic go?

Right?

I mean, it essentially gets that much more traffic, five lanes were the traffic into American Fork.

The the good thing is is that I spoke with I spoke with UDOT um as recently as just today.

Their congestion analysis shows that um their priority project for their next round of funding, which probably isn't until 2032, 2033, is to build out the um vineyard connector, which which is this line shown in yellow.

Um they're already funded out with all the projects that they have with the flex lanes on Pioneer Crossing with the freeway along 2100 north and whatnot, they're funded out and and committed out to 2031.

So that's part of the challenge.

If we bring a five-lane section, um where does all the traffic go?

The other the other concern is first of all, where would we get 15 to 20 million dollars?

It's and it's not all just us, right?

I mean, half of this would be American fork half to somehow find the money.

Um thirdly, I'm just speaking just frankly, because I sit on the TAC committee.

One of the concerns that many of the members of the TAC committee have is that they love we love to fund the pioneering of roads.

Uh and the white the full widening roads is not nearly as uh it's not seen uh quite as strongly as as a need because they expect that development will when development comes in, it will widen the roads to the full build out width.

Now this is a little bit different situation because it is kind of down near wetland type areas and we may not have we may not see very much development there, but um I I'm I'm just speaking it out loud from being a member on the committee.

We we often fund pioneered roads and very m very seldom fund full width roads.

You said 2031, 2032 is when it would be funded or when construction would I think that we're talking I think I might even have one more.

Um I think I wrote it right down here.

I would believe that the earliest that that um we could actually see the vineyard connector built would probably be 30 2034, 2035, because they wouldn't be allocating funds until 2032.

The good part is is that they've determined that this is a priority for them, which I think Lauren can confirm we we haven't heard this from UDOT for a long time.

It just has not been on their radar, but I think they're seeing it now because they see it as a alternate alternative to I-15, which helps take traffic.

Yeah.

That's really good news.

And I think we have the benefit of time to potentially save money over those next six years.

Um put money aside to so that when we can time it with UDOT to build it at once.

Um, you know, we have the benefit of time, even though we'd all like it right now.

Um we could potentially talk about that during the budget retreat.

The one thought I have on that is with this being a regional road, I don't love spending just Lehigh money to benefit the region.

I'd love to see this coming from MAG or the state, but I think we should think through but like maybe some of the great that's a great point.

So the I guess the vineyard connector is UDOT funded, UDOT built, correct?

But then you're talking about the MAG funding for the additional.

No, go please go.

I I mean we could do, I mean, this brought up during the campaign, but other you know this, that other cities have prepaid roads and they got reimbursed by MAG, but that was once it the funding was approved, right?

Yeah.

The challenge is whether or not MAG would really approve funds, right?

Yeah I mean uh Saratoga's done, they're doing the same thing, right?

They have they have funding, but they also had approved projects.

So they're using their funding to fund projects in ahead of time, but they also know that there's a reimbursement uh mechanism there, whereas we would not have a reimbursement mechanism unless this were an approved project for five lanes.

So my concern, I I get American Forks concerned that we would dump traffic into their city, but this is what's gonna happen to us.

I'm just looking at the map and okay, a dead end.

So where where's all this traffic gonna go right through our neighborhoods?

Um I I'm hoping we can find some creative solutions.

I spoke to Cal Roberts the other night um and he has a bill.

You talked about a revolving loan, like the state would give cities uh a loan, um hopefully very, very low interest or something.

Yeah, I do belie I do like I said, I do believe that's what Saratoga did.

And it can save money.

Um but but remember they had projects that were approved.

Right.

And that they could then be reimbursed from.

In this case, the risk would be that we would be fronting the funding of projects that we may not be reimbursed.

I would want to get it approved even if it's years out before you're right, we would commit those funds or take that risk.

So I mean, I guess another go ahead.

No, but the good thing is is that with UDOT putting this vineyard connector as a priority, I think that they can push our legislature and and you know, to provide the funding for it.

Because you know, I guess there's the possibility that they could get the funding earlier, but they did tell me we're funded out.

