So we have a reason to stop traffic.

Yeah.

It's it is kind of awkward if you put a signal up there and black it out and people all go, what's when?

What why is it not working?

Yeah.

So and hopefully that'll bring a developer in.

Yeah.

You know, once we get that improved, then it's like we're ready to go.

Yeah.

Anybody have any objection to this one?

All right.

I'm just going to move that to the consent agenda too.

Now we have item D, which is public works items.

We have one proposed amendment to Syracuse Municipal Code, Section 4.15 and 4.25 pertaining to water meter meters, proposed engineering standards updates related to water meters and proposed policy related for existing meters.

Yeah.

Robert, if you come forward and share with us just a little bit of insight as to why this is important.

Yeah.

So when a new lot is built, the floor lines are all stubbed to the center lot, and then and then the house gets built, they build the driveway.

And sometimes the water meter ends up right where they want to put a driveway.

And generally they are to about the center of the lot.

Anyway, um, what we don't want is for the driveway to be built around the water meter and have it built around concrete.

Couple of reasons why, mainly for serviceability, if we've got to get into it, dig around it.

It's going to take us longer to get to it, especially if there's an emergency urgent situation.

Also, um, it's harder to determine if there's a leak.

So if there's a slower leak, it may just leak underneath the concrete, create a big hole under the concrete, and it'll only take a moment of time before a truck drives over it and collapses.

So uh it is better to not have them encased in concrete.

Um the so that the proposal on the ordinance reflects language that um could be considered to be changed for city code to uh you know to improve that situation.

Also, the engineering standards uh would supports it with a note that was added to the drawings for both the culinary and the secondary.

And then the policy would be if there's already an existing situation where there's a meter in concrete and we have to get in there and work on it.

Uh we're not going to put concrete back in because it's just bad practice.

So that's the policy just allows us to work in there.

We would put it back, you know, in good shape, whether it's uh gravel.

We try to match best as we could with what's kind of around that area.

So whether it's gravel or um grass or mulch or um uh even brick pavers, you know, something something.

So we'd certainly uh try to work if that's good with residents who might be concerned about it as well.

But this allows us to do that.

So if it's so Robert, if it's in the driveway approach already, there's no required requirement to move it.

But if it needs maintenance, you would remove the concrete around it and then replace it with pavers or something.

Yes, yeah, okay, but they would not be allowed to put concrete back, right?

Right.

That could be in the middle of the driveway.

Uh generally they are.

We've only seen just recently one come across where they didn't want to move it.

Um, but we've always had them move it before we accept uh the home for occupancy.

Um they grumble, especially if they've already poured the concrete, because then they got to rip up the concrete and move it.

But we just tell them that's our standard is we can't put them in the driveway.

Um I don't know of any right now, unless say, like unless someone has widened their driveway for an RV pad and we're not really aware of that.

That's a possibility.

One of the good things about having it in our standards is if a developer is smart, they read through that and they don't do something because that's kind of our fallback is it's written and you received that when you filed for a permit.

So you should know that these are the rules you have to.

Is there anywhere during our inspection process on a new construction that would catch it before they before they build?

Before they put the driveway in.

It would be caught on the plans for inspecting the plans.

The challenge I think that came up that Robert mentioned is so many people will make a change and not tell anybody.

And so they may have poured concrete over it, but that would be why you file for a permit so that we can tell you things not to do before you spend the money.

But we do have to service meters, so there's just no way around that.

Is this forward looking or is this retroactive as well?

Uh the ordinance, the city code would be forward looking, the policy is more retroactive.

So if somebody has an existing meter in their driveway, it gets torn up and not replaced.

I just want to make sure yes, yes.

Okay.

How much does that impact the the driveway?

You know it's meters aren't very big.

Yeah, it would probably only be an opening of like a two foot by two foot section.

Or maybe a three by three depending on paper could be used because it could be pulled up.

Yeah.

And we've already done some of this with our secondary meter conversions.

Um when they've been in uh like a concrete park strip.

Um, and we haven't had we've had very little complaint with uh with uh how things get put back.

There was one situation where they were okay with the brick papers, and that was just a creative solution that we came up with, and they were great with it.

So it worked.

Okay.

So this would go on for next yeah, for next meeting.

If everybody's okay, uh changes, let me know.

Otherwise, any objections, or I'll put this on consent as well.

Okay.

All right, moving on.

We have some public safety items, updates and discussion to potential changes to the 911 dispatch center.

