Lehi City Council Work Session – Budget Discussions and Policy Updates – April 28, 2026
Lehi City Council Work Session – April 28, 2026
The Lehi City Council held a work session on April 28, 2026, to discuss Open Meetings Act compliance, city communications strategy, a potential library book drop box, and detailed budget requests from multiple departments including justice court, police, fire, parks, and others. The council also considered adjustments to council travel and compensation.
Open Meetings Act Discussion
- Councilmember [name] led a follow-up discussion on electronic communications among council members. Staff advised caution to avoid quorum deliberations via email or text. The consensus was that sharing information is acceptable, but policy discussions should be avoided when more than two council members are included on a thread. Staff agreed to avoid asking for collective feedback by email and to push consensus-building to public meetings.
Communications Strategy
- Communications director [name] presented best practices for city social media and City Chat. Emphasized accuracy before speed, unified messaging across departments, and that council members should defer to official city accounts on official platforms. Council members expressed support and agreed to coordinate messaging with staff before posting on city channels.
Library Book Drop Box Discussion
- Library director Christie presented concerns about a drive-up book drop: estimated cost of at least $16,000 for a two-stall drop box, plus additional costs for concrete, awning, and staffing (30–45 extra hours per week). She noted weather damage to books, safety concerns, and that the automated interior book drops would become useless. Council discussed alternatives: designated parking spots with a call service for curbside pickup of returns, signage, and testing demand before committing to a drop box. The consensus was to start with designated spots and evaluate usage over a period (e.g., summer) to determine if a permanent drop box is needed.
Budget Discussions
Justice Court
- Judge [name] requested two new full-time clerks due to a 46% caseload increase since 2021 and a projected 24% increase this year. The court remains profitable even with additional staff. Discussion included the possibility of moving the court to the old council chambers to save on building costs.
Police Department
- Chief Paul proposed reducing the officer request from nine to three, with the addition of AI report-writing software (Axon Draft One or similar) and a wage adjustment equivalent to $1.49/hour for starting officers (total $335,000 for wages). Also requested a records clerk. Chief prioritized wages over headcount. Council expressed concerns about AI accuracy and data privacy; chief noted policies and testing are underway.
Fire Department
- Chief Craft requested a minimum 20% wage increase (ideal 31.64%, totaling $819,000 including benefits) to retain firefighters, citing a competitive market and high turnover costs. The mayor's budget only provided ~6%. Chief prioritized wages over the assistant chief position. Also discussed a heavy rescue vehicle (cost ~$1.5M over four years) and renovation or rebuild of Station 81. Council leaned toward rebuilding rather than renovating and supported using reserve funds for a design study in the current fiscal year.
Parks and Facilities
- Director Marsh requested three full-time employees (leisure parks supervisor, arborist, irrigation specialist) to maintain 64 new acres of parkland. The parks department maintains 36 acres per FTE vs. 22 in comparable cities. Council discussed park tax capital projects (e.g., Willow Park campsite renovations, sewer line improvements with a $250,000 grant match) and agreed to hold a dedicated work session in May to prioritize long-range park goals.
Library
- Director requested wage increases for part-time staff (currently $10.90/hour), an increased book budget (currently below average for city size), an outreach vehicle, and increased program funds. Noted that 45% of checkouts are digital, and e-book subscriptions are costly and recurring.
Other Departments
- Info center requested a business licensing fee study ($20,000) and a technician position (to be funded by fee revenue). Planning requested a commercial plans examiner, and planning requested a transportation planning technician. Legal and emergency management presented status quo budgets.
Mayor/Council Discussion
- Council members discussed reducing travel and compensation. A majority agreed to forgo the proposed $6,600 merit/COLA increase for themselves, given the potential tax increase. Council also considered limiting DC trips to once per term or per year, but acknowledged the lobbying value of in-person meetings with federal delegates.
Key Outcomes
- Council decided to forgo the salary increase for themselves.
- Directed staff to test demand for a library book drop via designated parking spots and a call service before committing to a permanent drop box.
- Police department will proceed with three new officers, AI software, and wage adjustments within allocated budget; further details on AI policy to be developed.
- Fire department's wage request remains unresolved; council will consider funding options. A design study for Station 81 (rebuild or renovation) will be initiated using reserve funds.
