Hey, everybody, we've got about a minute left, but I'm gonna go ahead and get the recording started.

So if everyone wants to start quieting down, please.

Tuesday, January twentieth.

I appreciate those who are here and online for this meeting.

Those are items five through ten.

And then that we have general citizen comment at six PM for those who are here for that as well.

Those who are here to make public comment on anything, please fill out a blue card at the back of the room so we can call on you at the appropriate time.

Our Father in Heaven, we come before thee this evening.

We're grateful for the opportunity to gather as a city and a community.

We're grateful for thy love and for the opportunity to associate here as a community.

We pray for the Perry family, the Perry family as they struggle with the loss of their husband and father.

We pray for his wife and for his children.

We pray, Father, that thou would please help us as a community be able to move forward with a resolution on this on that issue.

We also pray that thy guidance will be with us and all the other issues that we have tonight.

We say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Thank you, Mr.

Pace.

Will everyone please rise and we will recite the Pledge of Allegiance?

I suppose I of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands one nation with those speakers and justice for all.

All right, in introductions, we'll start with Mr.

Fratto.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My name is Dustin Fratto.

I'm with the City Council office.

There are a couple other council staff members in the back of the room, Justin Sorensen and Liz Terio.

My name's Tracy.

I'm counsel for the council.

Chris Edwards with the council office.

Chris Nickel, District Three.

Marcy Houseman, District Four.

Cindy Sharkey at large.

Alison Stroud, District 2.

Brooke D'Souza at large.

Erin DeKaiser at large.

I'm Mayor Monica Zeltansky.

Good evening.

Shank Bay, City Administrator.

Lynn Pay, City Attorney.

And I know Councilmember Christensen is here.

I assume she's going to join us in just a second.

All right, we can go ahead and move into the agenda.

Item number one is our MVP update.

And Lori Hopkins, will you please lead us into this item?

Good evening.

Laurie Hopkins, I'm the executive director of Shelter the Homeless.

We are the owner of the MVP facility.

I see a couple of new faces here.

Very happy to meet you all.

Wanted to extend, as usual, an invitation to visit the program, especially if you haven't been there before.

But if you would like an update and a tour, we are always happy to accommodate.

Obviously, again in a year and with any frequency that you uh see fit.

So thank you for welcoming us here today.

The other thing I'd like to mention is that over the past year, uh, Shelter the Homeless, The Road Home, who I'm joined by as well as Fourth Street Clinic colleagues are the three uh main agencies that work in the MVP facility, and we have been in compliance with the conditional use permit, which is an agreement with Sandy City, as well as the memorandum of understanding that's between Shelter the Homeless and the Sandy Sandy City Council.

So just wanted to let you know there are no variances or updates there.

What we want to focus on tonight are the program outcomes and what's going on over at the facility.

So I'd like to start uh by introducing, let's see, is it going to be Bailey Dalos of the Road Home?

And then my colleague Lindsay Hector, and then that will be followed by uh Force Street Clinic staff.

Thank you.

All right, how do I move from slide to slide?

Yes, so use that remote and you just click the arrow and it'll advance the slide.

Perfect.

Awesome.

Well, thank you all so much for having me again.

I want to start off by reading a letter that we received from one of our previous clients at the MVP.

I originally drafted this letter last month, but wanted to make sure I didn't delay any further.

I want to personally thank the staff and everyone for your care while I was at the MVP.

If I start naming names, I will likely leave someone out.

Know that I am thankful for having a place to rest, take a clean shower, and receive much more.

I recognize my acceptance to stay was a blessing and a privilege, and I'm grateful for the support, security, and provision.

Handling crisis crises involving people from all walks of life and mindset is not an easy job.

It is filled with many challenges, both internally and externally.

I hope that you continue the tremendous effort and commitment to addressing the needs of those without shelter.

In addition, I would like to give back sincerely.

Then the individual goes on to offer their services volunteering at the MVP.

And then they express their appreciation for all that we do at the MVFP.

I know that this letter is addressed to our team at MVP, but I believe that this letter is truly addressed to all of us because you guys are the ones that continue to support us and help it help make it happen for the medically vulnerable people at the shelter.

Alright, so I know that we've gone over this before, but just as a reminder, why the MVP program is needed.

So the MVP is the medically vulnerable people's program.

Number of seniors succeed to plus experiencing homelessness continues to be one of the fastest growing demographics.

When we presented before, we said it was the fastest growing demographic, it continues to be.

Individuals experiencing homelessness with chronic health conditions is prevalent in the overall population.

Housing and health care work together to help individuals to prevent a return to homelessness.

Health conditions and injury can cause a person to experience homelessness, especially the aging population and may delay recovery.

Address an immediate gap of and we're there to address an immediate gap of supportive care, especially for this vulnerable population.

As we as we ended the year 2025, it was really our second, it was almost our second year of having the MVP open.

And so we just wanted to share some of the impact data.

We served 464 individuals, ranging from ages 36 to 83 with an average age of 62.

That was a 20% increase from 2024.

We had 57 moves to permanent housing or long-term care.

This double, this was double what we saw in 2024.

This was a result of strategic partnerships with long-term care facilities, different landlords, and working really closely with our housing case management team as well as our frontline team to stabilize the individuals that are served at MVP through basic need care, as well as, of course, our collaboration with Four Street Clinic and Shelter the Homeless, and our work with Sandy City, especially the police department and the fire department.

We've received 101,085 referrals from 78 different providers.

So reminder, anyone in the community can refer to MVP.

You don't have to be a service provider, you don't have to be a case manager.

Anyone in the community can refer a client to MVP.

We've had clients refer themselves, we've had gas station attendants within Sandy City refer people as well.

We have ongoing collaboration with Sandy Fire and Police.

We've continued to increase safety protocols to adapt and to respond.

We received three referrals from Sandy Fire, and two of those individuals were enrolled in the program.

We continue to work to balance the needs, the medical care and housing priorities for our clients.

Like I said, this really includes making those connections with landlords, making those connections with different service providers to ensure the clients get the holistic care they need.

We've improved our intake procedures and pre-admission screenings to ensure that the clients that are entering the MVP program really are the most vulnerable on the streets.

And we are support and we are learning that supporting our senior clients truly takes a community.

For 2025, we're looking to continue to build a senior homelessness tax task force.

This is meant to identify critical gaps and bring together multiple groups to address the crises that our seniors are facing.

We can are going to continue to have additional strategic partnerships.

We're going to be working with senior housing partners, aging services to continue to support our clients.

And we're working on more increased facility improvements, which shelter the homeless will be able to cover, and increase positive, increased positive client health and housing outcomes.

Client successes.

This is my favorite part where I get to kind of brag about some of the successes that we've seen brag about our clients and the strength they have.

I just wanted to talk about an individual named Bradley, names have been changed.

But Bradley arrived at the shelter with significant barriers to stability, including a lack of income, inability to work, and a need for a higher level of care.

Upon entry, it was clear that Bradley required not only immediate shelter but also comprehensive wraparound services to address both basic needs and complex medical concerns.

While in the Medically Vulnerable People's Program, Bradley was provided with consistent access to basic needs, including semi-private room, hygiene items, clothes, three meals a day, transportation assistance, mail delivery, and ongoing medical support through Four Street Clinic.

This created a sense of stability and dignity during an otherwise vulnerable period.

Housing case management worked closely with Bradley to navigate social security applications, transportation needs, and applications for higher level of care.

As trust was built with Bradley and Bradley's needs were better supported, the team focused on long-term planning.

Due to the complexity of Bradley's medical needs, the MVP team provided ongoing advocacy and support through the higher level of care application process, ensuring Bradley was not navigating these systems alone.

Ultimately, Bradley was transferred into a higher level of care where his needs could be more fully met.

A few weeks ago, we received the sad news that Bradley had unfortunately passed away.

But he was able to pass away comfortably and with dignity after exiting homelessness and receiving the care that he deserved.

Now I know that this may not be a super happy story, but it really highlights the needs of our population and the needs and the need that the community has to have services like MVP.

Without the MVP program, we don't know what the outcome would have been for Bradley.

We don't know how he would have had to pass away or how or what his comfort level would have been.

So I just want to thank you all for your continued support with the MVP program.

It really is making a difference in Black December.

We have the 56 that were houses double last year.

That's 56 seniors that exited homelessness and are now receiving the care that they need.

So I just wanted to say thank you.

Lastly, I want to talk about community engagement.

We have really worked to ramp up our volunteer program at the MVP throughout 2025.

We had 266 volunteers, and that was 678 service hours.

There are multiple ways to get involved at MVP.

We have group activities with clients, we have donation drives, we have meal delivery for lunch and dinner.

You can just, if you just want to pop in, you can sign up and you can come serve lunch or dinner if anyone in the community wants to.

We we can also have you plan group activities.

We had a chili cook-off where a group came in and brought a bunch of chili and the clients voted on it.

During Christmas, we had a Christmas movie and hot chocolate, and the clients really loved it.

Just a lot of that interaction, any of that interaction within the community is just really beautiful for our clients.

So I just want to say thank you also to all the community members that came and volunteered for our clients with our clients.

It created a huge difference in the lives of our clients.

Alright, and then I will pass it on to Fourth Street Clinic.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm really happy to be here.

My name is Trina Taylor.

I'm the outreach director for Fourth Street Clinic.

And I'm here to be able to talk about and highlight the successes of 2025.

The column on your left are the services that we have provided.

The column on the right highlights some of the additional services that we picked up during the 2025.

One of those that I want to highlight is the lab.

Patients can have their blood drawn on site.

We also have a supply of durable medical equipment so that if somebody needs a like something for their sprained wrist or a cane, we can go right to a supply closet, get those, and give those to the patient.

We also finished our second exam room.

At the end of this, you'll see a couple pictures of our community garden.

This is just one example of the way that we've worked together with the road home to bring help and healing to the people at MVP.

Okay, there we go.

As far as the Fourth Street Clinic, we have four different service lines.

And that is the medical provider, our EMT services, our medical case management, our nursing, and our behavioral health.

Sorry, that's five.

As you can see, we had a significant increase in almost all of our categories, which we're really happy and proud of.

Our patient encounters went from 6,148 to 10,153.

The one area that has been difficult is in nursing.

Not only have we seen a shortage in the state, but we've seen a short of a nurses across the nation.

We are currently recruiting.

We track EMS calls through the road homes incident reports.

This is really important.

The incidental reports that they road home turn in are very timely, they're accurate, and well done.

And as you can see, over the course of time, our those calls continued to slowly DS the late, or sorry, they they are reduced.

And even though there is a decline, we are always in discussions on how can we create even more of an impact.

How can we have less calls?

Based on the vision that we had for 2025, we continue to grow.

We served 418 patients.

We enhanced and refined our medical model, which was to add a provider two days a week.

We're excited that we have Dr.

Belknap.

He loves this population, he cares about them, and he knows them at MVP.

And he is there two days a week on site.

We trialed the support of occupational therapy students in collaboration with the road home, and we continue to provide the vital support, such as diabetes management, medication delivery, and referrals.

We're especially noteworthy are the number of behavioral help clients that we were able to serve and the number of visits.

We went from 135 visits in 2024 to 749 visits in 2025.

We're very excited to look forward to and look forward to 2026.

Our goals are couched in achieving a certification through the National Institute for Medical Respite Care.

We are doing this with the National Health Care for the Homeless who are providing guidance, resources, technical assistance, and peer connections.

We have found through our research and applying for the ability to go through this certification that we are very unique.

Having a medical respite program housed within a community partnering shelter, and those two married together, is very is very unique.

So we're hoping that the National Health Care for the Homeless can point out peers with whom we can we can talk.

Um we believe that this will enhance quality initiatives, patient outcomes, and further refine our service delivery model.

Okay, whoops.

There we go.

Sorry about that.

Let's see.

Yeah, I am sorry.

The most nervous thing up here is right here.

And I'm going the wrong direction.

Oh my heavens.

Okay, seriously, Bailey, please.

I have to turn it over to somebody much younger than I am.

Okay, now I'm excited to talk about two of the success stories that we've seen at Ford Street Clinic within our services at MVP.

Um, the first gentleman I'm going to refer to is Albert.

He is 57 years old.

He came to us with nine chronic conditions.

He was emaciated, he had a history of assault, um, he had a TBI, he had been hospitalized at the U of U, including a coma, and he was discharged without support to the street.

So in coming to MVP, he was housed, he was safe, he was able to enter into medical support, our medical case management, um, getting to a provider on a regular basis, seeing an EMT when needed, and because of this, he went from a man who was very agitated and angry, and I would be in that situation too, to a somebody who smiled and socialized.

Because of the coordinated effort in our medical care and these complex conditions were able were reduced.

He is currently still at the MVP, but what we can see here is MVP is a pathway to stabilization and to stabilization in many ways, including medical care and addictive or addiction care.

The next story, thank you, is a woman by the name of Sharon.

This female came to us with seven chronic conditions, one of those being chronic pain, and she was living on the street.

She enrolled at the MVP and with medical case managers.

She was able to collaborate with them and get the support she needed, get the referrals she needed.

She was she took part at took part in our behavioral health program.

And through the housing navigation and the referrals, she was actually housed today.

This very day.

So we're excited.

She learned to be medically stable.

This is something that our case managers work with all of our patients on.

And that is learning the learning the skills necessary to be able to stay in your home.

Adhere to your medication, get to your appointments, get to those referrals.

Those are things that literally keep people housed.

So in collaboration with the road home, she was she found improved pain control.

Her overall stress was minimized, and she was able to transition from crisis to stability.

Thank you very much for supporting these programs.

It is my pleasure to work at the MVP with four street services.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Really, what my slide is and what my job is is showing the work that I do to support them.

We you know installed pavers for the community garden.

My job is really doing the um capital and mostly wanting to tell you guys that we are still investing in this facility.

We installed a new roof last year, new sprinkler system.

Really wanting to ensure that the facility stays a place of dignity for these residents.

Next year we will continue to uh support these enhancements by looking at reconfiguring the lobby entrance and the offices.

As you know, this was a hotel, and it wasn't built as a shelter.

So that's really the the next step is making sure that these spaces support the work that's being done.

Um also you know, upgrading the electrical and HVAC, it is an aging building.

So wanting to stay on top of these uh major systems, um facility improvements, um, and then also replay repaint client rooms so that they get a refresh every now and again.

Um thank you very much.

And I don't have anything else.

Um good evening, and my name is Shanise Olsen.

I'm the chief operating officer of Four Street Clinic.

Um I'm here before you tonight because we would like to request a very minor adjustment to the MOU between Shelter of the Homeless and Sandy City.

So currently the MOU commits Four Street Clinic to providing services through its mobile medical clinic one day per week.

Uh, we would like to adjust the language to reflect that we are moving those services indoors, so we will be providing uh the same care twice per week in the facility inside the clinic.

Um, and that's it, it's as simple as that.

So it is an enhanced service that we're providing.

We're committing to up to do two days per week in place of one day per week with the mobile medical clinic.

And I will take any questions you have council.

Do we have any questions, comments?

Ms.

Nickel.

Thank you.

You guys do great work.

Really want to uh shout out to you guys.

I'm just wondering if the um treatment rooms are ready to go.

They are, yes, they've been in full swing for several months now.

We did add that second exam room uh earlier this year, and they're they're both in use.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Miss Christensen.

Are there any services that are being provided for by the mobile clinic that will not be able to be provided by the clinic?

No, it's the exact same service, um, just inside the clinic.

Okay, and so you also like I was just reading through the um MOU, and you said nursing was a problem, like getting nurses.

Is that I I think our contract says like four nurses or something like that.

Is that able to be is it working?

Are you having like with the problems hiring people?

Are you still able to so I think we're committed to a nurse on site?

Um but to answer your question, it recruitment and retention has been a bit of a challenge.

Um so that's something we're working through.

It's a it's a national challenge at the moment, and we definitely have a local shortage of nurses as well.

Um we are actively recruiting right now, and I think we're pretty close.

We have a great candidate.

Um but yeah, it has been challenging.

Okay, and will they just be there the two days a week or will they be there more often?

The nurse is there five days a week.

Okay, yeah.

Um, in the sorry, lots of questions.

Great.

Um, in the um security guard situation, it says that there's one 24 step, there's someone there 247.

It is two.

That's what I was gonna ask because the second one's based on funding, and so I was wondering how that was going.

It's going well.

So you have two 24-7.

Great.

Um are there any other like funding issues that are affecting staffing in any way based on the memorandum of understanding?

No, no, not at this time.

Okay, thank you.

Miss D'Souza.

Thank you.

Um, I always look forward to your presentations, and I do appreciate the work that you're doing, and I'm glad that it's going well.

And I do have confidence in um this team's ability to service those residents and clients.

So thank you.

Um, I do have a couple of questions.

Uh, specifically the requested change.

Um, as I'm reading one of the slides with the four street clinic patient care overview, the 2024 versus 2025.

Maybe I'm missing it because it's 2026, so maybe I'm confused.

So it looks like there is one on-site provider one day a week in 2024, and mobile one day per week in 2024, and then that move to, or are you requesting it to move to in 2025 should say 2026 to two to an on-site provider up to two days per week?

I'm a little confused.

Okay, so that particular slide was meant to demonstrate the services that we brought on site in 24, and then the services that we added in 25.

So those services will continue.

Um, we're just simply requesting that we are able to remove the mobile from the site and provide two days a week of a provider on site.

Okay, that helps clarify.

Thank you.

And then my other question with that, then um, the language says up to, and I see that's kind of in the 2025.

And so what is the I don't know, time from how consistent will there be two providers there per week versus up to where it's just like one for how a period of time.

So our goal is to have a provider there two days a week every week.

We are the reason the language says up to is because we are dependent on the number of providers that we have in clinic on a given week.

So if someone calls out sick, for example, we have to fill the main clinic first.

Um, so we may sometimes need to pull a provider back from an outreach service in order to fill the main clinic.

So that's why it says up to two days.

Our commitment is definitely one day, but we're our goal and what we've been able to do so far is two days per week.

Okay, and and I guess I'm asking too, because it seems like um with the language that we currently have that with the mobile there, there's almost two people uh well, yeah, two people there during the week, right?

We were committed, yeah, to one day a week, and we added a second day in 25.

And and my concern really is centered around the Sandy resources, right?

And I'm wondering from a I don't know, reporting correlation standpoint.

Is there um an increase in calls to our EMS that could be avoided with more on-site um professionals?

I'm you know, uh obviously I I I want to allow you to do your job, you do it well, but I also want to make sure that I'm asking the questions that I need to understand, you know, our resource constraints as it relates to this project.

So I want to answer that question, I think, in two two ways.

Uh the first is that the number of provider days that we have now on site, we think are very sufficient for a population of about 165 people.

I would say the service that's more effective at mitigating, for example, EMS calls are the on-site EMTs that we have.

And we would be very open to a conversation.

I mean, I I we see there's a downward trend, but we understand also that we we would like to continue to see that go those number of calls go down.

So we're very open to discussions with the fire department about how we might be able to do that better in this coming year.

I think there are some workflows that we could look at and some things that we could improve across the board, and we're willing to have those conversations.

We have a great partnership with the fire department, and I think we could look at some of those frequent flyers and really uh develop some strategies around how to get those calls down for those individuals.

Okay, um, you know, and you guys have been a good partner too, and I appreciate that.

And so I think it's been uh some learning curve, right?

Getting up and established and and getting up to speed, and now there's some adjustments that are coming through as a result of um what you've worked on and you know how you see this improving.

Um and so absolutely uh want to hear those options, I guess, for our consideration.

Uh, but I guess um what am I trying to say?

I coming going forward, I think that reducing the strain on our EMS is is a priority for us, right?

Now that there's some established history and some ability to um maybe be a little bit more um agile to some of these situations because there is some history to to pull from would kind of be my goal, right?

Um and so I'm wondering, too.

This is an ask, and this isn't something that necessarily needs to be answered right now, um, because I realize I'm just like surprised I have this ask.

Um the reporting time frame.

I know that we've kind of we finished our quarterly and now we're in annually, and I'm wondering with this change as we kind of monitor the resource um utilization of our EMS if we can um at least meet um have you guys come back and present at least twice a year from the you know once a year, less than the four times a year, but at least kind of help keep tabs on things a little more frequently than once.

Okay, anyway.

We're happy to accommodate that.

Okay, well, I just wanted to put that out there.

Um but that's all I had right now.

Thank you.

Okay, Miss Housman.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, I also want to echo appreciation for all of the the tenderness, you know, with which you work and the updates that you're willing to come and provide.

Uh, I just have a couple of questions.

One, uh whoever wants to answer it, but um I love I love the the success stories that were shared, uh, specifically around kind of here's here's here's the investment made in terms of resources, here's the outcome.

This is such a great story.

Um I I loved hearing a little bit more this time about behavior as as a as a part of the the wrap around services.

Um I and I know that what was what was sort of outlined in your update was like number of visits.

We saw this many more individuals, this many more individuals receive care relative to behavior.

Um I know there's an incredible positive impact when we have that kind of proactive investment, but I didn't see like like specific data around outcomes.

So though I absolutely recognize when we see increased numbers, when we see more residents receiving behavior support, um, that is absolutely a great data point.

I wonder if we could also hear more than just a couple of success stories, but actual behavioral data that is outcome-based.

So of this number of visits, for example, we saw this like specific outcome data.

Um that would be really really helpful.

And and I do second the idea of perhaps that I don't know, maybe that becomes part of the every six months update is I I love drawing the connection, especially for residents between investment made and outcomes because of the investment, so not just numbers.

