On March 9th, 2026 at 4 p.m.

here in the Lehigh City Council Chambers.

We have a full council today.

Council Member Newell, Councilmember Harrison, Councilmember Freeman, Councilmember Stallings, and Council Member Lockhart.

We welcome all those that are with us today.

We appreciate you being here.

So there will not be public comment today.

But we do appreciate that you're here and uh willing to listen and and be a part of what's going to happen today.

I've asked Councilmember Stallings if she'll open our meeting with an invocation.

Our father in heaven, we are grateful to come together this afternoon to discuss the business of the city.

We're grateful to serve the residents and the people here.

And we ask thee to bless us with a spirit with guidance as we discuss issues of importance that we can share our opinions and give input and make the best decisions going forward.

We ask you to bless our residents.

We ask you to bless those who serve our residents, especially our first responders.

Please help them in all their duties and give them protection and aid.

And these blessings we pray for in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Item two, presentations and discussion items.

We'll go first to 2A.

The presentation of the community development block grant, the CDBG program overview, and we'll turn that over to Claudia Saldana from MAG.

She maybe oh boy.

Not here.

So maybe what we'll do.

Yeah, we'll we'll work on a couple of these other items then we'll see where she lands.

Okay.

We'll go to item uh two C presentation of options to increase access and parking to the north end of Ozier Park.

Do we have yes we do?

Welcome, Steve.

Sorry, good thing I ran.

I was asked the other day to well, I guess it's been a month or two ago, to look at options about getting more access down to the back of Ozier Park.

Um to access the pond back there for fishing.

Sorry.

Do you want to hold a microphone towards you as well?

Yep, I do.

So we had a citizen.

Do you care if I use your name?

Mike.

Um bring this up and approach it and say or and he actually worked with Mike West to create this concept here that you're gonna see.

And then I've got a couple others.

If I can zoom in and show them to you.

Steve.

Yeah, if you don't mind.

Thank you.

All right.

This isn't his concept, this one's ours.

All right, so this is the concept here that him and Mike West worked on.

Um so down at Osier Park, as you come in, you're right at Willow Park's entrance.

You come up that back road, and that's our facilities and parks shed there.

Um currently we have a gate blocking this access right here for the water department access to get back into this roadhouse or into this well house for maintenance.

Um I don't know Lauren would know better the intention of what the pond was supposed to be.

Realistically, at the beginning, it was just supposed to be for water usage.

I know that the DNR has now stocked it, and there is fish in there, and it's quite a quite uh good fishing spot, especially for during the you know, if you don't want to go up into the hills or anything.

Um but one of the concerns when that got built, funds were never allocated to finish this trail to go all the way back.

So this is what Mike West and Mike Beck came up with, um, which would increase parking by about I want to say it's 65 stalls for that.

Currently at the park we have 128 stalls, which is more parking than we have in any one of our parked per foot.

Um so we looked at it in a different light and said it well, and not only that, but they also have a pier back here so that they can fish off of it.

Um which is a great idea, great concept.

Uh placement of it would have to be a little bit different because this is the inlet where it goes into the well.

We would want to make it so it's away from that.

Um of the other thoughts that the parks department came up with.

We had two different or three different options.

Um part of my concern with putting parking back here, I'll start there.

Is we already have a really hard time keeping kids out of Willow Park and off of the grass at Ozure Park and off of the trails with their electric bikes or scooters or golf carts or every their parents' UTVs.

Um putting a trail system back there, I'm worried that's just gonna make it worse.

Even with bollards, you still have to be able to remove the ballard to be able to get back in there and access it to maintain it.

Um but we did come up with this option that would still bring up a 10-foot road all the way to the back, create about eight more stalls for uh I we felt like that was very sufficient for the usage for the fishing area as far as the field space for the soccer and that um they're going to a park.

I I I'm a true believer that people can walk to where they need to.

I will say though, we do have a an issue with being able to access around the pond.

Uh people in wheelchairs with strollers or anything like that would have a hard time getting around it.

Um so that was uh concept number two that we came up with.

We did have another concept that basically what we did is we just created the trail or the path all the way around it, um back up into and around, and then back and out, and then again just another layout of that trail system.

Um we did put some pricing options together for that.

Sorry, I'm gonna switch pages here.

I should have had this better in a different presentation.

I apologize.

So for Mike Beck's and Mike West's plan with our current uh budget numbers from Geneva, it would cost us about $300,000, $285,000 to put the asphalt in.

Um finish the park around the side of the park, or finish the fence around the side of the park so that vehicles couldn't access onto the turf grass.

Um that is with a crosswalk, that's with some of the ADA access items.

So if we just did a 10-foot trail up and around, it would be about 40,000.

Again, that's adding the crosswalks, doing some of those things.

If we did a 10-foot road and then separated the road and the trail apart so that we don't have the mixed use on that, it'd be about 120,000.

And then if we did the small road all the way around it with that small parking lot, it's about 200.

Um questions you have for me.

Yeah, for the for the parking, is there an option without paved parking?

Right in our code right now, we don't allow that unless there's like a time issue, and we would say within X amount of years.

Uh, we did that at that spallpark for quite some time, got away with it.

It's in our code that you pave all asphalt or pave all trails, so I would suggest that we don't do that.

Right, Kim?

Is that my okay?

Yeah.

Yeah, and I I I think, and when Mike Beck approached me uh last year about this, he kind of explains some of the not just for the fishing hole, but a lot of the soccer tournaments and Saturday games.

Um I think it would be nice for for some folks who have mobility issues or parents with strollers and grandparents coming to these games to have at least some parking access on that north end.

Um I think looking for kind of a minimal plan that brings that access would is something that I'm interested in.

I think is a concept two that's that's a little more that that brings vehicle tracking.

That's kind of the one that we did that had just the set or the few parking stalls up on the north side.

Right.

So that one's the $186,000 one.

And that's that's a one-way, so it'd be one way going.

So realistically, it's a road coming into here, and then from there it transitions into a trail, and that they would have to go back out the exact same way.

Okay.

So I should know this because my daughter's plays soccer there, but how many fields are there at Ozar?

Um, I believe that it's two.

That's what it's not city fields.

We rent them out for the most part.

If we do any, it's just one game at a time.

So these are all rented fields, exactly.

Yeah, it's only clubs.

Okay, it's only two fields, so majority of the time people park and they just walk either on the grass or well and and realistically we've had we've had complaints about this for a long time with people parking out on the roadways.

People don't want to use the parking lot, they want to park as close as they can to the field space.

Um on this one I can't, but I can go to this one.

Sorry.

We built it and then we got theirs, and well, I guess this is this is it.

There you go.

And and for the concept, if if you were um to open up like a one-way, right?

Going clockwise around the field.

I really don't think it's wise to bring a road down in back of here.

Um unless you're gonna do a split trail as well.

You really don't want to create the cars and the we have so many walkers down there that I don't want to get into that mess.

Just because it's not wide enough.

Yeah.

Unless you want to eat up a lot of the park space, um, which is another thirty feet, which we can do.

Yeah.

Um I mean I I'm a fan, I think the concept too is uh a good start.

I mean, we could always move towards something.

I don't know if uh Mike Mike West wants to talk about this at all.

I know I mean that's more expensive, of course, but I think for the near term I'd be a little more supportive of opening up that park access on the north end with just those is it eight stalls on the north?

It might be more than that.

Let me keep zooming out on me when I do that.

Now, if we wanted to put you know, maybe spread out the the funding for this over two or three years, we could technically, Kim, have a a gravel lot.

Ten.

Ten stalls.

Yeah.

But technically we could.

If if that was in the plan that we were gonna over the next two or three years um put asphalt in for parking, that would be okay to do.

Yeah, I think we could look at a phased approach, especially this this type of facility where it's more the pond and the a little bit more in keeping with the natural area.

I do I wonder um I know we had a business open up recently in Lehigh that couldn't open because they hadn't asphalted their parking lot.

So we are a little bit more strict or for uh you know, people who aren't us, we should probably I mean to your point if we can do it over a series of years, but it's hard when we hold residents and businesses to a standard, and then we could not do it for ourselves.

Yeah, and I think I mean this isn't really for city buildings or employees, this is for the residents to have easier access to the park.

Um but I mean if we if we want to put the funding toward full asphalt there, then that's another option.

But I think especially in the west where you don't have as many um parks um, especially I mean you have fields, you have Willow Park, but for this, I think it would be attractive for folks living on the west side who otherwise are going to the east side for um more established parks like Family Park.

Um but interested to hear any other thoughts.

So I'm not familiar with this.

Um can you so I'm understanding that residents want access to the pond to fish and people and especially if we're you know making sure it's mobility friendly, we need to have a paved trail and there's a need there.

That's what I'm understanding.

Correct?

I think that's pretty much it.

I mean realistically, this kind of hindsight.

We would have never allowed that.

I know it's not something that I prefer.

I know it's not something that the water department prefers on a on a PI pond.

Um it happened, we're here, we're gonna embrace it.

There's no way to get fish out.

Um and it is a nice little feature.

I mean, you got Jordan River five feet away with fish in it.

Different species, of course, but I mean the same activity.

Um we have it now.

Uh we do have issues, like I said, my my biggest concern, and I I stated this when this was brought up.

My biggest concern is we're inviting more vehicles into somewhere that we have a lot of walking.

Um probably is pretty dang close to what we have up at the cemetery.

Um, those are our two major everybody goes and walks there.

Um I I really don't like loop trail up there.

I think that keeping the speeds down is going to be an issue.

I think bringing people in.

Uh we've already supplied plenty of parking.

The biggest majority of the issue that I see that we have here is the mobility issue, being able to make sure that anybody can get up into that back pond with any ability.

Um, and so I really think if it were my preference, what we would be doing is just paving a trail around it.

Yes, because it's there's over a hundred parking spots.

128 stalls around it.

Yeah, I've been there for soccer and it's plenty.

Um so if you just did the 40,000 one with the paved trail, where does it go to?

And can you also basically it's a figure eight around the pond and then on all sides of it.

So right now from this point here, I don't know if you can see that dot very well.

Okay.

So from that point all the way up around this pond is all gravel.

Not only is it gravel, it's rough gravel with drainage issues.

So we have all of the filled slants to that side, wet or not wet, we always have water there down in that area, it's a swamp.

So we do have to walk back there, it's not comfortable, it's not good, it's it's kind of miserable.

So we do need to clean that up and make it so that people can access it.

Um then it was always intended to have a walking trail all the way around this park.

And so that would be the reason that those roads are even there is there's a sewer lift station back there, there's the storm drain back there, and it's the service lines from the pond.

Can I ask you?

Um, if we're just doing that, just the trail, would you still need to widen kind of have that on what is that?

The west side that a little bit wider for the that's wider is for the road.

For the water access.

Just water department access.

Water department needs an all-weather access trail in there, and that's why the gravel's even where it is.

And then is there a way to do that?

Like could you have the pier just priced out?

Because I know if you are doing have having mobility issues, I mean you could potentially get back there on a paved trail, and maybe you just need to get out over the water a little bit.

We actually have a dock system that's sitting up at our water department currently that we inherited from Tibbleford that we potentially could look at putting that in.

Because I think you know, if I totally see how they can get around here, but maybe not close enough to the water to actually fish, especially if there's gravel and there's a grade.

But if we have some kind of I guess dock or pier or something they someone can go out on, then I think that that actually to me solves a problem.

Yeah, I I don't want to spend a lot of money on that unfortunately.

I I'm aligning with Rachel on this one.

I would love to see the walking trail.

I think that's gonna get the most use.

Um it does allow for like mobility scooters and that to you know be able to use it.

I know I'm not driving, but I'm with you about I'd like to not introduce vehicles into an area where it's really where people might go and be able to be on trails.

Well, and I uh I I guess I need to clarify that a little bit.

Monday through Thursday, my staff's in and out of there 40 times a day.

I mean, I have 20 trucks in there going back and forth on that short stand of road.

It it's bad, and we're I I'm always constantly getting after them for going too fast.

I find myself going too fast.

Um it is one of those things that it it there's a lot of people there all the time.

I mean, it until I mean at six o'clock in the morning, I'm going down there and it's dark, and you're watching for people because they're there.

Um so I I I I really like the idea, and I don't want to discredit the idea of having vehicles back there, uh, other than people and vehicles don't mix.

We all know that.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd love to get the money over to Maila Roads.

That you know, if we're gonna be putting money on that west side, I don't want to take a quarter of a million into this.

It's it could be like a long-term project.

I think the need for the the trail on the paved is there.

You're talking about you have drainage uses already, but I think when we're talking about big park things that we need to be looking towards, it's hard when we start doing some of these that may seem like a little bit of money compared, but they do chip away at the ability to get some of these bigger parks done.

Steve, so is the trail connecting to the parking lot proposed trail if we do trail only?

So we have a trail the gravel trail is from here all the way around to here.

We do have this cut through on this road, but that's the only trail system that we have there other than the sidewalk.

Yeah.

Okay, so when you're talking about the trail, would it extend the side?

Yeah, we would put the trail all the way into a figure eight, basically.

Okay.

So all the way around the pond, uh, front and back of it, and then two the sidewalks.

Okay.

And when you go out there, are there a lot of people fishing?

Is that or just walking?

Not very often.

There's a lot of people there.

Okay, but it's weekends, weekends it's packed, but there's always parking stalls.

But a lot of people walk there, and the gravel trail is not the best, safest thing.

Okay.

There's always parking stalls available.

I've never seen it full.

I mean, this is where we do our Easter egg gunt.

Uh that's one of our bigger events.

Um I think we had a movie night that it got pretty full at, but for the soccer games there, there's not.

I've never seen a full.

Okay.

Um so James, do you think that just the trail only would solve the issue?

Uh give greater accessibility.

Yeah, I think it I think it would be easier, of course.

It's an improvement.

Um but like Steve said, I mean, there's still you're still gonna need to put vehicles back there.

So it's still gonna be open for at least city vehicles.

Yeah.

Um, and my concern is even you know, if someone if someone wanted to park um that had mobility issues from the parking lot to the to the pond, you're looking at about 300 yards.

Um, and so I think even if you walk with a cane or if you're not quite as stable on your feet being elderly, I think it's still quite a long walk.

Well, I and I appreciate what you're saying.

Uh I mean, I think that's that's the whole of it right there.

Is this a nicety that we want to spend money on?

I mean, it's not a need by any means.

So we can't I I can't rightfully stand up here and say we need to do this.

Uh but it is absolutely a very nice benefit that we could give if that's what you want to do.

What would it if if we were to um at least in the near term do gravel for the parking?

Um I would even before I did I before I did gravel.

Uh we've gotten in, we've gotten a lot of heat by doing things like you know, like Emily said, you know, we we require it from here, but we won't do it here.

Um really we would have left Vets ballpark the way it was, but we were getting so much pressure because it wasn't paved that we needed to do it.

Um I would rather just stick with that.

But you know, another option that I'm thinking about while I'm right here is we potentially could do a I don't even want to say it out loud, but I guess we could do a single stall or a double stall and have it one way in and out or one way in.

I just yeah.

The minute that we start letting vehicles back there, vehicles are gonna go there, not the ones that are intended it or that that it is intended for.

Um and so that's really the problem.

Currently, right now we we have a guy that's building onto his home up here that comes and knocks and make sure he can get in there every day so he can work on the construction on the back of his house and fuel up the tractor.

And I mean, we're just inviting it.

Yeah, and I don't feel good about just a gravel parking lot, and I pointed that out to you before that again, it's in our code that we expected of other people, but um also gravel's not the easiest thing if we're you know to walk on.

Um so I'm wondering if we could start with a trail and then if we see increased use and a need to actually put a parking lot and road, maybe look at it in future years.

Um just south through budget meeting, so I'm not wanting to spend too much money on other things, so it's difficult.

But so our our rail fence ends here that we have to keep it kind of block people off.

If we extended that up to here, I potentially could do a two or three car stall parking area in that area.

I mean, we have workable rights on all of this as well.

Um that could potentially get them closer and help the issue be cheaper, but it's still uh yeah, it's not my favorite.

I have a question.

Um that's 20 foot wide, that access road.

Right.

Is there a way to make it a little wider and have like uh diagonal parking on the side and it'll just like a little loop turnaround at the top that's not actually parking?

Yeah, but I don't think it'll get us any, I don't think it'll be any cheaper.

It'll still be 140, 150,000 rank.

So just the trail though would be we're looking at 40, is that right?

Okay.

Yeah, I agree with I think I agree with Michelle about let's just you know, try to meet the need now with the trail paved trail.

I I would like to see if you can resurrect that dock or something if it's not not costing us something.

I I think that would help a lot with access.

I'll need to check with public works to make sure that they don't have any issues on putting the dock out there.

Okay.

Yeah, we have we have pieces of it up there for sure.

Sorry, quick question.

Does it connect to the Jordan River Trail right there?

Yeah, it'll connect right here.

And is the parking?

Yeah, never mind.

I don't think it does.

Parking doesn't, no.

Parking, they park at Willow Park or they park here, and then they can get off.

I don't know of any actual parking structure for Jordan River Trail except for off of 1500 north, actually.

Well, there's one up, I think we point as well.

But I do like that it connects to that trail because maybe people walking on that trail might want to take a detour or something.

We have a similar connection at Olympic Park, so it's not something that we're not used to doing or haven't done in the past.

Any other comments, questions for Steve?

Can I get a little direction?

Would you like me to put this in a budget request?

Would you like to see this go forward?

Um did you did you have the estimate for at least the paved walking trail?

That was the that was like 40, 40 something.

There's the 40.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, personally, I'd I'd like to see it.

And I and I know we have other big capital projects and Miller Roads, which has been on for a while.

I think this is an easy one to invest a little bit of money to open up access.

