Riverton City Council Meeting - July 15, 2025: Transportation Plan Update, Dansie Rezone, and Water District Tax Discussion
Riverton City Council Meeting - July 15, 2025
The Riverton City Council held a Work Session at 6:05 PM and a Council Meeting at 7:03 PM on July 15, 2025, at City Hall. The Work Session featured a Transportation Master Plan update, while the Council Meeting included a public hearing on the Dansie Rezone, presentations on the Jordan Valley Aqueduct project and a proposed property tax increase, and other routine items. All votes were unanimous.
Consent Calendar
- Minute Approval: The minutes from the June 17, 2025, council meeting were approved unanimously.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Abigail Patenai (Parkside resident) expressed gratitude for recent traffic improvements on 12600 South but reported that an informal neighborhood poll showed 80% opposition to a potential closure of Quail Lake Drive at 12600 South. She urged the Council to consider the neighborhood's limited roadway access if such a closure is proposed.
- Gavin Gill (Silos resident) raised concerns about strong odors and an increased mosquito population after a nearby county pond was filled, creating a nuisance and potential health hazard. He encouraged the city to use its influence to address the problem.
Discussion Items
- Transportation Plan and General Plan Update (Work Session): Jason Lethbridge (Development Services Director) and Thomas McMurtie (Avenue Consultants) presented initial data for the Transportation Master Plan update. Key findings included: 829 crashes in 2024 (up from 639), with an increase in congestion-related rear-end and angle crashes; Riverton residents make 11.3 trips per household vs. 8.3 in Herriman; 37% of trips stay within Riverton. The Council provided input via live polling on strengths, weaknesses, and goals. There was debate on the timing of public outreach—some council members preferred waiting until after construction projects (e.g., 13400 South interchange) are complete in October 2025. Councilmember Andy Pierucci advocated for an open house in each council district, while others supported combining with the General Plan update or using electronic surveys.
- Dansie Rezone (Ordinance 25-20) – Public Hearing: The proposal to rezone 2.32 acres near 3100 West 13400 South from R-22 to R-3 and amend the General Plan to Low Density Residential was presented by Jason Lethbridge. Applicant Alan Prince (MP&G LLC) described plans for a private lane development with four lots. Neighbors Liz, Clint, and Pauline Dansie raised concerns about fencing (solid, to contain livestock), emergency vehicle access (single lane, fire turnaround), and traffic hazards on 13400 South due to misaligned intersections. Staff clarified that fencing, lane design, and fire safety would be addressed in a future conditional use permit and subdivision review. The motion to adopt the ordinance passed unanimously.
- Jordan Valley Aqueduct Presentation: Jason Luettinger (Bowen Collins) presented the Southwest Aqueduct project—a $30 million, 66-inch diameter welded steel pipeline along 3200 West, connecting existing aqueduct sections to increase water conveyance capacity from 180 to 255 million gallons per day. Construction is planned to begin September 2025 and last two years. The pipeline will be buried five feet deep and will require closing the intersection at 11800 South and 3200 West for several weeks. Councilmembers expressed frustration about lack of coordination with the sewer district and past construction delays. A public open house is scheduled for August 20, 2025.
- Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District Presentation: Shazelle Terry presented the proposed 11% property tax increase (~$3 million, $11.78/year on a median home) to fund infrastructure including the aqueduct, treatment plant expansion, reservoirs, and groundwater development. Mayor Trent Staggs questioned the increase, suggesting the district sell Conservation Park (which costs millions annually) and noting a study that recommended property taxes fund only $20 million of the $111 million budget (current proposal would reach $33 million). Councilmember Pierucci opposed the increase, arguing low water rates subsidized by property taxes discourage conservation, and advocated for rate adjustments instead. Councilmember Troy McDougal argued that developers should bear more of the cost for new water infrastructure. The district's new policy requiring developers to bring water shares or pay for excess was acknowledged as a positive step but considered too late.
- Fraud Assessment Discussion: Nick Geer (Administrative Services Director) reported the annual fraud risk assessment improved from “low” to “very low” (gaining 20 points) due to adding a Certified Expert to management. Out of 395 possible points, the city missed only 20 due to the absence of a formal internal audit function (as defined by the State Auditor). The current rating is considered strong.
Key Outcomes
- Ordinance No. 25-20 (Dansie Rezone) was adopted unanimously (5-0).