Brody, I thought you would be.

So uh state of Utah generally has pushed a policy that they want to consolidate the number of dispatch centers in can you know, several counties, they'll have like multiple dispatch centers, and that creates logistical problems when you've got a call that needs to be transferred to another city that uses a different dispatch center, and there's an emergency going on, and so there's sometimes there's some difficulties with that in timeliness.

So um, so that's just sort of some backdrop as to uh to this situation in Davis County.

Um, we have a situation where the county has historically operated this 911 dispatch services for several of the cities, including Syracuse.

And um it appears they're making a decision to uh discontinue that service and merge with Leighton Cities dispatch.

So Leighton has essentially volunteered to step up and invest in in an upgraded dispatch center that would serve multiple cities outside, even outside of Leighton.

And um in doing so, if if our understanding of of the laws that if the county were to discontinue theirs, then there would only be two remaining in the in Davis County, bountiful and leather.

Um Syracuse would then those would be our essentially our options, however, the law also requires your your dispatch center to be contiguous to your city and bountiful is not, so therefore bountiful currently under the law is not an option.

So really we're left with latent city as our as our option.

And um, and they've been they've been good to work with.

They they're they're willing to do the the, you know, they have some capital projects that need to happen and that sort of thing.

Um so that's really where it stands.

Um there is an alternative option that is uh other city has proposed that you know, maybe before we decide to do this, hey, other cities, maybe we should get together and see if a special service district is a better way to do this and essentially convert the county dispatch center into a special service district center.

Um so that that's an alternative proposal that's floating out there.

I honestly don't know if we have the time to actually consider it and do it because the county has indicated that their timeline is by September, we're gonna have to switch.

Um because they're gonna be out.

So there is some timeliness issues there, but philosophically, I think there's two two points of decision for decision making.

Uh and one is the cost, right?

The cost of the service.

What would be better?

A special service district or just go with Layton.

And then the other the other issue is control.

Um, would you have better control over the service in a special service district or better control with Leighton City?

And it just kind of depends on what's more important to the council.

So without doing any kind of like feasibility study on either of these models, um we would, I think most of us would assume that the cost to run one of these is the cost.

And the cost to pay dispatchers is going to be relatively the same.

The cost to buy all the equipment to and technology to run these things is relatively the same.

And so and and to have the space, you know, the capital to have a center is about the same.

So I don't foresee again without doing an actual study.

I don't foresee the costs to be significantly different.

So the real question in my mind is is how important is it to have some sort of control or representation on how the service is provided.

Because under the Leighton model, it is essentially Leighton City's dispatch center, and we're just contracting with them.

So they're gonna they're gonna that they as I put in the memo, there's gonna be advisory groups that we will be a part of.

We will be able to get input.

We'll be able to collaborate with them on issues or concerns that we have.

But at the end of the day, it is the latent city council that controls that service.

Um, in a special service district, you would it's just like the kind of like the sewer district where you know this council would appoint a representative from Syracuse on the board, so you would have more of a direct influence on the service.

Um that's the situation we're in.

It is likely uh based on initial uh forecast of of costs that our costs will probably go up by three or four times what we currently pay the county, because it is um uh understood that the county has historically been subsidizing the actual cost with their general fund, and then they just uh have been charging cities a fee to offset some of the cost to run the service, but it didn't cover it.

And so if we go to Layton City, um they're obviously not going to use their general fund to subsidize our service, we're gonna have to pay the full cost.

Um, so and we're talking on in order of magnitude, we're looking at uh I think we were around 100,000, maybe something like that total, and it'll be close to four is the initial estimate um beginning um probably this next year.

How long?

So the the initial contract with Latent City would be three years with uh 16 or 18 month cancellation notice.

Yes.

So how long would it take to evaluate?

Because it sounds like we're almost going to be forced to do that initially.

There's a short fuse, but then it I mean, how long would it realistically take to evaluate a special service district and those interested?

There's some complexities to that that we've already exposed.

Uh I've reached out to the other mayors that would be contiguous with us that could possibly be a part of this.

The concern um there's really only four of us because uh unless they use a loophole that because the county provides sheriff service, we could also include South Weaver, but that so it would be us, Clinton, West Point, and Sunset are the only ones that are contiguous.

So if that's the case, that means we're splitting amongst four centers, and that's uh at this point.

What I'm being told is at least two of them believe that the cost is overwhelming and they're probably not in with us.