Um personally, I'd like to see stalls back there, but if the rest of the council thinks that a trail would be um good enough as a first step, then I'd be obviously supportive.

I'm good with that if you want to put in a budget request.

Yeah, me too.

Perfect.

I'll get it in.

There you go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Claudia, I think you walked in.

How are you?

We'll turn the we're gonna go back to uh 2.8 or 2A uh presentation of the CBDG program, and we'll turn it over to Claudia for that.

Just council Apple TV.

Um, sorry about being late, guys.

I need to keep practicing.

I need to just put more time on my commute every single time.

Um, so I'm here to talk to you guys about the C D BG program.

I know a couple of council members are have already been through this and they understand it a little bit better, so I just wanted to give you a quick overview so that everyone just knows what it is and what we can do with the money.

So CDBG stands for community development block grant.

It's a federal program that provides money to cities and counties.

And it comes from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and it's mostly used for a lower income residents to just improve quality of life.

And then who gets funding is entitlement cities is the term that they use.

These are cities that have reached the population threshold of 50,000 or urban counties that are reached the population threshold of 200,000.

Um and then the every project that we do with this money has to fall into one of these three national objectives.

The majority, and that's why the bubble is the biggest is low or moderate income benefit.

Um we can do projects that help prevent or eliminate summer and blight, just a little trickier, and we have to have them be designated areas of summon blight.

And then urgent need is hardly ever used, it's more for um like when COVID happens, some sort of emergency.

Lehigh city currently gets about 300,000 every year.

Um and mostly what the city has used it for historically is for public services and public facilities.

We can use it for economic development and housing projects, things like that.

Um this is just like a quick timeline.

So in the fall and early winter is when we start getting applications, we put out a notice of funding availability to public um nonprofits in the uh nonprofits in the area, and then to the Lehigh City, they know that the funding's coming.

So if there's city projects that you guys want to apply for, um we do an initial screening of eligibility in January, and we go do site visits and talk to all of the applicants.

And then we provide the city staff appo right now, currently, um, all of the applicants and the funding that they are requesting, and then they provide a funding recommendations to us, and that's what I'll present to you guys.

And that's when subrecipients is what we call them or applicants, they'll come and present their ideas to you.

Um then is when you today is when you're gonna do a preliminary funding decision.

So nothing set in stone yet, it's just what would what you think you'd like to see happen, and then we'll put it out for public comment.

We'll have a public hearing, and then I'll come back in May for your final approval.

And then this all just ties back into the annual action plan.

This is just a plan that we have to provide yearly, and this will tell us exactly what projects are happening in that year.

Every year we do an annual action plan, every five years we do a consolidated plan, which just happened, and all of our projects just have to be in line with those goals and objectives that we we set.

Sorry, that was really quick.

Do you guys have any questions before we have applicants come out and start giving presentations?

I think we're ready.

Okay.

So then, good evening, thanks for having me.

I am Josh.

I am with Tabitha's Way local food pantries.

Some of you may have heard of us.

We were very uh fortunate to have been supported through this CDBG program and in years prior and also through Lehigh City.

So thank you so much in advance for your consideration and time.

Um so Tabitha's Way local food pantry.

If you haven't heard of us, um, we provide food assistance to those in need to uh throughout Utah County.

Uh we'll I'll I'll bring you up a map of our three pantry locations, but currently we have a location, our uh not pilot our starting location was in Spanish Fork, and then we've moved up into northern Utah County.

Now we have a location in Pleasant Grove and Saratoga Springs with as well as a uh mobile pantry in Payson.

So we have uh three brick and mortar locations in those other three.

Um our mission is providing temporary food assistance.

Uh this 75 three months or less.

So of all the participants that come into our pantry, um, the program that we utilize is called uh the pantry feeding program.

And just kind of give you a brief overview of how that works is if we gather food from uh our main way we get food in is through our grocery rescue, which is a subset of the program, but it's from local food producers and grocery stores.

Uh we get their kind of surplus food food that's kind of missed the sell by date, but it's still you know, nutritious good food that we can give out.

Those are picked up through food trucks, brought into the pantries and given out to our clients.

That that comprises about 68% of all of our food donations.

We also get food donations uh through the Bishop Storehouse and uh some other uh I believe Cisco grocers where we have to do food purchases because some food can't be easily donated, like uh temperature regulated foods.

So that's the pantry feeding program and how we get our food in.

Uh 75% of all our beneficiaries only come for three months or less.

Um, and that's why we say it's a temporary.

Usually most of our clients are coming in for uh temporary crisis.

We'll gotta go through different scenarios there.

But as far as uh trying to help bolster against long-term food insecurity, we do provide we do recommend wraparound resources, so we do initial intakes for everyone that comes in.

And we ask them, okay, what are your needs?

Do you need help with uh housing, which I think is everyone these days, um, you know, food uh clothing.

We also get uh we've been privileged to get VI vouchers where we can say, hey, if you need food, here's a voucher, you can go get uh a certain amount of clothes for your for your family.

So we do wrap around resources, and that's to help the pull people out of food insecurity for long term along with temporary food assistance.

It's really we do have uh a small percentage of people that will utilize our services for an extended period, but it's really more of a temporary stop gap for people that are are needing that resource.

And and our whole, and it's part of our mission is uh you know, neighbors helping neighbors, and we're very fortunate for that in all the communities that we work with.

I mean, like you can see in these numbers, we utilize the services of almost 11,000 volunteers.

Uh currently we have 29 uh staff members, so our our volunteer to staff ratio is very high, and that obviously helps us minimize costs.

But we do have three full-time pantries that they give out quite a bit of uh I think we had uh about 10.7 million meals last year throughout organization.

So we're very, very grateful that we have our volunteers.

Uh we wouldn't be able to do it without them.

Uh no hunger zones.

This is the ultimate goal of Tabitha's way.

Um it's a no hunger zone is when no one need go hungry because the community has invested in persistent solutions resolving food insecurity.

So we understand that hunger is always going to be a thing.

We can't prevent it.

But our our vision is to have a robust food safety net so that no one need go hungry.

So in this, I was gonna talk about this later, but this obviously came up with the government shutdown when uh there was the scare for snap benefits where it was reduced.

We saw a hundred percent increase in those seeing food assistance, and and we know there's I mean, you guys would know more than I do, but we're we are worried about different cutbacks and about how that's gonna affect our beneficiaries.

So we want to have our our goal is to have our place in that safety net to help provide people with if they don't have other options.

So that's just going over that.

Uh who we serve, it's it's we do we don't discriminate on who comes in.

We we do an initial intake and we we do have certain uh uh things that we track just for our our partners we work with Feeding America, Utah Food Bank.

I think we asked for a photo ID and we asked for like their household number and a contact number, uh, but we don't discriminate on who can come in and receive food assistance.

And uh mentioning uh about how the CDBG funds are are tailored towards low to moderate income beneficiaries, uh versus like 99% of our uh beneficiaries are considered low to moderate income based on federal poverty guidelines, and that's been the case.

We we actually just celebrate our 15 year anniversary last year, and that's that's been the case.

You'll you'll see all our numbers.

Oh, in the interest of time, I won't go over these stories, but I'll just share example.

I mean, it's it's every sort of different circumstance of people coming in needing assistance.

We had a story of uh a UVU student that came in and she was able to get food, but and she actually mentioned us, gave us a shout-out in her commencement that you know I I needed tablets way to help feed my kids and get through school, and we've had cancer patients that you know luckily are actually cancer free now, but they needed food assistance while they're paying medical bills.

So that's people losing jobs and losing a loved one, divorced, things like that, where people are like, look, I just can't make ends meet this month.

How can I get assistance?

That's that's typically what we see.

Um this is Utah County population.

I think we all know that Utah County, and this is I believe that's a projection for 2025.

I don't have strict numbers in it, but I just want to kind of show obviously the the county's growing, and that's who we serve, so our numbers are gonna go up, but we're still seeing pretty uh pretty drastic increases year over year, and maybe that's just because we've grown where we have a bigger service area, but we do believe like the need is is grown as well.

Uh so in 2025, we served, I mentioned about 2.7 million meals.

That is a 70% increase from 2024.

And as far as individuals, it was about 240,000 individuals, and uh I put in 95,000 were children, about half, 45 to 50 percent each year are children, and then a good bulk is of is uh senior citizen, and also about half is also women as well.

Um just to be very clear with this, this isn't just obviously 239 separate individuals per se, but this is every visit that has come in.

This is how many people have come in on different occasions.

So again, this is a projection for Lehigh City growth, and this is just a quick initial thing.

So if I'm wrong on this, please excuse me.

But uh from what I searched up, you know, Saratoga, Eagle Mountain, and Lehigh, which are kind of our newer locations, these are the really fastest growing cities and areas in Utah County, and we're and we're seeing that across our pantries.

Our North Pantries serve a lot more uh individuals than our South does.

And uh just for the numbers, we served about uh 17,000 individuals from Lehigh City last year.

Um I mentioned this earlier, we our our main like clear and present worries are uh there's kind of a two-fold issue.

We don't rely a ton on public funds.

We're we're very fortunate to be mostly funded by uh uh private donors, uh and I'm the grant manager there, so we do some foundation corporation things, but we've seen uh obviously there's no uh news to you guys that there's a lot of cutbacks to different programs that are also funding organizations like ours, and then also cutbacks to uh critical programs for our beneficiaries, uh like we saw with SNAP that has seen some reductions, meals on wheels, um, and then also just the big thing that's been over the last few years was crazy high housing prices.

We believe is what the biggest reason that's pushed people where that's like their budget just don't they're they don't stretch as far as they used to, and then also uh health insurance premiums seem to have spiked up the start of this year.

So, with all those, we've seen a lot of uh we believe that's where our curve is because we kind of had a more linear growth, but that's seen these last few years.

And like I said, we haven't grown.

It's hard to know exactly what that increase was, but we have seen more and more people, and there's a lot of worry of like, okay, are we are there gonna be programs that help these people if if ours isn't around?

So this uh what would the funds I believe in our ask?

I think it was 35,000 that we had asked for this, and that's where these numbers come from.

This is all just Matt Dunoff.

We are based off our grocery rescue efforts and our uh donors, volunteers, all the programs together, we're able to provide a meal for only 20 cents per meal, which is amazing for us.

I mean, we were able to keep that cost low based off all of our partners, and so if this is if a full amount of 35, I think we asked anywhere from 20 to 35,000 that provide about 175,000 meals, about 4,000 individuals and resources to uh uh about 13,000 first-time clients.

And those I mentioned, those wraparound resources that we do with every intake.

So that really just kind of comes at if that's uh 13,000 first time people coming in, if that makes sense.

Uh these are just our locations.

I couldn't find an actual picture of the Pleasant Grove Pantry, but they actually built a new facility.

We have we've uh we've had to grow just to meet the demand.

Spanish fork is hopped from smaller location to bigger as they've gone along.

Uh this one here is a previous grocery store that about I think was like five times bigger for as far as warehouse space, which we need.

Um and they go through that entire space within like of food in two months.

Uh currently this week we're doing our feed Utah food drive, which you may have heard of.

Um that's one of our biggest food drives that's actually been uh very much reduced this year.

It went from we gathered in a hundred thousand pounds of food in 2024 down to 40,000 last year, and then this year we don't expect to get even close to that.

So that's kind of the need that we're seeing.

Did you have any questions about the program, what we do?

Anything about that.

Um just you said 2025, you serve 17,000 meals to people in Lehigh or individuals.

That was 17,000 that was individuals.

And like I said, that that's coming from like that's basically 17,000 visits from Lehigh City residents, if that makes sense.

So you can't quantify how many meals that was, I guess, really?

Oh, yeah, so we can't, so it's you basically multiply it by 45.

So how it works every time someone comes in, they're able to get two weeks worth of food based on their family size.

So if they have they'd get more if it's a family of four versus five, but every time they come in, they get two weeks worth of food and they're allowed to come back every two weeks as well.

Um so that's that's how it works.

So really, and that's we we consider that 45 meals each, excuse me, every time they visit.

So really you would multiply that by 45, and that'd be the number that they're the meals that we provided to those individuals, if that makes sense.

And these individuals are not including the families.

This is like the person who walks through the door, or are you calculating the families?

That would be I I believe so yeah, the family would be baked into that.

I'd be like if it was a family of five, it's like that's included in that.

Yeah, and we we do we can give numbers for for households as well.

Uh, the I can tell you the average we what we usually go off of, it's about four and a half, you know, four to five for each family size that we see.

But it's a lot of children, like I mentioned, it's it's usually we're about half of who we serve our children in our communities and and things like that.

So it's but it's been it's been growing quite a bit.

Like I said, we've been lucky to work with uh the uh we get a lot from Saratoga Eagle, Eagle Mountain and Lehigh, and it's been great community support.

So and so thank you for that.

And I'm sure you've guys have heard about us and brought it up, and we've had great community support.

So any other questions?

Thank you, and thank you for your involvement in the community.

We do appreciate it.

Yeah, of course.

Glad glad to know that someone can go and get a meal.

That's important to know.

So thank you.

Absolutely, yeah.

Thank you for all your support and consideration.

Thanks.

Hello, my name's Stephanie from the engineering department.

How are you guys?

See if I can get this to connect.

I'm a little nervous, so bear with me.

Um my job here is to be in C D BG project.

This is my second year doing it.

Um I'm still learning, but I have Lauren here with me.

If you have any questions that I can't answer, he'll back me up.

Um, our goal for CDBG is to add missing curb, gutter, and sidewalk in the downtown area of Lehigh, one section at a time.

I wish we could do it all at once, but we have to take it tip by tip, and I feel like we're doing great progress right now.

Um, the area of focus that we're doing right now, um, I have a little map here just to kind of give you a visual.

Um, for 2026, we are doing 600 north between 100 east and 400 east.

Of course, it breaks down on me.

So on the map, you'll see a yellow line with the cones.

That's actually a project that we are under design and going to be breaking ground in the summer, um, which is on 400 east.

Um, so we want to kind of finish that block out to make it safe for all Lehigh students, both elementary and high school, and also help support the surrounding residents and also the businesses to make it safer, walkable area.

Um, and it will also help the drainage of that as well.

Um the benefit of it is this route is actually a collector road with the installation of curb, gutter, and sidewalk, it'll improve the safety of the section.

Um, and it will also, with the drainage, like I just said.

Um the funding will be approximately 300,000.

Um, this was will be requested the amount that we're hoping for.

Um this will include curb gutters, sidewalk pavements.

If we need to um relocate the stop signs, all of that.

Um it'll really it'll improve the safety, it'll improve the parking, you know.

I have a high school student myself, and he loves to go to punch it.

So walking there, I always worry.

It is a bit I don't know if you've ever walked there when school's out, or even you know, you got high school students parking there and walking, and I am a nervous mom.

So having that sidewalk there would be very helpful just as comfort as a parent myself.

And we're gonna go for a little walk on this little video.

You're going to see on, I want you to focus more on the left-hand side.

That is where the project is projected to be, and you'll just see the great need to this.

Um, and while we're walking down this road, if you have any questions, this would be a great time to ask.

But you can see that it's very busy.

Can you tell me?

I miss that.

Where's it?

Is it gonna go all the way to wines?

Yes.

Okay, awesome.

That that's really exciting.

Yeah, it'll connect it all the way.

It'll be a great improvement.

I mean, there's so many people that park for roundup up there in Alpine Bible Church, and so to be able to have that on.

Yeah, this is awesome.

Yeah, it would be a great improvement.

I think I I like to take this walk on my breaks to get that fresh air, and just seeing the the need for it.

It's crazy.

But yeah, any questions?

Have you spoken to all the residents?

Yes.

Yeah, we actually have to go door to door and get a survey to make sure that they do meet that uh load of mod income, and every resident that I spoke to, they're actually quite thrilled that this is the project that might be happening.

So this was a section where there have been residents before that have talked about they like the idea of being able to park perpendicular, and then they've talked to me recently.

It's like we have so many water issues, there's lots of other issues, plus with all the walking with kids, so this seems like a high need area to get done.

Most definitely.

Yeah, that is my presentation to you.

If you have any other questions, I just have a well, I have a question too.

Uh-huh.

Um so in this area, there's a lot of areas that need sidewalks.

So the priority here is because it's a walking route for schools and yes, yeah.

We see the need of um how it's in between the two schools, the high school and the elementary school, but we also have a lot of walkability to quench it and the church and all that.

So it's just a high walking point.

Okay.

Yeah, and I'm hoping, you know, within the next, I mean, we got years, right, to be able to connect it all so everything is just a good flow.

Yeah.

Well, I have supported this sidewalks downtown and other areas for a long, long time, so I'm thrilled that you're looking into where it's needed most.

And I would add also, just for my experience, parking to go to city events at Wines Park.

It's there's not enough parking, so we park quite a distance away, and this is one of the routes we take.

So I think it would help with our people walking to our city events as well.

So especially if you have a stroller or you know, the mobility thing, it's a big deal.

So I think it'd be a great improvement for sure.

Thank you.

Thanks, you guys.

That's great.

Yep, thank you.

Hi.

We just finally were able to open our doors to our new Lee High facility last year, and we are providing services to uh two days a week, and we are looking at ramping that up.

So we've already had a lot of um Lehigh families reach out to us, and you guys have uh helped us with the Lehigh Serves projects, and it's it's been really great to be on the same team.

Uh but Family Haven's been around for a very long time.

Uh we've been open since 1984 in Orim, and I guess in Lehons last year.

Um, and we provide um are you guys seeing what I'm seeing?

You're not seeing anything yet.

There you go.

Okay, we provide family support programs.

So you're worried about this or okay.

Well, imagine a really cute graphic that represents each of our programs.

Um we provide drop-in child care at no cost to families for children ages zero to twelve.