Any questions on that or some thoughts?

That makes perfect sense.

Okay.

Um, and then the only other question I had, I didn't really see this clearly, and maybe I overlooked it, but but one of the things in the original MOA had to do with communication town halls, and then I know that was initially because of the launch.

We wanted to make sure we were incredibly proactive with the community, responsive to some things that have been shared, but I didn't really see any updates tonight relative to continued proactive communication.

Um what are we doing to continue to keep two-way communication happening?

Um, I know it's happening, but it wasn't necessarily spelled out in tonight's presentation.

Um, and in particular, what is our process or or or protocol when there are critical incidents?

How is that communicated shared with the city?

How is it shared more broadly to ensure that that we're never playing catch up in terms of communication?

Okay.

Um I didn't mention in my presentation.

Uh, in July, we did hire a safety and community liaison position.

Oh, sorry.

In July, we hired a safety and community liaison position, and his job is to connect with all of our surrounding neighbors and be that point person for any complaints that they're seeing on to have any questions about uh the NVP.

Um additionally, we have uh as part of the conditional use permit uh biannual uh safety and security review with uh the chief of police.

So we have been completing that as well.

Can I ask follow-up?

Sure.

Thank you.

I'm glad I asked, and you you were like, well, I didn't mention it, but here it is, that's perfect.

Um so with with that liaison, I think that's a great investment since we're speaking about investment and outcomes.

Um what what is the connectivity between that liaison and the city as a as a whole?

Um city council, not not just with our with our fire and police, but yeah, we have that lead on the yes, but we can definitely uh weave that into that position.

That'd be great.

Yeah, that that way, and maybe that perspective ends up being part of the every six month update, or I just think it would be really valuable to the council to to a learn more about that position because I think that's really smart, but then B, how do we make sure we are are supporting the effort of that liaison?

And and also being able, you know, full transparency, answer questions that that we field from the community.

Absolutely.

Thank you for answering that.

That's all I have, Madam Chair.

Ms.

Christianson, go ahead.

Um, okay.

Uh um council member de Sousa's comments made me out think about.

So on the slides, it looks like there's pro approximately like 320 EMS calls last year to Sandy.

Um and this I don't know if this is this is not a question for you.

Um to our uh fire chief, like what's our do we know our average cost of those calls?

I'm just not here and I don't have that number.

Okay, that's okay, thank you.

And then also um I just recommendation, I guess, to the council would be instead of maybe saying up to two, I would prefer it to say something like a minimum of one.

So because if you say up to two, unless I'm mistaken, you can have Cero.

Ms.

Straight.

And that was actually one of mine that I was I just wanted to clarify.

Um, so your practitioner, it will never be less than one week.

Correct.

Okay.

Yes.

Um, and then so you have an EMT there Monday through Friday from 6 a.m.

to 12 a.m.

Correct.

Um, is there a way to possibly expand that?

I weekends um, 24 or 7.

Do you know how far we are in those conversations?

I think that would that would probably help you know your clientele, but it could relieve some of the the pressure that we that we still have um with our fire departments.

Yeah, I think that those are conversations that we can definitely discuss.

We you know, we similar to you, we're up against funding issues for those positions and um but open to the conversation.

And that and you are you're working on that just trying to look for funding to secure that.

We're always looking for funding.

Hear you on that, but okay.

Um then there was one other question, but I think that is kind of lost me for now.

Um so just clarifying uh those two and uh yeah, and you know, echoing some of you know what's been set up here, you know, appreciate your willingness to work and your passion, you know, to work with uh with these individuals to help them become um more stable in their housing, you know, and providing that you know that service out here, especially as you know our winters get really cold and the summers are really hot, um, but uh you know, a service that is that is necessary.

Um I've been out there a couple of times been on ride-alongs and uh you know I've been inside the facility, and everyone is just top notch, you know, very professional, uh willing to answer questions to be helpful, uh the way that they interact with the clientele there is incredible.

So you know I can see how how these residents um have developed that connection and that bond, um, and then you hear about these stories, these success stories.

So, you know, thank you for everything that you're doing.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Mr.

De Keyser.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I too just want to say thank you.

Um incredible team, honestly.

You're all professionals and uh coming at this from different places, and I think we've got a really great um thing going on at the MVP, so I really really appreciate it.

Um like Councilmember D'Souza said, you have my full faith in in the efforts of the team, and I want to do whatever I can to support you.

I think I'll come and do some volunteering and maybe learn some more details about the inner workings um so I can be effective as a council member to support you.

Quickly, I'm wondering if the you said there was a 20% increase in service from 2024 to 2025.

I'm wondering, does that equate to a 20% increase in the workload?

A 20% increase in which service.

So if you serve 464 individuals in 2025, I'm saying, does that mean you there's 20% more work for everyone to do?

Yes.

Yeah, so I'm I'm wondering um 20% last year.

Do you do any um intake forecasting or modeling?

Are you able to do that?

Are you gonna grow 20% in 2026?

Um I doubt that very much.

Uh I wanna look, I mean, I don't want to answer that question all by myself because I don't do the numbers on uh shelter beds.

Where I'm getting at with this is like how much can you grow?

What what how many individuals can you serve at most in a year?

Hi, uh thank you for having us.

I'm Johnny Dy Emerson and I'm the CEO of Four Street Clinic.

Um, so I think a couple of things.

Uh it's pretty typical when you open a new clinic, a primary care clinic, that there's a little bit of a lag in terms of when you would expect to be at full capacity.

So in 2024, we were staffed for full capacity, and um, and what we saw was that kind of ramp up as you're establishing new patient care and follow-up visits and some of that type of stuff.

Um so it's it's more work, but the schedules are full, and that's really what we've been working towards is making sure that the appointment utilization is where it needs to be and all of those kind of things.

I think if we were going to see more individuals um within the clinic itself, then that would require some additional staffing, and it would really be based off of for us, we would be looking at need.

So we we watch our provider schedule really closely.

If we're seeing that we are turning away visits, or we're not able to get people in in a timely fashion on Dr.

Baldamp's schedule, then that would be telling us that we need to think about adding maybe a half a day um to start to kind of address that need, and I would say similarly with case management um services as well.

So we're really what we're doing is we're watching that schedule utilization, and if we're turning people away, then we have to make staffing adjustments to grow to meet that need.

Did that answer your question better?

Great, thank you so much.

Well, like I said, I look forward to doing some more volunteering and encourage people in the community to do the same.

It's awesome how much participation there is.

My council colleagues.

Appreciate the time, madam chair.

Thank you.

So an a an amendment to the MOU will require a council voting item, correct?

Okay.

So we'll be putting that on a later agenda.

So what I'll be looking for is the assurances I think that some of my council colleagues have been asking that I like the amount of detail we have in the original MOU.

So an assurance that we'll be having at least as much service provided, if not more, at least the same level and type of personnel, if not more, at least the same hours of services coverage, if not more, right?

So as much detail as you can give us that we're getting at least as much as we had, if not more, and to whatever extent you might be able to make a commitment about the more, that's always helpful, right?

So we'll be putting this on an agenda for as a later council voting item as soon as we have the language to be able to make that adjustment.

Okay.

Thank you.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

And if the council's okay, uh, since Mr.

Cadell worked on this MLU originally, I'm going to have him uh work with uh our colleagues over the MVP to get that uh amendment finalized and we'll bring it back to you for consideration.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Miss Houseman, another one.

Yes, sorry.

I just I just thought since since we're giving feedback on the actual language, um, I wonder if you'd be open to doing what councilwoman D'Souza mentioned is as also um like every six months coming back for an update.

I don't know if that is necessarily what you had in mind in terms of the amendment, but if we're making amendments, maybe consider that so that it sort of gets codified, so to speak.

Ms.

D'Souza.

Thank you.

And I just I wanted to add like some thought behind the six months, and I think that it would also be helpful as we're approaching our our budget discussions to have that interval to assist us in preparing for that.

So that was kind of part of the thought.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any more comments from the council?

No.

Thank you very much for your presentation and for everyone that came.

We appreciate you guys so much.

Well, somehow it happened that we're right on time for uh citizen comment.

That it that rarely happens.

So I will go ahead.

Anyone who would like to speak in this general citizen comment period.

If you'll please go ahead and fill out a blue card.

Um let's see.

What have I got?

Okay, two.

Um I'll call your names in the order that I've received these cards.

You'll have three minutes to speak from the time we start.

And if anyone uh online would like to make comments as well, we'll be calling for those in just a minute.

We'll do the uh in-person comments first, and that will start with Josh Carr.

Yeah, thank you.

Um thank you to the members of the council, Madam Mayor.

My name is Joshua Carr, and I'm a neighbor in the Alta High School community.

I back right up to the Alta High School.

Um I'm want to begin today by thanking the members of the council and our mayor.

Uh many of you have reached out to me over the last 72 hours to express your heartfelt support and sympathy for the loss of our neighbor and community member Joshua Perry, who's tragically struck and killed by an auto accident in an intersection at 110 South and 1000 East right next to Alpha High School.

Um that's why I'm here today.

Um I'm here because I'm scared.

Uh it's a really scary thing to see something happen a block away from your home like that.

And I'm scared for my kids and for my neighbors and for all the kids that walk to Altera Elementary and to Alta High School Monday to Friday.

It's it's really scary thing.

And I'm here to represent members of the community.

Uh, last day checked, uh almost 700 members of the community in the last 72 hours have spoken up and spoken out that they're they feel that same feeling that I do.

And so they've they've joined with me.

Uh, and I'm here to represent them here tonight, um, asking for your support.

We're asking for your partnership moving forward to create a safe solution in this intersection.

Uh and this is this is what we're looking for.

We know that 2030 uh the city has plans for a roundabout.

Um we feel uh to address that solution.

We feel that waiting over 1400 days for a solution is too long.

We're looking for things that we can do to move that timetable up.

I know the finding the right solution takes time and it takes data and partnership.

We want the right solution.

We also want prioritized safety.

Uh we have a requirement for active protection.

We know that in this intersection, um there's been a lot of near misses as part of what the comments that I have going to deliver to you today uh in a packet for each of the city council members that contains comments from the members that have signed this petition.

You know, there's a lot there.

Um, and we're we're wanting some immediate safety enhancements now.

So I'm here to deliver this petition and the almost 700 members of the community that have signed this petition and ask for your partnership and support as we move forward to find the right solution for our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Carr.

Can you give that to Mr.

Fratto right there?

And he'll make sure we all get that.

Thank you very much.

All right, Carl Lujan.

Yes.

I'm gonna try and make this as quick as I can.

When okay, this is the Sandy City pledge that everybody takes who's going to run through office.

The oath uh the oath of office states I do solemnly swear I will discharge the duties with my fidelity.

The oath is taken pursuant to Utah notary acknowledgement, which said upnowledges means to admit the truth or existence to show you recognize them.

The thing being recognized is clear.

The state is this is what's being recognized when you put it, you put yourself, you're gonna put yourself under oath here.

Now the oath, once it's signed and notarized, is now an oath to these pledges.

That's what you're that's what you're pledging to.

Okay, now part of the oath is that a person swears to discharge their duties of their office with fidelity.

Fidelity is defined as a strict observance of a promise.

A promise is defined as a declaration to pledge or undertake a promise of something that will or will not do.

This are these the things that you shall and shall not do.

Those are exactly the same things that one means that's like shouldn't shouldn't do.

It's clear.

The promises are stated clearly in this bold letters, naming pledges set forth in the the state of Utah and Sadney City pledges.

So they're different, they're two different pledges.

Since the candidate is under oath, any violation of any pledge of these here is perjury.

In Utah, perjury is a second degree felony, printership up to a term of one to 15 years in the Utah State prison and a possible fine up to 10,000.

So anyone who perjures themselves is going to go to the prison, Utah City Prison for one year at least, and the at that point the the fine doesn't make any difference.

Now a pledge, uh a perjury charge for any of these violations automatically triggers two more second degree felonies because they violated which states you shall follow all state and laws.

Now there are three two other ones.

Now you all now they're into three perjury charges in and of itself.

That's three years in the prison, and that the prison is not going to be happy if you're doing the same offense.

They are not going to be con lenient on you, giving you just one to one, because the judge is going to sentence you consecutively, meaning each sentence will be served or there's by then you serve the second one and the third one.

So that I'm not here to talk about that.

That's minimal.

That's that's that's insignificant.

It's there.

That that's inconsequential.

The only real thing is more consequential, and that is a political conspiracy.

Let me tell you something.

I told you before I graduated from the university law school 30 years ago.

I clerked for a federal judge.

I've seen many, many conspiracies.

One conspirator, it only takes two to enter into an agreement.

Now you're a conspirator with the other.

Each one is is now cultivatable for the conspiracy and the actual charge.

So you're gonna get nailed for two.

The conspiracy, they're separate crimes, so you can be convicted for both crimes.

You're out of time.

Oh, well, I'll email this to you guys.

Thank you.

You guys are who's after by it and I'm not sure.

Mr.

Fraddo, can you invite our online participants to join the conversation as well?

Of course, thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh, if you're joining us uh virtually via Zoom this evening and you'd like to comment on any city business, now's the time.

Go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen, and I'll call your name in the order in which you raised your hand, and you'll have three minutes, madam chair.

First up is Kelly Forbes.

Kelly, I'm gonna allow you to begin speaking.

Please remember to unmute yourself, and you'll have three minutes.

Okay, thank you for taking the time to listen to me.

Mostly concerning this um first reading of this council budget wage salary thing to do with the council and the mayor.

I'm really disappointed, Chris, that you're bringing this up at this time.

This is not the most important thing on the agenda.

We already have transparency, so it's pretty clear that this is just pettiness, and I don't understand it at all.

A couple of things to think about.

First off, if the mayor does not get a car allowance, then she's either going to need to have a credit card for everything, a car and a car that belongs to the city, or a driver and a full-time employee, because her job requires her to travel a lot.

And secondly, about the paid time off and the raises.

But you're saying that there could not be a merit increase, which the city employees all get.

And it's not a good look.

And I still think Cindy Sharkey should resign.

And maybe you should too.

I'm done.

Thank you.

And Madam Chair, I don't see any other hands raised at this time.

Same.

I will close general citizen comment.

We do have a fairly large online audience, larger than usual.

So I'm trying to weigh what the interest is here.

Madam Mayor, we discussed an update later in the agenda.

If you're ready, could we go ahead?

Do you want to go ahead and do that now?

You I would prefer to address it sooner so that we have a broader audience.

Let's do that.

Okay.

Well, tonight I'm going to be inviting our police chief, John Arnold, and our public works director, Ryan Cump to provide some facts and some history about the intersection.

But before we begin, I want to thank everybody for uh attending tonight, both in person and online.

I want to thank everybody that's reached out to my office over the weekend.

It was a holiday weekend, and so I believe this morning is the first time we had a chance to assemble as a team to focus our resources.

And I would just want to express to everybody who is here tonight that as the city, we share the grief, we share the sadness at the tragic loss of life.

Our hearts go out to the Perry family.

We take this any serious traffic accident seriously, but certainly a loss of life that stops all of us in our tracks.

As city officials, as city employees, we are fully committed to public safety.

That is our number one purpose for being here for being at the service to the community.

And so I just want to be very clear, declare our uh shared commitment to public safety today and always, and this includes, of course, road safety.

And Alta High School opened its doors in 1978.

It's been almost 50 years, and it actually had a much bigger student population than it does today.

But I think all over the city we feel the pressures of traffic congestion, certainly since COVID, we've noticed uh on the city side, the lack of attention, our drivers have a lot of distractions from cell phones and just sense of personal urgency uh that sometimes gets in the way of courtesy, and then if you add impairment, there's no amount of safety measures that can prove eliminate all the risks.

So we take this very seriously indeed.

And this morning at my cabinet meeting with uh my staff, I've directed every um department head to dedicate full attention, full resources to not uh a quick fix on the issue on the issue, actually, but coming to the right solution, uh examining first, examining what is the history, what are the safety impacts at that intersection?

It's Elta High School, it's El Terra, it's a walkable community, there's a always uh the next year of student spring, the next generation of children, new drivers.

There's a lot happening at surge times, and then it's very quiet at other times, but it's uh not an intersect, well, it's like all of our intersections.

We examine the unique characteristics, the unique challenges, and are constantly evaluating safety improvements.

That's why over the last almost 50 years we've added crosswalks, crossing guards, four-way stops, and after last week's tragic events, uh, we're looking at can we do even more?

And we're not looking at this as in a vacuum.

We are not here to declare tonight to the community how it's going to be, but our job tonight is to provide some initial facts to listen, to really listen, and take the suggestions from the community, uh, Mr.

But our job tonight is to provide some initial facts to listen, to really listen, and take the suggestions from the community, uh, Mr.

Carr and others, and work together in collaboration as a community coming together to share in the sadness of the loss, but turn that loss into something meaningful because we owe it to the car family to make sure that this is not just another ordinary day in Sandy.

It certainly is not.

So it's all hands on deck from the administration point of view.

We are working on this, giving us our full attention, our full resources, the full attention of the mayor and her administrative staff, and I just want to assure everyone that this will be a thoughtful process, a deliberate process.

We don't want a quick fix.

We don't want to expend valuable resources to take from other safety measures in the city and do a quick fix that may or may not achieve the intended results.

We want to get it right.

We must get it right because lives depend on it.

So I just want to express that commitment from the uh from me as mayor from my staff and administration, and to let the community know as we move forward, we'll be coming back with more information in the coming weeks.

We will be discussing this transparent transparently.

We we're exploring assembling a working group of concerned neighbors, council members, and assembling our resources as a community to make sure that we're hitting the mark.

Yes, it's true.

This has been identified as a high priority for capital improvement.

The 2030 roundabout has been uh has been studied by our engineers, by our traffic engineers.

Is it decided?

Is it the beginning end all?

There's plenty of room for conversation on that.

So let's start tonight with our shared commitment, shared concern.

Uh let's make sure that the decisions that we make are data driven, that they're fact-based, and that everyone feels empowered to participate in this important discussion.

And finally, again, I just want to say thank you to our residents for stepping up.

We all recognize that you know, an impaired driver, that there's there's nothing that can prevent against that risk, but there's uh a broader conversation that's happening, and it certainly has the full attention of the city.

So, with that, I'd like to invite interim police chief John Arnold to talk about the enforcement, um, traffic enforcement, crosswalks, and safety enforcement from the police side.

Thank you.

Hello, council.

Um, thank you, Mayor.

Um, one of the things I want to share about uh the incident that happened Thursday night, the accident, just so we are aware of what happened.

Um at about 65, there's a crash where uh an individual is crossing uh through the east crosswalk on on foot, pedestrian, um vehicle is traveling eastbound on 1100 south, went through the intersection and and hit that individual.

Uh initially uh the the individual uh was transported to the hospital, they were in critical condition.

We did our uh investigation uh where we were able to determine that the individual was impaired, they were booked into jail on uh DUI charges for the accident.

Uh after they were booked into jail, the the pedestrian ended up passing away.

Um, because of that, we amended the charges that they were booked in on, um, and they were they are held currently at jail uh on a no-bail for uh vehicular homicide.

Uh the district attorney's office, uh they are going to be screening that case later this week.

Um, some of the things that we are still waiting because of the holiday weekend, etc.

Um the chemical tests that were taken that still need to be uh the results need to come through the state crime lab, and we are still working through some of the uh when we deal with larger crashes like this, there's a countywide crash uh team that comes and helps out multiple agencies, it's called the car team.

Um, and so they work and develop a with drones, etc.

Develop an overall side of how it happened, download information from the vehicle so we can recreate the crash.

That is one of the things that we are still working through that process with the car team as well.

And so that is where we are at in terms of the accident investigation.

With this intersection, there were two crashes in 2025.

One in March of 25, one in June of 25.

Both of those, I should say, sorry, I apologize.

Neither of those were stop sign violations.

One was a rear end accident, another one was an improper lookout, where the individual, all there were multiple vehicles at the intersection.

The two that had ride away decided to they went, and the one who did not have right away, for whatever reason decided to uh after they had stopped, decided to enter the intersection and meet one of them.

The last stop sign violation we had at that intersection was in September of 2024.

An individual ran a stop sign, creating a collision.

In 2024, we had a total of three accidents.

Only one of them was a stop sign violation.

The other ones were improper lookouts where people are not they started into the intersection after stops and ended up causing accidents.

In 2023, we did have three stop sign violations for a total of four crashes that year.

And so just as you guys do the math, that is there were a total of 10 crashes over the three years, including into this last one in the month of January.

As we deal with these accidents, we look at the cause of all those crashes.

We assign them to go out, and if we need to do more enforcement at those intersections, we do that.

With improper lookouts and impairments, unfortunately, there's not a lot we can do about improper lookout.

That's an individual who's stopped at intersections and just chooses to hit the gas at the wrong time.

With with stop signs, those are things that we can go and work on, and we do.

Just so you are aware.

Those are two-hour shifts where they they deal with uh watching those, whether it's the motor unit or off-duty officers.

One of the things that we after this incident, um, we had a couple of those where we assigned those to officers, and we are uh opening that up again because of or due to this to make sure that this is not an ongoing issue, and that's what the last couple years the stop signs have not been an issue in these crashes.

Want to give you a heads up about the crossing there for school crossings particularly.

There are four crosswalks at that intersection, three of them are school zone crosswalks, so they are they're um painted as ladders rather than the the parallel lines that are typical crosswalks.