If they're not Costco's, that doesn't make sense, then it we it almost doesn't make any sense, and we could not partner with a city that's not contiguous.

So um that option is going down really quick.

Uh, I can tell you the one that's really interested in this is Clinton is fighting with the legislature to try and say, can you make some kind of change that would allow us to start because the way the current law reads, if uh this goes away, you can't start a new district.

Yeah, so when the county one goes away, you couldn't even.

So we the only way that this would work at all is if the county hangs on long enough for Utah legislature to make a change and it take effect, right?

So it could happen if it happens this year, and I know Clinton's pushing that really hard, but it doesn't look like it has any support.

So if that doesn't get changed, we only have one option.

The really difficult part is we'll have really limited representation on that board because they'll just they can do whatever they want, which is you know, it's not like a we expect them to do anything better.

It's just we don't have that uh safety net.

Well, that's why I'm saying, you know, it sounds like our hand is forced.

Yeah, and you're going that way, but depending on, I mean, if if we get into it a year and everybody's like, oh man, this is not we don't love this, we might find more support for a special service district and have time to evaluate because we're we're tied in for three years.

Yeah, and I feel like if that were the case too, you could there would be enough support to probably affect some legislation in the state to allow the third one to come back.

Yeah, but that's the challenge.

We we have to have that right now.

That's the challenge that's not even a available.

Seems contradictory.

We're limiting our ability for dispatch centers, but we have to increase our uh yeah.

Well uh with the ambulance services that you have to make sure you're getting competitive pricing.

Yeah, that is so maybe there should be a law that we should get competitive pricing on dispatch.

Yeah, yes, yeah.

I mean, you realistically to consider if you want to consider that alternative route of of a special service district, the window right now is probably I would give it like now through maybe the end of April to figure out if it's something you'd want to do.

Even that much because if legislation doesn't change in by February, yeah, we're kind of and there's a lot.

There's logistical issue of what the county is gonna do.

Um, because they they have they've already announced to their dispatchers that they're moving to latent.

Right.

So they're gonna be so so they're they're pretty serious, and um there would have to be like that handoff somehow, though I'm not sure how that would work legally.

Um so it's a tight window if it's what if it's something you'd want to consider.

I don't think I mean there's very little time to like I think you'd have to have all four cities willing to do it, and it doesn't sound like we have the yeah, not at the moment.

And and really it's about the cost because uh the proposal was could we research this enough and see if the operating costs were equal?

And they might be that that part is actually possible, but that does no consideration for all startup costs, yeah.

See, and Leighton's already agreed to put that in place and it's being constructed now.

Okay, so um we don't know if we could get money fast enough to do that.

We certainly don't have it budgeted amongst any of the four cities to build our own.

Yeah, and for uh and you know, on scale, maybe it's worth it, but we do know that Clearfield, who had a dispatch center closed theirs until about two years ago, year and a half ago, they closed theirs and and they are already contracted with Leighton.

Okay, they decided it was too much upkeep and too much maintenance, and the cost wasn't worth it.

And so even though it increased their their annual costs, the maintenance and upkeep and and training, I mean, you have and be competitive with dispatcher wages, all of those things led them to close theirs.

So late's probably the most cost-effective solution anyway, even though it's more, and it's just shocking that the county saying they subsidise this considerably for a long time.

Yeah, so there's there's a lot of headwinds on on this.

I mean, it's the state policy to reduce the number of dispatch.

So right now, where the state stands, they would rather see it go from three to two anyway.

Yeah, um in Davis County.

Is there an existing contract or agreement?

I can tell from the way this was written.

There's not because we've been contracting.

Well, I mean, we could pull up one that's the contract with the county, but we don't have an existing one anywhere else to look at.

Is that what you're talking about with Davis County?

Right.

Well, I mean, it says that what the terms are for the one with Leighton.

Yeah, well, what that would be worth, I don't think that's finally yet.

Yeah, I mean, is that open to discussion or or is it taking their leave?

Yeah, so there's somewhere on the yeah, it it will be an interlocal agreement that the Syracuse City Council will have to vote on uh to contract with uh with Wayton City.

So yeah, you'll see you'll see a draft contract come through and and everything.

And both of our chiefs have had discussion about this.

If not, I don't know how much they're listening to them, but they have been discussing this and kept updated, right?

Yeah, so that's and their their formulas are their proposed formulas, which may change, but their proposed formulas are call volume for fire and number of officers for police.