Um we provide therapy services for children, adults, families, um, older adults, people with disabilities.

We are able to provide um play therapy, art therapy, and we focus our therapy services on trauma recovery and abuse treatment.

And then we also provide education.

We provide abuse prevention education where we have a program that goes into schools and teaches children how to identify and prevent their own abuse.

We have parenting classes that help parents who are not yet parents, learn parenting skills, and parents who are dealing with difficult parenting situations, maybe have older kids and and are looking to get new techniques.

Both our child care and education services are completely free to the public.

Like a lot of therapy programs are, the whole industry is just very regulated in that way.

So we are one of the few providers in Utah County who are able to work with Medicaid, who are able to work with lots of pretty much every single insurance that's available in the in the area.

Sorry, I got distracted because now it showed up.

Okay.

Is that my new one?

Okay.

Great.

Fantastic.

And so we are able to do that.

And we are we do that in order to increase accessibility to as many families as possible.

So like I said, our focus for our clinical services are in abuse, recovery, and treatment of whether it's sexual abuse, uh, child abuse, uh domestic violence, we focus on that, and we continue to see unfortunately a growing need for these services.

There are a lot of children who are experiencing stress, and a lot of the socioeconomic stresses that we are experiencing also translate into stressed parents, lower emotional regulation ability, and we are seeing more and more cases.

We work very closely with DCFS, we work very closely with uh community partners that refer families to us, and we are able to handle the entire family because we have a large clinical team, we have a larger facility, we're able to give services to the entire family at once, which is something that is a little unusual.

Um usually families have to find a therapist for mom, a therapist for the children, and they're all at different times.

Our model is to do this all at once.

So we are able to provide each child with their own therapist and their own clinical plan.

We're able to provide the entire family with that.

So every child in the family can have their own therapist.

Most of the time, we're able to provide this at the exact same time.

So if you have a large family and something traumatics happen to your family, you're able to come to Family Haven and just all sort of be taken care of at the same time.

We're also able to provide child care for if there are younger children or children who are just at a different stage or they don't need those services.

Uh parents can drop off their children and just have that all taken care of and have that hour to that hour can just take care of everything.

They don't have to worry about getting additional help.

And this actually really helps, especially larger families get services if they have if they can have younger children taken care of during that time.

We also have access, we do community events for all of the families that are well for anyone really, but for all of the families that are involved in our programs, so that our clients can meet each other and make friends with other families who have maybe been through similar things.

We also have our education classes that are available for free for everybody.

So by treating the entire family, we have found that every single individual in that family has improved outcomes.

Children are very resilient, and if we're able to address the trauma and address the abuse, we are able to see them just correct course very quickly.

This is this slide just talks about why our program is really good.

Um we have the specialized providers who have a lot of training, we have community engagement because we've been in the community so long.

There are a lot of organizations that know about us that can tell parents who are going through a difficult time that we're there, and we are continuously improving our programs.

The funding request for CDBG is about this.

And I know this is a lot of words, but maybe if you just look at the one right in the middle, um, that's really what we use this funding for.

Because it's very targeted per family.

Uh what we find is that a lot of families who have insurance are able to access whatever services they want.

It and it it doesn't, you know, we're able to take care of them.

Um but especially lately we've been seeing a lot of families who with job losses, they um interrupt the the insurance is interrupted.

And um what we're able to do with this uh specialized funding for each community is be able to maintain that continuity of care.

So those children who were maybe in therapy because of a traumatic event, they don't have to stop.

They can continue receiving treatment in if there's a job loss.

Or um sometimes we have uh situations where the traumatic event results in the breadwinner of the family um going to jail and losing their job.

And so those families who are at at the moment of highest need, they'd no longer have the resource that would make this um available for them.

So our staff who are funded through our ACES program, they're able to work with that family to get back on their feet and to get signed up for for insurance, to get signed up for Medicaid.

We are very lucky to live in Utah where Medicaid and chip and all of those things are well funded and well supported.

But when a family's in crisis, they still need support to access those services.

So that's what our staff do.

Um that's the way we use the funding.

We use the funding to fund treatment for specific families so that they can have access to that through the ups and downs, or if they're just coming in um from in a crisis situation.

So if you guys have any questions about that, I'd be happy to answer questions.

Okay, I think we're good, but thank you for your presentation and thank you for what you do.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Thank you, honey.

I can use my hotspot.

I can let them use my house file.

Wait.

I missed the question.

No.

It's a race.

Who's fast?

I haven't seen Council Member Walkart for a while later, so I'm surprised by your whole point.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today.

We are thrilled to be before you.

I'm with My Story Matters.

My name is Rebecca Spencer.

I oversee compliance and grant funding.

And this is Joshua Hesla, and he is case manager extraordinaire.

And so if you have any specific questions, he's your guy.

He can really share the specifics with what we're doing.

And we believe in partnering with communities like Lehigh to make that transformation real.

So I want to share with you today a little bit about what we do, but more the vision and how we're building what we're building towards.

We're looking at a Utah County where every individual who leaves incarceration has a real path back to stability, to a solid family life and contribution to the community.

So we'd love to partner with Lehigh to have Lehigh be the cornerstone of that vision.

The community challenge that we face in Utah County, and a reality is that 94% of incarcerated individuals in the state of Utah will return to our communities.

They're in every neighborhood.

Individuals returning from incarceration face huge barriers.

And that's not because the programs fail, but that's because the participants have lacked the foundation to engage in these programs successfully.

So this results in a revolving door that costs communities significant in public safety, in housing pressure, in emergency services, and in human potential.

Lehigh, as many of the cities in our neighborhood in our community, is not immune to these costs.

But we don't have to accept those costs.

Sorry.

So this CDBG project targets low and moderate income individuals in Utah County who are at the highest risk of housing instability.

We look to men and women leaving incarceration or addiction recovery treatments who have few few resources and significant barriers.

Early intensive support is what determines whether someone stabilizes or whether or not they cycle back.

So we look specifically to tar to partner with Lehigh in this application because Lehigh is one of the fastest growing cities in the county.

Um and in our state, and with the growth that comes, we need intentional community infrastructure.

This is looking at investing upstream, reducing downstream costs, and positioning yourself as a leader in a smart, compassionate community development across Utah County.

We're not asking you to solve the problem.

So we focus on identity development, emotional regulation, vision vision-based accountability.

So we start when an individual is going through their treatment.

If they're incarcerated, right, we're working with them in prison.

If they are in addiction recovery, we're working with them as they go through their treatment.

And it's this is what will make a housing placement stick.

If they have, if they've um if they have employment, they're ready to succeed if they have stable housing, if they're rebuilding their families, if they have the tools to put all those pieces together, then they're much able, they're much more likely to succeed and to function well in society.

Um we are authorized by the Utah Department of Corrections as the state's first approved inside out organization.

We're also recognized by the governor's criminal justice task force.

We partner with Intermountain Healthcare, Wasatch Behavioral Health, Federal HUD programs.

Our model has been validated at every level.

Some of our outcomes that show that our vision is working.

In 2025, 59 program graduates remained in the community following release.

So this generated an estimated 1,011,636 dollars in cost avoidance to the state of Utah.

Our recidivism rate among our participants is approximately 11%, compared to Utah's 46%.

But these aren't just numbers.

These are fathers who are back in their children's lives.

These are families who are restored, these are neighbors who are contributing to their community rather than cycling back.

This is our vision, and this is what it looks like in practice.

It's already happening in Utah County.

The participants, how this works, and this is if you have questions, this is where Joshua comes in because he's amazing.

They work directly with our case managers, and we provide them with peer mentors.

We build stabilization plans, housing, employment, family reunification plans.

We connect them to existing resources and we show them how to make those connections stick.

We're not trying to replace an ecosystem out there, we're just trying to make the system work.

Lehigh's investment through CDBG will strengthen every partner organization in the county.

When individuals can engage, every program becomes more effective.

So we look at the partnership and the funding.

We're looking at the funding specifically to expand our re-entry stabilization initiative throughout Utah County and very specifically in Lehigh because of the large amount of growth that Lehigh has, as well as the demographics that the city has our positioning with public transport.

What we'd like to provide is intensive case management services, peer mentorship, coordinated connection to housing, employment, and behavioral health services throughout a very established partner network.

This is targeted high-level investment in community stability.

So Lehigh's participation will make that possible, and it would make Lehigh a model for how Utah County cities can lead out on this issue together.

Have a list of some of our partners, community partners who we work with.

Every person who stabilizes reduces pressure on your housing system, on your emergency services, on your public safety, every family that stays together, strengthening the community fabric.

The return on this investment compounds because stable individuals become employed residents, engaged parents, and eventually mentors to others who are going through the same transition.

Lehigh's investment doesn't just help individuals, it's building a community, the kind of community that Lehigh is actively working towards.

So we stand here at a moment of real momentum.

We're working hard with the state.

We've been very active in legislative processes with governors' initiatives.

We're trying to work also target with the cities and our county in our community.

Our infrastructure is in place, our outcomes are proven, and now we're just looking for strategic partners who are willing to anchor this next phase.

So that we've come to you today to request that opportunity to help build a Utah County and specifically a city of Lehigh, where re-entry doesn't mean returning to instability, it means returning home.

So we're very grateful for your vision for your leadership, for your consideration of partnering with us, and we'd like to ask if you have any questions.

Mr.

Mayor, if I may.

So the request, if you could go back a couple of slides, I think it was over 300,000 for the total project.

Yes.

But you're requesting 12.5 from Lehigh.

Correct.

So I guess I'm just trying to understand if Lehigh is an anchor for you.

Like what does that mean if you if we're if you're asking us to contribute so little, how would that mean that Lehigh is now the anchor for your program?

Sure, that's a fantastic question.

We um our total project comes from federal sources, state sources, county sources, and so we targeted down to Lehigh what we felt was proportionate.

We're looking here specifically at 14 individuals, and we want to build our model and build our data with 14 individuals targeted in very in-depth case management services to say how can we help you?

How can we connect you with the services in Lehigh?

And then as we build out this $342,000 budget will take us over two years as we implement the course, and we're asking for the funding from Lehigh as we lead out in this entire project.

Also, I should note that this is not a new project.

We have been operating this project very successfully under home ARP funding, and so we're looking to continue, and we wanted to target areas where we see weaknesses, and we very specifically we're having very positive relationships with UDC with the legislature, with the governor.

We wanted to do it on a local level because we believe that the local level is really what's going to drive it statewide.

So we're taking our statewide focus and look to Lehigh to say, let's lead out, let's start with these 14 individuals, let's show you how it's done, and then as additional money comes in, we're not saying Lehigh, you only get 14 and we're done as the money comes in.

We're saying we've established this program, here's our real-time data, and let's continue to build.

You're not seeking funding from the other surrounding cities.

It's just Lehigh.

We have sought funding from the regional CDBG at a at um we asked 10% for uh contribution from Lehigh, and we have sought 125,000 from the regional.

Oh, thank you.

That's helpful.

Um I just kind of want to break it down to maybe specifics, a little bit like we heard from some other um organizations.

So are you talking about like a group home situation, transitional housing, counseling services, and then you're getting going out finding low to moderate income housing that you help connect them with and subsidize, like you know just specifics, I guess.

So a lot of these individuals are already in your community and are accessing services through adult probation and parole, um, through other agencies in that space.

So they can work with us, but only in approved cities, and so without funding, they then have to move to another city just to move back to Lehigh, if that makes sense.

So we have a lot of families of incarcerated individuals who are here.

Their families are on the are engaged with our programming.

However, they live here, they don't live in Provo or in Oram or in Salt Lake with some of these other communities that are a little more invested or involved in the current programming we have.

And so this would provide services to their families, which is a key component, as well as to them as they transition back into the community.

So for you key you say services, can you be specific about services?

Yeah, so services is case management and one-on-one support.

So referrals to therapy, referrals to other partners.

Um, one of the big things that we see in case management is we say go to this place, but people don't know how to communicate what their needs are and how to work effectively with the partners you already have in your community.

And so what they do in a condensed version with me and with the caseworkers is they work with them one-on-one to then figure out how do I communicate with other organizations that are already in the community that I need help with food stamps, or I need help getting into the food bank, or I need help with these things.

It sounds really basic, but when your entire world gets rocked because dad or mom or brother and sister is no longer in the house, kind of all common sense goes out the window, and then we see other issues in that space.

So we were there to help direct them to those services.

We're not creating a group home or housing support, like a housing facility in your guys' community.

It's already where they exist in the community, just providing them with supportive services is the general term.

So you're talking mostly case management, like your case workers.

That's what your model is.

Correct.

It's primarily case management.

And in the flyer that Joshua handed out, there's a QR code, it's our legislative brochure, and it'll take you through on the back side.

Thank you.

It'll take you through.

We have one copy with us that we can share the up assault lake, they took more than we thought they would.

We discovered we were low today, so my apologies.

Um, but it will take you through some of the stories, and so you'll see as an individual gets out, we're giving them the support that they need for the initial right food stamps to find housing.

Um, and I and I can think of a situation, someone who Joshua has been very involved with in helping recently who, after right, we're talking maybe 15 years of incarceration.

They don't know how to work a cell phone, they don't know how to work GPS, they don't know how to function in this in the community, they have a lot of restrictions, and they have three weeks.

There's about three weeks to have this whole list of stuff that they've accomplished before they sit down and they meet with their um parole officers.

So this case manager is going to sit down with them and say, okay, so what do you need to do?

Okay, well, how do you do it?

We're not driving them necessarily to the appointments.

We're more of a teacher man how to fish type mentality where we're saying, okay, so these are the services you need.

Let's get you set up with them, and then what's your next step?

We have an employment specialist who we're gonna sit down and we're gonna connect them with our employment specialist who has networks throughout the state of employers who are willing to take people with the prison record and give them a shot.

We even have some employers who will take people who have been sex offenders and who are trying to turn their lives around and have a chance at employment and re-entering society.

So very much it's a second chance organization.

So again, housing, we have specific housing partners who are willing to take people who have recently been incarcerated.

So we can get them the services they need, direct them towards employment and housing, and that's on them.

We've taught them the principles for success, and we expect them to stand up and to live it and to get that job and to secure the housing and to pay your housing, but we're gonna give you the support that you need while you're trying to do that, really is the mentality of our case managers and what they do.

I don't know if that answers.

Yes, I understand what case management is.

So you're trying to make Lehigh kind of a model of the city of this program, so you can go to other cities and say the IA is supporting this program, and we would invite you to also.

Yes.

And this is the success that we high seen.

I just one question are you working with like juvenile detention centers as well?

Okay.

Yes.

So we're partnered with the Department of Corrections, but JJYS, DCFS, all of those other entities in that space.

Now the implementation looks different within each agency, but we have curriculum that supports right that class that teaches them how to fish, metaphorically, right?

That course exists in all of those spaces for every age group and demographic.

And then this specific request is for the case management to support those families and individuals after incarceration and the adult side of our justice system.

The juvenile is a separate thing that is not a part of this request, if that makes sense.

Yeah, thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for watching.

I know this might be awkward where you get to watch me signing, but here a female, it is what it is, sorry.

Um I'm here from um Definity Media.

We have a project focused on supporting people who are deaf.

So like this picture, it's it's kind of an example of hearing people finding jobs.

There's there's obstacles, there's hurdles, but not as many.

Um while deaf people, there's very many, and that's why we're here.

For example, um kind of national employment rates at 70%.

And Utah's even better, that's great.

But um deaf employment rates across the nation and um deaf employment rates in Utah.

We couldn't find a number that didn't include like people who'd lost their hearing later, so they might not be sign language users.

We feel it would be lower than that.

But the reasons why deaf people might be um disadvantaged in finding jobs, and and there's barriers.

There's always going to be barriers.

Like as you can see, they kind of even start with with a ball and chain.

There's labels and lower expectations and just not fitting in with a lot of the mainstream kind of services.

There's always going to be some barriers.

Some things that cause the barriers might be um lack of education level.

I and I don't mean that deaf people are intellectually disabled.

I don't mean that at all, but they might have gone to a school that didn't expect as much.

They might have not received higher or further education.

They would struggle to access other services.

A lot, 90% of deaf people actually might be the only one in their hearing family, so they don't have a lot of sign language or access at home.

And they only get you know minuscule information that the other people can easily access.

If you think of your kids as they're growing up and you're holding this adult conversation, all of a sudden they ask, like, wait, what happened to so and so?

Or what did this happen?

Kids hear everything when their ears work, and they can ask questions, they can clarify deaf people can't.

You know, their parents, their kids, their adult, you know, other people might be talking around them, and they don't have access to that overheard information.

There is a lower literacy level among deaf people.

And I want to say that it's less of an education thing, like, you know, deaf people can achieve degrees.

I don't mean that at all.

But there's still that visualness of English that doesn't carry over when you can't hear it, when you can't sound it out.

Um, and then if you think of any job application system, it's based in English.

So they struggled to access it's often heard about, like, oh, so and so got a job there.

And there's automatic awkwardness for most employers when you show up at an interview and you're bringing in interpreter and you're bringing or you're trying to do it on yourself on your own.

And so, yeah, communication is always an issue.

It's something you get asked at interviews, they don't understand how it's gonna work, and it's too too easy to just hire the many other applicants to the job.

So and housing as well, sorry, there's also housing issues.

We already know that deaf people do tend to be on the lower income, lower and m lower and moderate income band.

Um similar kind of barriers to finding finding housing.

A lot of the searches are very internet and English based, getting a hold of the landlord.

In fact, we found that um in 2015, an actual research by HUD found that 26% of the times the hearing person would get through and the deaf person would get hung up on when they were trying to contact the landlord.

So this project that we are asking to set up and start in Lehigh is to provide all of this type of information in sign language, in American sign language.