Um the the ladder crosswalks if in if anyone is in the crosswalk, then no cars are allowed to go through that crosswalk.

Um if it is a parallel line with the typical crosswalk where there's just two lines on the outsides, those ones people are allowed to.

If someone gets halfway and they are past your halfway, you can go through the intersections.

Whereas the school zones, if anyone is in that crosswalk, they are not allowed to go, they are not allowed to drive through that.

We have two crossing guards that are at the intersection at both school times when they're going to school when they come back.

One of the things that we have done in at the end of December, uh, they requested to have their handheld stop signs that they have.

Uh they had requested to have flashing stop signs.

We ended up purchasing about 10 of those.

Both of those crossing guards actually have those flashing stop signs, the handheld ones that they used at that intersection.

They got those in December.

There are about 20 kids that cross consistently that are cut going to Altera Elementary.

The crossing guards are designed to be there in conjunction with the Cana School District.

The crossing guards are there for the elementary school kids.

If they're crossing happen to be crossing at the same time as the elementary school kids, then they'll cross them.

But the the crossing guards are there during the Altera crossing times, not necessarily matched up with the Alta High School crossing times.

And that deals with the age and maturity and understanding of the kids that are trying to cross intersections.

One of them is in a neighborhood but is right next to schools as well.

But uh at 114th and 17th is another four-way stop that is controlled by a stop sign.

And also the one that's in a neighborhood is at uh Newcastle and Quell Hollow.

Uh, there's the middle school right there, as well as uh an elementary school.

Uh in terms of numbers, the 114th and 17th, uh in that same time frame, those three years, uh, there were seven crashes in that intersection.

Uh inside the neighborhood where Quell Hollow and Newcastle are at, uh, there were only two intersect or two accidents, and those were in 2024.

That intersection is in terms of traffic, um, far less traffic than with dealing with dealing with that intersection at one tenth and tenth.

Um, and so that's what I would uh attribute those lower numbers to.

Um tenth and tenth uh to have two crashes last year, uh, three crashes the year before based on traffic flow.

Um those are low numbers.

Unfortunately, this circumstance, incredibly tragic.

Um made a incredibly poor choice to drink alcohol and get behind the wheel of a car and decide to drive.

Um DUI driving is unacceptable for these reasons.

Um that is something that it that uh the police department uh is well aware of in terms of trying to deal with DUI drivers, um, and sadly it had very serious consequences in this circumstance.

Um do you guys have any questions or concerns for me at this time?

Do you think that just um comparison that intersection because of the schools?

I'm calling it a school intersection.

Do you think it's one of the busier ones for our schools, or is it just average?

I it'd absolutely be one of the busier ones between the between the vehicles for for students driving to school and going and parking in the parking lots, as well as the students who uh park out on the streets.

We get calls on parking problems regularly, kids are crossing, um trying to get to the school to the high school particularly, that is busier by far.

Yeah, the only one I can think of that might be as busy as a cross 90th for Mount Jordan and Sandy Elementary.

Yes, but this is I would I would say this is busy busier than 90th South.

You don't have because you have the multiple directions of traffic coming in, that four-way intersection, both directions are busier.

Okay, and so I would say yes.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for this for this report.

I it was it was mentioned, and I'm not sure if you were taking point and and or if it's someone else, but in assembling the working group that will continue to study this and think I'd like to request to be on that working group.

Will that be you running point or someone else running point on the working group?

That would be the administration.

I'll be taking point on it.

Okay.

I just we'll make sure you're involved.

Okay, thank you.

Um thank you for for being very thorough and understanding you know root cause and um studying other intersections.

I appreciate also the question around this particular school centered intersection is quite busy, so I'm grateful we are looking deeply into this.

Thank you.

Can I add one more point?

I apologize.

We we recognize that pedestrian crossing and intersections are extremely dangerous.

Um, this last year on social media, the police department has uh posted things about crossing uh intersection safety, et cetera.

Uh we we put out approximately 30 posts dealing with these types of things.

I did a when I was captain over the patrol division.

I was part of doing a video talking about uh pedestrian safety, crosswalk safety.

So this is something that the police department recognizes and both vehicles and pedestrians need to be paying attention around crosswalks.

Just because there's a crosswalk, pedestrians do not have absolute freedom in there.

They need to be careful and be aware.

Um, but also our drivers need to be more careful and and follow the rules.

Don't pull into the crosswalks as you're approaching.

There's a stop line.

The stop line is where a vehicle should stop.

That gives pedestrians plenty of room to walk in those crosswalks.

So it takes both the drivers in the community as well as our pedestrians to make sure that those crosswalks, there's safety in there.

And so that is something that we as a police department recognize and we try to get that information out to the public talking about crosswalk safety.

And so thank you very much.

Thank you, Mayor and Council, for the opportunity to speak.

I'm Ryan Cump, the Public Works Director.

Normally I give you my comments extemporaneously, but tonight I did prepare something written in writing.

Uh, so let me begin by reading my statement.

I want to begin by acknowledging the tragic death of Joshua Perry.

His loss will be deeply felt.

Sandy Public Works takes seriously our responsibility to learn from what happened, then respond in a way that meaningfully improves safety.

Over the weekend, we heard a clear community voice asking for a traffic signal at this location.

The petition and public comments are not abstract, they come from parents, neighbors, and families who cross the intersection every day.

At this time, Public Works has not had an opportunity to fully review the finalized accident report.

Until we have the final facts, it would be premature for me to state that any change to the roadway could have prevented this specific tragedy, which involves a suspected DUI.

What I can say is this.

When a fatal crash occurs, we treat it as a priority safety event.

We will review the accident report, the broader crash history, and the operating conditions at the intersection, then look for improvements to infrastructure to reduce future risk.

To provide background, this intersection is one where we currently have a concept plan and funding for a modern roundabout.

We previously evaluated improvement options and identified a moderate roundabout concept as the preferred project because it can reduce vehicle speeds and simplify complete points.

This concept has since received federal funding lined up with the current construction year program for 2030.

However, given the community's request, we will reopen an updated analysis.

We will do a side-by-side evaluation of the two permanent options, a roundabout versus a traffic signal, and how either would perform for pedestrian safety, school traffic operations, and neighborhood fit.

Regardless of which permanent option we move forward with, we believe we can advance a project sooner than 2030.

We will immediately engage WFRC to pursue accelerated funding and delivery as needed.

We believe construction could occur sooner for either a roundabout or a signal, depending on right-of-way design and procurement constraints.

I'd like to propose a two-step solution.

First, a near-term measure that improves visibility and compliance, and second, a permanent design with the aim of lowering the probability and severity of future accidents.

I also want to be transparent about a key point.

Any accurate intersection where pedestrians and vehicles share space has risk.

The only way to eliminate that risk in in its entirety is by separation, like a bridge or an underpass.

Outside of separated crossings, we can work to reduce accurate risk, but not eliminate it.

For context, the intersection in question has a reported accident rate of 0.76 accidents per million vehicles.

This is the gauge that we use to measure accident, taking into account both the number and the volume of incidents.

I am proud of the progress Sandy has made in traffic safety over the last two decades, and I'm also aware that one tragedy is too many.

We take this instance seriously.

We'd like to bring back a study and recommendation that is effective and responsive to the community's concerns.

Any questions for me?

Thank you.

I don't know that I have any questions.

I I just want to say that I um appreciate the speed with which this information is coming to us.

So thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, administrative staff, really appreciate you getting behind the community in this unfortunate event.

Um I have I have a son that attends ALTA as a freshman, so he'll be there for another few years, and in two more years, I'm gonna have another one go through, as will does Mr.

DeKaiser.

And so this is an area that we're very familiar with and um has been of great concern.

And as my son reaches driving age, you know, the some of the challenges with new drivers and what they call I I learned that they call it sophomore hill because that's where the sophomores get to park because they aren't they don't get parking passes in the in the um parking lot creates with the least experienced drivers, right?

Creates um more potential contact points with the pedestrians that are also crossing there, and so I appreciate the um thought that you're putting into it, and I look forward to staying um informed through council member um houseman and the administration and learning about once you guys have had adequate time to really um dig through all of the information and review those options more thoroughly to be able to provide more information on on what that might look like.

So thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Can you just uh reiterate what you said about accelerating the 2020 or the 2030 timeline with uh in conjunction with the WFRC?

Yeah, uh so for background, uh WFRC is the local the Metropolitan Planning Organization MPO, which is the clearinghouse for federal dollars that are spent on transportation.

They program those federal dollars in five-year cycles.

So last year we received the grant for the roundabout, which put us in the 2030 time frame for funding.

We have successfully worked with WFRC in the past to advance fund projects.

If the roundabout is determined to be the best solution, we would work with WFRC to bring that as far forward as their funding would allow them to.

Um and so we we work with them, and I think that they would help us advance that as far as feasible.

Uh, if we decide not to go with the roundabout, but instead a traffic signal, we probably wouldn't use WFRC, but I'd come to council with a budget request for signal, which would be this year or the following year, um, and then get that going.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I want to thank I want to thank you, Ryan.

I want to thank Chief Arnold and the administration for pulling this together for us, and I want to encourage certainly during standing reports would be really nice if we continue to get updates as to the progress, and when ever we're ready for a full agenda presentation on the proposed solution, we're really anxious to get that onto an agenda at whatever time frame you might be ready for that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And I I misspoke earlier.

I said we owe we owe it to the Perry family to get this right.

It's uh signal aroundabout is a once in a multi-generation capital investment.

We want to make sure we're spending our taxpayer resources the right way to get the best result.

And just a reminder public safety on our roads is a shared responsibility.

Yes, um, our intersections are designed for safety, but we also need, in addition to that proper planning, we need driver awareness, enforcement, continual education, and Sandy does it all.

And we are continually reminding our residents.

So please, if you hear this, if you hear my words tonight, please slow down, be aware of your surroundings, put away your cell phones, and be mindful of the speed limits everywhere you travel in our city and beyond.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Carr, for coming tonight.

Well, I'm sure all of us are anxious to stay in touch with you.

Please reach out just as quickly as you need us.

All right, let's get back to the agenda, but let's switch it around just a little bit.

Um I've been asked to move agenda item number six to being next because it will be fast.

We promised it will be fast.

Is that okay with council?

This is the Automall amendment.

I think we can get this done pretty quickly and move on to other things.

Mr.

Wilcox.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Council.

It'll be fast because my voice is kind of cutting out today.

Sorry about that.

I've been dealing with the cold for the last two weeks and won't quit.

Um we can get the slides for that item.

This is uh an item that we presented last week um regarding the Automall area.

Uh the purpose of this is to again strengthen the Automall's area and the special district that we have up in that uh vicinity to try to promote um automotive dealerships in the area and aligning our development code and the uh land use matrix is part of that purpose of this.

So we've proposed a few minor amendments.

Um we did follow up with a map that um in more in detail shows where this area, it's the area in red that we're looking at.

The area in the blue AMC is the automal commercial area where it has other supportive businesses such as repair shops and other things.

But within the Automal district itself, uh currently we only have dealerships within that area in red, and we'd like to keep it that way.

We'd like to promote uh more businesses trying to locate in the area, and keeping that automal alive and vibrant is vital to uh Sandy's um uh well-being as far as the tax revenue that they generate in the service that they create and and provide for the area in the south area of the valley.

Um, and so we're proposing a few changes that align that goal of the district a little bit better with what our land use matrix allows.

And so some of these items we would allow only in conjunction with the dealership, whereas in other uh land use categories we would not be allowing those going forward in the district at all.

Uh planning commission did give a positive recommendation to the city council to adopt this proposed amendment, and staff recommends that the city council adopt ordinance 2601 as shown in the uh staff report packet and exhibit a if there are any questions, I'm happy to help.

Council, any questions for Mr.

Wilcox?

Ms.

DeSouza, go ahead.

I don't have a question, I just wanted to say thank you for providing that map so quickly, and then with this packet, it's very helpful.

I appreciate that.

Absolutely.

Okay.

This is a voting item, so we'll open public comment on this particular item.

I have no blue cards on this, so we'll ask the public online if they would like to comment on this item.

Mr.

Freddo, go ahead.

Thank you, madam chair.

Uh, if you're joining us virtually via Zoom this evening, and you'd like to comment on item number uh six on tonight's agenda.

Go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen.

I'll call your name in the order in which you raised your hand, and you'll have three minutes any comment, any hands raised, madam chair.

Same.

So we'll close um comments on this particular item, which is number six, and we'll bring it back to the council for discussion questions or a motion.

Yeah, go ahead.

Madam Chair, uh, like to make a motion that the council adopt ordinance 26-01 to amend title 21 of the Sandy Municipal Code relating to Automall Zone Land Use Matrix Amendments as shown in exhibit A.

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second.

Ms.

Edwards, roll call vote.

Ms.

Stroud, yes, Ms.

Christensen, yes.

Ms.

D'Souza, yes, Mr.

DeKaiser.

Yes, Ms.

Nickel.

Yes, Ms.

Houseman.

Yes.

Ms.

Sharkey.

Yes.

Madam Chair, that motion carried seven to zero.

Thank you.

All right, we're gonna go back to our information items.

Sorry to keep you guys waiting, but uh we're on item number two, community events for 2025 and 2026.

Who's starting us off?

Katie and then Sarah tag teaming it.

Okay.

Exactly.

I will start and then tag team the setup.

So thank you.

Just share my screen here.

All right.

Council members and Madam Mayor, thank you so much for allowing us to be here to present this year.

I love talking about our amazing Sandy community events.

Um I could stand up here all night, but I am not going to.

Ummunity events really is a unique beast.

It's not a school event, it's not a church event, it's not a business or a private event, it's a community event.

We're really all are welcome to come.

Not even just specifically Sandy City residents, but everyone is welcome to come to our community events.

Um it's really been an honor the last three years to work as the community events manager, and I've since um moved to on to a different role.

Sarah will be taking my place and will do a phenomenal job.

And I'd also like to recognize that I stand on the shoulders of many others who've come before me to establish amazing traditions of our community events here.

So let's jump in.

In 2025, our community events, we had 60 total events and rough estimate of 103,000 attendees.

We had over 400 businesses or vendors that came and participated and sold their products or services directly at these events, and many of these businesses came multiple times to different events, and we had over 700 volunteers participate in 2025, which those are some big numbers for our for our community, and really trying to measure the return on this kind of investment is immeasurable.

But we're gonna try.

With our 5K to so many free activities that we have for families.

Um, our park staff does a kids' tent.

We had free miniature golf this year.

One of our main goals at every city event that we try and do is interact, have a positive interaction with our first responders.

Um, if we can have community members interact in a positive way in a non-emergency situation with our police and fire, heaven forbid when they do have an emergency.

Hopefully, that trust and that relationship, that friendship is already established to help cool the temperature of an emergency.

So that is really a big main focus in all of our events, and we look for those opportunities, and they really are highlighted very well in our in our Fourth of July event.

Um, we provide opportunities for community members to perform, and it's it's quite an awesome event, and of course, our free concert and fireworks, it's a lot of fun.

This year we also were able to use our incident action plan with lots of lightning strikes, and as you all know who were in the parade, the downpour.

So that's another thing that Sandy City really does well.

Um, is our instant action plan.

If X happens, we know exactly how to react.

So, as an event planner, I'm very grateful for that.

Our balloon festival is another fantastic event.

This year was our 18th annual balloon festival, and what is so unique about our balloon festival is it's in an urban setting.

So, really, only the most skilled pilots are invited to come to our balloon festival because it takes quite the skill to navigate all of the different trees and cars and all the things that they have to deal with, so only the best of the best come to our event.

This year was pretty special.

We had Michael Glenn, who is pictured in the bottom left-hand picture here.

He is the very first paraplegic balloon pilot, and he worked very hard with the FAA to get certified to get that pilot's license, and he's pictured his balloon, is pictured right next to him.

Yoli, the the bee.

He's from Arizona and is a motivational speaker, and it was quite an honor and really fun to have him part of the event and interacting with the public.

Of course, um, this year we were really grateful.

Mother Nature cooperated, and we were able to have our balloons fly each three times we had our events, so it was fantastic.

We also have our custom drone show and dance party again, lots of free events or free activities for attendees to come.

Free face painting, free balloon twisting.

Um a lot of fun.

We are seeing our numbers definitely growing each year, as you'll see in a few slides later.

This balloon festival really highlights the beauty of our community.

It takes off virtual, it goes virtual every year.

It's a lot of fun.

The way our amazing communication department presents the balloon festival as a contest.

It's so fun.

So the pictures are amazing.

Sandy Farmers Market.

This is a newer event.

We started this in 2024, and we were very strategic.

But for Sandy City and having a city-sponsored farmers market was very important to us.

We were very strategic in finding the right location for it, and we chose the amphitheater park, not just for the gorgeous view.

It was the best view of farmers market.

I would like to argue anyone with that point.

Um, but we have our amazing splash pad, our playground, pavilion, restrooms, and of course, parking, which is always one of the biggest hurdles for anyone attending a farmer's market.

So this really is an ideal location, but not only that, this location touches borders with neighborhoods who face a lot of food insecurity.

Now, why would I bring that up?

Well, the state of Utah has an amazing program where they partner up with Snap or you know, the food benefit, the food stamps, and you if you are on food stamps and have your Snap card or the free or reduce lunch program in the summer, families are given a card to help them with the food insecurity.

You can show up at our our um at our the vendor booth, our headquarters, and they swipe your card and ask how much you would like to spend.

You can spend up to $20 off of that card.

Well, when you're swiped for $20, you're given wooden tokens, and you if you swipe for $20, you're given $40 worth to spend in the market at participating vendors.

So it's our agricultural, our farmers' bread, jam, that kind of thing that has to do with really good nutritious food that is locally sourced.

At the end of the market day, it's turned back into the state, and then the state then pays the vendors.

So it's this beautiful symbiotic relationship where we are supporting our agricultural community and helping feed those who are facing food insecurity.

As you can see in 2024, we had about 500 people attend per market.

It goes June through middle of October, every Saturday from 9 to 1.

And our food snap benefits, the state that very first year was really pleased with our numbers of how many people participated in this program.

And as you can see on this chart, we doubled the amount of attendees and doubled the amount of SNAP benefits that were redeemed.

So that's really exciting, showing what a need that we are fulfilling for our community.

We were also named Utah's own five preferred market on year two of the Sandy's Market.

Um, on average, a farmer's market has three to five farmers that actually are there selling produce.

Sandy City this last year, we had 17.

So the vendors do talk amongst themselves.

They love coming to our market.

They love the support that they get from the city and from the community.

It's really important.

Movies in the park.

We had three different movies in the park.

We're watching our numbers increase every year as well.

There is no admission fee to come to our movies, and we are lucky enough to partner up with America First Field.

We showed Princess Bride.

That was a lot of fun.

And then this year we had the opportunity to show a movie inside our Sandy Amphitheater.

This is it was full of young people, and we were really surprised by the numbers, even more than America First Field.

And to buy a ticket, family, the larger families that we have in Utah, it's really expensive to go to some of these concerts in the amphitheater.

So to be able to provide a free event for these young families.

It's the first time a lot of people stepped inside this beautiful venue.

So such a such an awesome thing that we do.

And then we also try and highlight different green spaces, and we have our inflatable uh, as you can see, our inflatable screen, it takes quite the amount of manpower to get that thing up and down.

But it's again 350 people, that's it's quite a good crowd.

We also try and highlight different needs in the community.

Last so in 2024, we partnered up with the domestic violence shelters and asked people rather than paying for a movie ticket to bring something that they could donate to help build the community.

This year we partnered up with Kenyon School District when we helped with the students in need to get them the packages that we all put together in 9-11 project.

So great opportunity there as well.

We had our 24th annual healing Utah Healing Field.

This is a tradition that's been going on since 9-11, the year after 9-11 and the tragic accidents.

This is my personal favorite event that we do.

We transform a regular stretch of grass into a holy space.

I talk to people every year that have nothing to do with the 9-11 victims necessarily, but people who have faced a tragic event themselves, whether it's losing a loved one by suicide, a car accident, sickness, they are there to feel the feelings down in our Utah Healing Field.

It truly is an amazing space, but it takes a lot of manpower, a lot of volunteer hours to get those flags up and down, but we have got it down to a science.

We can get these flags up and down in less than an hour, which is pretty unbelievable, and a lot of thanks to our parks and rec team and also our fire and police.

They put up the flags for the Utah Fallen Field and take them down.

And the Utah Fallen Field are the ones that honor those who have died in the line of duty since 9-11 here in Utah.

More Sandy City events.

We had our historic barbecue in June where we unveiled we had our ribbon cutting ceremony for Bicentennial Park.

We have our food truck nights that go April through October every Monday nights at the amphitheater as well.

We also have a children's entrepreneur market that happens in May.

If you have not attended that before, I highly recommend it, and I dare you to not spend any money because it's impossible.

These kids are amazing salespeople, and they are sharing their family traditions and cultures and food.

It's a beautiful event.

It's a lot of fun.

We'll hopefully be doing that again this year.

We had our Heritage Festival and Horse Parade at the end of September, where all of Sandy City is invited to Historic Sandy to celebrate the different cultures that we have here in Sandy, and we partner up with the historic committee and get their input as well.

And it's it's a growing event as well.

It's a lot of fun.

And then of course we wrap up with Light Up the Cairns, where we invite different youth and school choirs to come and perform.

The last two years we've added vendors thanks to the economic development department and partnering up with them.