Is I mean, do we feel like that's a reasonable calculation or of I think to argue that there was a better way to do it, we'd have to figure out how that affects us.

Yeah.

For law enforcement, we've we actually um prefer the per officer because there's so much wiggle room and discretion on what you can call a call for service in law enforcement.

Um, because you have you can do self-initiated stuff, or you can um you know the challenge I have with that more than anything is uh West Point doesn't have its own police department, so essentially we're looping in the county sheriff serves them, and the county sheriff serves uh South Weaver and Fruit Heights, those three cities don't have their own police force.

So they I don't know how this factors in a fair cost, because for a long time, mutual aid has been the majority of their service.

They don't have seems like they should have a minimum I think that that's minimize and then or it's my understanding that their contract with the county does have a certain number of like patrol officers, deputies.

Um it's very split.

And then in the yeah, and then in this in this contract, they would be given like a value that they have the equivalent of our four officers.

So our cost is higher because we have a larger course.

Uh yeah, it'll be based on, yeah, compared to other agencies.

I'm not sure how many Clearfield has, but um, it's probably pretty close.

They might have a little more.

But um yeah, it's based on the size and the number.

Saw in there that then if they overcharge or there's overpayment, then what will they do?

Yeah, so that's uh you we would either get a credit back to us or they would like lump it into the next year so that we don't have to contribute as much the next year.

And what if we go over?

Well, is that it's we're a contract for 400,000.

If we go over, then yeah, I think it depends on the reasons, I think, for the overridge, but if it's something where we everybody needed and it's ongoing cost, they would probably factor it into the following year.

So we would we would end up paying for our share of it the following year.

Before we wrap this up, I'd like to give either of you or both of you a chance if you have anything we left out and you wanted to add in the only thing I would add is the the method of calculation that's used is the same thing Davis County did.

Oh, exactly, same method the way we've been doing that for years.

Um I my personal feeling is that the less dispatch centers, the better.

There's a lot of complications where you're transferring calls between dispatch centers, even though we've worked really hard to have a consolidated uh server that allows the computers to connect a lot quicker.

Uh, there's still some challenges with it.

Um I in either option, I I think you know, if moving to Late City, I don't suspect any challenges.

Um, and when we talk about it was also mentioned about the the governance and how much how much say we have in it, moving to Latin City truly wouldn't be any different than the agreement we had with Dance County as far as we still sat on boards and we still had input what was going on, and and we think it's gonna it would be a good relationship either way, is how I feel.

I would certainly agree with that.

I think from an operational perspective, they're the improvements that are made by having a common operating picture with our officers and our surrounding agencies being dispatched out of the same center is a huge, it's a huge benefit to the officers and the community as well when it comes to the timeliness of response.

Um officers getting help when they need help.

So I think I think it will result in a net improvement in um just operationally for officers, and certainly um I'm familiar with Leighton and they they do an exceptional job with their dispatch center.

So to me, that would be an improvement and service and I decrease.

Yeah, to expand on that just a little bit right now.

We're kind of almost on an island between dispatch centers.

And when we have mutual aid coming to us for fire, or we go to another city, we're constantly changing channels back and forth to try to match up with whatever city we're in.

And so it does become uh a little bit confusing.

There's there's sometimes miscommunication or trying to get people on the same channel can be a little challenging.

So operationally, I agree with him.

It's the less dispatch center, the better.

So we can look into this deeper, but I'll just give you my gut feeling is that a special service district isn't gonna work.

I mean, that I'm just giving you my gut feeling to that.

Is it it every time I try to get more information?

It seems like there's another hurdle.

I mean, I would anticipate it not being more cost effective than going with with Leighton, especially if we've seen another city already fold their own and jump on board with Leighton.

Are with Antelope Island, or do all of those calls for service come to come to our fire department solely?

So that increases our costs to operate, even with the dispatch center.

So hopefully this is why we're working on that agreement with the state.

And I'm I'm hopeful.

Um so well, and maybe Leighton can also look at that when they run their numbers, you know.

Have anyone out there?

That's fair.

Yeah.

But it does sound like uh just for continuity of care that it makes sense to just go forward with Latin.

I'll tell you, my only real worry on the service that Leighton provides now is they have a reputation for doing a really good job, but they don't have anybody else that they have to take care of.

I wonder if there will be a little hiccup when they suddenly take on all the rest of it.

So they need that money.