Um that would be not translations, not through interpreters, not second hand, but first hand direct from deaf people to deaf people.

Um it would be some workshops, some events, community events for Lehigh residents to come to, but then one-to-one kind of support and advocacy and guidance in you know, tailored for each individual.

And that's the project here, and we would be careful, you know, keep records of Lehigh residents and be able to report on that after.

Any questions?

Um, how much is the request?

Twenty-five thousand.

Sorry, I didn't realize if you would already know the numbers.

Thank you.

Can you just go back one slide?

I'm sorry.

That one.

Any other questions?

How about can we get your name?

Sorry, my name is Gohar Nissar.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

We appreciate it.

You want to grab that mic?

There you go.

Thank you.

No problem.

So those are all the applicants this year.

This is the spreadsheet I share with your city staff.

This the first column B will be preliminary funding.

That's what you guys will decide today, what you think should happen with the money.

This column C is their requested amount.

This is what they would would like to receive their full grant ask.

This minimum, this is a question that we ask everyone.

Um just to say if we couldn't give you the full amount, what's the minimum you could take and still make your project happen?

Um these are the funding recommendations provided by your city staff.

And something that I realized I didn't go over in the PowerPoint was public services can only, and this is just a rule from the CDBG, is 15% is the max amount of your total and talent entitlement allocation that can go towards public services, and the rest would have to go to infrastructure, housing, economic development, things like that.

Um this number, the 40,000 is the administration cost, and I don't know if I went over this either or if you guys are already aware, but MAG Mountain Land Association of Governments administers the C D BG program for the city of Lehigh, and that's where that number comes in.

And this is for all the administration and the planning that goes into the upcoming years, like the Calm plan that we talked about last in the last slide, or the annual plans.

Um and then so yeah, so these are the funding recommendations, the full 40,000 and the 292 for the Lehigh Engineering Project.

And we don't actually know the final number until late spring, early summer, May, June-ish.

And by the time we do our public hearing and public comment period, we should know the final amount, and that way if we come back, we can make those final decisions with the real numbers.

And now this is just kind of the time that normally you guys can talk about whether or not you want to just go straight through the city recommendations that have already been providing provided by the city staff, or if you would like to play around with the numbers and see if you did provide some public services, some to the infrastructure project or whatever you would like to see.

I just had a quick question.

So public services versus the infrastructure.

So do your percentages again.

Sorry, just to make sure I think that's a good thing.

So 15% of the total entitlement amount.

So this 332 that you're seeing here, this is approximate.

We're just we're getting this number based off of last year, but we normally get approximately 300,000.

And so that's the number we're we're gonna be playing with today.

And obviously, if that number changes, we'll come back and we'll tell you the final.

So and then these two, you'll see that this is the public services available.

So if we were to get the five the 332 like we did last year, the max amount that you would be able to contribute to public services is 49,000.

And that's not the infrastructure piece.

Public services is the applicants that we just heard.

Yep, exactly.

Other than the Lehigh Engineering.

So 15% of it can go to them.

The rest goes to Lehigh.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, or the total amount can go to infrastructure, but just the max amount that you could possibly do to public services is that 15.

You don't have to contribute anything if you don't want to.

Okay, thank you.

So with so with the requested amounts, it's already over the public services amount, it looks like.

And with even the minimum.

Yeah.

If we added all the minimums together, if I'm doing math right.

Yeah, let me make sure that's yep, that's adding correctly.

Yep.

So if we did the full amount, we would be over.

And then if we did do the minimum, that's not counting correctly.

Who sets the MAG admin rate?

Um, it's just been negotiated with the city, and we're on a three-year um contract.

The max amount that you can give to admin is 20% of that total amount, so we're not taking the full 20% for the administration.

So we negotiated down.

Uh-huh.

Yes, so I think we're in a contract.

I think we started either last year or the year before.

So this should be maybe our last year or the second to final year.

Okay, thank you.

Well, it looks like we have a tough decision to make.

We have some great applicants today.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to make that decision today, but I appreciate everyone coming and all that they shared and all that they're doing for our communities.

I I would need more time to think through it.

Um I appreciate everyone and all that they've done for our community.

What could be helpful too, since this is the first year for most of the council is to see what was done last year, because we had that excess funding that was able we were able to use for quite a few of these areas last year.

Yeah, so last year we we had um there was a parks project that got COVID funding in 2020 or 2019 or 2021.

Um and they had leftover funds.

They didn't use the full amount, and that funding was gonna expire in 2027.

So last year, um I think it was last year when the parks department decided that they were no longer gonna use it, that was just left over, and we allocated it to Tabitha's way in Family Haven received um kind of I think Tabitha's way got around 35,000.

And then I think Family Haven received 9,000.

And the caveat with those funds was that they needed to somehow still relate to COVID.

It wasn't just free money that could go to any project.

You had to show that there still was some sort of impact from COVID, and that's how you were gonna be able to use those funds.

In the past, I think we've we've always funded the public infrastructure, the sidewalks projects, and um there's always been about one to at max three public services that have been funded.

And there's always just a smaller request for Lehigh in public services just because of the amount of money that the entitlement receives the 300,000 approximately.

And so there are, like they said, the regional application, which is provo and orum, and Utah County will be doing their own entitlement, so there's always a way to get funds there.

The only thing with that is that the funds have to be directly tied to the residents of that city, or in Utah County's case, they would have to be residents that don't reside in Lehigh Oram or Provo.

Is there a way I can ask the definity media person something again?

Yeah.

Um, can I ask you you spoke about having workshops and advocacy for uh the deaf community, or is there a significant need for that here in Lehigh specifically?

You are speak that you are a definity media thing, so is that reach in a broader community than Lehigh?

This this project I'm mentioning is only Lehigh.

We do have a proposal in for Aurum and Provo as well.

But Lehigh does actually have quite a large deaf community.

Um it is growing and more people are moving here than some of the other cities in the in the valley.

I apologize.

Okay, but we're speaking so you're requesting things specifically for mostly workshops and then having kind of a mentor situation with yes, and to build kind of sustainable resources.

So at the workshops would be videoing it, so it could be you know, it could continue to reach people even after the project, or they could refer to it and remember what was said, and um yeah, definitely get better records, I guess, data of the deaf people in the area and the struggles that they are facing and hopefully help them break through and break into employment better.

Okay, thank you.

Claudia, can I ask you when you have the minimums listed?

Is that the minimum you have we have to fund?

We cannot fund less than those minimums per project.

Not necessarily.

These are the minimums that when we asked in their application, what could what is still feasible for your project to still continue?

And these are the numbers they they gave.

So I'm sure we could ask and and figure out if that is if there is a lower number that they would take, but this is what they indicated in their application would be able that's what they would need to make their project go forward.

And just to answer to uh to your question about having more time, um, the only reason we're requesting a preliminary one is for that public hearing and public comment period that needs to happen.

Um, and that's all just to stay on track with our annual action plan that we need to submit to HUD by June 15th.

And so we definitely in and during this time of public comment and period, we could definitely have you guys be deliberating and thinking considering what you would like to actually see during the final funding.

Um so even if it isn't is it isn't exactly what you would like to see, just having numbers to put out there for public hearing, public comment, and then you guys could make that final decision when we come back in May.

I'm just leaning towards the recommendation somewhat.

I'd like to see the bulk go to sidewalks.

Um but then if if we even fund the minimum and there's 10,000 left over and maybe some additional funds funding, it looks like there's a couple on there we can look to fund as well.

Um but I yeah, some of these serve the broader regional community um and they're all great.

I mean, again, we had started our budget discussions and there's never enough money, right, to fund every good thing out there, and these are definitely good things.

So my position is fund the sidewalks at least the minimum, and then maybe looking at doing a couple others that we're that we can do with the minimum.

It looks like there's two that if we if we have at least 10,000 dollars extra, there's one two we can choose from to fund.

Um, and then if there's additional funding, maybe we could look at doing more.

But I like the idea of using this money locally directly benefiting our residents, and then some of these again are are more regional.

And then you said they have access to county funds or other the Utah County will have entitlement funds that they'll have they'll have their own notice of funding availability when they are started on their cycle and then there is a provo and regional approval or on regional application that's also on our same timeline.

So they're also taking applications right now and going through the same presentation process.

Okay.

So if we do fund the minimum and we do the just the admin is just what it is then we're we're right at that 332.

So um there would only be about 2,700 to fund any other projects.

Oh sorry say that again maybe then my math was wrong.

Sorry you were just explaining that you wanted to do the minimum for Lehigh which was the 290 and then if we do the admin the 4000 which is already just like a contracted amount then this would bring us to that 332739.

Yeah sorry yeah if Mag admin's listening maybe take a little less of a piece even I think 25K might be good for their administration costs personally.

It's only one it's only one side of the street it is it only one side okay one side of the street for that much.

Okay.

Three blocks though so it's like isn't it like three there's three yeah um I was reading all the monitoring risk assessments that you did I think you for I appreciate those um family haven is established I'm very familiar with them it's considered low risk you probably have all read over this Tabitha's way is also well known this is also considered low risk though it hasn't been in the community apparently using funding here at Lehigh for a coup near recent years is what this report says I don't know.

I don't know I'm a bleeding heart so I like all of these things yeah I mean I think they're all incredibly powerful organizations and have great missions.

But just echoing what the other said we definitely need to prioritize the sidewalks that's a direct you know public safety issue.

Just curious though Kim on the on the sidewalks is this number specifically like a quoted amount to complete those sidewalks or is it a ballpark?

Or sorry Fraud Yeah I think I can answer that question.

This is these are estimates based on current average unit bid costs that we have so we haven't done all the designs so we don't know the exact engineering costs but these tend to be um they're not heavy that's for sure.

The construction costs tend to go up all the time so these we feel very confident that these are the minimums that we would need.

Okay.

Thanks yeah I I was glad last year that we had that roughly 5000 that we could contribute extra so to kind of help with the lift this is a big section of sidewalk I always feel like this would be a good use to put it towards the sidewalks and then be able to get through the budget session because these are these are all amazing organizations they fulfill a much greater um public benefit than any kind of like private or individual one that we could come back in and revisit but I know that it would be difficult to chip away at the engineering portion and then not be able to do that project not be able to fund it through budget.

So that's that would be almost like an easier way to go that way and then be able to see on the the budget what we might have because otherwise we're gonna have to fulfill the the sidewalks with budget I'm going I think because we're on their constraints to pay this 40K to Mag admin I would be okay considering reducing the cost to Lehigh City engineering by 40K and that would take us to be able to fund the minimum of all these asks but I'm um also okay waiting to see the what the budget holds I I think that these could be very beneficial to the broader Lehigh community whereas the sidewalks would benefit many citizens in that one area but this might benefit more especially some of them as family haven or tablets way that have a broader age so okay you're talking about subsidizing from the budget with the if not funding the full 292 using others towards sideways basically doing 250 no I know there's been concern in 2000 to Lehigh City Engineering about doing it that way.

So okay, you're talking about subsidizing for the budget with the not funding the full 292 using to the others towards the basically doing 250.

No, I know there's been concern in the past.

I think if I am understanding what you're indicating correctly, what you're proposing is that we would fund 250 through to C D B G and then another 40 would be an additional budget request through that we would have to make to kind of make this project whole.

Or can we do some kind of caution or anything?

I know we just bounced around some different ideas about it.

So the Lauren's gone, but I thought there was discussion in the past about the complications of applying for this kind of funding and how it's I don't know if you can do that, right?

I think it I think it becomes challenging to mix funds.

Yeah.

Um when you're you it's it's almost like mixing state and federal funds.

I think it does become difficult to you know to introduce our own city funds along with this funding stream.

It's the same problem that I have with MAG when I when I try to do that same thing.

We like to keep these funds all together.

Now I'm I mean I guess we could we could shorten the project, right?

I mean we could instead of doing three blocks, we could do two.

The problem with that is then we're in introducing, you know, trap, you know, we're introducing we still have that one section that's still not done.

You know, whether we do three out of the two out of the three blocks, it just creates that problem with us not providing a project that goes from start from point A to point C.

And that's what I loved about it.

I mean, like wow, we can get that whole section done.

All the way to Wines Parsons.

Yeah, in one shot, I think that's great.

And just um and take it for what it's worth.

I was on a long flight recently and read through the U Tell Equities and Town Manual.

And one caution it did say was you know, there's good things, but who does whose responsibility is you know, is it really?

And usually cities are for local services and these kind of things, streets and my opinion, sidewalks, fire and and that sort of thing.

And then there's other governmental entities, maybe county and state or even federal, where they do more of the social service aspect.

So I would just caution I mean, of course we could spend this, you know, the way we want.

Um, but do we want to get into providing those when we have other governmental entities that fulfill those roles maybe better than the city should when we have our own responsibilities we should consider, I guess.

Um who determines top line?

So the total available.

What's the calculation for that?

This 332.

That's just the the budget that we get directly from HUD.

So when we get the final federal budget and they release all of the entitlement amounts, um that's when they'll tell us.

And this number fluctuates based off of how much money they have they received this that year and the budget.

Um but also depends if any other communities that surrounding us to become entitled as well, so they also start receiving funding.

So this number just changes every year.

And so Provo Oram and Lehigh.

And who else in Utah?

And Lehigh are the only ones.

Saratoga Springs just recently became entitled, but they won't be able to access that funding in first three years because they were in an uh county agreement that they they participate through the county.

But once they um and that three year agreement, I'm assuming that they will also just start receiving their own funds.

Okay.

It would be interesting to see Provo and Oram's request list.

And if there's crossover.

Yeah, I think the majority, if not all of these are have a request in for a provo and orum.

And it and the only the the big thing here is where the beneficiaries live.

So even if they do get that funding, they can't help anyone in Lehigh with those funds.

All right.

So as far as that goes, like if they were to contribute to Tabitha's way.

I mean, so would a resident from Lehigh go into the Pleasant Grove facility and ask for food and they say I'm sorry, no?

No, they would still get funding, but the this Lehigh City C D BG money would not be the ones used for that.

So we have to prove all of our beneficiaries and Lee and Tabitha's Way would provide us documentation showing how many residents were served, and because they're doing a food pantry, they would show us kind of percentages, how many people came from Lehigh, so we know exactly where our money is coming from.

And that's just the point of C D BG is really just to make sure that that money is providing your residents and your community the money that it can improve.

Okay.

So we're not going to be able to do that in provo when they look at whatever to fund they have to make sure their residents are benefiting from it.

Okay.

I'm sorry, you totally misunderstood.

No, you're totally fine.

And same with county, they would have to go, but they would kind of do the opposite.

So they would subtract anyone from Lehigh Provo Oram, and then that's how they would figure out what is their percentage that they're paying for that or how how their beneficiaries are calculated.

Okay.

Yeah, and I think knowing that, like if we have 17,000 individuals, and you know, people from Lehigh, they're being excluded from the other funding sources if we don't fund this, right?

And so it's really important.

I mean, 17,000 is more than twice the amount of ballots cast, right, in the last election.

Like that's a lot of people.

You're saying for Tabitha's way specifically, yeah.

So they they would not they would still get food through Sabbath Sway and other partnering funds that they receive and things like that, but yeah, but CDBG would not be the ones contributing to paying for that.

We high C D B G.

Well I'm going back, of course, with all this information.

So I think if we're if engineering is saying that they have to have the 290,000, were you saying, Heather, that we see kind of where we land with the budget?

Yeah, I'm I'm concerned with Brad about splitting up, trying to pay from two sources.

I'm also concerned about doing sidewalks with I'm like I support sidewalks using grant funding, but when we open that up and start using city budget, then we open up the fact that we have a lot of residents, even including downtown who purchase their own sidewalks.

And so like when we can do it through grants, then we can kind of justify it.

But when it comes to these other areas, um it's even easier for them if we fund it directly through the budget.

They don't have to go through the whole administrative process of receiving the money, but then we can see what money we have.

And I do feel like these areas are areas where we can more easily justify not having to have a grant because they do serve much wider public good than just the you know the section downtown, even though I feel like this section downtown is really valuable because of the schools, because of the the area that it's in, because of so much of the the city comes down to that area for events.

So that's kind of my my reason of not splitting up the engineering portion.

I I think that might make it really messy.

The other thing too, I know like I had a concern about the MAG admin before, and my response the response back to me was that it would cost the city far more to administrate administer this ourselves than it would be to have MAG do it.

And to speak on that, I do believe Lehigh City administered for at least two years, possibly three before they decided to contract it out because of all of the work that it does take for all of the annual action plans, the consolidated plans, and the administration of the program for the full funding year.

Okay.

Thank you for the information.

Yeah, so I support Lehigh City Engineering having it as a Lehigh City representative.

Um I challenge all of our community members to help these uh these companies, these uh nonprofit and um organizations that are doing good.

I personally volunteer at one uh at a place and volunteer care clinic, and we refer people to a lot of these places, and we um yeah, go do some good, make a difference and help these companies out.

Last year, um how were they able to fund the public service requests and do the city engineering?

I think to Heather's point, can we look at what happened last year?

I'm curious was top line higher, was the project smaller?

Like how did they pull that off last year?

Yeah, so this was the amount from last year, this specific 332,739.

And I believe last year we funded 100% the sidewalk project, and the only reason any public services were funded was because we had that leftover COVID funding.

And without that COVID funding, they wouldn't have been able to use that.

And the Lehigh City, like the Parks Department of Engineering could have used that, but they would have had to tie that back, and that would be really difficult to prove like why that sidewalk maybe is impacted by COVID.

And so that's why public services were a better fit for that funding and with COVID funds, there was no cap on public services like there is their regular funding.

So that money was able to just go out to those two public services that could say exactly how this ties back, and they submitted an application with an explanation of that.

And that's the only reason that those two were funded.

Understood, thank you.