Again, lots of free activities, free hot chocolate, pictures of Santa, and our awesome Sandy Youth Council that shows up, helps us run our scavenger hunt, and they did a free craft this year as well.

So that was a lot of fun.

So we do a lot of things here in Sandy.

Quickly, I just want to go through some of our social media numbers so you can see the kind of virtual reach that we have as well.

Out of our main Facebook and Instagram at Cindy at Sandy City Account, the top 200 social media posts this year, 60 of them were for community events, which is 30% of all of the hundreds of posts that we do.

Top 10 overall, all overall posts.

You can see there, six out of the 10 are directly community events.

And a lot of those you see are from our balloon festival because it really is such a beautiful event that photographs well.

Out of this, the community event posts, there were 148.

That's close to 7,000 people per post.

That's a big reach.

That's a on average 113 likes, and you can see the top 10 posts there from community events.

There was a flash vote that went out to just Sandy City residents, and out of 375 responses, I wanted to share this specific question that was shared, the answers here.

Which of the following topics or departments, if any, are you most interested in receiving information about from Sandy City?

And they could choose up to five.

You'll see right there, 77 respondents.

The number one answer was events.

Community events department is a department of one.

There is no way one person can do all of this work.

So a huge shout out and thank you to the support of everybody in the city, specifically these um these departments listed.

We have a community events committee who meets once a month, February until the end of the event season to make sure that the events that Sandy City puts on first and foremost are safe.

If it can't be done safely, we won't do it.

And then, second of all, making sure that we are doing it the best way possible with the best lens.

Megan from RISC has a different definition of fun than Katie does, but meeting in the middle and compromising and making sure that it's in the best way is truly our goal.

So I will turn the time over to Sarah to give you a preview of what 2026 looks like.

Thank you, Katie.

Hi everybody, I'm Sarah Dowling.

Many of you may already know me.

Some of you I haven't quite met just yet, and I'm the new Sandy City Community Events Manager.

I'm looking forward to working with you all throughout the year, and welcome to this portion of the presentation.

We're here to preview what is up and coming for Sandy City Community Events in 2026.

So here we go to the next slide.

Here we have the 2026 vision, and I'm going to go ahead and read through this if you'd like to follow along with me.

Sandy City events will be guided by the theme, as many of you already know, Sandy Rising.

What a great theme this is for our community.

And let's take a look at what's happening in this branch of Sandy City with the theme of Sandy Rising.

So we are bringing people together through events that connect the community.

We are keeping gatherings welcoming and safe, and we are creating experiences that reflect Sandy City's culture.

This theme supports the overall direction as a city by keeping events community centered, well coordinated and service oriented to lean on a lot of what Katie just said.

So let's take a look at the next slide.

Our 2026 event vision focuses on five guiding priorities.

Let's take a look at those.

First, as you can see on your screen, we bring strong community connection and communication, and this includes messaging, consistent messaging through the city website, social media channels, and newsletters, so residents know what's coming up and how to participate.

Second, we create high quality, high value event experiences that feel organized and energized and will add value to those attending.

Third, we provide safe and welcoming gathering spaces with careful attention to the logistics and coordination.

Fourth, we plan efficiently with responsible coordination, including cross-department alignment and clear operational planning.

And finishing the list at the bottom of the slide here, we support city culture and the local economy by continuing events that bring residents together and endorse local business activity.

So let's go to the next slide.

So this is the fun slide, and Katie did just touch on each one of these items, but this is the lineup.

So if you'd like to follow along with me here again, these are Sandy's signature events and community favorites, which is the programming residents know and consistently show up for.

So partnering with America 250 and Utah 250 is our first 2026 edition, and it will include commemorative community programming currently planned to include a public art canvas component.

The second is the 25th anniversary of the healing fields, which creates an opportunity for meaningful recognition and additional reflection as part of the existing event.

So these enhancements are intended to add value through engaging community connection experiences while still remaining well coordinated and fiscally responsible.

So and the final slide here is a thank you, and we welcome the city council to provide ideas or feedback with America 250, the 25th anniversary of the healing fields, or any community event overall.

And you've got my number and email at the bottom of the slide here, and thank you for your time this evening.

Council, any questions or okay, Miss Housman?

Just as you put something in your mouth, huh?

I didn't realize how quick you'd be sorry.

Oh it's peanut butter too.

Even worse.

Thank you both for these updates, and um I I think all I can say is I echo everything you said in terms of impact.

Um the feeling that our residents experience when they attend our events, I think is significant.

So thank you for the investment of time and effort and strategy and collaboration.

I love it.

I love that you pointed out cross-departmental collaboration that this doesn't happen without that cross-departmental collaboration.

So thank you.

I did have one question.

You don't have to necessarily go back to the slides, but when you talk through your the 2026 plan, I noticed that the trunk retreat is not on the list.

Is that list comprehensive?

Um will it will are we eliminating the trunk retreat?

Um, and if so, could you just tell us a little bit about the process by which that is based on the case?

My understanding is like it draws still be in discussion, but um, as far as what's been approved for the calendar year this right now, that is where we're at.

Um happy to revisit that though.

Yeah, I I can't or if you have information to add to that as well.

So we didn't have a trunk retreat last year either.

Right.

Um there were budget cutbacks that we were facing, and we had to make some hard decisions.

And one of the things with the trunk retreat that really the whole reason of a trunk retreat was really established in a rural area where people live on acres and acres and acres, and so it's a safe, easier place for the community to quickly come and to trigger treat.

We here in Sandy have churches that do trunk retreats and schools that do trunk retreats, and we didn't want to be taking away from those other events that these smaller areas were doing as well.

So, with that thinner stretched budget, we thought we could make a bigger impact by almost not doing a trunk retreat and keeping those in the neighborhoods and putting our resources elsewhere.

And one of the measures by which it's it sounds like you make decisions is um number of people touched by the events we do, because that was clearly your data points throughout, were you know numbers of people touched.

Have you done a comparison across all of our events?

And and I I mean, I understand what you're saying about the decision that was made.

My understanding around budget allocation was um different than what it appears ended up being funded.

Um felt like we indicated what our priorities were for events, and it didn't end up being that, which that's that's your department.

But I guess I'm curious as to the process that was followed.

If we're if we're looking for touch points with residents, it would seem to me that that's a really great opportunity.

Every time I've attended, it's been massive numbers of people, and the great addition of classic cars to the event brought an entirely new demographic.

Um, and my understanding is they would bring their own candy, like they did, but we ended up spending thousands of dollars in additional money to have enough candy for everyone to be to get a piece of candy.

We did have a car show at our um Heritage Festival as well to try and address that same community, and it's awesome because there are a lot of residents right in Historic Sandy that own cars and participate in that car show.

So that was important for us to keep as well.

Um, my understanding was last year we were asked to operate at the same budget as the year before, and we have contracts where we're there are three-year contracts, and just like every department, inflation is going up and up and up, insurance costs and hard costs, and so we had to make that difficult decision with a budget that was lower than expected.

And so we had to make that difficult decision with a budget that was lower than expected.

We had to make hard decisions.

And so we tried to make the least impactful one where there were already trunk retreats happening in the community.

Sure.

So and I guess that never came before us.

I don't remember that coming before us in terms of getting feedback from the council on the decision making.

I understand that's your lane.

I guess what I'm expressing is would be helpful if the council was uh at least a part of the deliberative process.

Um offer a data point in terms of of perhaps why some of the budget allocations, which is our lane, why those were made, and and help understand how our thinking went into those budget decisions so that it could come into play as you're making decisions that would be helpful.

Um it would seem to me that part of the process would be again back to data points and how many people we are touching.

I I understand what you're saying about those are offered elsewhere in the community, but I think I I'm looking for as much of much reach as possible, and historically that was a pretty significant event in terms of attendance.

That's all I had.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Or Ms.

DeSouza.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and uh I just want to echo what Councilmember Houseman said in terms of um gratitude for the work that you do in conjunction with um the other administrative departments to pull off these events.

Um it's some of them are very lofty, and you know, I'm impressed that um we're able to do what we can do.

So thank you.

Um I also echo sentiments on um I guess budget allocations, you know, the council's um priority is the budgeting, and so when there are allocations for certain events, um it does maybe it it's difficult when administrative decisions are made that contradict intentions set with the budget, right?

And so when you have a line item um for uh funds for one event, and that event isn't done, but those funds are used in another way, you know, that becomes um budgetarily problematic in my view.

Um where I do differ with council member Houseman is I was okay to see the trunk retreat um not be an event last year for some of the reasons that were mentioned.

Uh I also have a personal opinion.

I recognize that it's maybe an opinion that trunk or treats killing trick-or-treating and it's difficult to manage and that experience of going door to door in your neighborhood is um I don't know a fond one for me and um my kids and their friends seem to enjoy it too.

And um, you know, I know that it's been a couple of years of of trial with that particular event, and it was at the um amphitheater park, and there were some challenges with the the number of attendants and um candy allocations and buying too much or buying too little or sending people to the store, and it's um a very difficult thing to adequately judge.

Um, and so if you know, when we're I appreciate the re-review of the events and what makes sense and what doesn't, and while I absolutely respect my colleagues' opinion on the matter, um I do differ in that way.

But thank you.

Just to also address that.

Now I'm standing up here thinking about it.

Trunk or treat never was an actual line item as well.

That was a miscellaneous event is where the funds came out of.

So that's part of what in that budget shrunk.

So you know, we just we had to make some hard decisions there as well.

So but I agree, I think we can do a better job communicating budget and um intention.

So, yeah, absolutely.

Mr.

Tekaiser, do you have a comment?

Thank you, madam chair.

Um I was gonna talk about this in my council member business, but I'll just do it now.

Last week I was on a podcast for the Utah Foundation's or their podcast, and uh the last report they published in December was on social capital, and that is the value that is created by social relationships, and I just think no wonder is Utah Utah's number one.

Sandy's leading the way.

This is really really incredible.

The the number of uh free events and community participation, the growth we've seen over the years.

Um thank you so much for everything that you've done.

I think the story is really so compelling, like that's the number one thing that our residents are interested in.

I I think it would warrant uh consideration on the council's behalf to or on the part of the council to increase that funding because it it really does have such a benefit to our community, and there's so many draws.

So thank you both so much for all your work on this, and congratulations both on your promotions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Stroud.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, very similarly.

I I have I have memories of growing up in Sandy and going to the Fourth of July parade.

Um my children have memories of doing the healing fields of the Fourth of July parade.

Um I mean it this is something that has been longstanding and such a value to the community.

I currently have students that look forward to it.

So it whenever we have these free events, I send them home in a weekly email to parents.

And I have students that ask, when's the next one?

My mom said you didn't put something in there this week.

Um I have students from previous years, I mean kids that are coming back.

Hey, when's the next Sandy free thing?

When are we doing something else in Sandy?

I mean, these are these are nine, ten, eleven-year-old children that are looking forward to these events.

That's the connection that they're making.

They are so important, especially as we've moved past this COVID and re-engaging, reconnecting with our community with um with all of the departments.

I mean, you go to any of these and you have I mean you're just going in 15 different areas.

It's like, where's Katie?

She was there, and now she's here and they're over there.

And that's it's gonna be Sarah all over the place.

But the amount of work that goes into this before, during, and then even that after that your organization working with all of the departments, it is so impactful.

And even when it's just that that one student, that family that looks forward to each of them and follows the socials for that, as for those.

That's exactly what we're looking for.

Thank you so much for what you've done for the past three years, and then we'll continue with this.

Um, but it is it's you know, just seeing this list, you know, the the balloon festival, you know, remembering taking my kids there years ago and going, oh, is it only 18?

You know, that we've had it here and seeing that.

And it's it's the memories that I have, and I know it's the memories that the kids will have now when they're older and they have their kids.

So thank you.

We've definitely appreciated all of the candy throwers.

All right, looks like that may be a thank you so much.

I I have a comment.

I just want to thank Katie and Sarah for of the work preparing this presentation.

I want to thank the council for inviting this presentation.

And as the council turns to its budget preview and the discussions, uh, please include consideration for the America 250 and for the 25th anniversary for the healing fields.

Uh we are the first healing fields in the nation uh for the 20th anniversary.

We did it up really big, but we would not be able to do additional uh recognition and can additional community engagement, which these you know milestone uh memorial years present without additional funding.

So we would love to have some direction from the council early in the budget process about creating this public arts canvas, um America 250, and um and higher than normal resources for the Fourth of July and uh the healing fields this year.

So just want to put that on your radar council.

And thanks to all of you for funding these great community events.

And uh I remember I was uh a kid in 1976, and we painted fire hydrants, and I remember the bicentennial quarter, a new quarter came out for the first time, and it's just such a core childhood memory.

And to think about Sandy kids, they're gonna remember about their community, how we've celebrated America 250 is going to be a core memory for um future leaders and future citizens 50 years from now.

Thanks.

Thanks for sharing that reflection, Ms.

Stroud.

Thank you for the presentation.

We appreciate it.

Thank you for your support.

All right, our next item on the agenda number three.

This is a first reading from Council Member De Kaiser.

Well, thank you, uh Madam Chair, for keeping this on the agenda, and thanks to Councilmember D'Souza for scheduling this item during your term.

I just will briefly introduce the memo before you and explain why I'm requesting consideration for the two parts that it outlines.

Um to me, the core of this is about transparency and public confidence and the integrity of our municipal elections.

Uh both of the sections respond to gaps in the current framework that sort of leave rev residents quite not quite with a clear picture about how money shapes city elections and allows different participants in the process to operate under different rules.

So the first part is about independent expenditures.

Umun candidates are required to file timely campaign financial disclosures with the city.

However, individuals and entities are able to spend sums of money to influence the election without filing any disclosure directly with Sandy City.

And so although there is some reporting that uh exists at the state level, uh Utah law expressly exempts political parties from these requirements, and there are other exemptions that result in engagement in expenditures that support municipal candidates without any uh election-specific disclosure to the voters of Sandy City, uh, which creates a transparency and accountability gap that um prevents residents from understanding who is spending money to influence the people who are elected to represent them.

And so this part of the proposal simply asks that independent expenditures be disclosed uh per financial reporting the same the same way that it a candidate is required to financially or to report their financials and it would make it so that uh voters can see all that information in like the same uh financial disclosure software.

Um the second part of it asks the council to consider implementing reasonable campaign contribution limits.

Um the concern here with this is just that uh very large contributions uh are made by very small uh groups of people compared to like the residents that everyone represents.

And so when a small number of donors can contribute such disproportionately large sums of money to influence elections, those voices end up carrying far more weight than those of typical residents who are concerned about a much broader uh set of topics than uh special interest group, for example.

So I don't think that dynamic is in the best interest of the community.

Um there was some discussion on that last year, and and it it uh gives a sense that that can undermine confidence in local elections and doesn't necessarily represent broad uh public priorities.

So these limits are intended to encourage uh more participation from the community and ensure that candidates rely on that wide support base to be elected.

So again, this is just an informational item tonight.

Um I'm just hoping that we engage in a thoughtful discussion about whether this uh measure would actually strengthen transparency and fairness and public trust in our elections, and I want to see if anyone potentially before this comes back would be interested in um joining a working group uh with me to bring back uh a final version that might be acceptable to the council.

Thank you.

Ms.

Christensen.

Um I like this.

I I'm interested in especially the first portion of it.

I have um questions about how it would work and what it would do with our city recorder's office and if there's any like laws that we need to be you know worried about.

Those are the types of questions, but I actually really like proposal number one, and I'm not opposed to proposal number two either.

So I'm in support of both of those being flushed out and um talked about.

So Ms.

Housman.

Oh no, go ahead.

Aaron, I just have can you give me like election cycle?

Give me dates like what what your intent because the state's definition of election cycle is different from this one, and I don't know basically how how this one would work.

So the intention of this would be to make it so that uh independent expenditure disclosures are on the same timeline as candidate financial disclosures.

So uh I don't know, maybe Tracy or Dustin can weigh in on how that works, but there's like the 30 days before and seven days before the general election, whatever the reporting periods are, it would coincide with with those for the independent expenditures.

So the definition here says that each election cycle begins the day after the previous general election for an elected office and ends the date of the next general election, so four-year period.

She's talking about presenting I believe um is it for questions we can speak to that if you'd like us to, madam chair, as we help draft this, but I'll leave that up to you guys.

Did you have no just one of kind of a clarification on that and the definitions not matching state code?

Yeah, Dustin, if you could weigh in, that would be great.

ends the date of the next general election so four year period she's talking about hasn't she liked right um is it for questions we we can speak to that if you'd like us to madam chair as we help draft this but I'll I'll leave that up to you guys did you have no I just want to kind of a clarification on that and the definitions not matching state code yeah Dustin if you could weigh in that would be great we we were trying to define uh the reporting period which is a single essentially a single year so we're talking about uh that the you have the day after an election right so let's say the elections on November 4th November 5th and then that election cycle would be the following year until the date of the next general election I'm sorry not the following year but the following um I'm sorry guys I'm having a hard time communicating this but the I think what the intention was was a year and now that I'm looking at this I'm wondering if we if we had meant to say the same election that following year and not for the not for the same elected office.

Do you think I'm right on that Tracy?

Yeah I I can see why you might have some confusion there Chris I think our intention was it's a year.

Okay so it's the day after the end of the election until the date of the next general election should it be specific to Sandy's general election or is I don't I don't think so personally because what what we're trying to get at is what's the reporting period and so you would want uh these entities to uh disclose over a specific period of time and in my mind the year makes a sense makes sense uh you guys may feel differently and you could say hey no we want it to be uh the same as that office that doesn't make sense to me would you agree Tracy that it should be a year right because my what our understanding of what Aaron was trying to capture wasn't just political action committees but political issue committees um which may weigh in on a variety of things not necessarily according to our municipal election schedule um and to report the the the dark money that might be involved in uh say a pick or a pack trying to influence not maybe not just an election but other issues that may come before you as a body that are on the ballot yeah could be on the ballot or could might be issues you're considering yeah and I think myself and Mr.

Cadell and Mr.

De Kaiser probably read over this two dozen times each and I think we were reading it as a year and that's probably just an error on our part so when Aaron brings this back for a second reading I think we should probably adjust that language to capture that it's the a year.

Those are my comments for now thank you madam chair um I appreciate the time that's gone into this and and clear thinking I I think my my point is less question based and more sort of drawing a a a comparison I I see things differently than you do just I know the first reading is about asking for feedback.

You defined it as a transparency gap um and I just I don't see it the same way I I really believe in limited government I think this duplication is the opposite of limited government there is already a path for transparency it's run through the Lieutenant Governor's office and I don't think it's appropriate for us to add an additional what I would call you know barrier to entry so to speak um so I don't think the transparency gap exists I think there is plenty of transparency.

What we would in effect do is ask people to have a second filing system which creates more work um not less so I think the transparency is there I think it's important that we think about um streamlining process for all involved because anything we do to make it make it more difficult eliminates more and more people from stepping into the ring and I think anything we do to make it more difficult for people to run for office is is actually not in the best interest of our community.

And so similarly I feel like the the cap on contribution limits is is similar I don't I don't um see it the same way that you do I think any time we are limiting the amounts that individuals can receive um we are in effect saying only people who can self-fund their campaign can run for office because we're limiting how much people can receive in donations and we're adding an unnecessary barrier.

I think there's a process by which that transparency is given.

I think it's a it's appropriate to keep in mind that we want any and any and all people who are interested in running for office.

We want them to see it as a simple process that they are welcomed into and adding any additional layers of compliance or tracking and filing and and all of all of the things that come with these layers you're recommending, I think complicates the ability to be involved in local government, and I believe again, like I started with I believe in limited government.

Um I feel that that there's some of what you were saying that has more to do with um a narrative rather than governance.

I I don't I don't think we have I know people disagree, and that's okay as part of the process, but um I don't see any evidence of of some of the um cause for which the that you were trying to solve.

I'm not I'm not seeing a failure uh of state enforcement of of what's expected.

I'm not seeing evidence of um Sandy elections being um taken over by you know corruption or or distortion or any of that kind.

So um I I don't think we should be laying more barriers on top of things.

I think if anything, we should be we should be simplifying and encouraging civic engagement.

Um I don't see evidence of of abuse or um failure in our existing systems.

I don't support adding additional regulations.

Um we need to make it as easy as possible for people to engage and consider throwing their hat in the ring.

So that's that's my feedback on your proposal, Ms.

De Susa.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um so I understand where this I think I understand where this is coming from.

You know, we came out of an election cycle.

There was a lot of conversation mostly in the social media realm.

There's there was a lot of conversation about lots of things that came up during the um during the election that I think warrant discussion, you know, and I would say that this you know is one of them, warrants discussion.

And I think that overall the underlying goal of ensuring or creating an environment where transparency exists or um or making sure that we are more transparent is definitely a worthwhile one.

I'm just not sure on the first proposal with the um PAC filing that I agree that the system lacks transparency.

I I can see that there is differences because it's not all in one place, but I wouldn't say that that's less transparent, maybe less convenient.

Um I think that there is an opportunity maybe in that case to I'm kind of what council member Housman said, the duplicative aspect of your proposal in in that regard seems like it could cause more problems than it actually solves.

Again, like I'm not sure that the problem has been defined, but I don't know that I feel like I have the evidence to say that there is actually a problem.

Um and I guess that's kind of where I'm going with this.

And so, you know, maybe something more along the lines of um like a transparency hub where we provide helpful links that all have all of the links all on one page for for Sandy voters might be something that is more manageable but also gets at the goal of increasing convenience for the transparency that already exists.

Um one of the other things that I was thinking about I am not a lawyer.