Maybe they won't.

You know, I did.

I mean, I'm just saying that's the only concern I have, but optimistically, they'll be prepared and it'll be fine.

It sounds like they're gonna need to hire, you know.

Yeah, so they'll have the money now.

All right.

So this is not an action item.

Um, this was just kind of an informative thing.

We wanted to keep you in the loop because there's a lot of discussion going on, and we appreciate your feedback.

If this does become an action item, and certainly if we join it, it eventually will, we'll bring it forward.

So we're just keeping in the loop.

Yeah, as soon as we get the draft contract language from Leighton, uh, we'll bring we'll come back to a board session when we do it.

The county's costing us an extra 300 grand.

Yes.

Yeah, that is kind of what is just for the step.

All right.

So the next item is discussion regarding uh provision of ambulance services responsive to Senate Bill 215 in 2025.

Yep.

Go ahead.

So yeah, uh memo is in the pack.

It is as you know, we've got uh a new law that requires us to put out an RFP to see if anyone else wants to provide ambulance service in Syracuse City other than Syracuse City.

Uh we did that.

Um, and we didn't have any bidders.

So the suggestion here, um, we do have to have a letter of support that goes back to the state and then um draft it.

We have a resolution for you to that you would need to adopt in order for us to continue providing ambulance service within our own city from our own city.

Okay, and I don't know if Chief, if you have anything else you want to do an awesome job.

So that'll just be forward a resolution so that we can complete this process.

And actually, I think it's the best outcome.

So I'll put that on the consent agenda and we'll draft up that resolution.

And if anybody feels like after we've drafted that that you'd like to discuss it, we can pull it off.

Okay.

All right, the next item is a municipal budgeting overview.

Now, this is something that I've been working on this month, and I will tell you what it's intended to be and what it's not intended to be.

There is no numbers that for any budget in this.

What we're trying to do is just give you a heads up and some advance help on some of the things that are talked about during the budget process.

So we are not talking about any actual budget here.

This is just helping you out.

And you know, people always say there's so much to it, there's so craziness.

So this is really just the basics.

There is no wizardry here, but let's uh go forward and talk about this.

So if you could advance that slide.

Uh basics before budgeting.

So before budgeting, I want you to be familiar with some of the terminology that we use, some of the sources of income so that we're familiar with where we get the money, um, vision statements, how they apply, all of this stuff, long-range planning, enterprise funds.

So we're this is just an overview.

Go ahead.

Um, taxes versus fees.

This is a big one.

Uh every council should understand that to the general public, a tax and a fee is really no different.

There are differences, and I've listed them here in the slides, so you can understand that taxes are a mandatory payment that's collected generally once a year.

Fees are voluntary payments, even though if you want the service, you do have to pay.

So fees go for things like um sewer roads.

Uh, you know, the there are fees for these things, and um, you know, basically if you want the service, you do have to pay.

And um, you know, basically, if you want the service, you do have to pay.

Your garbage does not get taken away if you don't pay your garbage fee.

But as far as the general public is concerned, you will hear throughout your entire time serving.

People will say, oh, you're just taxing us when it's a fee, or oh, yeah, more city fees when it's a tax.

It to them, it's kind of interchangeable because that's what it is.

Um, but there is a difference, and you should understand that technically.

Next slide.

Annual expenditures, recurring costs.

So it's really important to understand that a lot of times when we start a budget, there's already things that have been spent by previous budgets and previous councils that go forward in costs.

For example, employees, if we hired them and we incur the cost of them every year as wages.

So there is a lot of our budget, majority of our budget every year is spent by previous decisions.

Uh fund balances and economies of scale.

Sometimes we take these uh fees or these these expenditures that are annual and we maximize them by combining two years' budget.

We do this a lot with things like road projects.

We'll take the money from the previous year and the next year, combine that, get a bigger volume discount because we'll do more road at once.

So some of those things come in a little bit every other year because we're able to uh get more bang for the buck.

So just understand that annual expenditures, there are those two caveats.

One that uh these are things that have a lot of times been set in motion, and anything you bring on new will be brought on, like if we bring on more staff, that's an annual expenditure that continues into the future.

Um, and then the just the economies of scale and how we manage fund balances.

The other thing about fund balances that I wanted to make sure everybody understands is um capital projects take lots of years to build up the funds.

Like if we put in a new water tower, we're gonna be collecting money for years and sometimes years after to pay it back if we didn't have enough money.