- Parks capital projects to be discussed at a May work session with the Parks Committee.
- Justice court clerks request to be considered in budget; court relocation to old council chambers to be explored.
- A motion to enter closed session for discussion of real property and litigation was approved unanimously.
Note: This meeting was a work session; no formal votes were taken on budget items except the closed session motion.
Meeting Transcript
Harrison. Our dear Father in Heaven, we are grateful to be gathered together as a council and department heads and city staff to um discuss and talk about what we can do to best serve the residents of Lehigh. We are grateful for our first responders and we ask that they'll bless them and their families that they'll be safe and they'll be watched over and protected. We pray that thy spirit may be with us to help guide us to make the right decisions for Lehigh, and we say this in the name of Jesus Christ to me. Um just for a roll call near Binance's absent, but we have Councilmember Lockhart, Harrison, Friedman, myself, Stalin's and Newell here present today. Um we'll start with item two, open a public meeting discussion act. Open a public meeting act discussion. That's me. Okay. I just wanted to take a few minutes and maybe follow up on the email that I sent out I don't know, a week, a week and a half ago. Kind of realizing that we're a little bit trying to straddle two provisions of the code. And so to answer your questions and maybe have a brief discussion about best practices. So fifty-two four eight is the one that says, you know, outside of a public meeting, um there's you shouldn't be discussing things as a quorum in a deliberate way or figuring out how do you gonna vote and thing. I think we're we're being careful about that. But then I realized that, you know, in our meeting a couple weeks ago, we talked about getting email feedback and then making sure that there was a consensus as to whether to put something in the draft, and they got thinking, well, that's there's a little bit of a conflict. Oh, there could be a conflict there, right? Or we could run a foul in the open meetings act if we require three of you to give a consensus, but then if it's by email, then we we we risk maybe crossing a line for fifty-two four eight in nor quorum of you deliberating, or could at least be construed as a deliberation or a discussion. So I guess more than anything, just to identify that as a possible risk, and then just caution you to continue to be very careful. And and I guess my advice would be if three of you are communicating electronically, make sure that it's informational. Two of you can talk about whatever you want. If there's a third one that joins, then stay away from any policy discussion, and then push as much of like the consensus building on certain red lines or certain additions or deletions from contracts as much as we can. Let's push that to the public meeting part of a you know specific contract discussion or something like that. So again, that I just wanted to have that brief discussion, answer any questions because I got thinking about those two things, and I was like, uh yeah. Like we could definitely be crosswise if we're not really careful about about lines that we cross. So if if you have any questions, that's all I wanted to mention. Just it was a good follow-up from the emails and from the discussion that we had had on the dais a couple weeks ago. So that was it. Okay. Um I just noticed that staff will like reply all and start like looping all of us in on those emails. I think that maybe where I've gotten a little confused is if I'm not supposed to be seeing that, but staff is replying all, and now I'm on this thread I never asked to be on. Yeah. So how are what's our policy moving forward from that perspective? Yeah, it's a that's another difficult one because we I think we have Jason can chime in. We we want to be careful that if we respond to one of you, that we respond to all of you so that you all have the same information. And so I think if it's one directional from us, that's fine. You don't have to worry about having been included. We have to be careful, and and you have to we have to be careful together that that push of information in one direction doesn't become we have an or inadvertently asked you to start a discussion and to respond to the information that we've given you. So again, I don't know that I give you any blight bright line rules, but we'll all just have to be cognizant of that and careful, both as staff as council is that we give you information, but then we be careful about how we ask you to respond to that. So if we and if we do, then feel free to call us out and say, you know, I don't I'm not comfortable responding when there's more than two of us on this email chain. So that I mean that's a really good point. I was just gonna add to that. I think the key is your guy's response, right? You can ask us all the questions you want, we can respond with all the information we want or you want from us, but then when you guys start pontificating on, hey, here's what I think, or here's our remote, maybe that's yeah. Well, and I think that I think there's been a couple times where we have kind of asked for that. Yeah. And so we have to be careful that we we clarify that we'll we'll just give you information, we'll have the discussion with a core at least a quorum of you at a later time. But I could yeah, I could think or you can reach out to me and say, hey, here's what I'm thinking, yeah. And I can kind of be the repository of all that information. So just don't reply on to each other. Yeah, to each other.
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