I'm gonna go ahead and say that for the lawyers in the room.

Um I did take a couple of law classes in my undergrad.

I recognize that doesn't make me a lawyer.

Um but so to reading reading your proposal and try and reading through the memo.

Um I first started with the the um assertion that this was modeled after Salt Lake City, and I don't know if the whole thing was or if just the candidate uh contribution limitations was, but I couldn't find anything in Salt Lake City Code that talked about specifically like political action committees.

You know, there was language and an end independent expenditures, but it wasn't relative to the cut topic that you're talking about.

Um, and so then I went through state code and was trying to determine um you know how this relates to state code, and it seems like the state again, and this is where you guys can correct me.

And they define candidate as somebody that you know is running, is making decisions for themselves, is can you know coordinating, and your definition of independent expenditure is uncoordinated and therefore would not fall under the definition of being a candidate, right?

And so I'm just wondering if the city actually has the authority to require these third party entities that are already registered and regulated of the state to also have to register with Sandy.

I mean, I can see if every single municipality in the city were to do something like this, what a difficulty that would be.

That would be like a real estate agent having to get a real a business license in every city, even though we are registered at the state, in my opinion, you know, like I'm thinking about it logistically.

Um, and is that intended?

Is that feasible?

Does that is that problematic?

I don't know.

And so I'm interested in a more thorough legal analysis of this personally, just to it doesn't make sense to really consider something that may not be legally valid in that way.

And then I was reading through again the proposal, and there seems to be some, in my opinion, I had the same question, and I apologize, Councilmember Nickel.

You're right, it was in the very beginning definition part, not in the second proposal.

So I apologize.

Um, but I had questions about that too.

I read it as a four-year cycle that was specific to the office, the elected office.

So each uh elected official would potentially have a different election cycle per the definition that I read in here, the way that I've interpreted it.

And then the other thing that I found inconsistent and problematic is the definition for independent expenditure in the red line version says an independent an expenditure by a person or other entity expressly advocating the success or defeat of a clearly identified candidate.

When you go into the section 2.17 in the red line, which is the disclosure requirements for independent expenditure, it kind of restates a definition but gives a different definition.

Instead of just so it says any person or other entity that makes an independent expenditure, and then it says meant to influence a Sandy municipal election, and so meant to influence or expressly advocating are very different, and one is a lot more subjective, and so again, from like a the standpoint of enforceability and is are we creating again more problems than we're there than we're solving with this?

Um as far as the candidate, so that's my my thoughts on the very first part of this.

Um the second part, you know, this one's this one's really hard.

I think that there's arguments both ways for from two couple of different perspectives that are both valid.

Um, you know, with every with every decision or action you have a reaction and unintended and unintended consequences of any decision that we make.

And so, really, you know, I think that it warrants a thorough conversation on what those potential unintended conduct consequences could be both ways.

Um the way that I read this is similar to how council member Housman expressed her understanding or thoughts is that allowing limiting limiting campaign contributions to a certain amount, but then allowing a candidate to expend, you know, unlimited funds seems again to create a potential problem where we only have potentially candidates that are wealthy enough to self-fund running for election or having the you know having the funds to be successful.

We all know how difficult it is and and to get our name and our message out there and it costs it costs money to do that.

Um I agree that having widespread support should be the goal, but I also think from a transparency standpoint um giving the ability for voters to see this data that is required to be reported and is put on our website and shared, you know, especially on social media to see that information and make decisions about whether or not that's the candidate they want to support.

I worry that limiting the campaign contributions where there's a will, there's a way, and people are always looking for ways to exploit laws and loopholes, and I feel like it may make the contribution disclosure less transparent because instead of seeing that this person, you know, donated, I don't know, 10,000 dollars, this person donated you know two thousand, and their sister donated, you know, two thousand, and I I think that that might be harder to track and um reduces the transparency of the intended contribution.

And I think that that might be harder to track and reduces the transparency of the intended contribution.

So, like again, I agree with the goal.

I just have a different opinion of what transparency is and and allowing voters all of the information that they need or that they feel is important in making a decision for whom they want to represent them in any respective office.

So I know I wasn't, I know this came before the council, I think maybe in 2021, I was not on the council, um, but I was a member of the public listening to that discussion discussion, and I do recall there seemed to be a lot of um council uh staff.

It it seemed like this was more of a presentation led by council staff at the time that provided a lot of um data and uh for uh for giving examples of pros and cons.

Um the last thing that I'll say on this is I do get a little worried again about the language that's used to justify that that I feel is used to justify um these proposals, specifically the candidate contribution limits.

It all talks about like the the appearance of and not the actual like factual happening of, and that makes me a little worried because I feel like language like that is inflammatory, it's not based in fact.

Um if there are factual situations or examples that can be proven that can be provided, that would absolutely be helpful.

Um because otherwise, you know, we're we're basically maybe this is a stretch for some, but this is how my mind translates it.

You know, we have the idea of innocent until proven guilty, but here if we just do it, if we just make this change because of the appearance of we're deeming any potential contribution over an arbitrary amount of 2500 in the proposal is you know corrupt or whatnot.

That's not right.

And so I don't want to, I don't want to feel pressured to make a decision because of the appearance of because I feel like that also is not uh responsible representation, and that's my my level of understanding and my involvement in the elections that I've been a part of, um, I have not experienced that at all in any way.

Any corruption, anybody asking me for anything.

Um I did have somebody once want to give me an anonym anonymous donation.

It is um the it was like a $20 donation um cash, and I knew the person and I said I I don't want to accept your donation if it's gonna be anonymous.

I want to, you know, make sure that all of my um contributions um have a name attached to them, and the person then agreed to be um stated and not anonymous.

Uh and so again, like as candidates, we have choices on how we want to run our campaigns and what we do and what we don't do, and um I think that all of that is helpful information to voters on how you know people choose to run their campaigns.

So I think limiting some of that reduces transparency and is counter to your overall goal.

Um but those are my comments right now.

Thank you.

That was a lot.

I know.

You ready?

Mr.

Thank you.

Um so on the first, because there's kind of two items here.

Uh I don't see it as being um I I mean it is it it could be duplicative for you know a PAC or pick, you know, to have to register and file with the state and then also with the city, but there's a lot of things that we have to duplicate.

Um you know, so it's I think for the voter to be able to go to one spot and click on it.

But if you have to go to one spot and then click for that and then click through and click through, that can be frustrating.

So you know, I I think that that's it's probably a you know, a small price to pay on requiring a pack to do that.

So, you know, candidates are are coming in and filing.

Um, I think PACs would probably become pretty good at it.

You know, if they're filing with the state, then they can come through and file with the city as well.

So I don't have a lot of concern, you know, on your first one.

Um there are some questions that have been brought up, you know, legality, um, you know, so that's you know, but I I would assume that you know Mr.

Cadell probably looked through a lot of this, um, but you know, just to make sure, you know, dotting I's crossing T's, uh, but I I don't have a lot of stress with that one.

Um the uh the contribution limits, you know, and we've talked about this.

Um this one I I do have some concern over.

I think that when there's a will, there's a way.

And if somebody wants to give you $4,000, then they're going to give it $2,500 in their name and another $1,500 in their wife's name.

Um, you know, if that's if somebody feels that strongly and wants to contribute that amount of money to your campaign or a family member.

So, you know, I I have some concern with that because I think it actually reduces transparency.

Um, if it was, you know, and I'm just kind of rambling with this, but you know, if it was putting a limit on an organization versus an individual, you know, that may be it's hard to have you know A1 printing give a candidate two thousand dollars and then one A printing.

I mean, they're you know, they'll stick with their name.

Um, so that we that's and and I don't know how that works, you know, to have where it's two different.

Well, if you're an individual versus a business or organization, um, but I I do think that it would reduce transparency.

I mean, it's it's hard enough when you go on and you try to look through and you're going, oh, you know, did this individual they contributed in the first time that this candidate filed, and then they contributed the second time they filed, and they contributed the third time they filed, and we don't have a process where it meshes those together.

So I'm looking for you know, John Doe, you know, or Bob Smith, and I can see that these names pop up on different, and I'm trying to pull it up to see who it is.

So it's I think it makes it less transparent because there's the the potential of creative accounting when it comes to that.

Um the other thing, you know, with the full name and address, we don't put you know, we've redacted our addresses on there.

I I totally agree with the full name.

I don't know if there's a way that you can submit the address and then upon request, somebody can ask for it.

Uh you know, I'm just not sure if I don't know.

I don't know if there's privacy concerns.

I mean, even here we went away, you know, four and a half years ago from requiring an address from somebody to can't to stand up and to give their name and address, you know, their full name and address.

You know, it's just well, you know, a resident of Sandy or resident of Draper, um, you know, whatever that is.

I don't have super strong opinion with that, but you know, there could be some concern with that is is disclosing you know full name and address of somebody out there.

I and it it is out there, you can find that information, but um, and then the you know, the zero dollar uh anonymous contribution, you know what I somebody you're at a you know, a meet and greet somewhere, and somebody you know you're talking to a lot of people and they hand you ten dollars.

I mean, I think we have a good path right now of saying, you know, there's a certain amount that if somebody hands you ten bucks and you're like, hang on, I need to stop.

I need you to put your name, um, address, phone number, all of this information down for ten dollars.

Now, if it's a hundred bucks, I mean I'm gonna be chasing that person down, but you know, just kind of questioning that if it's I and not a lot of stress just trying to figure out, you know, keeping candidates, okay.

I have this ten dollars, now I have to turn it over, and then Wendy's going through and trying to put in the general fund, you know, if there's something with very nominal amount, you know, if that zero dollar is truly the best place to land on that.

And once again, you know, not a significant amount of stress to it, just curious with it, but you know, I I have you know a fair amount of support for for your first one, you know.

I I think you know, just kind of recap there.

That's not entirely bad, you know, and and for residents to be able to go to one site and to look up here's candidates and here's PACs, you know, whoever's contributing in this election cycle.

Sandy City website, we try to push a lot of uh residents in that direction as it is.

Oh, you're looking at bios, you're looking up, you know, which races, you know, what's open this time, you know, how many candidates are there, all to one place instead of sending them around to different sites.

So, you know, I I do support that one.

Um, and then the concerns, you know, with the contribution limits, you know, if it's there's my input on that.

So, but I don't think it's anything you haven't heard before.

So thank you.

Miss Nickel, thank you.

So I'm gonna refer to your section.

Um it's section two one five, it's gonna be two one six.

Um, annual contribution, again, there's a discrepancy between Utah State Code and this disclosure requirements.

It's defined differently.

Um I have some legality issues too.

I think the lieutenant governor is the only one that can issue fines.

It's um pretty well defined that she is the chief election officer.

So having D set up to say we you automatically refer.

I don't know any other law where the council says it would be automatically deferred.

It like that would be saying if you're going one over, you're gonna write a ticket, or if you subscribe to the nine you're fine, ten you're mine, you know, type law.

I don't see that, and I think the number there is quite arbitrary, and that could get us caught up in uh quagmire.

Um let's see, and I too have some uh additional legal issues, but I first want to go into contributions.

The state has con has stated where uh an anonymous or any leftover funds in a campaign can go, and that is to a bona fide 501c3 or another candidate.

So I don't know that we could put that restriction in that it would have to go to the city.

Um privacy laws prohibit us from asking for an address.

It's a privacy issue, 100%.

It's not it's something we did after we violated it.

So that is my thing with that with D.

I think that's already implied in our code.

And we also Sandy has three additional disclosures above what anybody else does.

I think that's a really good thing to point out.

So we we disclose a lot more than anybody else.

Um I kind of don't like statements written in code.

So your E is more of a statement, it's not a directive.

This law supplements but does not replace modify any filing obligations.

That generally is implied, and that is in the code, so we don't need to be writing an explanation for that, I don't think in the code, and the same on E as well.

It's it's a statement, not a directive.

I do see some First Amendment right issues here, some some big ones, and also some uh due process issues as well, and I think there's you know the citizens united case versus the FT federal um election committee, really put down the law of what we can and cannot do, and those laws apply to municipal level government as well.

Those are all my comments.

All right, so I'll make mine.

Um I spent a lot of time on the Salt Lake City website yesterday trying to find disclosures of the type that you're talking about, and I looked at every campaign disclosure from 2014 until 2025, and I couldn't find any.

So if they're there, I don't know where they are.

I couldn't find them.

I opened up every single election every two years, couldn't find any.

Um, but I had no trouble at all finding the PAC reporting on the state website.

So if it's transparency, uh I found it on the state website, but I didn't find it on the Salt Lake City one.

Um there was a Salt Lake City one where you could search alphabetically, and there were 800 entries there, so I didn't try that one, but um I did find them right away on the state side state uh site.

So my thinking was why don't we just I think it'd be a good idea if we provided a link on our financial disclosure disclosures page to the state website, and you know they could be reporting because of the way the PACs have to report, and thank you for providing that information to me when I asked you for it.

Um they could be reporting it more quickly on the state website than on ours because they have to report within 30 days of any expenditure over a thousand dollars, right?

So it could be that we would be stunting the transparency on our own website where it's more visible on the state website.

So I'm not sure on balance that there's anything to be gained, but I think it would be a great idea to provide a link to the state website on ours so people know where to get that kind of information on outside uh PACs.

Um the campaign contribution limits, yes, I was on it's back there are one, two, five of us that were here when it was voted on before.

Um, and my thoughts on that haven't changed.

Um I do I want to say, I find some of the language in here personally to be offensive.

Um I don't know anyone that is corrupt.

I mean, this larger donations carry larger weight with do they with you?

Because they don't with me.

So that's a that's a statement you just made.

Larger donations carry larger weight.

Um appearance of corruption.

Umlimited can't come campaign contribution contributions may give a disproportionate voice to wealthy individuals, corporations, or special interests, undermining the principle of one person, one vote and eroding public trust in the impartiality of elected officials.

I don't think that's happening.

I don't know.

I don't I don't know anyone who's ever.

I know a lot of elected officials, you know.

I think there are a million of them across the U.

I don't know anyone who's ever been offered a bribe, much less accepted one.

I I I don't know anyone.

Um large contributions can create a sense of obligation on the part of the candidate, even though no explicit quid pro quo exists, or at least the suggestion that a public office can be bought, not earned, I find that incredibly offensive.

I don't know any elected official that thinks that way or acts that way.

If there's anyone here that does that, speak now.

I mean, I'd like to know because if there is a problem we have to solve, I'd like to know about, and that's that'd be a big one.

I don't see this happening, the limit of $2,500.

So if what we're suggesting that is that a $2,500 donation is not corrupting, but a $2,500 donation is corrupting, I don't know where we come up with that.

I uh I don't know where we come up with that.

Um I do firmly believe that if at if we curtail candidates' abilities to um attract campaign donations, we are limiting people without the financial means from running for office, and I think that is the biggest drawback to this kind of thing.

Um one thing to remember is that we're not applying it to the candidate themselves.

So whatever level, whatever playing field you're trying to level, you're just not getting there as long as the candidate can donate whatever amount of money without limit that they want.

So you are inviting a situation where candidates with greater financial means have an edge, and so that really I think is the flaw in the entire thing, and I think you are creating hurdles and challenges for people without financial means if you're saying that you're gonna limit their ability to uh accept donations from others.

Um personally, I you know, I can understand a situation, and I could support one.

I personally think the only way to level the playing field here is government-funded campaigns.

That's what I think.

I think it's the only way to level the playing field.

It's government-funded campaigns.

You do not allow candidates.

If you can limit this, you do not allow candidates to put in their own money.

Everybody gets the same amount of money, and you know where it's coming from.

It's coming from the city.

Um, I'd be willing to entertain that, but I'd only be willing to entertain that if we put it on the ballot for the voters to vote on because it's their money.

So we'd be asking them, hey, we want to level a playing field.

We want it, we want to treat everybody the same.

Taxpayers, do you want to pay for candidates' elections in Sandy?

Cindy, have you been talking to my husband?

Because he threw that out idea to me, and I'm like, no.

So that's uh if that's and here's my question about that.

Can you limit the number of candidates?

If you're gonna say, hey, anybody who wants to run, the city's gonna pay for you to do that.

You're gonna have a hundred people run.

Can you because hey, cities paying for it?

Why should you know?

I'll run, sure, of course, why not?

I don't know what you do, but see, so I think there are I think there are issues on like everything.

I think government funded elections come the closest to leveling the playing field and achieving what you want.

Um I'd agree to put it on a ballot for the for the voters to vote on it to see if they were willing to pick up the tap for elections in Sandy.

But other than that, I just think I'm not sure we're gaining anything.

I think on the campaign contribution limits, I think it's counterproductive.

I think it hurts some candidates.

Um we had in this last election, one candidate donated $60,000 of their own money.

As long as we allow that, and we can't or won't curtail that.

What are we what are we solving here by saying that anybody else can only donate 2500 max, but the candidate, whatever you want, right?

So that's where I am.

Any Miss Nickel.

Go ahead.

Um you're right.

We have discussed this a lot.

We it was like when I was Chris and I were on the council before it came up a number of times.

Um something to consider possibly since we're all seem to be very interested in lowering barriers to entry, and we're not sure that we can fund campaigns because we don't have that much money, I don't think.

Um and we can't just put campaign finance limits like spending caps because that's unconstitutional.

Um an option might be voluntary spending caps for each office.

You set each office at $10,000 for elected officials, and voluntarily, as we as elected officials agree, you know, lead the way in doing that.

And if someone doesn't blast it far and wide that they won't agree to the fair standards.

I don't know.

This is another option to consider.

Did you have one?

Mr.

I'm I'm just um wondering there's a lot that's been put out there and a lot of trepidation with council members showing support and not support.

I would I'm really worried about the amount of staff time this is gonna take if brought back, and I probably wouldn't be supporting the amount of staff time it would take to put into the energy into this, which is the way votes are looking.

So that's my opinion.

Ms.

DeSouza.

Thank you.

Um so what council member Christianson said about um the voluntary thing.

I actually did come across that on Salt Lake City's website.

They do have it's it's similar to our little to our our little our pledge, but it's voluntary, but it also creates a process for the candidate to um that that has opted into it to revoke their opt-in if you know they are the only candidate in their particular race that agreed to that, you know, then it gives them an opportunity to reconsider their decision, you know.

Um, but you know, that is an option to address council member Sharkey's interesting idea of um government-funded campaigns.

It doesn't have to be you know $50,000 per candidate.

Maybe there is a pot of you know the the council assigns a budget for that, and it's X amount, and however many people in sign up to run, and we've had some pretty um I don't know, I don't know that hotly contested, but um very involved elections.

There have been a lot of people that have signed up to run.

You do you divvy that up and everybody gets an amount that's equal to whatever the the budget was?

That's an interesting idea.

But if you can't limit the the contribution from the candidate, then again that that blows that out of the water.

Um I don't see there in to be any real I don't know, like perfect scenario here.

Um and I had one other point I was gonna make and I forgot, but if I remember I'll talk to you about it privately.

Thanks.

If it's okay for me to just wrap this, I just want to thank everyone.

That was a really um great discussion and got lots of useful feedback.

Um there are some things that we just disagree on, or my perspective would be that was framed incorrectly, but we will over uh come those uh uh off the dice and and work through figuring that out.

There's a couple issues.

One of them seems to be uh whether this is legal question, and so um I don't know if we like Tracy worked on this with me, and it was fine.

We um sent it to Mr.

Pace, who had no legal issues with it.

And so I don't know if like that suffices, or um like if you wanted to have a quick conversation about that now, or or maybe get a statement from Mr.

Pace and Mr.

Cadell on the legality of this.

Um, but as far as I'm concerned, there aren't any legal questions from our staff with this.

Um so maybe we could just have an opinion written up, or I don't know what the best way to proceed on that.

That's like the overarching question of whether we could even do this.

Well, I I madam chair, yeah.

Um I mean, I'd be happy to do that.

I know Lynn's office would be happy to do that.

I'm I'm I'm happy to mention uh off the cuff how I feel about a lot of it.

I mean, um it's really interesting to hear the the the council specifically, just just for a second on the on the campaign contribution limits.

Though those are legal.

Um but they're but not just they're not just legal.

Uh the council has to make certain findings in order to determine why you need something like term limits or I mean uh contribution limits.

And those are the things that uh that that chair uh Sharky was saying that she doesn't think there's an issue with those things.

So you have to make certain it the way I read the case law is that in order to say that um certain contribution limits can be imposed, you have to make a finding that yeah, we were worried about the influence of money, therefore, because we're gonna limit a person's contributions to X or to Y.

Because remember, um financial contributions are considered speech.

Uh it always has been.

People's money is considered how they use it, is a form of political speech.

We have to be very careful about how we limit political speech, as you well know.

And if you're gonna limit uh impose, say campaign contribution limits, you have to make certain findings, um, which are typically done in recitals or the way that you discuss the matter over the dais.

It's difficult to force those things if the council's all saying, uh no, we don't we don't have that issue, but we're gonna impose it anyway.

Um so keep that in mind, and then of course, this issue of limiting speech a person's own money, that's clearly decided.

We can't limit how much money people spend in their own races.

You know that.

Um we can't limit it.

Uh, in terms of uh most of what Aaron's has here, assuming the council's willing to wait make some findings, there's a way to make that comply with both federal and state law, I think.

I think Lynn probably thinks that too.

Uh if you really agree with the policy side of it.

If you just don't agree with the policy, then what you know, I don't know that we need to burn the bandwidth on whether or not we can get make it legal.