And remember, this is just preliminary and we'll put it out for public comment and hearing, and so if there are any changes, we definitely can make that change.

Any other comments or should we go forth with what's been recommended from staff?

Mayor Bins.

Yes.

If I may.

I just have a question for Claudia.

What how what are the chances that the 332 may raise?

I mean, how often does that happen where you these are estimates?

What are your what are your thoughts as to what are not that amount may be greater?

Yeah, I think historically it's always gone up by a little bit, not by a ton.

Um and that's just is it's different because and I don't exactly know how this calculation is made by HUD.

These are just the numbers they provide us.

And I've never gotten a very clear answer from our head representative how that happens.

But like Oram, for example, their number decreases every year.

And so we're not exactly sure if the they're going off of the amount of residents that are living there.

We're not sure how that's happening.

But Lehigh at least has always gone up not by a very large amount but very small.

When do we typically know that number by late May early June I'm really hopeful because we really should have agreements out with whoever by July 1 and that kind of has just continued to be pushed back later and later.

But as soon as we get those numbers we would let you guys know and we'd come out for after the public comment and hearing and everything we keep we can't roll over any of the funds can we?

Yeah funds can roll over yeah we normally um so like I mentioned that annual action plan um they like to have the full amount budgeted out for the year exactly what are we doing with that with that money.

And there are um certain like timeliness tests that they do.

They don't like to see a lot of money sitting there unused unless you have a very specific plan like you are holding it for a large infrastructure project or something you're gonna pay it all out in like two or three years.

But yes we we could rule over funds potentially and if there are ever any um leftovers then we do bring that the following year to show that's what I was asking if there we have more a little bit more but again I'm understanding what I'm hearing was that the application process is really complicated.

I think we talked about this last year how it was sometimes it was like so little it wasn't worth all that time and effort in the right C D BG I think there's a lot of um red tape that goes with this funding and a lot of um documentation to prove exactly where those residents live how they're benefiting from this and there are some groups that they that had presumes are 51% or over LMI.

And sometimes that is comes to our benefit but for the majority it's just a lot of documentation and stuff and sometimes the amount of money that they are receiving it makes it a little bit difficult to kind of justify that.

Okay.

So if we get a little extra we could roll it over for next year and maybe get a little more to fund some of these things possibly that yeah any uh recommendations then I would just recommend we go with the staff funding right now the the funding recommendation okay I support that as well I agree.

I mean we all love these organizations and what they do but I think that's really our only option um in order to make sure that sidewalk funding is funded completely.

We could do a smaller project and find 17,000 Lehigh residents having access to some food.

They I think we made it clear right that they'd still be able to access food at Tabitha's way if we don't fund this just do other funding I would imagine and the fact that we did a very large donation last year to Tabitha is way I would still like to support Tabasway I don't want to throw two five thousand dollars so you know a small amount because the administrative cost of trying to do that is you know almost ineffective it'd be far more um beneficial to them to receive five thousand from the budget than it would to have to go through the administrative process of of this and I would argue for Family Haven because I'm very familiar with our organization and they provide emergency child care trauma situations which can prevent child abuse can prevent crime and other issues that we if we only have two days a week right now on Lehigh I feel like it would be good to look at that.

So let's move forward with the recommendation of funding the sidewalk project.

Okay.

I know you've got three that are okay with that I know I know we could put this money in any direction but I know you need a recommendation so let's move forward with that recommendation when you come back with uh uh the full number then we'll we'll know and and can massage that a little more so take care of what you need to yes I'll come back with the funding um actual decision and then if there are any public comments I will bring that to you as well so you have all of the information.

Great thank you.

Okay thank you okay we'll move to item two D presentation of safer systems approach and the discussion of the 700 South cycle track.

Mr West a quick question I know we're getting close to I don't know if you want to go later than six.

Mike has probably about a 20 minute presentation and then there'd probably be some discussion.

I don't know if you we're happy to do whatever you council where are you on on this?

I know we haven't met for a while but you tell me where you're at I my son's home from spring break and we have an activity I need to leave at 615 if possible I am so if I even if I jump out that might be okay.

Yeah.

Are you guys everybody else okay?

Are we okay?

I'm okay till I'm okay until seven but I might need the bio break.

Okay.

So why don't we why don't we take um a five minute buy can we be quick in a quick five minute bio break?

If you want to wait till six fifteen let's do that.

Let's do that.

So Mike, you are on till 6 14.

Come back to as well.

So let's see.

What's the best way to do this?

Just HDMI cable.

I will say there's a lot that goes into this stuff, especially like safe streets in general.

So I'll do the best I can to roll along here.

Okay.

Yes, I do have a little agenda for you.

And again, I don't know.

We'll be able to hurry through all this.

I'm gonna just go go go.

If you want me to go back to anything at the end with questions, just let me know.

But uh just want to quickly mention vision values and priorities, the council intro to safe system approach, bike lane types of trade-offs, um, and then looking specifically at some options on seventh.

Uh so vision values and priorities.

When we're looking at roadway design, every and every roadway may be different as to what the priorities are.

Um but I kind of just put that to you as the council.

You're the ones that uh set the policy for the city, so you know, you can take your values or whatever your priorities are when you look at any roadway project coming through town.

Um thing that was awesome was just at the budget retreat, had a lot of good uh goals and everything.

Uh a good number of them mentioned safety in some fashion.

Um, some of them specifically towards uh sidewalks or bike lanes, whatever it may be.

And then uh this is the old kind of graphic.

I know they're working on a new one, but that term family centric community, that could be interpreted in many ways, but I just no, I interpret it maybe one way, maybe that'll show in this presentation, but obviously we'll keep that in mind as we're looking at parties of our transportation system.

Now, that being said, safe system approach is actually, you know.

Well, I'll just start with this.

When we're looking at traffic fatality rates of countries all over, um, specifically uh Europe here and uh Mexico to our south.

So Norway, they have one of the lowest fatality rates uh per 100,000 population in the world at one and a half.

Um Japan's a little higher, Netherlands 3.4, Canada 4.7, Russia 10.6, Mexico to our south, 12, and then we're all the way up at 14.2 in the United States.

So for a wealthy country, we're actually some of the most dangerous streets out there, and there's a lot of reasons for that.

Um but this is from the FHWA.

They adopted the safe system approach uh two or three years back.

Um they have six principles and five elements.

And I'm gonna try as quickly as I can to get through these.

Like I say, there's so much to understand here.

I'm just kind of touching the surface.

Um, but just kind of give an introduction to it.

But there's death and serious injury is unacceptable, humans are vulnerable, we make mistakes, responsibility shared.

Safety's proactive and redundancy is crucial, which is the elements, that's our redundancies.

We want all users to be safe, safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads, and post-crash care.

So, first of all, death and serious injuries, unacceptable.

You know, people getting killed in our transportation is an outcome of the system, the way it's designed.

Um, a lot of the socioeconomic factors.

This is just recently, uh, this woman was killed in If you now her husband is trying to find the strength to go on in life without her.

Is that an acceptable outcome of the system?

Um this was last year, 500 West.

We had a girl killed there.

Um I personally find it absolutely unacceptable that our transportation system would produce this.

Is it easy to prevent this?

It there's a lot that goes into it, and it is, it can be difficult.

But personally, I don't want to see any more of these memorials around town.

And again, I'm gonna there's a lot that goes into this.

Um it's not easy, it's not perfect.

Um, but the the idea is keeping the risk potential low in our streets.

So this is uh just kind of some speeds, and if you were to hit somebody walking or riding a bike with a car, generally at 20 miles per hour, you might be around a 10% risk of killing someone.

You go to 30 miles per hour, that jumps up to about 40 percent, and 40 miles per hour that jumps out about 80 percent.

So exponentially it gets more dangerous with speed, so we have to keep that in mind as we design our roads.

Um the goal should be to keep there's it might be impossible to completely eliminate eliminate risk.

I could walk down the street with no cars at all and trip and hit my head.

It's but the risk potential keeping it low is the key.

So 10% is what FHWA recommends that we try not to exceed a 10% risk fatality threshold.

My neighborhood up in South Jordan.

This is last fall, somebody got hit on a corner, a pedestrian cars only going 20 miles per hour, but it was a pretty serious injury.

So it doesn't take a lot of speed to hurt people.

No, we have to keep that in mind just with our communities.

When it comes to drivers, you know, 30 miles per hour is around that 10% risk, had an angle crash.

Once you go over that, you start seeing people get killed at higher rates, hit on collisions.

There's kind of a range between the uh FHWA guidance, but obviously the risk of fatality goes up, and then 30 miles per hour with a fixed object.

This is just an example.

We were doing our fun bike and pedestrian counts.

Saw this on our cam.

Somebody's poor Chick-fil-A didn't make it.

But uh luckily the car was breaking, there was a minor injury with this crash.

Um but it again it doesn't take much, especially on a site impact like that.

So we have to remember this with our road design.

Um the next principle is that humans make mistakes, and we have to anticipate this and understand that this is part of who we are.

I thought it was a good idea to run the red light.

I mean this other guy crossing.

This is just the other day, run the red light.

Kids cross the 2300 West, set a red light.

I was about to cross the street, people flying through, people changing the same lane as the child.

Whoops.

Again, crossing the crosswalk already.

Somebody thinks it's great to fly on through there.

All over the place.

Sometimes cars even make it onto our trail system.

Or red vans running red lights, right?

As kids are crossing the street.

This is at center street in Esther 92.

Red light, these guys are getting ready to cross, and what do you got there?

Massive semi truck flying through there.

So when you're structuring the system, it's impossible to prevent people from making mistakes.

We make mistakes on purpose, and we make mistakes inadvertently.

So the on-purpose mistakes, you have to create restrictiveness in your roadway design to try and keep people from doing stupid things.

And then the other things we do inadvertently, and that's not going to change.

Um but what we can change is how we design our system.

So what we call is this is design forgiveness, so we should be forgiving these mistakes that we're making.

So on the highway, the freeway, on purpose, we made white travel lanes and wide shoulders, so we don't hit into each other so easily, and you have a recovery zone.

When you apply that to surface streets, then encourages speeding, and then you have unsafe speeds.

This is in the Netherlands.

You can see the this is a 30 mile per hour road.

And sorry, I'm not going to show anything actually happening, but slow motion, that of the year there.

But I estimate this car is going around 30 miles per hour.

As you can see, they they weren't able to stop it in time.

So you need to slow things down a little bit.

And this is an example of me driving just in daybreak, coming off a little raised crossing there, coming around the corner, and having that low speed forgiveness is essential because whoop puppy and kid.

So if I was going 30 miles per hour like that last video, I don't know if that puppy would have been so lucky or the kid.

So it's really important to understand the kid follow his doggy.

Yeah.

A kid loves his dog, that's for sure.

But a kid.

This is just to show complexity at slow speed can work.

This is a video I took a couple years back, but uh people are going slowly, so the risk potential is low.

But when you have complexity at high speed, this is State Street and Market Fork.

Somebody crossing the street there, oop, almost got hit, and then that car almost got hit.

So when this is when you have too much access on and mixing functions of a roadway, you start running into safety problems and efficiency problems for the roadway.

Uh the next uh principal shared responsibility, and like I say, we might have to come back to some of that.

So sorry.

Um responsibility.

We're always telling people to drive good and buckle up, just like I saw at a bees game last year, which is not a bad thing to try and encourage people to drive better, but uh that doesn't get to the root of the issue.

Um this is an example of a news story.

I saw I used to live in Vegas, so I saw this new story pop up.

Uh the guy was hit, didn't use the crosswalk, was trying to get across a busy road by a hospital.

And what do people say?

Well, I should have just walked down the street corner and use the crosswalk instead of running across.

But we have to understand that uh when we put a big huge roadway with high speeds right through a context where there's a lot of pedestrian demand or people crossing the street, then we're setting up a system for failure.

So you have to look at either reducing the speeds or providing safe crossing points and locations that make sense.

This is just to show education acts individually, so some people respond to it and do better.

I personally try my best to drive safer, even though I'm not perfect either.

But when you look at the socioeconomic factors and the built environment, especially that's how you systematically increase safety.

So socioeconomic could be you know, people who maybe make less money, tend to live in areas next to big roads and they're at more risk because they can't afford cars, maybe, and now they have to use the road system that's dangerous, and they have no choice.

Also, land use can go into that.

Safety is proactive.

Um, we're not gonna sit around and wait till people get hurt or killed.

The idea is you should proactively be setting up a system for safety.

This is some preliminary mapping I did for Lehigh.

I think you can guess the more red the line is, the more risk potential there's gonna be.

So this generally shows risk potential for the city.

Um the green ones are the freeway because you don't allow pedestrians on there, and there's no right angle conflicts or anything.

And then some of the HOA streets.

I should say this is based on speed limit operate, not operational speed.

I haven't plugged that data in there.

So the actual speed people are driving is not reflected in this.

This is just the speed limit.

Then the last one is redundancy is crucial.

So this is what we call a Swiss cheese model.

So you have safe users, safe roads, these are all of our elements.

The idea is, you know, maybe if you have one layer of protection, it might help you sometimes, but other times it might fail, but you have to have another layer of protection there to help.

And ultimately, when you have all of the elements, you're gonna do a lot better job of trying to keep people safe.

Now, for these elements, real quick, and we may just have enough time to get through this part.

But um, we have to look at all users of the system to have to be safe, whether you're driving, biking, walking.

How can we rethink design in a way that keeps all the elements we want to provide mobility in different forms, but do it in a way that's gonna be safer for people?

Um, and not to say that design is perfect for any everywhere, but um this is just to say our sidewalk network is not fully built out everywhere.

Um, this map kind of shows where we have sidewalks on both sides, one side partial.

Um so there's still some of our sidewalk network that doesn't that needs to be put in.

We're looking at a separated network for bicycles.

The green is where we either have trails or like 700 south.

Um, this kind of shows our separated network for people biking in town.

Um, and next one is uh looking at safe roads.

This is a typical intersection design that we see all over the place.

Um, but long straight roads with high speed limits, wide lanes, wide shoulders, encourages speeding.

So inevitably someone's gonna make a mistake here and there's gonna be a crash.

Now we could for the the last one showed a bicycle on the shoulder or a bike lane.

You could put a trail in, which obviously it's a lot safer along that, but you still have to cross these roads at some point for the bike.

So putting a trail in of itself isn't gonna resolve the safety issue of the roadway.

But and again, don't freak out when you see some of these concepts.

But how do we rethink road design in a way that allows good traffic flow but keeps the speed safe and provides things that are more intuitive and people less likely making mistakes?

This is an example.

I'm put myself at risk to cross this roadway here, not in a crosswalk, unfortunately, because there wasn't one for half a mile.

But that's a long crossing, and it takes a minute to cross there, and those vehicles are going at a higher speed, so the risk potential is higher.

This is a different crosswalk.

You cross 10 feet of asphalt, the cars are slower, and you have a point so you can look one direction and cross, look one direction cross rather than having to look at the whole road.

But two short crossings versus one big one, so the risk of uh crash is less.

Um getting into also part of safe roads is looking at functionality.

These are we have like arterial roads and freeways and collectors and all different types of roads.

But this uh sustainable safety manual breaks it down to three a through road, a distributor, and an access.

And if you can hold to those single functions as best as possible, then you'll have better traffic flow, and you won't have all those complex uh just like that state street example of cars turning, you don't want that.

Um but basically if you can hold to those singular functions as best as possible, it's not it's sometimes impossible to completely do that, but as best as we can, then we'll have safer and more functional roads.

So I'm gonna move in quick on you guys here, so we can definitely come back to anything.

I'm just about done with the safe system portion.

This is just showing we have different land use kind of contexts, all the way from natural zones to like an urban core, which would be more like downtown Salt Lake.

Um I would even add maybe public district kind of a special district, but when you look at road functionality and these different types of context, red lines on here are like a through type function, and if you're putting a through function through like an urban center zone, for example, like what's planned in Thanksgiving point, then you're gonna have issues again, people trying to cross the road, and it's also not gonna be for good for the flow of the vehicle traffic.

And uh yeah, sorry, it's a lot of information to take in.

Safe speeds, this is just guidance on what safe speeds are at based on conflicts and uh user types.

Uh for example, if you're crossing the street, you really shouldn't exceed about 20 miles per hour with uh vulnerable users.

And then uh this shows Lehigh at to what degree our roads are signed for the speed limit above what the safe speeds are based on that recommendation.

Then we've been doing tests and data collection for speeds, been interesting to do that.

And then uh this one we don't have a lot of control over because we're not the auto industry manufacturing the vehicles, but vehicles are getting more dangerous.

You can see it's gonna be difficult for that driver to see my kids right there.

Um here's an example of a truck parked there, and that's their line of sight.

So nine kids are not even visible to that driver right there.

They're in that blind spot.

So safe vehicles, you know, taller the vehicle is the harder the more of the blind spot you have.

And this is why I just find it to be more crucial that we really look at good design.

But for different vehicles, you have different blind spots.

Obviously, the shorter the car, like the camera on the butter bottom there, the smaller the blind spot you're gonna have for small children.

And then last but not least for the elements post-crash care.

This is more police and fire department and EMS, uh, but trying to get timely care, getting good transportation to trauma center.

Luckily, we have a couple hospitals here in town.

Um, so we have close access to that.

Um that's something I know they're always working to improve.

Okay, sorry, that was a marathon, but that's the intro to the safe system approach.

So it gives you an idea of what you have to look at.

And it's a lot at once, it's not something we can do all at once.

It's taking a step at a time every time we're doing something, trying to follow those elements of principles.

So that being said, I don't know.

Uh Heather, you had to take off.

I don't know if you want me to.

Heather, do you have any questions?

Okay.

I know I know your philosophy.

Here's my, and I'll throw one question at you, Mike.