You know, we're we're all committed to 2031, but at least there's a positive there.

Yeah, what's the likelihood like I'm thinking through another process um of getting UDOT to claim this section as well to make from the from the vineyard connection point, but actually just pull it all the way out to the red line in Saratoga.

And we could still participate to the funding we've received in partnership with UDAW and they come in and bring in the rest.

Uh I I think the it's a possibility, but I think it the possibility is low.

Um I I think as cities along this entire corridor, we would be very anxious for Utah to take over the entire Pony Express parkway, but we haven't seen any kind of an indication that they're willing to do so thus far.

Okay, thank you.

Could I could I one thing we if they're not out until the 30s, you know, in the into the early 30s, we may come back to MAG with this request.

And once you get those tied together, we've never heard this on vineyard before.

That gives a whole lot whole different perspective to that committee.

Any other questions for Brad?

Just to make sure I have this right, when it comes to what you can actually paint to have the extra lanes, how much is that in miles and then how much as far as Lehigh goes, our city would we still be just in the two lanes.

Um we would have I can go back.

Essentially we would we would still have one section that's on that's incomplete.

Um this we would have this 900 foot section that doesn't that's not striped for five lanes.

So we're just talking a 900 foot section for Lehigh.

Okay.

Yeah, and I I I love the direction that's going before.

I know that's worked really well with Saratoga.

I think that's something that's not as well known as that they're front loading, but once they have approval, um also speaking with Saratoga and Eagle Mountain, because this is such an impact to them and far more on the side of Eagle Mountain that they're like, we want to help, however, we can help get this done, including helping support the front load.

So that's an opportunity too.

I know it really this sounds like it depends on American Fork.

And maybe we won't with only the 900 feet suffer as much of the trickle off from the five lanes, but I think it's gonna end up being a bigger issue than you know, and it almost seems like it's a battle ram coming through.

Like we're coming through ready or not, and this is what's going to move the needle much closer from you know 2034 up.

But I think there's there's definitely some things that we can try and play with there to and I think American Forks feeling that RAM now, right?

I mean we felt it over the many l many years.

I think to me the key, one of the biggest keys here is our expenditure.

Remember, Saratoga's the same way, right?

They may be expending their own funds, but they're only committing essentially 7% of the funds to build very large roadways.

We're the same way.

We're only like we're getting essentially a 17 million dollar project for 450,000.

But if we front load it and don't have the reimbursement potential, then we use the yeah.

Yeah, I don't think any of us would want to do that, but ways that we could potentially put things in for approval even though they may be further out than we typically do, just to be able to give us that ability to front load.

Yeah.

One of the things that we've also done, I've worked with Jason.

One of the things that we've also done, I've worked with Jason, we've we've looked at whether we can get some federal funds to do this project too.

Unfortunately, MAG does not support pulling federal funds into the vineyard connector because federal funds kind of taints their state funding and makes it hard for them to build their own project.

So we've even we've tried that too.

We've tried other funding mechanisms to bring federal funds in to do this, and it gets complicated when we're when we're mixing state and federal funds.

One question clarification.

Yeah.

It's uh you said you we need 28 million dollars to go to five lanes.

But that's with American Fork.

So if our portion really we we would be looking at 10 million.

Yeah.

Really?

Okay.

I just want to clarify that.

Correct.

Sorry, the number I saw was 15 to 20.

Yeah, I was just I was just accounting for inflation.

Oh, we inflation in five years versus now.

No, that makes sense.

I just thought maybe.

I just want to I want to say twenty instead of fifteen, just in case we get the screen.

Yeah, those are definitely to be split between the two cities.

So really Lehigh would just I mean we're looking if we're half of that, that's 10-ish.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Thanks, Mr.

Kennison.

Thank you.

Um I would take a motion um for a closed meeting for to review purchase exchange, lease, and real property prior to our meeting at seven.

I would like a restroom break also if possible for a second.

So we uh we have a uh first by council member stallings, a second by council member Freeman.

All in favor?

Okay, we'll recess.