But I think a lot of the policy that Aaron's trying to get to, I think we can make it conform with state and federal law.

Because you know, when we started the project, our understanding is he was trying to capture this dark money piece.

This piece of someone having a pack and spending money in a municipal election and not having that disclosed, so Sandy voters are aware of it.

There's a way, there's a legal way for us to do that.

Of course, PACs do disclose to the state of Utah, but you might not know unless you go and sort through all that.

And if you want to for them to disclose, we could we could tweak this policy in a way that does that if you think it's necessary.

So Lynn and I could maybe do a more comprehensive opinion, but maybe the takeaway is is that if you agree with the policy that that Mr.

DeKaiser is advancing, then we can find we'll we'll be able to frame it in a way that it can pass constitutional muster.

But if you don't want if you don't want to do it, just tell Aaron you don't want to do it, and we'll go on to the next policy.

Yeah, um, thank you, Mr.

Cadell.

I uh yeah, so we'll we'll kind of circle back.

Like I said, I think there's more discussion to be had, and we'll see if there's an appetite for this.

I just want to end my comment by saying I am completely surprised, maybe of the thought that we could work together on publicly funded elections, because so everyone knows that is the ideal outcome.

Uh this to me is like baby steps toward getting there, not thinking there'd be a chance we could ever get to that, but that would be awesome.

So we we will be talking about that and see what comes of it.

But no, thank you, uh, council members for all the feedback.

It was very valuable and helps uh clarify the story of this.

Again, the goal is just to be transparent, make it easier for the put the public to understand uh you know who and what they're voting for, and um if there if there's nothing else, I just very much appreciate the discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Chair.

Yeah.

I have made an error.

We this is related to this item, that's why I'm bringing it up now.

So we received an email from a resident uh with comments about on this topic tonight, and they asked that I get read during the general citizen comment period, and it was at the bottom of my stack, and I forgot to read it.

And we may have made another error.

Is Ben Davis still here?

No.

So we had gotten a card, and I wasn't sure if we had misplaced it or what had happened.

So Ben has left us, unfortunately.

So I was gonna find two reasons to reopen public comment, but hopefully there's not a third at this point.

Um but I'm happy to read this into the record whenever you would like to, since we're at this item and it's about this item.

I'm happy to do it.

Let's do it.

Now, okay.

Uh let me just set a timer out of fairness.

And uh we received this today uh from it's from Jude Ingracia.

Dear Sandy City Council, my name is Jude and Gracia, and I've been a Sandy resident for over 10 years.

I'd like to encourage the council to support councilmember Aaron DeKaiser's two proposals.

One where individuals or entities that engage in substantial political expenditures and Sandy politics should be required to submit financial disclosures to Sandy City, and two, there should be campaign contribution limits.

In October 2023, the Pew Research Center conducted a study that found 72% of Americans say there should be limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations can spend on political campaigns.

84% of Americans say that special interest groups and lobbyists have too much say in what happens in politics.

Large majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike say campaign donors, lobbyists and special interest groups have too much influence.

By contrast, 70% of Americans say that the people who live in representatives districts have too little influence over the decision their representatives make.

As a result, I believe Sandy City should implement campaign contribution limits and also that third parties that spend substantial amounts to influence Sandy elections should be required to submit financial disclosures at the same time intervals as candidates.

I would like to request that financial disclosures also include the donor's address.

This used to be the norm in the Sandy City financial disclosures, but the donor address seemed to have disappeared around 2021.

I'd like to ask why the form filled for the address was removed.

If this was voted on by the city council, and if the public had any say in removing the donor address from disclosures, if this was simply a mistake, please add the donor address back to the to the disclosure form for the sake of transparency.

It is helpful for us residents to know how much money a candidate receives from within Sandy versus outside of Sandy.

Thank you, Jude.

All right.

So if there's no more comment or discussion, we'll move on to the next information item, which is number four.

First reading from Council Member Nickel.

Thank you.

I just want to this isn't about uh a salary rate or anything like that.

This is a total compensation package, and it's only specific to elected officials.

So all of us over here.

And no blame assignment, anything like that.

It's just a um to make uh we've kind of defaulted to doing what we did in the last budget year, and that falls over to election cycles as well.

And so this would help continuity between elections.

I think it's a big public trust issue.

It's been a uh an issue that you know compensation packages or salary have been discussed.

It would also put us in alignment with our budget policy statements, improve transparency, and give express ability to the council to set elected official compensation and pay.

Which is some could because we're silent on it in the code, some could say we never should, you know.

So I think we should have a statement in there about it.

And specifically, it's it's really the items that are intended for retention, and those staff members who have maxed out their pay range, so we can um we can give them spot bonuses, car allowances, some things to keep them stay, because we want that institutional knowledge.

So it would only be elected officials are not eligible for the following forms of conference compensation, salary related merit pay adjustments, incentive pay, spot awards, vehicle allowances, phone allowances, and tuition reimbursement.

Um I had a conversation with Katrina today, and she had some recommendations for some language change, which I'm totally fine with.

It's in the statement elected officials are eligible for standard health retirement and other insurance benefits offered at to all non-sworn full-time employees.

We would strike full-time employee.

That's her recommendation on that.

And was that the only one, Katrina?

Just clarifying that you were excluding the judge.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I'm sorry, I didn't even take into consideration that that our uh district court judges are elected as well.

So this would specifically exclude judges on this as well.

Thank you.

Um anything else?

No, it's pretty self-explanatory.

It's not I'd love some feedback or comments on it.

Council members.

Ms.

Houseman.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um yeah, I I feel I agree.

I feel like it's really straightforward.

I think it's worth considering.

Um the one thing I spent a lot of time on that I think is is I mean, I don't want to say the whole thing's valuable, but the thing that I am really, I guess, honing in on is that I think is particularly valuable is the discussion around merit pay.

I I like how you've unpacked the why of that.

It is a tool of recruitment, retention, etc.

Um, and I don't think that should apply to us as elected officials.

I I I really think um it's it's we are the governing body, and so things relative to recruitment and retention don't apply to us.

Our recruitment is we're choosing to run for office.

Our retention is do voters re-elect us.

Um, and so that's kind of where I I will be honest.

I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the other pieces.

I'm totally open to whatever the discussion is relative to those, but but I feel very strongly uh in terms of agreement around the merit pay.

I think that that um that that doesn't apply.

Um anyway, I could I could elaborate further, but um then was there was a couple other points I wanted to just share.

I think um you mentioned some concern as as in form of um public trust, you know, and and being fully transparent about the governance, the governance mechanism for for us holding ourselves accountable, and and and that's another piece of why I don't think merit pay is appropriate either.

Like it's the public who holds us accountable, and so I don't think merit pay should come into play because for that reason.

And I did want to clarify one thing.

Um cost of living increases um are would continue, right?

That that elected officials would be eligible for the same cost of living increase as employees.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that there are elected officials that section two of mine elected officials are eligible for forms of compensation, salary set by the council, including the same cost of living adjustment provided that fiscal year to all non-sworn full-time employees, standard health care retirement, and other insurance benefits.

Those are what and that's where you're eliminating full-time because yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah, that's I wanted to make sure I understood that.

And and as in the past, would the intent be um individual elected officials would would indicate we are accepting the COLA or not accepting the COLA, or does that even come into play here?

You can, you can't.

I can put it expressly in there, you can, you can't, but I mean we can do that now, you know, we can accept it or not.

So I don't know if it needs to be in it.

Okay, so but I I'll maybe when I go to rewrite, I'll write something up.

Um I I don't have strong feelings either way.

I just wanted to understand um how you were thinking about that.

Um then let me just see.

I think I have one more question.

Oh, I guess it was more of just a statement.

I I think um when it comes to our finances and building trust and and and transparency from the public.

I think I think it's critical that we that we confirm the message that when we run for office, we are running because we want to serve.

We believe in our community, um, we believe in giving back to our community.

We we accept the terms coming into office if we are elected.

Um and I don't I don't think I think merit pay could actually undermine that messaging around we are we are here to serve, we're not here to compensate ourselves and and climb a career ladder.

So uh for that reason as well.

I feel like this is an appropriate conversation.

Um thinking about um removing merit pay from the conversation.

I think that's I think that's appropriate.

And and I think it's a model that Sandy should embrace is is we do we should not be included in the whole mechanism for recruitment and retention.

We are elected officials, our accountability lies with people.

Ms.

D'Souza.

Thank you.

Um I guess I do have a couple of questions just to make sure that I understand your proposal.

So your proposal really is just contained in the proposed amendments, and you've kind of um summarized what some of those are above.

And so I don't know that I completely understand um are we are you suggesting in this that the council uh and I know maybe we already doing it and it's like implied because we don't say, but um, you talked about expressly saying, but that we're setting the compensation well let's see.

Okay, is this just talking about compensation plan?

And does that include salaries then?

Yes, like full compensation.

This discussion does not talk about salary.

This discussion is just for the benefits that should be for our employees, not for us.

Okay, it but you're saying that the compensation for the mayor and council members shall be set annually in the staffing and compensation plan approved by the city council in the annual budget.

We do that now.

Right.

Kind of.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um but it doesn't take it any farther than that in defining any policy or anything to get to a particular number.

Is that accurate?

I can do that, but this does not put that.

Okay.

Do that.

Okay.

Um I agree with what you've put in here.

I just thinking about it from the standpoint of elected office.

Um this is a choice we made for public service.

You know, this isn't a career move for me.

If it was, I wouldn't be doing it because it's actually taken away my ability in some regards to, you know.

Earn a living.

Earn my yeah, earn a living in my day job because I'm actually really busy with this job that the pay structures, you know, not fully compensatory, comp whatever.

Um anyway, so I don't think that elected officials should be eligible for the elective or merit pay incentive pay spot awards.

Um specifically because like council member Houseman said, those are generally done for um employees who can be um who can be fired also.

Elected officials can't be fired, and so there is no incentive needed for us to do a good job outside of you know, making sure that we are representing our constituency, otherwise, if we choose to run for re-election, we may not be um elected again, right?

And so um those things don't make sense in elected office in my opinion.

Um the vehicle allowances, phone allowances and tuition reimbursements, definitely not tuition reimbursements, you know.

I'm I don't know how that would even apply or be applicable.

You don't need to have any particular career um or a experience or credentials to be an elected official outside of running for office and being uh you know elected.

Um so that makes sense.

The vehicle allowances, phone allowances, and tuition reimbursements, or excuse me, um just the allowances.

I'm gonna say something that might be unpopular in general.

I question whether or not those are needed at all in any of our compensation um with any employee, only because I feel like those are old practices that had a place when um when things were different, and you know, if you had to use your phone to um and you had to pay extra for minutes, you know, some of that made sense.

That doesn't exist anymore, you know.

It's kind of a an all-in-one, and maybe maybe there is still some, but what we give for phone allowances seems to anyway supersede.

So vehicle allowances, same same thing.

Um I think I don't get a vehicle allowance, you know, and I uh I tell you how many miles I put on my car for for this job.

Um and but it I do that knowing what I'm getting into when I run for this office.

And so, you know, I doesn't I agree it doesn't make sense to have some of these other perks, if you will, um, because we aren't while while we may be technically employees in some way, we're not employees, we can't be fired.

We're elected, it's different.

This is public service, not a career choice, in my opinion.

Um the paid time off, that one's kind of interesting again, because usually paid time off, um if you exceed your paid time off in a regular employment situation, you can be um let go from your employer.

That doesn't apply here.

Um, you know, the the full-time position of the mayor is salaried, we are part-time hourly with a set number of hours, regardless of how many number of hours we work, but we can't be fired if we miss, right?

And so that one the way that it's worded, I don't know that it makes total sense, but if the goal is to say, hey, we don't want an elected official to you know be elected and then like never come to work, um, and still receive the pay of uh that the you know there's an attendance policy for us as well, so I think that would be a good thing.

Right, but it's not the same.

It that but it doesn't it's not um I gotcha.

It's only the council, right?

Yeah, yeah so if that's what this is trying to accomplish, then I I don't know that that just addressing that accomplishes it, but I could you know be open to conversation on that.

Apologies.

Um if judges are elected and we're calling this elected, I would be curious about some of that stuff too.

I don't think that it's necessarily fair to just exclude them without having more information.

I got a cough, excuse me.

Um then as far as the pay goes, I do think that we probably do need to address some sort of um broader policy that helps determine what pay is that um staff can rely on when preparing budgets.

Um and that we aren't just making those decisions on the fly every year kind of arbitrarily.

I apologize for my voice right now, but I'm okay.

Um anyway, those are just kind of kind of my statements.

And so yours doesn't address that.

Um I think that we should, if not now, at some point.

Um, but those are my comments.

And to your um the car allowance, we would still be able to give um turn in our receipts for a mileage um reimbursement, that type of thing.

If if we you know it's all it's our option to do that, whether we do or not, you know, that's the that's our choice though.

That's what in my my previous private employer, you know, that there were no car allowances, but if you had work that was over and above your average role, you know, like traveling somewhere for a conference, say, yeah, then you got to expense that.

If you were just in your normal course of work or going here and going there, that wasn't an expensible um thing.

I think there's something in policy that 30 miles or more it may be that I'm not sure.

I thought I read that once, but okay, regardless of kind of Ms.

Stroud.

I just I had a question, and I you know, Ms.

Frederick, at the beginning you mentioned, you know, to keep the judge, you know, separate from this, but then Marcy, you started talking about or elected officials and all this, and I'm like, well, but he is too.

I mean, I I'm trying to to understand, um I and if we keep him in here, we keep him in here, or whomever is occupying that seat at that point.

Um I you know what the what the difference is there.

I mean, that's you know, we're we're setting the standard for elected officials, except for this elected official, and I I'm not sure.

So, you know, Ms.

Nickel, I know this is yours, if if that's um I the state actually carves them out of a lot of laws, so um that pertain to like tier one, tier two, so it's not setting a precedent.

It would be pretty much commonplace to do that.

Is to include which the tier one, tier two, that's the retirement.

And I'm that that's in here, you know, and I'm I'm not yeah, oh no, yeah, no, that question that at all.

Judges are specifically excluded from a lot of things.

Okay, yeah, and that's an issue.

Would you like me to I mean I have an answer to that if you'd like to share it?

Yeah, so uh with uh the justice court judge.

Yeah, so uh with uh the justice court judge um their uh compensation amendments are set statutorily, and I believe don't quote me on this, but I believe what it says is that they receive uh the average increase of all city employees, something along those lines, but that's set by state statute.

We do that same thing for mayor and council right now, but that's not set by state statute, and so we couldn't uh limit the justice court judge since that is set by state statute, that's why it would need to be carved out in this proposal that's talking about the cola increases and getting rid of a merit increase, right?

Because that wouldn't those those wouldn't uh jive with one another.

Right, and that's and I understood you know the cola part of it, it just I you know, part of that, okay.

The merit, you know, that all of that, you know, how that elected position was different from these elected positions, but if it's set apart in state law, I'm then it's there, and it was just more of a clarification, you know, some questions that were brought up, and I'm like, oh, wait a second, that's kind of the same thing, you know, voters determine whether that individual stays in that position or not.

So good points that that was kind of thrown at me today, so I'm thank you, Justin, for uh letting me know about that.

Yeah, thanks for the question or comments.

Thank you for bringing this.

It's interesting.

I um I remembered that we had some kind of council policy on compensation, and so I pulled it out of the policy book, and in reading it, it really was all about employees and why and how we should treat employees and how we should evaluate them and recruitment and attain and retainment, and it just it stepped through all the things that we all agree that we should do.

Um but you're right, that's for employees.

That's for employees that can seek employment elsewhere, and if we don't do the right thing, treat them right, pay them right, we stand the chance of losing them, and that does those kind of things don't imply to elected officials.

Um and as I was reading through it, it was also talking about um salary ranges and identifying we do this every year too.

We establish salary ranges, we look at um, we do a compensation study that compares us to other cities.

We don't do it for ourselves, should we?

Um I I know in our budget book we used to express a salary range for like the mayor, and it disappeared.

Why did it disappear?

It was exceeded.

So there was no there was no purpose to apparently there was no policy to stop an escalation of pay, even when the cap in the budget book that had been adopted was exceeded.

So I do think that that could merit.

I realize that that's not included here.

Um you know, it talks about the reasons that how why we establish a compensation plan.

Um competitiveness in the job market, that's not us, reward for individual performance and growth, it's not us, recognition of the quality of life needs of employees, not us, fairness and equity and practice and perception, administrative policies and procedures based on transparency, consistency, objectivity, recognition of fiscal constraints and taxpayer burden.

That's an interesting one.

Um use of quantifiable objective measures to evaluate the success of the plan.

So yeah, I think we do a really good job of applying those that lens to our employees.

Um I think it's time that we do it for ourselves as well.

Yeah.

Thank you for bringing this.

Oh, Miss Christian.

You go ahead.

Um so parts of this I really like.

I honestly think that um sometimes, like if you've been on the council for a long time, like your rate keeps going up, and so I would be really interested in seeing something where the hourly rate is the same for all elected officials, which it basically is right now, like very similar.

I think our policy is um the average when a new council member comes in, they get the average rate of all the other council members.

So I would really like to set a rate, and then every four years when your election is up, you go back to the beginning rate again.

I mean, we're talking a couple dollars, right?

It's not that and so that way it keeps all of the council like uniform, uniform, and not just the council, but the mayor.

get the average rate of all the other council members so I would really like to set a rate and then every four years when your election is up you go back to the beginning rate again I mean we're talking a couple dollars right it's not that and so that way it keeps all of the council like uniform uniform and not just the council but the mayor I mean we're all getting the same pay it's just the mayor has more hours at this point and so um I think that might be a really fair way to do it and that also keeps like the council's or elected official budget costs down over time um I don't know just a thought on that um the I mean the I like the cola being the increase I know lots of us don't take it but like just whether and whether you want to or not that's fine it's it's a it's a small amount and if you're resetting every like four years it wouldn't matter you know the 20 bucks isn't gonna matter here or there and so um I also two things one I I'm not totally sold on taking away the vehicle allowance from the mayor's position um there's just a lot more travel I think for uh like running around so whether it's a vehicle allowance or it's a car from the fleet like whatever that happens to be I still think that that's a fair expense um and I I don't know if you're open to it but I really if the mayor wants to say anything about this since it does affect her I would like her input as well thank you Miss Christensen I would have um appreciated the chance to talk to you Miss Nickel before this came on the agenda and I did reach out to you as soon as it came to my attention and we had difficulty connecting now it's not about the the mayor's salary today it's about consistency reliability respect for the office and the tools the office demands the mayor's position is a full-time position I don't have um the mayor typically is not gonna have a side income or a side hustle because the job the demands of the job are easily a 70 hour a week job so if you talk about hourly pay and you want to calculate I invite anybody to calculate my hourly pay I think you'd be really surprised and as council members I don't think you'd want to be have an hourly pay commensurate with the mayor but it's one calculation the mayor's pay is set transparently it is always been sent set transparently and there's a lot of misinformation over the course of the past year that uh spread this um sentiment of you know mistrust you want to talk about public trust of the mayor's pay and all elected officials pay in Sandy set by council policy it is uh the the and any increase by council policy is the average of all Sandy employees okay that's the way it's been done as long as I've been in office and I've never received a spot award or a paid day off I don't think I've taken more than five days off of regular business time in my four going on in my fifth year as serving as mayor so I want Katrina to give some feedback about these classifications because even these do not pertain and I don't want to uh create the perception that there's a big draw on public resources because a lot of this stuff is never even applied to my compensation my base salary is set um cost of living and the average increase the council wants to change that that's council's prerogative you do as you see fit but uh that it's the first item out of the gate after so much misinformation last year it does feel political I will say that uh the tools of the job cell phone we're not gonna balance the city budget on a 45 dollar cell phone it's an essential tool for everyone not just executives it is standard compensation I couldn't do my job without mobile devices multiple mobile devices I would need a city phone I would need a city device probably at much greater cost to the taxpayers same with car allowance talk about a car allowance like it's a perk it is a convenience because there's the personal first of all you're putting up your personal vehicle you're putting up your insurance your liability and the city study studied this issue in the past and found it's a lot cheaper to do that than to provide a city vehicle than to provide even mileage reimbursement.

So if you're talking about cost savings to the taxpayers it makes sense to continue those as I said I would have liked to have had the chance to have a discussion off the dais because I do have thoughts on how we can improve the compensation policy but I'd like the chance to discuss that with my colleagues and have it as part of the budget discussion.

So Miss Nickel I invite you set a little time aside to talk to me and I'd like to talk about it further.

Yeah.

I'd love to do that too.

I this is not about pay range.

This is this is solely about retention tools in the compensation plan for employees.

So it's it I'm not even and this is really always awkward to talk about.

So thank you guys for not making it so awkward.

I really appreciate that.

Well, and I think there is value in a city of Sandy's size where the we're representing a city of nearly a hundred thousand people administering a budget of a hundred and eighty-five million dollars to have a range of compensation for elected officials that encourage people to run for office rather than discourage people.

Let's talk about public service.

Indeed, it is.

I think none of us uh would say we're in this for the money.

All of us have professional responsibilities and professional opportunities where we could exceed what we are earning here in public life.

So I think that's a given.

And I don't think that there is an expectation on behalf of the public in Sandy that uh, you know, we we drill down or have an austerity approach.

I think uh Sandy residents spoke in the last election when this was a central issue to the campaign, and and uh the the politics of it, uh it was fully discussed, it's fully vetted, and the people made a choice.