So long range planning uh commits annual expenditures for multiple years.

That's what we need to know going into a budget.

All right, next slide.

One-time costs.

So when we talk about certain things, and I put several of the beautification projects on here as slides, uh, because they're kind of fun.

But a lot of these one-time projects, we don't have to worry about them coming back year after year.

We spend the money one time, it's done, and we have that for a lasting thing.

Things like, you know, a lot of these were paid for with grants, but that's one of the things that we can look at that is nice about grants is it takes care of a one-time cost and doesn't commit us to future money.

So understand the difference between those fundamentally and budgeting is a really big deal.

Is it a one-time cost?

Is it an annual expenditure?

Next slide.

These are the sources that we get money from.

And uh Steve put together this pie chart for us, which is great.

Um, it helps you understand that sales tax really is our biggest source of income.

By building more sales tax, that is the number one impact for what we can do to spend and to account for the needs that we have.

Property tax is the next biggest.

A lot of times people have tried to propose in the past that property tax overtakes sales tax, but that's not been true for many, many years in our city.

Um, several of these other things, like impact fees are much smaller.

Licensing permits, people always complain, oh, why do you charge for a license to do this?

They're tiny fees compared to our overall budget, but they're essential to managing uh, you know, those programs and things like that.

So any questions on this one while this slide is up, because this is everything that we do as far as getting income that we can spend on anything.

This is our limitation.

Okay.

Then let's go to the next slide.

Uh, what are the goals of successful budget?

And and you need to know that when we go into a budget, the first thing is to fulfill the mission statements that people voted us to take care of.

So things are like the services that they expect for the fees that they pay and for the property tax that they pay.

And we have to fulfill the things that have previously been voted on.

We have to achieve strategic goals that you set as a city.

So usually before we go into a budget, we will have a discussion, and we'll probably have this next uh work session where we talk about strategic goals.

What are your priorities?

What's the most important?

When we have to make a decision while doing the budget process between A and B, which ones do you want us to lean for towards and why?

Your information helps the staff start the basis and the baseline of that budget.

So we're trying to complete the tasks that we've told everybody we're going to do.

Next slide.

The vision and mission statements.

Now, these haven't changed a lot for several years, but know that this is always on the table.

If you believe that you should always read through these before we do a budget.

If you read through our mission statements that we've used to govern departments and to govern the overall city, govern the overall city.

If you read through that and you say, I just think this is really off base, we should bring that to the table and discuss it.

Because that essentially is the message for all staff.

What are we trying to do?

How are we trying to run the city?

What are we saying is essential?

And what do we need to make sure is affordable?

And what is a stability look like for us?

So keep in mind that before we start on the numbers part, we should talk about the vision.

And if you have any concerns, please bring them forward and we will discuss them as a group.

Okay.

Any questions on the vision statement?

Because it's it's there and we always lead with that.

All right, seeing none, let's move on.

Methodology of budgeting.

I wanted to talk a little bit about this because this comes up from time to time.

People will come to the table and say, I wish we did budgeting differently.

What we do in governments is really a hybrid.

It is not a direct uh method that you're going to learn in textbooks.

I've heard people say before, gee, why don't we just do zero base budgeting, which essentially starts from zero in every category.

We kind of do that, except for previous councils have voted to spend some of our money.

So if you start at zero, that's the first thing in, and there's already something there.

We talk about traditional budgeting.

You know, we don't really we've had talks about, you know, some of the ways that people say, oh, I want to just raise everybody's budget by a percent because we have that.

We don't really do that, but when it comes to employees and wages, we do kind of tech about a cost of living and a percent of what's expected uh for things to grow.

So our budget really is a hybrid because it's long-range planning uh based on the things that we know, and it isn't any, it isn't really true to one academic standard.

And that's what I wanted you to understand.

We are fund-based.

A lot of our money comes from specific funds and can only be used on specific funds.

You need to understand that concept too.

You know, we can't say, oh, let's take parks money and go spend it on streets.

You can't do that.

It's legally, it was collected for one purpose.

It can only be spent on that purpose.

Then there's general fund, which was collected for the general use, can be spent anywhere.

Okay.

Next slide.

The budgeting process.

So traditionally we hold a budget retreat with the council and talk about goals, and we're going to do that in our next work session because it hasn't, every time we've talked about goals, it hasn't changed a lot.

So we're gonna, I'm not gonna try to spend a whole day on this because we haven't needed a whole day for a long time.