That I know because I live right there off of fifth and seventh.

Oh, yeah.

And I know one one of the main questions is, and I get it, I understand what you're talking about with safeness, but I think we give away safety when we introduce something that no one understands.

And so I mean, we got a lot of white pylons there, right?

That that should force people into that.

But again, we we talk about people using the other side of their minds and still riding on the other side of the street because they were taught to ride with traffic.

Uh I mean the law states that bikes should ride with traffic.

Uh the law protects them when they ride with traffic.

Insurance protects them when they ride with traffic.

And so I think I I'm with you with safety, and when we look at some of that stuff, I just know when you look at like seventh, seventh south, only because I see it all the time.

It introduces confusion that now be makes that unsafe in some portions.

And so I think that might be a portion of the confusion or if you will, and I think you understand what I'm talking about.

There is, I mean, if you go on fifth, there are on fifths, uh fifth west, there are no white pylons.

So you still have bikes on both sides crossing to get to holiday oil, in which that I've almost dinged several.

But anyway, those those are some of the confusing parts that I think we're introducing back into the community where we're trying to make it safe, and the idea is really, really good, and I can see the the thought process behind it, yet I think we've actually introduced unsafety.

It's a terrible word and not not good English.

But I think we've introduced it back into the system simply by the confusion that that we've introduced.

Do you see what I'm talking about there?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not gonna say that 700 South is perfect design as it is today.

I think there's good elements to it, which it's kind of the next part of the presentation.

I just don't know if you guys won't have time to go through the rest of that too.

I have one photo I got from DC a couple weeks ago that um when we get to the 700 South, and I'll send this to you separately, Heather.

Just because I think it it kind of hits what we're trying to accomplish with safe bike lanes, but also fix with the 700 South specific design.

But I'll I'll wait until you're you get to that point.

That would be helpful.

Heather, thank you for participating.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Have a great great evening.

And I know there's items after, so you guys let me know if you want me to continue going forward or if you want me to go.

Let's go, let's keep going for a minute here and see where we're getting, then we'll we'll see where we're at.

Fair enough.

Yeah, sounds good.

I was gonna say uh the next section is kind of just looking at trade-offs of different bike facility types.

Um trade-offs would want to think about is how inviting is it to people, who are we planning for, design priority, cost, conflict point types?

Does it help or hurt pedestrian safety, neighborhood vitality, family order?

I'm sure there's other trade-offs that we can think about there.

I just threw a bunch of out there.

So I want to ask you guys what do you think of when you think of the word cyclist?

It sounds like the Olympics.

Smaller, smaller wheels than my car.

So yeah, Rachel, you said this guy.

A lot of times people envision this, and that's what a lot of people think we're trying to design for.

No way, that's not me.

It's Greg Lamon.

I've never worn spending in my life.

So not to say it's bad, but that's just not the fuck.

I'm your average guy, so uh what I push for, and what we I feel like we should be looking for is how do we design for all ages of abilities?

Obviously, this is a nice trail off the street, and I think most people agree this is pretty nice.

Daughter and that guy riding by and is mobility scooter, you know, everybody's comfortable and safe going there.

So when uh we ask who we're planning for, if we go towards the interested and concerned, there's kind of three groups.

There's been surveys done around the country before, but one of them showed from up in the Oregon area.

That around 60% of people are interested but concerned about biking.

Um, you know, 7%, 8% are somewhat confident, and then you know, two or three percent are highly confident and they'll ride in the roads wherever uh they don't have a problem doing that.

Most people fall into this interested but concerned kind of group that uh would ride a bike if they felt safe doing so.

And that's where bikeway design can be inviting or not inviting.

But if you design for the interesting and concern you do it well, you can also accommodate the highly confident as well.

Um I'm not gonna go through this.

This is a whole other presentation on its own, but there are five design principles to make a more successful bike network that's having a cohesive network, direct routes, safe and comfortable, and making more attractive, which to your point on seven south, the little poles they are a little, you know, they're not fantastic looking.

Um so it's not super attractive.

Having a big white asphalt road with white poles, it'd be nicer to have more of a park-like setting for your path.

So that's gonna encourage even more use than uh a white asphalt road.

So if you have no facilities, you're daring people to ride a bike.

If you have some standard bike lanes or things that are closer to vehicle traffic, you make it able, but you're not inviting.

But the more separated and the more greenery you have around, generally you're inviting people.

The more you invite, the greater the number of the people, and the more farther the distance they're gonna want to be willing to ride the bike, especially with e-bikes these days.

So this is just uh my same bike ride.

I got to up in South Jordan on the left-hand side.

I was dared to ride in traffic.

It was not fun.

I don't usually do that.

But sometimes I do stuff for the sake of providing an example.

Put my life at risk for you guys.

But uh in the middle, you're able, it's a separated space, but you can see cars turning, and you know, you can drift into that bike lane, and then obviously on the right hand side, I was riding on a trail next to a lake that's very inviting.

Um we have that Murdoch Canal Trail.

It's very inviting.

Get kids all ages and abilities up there cruising along.

It's super nice.

We're very thankful to have that trail there.

This one is one of our busiest trails in town, gets over a thousand people a day in the summertime.

You got parents with their kids on a cargo bike.

Um but this invites people and encourages use.

So this is why we've seen this as our most busy trail in town.

It also has great separated crossings at every single major roadway, other than darn digital drive.

Someday we'll try and get it there.

But anyway, because of that, it sees a lot of good use.

Uh, when you're looking at different types of bike lanes, this has some several options here.

But looking specifically at like typical bike lanes, which we have like on Ashton Boulevard, um, these are the types of crash types that are associated with that type of bike lane.

So right and left hooks, that's usually that intersection, side swipes means you're drifting into a lane, you can hit someone or overtaking the cyclist, or you're just playing hit them from behind.

Um, so you have a lot of conflict types um on a bike lane.

Whereas on a separate style bike lane, so and south, uh, and I agree it's not it's at least the way we've done that one, is new to Lee High.

Um functionally, it's the same as trails that we have all over town, it just looks different.

Um but you really only have conflict points at your intersections or your driveways.

Um that's the difference there.

So looking at some different design types on the left, you have standard bike lanes, the middle, it's one-way protected, on the right is a two-way protected.

You know, per state code, that two-way protected bike lane is actually out of the functional area of the road, so it's not considered part of the roadway.

Um, that was just a note on that.

You're looking at a regular bike lane, that pedestrian crossing distance.

If we were to want to get some more crosswalks in, south south, we don't have any designated crosswalks between, say, like 5th West and 11th West.

So you have a half a mile with no kids.

I've seen it across the street all the time through there, uh, especially coming home from school from meadow elementary.

But you have a longer crossing distance with that.

Um it's not to say you couldn't put some curve extensions and shorten it up a little bit, uh, but you're you are lengthening, creating more exposure for that crossing.

Um, someone's riding a bike there, that truck could sideswipe, you know, people aren't paying attention, whatever it may be, they're exposed to that, and they're still subject to these left hooks or other types of turn movements with the intersection there.

Um, then so pretty well the whole bike lane is exposed.

You're maybe more in that forward visibility from a driver's perspective, but the entire bike lane is exposed to vehicle traffic.

In the middle here, the one-way protected.

Uh, you this is assuming you install some kind of refuge line or something, but you can really shorten up that pedestrian crosswalk.

This introduces an element of traffic calming that can help slow the vehicle speeds down.

So you can slow speeds down, which is critical with ensuring safety, but also reducing that exposure of people crossing the street.

Um the truck can't get the cyclists there because they'll hit that island first.

Um in our case, we have the delineators, they won't protect against a drunk driver, whereas something physical would do a better job of that.

But if somebody's distracted, it'll definitely you know make them pay attention.

So the delineators protect through behavioral change because they also require a little bit sharper turning movement, so it slows people down more at those.

Um, if you have your person in the bike there, you're still subject to those turn movements.

Um that red there's your conflict point, so that's your exposure to the vehicle network.

Um it's kind of the same story for the two-way, it's just a different configuration.

Um, same thing with the island, you can get a short crossing, but yeah, you are subject.

The main difference is just it's a little less expected to have that contra movement.

Um again, it's same as our trails, but it's a little different on semestral just because it doesn't look like a typical trail.

And then that's your conflict point there.

So what I like to think about with vulnerability when you're on a bike, you're just as vulnerable as if you're walking somewhere.

The only difference is your speed you're moving at is different, but you don't have the protection of your airbags and your steel cage of safety, some people like to call it of your car.

Um obviously we have our limits with uh safety in cars too, but putting bike lanes here between park cars and moving traffic, be the same vulnerability as putting, say, a walking lane between moving traffic and a parked car.

You know, when we're thinking about all ages and abilities, again, I ask you just to think back to your values, you know, whatever your priority is for the roadway.

But putting people, especially if we're thinking all ages and abilities, is that the appropriate thing to do?

Um, if not, obviously, there's all kinds of options of how we can deal with it.

These are some of my experiences, either driving or biking with regular bike lanes.

It just shows me cruising along and you see it all the time.

People will drift into bike lanes.

That's why I ride on the trail over there rather than the bike lane.

Luckily, there is a trail.

Or I'm riding on this bike lane, this guy thinks it's great to eat around.

You know, you see it all the time, people just drifting in the bike lanes.

Now these roads are a little higher speed.

Oh, or this guy deciding it's a good idea to get right in front there.

This is bike lane south.

Jordan, people park in that one, so uh makes you have to go on the roadway, or you have these mixing zones at intersections rather than the protected intersection, and people you're just exposed to traffic.

This is uh driving, and uh the BMW used the bike lane to pass somebody on the right.

If you heard the sound that SEV is honking at him, or let's try driving the bike lane to get to our final destination, and uh anyway, we'll block that.

Or again, people drive in the bike lane.

That's where there's a lack of restrictiveness to keep you from doing that.

This was I didn't want to show the video, but this is a little girl, 12 year old was in a buffered bike lane in Vegas.

And uh there's a car parked in the bike lane, she got over, she got hit and killed by the bus.

And this was in South Jordan, this is a typical bike lane.

The driver was not paying attention and drifted over, but this is a higher speed roadway.

Um killed a nine-year-old a couple years back.

So it's not to say you can't get killed in a protected bike lane either, but there's less exposure.

It's just trying to at those conflict points.

So on a standard bike lane, you're at a higher speed in that conflict point if somebody were to drift.

Whereas on a turret movement for the protected style bike lane, you're going at a slower speed at those points.

So there's still that likelihood of getting hit at the conflict, but the turning movement, especially if you have like a raised style crossing, which we have in some areas for our trails, that really slows people down and makes it so it brings the risk potential down by slowing the vehicles down.

Now, this is some experiences with separated bike lanes or trails because they're similar in function.

Um I can't remember if I've shown you guys this one before, but just kids going home from school, it's great to see all the use or that adult going by there.

I wish I could fast forward through this if I've already shown you.

All right, but yeah, you can see the nice thing about the two-ways, there's a lot of space, so you get kids in like groups of four or five able to ride together.

This is just me riding on it at one point.

This is a separate bikeway.

So you can't hear it, but every time I almost get hit up by a car, I apparently say, oh dude.

So this guy, this is a trail, similar conflict point as the two-way bikeway.

Um but the two-way bikeway in Salt Lake was raised, so it slowed the driver down so they could stop before hitting me.

This is all in New York City last year, but they had a lot of these sometimes in the street like Seventh South, sometimes they're above.

This is in New Jersey.

You can see that guy popping out into traffic.

If you don't have enough passing space, then people start using the vehicle lanes.

That can be unexpected if people pop out.

This is obviously like the gold standard having a nice bikeway, or in daybreak we have this one-way bike lane in the middle.

Actually, I don't recommend putting it in the middle like this, but having that separated space is nice.

Now, sorry, throwing a lot of stuff at you guys, but uh next is kind of looking at some options that we could do on South South.

I actually have a little sketch up model here I can always pull up to.

But um thing I do like to ask is we shouldn't.

This is a quote from uh an author named Melissa Bruntlett, but uh she says we shouldn't ask what the city can do for walking and biking, but walking and biking can do for the city.

So if you have facilities that aren't very inviting, you're not gonna get a lot of use, so there's not gonna be as much benefit.

But if you can do things that are more inviting, and we obviously want to make sure it's safe and you know, do better design.

But you can have a lot of benefits to the city, you know, we reduce traffic, especially at school time.

If you can imagine all the kids at snow springs there having to be driven rather than riding.

Um so there's just keep in mind, it's not we're not doing this for the sake of walking and biking, but what can it do for our city?

All right, so some of the options would be for now, you could leave so and south alone.

That'd be no cost, or there are some minimal things that we could do to help um try and make it a little bit more intuitive, but you're gonna be limited on how intuitive you can make it with just the use of striping and little poles.

Um thing you could do is you could introduce the concrete protection.

Um definitely significantly cut down on the number of poles you have.

In my model, I left some poles on there to still keep people slowing down at those corners and prevent parking in those areas to maintain visibility.

But you could put islands in there as well if you wanted to.

But just for the basic concrete, you're around 740,000 for the mile and a half of seven south.

Um the other option you could do is you could go to more of a I show this as more of a buffered bike lane because there's 7 south, it's so wide.

Um, but it's just the same as a typical conventional bike lane where you're between traffic and parked cars.

Um talking with Brad and Public Works.

Um, because there was a micro seal on Seven South with this project, rather than it being put just on the asphalt, you wouldn't be able to do a traditional pulling the paint off.

You actually have to mill and overlay seven south to significantly change to striping, so it actually would result in about a 750,000 dollar cost to do that, plus put the striking down like this.

Um is it due to have that done just naturally?

Do you have it on you?

No, milling our time.

Like five years.

You know, essentially when we did this project, we we essentially painted the road black again.

We did a micro seal on it.

Every time we do that, it's like it's almost like putting lotion on your arms, you know.

You're you're just getting more protection.

You're we probably get five or six years out of that um type of a surface.

So um that's like Mike said, that's the main reason why that costs us so great, is because of the type of surface we can put on there.

It's if we were to just put another micro seal over it, um, it's a very thin coat, and the existing striping would reflect back up through it in time.

So then you'd have two sets of lines.

But um, that's part of the challenge there.

So it's not due to have any restriping done for at least five years.

Uh not necessarily.

I think when I when I give numbers like that, it's it's more of a maintenance of the roadway.

Uh definitely striping may need to happen every two or three years.

Um depend um, but I think the striping could be refreshed in the in the higher traveled zones for the for the traffic.

Um obviously we just have to wait and see.

But you know, typically speaking, we stripe a road every two or three years.

Um but in in this case it's you know, obviously, some of that striping was thermoplastic.

So um, you know, the green striping on the cycle track was thermoplastic.

Um so it would last longer.

The challenge is is you can't we can't just pave over thermocloplastic, we'd have to remove it um to do some different type of striping.

But um can you grind grind it off?

Um those lines.

There are ways of doing it.

Um so you can either grind uh generally you don't grind it, you'd sandblast it off.

Snowless.

Um the challenge with sandblasting is it it does it does affect the top coat of this of the pavement.

It kind of wears off that the oil, the the asphalt that's in the pavement.

And so even though you can essentially erase those lines, um you kind of especially during a rainstorm and things, you see them.

They it we call them ghosted lines.

So you kind of tend to see the ghosting.

A lot of times you'll see those on U dot roadways when when they change the pat the traffic patterns, you'll see those lines reflect up through the they're dangerous um in the in like a rainstorm, especially, but that but it can affect um it can affect the uh the maintenance of the road too.

Because you're you're you're basically it's almost like taking the you know, if you do concrete, if you if you um if you take off that cream, that the very top part of the concrete, it's the same thing on asphalt.

You it it is somewhat damaging to the asphalt.

Um as far as other options would be the same story if we were to go to like a one-way style bike lane.

I think it's the same thing.

That's why the cost is so high on this, because you'd have to redo that surface.

Um this one's a little more because you'd have whether it's poles, I have a model, like there are other options other than poles, but um the striping of the poles would have to be done on this, which is more than just the typical bike lanes.

Mike, maybe maybe if I could too.

Yeah.

A lot of times you um on a roadway project, we'll do what's called a chip seal.

Um, the problem with the chip sealing is the the chip seal surface is not a smooth surface.

So if you chip sealed the roadway, it's uh it's not a very smooth surface for the for the users.

Um and those lanes can also reflect back up through.

So it you know, that becomes part of the challenge.

Um I think we we receive some negative comments at times when if we chip seal a roadway that we want to be a bike lane, they just they're just not smooth.

So um that's why it's more difficult to use chip seal on something like this.

We'd have to road a millet and re-overlay it.

Then the one way if you were to put protection again, you'd have to strip everything off and you have some striping, but now you have to build two concrete barriers so it doubles the cost of the protection.

Now, functionally, I personally do like the one-way bike lanes, um, just because it does go with the way of traffic.

Um the when it's not a good idea is if they're too narrow, then you get people popping down to traffic, which can be dangerous.

Um so you want to make sure there's enough sp passing space.

The two-way lanes create a lot more space, so it's a lot easier to pass and do that.

So there's again pros and cons of every different kind.

Mike, if I could maybe one of the reasons why we went with the with the two-way cycle track on the seventh South Cycle Track was part of it was because of cost, and the second part of it was because we wanted to um we didn't want to we negatively affected less people with parking in the middle of the street when we did a two-way a two-way cycle track on one side.

If we did it on both sides, then we have parked cars on both sides of the road that are parking close to the traffic lane.

So that's part of that's another part of the reason why we went with the design that we did.

Costs were cheaper, um, and we we negatively affected less residents.