- Consent Agenda (minutes) approved unanimously.
- Youth Council Executive Board was sworn in.
- The new animal shelter is expected to be operational by end of July or early August, with a grand opening planned.
- Upcoming Meetings: August 5, 19, September 2, 16, 2025 (Work Sessions and Council Meetings at 6:00 PM).
- Truth in Taxation Hearing for Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District's proposed property tax increase is scheduled for August 11, 2025.
- The Transportation Master Plan update will continue with public surveys and potential open houses in fall 2025 and spring 2026.
- The Jordan Valley Aqueduct project will proceed; a public open house is set for August 20, 2025.
Meeting Transcript
This should be about a good 40-ish minute presentation and some time for some uh some questions. Yeah, so just if you want to go ahead and plug in. Um we have uh as part of our updates to all of the elements of our general plan. We are also updating our transportation master plan that's been one of the most uh uh and I'll say dated in that it in need of an update. So we have a consulting group that is assisting us with that that was funded through uh some grants that we received. Uh so we have them here tonight to present uh and this is the I'll call it the kickoff presentation, although they have some some data and things to go over with us. Uh so we'll we'll turn the time over to them, they can introduce themselves, but uh the bulk of the meeting will be uh working through this initial presentation on transportation. Council, good evening. Um I'm Thomas McMurtry from Avenue Consultants. With me here tonight is Greg Sanchez, who's our traffic engineer and has helped put together a lot of the information you'll see, and Stacey Adams, who is our outreach coordinator and helps kind of communicate. She'll have a couple things later on as the presentation. I am uh the transportation um project manager for Avenue Consultants leading the transmission master plan update. So I've got about 25 slides for you tonight. Some of them we'll go through quickly and some of them will linger a little bit to kind of understand the data. It's really our goal tonight is to do two things. It's to um let you guys know that we're updating the transportation master plan. We're just now kicking it off. The plan is to deliver it next spring, maybe April or May. Um tonight we're gonna look at some initial data on traffic, safety, some different travel modes. We'll show you some biking and active transportation elements, and then we want to get to your insights and specifically collaborate on uh a vision and some goals. So I've got a couple of slides where I'm gonna ask you guys to either open up a laptop or your phone and provide some insights to us on like what our goals should be as we work together to accomplish this plan. So it's the agenda is broken into kind of like three elements. The first is setting the context again. That's transportation data, it's OD analysis. We've got maybe 10 slides in there about that. And then the second half is really getting to the vision and goals, and that's where again we want to hear from you and and and kind of collaborate together, and then at the end, we'll talk about our schedule and um public outreach. At any time you can kind of interrupt and ask questions, clarify anything at all that you guys see. So let's dive right into the context. So our study area is to look at at Riverton as part of the work that we're doing here. We're also looking at adjacent communities, specifically um understanding traffic that's coming from Harriman and Bluffdale and things that are like traveling through the city and those type of things. I want to point out on the slide uh the 2024 populations, specifically here in Riverton, we're at about 44, 45,000 people. Adjacent to our West is Harriman, and you can see they're at about 62,000 people. Again, this is the 2024 population estimate. That's gonna come back when we start looking at at trips and things. So just remember that they have more people than than Riverton. Yeah, that's them, they add another 10, 20,000 out of that, but yeah, okay. Honestly, it's happening daily out there. So these are these are numbers that are supposed to be a July 24 estimate. So it's a year old already. So yeah, I'm sure that they're that they're gonna resist that. They always they always think their population grows a thousand a day, but that might be true. Um, so this is the traffic volumes, the the kind of latest traffic volumes that we have for all of the roads around the city. Um, we're kind of zoomed out, so you mostly are looking at the arterial volumes. This is data from 2023, so it's also a few years old, and it's pre-construction on some of the construction projects. And really, the kind of message here that I would tell you is to like look at 120 um six, then look at 134th, and specifically the volumes that they're carrying, kind of between Bangatar and Mount View, which are like 30,000 and 134 is higher than 126 south, and then you can see kind of the volumes that we're carrying on on Banger and then Redwood and 13th West is honestly carrying a decent amount, and so is 27th. And so um this is kind of where we're starting for like existing traffic around the city. Besides volumes, we're also looking at a lot of other elements. One of those is um safety, it's how we're doing with crashes. Um we've been looking at crashes and and and safety data recently. This is the total number of crashes within Riverton City in the last six years.
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