We're not gonna council to election.

Do respect the decision the people have made, respect that the voters are informed on salaries more than I'm not talking about an election.

Can we stick to the item on the agenda?

Uh it is on the agenda.

You can't divorce.

We're not talking about compensation.

That's been explained.

But you were talking about the compensation policy of the council and the pay raise of the council, and that was council.

Fully discussed in the community conversations.

So uh I ask talk to me offline, respect the roles of the responsibilities of the office, give elected officials, put take me out of it.

Whatever feelings you might have about my personal compensation, take me out of it and think about future elected officials and the expectations and attracting people to serve in this very demanding position, my position, your positions, and we want to do our part as a community to encourage people to run so that you don't have to be independently wealthy to run, that you are going to be given a uh salary commensurate with the responsibilities of this office.

All right.

Do you have what you need or there is there more input or you have what you need?

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

So any recommendations on change, just to be clear.

Um maybe look at the the car allowance, get some language if we need to about judges, that type of thing.

Aaron, you didn't have any input.

Uh I'm pretty far on the spectrum in terms of compensation and stuff like that, so we won't get into that.

But yeah, um, just kind of hearing the discussion.

I do think maybe the risk that a vehicle allowance or a cell phone allowance um is more expensive if you're using city resources, it might be worth uh thinking about that.

Um yeah, I I don't know.

I I'm kind of in line with the the policy now that would that's the average merit and the cola increase.

Um but happy to talk talk about it more.

When now's a good time.

No, I'm I'm saying we can have a conversation back and forth where we're where we're talking about it.

I'm gonna kind of process this, but like, yeah, is it I don't know if it's more expensive to give the mayor phones that are city owned or whatever.

I mean, I I get technology from the city.

I think that's more of an expectation, and rather than um on on that shouldn't be an expectation.

Again, like I said at the outset, like I'm I'm probably different from the rest of the council in terms of this.

I want to pay elected officials a lot to come in and do a really good job, not just show up and not answer their phone or whatever part of the time, which uh our mayor doesn't do that.

No, of course, of course not.

Our mayor works maybe more than 70 hours a week, and I think should be compensated uh fully for that.

It's a very hard job.

Um, she's a CEO of the city.

Um and so, yeah, government government pays less than than the private sector, but we should be we should have policies, I think in principle that make it so that, like we said in the last discussion, that people can run for office, that they are compensated.

I mean, committee meetings and all the stuff that we have to do.

Whoever tricked me into thinking this was a part-time job.

Um, it's not.

And so, you know, I I'm very interested in you know what Salt Lake City has done on things.

So they uh a few years ago, I think made it so that council members receive a quarter of the mayor's salary, because that's what they thought was fair.

I'm just saying I think there's a lot to tease out here, a lot to kind of uh figure out information on and how it would go, and I'm happy to continue the conversation.

Okay, this will just come back with the compensation.

It's not talking about pay bans or numbers or anything like that is specific to these things that are really meant for employees.

Yeah, so Ms.

DeSussi had one more comment, right?

I did.

I just wanted to say, you know, I I made some comments early, very specific to to this, and and um listening to um the mayor's thoughts on some of those, other the car allowance, the phone allowance, you know.

I I can't disagree, it doesn't it it makes sense, it's just a matter for me too of creating something that's a little bit more um what did you say uniform, right?

And so you know, like I can absolutely sympathize with the arguments that that the mayor made on you know the need for some of those things, but should that apply to all elected officials then?

Um I will say that I'm in a situation with my car mileage-wise that if it wasn't for this, like I'm gonna be out of my warranty, you know, soon.

And if we are doing city business, then um, and and we're out representing the city, then don't we uh have the same risk that the mayor's describing and in terms of cost potential cost of the city, and so that that raises some good questions.

I think that that should be maybe looked at or considered.

But I think for me, what's important in in reviewing this is creating some uniformity, which is why I I figured if a if you know the judges, but you've explained why that doesn't necessarily work, so I can accept that.

And I also just want to clarify that I don't view this as any one person or one thing.

I think that the election did bring up, like I said, with council member de Kaiser's item, some some conversational items.

I think that there's more that will probably come up, you know, at some point because again, they're valid questions and valid conversations that I think that we could have, and by doing it together, I think we can all create good policy one way or the other.

So okay, thanks.

One more thing.

I just wanted to add some provocative comments here.

Um we're paid for six hours a week.

We don't all of us work four to five times that for sure.

Um if we were to earn a quarter of what the mayor does, that would almost be doubling what we're earning right now.

So six.

Yeah, yeah.

So this is for all elected officials, not just one.

And so um we're I don't hear us asking for more.

So uh anyway.

Thank you.

We're finished.

All right.

We are finally moving on to item number five, Brian McKuston.

This is our public hearing item tonight.

I just want to show it.

We good, okay.

Good evening, everybody.

This is the summer haze annexation.

This is property located at 2935 East Dimpledale Road.

You got the map in front of you highlighting the property.

This is just over five acres.

There are two homes on one piece of property, and they are proposing to be annexed into Sandy City.

Um the council did approve the resolution back in December for the public hearing to be held on today.

Um we're proposing a zone of R 140A, which is similar to what they had in the county, which is R 143.

We're adding the A for animal rights.

The planning commission did hear this last week, and there was a comment made at the Planning Commission that they are working out a title issue, and it has been Sandy City policy that we get a consent when we do an annexation.

And after that comment that was made at the planning commission, um, we learned that the owner of the property is Summer Oaks Farms.

And we're not sure sure who best represents Summer Oaks Farms, but we were under the impression that it was the mother who's lived there on the property for a number of years, and so um the planning commission did review this, and they were forwarding a positive recommendation on the annexation and the zoning of this property, and I believe um the property owner here as well as the other individuals who live in the other the second home on the property are here also.

So happy to answer any questions you have of staff.

Do we have any questions for staff?

Not for staff.

Who is the applicant?

And who are we asking up to speak for the applicant?

Is that clear?

Yeah, so Jeff Summerhayes is the applicant.

Okay.

And Arlene Summerhayes is the one who signed the consent form.

So Jeff is acting on behalf of the and Jeff is here today.

Okay.

All right.

We're happy to hear from Jeff Summerhays, then if Jeff would like to give some comments.

I just want to make a comment that I live right down the street from you.

And this is such a fun memory for me is when you had the little black donkey.

And every time we would drive by to preschool, my kids will yell, donkey.

And we noticed it was coming out less.

Yeah, but it was an amazing memory, and my kids still talk about it.

Fun stuff.

Thank you.

Well, my name is uh I'm an attorney.

I'm Grace Acosta.

I represent the family, the Summer Hayes families actually.

Um Arlene Summerhayes has asked me to come today.

So she is the owner of the property.

We think there might be a small title issue, but it's so minor that we hope that it doesn't prevent our annexation.

The Summerhays family wants this property to be annexed, they are adjacent to Sandy City.

They've they've lived there for 70 years approximately.

Um, 1965.

Yeah, um, lived there a very long time, and we're hoping that the the this small title issue is not gonna cause a hiccup and we will be annexed.

Let me explain to you what the title issue is as we understand it.

Summer Oaks Farm was a farm that was started by Boyd and Arlene Summerhayes.

Boyd has since died in 2019.

Arlene is his his wife, she was a title holder as well with him, and so she inherited the property.

And so we are having a little bit of difficulty in locating um corporate documents for Summer Oaks farm, but the owners would definitely be Arlene Summerhays and Boyd Summerhays.

And so we if we have to figure out a title problem, we believe it's something that we can address very simply among the family, and it should not be anything that would stop the annexation.

And so we're hoping with that small explanation that the council will just grant this.

They started this process over a year ago.

We've been in the process with the city since November.

We don't want to continue to delay.

We think that worst case scenario, we have to just do a small title fix among us, but there shouldn't be a reason to delay the annexation.

And with that, I'll ask or answer any questions that you may have on behalf of the Summer Hayes family.

Any council members have any questions?

Ms.

D'Souza.

Thank you.

Okay, so with the title issue, like I I am I'm not familiar how this may affect um.

I just attended a probate class today for my CE credit as a real estate agent.

So it's kind of interesting.

This is a different theme, but you know, title and trying to understand who has the ability to um make the decisions as it relates to these types of assets.

And so I'm curious.

Can I ask, like our legal, do you have any information?

And if the council were to grant the annexation without having, I don't know, with with the wrong, I don't know, wrong is not the right word, right?

But not the representative.

What does that do?

Um great question.

I would suggest that we hear everybody who has to speak to this, and then we'll know better what the issues are, and then I'd love to answer your question after we've heard all the input, if that makes sense.

Okay.

So I will I was maybe I can anticipate a question that you're having.

Let's say, for example, we cannot prove that Summer Hay Summer Oaks Farm exists.

Well, we have a warranty deed from Boyd and Arlene Summerhays moving the property into Summer Oaks farm.

So that would be a deed that was signed in 2003 and has been on file for whatever, 23 years or whatever.

Um let's say that deed fails.

Well, then it still goes back to be owned by Arlene and Boyd Summerhays.

And Boyd has passed away.

His only survived his surviving spouse was on joint title with him, inherited the title.

So she is the title holder.

So I mean that's the only thing that I can think of that that um is holding us up, and it's really can be fixed within Arlene.

I mean, worst case scenario, she slash she goes and gets an informal probate.

I get her to be elected as his personal representative.

She signs the deed.

That's it.

I mean, like it's not it's not anything super complicated, but we've been working on this for a very long time, and we're hoping to get it done today if we can.

Um that's where we are.

But I don't believe any of that's true.

I do believe that Summer Oaks Farms exists.

We just haven't been able to locate the actual corporate documents.

Arlene remembers doing it with her husband, they were the only owners.

The only other party that's here today is her is their sister and her there and the the summer haze's daughter, who in order to get a benefit, deeded her house to her parents, and they combined those two lots in 2003, and it's been combined ever since.

My my client, the summer haze are not trying to withhold that property from her daughter or his sister.

We're gonna give it back to them.

We were already put that in writing to them.

We're just needed to fix this a little bit.

But we want to be saying right now, they want to we have but in order to get the the daughter's land back to her, we will have to subdivide.

And we're trying to slightly think it'd be easier to subdivide under Sandy than it would be under the county.

Does that make sense because they combine the properties?

We want to separate them again, and so annexation makes the most sense.

We believe that's the simplest way to have this be taken care of.

And we also don't want to get stuck with granite claim and get drugged out for years and years without being able to separate these properties.

So we think annexation actually works.

Okay, does that make sense what we're trying to do?

It does, it does.

And and I think the heart of my question was more about is there a possibility that this could be contested and how you know, like if we make the decision this decision and go forward, but it's contested after the fact, and like I guess that's the heart of my question.

And if that if it is contested, well then we won't be able to agree to the annexation, like uh ultimately it won't work if that because the right people would not be able to sign the documents.

But right now we've added an application, we're asking you to approve the application, and then the process is gonna continue forward.

It's not like it happens automatically, right?

We still have to go through and do our subdivision requests, divide the park parcels, return the piece of property back to the Oakersons who deeded it to their parents 25 years ago.

This is this is what happens when families do things as opposed to following lawyers from the very beginning.

The lawyer that taught the CE class made a similar comment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So just like just follow the rules, and then it would be easier.

Right.

But but we just we think annexation will make the subdivision simpler, and the subdivision is our ultimate goal so that we can give the oversons back their property.

And that and the ogresons are the ones that are that raise this issue with Summer Oaks farms because I don't have access to the documents that were signed.

We're in the process looking for them, and we've been looking, we haven't been able to identify them right now.

Doesn't mean they don't exist, it's just that you know Arlene's held as Arlene.

She's 90.

So we're just trying to dig through a lot of things.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Any more questions for us?

We want to be transparent as possible.

We hope that this will work.

No, I'm ready with the motion, but we'll wait.

Okay, we have to take public comment.

Are we worried about that?

Well, yeah.

You just asked, is there anybody protesting it?

We haven't heard.

Let's find out if there's if there's no protest, you can go forward.

If there is, then we'll deal with what what those protests are, but I haven't heard yet.

Okay.

Any more questions for staff or the applicant?

Okay.

This is a public hearing.

Um, so we will open this item up to public comment.

I do have one card here, so we'll call up Michael.

Is it Gill or Gile?

Gile, okay.

Sorry about that.

So my name's Michael Giles.

I am an attorney and I represent Heather and uh and Brad Okusen.

There, they if you look at the the plat map that you have in your packet, they they occupy the Ocason subdivision that is on that map.

And uh the history of this is in order to get greenbelt authority or or recognition that the Ogusons transfer that they had a plan with the Summer Hayes to combine that and get greenbelt treatment.

Green belt treatment being you get a property tax benefit.

So they did their property in 2003 to the Summer Hayes, and then immediately went into Summer Oaks Farms.

There's Summer Hays and there's Oaks.

We don't believe there are any documents that exist that incorporate this entity.

That that's the title issue is what is this thing.

All we know is that at the for the Greenbelt application, Summer Oaks Farms was the applicant, and all four of them signed that application.

The Summer Hays and the Oakesons.

So for all infantry, all four of them are part of Summer Oaks Farms.

So we're concerned about the Oakons are concerned about being brought into the annexation, what that means for them.

What improvements are they going to be forced to do on their property?

And they'd like to get this title issue resolved before the annexation is approved or figured it out during this process.

So they'd like this to be tabled.

So while we work out that title issue, and while we work out the whether it's better to do it in the county or the city, if we have to start over the process, or if we can go back to the Oaks and Farms subdivision, that's what we need to figure out.

And that's what they've asked me to come and talk to you about today.

All right, thank you.

Thanks.

All right, I have no other blue cards for this item.

Shall we see Mr.

Frato if anyone online would like to comment on item number five?

Of course, thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh, if you're joining us virtually this evening via Zoom and you'd like to comment on the public hearing this evening listed is item number uh five.

Go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen now.

Call your name in the order in which you raised your hand, and you'll have three minutes.

Madam Chair, I don't see any hands raised.

All right, we'll close public comment.

Oh, madam chair, a hand.

Well, it went up, it went up.

Do you want to it's going up and down?

Uh it's back up.

Okay, we've got Heather Okison.

Heather, I'm gonna allow you to begin speaking.

Please unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes.

Hi, I'm Heather Okison, and I don't know if you're aware, but we have lived here for over 35 years.

And as um a resident here, we have not been told that our property was going to be included in this annexation.

The way I found out about it was to take a look at the sign that was posted, and didn't give us enough time to check out all the things that need to be checked out and have a greater understanding of what that meant for our piece of property.

And I talked to Brian today, and he said that he was going to ask that it be tabled until we got the title figured out, and that's all we're asking is give us the time to table this and figure this out and let us do that as a family and get it so everybody benefits and not just the few that are pushing for this annexation.

And I don't think that's a lot to ask of Sandy City.

And it's not that we oppose annexing, but we'd like to have the choice to to annex our acre that we've lived on for 35 years, and we actually went into Greenbelt to help my parents with their tax issues.

It didn't benefit us, and so I would like you to please consider our part and that we have need more time on this issue.

Thanks.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Family issues are really tough, and um this is difficult, but I think I you know you guys should come together before the annexation happens.

So I'll make a motion to table this item.

I haven't let me close public comment.

Oh, and then bring it back for whatever quest.

So we're gonna close public comment on item number five.

Um so we have a motion to table council.

Is there any discussion or action on the motion?

Madam Chair, that motion didn't receive a second.

Well, I'm asking for one, yeah.

Are you gonna do that?

I'll make a second on the motion.

Okay.

Question just to make sure I'm thinking of this the right way.

Don't all the county, the unincorporated areas need to be annexed into cities in a time frame?

Not necessarily, and granted is a um it's an exemption.

It's a hotly contested issue up there, so it is an issue.

And um, by 2027, but granted is is um so everywhere to granite.

No, granted is doing a uh a study to see if they can function as a independently, and that hasn't been completed yet, although there's some complications that way.

Okay.

Questions, Ms.

D'Souza.

I wanted to circle back to um Lynn to see if he could now give an opinion.

Well, um, this is I'm out of time apparently.

Um, this is an interesting issue because the um uh my understanding, and and it's all I don't have first-hand knowledge, but it's been reported to me that this is all one property.

That property is held in the name of a certain entity that we don't believe is a corporate entity, it's not a corporation or an LLC, it's a DVA of some sort, right?

So the question is uh whether or not the consent that you the request that we received, given the people who signed it, whether or not those are the people who have authority to speak for this entity.

Right?

If yes, then you can go forward.

If not, then you don't have a valid consent.

But we don't have something.

I mean, we have we have something uh in the name of I forget what it is.

Summer Summer Oaks, thank you, signed by a person who claimed they had authority, and the city proceeded on that until at the planning commission hearing someone raised that question.

Okay, now it's in question.

So you really have you really have two choices.

You can go forward and vote on this, but if you if we don't have a legal consent, then someone will challenge that and there'll be a dispute, et cetera, et cetera.

Or you can table it and say, you know what, you guys work it out, figure out who's who has authority here.

But since there is one property, you know, this isn't this isn't like three or four properties where you got signatures from three and they can bring along number four without their consent.

There's one property.

The question is do we have assigned consent from that property owner or don't we?

And apparently that's in dispute.

That's kind of what my thinking was with my motion is that we'll create another legal barrier for this family, and I don't want to do that time, money, and that type of thing.

So I don't know if you were okay with both tabling this until I'm sorry.

We just waiting a very long time.

That's all I think.

Yeah, we've just been waiting a very long time.

And we also think that I mean they've known about this for a very long time, and so it just feels like I don't want to get into the I understand.

It's just difficult when they make a comment like the day before the final public hearing with no evidence and just say we believe this, where my client signed the document with complete belief that she had the right to sign it.

It'd be like me coming in and just arguing without any evidence that I I own your house.

We're not the adjudicating body.

I totally understand.

That's what's frustrating to us, and we're just gonna try to put it back on the next agenda because we've been waiting for a very long time for the city.

What if we can't ever come together?

And then I guess that'll just happen in 2027, I guess.

That's another story for another time.

I guess they'll never get their property back.

So that's the problem, it becomes a cycle, a chicken and egg problem, because we can't divide it without this happening.

We we would love to have you.

There's no question about that.

Right?

We would love to have you.

If there's some question amongst the property owners as to whether the subdivision would be best to happen in a county or in Sandy, you guys get to make those decisions, and it sounds like there's a dispute, and we'd love to see you back quickly, which would mean you've resolved all of this.

So please get back on our agenda as quickly as you can.

Thank you.

And motioning to table actually speeds up the process for you.

Perfect.

So thank you.

We appreciate that.

Thank you.

Madam Chair.

Just for the sake of clarity, you've already held the public hearing.

You don't you're not undoing anything, you're just stopping where it where it is.

And as soon as this issue gets resolved, they can bring it back and you can tee it up for the exactly right.

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

We'll get you right back on here and hope to see you all again soon.

Would you guys like to have my mom come?

I don't think that's necessary.

I know your mommy will.

I know.

No, she's sweet, but I don't think that's necessary.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, we I know.

Miss Housman.

I just want to clarify something I thought I heard, but I didn't hear it actually.

It was indicated that you said you were going to ask for us to table, but in your presentation, unless I missed that.

You did not actually ask us to table.

Yeah, there's been a lot of discussion on this today.

And so um, you know, we've had we had discussions earlier this morning where we thought it might be best to table it.

But then talking with uh our legal department, it's best just to lay out what happened, bring up the comment that was made at the planning commission and let the council decide.

Okay.

Thank you for clarifying.

That's all I had.

Okay.

Ms.

DeSouza.

Thank you.

I before you leave.

I just generally I just want to say that I I agree that we should have clarity on who legally represents the property and you know, can enter into this annexation um request or whatnot.

But my question is what what hardship would you face, you know, like w what is the reason that you're really pushing for this to be done.

I'm just curious.

And I I don't know that that will change my vote, but if you'd like to help me understand the situation and why waiting is problematic.

We believe that the uh subdivision will be faster going through the same city.

We believe that we'll be able to separate the two parcels, which ironically is what they want.

They want their parcels separated from ours.

We think it'll be faster if we annex.

Because if we wait, we'll get stuck with the county and we'll get stuck with granite.

And if they continue down that path, then that could take years.

So it might be actually years before they get their parcel out of our parcel, which is what they want.

That's why I don't understand the objection.

It seems like it'd be faster for us just to get annexed, subdivide, they get their parcel, and then my client can do what she wants with her parcel.

Exactly.

We're just worried that we'll get drug into this with granite.

Well, and hopefully the title issue is really quick and easy, and you can come back quickly.

So that's that's the hope.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we're uh there's no more discussion.

Are we ready for a vote?

A person that's has a stake in the property that's here that is would like to speak.

I don't know if that's proper or what.

This is well, um, this is all I don't know.

This is public comment though, though.

You did close the public comment.

The question that was brought up uh when we requ uh suggested that we weren't interested interested in being an annex, the attorney Miss Acosta sent me a letter that said uh the primary reason for moving into Sandy was that the back taxes from the green belt would be taken away.

Now it'd be nice if she could tell us who told her that.

She said that the hundred thousand dollars that that uh she intimated that if I oppose this, then that would be my problem to pay that those back taxes.

I don't I don't think there's any rule that says if we move out of Greenbelt into Sandy that someone's gonna eat the back taxes for five years, and so okay Mr.

Summer to work out yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that by tabling it, it gives you the time and the flexibility to come back quickly when you guys resolve this.