It was uh fairly simple to and I'm not the plow guy, so I can't say that for certainty, but um snow plowing these one-way bikeways, you either have to get the parks department out there in their side by size, or you have to get different kind of equipment, or is the two-way, you could just put a pickup truck right down that thing, which I thought I had a picture of that in this presentation actually.

But I didn't make it.

But uh our streets guys did that.

We didn't get much snow this year, but last year I had a picture of that.

They had uh gone up there and plowed that.

Um there's always an opportunity cost, you guys are going through the budget.

Tons of opportunity costs all over the place.

So, first of all, you know, whether you use poles or not, whatever it may be.

There's all kinds of options you can use for that buffer space.

But poles and paint are pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things compared to putting in concrete or rebuilding roadways, which someday would be great to make them all better, of course, but we're gonna be limited on the resources we have.

Um this kind of a design that's more permanent, introducing greenery, better materials and all that kind of stuff, can be a lot more intuitive.

Um but what you run into is you know, say on the left, we have a fast network growth, and again, maybe it's not these poles, there's other ways to look at it.

But you know, at first you could put more network in place, and you can see more impact from the use of that, and it does help um pedestrian safety and shortening crosswalks and things like that.

And over time you can get a more complete network.

Whereas if you did more permanent stuff, you're gonna more slowly put a network in place.

Obviously, there would be a nicer network, but then you may, you know, like the yellow circles are either like downtown League High or commercial centers or whatever.

Schools, you know, the more you can connect to something.

That's just kind of scenarios of what could be done.

You could do more the cheap way.

People aren't always excited about it.

You don't have to do it exactly the way Sound South has done.

Or you could do a better design in it with A over time you can start putting in nicer stuff too, but just at front, you could get more of a network in place sooner and get more impact for the use of money.

Then uh if you wanted me to, I do have this model and play around with all kinds of different uh protections.

And uh can even throw things like uh refuge islands to shorten those crossings.

Mike, I can't see your screen.

Oh sorry.

I'm all like checking out this model here.

This is great.

There's another quick question.

Um can you talk about phase two?

Isn't there an extension that we've been funded?

So we need to that think you know, with the end in mind as the extension that we my understanding is we've already received funding for that, it's happening.

What changes we make here, how does it impact that?

It's all gonna be one big street, so we need to think through all of those factors.

Yeah, absolutely.

We're gonna want to make sure whatever's done here ties in with the what has been funded, like what is the design that is gonna be funded?

But the concept we have is to move more towards like a trail type design over there.

Um again, it's ideal, especially a lot of that doesn't have existing curve yet, so we're putting in the curve new, so might as well put the path behind it.

So that's a lot more you know, when you're talking from DARE to invite, I would say the way Sound South is designed now is towards invite, but what's more inviting is if you're just completely out of the roadway.

And that's the phase two.

And it's gonna be more inviting.

Yeah, that's what our hope would be on that one.

So whatever we do to phase one, if anything, we need to think about phase two as well.

But my my understanding is the funding that came from MAG for that has already been used.

So there's not it hasn't.

No, just to weigh in on that.

I think so.

The f so this so the current cycle track is phase one.

Phase two funding um is was available in 2027.

Uh the indication we're getting for MAG is it seems like it may be backed up a year.

So that's probably 2028.

That funding, we're calling it the phase two funding would take a trail or the cycle track from 2300 west westward along seven south, um, through Jordan Willows and tie into the river way.

I mean that that road is barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, right?

So we'd have to widen that road.

Uh River Riverway as in 700.

700 to go to 600 south.

Yeah.

That little bit.

Well, yeah, that it's widening on the north side of that road.

Yep.

This link here, we put a new curb on the north side and the bikeway would go on the back side of the curb.

And that's why you have the mag funding.

Because that's very significant.

Yeah, that's current because it's currently funded.

And and I I guess one caution that I would give is that we currently have we currently have it's scoped, right?

We have a currently scoped project to do a cycle track.

To Mike's point, I think our plan is to take the cycle track mostly on the back side of the curb and gutter.

We're still working through the fine-tuning on that, but we actually don't have design funds on that until 2027 or 2028.

But the concern that I would have is if MAG feels like that we've changed the cycle track to be more like just bike lanes.

Now we may have funded projects that were roadway projects that had bike lanes on them, but to take our funding that's currently scoped as a cycle track and change it to funding to be more just bike lanes, I think that would be problematic.

And I would anticipate we would have to go back to Mag at least with a scope change.

It doesn't mean they would or wouldn't support it, but I would be more doubtful that they would because that fully funded.

Would that be fully funded?

The the extension all the way from 2300.

We have a 7% match that we pay as a city.

Okay.

So something that's classified as a cycle track, is it's two-way not necessarily separated, so you're not next to traffic, you're separated from traffic, is really what you're doing.

Because I support, I mean, I know at the last MAG meeting I was at there talking about putting an intersection in off Pioneer crossing to 700 South.

So that's gonna increase traffic on 700 South.

I mean, that won't be for you know five, ten years, whatever.

I don't know how that long they're saying, but increasing speeds, most likely as they're using it as a diverter, whatever you call it, sort of their I mean, you know, if I had my druthers and didn't have to pay a million dollars to do it, I would I would like to see the one-way protected bike lanes.

I feel like that's more intuitive, you have less of those con like conflict points we have because we have all these driveways, right?

That's a problem.

And it's a problem when you have two ways to check and you have to bike out, you have to back up 25 feet from your driveway in addition, you know.

Um but yeah, it's it's a difficult situation.

Um I think so I'm I'm just pulling up uh a photo.

And I think you've already shown this concept.

It's it's basically what Rachel just mentioned.

Um this was in DC, and you'll never hear me take any good examples from DC.

Um except for this one.

Um but but I was walking.

I'm on the record.

The only thing DC has done right.

Um but but it's about four feet from line to curb.

Um and it was working pretty well.

I mean, they have those concrete like parking barriers in there.

The the plastic posts were much shorter, which was nice because you didn't have such a uh high bar, right?

Especially for those um smaller sedans.

So I think I mean for 700 south, but also extending through um into the new section up to 600 south and to the river, I think we just want to make sure we do it the right way, right?

Um and in the shortest term figure out what's best for 700 south.

Because I I mean I commuted on that and I saw it.

I didn't have super strong feelings one way or the other, but um over the last you know, nine months there's been a lot, I mean dozens upon dozens of people that that I've talked to in depth about this.

And so I I just want to make it work for both um people riding bikes as well as cars in the residents, and I think this this option I'm a little more I'm favoring because those are parked cars.

So you still have that hardened barrier.

I mean, we could actually move the posts and not have concrete, but if you have cars parked there, it provides that physical barrier for safety for the riders.

Um so I just wanted other thoughts on this, if it makes more sense.

Yeah, I like this too.

I mean because yeah, those little kids, we want to keep them safe.

Um but this so one of the issues I have is like we gotta put these safety things in the right place, right?

And the problem with the double-lane and then the parked cars is you have a lot of driveways.

This is a residential area.

And I I've seen them in Salt Lake and this kind of thing.

I mean, there's so you have we want right, we want to make it safe for everybody that backing up out of your driveway that far just seems cumbersome, but also more dangerous in my opinion.

Because we I've known kids who got my husband got hit by a car when he's riding his bike and backing, you know, cars backing out.

So um yeah, so I like this because it shortens that distance.

It also provides a protected lane.

So I yeah, I but and I think I've mentioned that I kind of like that idea from the beginning.

Um I do have a question though.

So the this phase two, what design are were you looking at?

Because I know in phase one, this wasn't what we have now wasn't your original plan.

The money got diverted to something else and you did what you could kind of thing.

So with the say phase two, are you looking at the double bike lane next to each other or phase two would be more like a trail.

It wasn't Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe phase two was behind the curb uh multi-lane, you know, two lane, two dire it's bi-directional on the backside of the curb.

So we have a concrete barrier to phase two.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One of the well Mike's pulling this up, one of the challenges that I would see, and I you can correct me if I'm wrong, Mike, but I believe that our concept report on phase two be there is a cost savings on running it in um two-way because you don't have to buy right-away on both sides of the street.

So I know that our cost estimates only included the purchase of right-of-way on the one side of the street.

So in essence, we're we're widening one side of the street, and then when development comes in on the south side of seventh south, then the developer's paying for that.

So it's a good thing.

So there was a right-of-way cost advantage.

So I'm not familiar with the area, but are are we gonna run into problems too where we have driveway after driveway?

Or I mean the kind of the curve you showed us, there were no houses there.

Do you remember those 219 units that came in?

This is like right there.

Where we said no because they were only entitled to 25.

That application is right where we're talking about.

Well, and and beyond the curb, I mean that's great.

Like if it's if we have something like this beyond like above the curb, then it takes away confusion for drivers, right?

Um but it solves that problem, but I'm still concerned if you're backing up that long distance.

But the it might be better.

Oh, sorry.

Well, one thing I I mean, is this is this 1500 north out on the west side?

But basically this is a trail.

Um see there it works great, in my opinion.

It's how it just well, the driveways are on the other side, right.

Yeah, this one doesn't have driveways along it, they're just some street crossings.

Now the one example I can think of that would be similar to South South is an Ivory Ridge.

And actually, maybe that while he's looking for that and to answer your question.

I believe we have in from a driveway standpoint along this seventh south section, we would have three driveways.

Phase two in phase two.

Phase two's basically between fifth west and eleventh is where we have most of our driveways.

Once you get out of that, it's mostly just street connections.

Would it be possible to host like a town hall sort where we bring all those who have the driveways and show them design options and cost options and get feedback?

Or you can I mean now I can do that individually.

Yeah.

But like for the city to do it, I I don't know if if it's worth it.

I mean, I can do it on my own, but sometimes it's nice to say, hey, we're gonna discuss all this phase one, phase two, and get the feedback.

Yeah, no, I think that'd be good.

Um we often hire public information companies that help us with this kind of thing, whether they're whether they're preparing exhibits for an open house or whether they're helping us with the right-of-way acquisition and meeting with each landowner.

What that's something we could do.

Like I said, that's on the seventh south.

This is probably the mayor was at the meetings, but I I think they're going to take and back our funding up to 2028 on phase two.

But I think the funding for phase two is the correct way that we want it.

I think we're all still stuck still on phase one.

And quite honestly, I don't know that we have the money to fix phase one until we're ready to restripe the road.

Uh and it and my opinion would be once we s have to restripe the road at that point in time, we would redesign it to put it on both sides and feed it down the road.

But I don't know that we want to r go through there, rip it up for a million dollars to re-replant when the project's already been completed and paid for by MAG.

That's where I'm at.

I think that we need to reevaluate when it comes due to being restriped.

Um the double side the double lanes, you see videos, kids are riding one way on both lanes, right?

It's so uh um it also invites parking in the bike lanes when it's that big because the cars are like, oh, I can fit right there.

If it's a single lane, they they they're not gonna try.

Um but yeah, I don't really want to spend them like I I agree, I feel like we we kind of have what we have.

I actually have knocked almost I've knocked doors down there, had lots of Facebook feedback, lots of I think a lot of us had feedback over the last nine, six months over six, nine months over it.

I think we know the way the community fills down there that have it in front of their homes.

Um and then there's people that use it who don't live right off the bike lanes, but they are driving are biking through and they appreciate it.

So it's just, you know, what residents which residents are we considering, what's the cost benefit analysis in my mind.

Yeah, again, going through budget things, is it worth a million dollars to redo it?

I yeah.

Well, I'll just I'll just add like I I think we could still sandblast the lines like without doing severe damage to the road.

I mean, I for from age eight to eighteen, I stripe parking lots and sandblasted lines right on a regular basis.

If you look at Pioneer Crossing, they're sandblasting like every few days as they as they restrict the new lanes.

Um because that I think that would be the cheapest possible option and then restrict.

Yeah, you'll see rem remnants of the old old lines, but you're still gonna have freshly painted lines.

Um I don't think that would be outrageously expensive to be able to do that if we wanted to do that.

We could definitely check into that.

I can say that the difference between sandbast sandblasting lines on 7th South and on Plan Air Crossing is there sandblasting on concrete, whereas we're you know, we're on asphalt, so there is a difference there.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a lot easier to bought.

I mean, we could definitely look into costs for that.

Um obviously as you d as you drive along Seventh South, there is a lot of paint.

Right.

I mean, all the hatching um and we have to it glows at two in the morning.

Yeah, it reflects at noon.

Are there are there any other questions or comments on this?

One quick comment.

So if we go down this route where we change 700 to one on one side on each side.

Um again, I don't know the area, so I'd have probably have to look, but if we when we transition from that to the two-lane, it hopefully there'll be some kind of a safe crossing together.

Do you know what I mean?

There are ways to deal with that.

It's not always ideal doing that.

You would have a crossing at 23rd and 7th.

And you have a light that you can cross the street.

Okay.

Yeah, because the lights coming, right?

Correct.

Maybe maybe just a clarification.

When we're talking about changing potential, you know, when the time comes, we change to potentially look at options of changing to, you know, one lane on each, you know, direction on each side.

Is are we looking to change this phase two that direction or just phase one?

No, I like phase phase.

Because I I do I do worry about the right-of-way costs on phase two.

But um, I think phase two is prepped and ready to go as I think that fits all of our our favorite design where it's behind the curb and done at the time of the yeah.

And it's all new.

I mean, there's no homes over there on most of that strip.

Um so I think that we have that benefit.

But when we put in the first phase, we already had homes existing and and so we have more leeway.

Maybe maybe if if I could, Mayor, just really quick.

I'm not sure whether you know this yet, but um we're in the current round of funding requests through MAG.

Our current, besides the um SR92 Ped Bridge, which which seemed to have ranked really high.

We're excited about that.

We're we're feeling very confident that it will be funded.

Our other proposed project is the third phase of the 7th South Cycle Track, and in that in that case, when we're in virgin territory and building a new road, um, we are proposing to run a two-way cycle track on one side.

Where is the third phase?

Uh, where is it?

Through Jordan Owls.

Uh this is going east towards the pioneer crossing.

But again, it's again it's inland that's undeveloped currently.

That's correct.

Which means you can put it behind the curve, which is exactly how it's behind the curb.

It would still be we're still proposing it two-way.

It crosses Pioneer Crossing at an approved U-dot location where the signal is and essentially ties in, ties our cycle track over towards um the um American Fork Train Station.

Which I think is perfect.

That that project did not rank overly high.

We still feel like there's a good chance we could get it funded, so we're going to proceed, but it's kind of shown on the map there.

Yeah.

Okay.

So is everybody okay with that discussion?

Are we good to move on?

And Councilmember Lockhart, you're getting Council Member Stallings.

Thank you, Mike.

Council Member.

Thank you, Mike, for that presentation.

That was fantastic.

It gives us uh gives us a little direction as we move forward.

Um we've kept you here way an hour over.

Um the Pedbridge.

Uh Brad, you just gave a quick update on that.

Yeah, I I we feel really strongly that I think as I looked at the ranking, it looked like it may be third or fourth and list um of ten well, actually more like five or six in ten or twelve projects.

We we feel confident that it will be funded.

And equally as important, probably even more important from a roadway standpoint, American Forks project where they proposed the phase two extension of Porn Express Parkway.

So we have funding for phase one.

Uh huh.

Their project was uh seventeen or eighteen million dollar request for the for the second phase of that running Pony Express to the PG Boulevard Interchange.

That one ranked really well too.

We feel like it will be funded.

So that that was the premium project we really wanted to get as Pony Express extended all the way to the interchange.

Great job.

Awesome.

Well, that was American Forks request, but we obviously support them highly on that one.

That's awesome.

Mike.

Yeah.

Yes, please.

Well, first of all, I do want to clarify MAGS funding is for half the total funding.

Uh we've been working through some design stuff.

Our ideal designs don't look like they're gonna work, so we're rethinking some of the other designs just so you're aware.

Uh we had a meeting with Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District and UDOT, and they both have some kind of critical issues that we can't mess with.

So we're trying to rethink the design on that and try and get it to work as well as possible.

Um but I did want to bring up, in fact, it was Rachel, you shared that funding source from Mike Kennedy.

I never got any indication whether we should or shouldn't be sending in a letter on that, and I'm just trying to get some direction on that.

I haven't heard on that.

I will talk to I'll follow up on my side of it.

Um that was the first I had heard of it back when when that came up.

We were unfortunately we were there in DC at the time, which is weird that uh Congressman Kennedy didn't bring it up, but uh I will follow up with that also with the uh with our lobbyists who's there, Ryan Lovett, who can chase it a little bit for us.

Did you dot give you any um heads up that they were gonna fund a portion of that or I haven't seen anything yet?

Doing their analysis on the TIF Active funding still.

Okay.

Um but this uh letters due in two days for Mike Kennedy's office we are gonna put in for it.

So is there a harm in trying?

Well, there's some if there's other things the council wants to go after versus the Fed bridge funding, I don't want to take away from that.

So I think that sounds like a great idea to go for bridge funding.

Yeah, I don't I don't know how it works.

There's this other things that the city apparently applied for that.

I thought maybe there's something about public safety trying to fund more positions or something like that.

Funding, yeah, funding police cars, public public safety cars.

Maybe tomorrow in an administrative report that could be caught.

Yeah, I'll talk to that be helpful.

We'll bring that up and see kind of where we're feeling about it.

What's the time frame on finding out from Utah about the funding for they're they're not very great with their time frame?

Like six months.

I was gonna say their their timing floats.

I know you dot's feeling a little more pressure, which is what the great thing you guys can do as elected officials is keep putting on the pressure and let them know that this is important for Lehigh.

So when would those letters be due?

So the Mike Kennedy funding letters due on Wednesday.

Um I have to get that in.

I think by the end of business that day if we're gonna go after that.

I was proposing a million and a half because they said that's their typical funding for a community project.

So that would take us a step closer towards full funding on the bridge.

Okay.

And essentially when we proposed our funding request to MAG, it was for half the funds, knowing that if we were granted those funds, we would have between four and five years to secure other funding to help make ourselves whole.

So we feel like that that was a good choice because it gives us a better chance of getting that project approved with half the funding versus all of it.

Yeah, not to uh bring up other I don't know, I guess it's not always been unpopular, but if the council wanted to, let's say you DOT and the Mike Kennedy funding said, oh yeah, we're gonna fund you next year.

MAC funding's not there yet, so then you know the council could decide to bond for money and get reimbursed by MAG in a few years.

So that's a possibility.

I think that could be considered if we get other funding sooner.

Right.

And I don't know.

I personally don't want to wait four years for the bridge to come in, but it's better four years than never.

So do whatever we can to get as soon as we can.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You ready, Joel?

However, I think uh we need to take like a five minute.

Are you okay with that?

Okay, we'll call Resus for five quick minutes.

T share you okay?

Uh-huh.

Yep.

It's not probably the most exciting topic.

I will uh maybe emphasize the importance of it though.

Uh this is replacing a document that is really the governing document of UAMPS that facilitates billings to the city from UAMPS to the tune of almost 45 million dollars a year.

So these are important documents on how all of the energy purchases and things happen through UAMS.

Um it is very important.

And we're gonna we're gonna go kind of a high level skim the surface um and we can dive into specific details if needed.

I'll try to get those out tomorrow to you all so you can review in more detail and take time and ask questions as needed so that then the 24th should hopefully be of easy approval for you.

And then if there are questions, I and this is also a good time to introduce a couple of our staff from power, uh Crystal Robinson and Jason Bond.

These are the individuals that are working tired tirelessly to schedule our power and start the generators or not and determine what the markets look like on an hourly basis.

So they're gonna answer the hard questions.

That's the hope.

I don't have to do that.

Okay.

So uh this is extended day ahead market and pooling appendix.

So just to set the table a little bit, let me just show you kind of how this is going to work into the future.

But there's a few pieces to this, and right now we're shifting to a market that's controlled by the California independent system operator or the ISO market in the West.

And then the two inputs to that market will be driven by scheduling coordinator for our load, how much power our city uses, and then scheduling coordinator for the generator or how much we're generating, not just in our plant, but all of our resources we have capabilities of.

So you would almost take this and you would add a leg of we have our own scheduling coordinating group that's scheduling our generator that would be kind of a line tapped off of the scheduling coordinator for the generator.

So UAMPS acts as the as the generator and load when they're scheduling that, and they're also contracting through an organization called the Energy Authority or TEA.

So there's a lot of moving parts and parties to make these markets work.

Um so this is maybe just kind of a real easy overview of what that looks like.

So one thing we try to do and focus on is managing risk and diversifying our resources.

That's the best way to do it is through diversification.

There's a lot of moving parts.

Um we obviously diversify on the types of resources and the fuel types that we get, but there's other diversification that we focus on too when it comes to markets specifically.

So where the market product we get, we don't always pick what that energy looks like, and so we we don't diversify that piece, but instead we try to diversify by buying at different times, different times of the year, different times of the day.

There's a lot of different things.

And if we buy products too early, oftentimes those come at a premium, and then if markets shift, we often pay a premium or penalty because we could have gotten it cheaper.

So it's all about timing with markets.

We typically try to do all of the above by diversifying when we buy it.

So well, let's dive in the next slide here of when that takes place.

So for example, uh, this is how it has been in the past, and then it's going to change in May.

But in the past, we've looked at a long-term purchase.

So for example, this might be something a year to five years out ahead of time, and we would execute an agreement maybe for 20 megawatts at $80 an hour for hours 8 to 23 running July through August.

So we're gonna buy this strip of power.

We might pay a fixed price of, I don't know, what's a what would you say that?

Oh, I I guess it's here, $80.

That's typical.

So that's something Crystal's gonna look at and say we can make that fit within our portfolio to stay within that $44 million number for our power supply.

It's a good deal.

Let's plan on that.

So that's gonna secure some of that risk in advance.

Five years, one year, we're looking a ways out.

We always leave some though, if we can, and we leave it to the day ahead because sometimes there's deals that can be made, and we can clean up a lot of um a lot of costs there.

So then we can um leave it to the day ahead of the market, and we can then choose to purchase a product at that time through maybe another city that's selling some excess, or we can buy it from UAMPS directly, or we can decide to run our generators, and there's a lot of options, and it's just seeing what's out there.

Uh, we might get some from like Heber.

They might have some extra so we could buy theirs at the whatever price they're offering.

So there's a lot of dealing that's happening on a day-ahead basis.

And then we can kind of look at how the markets are perva per performing, and we can make a decision, you know what, we're gonna we're gonna gamble with that last bit, and we're gonna leave it exposed to the real time.

Because when we go to that hourly market, has you know the last few days, weather's been mild, we think we can do really well on this last bit, and we can get it for maybe $30.

So we'll leave a little bit and just see what happens in real time.

It's you know, a little risks there too, but it's part of managing the market.

So that's how we've been operating for years.

Um but with all of these changes on bringing on and joining an independent system operator, things are changing.

So this is what it's going to look like.

Um now we still same scenario for long-term purchases.

Um nothing's really changing there, other than UAMPS is gonna offer that up every year, probably around November.

We can then make a decision on our own whether we'd like to participate that or not.

They're gonna look for uh most likely a bigger piece than we historically have done, and we can choose to participate in that or not.

Not a huge difference.

Now we go to another piece where it's two days ahead where we have to decide whether we run the generators or not.

So that gets us pushed a day earlier, which makes it a little bit tricky.

And then um then we go to the day ahead.

There's a new term that's being um put out there, and it's called resource adequacy, or there's a um uh resource sufficiency equation.

No RSE.

What's that acronym?

Resource sufficiency evaluation.

So they're gonna run that for every utility and decide do you have what you need?

And you're required to go into that sufficient most of the time.

There's still a provision that allows us to, for example, if we would if it's better for us to pay a penalty because the markets are really expensive, it might be better.

But most of the time, we're going to be required to go into that day ahead fully resource adequate and then some, where we could have left that to real time most of the time.

That's not going to be as flexible as it has been.

And then if UAMPs as a group decides to go into real time short, then they they can fill in those last gaps, um, but they can come at a premium.

So it tightens up a lot of the rules on how these markets are and changes things.

So what that means is um there are a few things.

This is because of all these new rules, they have to come up with a new agreement to be put in place.

This pooling appendix agreement that has been in place was put in place in 1980.

It's been 45 years that this this agreement's been in place.

So now we're having to redo that.

And so that dictates how market purchases are done through the UAMPS pool project, and then um it's that appendix has governed how that's taken place.

What's changing that, like I said, is the drivers from that independent system operator.

Why do we have to join this?

This is a really important piece is Kaiso or the California independent system operator has been putting together a program to to do this real-time market with extended day ahead.

But Pacific Core has chosen to participate in that.

And because we are transmission customers of Pacific Core, in a way we don't have a lot of choice.

We get to participate in that market.

So there's a lot of layers, California independent system operator to Pacific Core, Pacific Core to UAMPS, UAMps to then Lehigh.

So there's a lot of layers to navigate, um, and it's complex.

Uh a silver lining to this is we're gonna create as much control in this as possible, and we're we're lucky enough with the team we have that um so they are forming an advisory committee through this process and how purchases are made and things like that, and um they've asked Crystal to be part of that advisory committee through UAMPS, and so she's gonna be a voice at the table.

And how many are on that, Crystal?

Because it's not everybody.

So there's just a few.

And so we're excited to have her there to look out for our interests, but also the interests of all the cities and make sure um they're working well.

So that's a lot.

It is quick and high level.

Um, I want to just give you a heads up that probably tomorrow I'll get these out, be looking for there's four documents I'm going to send out.

Um I'll send out my um my comments in an email, and then there'll be an authorizing resolution, an appendix agreement, and then a participant certificate, and that's something that you'll sign up after approval, and a legal opinion, which is Ryan Wood's review of all these documents, and that he says this all looks good.

So you'll be focusing on those first two for approval.

We anticipate bringing those back to you on the 24th for approval, and our deadlines that are that this market goes live the first of May.

And so those are kind of some of the timelines and details there.

But what questions do you have?

I know this is a lot.

24th of which month?

March.

March, sorry.

So do you do you anticipate this increasing the cost of power to the consumer because we're not able to do the have as much control, local control over some of these things basically as we were.

I don't like what we're being told that this is the the California independent system operator is going to streamline how resources are dispatched and take the lowest cost ones first and really make things more efficient.

But to put these systems in place is very, very expensive.

The costs that we're having to pay UAMps are extreme.

I personally have not seen a process that you add complexity and reduce the cost.

That just doesn't usually happen.

I'm very skeptical.

I think it will raise our costs.

I'm just gonna point out this is coming from California, and we're forced to participate, and it's it affects local control and it ties us to California energy policy, which in my opinion is probably not a great thing.

So I'm not a fan of this, but I don't know that we have a choice, right?

I mean, I think we do have some protection as far as policy goes, like they're not gonna dictate what type of resources we build or take.

It's just a matter of how those are stacked in the market.

So we'll take our natural gas combustion cycle engines, and we'll we're gonna evaluate the price and we're gonna bid that to that price, and then it's a matter of if we're calling.

It's not we're we're gonna dispatch these ones first, and it is gonna shift things to those products that will be able to run at any time.

So these will get valuable.

And we're choosing to do this with having Lee High Power and be part of UAMps versus like Rocky Mountain, whatever Lee High City has chosen to do this because of the control we've been able to have and the prices and a lot of benefits that way, right?

But even if let's take uh Saratoga Springs, for example, they're going to be part of this through through Rocky Mountain Power because they're tied to the PAC system as well.

Okay, there's not like a out that you can get to provide the benefit to residents, which is like their city council setting rates and things like that.

So, in some ways, we it's still better to be in Lehigh, right?

It's it's we still have a better product offering, even though we don't like the system that's being dictated to us.

Yeah, I mean, there's a ton of benefits that we provide, even other than power to our community.

But did you want to comment on?

You look like you want to comment.

Um I think these are really good questions, and um I think it's important to keep in mind that we don't know a lot of the answers until the market starts.

And um it is gonna be more complex, but it's also oper opening up more opportunities, and we're always just gonna weigh the costs of our resources and and maximize and get the lowest cost resource.

So we're gonna keep we're just gonna digest the changes and then keep playing our game and just try and minimize our costs.

And there are there's like new markets for um like capacity, which means you could just get paid for having the ability to turn your engines on that we can look at that we haven't been able to really access before.

So I don't know.

I think we're all a little bit like apprehensive and scared, and that and it's like it's um legitimate, but but I I feel like people join a market like this, and PAC joined this market because Kaiso promised them savings, like Kaiso promised them that by coming together there'd be savings, and there's the resource adequacy because California is so invested in solar and wind, and those don't always show up when you need them, you know, they had the brownouts and everything, and so um so I don't know.

I think once it comes together, and Kaiso is always like reviewing the rules.

So if something's not working, they're gonna review it.

And we all we already something else that I think is maybe good to point out is that our prices are already driven by the Kaiso market because Kaiso publishes their prices and no one else does.

And so if you can see that price and you're calling up somebody and saying, Hey, do you have something for hour 13?

They know what price you can see.

And so they're not gonna, they're not gonna bid you higher.

They're gonna they're gonna go off that price.

So Kaiso kind of already sets our prices.

I don't know.

It's I'm not I'm not gonna just say like it's gonna be more expensive.

I'm gonna say it could be more expensive.

Um but it's but a lot of things remain the same.

So we're we'll be ready.

We'll be ready.

Definitely we're gonna take every tool we have at our disposal to keep these costs down, and if we're finding this new benefit that didn't exist, then like we're gonna look at how do we do more of that.

And so, like Crystal's point, it shifts to a capacity market, and we're able to sell basically the ability to generate, uh, we're gonna do more of that.

Anything we can do to keep those costs down.

So, do we have to um I pinch a lot of those meetings, right?

So um yeah.

Well, they leave me with more questions.

Um yeah, so the day ahead we have to predict, right?

How much we'll need.

Is there a requirement to have um to distribute as well as do you know?

I thought there was something in there about we have to provide be able to provide some energy to the market as well, or it's we just have to have enough resources to cover our need.

Okay.

Um, and it's gonna it's really UAMPS has to provide the coverage of their entire portfolio, which we're a part of.

Okay.

But this really dictates cost causation, and if they need to buy a whole bunch of power to be sufficient, they're gonna have true ups to ensure that if like Lehigh's short, we're gonna pay those costs.

So they're kind of handed on, but it's really what their coverage is.

They have to be resource adequate.

Yeah, and I think um the only time that would we would be like dispatched, like they would tell us like you need to run your generators and sell it to the market, is if we signed up to do that.

So they so they're not gonna tell us like you have to turn a generators on if we didn't tell them we we were willing to do that the next day.

So there's still a lot of optionality, and we can decide two days ahead that uh we're it's more efficient or cost efficient for us to run our generators.

That's just you gotta you gotta predict that sooner than normal.

Is that it?

Kind of and we're still under negotiations with UAMS about that because Kaiso's deadline is the day ahead, but UApps wants us to give it to them 5 p.m.

two days ahead so that they have it the morning of.

And part of being on this advisory committee is that maybe we can poke a little bit at their processes and say, hey, what can you automate to give us, you know, overnight if the weather changes, that's a big deal.

Like I don't know.

We just we want to be able to give it to them as late as possible.

That's to our advantage.

So okay, and can you tell me about um transition commission um congestion and are there fees with that, or one of the concerns I was reading about was that they're gonna pass it on to local like Kaiso will benefit from that, though they'll collect the revenues or something, or oh um, well they already they already have congestion like in the equation of pricing, and Kaiso is actually a net zero organization, so if they collected revenue someplace, they would have to disperse it someplace else.

So they're not holding on to anything just to make money as an organization, they're a nonprofit, and so they they have to be net zero, or or in addition to being a nonprofit, they've said that they're gonna be a net zero.

So yeah, it's already a part of the um equation because if you have a bunch of solar and palm springs and there's one transmission line, it doesn't matter that you can produce a whole bunch of solar if you can't send it anywhere, and so that solar pricing may go negative, and that's kind of like a function of the congestion from the transition.

Um so that that won't be new.

So okay, that's a good question.

Yeah, yeah.

Good questions.

I think one advantage that like our generators I would like to point out is because we have those, it does allow us to go in shorter and extend opportunities.

Like you can't go in short if you don't have a way to cover your resource.

But because we can turn our generators on, we can to the last minute decide whether, right, Crystal, we can wait till the real time whether we dispatch our generators or not.

Yeah, yeah, and that may sound contradictory, but um what he's saying is that if we didn't have that capability to turn on that 20 megawatts, we wouldn't even be able to like sign up to play in the real-time game.

We just it's not a game, but it's like if you think of it as a game, it's easier.

But um that there's a penalty if you do that.

Uh not if you're covered by your 20 megawatts.

So if you had the 20 megawatts available, let's say you only bought 60, but you're you were gonna be 80, like hours 18 through 21 the next day, and you knew that you didn't want to buy a block from 8 a.m.

to 11 p.m.

to cover three hours in the late afternoon.

Because power actually has a different, I really need a whiteboard, but power has a different cost for every hour of the day.

So at 8 a.m.

when there's plenty of power, it's a lot cheaper.

But if you buy a block on the day ahead for 8 a.m.

to 11 p.m., you're gonna pay a lot more than that 8 a.m.

price.

And so you're gonna buy too much power for a higher price, and then you're gonna sell back the hours that you didn't actually need it for.

And so that's why you want the generators because you're covered up to that 80, even if you only bought 60.

And then you can say, okay, tomorrow if the market is really expensive when we need power, we'll run the generators.

If it's not, we'll buy it from the market.

So it leaves that optional open, whereas you would just have to buy it.

Um when they talk about penalties, they're just saying that it may be a little bit of a higher price, but when I was talking about maximizing, it's still maybe less expensive to pay a penalty than to buy the day ahead, like a uh um you know, a 13 hour or like a how many hours is that eight to sixteen, yeah, 16 hour block of power.

So the penalty could be the extra power you don't need.

Yeah.

And with our generators, we can shape it and we could turn on half of them.

We can map that 20 megawatt need to the T and make it a lot more efficient.

Yeah, it's interesting to see them try and keep you down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They don't want you competing with their power sources.

So it's interesting, it's definitely a game.

It it is.

Do you I know you have to wait and see how it plays out really, but is this do you think right now putting it on track to probably get another generator?

I think you were kind of interested in that anyway, but you just that just wait and see how it works.

I would I don't feel confident enough in the information to even make a guess on that yet.

Like I won't, I think we need to see how the market performs.

Even if we decided now we wouldn't have the generators in place for five years, so I think we're planning to just wait and see on the market, because I don't know if if they know that we're signed up for 50 new megawatts of natural gas through UAMs.

So that is also dispatchable.

You can we can schedule it at zero or at 50, and so that gives us a ton of flexibility there too.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

Good questions.

Any other questions?

Okay, thank you, Joel.

Please reach out to me if you do have need clarification on any of those documents.

They're complex, and I will say that Ryan would, Crystal, and I and other cities have worked tirelessly trying to make sure all of our interests are covered, and so we have gone through them and back and forth for months.

So you'll we should level us tomorrow.

I'll shoot those two tomorrow.

Great.

Thank you guys.

Okay, uh T She tells me that number three is no longer part of our meeting today, so that's been removed, so I'll take a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

Second.

All in favor.

Staff, thank you for staying late.

We appreciate that.

Brad, I know you haven't been to work for about three and a half weeks, so it's good to have you.

It's good to have you back.

Good to be back.