Hopefully be to before 2027.

Madam Chair.

Uh could we get Mr.

Summers Hages Mr.

Summerhay's first name so we can include in the minutes for the record?

Jeff.

Thank you.

This is Brad Okison.

Thank you.

Okay.

We're ready for a vote.

Thank you, madam chair.

Ms.

Nickel, yes.

And this vote is to table this item.

Yes.

Ms.

Sharkey.

Yes.

Ms.

Christianson?

Yes.

Ms.

DeSusa.

Yes.

Mr.

DeKaiser.

Yes.

Ms.

Stroud?

Yes.

Ms.

Houseman.

Yes.

Madam Chair, that motion carried seven to zero.

Thank you all for coming.

We hope we will see you again soon.

Do are people looking for a short break?

Yeah.

Okay.

Five minutes.

Can we do it super fast?

Yeah.

Sorry.

Recording stopped.

I have to already stop.

Yeah, I don't know.

I didn't know I was going to use the other.

All right.

Resuming the council meeting, we're on item number seven.

Brian Kelly.

Hi, good evening, council.

So we are continuing our discussion on the purchase of the Arbor building.

And what I like to do tonight is talk about the parameters resolution for the financing plan for that purchase.

What I want to just start out with is just to remind the public, this is a continuing discussion we've had, but maybe the public hasn't been part of it all.

But we uh have under contract the Arbor building, the due diligence period has been extended to February 19th.

And we asked for an extension on the closing period into April.

That was countered from the seller that if we were to do that, there would be an additional charge of 150,000.

So we have not responded to that counter.

So what we do have here is we have a track of the real estate purchase.

We're still in the due diligence period till the 19th of February, but in order to meet the existing closing date on March 2nd, we need to kind of get the financing track going at the same time.

So the two tracks are going concurrently.

Um you still have the authority to revoke this this parameters resolution in the future if you approve it tonight.

It does not bind you to doing issuing the bonds.

In fact, in uh section 10, it says that the city reserves the right to uh not issue the bonds at any time.

So this is just allowing uh you setting parameters for us to move forward with the financing, and the plan that's contemplated here, just maybe for the public that hasn't been part of the discussion, is this authorizes issuance of up to $8 million in bonds.

Um the other part of the plan, the purchase price for the building is 12 million.

So the RDA is making a contribution of cash equity for the remaining portion.

We have some reserve funds that are included for tenant improvements and for capital projects include, and then there's some closing costs.

So the total borrowed amount that we're contemplating is 7.3 million.

The parameters is set at 8 million, so we're pretty close to that.

If if you did want flexibility higher than eight, you would need to adjust that or amend that tonight if you wanted to for any other reason.

Um this parameters resolution sets a hearing date for a public hearing on February 10th.

Um, so it'll come back at that time if you if we continue on for public comment that night.

It also sets a contestability period that we would um last for 30 days, and we have the resolution on file at the city recorder's office, and anyone can contest the issuance of the bonds for a 30-day period.

Starting when, Brian?

Um, we would start that this week.

So if you authorize this tonight, if you this is a voting item.

So if you approve it tonight, we would get to work tomorrow to note um issue the notice on the public notices website, which would start the clock ticking on that 30 days, and it it would set the notice would identify the public hearing date on February 10th.

Um it also the sets the parameters for the interest rates that we've worked with Jason Birmingham at the LRB financial advisors at what an appropriate rate would be.

We're still contemplating doing a direct placement with the regional or national bank, so we would be soliciting bids from banking institutions to place these bonds.

And we would if everything falls in order and we finish the due diligence period, come uh February 17th is the last regular city council meeting before the 19th.

That's a Thursday.

So if you still give us the go-ahead on on that night of the 17th that you want to continue with the purchase, we would anticipate closing on this on February 26th, which is a Thursday.

That would give us two days before the following Mondays, March 2nd when we want to close on the real estate transaction.

So this would give us the funding a couple days ahead of that time, so it would make for a kind of a seamless closing on the transaction.

Um questions on that.

I think I've hit all the highlights of the resolution, but um let me know if you have any questions.

Ms.

D'Souza.

Thank you.

So in this parameters resolution, I just want to clarify one point for myself.

So on the on the 17th meeting in February, is can I expect this to come back or is does the council have to initiate action to reconfirm that we're good to go, or if like we say nothing, then it just goes if you say nothing, we have the authority with this to move.

With this, okay.

I just want to make sure.

So I'm not expecting we aren't expecting you to bring anything back on the 17th with regard to this bond parameters resolution.

Correct.

Okay.

And this author also sets uh in conjunction with LRB financial advisors, it designates officers that you give authority to move forward, which includes the mayor, the council, any two of the following the mayor, the council chair, myself, and the deputy finance director.

So if you authorize it, it moves forward.

You we don't have to bring it back, but you have the right to put it on an agenda item and do a motion to cancel it if you'd like to remove that authority at any time.

Okay, that was anti question.

I just have a question on the bond parameters.

Is it callable?

Um yes, it is.

Yeah, that's one of the main reasons.

The flexibility is a key advantage of doing a direct placement, so it's called no call provision.

Okay.

So it can be callable at any time.

Um I think you asked last time, can we do a principal only payment?

I I checked on that.

Yes, we can.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Ms.

Christiansen.

Does when you're talking the amounts, um, the capital improvements for the Arbor building?

Yes.

Any capital improvements for the council chambers?

No, we have not included that in here.

I know that was an idea that I threw out as a possibility, but I really like that idea.

Yeah, so if you want to, you can amend the parameters to allow that.

Like this would allow us to go up to eight million, so you would have um you know over 500,000 available.

But if you wanted a million, we would need to probably I would recommend we increase the parameters to eight and a half million.

I'm very open to that, you guys.

We looked at the numbers before, and it doesn't change the payments significantly.

Anyone else interested in that?

Yes.

Even with that agrees, yes.

I retrieved I that would be my ask.

So if we did do that right now, and we get through a little bit more because there's still some more due diligence do another motion in a future meeting and say we don't want you to do that.

All the way up through the 17th.

Madam Chair.

Uh Mr.

Larson has his hand raised.

Um he might have some comments on that if you'd like to call on him.

Yes.

Hello, madam chair.

This is Randy Larson.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Just wanted Brian's right on track.

I just wanted to note that if we went to eight and a half million and we expanded the project from being the Arbor building to capital improvements to the chambers, we should just amend the project area.

So if if there was an amending motion, it should increase the par amount and it should amend the project to include uh the the council chamber improvement would it affect the RDA funding at all?

No, no, okay.

We would just use the RDA funding for the uh Arbor building.

Dustin, how much money do we already have set aside for the council change?

Isn't it a few hundred?

I don't have the exact one.

I think it's 335,000.

335.

Brian has the exact number.

So 99.

So I mean, I could be off a little bit, but I think that's if we were to go in that direction.

I mean, the eight million right now, the estimate the debt as of last week's presentation was seven million three hundred and seventy-five thousand.

So going to eight with what we have and what we would gain should give us enough money to do that.

Yeah, if you wanted just a little extra cushion in the parameters, we could just go nine million even.

And then we have to do it.

It's not that we would actually issue them for that, but it just you wouldn't have to worry about it.

I think she was trying to stick it at eight million.

Yeah, just jumped into nine.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Madam Chair.

Madam Chair.

Just remember, all you're doing is setting the the max that you could do tonight.

See, okay.

And this is the money.

Because I was thinking you know, Brian said, okay, it's set at eight, which I knew was too much.

And Brian's, you could go more, and then I'm thinking, wait, wait, when we went for out to sell it, it would be 7.3, and now we're talking about nine.

You guys are scaring me.

So hey Brian, I just have a couple of questions about just differing numbers that are in here.

Um, like yeah, the interest rate is higher than what I had presented before.

I don't know if that's well.

Six and a half percent in the resolution.

It would that's that's just um to give the flexibility because what we've given you up to now is indicative rates, which are kind of what we're seeing from the market, but there's always interest rate risk.

You can't lock them in.

So until we go to price them, we need to set the parameters high enough in case the market changes before we go.

So last week we were talking 5.35.

The schedule we're looking at is 5.59.

The resolution allows up to 6.5.

That's all you're doing is trying to do that.

Yeah, I think and talking with Jason from LRB today.

We're we our best guess today is that it's gonna be between 5.35 and probably 5.75.

But when we go to market, there could be a scenario where a bank comes in and and they want to do a variable rate and let you re set it.

We just in talking with he, you know, he recommends that we allow that in case they have an attractive proposal that would include some type of variable rate.

But I think that just allows them to shop the rate, which is good for us.

It is we'll definitely get the best rates we can.

Shopping the rate is fine.

I just wanted to make sure all these different numbers.

Well, what were we account accounting for there?

And somebody was noticing that the numbers were changing.

Just wanted to let you know.

Yeah.

Um this is very typical of what we do when we uh any parameters resolution we've done.

So I go down what other questions.

Uh Mr.

Larson has his hand raised again.

Maybe we could just invite him to speak as needed.

Randy, go ahead.

Thanks, just want to be careful.

I I wanted to note that six and a half percent.

State law requires that we have a maximum maturity to cover every one of the bonds.

In other words, your year one maturing bond will have a lower interest rate than your year 20 bond.

And in the average, Brian's correct, 5.35 to 5.75.

But if we had a six and a half on that very last maturity, we would need that parameter in here to be able to cover it.

So I just wanted to give that color.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

No, it's a voting item, so we have to.

So um, I'm gonna take public comment on this item.

I have no blue cards on this.

Um Mr.

Fratto, let's invite the online participants to provide public comment if they'd like.

Of course, thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh, if you're joining us virtually this evening and you'd like to comment on item number seven on tonight's agenda, go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen.

I'll call your name in the order in which you raise your hand, and you'll have three minutes.

Madam Chair, uh Steve Van Marin has his hand raised.

Steve, I'm gonna allow you to begin speaking.

Please remember to unmute yourself, and you'll have three minutes.

Thank you, Dustin.

Council, Steve Van Marin, resident of Draper.

Um I'm I'm not happy how quickly this came up to the public notice.

I don't know how much notice you guys have had on this.

I'm concerned that you're taking a lot of risk.

You may lose tenants and have to pay more.

Um you're expected because you're not gonna have tenant revenue.

That's a big risk to me.

Uh it wouldn't be as big a risk if the city had a policy of collecting rent from every tenant in their buildings.

Uh we're sitting in city hall would pay a certain amount towards future needs or whatever, uh R and R or new new acquisition.

But if you just move them in there and don't charge the city for it, you're putting a lot of risk of loss of tenants on their well.

But it just seems like too little notice.

There's not been any prior discussion of the need for additional office space that I've heard about.

So I'm concerned.

Uh I'm sorry, thank you.

Thank you.

Not seeing any other raised hands, madam chair.

All right, well, close public comment on item number seven.

Bring it back to the council.

Do you want to make a motion?

Miss Christensen.

Um, I'd like to make a motion to approve resolution 26-05 C with the amendment of adjusting the ceiling to $8.5 million and to increasing the project area to include I don't know how to city council chambers.

Second I just have a question.

What is in capital projects to complete the council chambers?

How much money?

335 and what is the estimated that we need about a million.

I would for a friendly amendment to do it at nine million, but I I think the amount might be a little bit over a million for the chambers, but it's you know I'm sorry.

Yeah, I'm really uncomfortable with that.

I uh not only are we almost there, but we don't have to do it right away, and we can we can add some more money into this too, and there'll be revenue that comes in through the lease that will produce some additional cash flow for that as well.

So I'd rather make up the deficit there.

I'm fine with accepting the friendly amendment personally, so I I'm fine with that.

Alison, are you okay?

I'm fine with it.

Yes.

Yes, discussion.

Ms.

D'Souza.

Freaking out over there.

Thank you.

Okay.

So the public comment from Mr.

Van Marin, you know, I I definitely feel similarly in some ways.

There has been a little bit more discussion in appropriate venues.

Um, but yes, there's a little bit of a timetable problem with the real estate transaction and our inability to get an extension on the closing date, and so in order to make everything potentially work and not lose our earnest money, um, there's this, there is a an accelerated time frame, a time schedule, but we still have some due diligence to do, which is why being able to come back and potentially pull the plug on this whole thing by the set you know before the 17th is important.

Um so to my council colleagues, you know.

I feel I feel apprehension uh at at this for some of the reasons that were stated.

Um, with the the tenant revenue that we are receiving is the only reason that I'm even remotely entertaining this.

If the city were to come and say we have this need and we're gonna buy this building for 12 million dollars and fund it yourselves, I I'd be a no.

And so I've I've said this before, I'm gonna say it again.

I think everybody's aware, but I'm gonna make it really clear.

Um, I uh the financial aspect of that building and the um and the tenant revenue is material to my decision tonight, and so I in order for me to end up on a yes and not pull this plug, then I need guarantees in some way from the administration that the council will be involved, and you know, not that we are the only, but involved with the administration in who what tenants go in there, how much and how much space they occupy at all times until that bond is paid off.

Um, I think that that's important for us to be able to because I recognize that it's um an administrative function to uh move administrative employees around, but because this particular building has a financial impact and stake, and some decisions can affect the um rent aspect of it and and how much space gets used versus how much um revenue we're gonna have to give up and in leases or lease revenue.

I think it's important that the council be involved in those discussions and that we the council and the administration come to an agreement before um the administration just goes and makes changes to who's in there and how much space is occupied because any change in that a change is the financial equation.

Um so that's that's where I'm at.

I just wanted to put that out to everybody else, and I am trying to work through how that works or how that makes sense, and I I hope that the administration, you know, doesn't feel that that is like intended in an in a negative way, just as an assurance that uh we can work together on this particular project because I do feel it's different than any other project we've done because of the um tenant revenue.

Okay, that's all thanks.

Christensen.

And I I mean Brian's pretty conservative guy.

Shane's a pretty conservative guy.

Dustin's a pretty conservative guy.

They've I've talked to most of them about this, all of them about this, and if we don't need the full amount, they're not gonna borrow the full amount, right?

Like there they know pretty solidly what we need to do the chambers with, and we aren't going, I don't I honestly don't believe we're gonna need all nine million dollars.

I don't, and so but I totally agree with you, Brooke, like about the rental tenants are the reason that this is an okay proposition for me as well.

Who she let's do counsel first, Ms.

Nickel.

Okay, I'm gonna ask Tracy if there's some way that we can encapsulate that Brooke's thoughts into the motion here.

Here's maybe my answer to that.

I I think that I appreciate Brooke mentioning that it's staffing or how we where we put professional staff, that's clearly administrative function, right?

If the council or the RDA board wishes to engage in some sort of narrative that will make you feel better about how the administration is gonna staff that I don't know that a motion tying uh I don't know that you'd want that here, right?

Like that might be better in uh some other forum, perhaps.

Um I don't know that you want, and and Randy might not want that here either.

Um the reason I say that is because bondholders we're making certain commitments to bondholders, right?

And we have to be careful about how we make those commitments, and we don't want them to be concerned uh about any aspect of how the bond's going to work, right?

And so look, if if there's an instrument that we could negotiate with the administration on a couple of these details, and they voluntarily and the mayor and her staff agrees to voluntarily engage in that process.

Perhaps there's a mechanism that might be better, I think.

And that could be some sort of agreement with the RDA, um, and perhaps the city that talks about look what you know that we don't necessarily see the police in this building because it could detract from certain types of tenants who want to be in that building.

And I've had conversations with Shane about this issue because a couple of you've asked me to talk to him about it, and the assurances that he's given me and the plans of the administration make me feel really comfortable.

Okay, you know, um, in fact, every conversation I have with Shane makes me feel really comfortable about this whole deal.

So um perhaps if you really are want to do that, um, let's talk about it, but maybe not on this issue tonight.

My sense of it is if you I think you should just pass this tonight, and then we work with the administration on those questions.

Do you think it could be resolved by the dates that are in the contract?

Okay, Brooke, does that give you any more assurance or make you yes?

Um go ahead, Alison.

What if we put it in the ILA with the RDA again?

We have to administration would have to agree to voluntarily um you know give up some of their authority, uh, the administration's authority, the mayor's authority, in order to do that.

Is that possible?

Yes, will the mayor agree to that?

I don't know.

Um I don't know that we ought to negotiate that tonight, but if you want to task me with chatting with Shane and uh about it, I'd be happy to do that.

I suppose that very interesting idea.

I kind of like it.

We are yeah, I just I don't know what the right way to do it.

I think that's a very interesting thing to explore and quickly running my head through it.

That seems like it may be the right kind of thing, but I just wanted to convey, and and I I didn't I don't want to say that you know I I think that the administration is gonna be combative at all.

I just wanted to be able to put that out there in the public since we're talking about you know um this bond parameters resolution and what that might mean.

And so anyway, I I just wanted to get that out there.

So let me just say this.

Uh remember, this is just the parameters resolution.

If you don't feel comfortable with what the plan is, and the administration doesn't engage in a certain dialogue with you to make you feel ultimately comfortable, then you don't issue the bonds, and that is clearly 100% your decision in your wheelhouse.

Um, I've had really great conversations with Shane about this, just so you know.

Brooks asked me to talk to Shane about this a couple of times, which I've done.

And um I think that I think that you can get there.

I I I'm actually pretty really optimistic about it.

I think you should do it for what it's worth.

Um, but it's clear to me that you need something more than a trust us.

Okay.

So we'll talk and Lynn and Shane can help figure out what sort of instrument we can use in order to make you feel comfortable.

We've done this kind of thing before, remember?

We earlier tonight, it seems like it was three meetings ago, but earlier tonight we were reviewing uh kind of a memorandum of understanding that you didn't necessarily have any authority to engage in, but we just sort of made it happen as a condition of improv of approvals, right?

So um we'll engage in that conversation, and I think you know, you know, the administration's on notice that they got to figure out a mechanism or some sort of instrument to make you feel good about us we can do it.

Because look, I I think we should do it, and I I it's pretty clear to me that you're gonna be happy with the plan that they're proposing, but what you're concerned about is is the gotcha or trust us.

Um and if if the trust just isn't there, then we'll figure something out and make it work.

I just want to also say to you, I I don't want it to be specific with this administration and this council.

This is a 20-year bond, right?

And so this will exceed our times, both you know, in this seat and in that seat, and it's it's really I just want to make sure that it's clear to everybody that this isn't about you know this council or this administration, but just what is good policy in this case that gives flexibility to the budgetary authority and you know the intent behind the decision.

That was it.

Well, if if we the administration says we're gonna put some money in, say, to the to the you know, our old the old third district building out front, you know, it's our courthouse, and we're gonna put make a justice center and put the police there.

They're not gonna in three years say, well, we're just kidding about that.

We want to move them into this other building now, right?

Like, and what I'm hearing is you want to have some assurances on how the hell that'll go.

Well, we'll we'll work that out.

Because I I mean we this is really important not to lose this deal, right?

So we can work it out.

They recognize that um, you know, I too just want to show sensitivity to the comments that Mr.

Van Maren made.

This is very fast.

This is too fast.

I mean, we are up against a deadline and now some penalties thrown in there, and um I think it's not it it's not the pace at which I would like to go through this process.

Um so I want to show sensitivity.

Have we had a discussion on it?

We had a pretty robust discussion on it.

Was it last week?

Um, but I I mean I have to agree with his comment.

It is it is really fast and hasn't had a lot of public hearing.

I mean, we will have a public hearing scheduled on February 10th as well, and you know I actually didn't think about the fact that there would be no further council vote, but we could schedule one if you guys want one, a final vote before the deadline to make sure that everybody's good to go and not just in the absence of an objection, everything's happening.

So you can let me know.

I mean, I can do that as a portion of agenda planning.

Um Mr.

Pace, you wanted to add something.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

I believe the tie is already there.

Okay, this is a hybrid project.

Five million of the money is coming from the RDA.

You are the RDA board.

You will have to make a motion as the RDA board approving that five million dollars going towards that push purchase.

You can put anything in that motion you'd like as the RDA board.

So if you want to put the things that that council member D'SUSE was talking about, it can go in that motion, and Casey can come to you on a regular basis and report to you how the leases are going and what's going on with those leases and what tenant improvements are having to be done in order to keep tenants there.

Um that that's the way I see it working very easily for the council to be uh tied to it.

Okay, what is the motion that we are voting on?

Okay, motion for whatever number that is to make it nine million and add the council chambers to the project area.

Yeah, we got we got your motion down with a friendly amendment.

I was wondering.

Okay.

Okay, we have a motion and a second.

Roll call vote.

Thank you, madam chair.

Ms.

Christensen, yes, Ms.

Stroud, yes.

Ms.

Nickel, yes.

Ms.

Houseman, yes.

Ms.

Sharkey, no.

Ms.

DeSouza, yes.

Mr.

DeKeiser.

Yes.

Madam Chair, that motion carried six to one.

Okay.

All right.

Moving on to agenda item number eight.

This is a council item from Casey.

So we'll have two council items and one RDA meeting.

But first two council items.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, I'll be pretty quick on the next two items.

This item specifically was discussed uh in last week's um RDA meeting, but to be brief for the public.

This is a resolution that has to do with an interlocal agreement between the city and the RDA for the sale of approximately one acre of property uh adjacent to America First Build.

And I'm happy to entertain any additional questions if you have at this time.

If not, I'm you know just looking for uh an approval of the resolution.

Any council questions for Casey?

All right, this is a voting item.

I have no blue cards for this.

Let's invite the public, Dustin, see if there are any online comments.

Thank you, madam chair.