Um, there is a budget officer, and that budget officer receives requests from departments for what they need to operate their budgets.

That's the process we're in now.

So, what we've done is we say to all department heads before we come together, what are your needs that are different from last year?

And what, you know, do you still need everything you asked for before?

Do you need anything different?

Those are start uh is the request.

And then we prepare something that we bring out to you and say, okay, these are the requests.

This is how much money we have, and we get to start making the hard decisions with what we spend versus what people would like us to spend.

And so keep in mind that that's the steps that we take.

We usually do spend a whole day going over department by department, every budget, all the requests, and we try to balance that.

Next long range plans.

Our city has done something very unique, and that is that we have had not unique to all cities, but we have a lot of long-range plans, and it really does make a lot of budgeting easier because we plan for big expenditures like capital projects and capital equipment.

We have a long range vehicle replacement plan.

Um, these were brilliant things.

Actually, that I don't know if I can attribute that to Steve or not, but it's been here longer than I have been.

And this was brilliant to say, okay, this is a 20-year vehicle.

So in 20 years, I need to replace that.

And keeping that long map of how many the life cycle of vehicles really does help us balance out capital spending and uh plan for what we need to keep in a fund so that when we have a fire truck that costs more than everything else, um, we have enough money set aside to actually make that perk or purchase, or you know, is you know, it's not the same cost as a police uh car, or it's not the same cost as developing a park.

So these five year plans that we have, we have a five-year park plan, we have a five-year enterprise funding plan, and we have a five-year road replacement plan.

These are brilliant things that help us uh really plan for the future.

And I'm glad that we've expanded the use of these long-range plans.

Did anybody have a question on that one?

Or it it's really been helpful to the city financially because we can see into the future.

Go ahead, next slide.

Tell me again what the five-year enterprise planning is.

That let's go to the next slide because that's what we're next, enterprise funds.

So we have these funds that are capital projects, special service fees, wrap tax, special use fees, class C road funds.

These are enterprise funds.

These are things that we save money for for specific uses, like, for example, RAP tax, that's recreation arts and parks.

We collect that, it can only be spent on recreation, arts and parks.

We tend to align out what you're going to do with those fees years in advance.

So because we have the ability to save those fees, class C road funds.

I mentioned that sometimes we combine multiple years of road funding to get the most bang for the buck.

We can do that with long-range planning, meaning I can hold two years worth of roads to attack a road that's going to cost more than I can, you know, gather in a year, or things like that.

So these special funds, what we call enterprise funds at special revenue, they have very limited uses.

They are set up to collect tax for one thing, and it can only be spent on that one thing.

Special use fee.

We have been we instilled more than I think 15 years ago, a fee for street lights that we have always had to pay for putting street lights across the entire city.

We're almost caught up with that.

That could be retired at some point in the future.

We're not this year, but you know, we're at the point where you could put a special fee, but then it can only be used for that.

So I couldn't say, hey, you know what, we made it, so I'm going to take that fee and repurpose it for something else.

I would have to create a new fee and new fund if I were replacing it and retiring it.

So just to know how the law works and how that works.

Questions on these.

We have several.

They're in the budget.

All right, next slide.

Impact fees.

This is something where the state has put together the several things that we can collect impact fees for.

The purpose of impact fees are that new people to the city pay their fair share.

They pay the impact they're having on the city.

So uh today we have a set number of parks, acres and trails, miles, and we are saying that we have a standard that we expect that much to be available to all people.

So if we bring in a thousand more people, we're not saying that there's just they all have to use the exact same we have.

We have to produce more for the new people in the park so that they have the same amount of park space as everybody that has today.

So that's an impact fee on new development.

Your existing citizens, none of you that have a home today are paying these impact fees.

You pay this when you put something new in the city.

Businesses also pay an impact fee.

Um, public safety is another one.

This is because you are going to have an impact.

Is you have, if we have a thousand more people, we may need a new officer, or we may need to expand our fire department.

Transportation, you have an impact on these roads.

We may have to widen a road for because of the impact, or extend one to the field that you're now building in.

So that's why these are very specific.

The challenge here is that the legislature continues to mess with this formula.

And they have the way the law works, you cannot collect 100% of the impact that you outline on.

They assume that the things that we project in these impact fees won't all happen.

So we never collect a full amount of impact fees.

And true, some of them don't happen, but for the most part, when you're a high growth city like we are, we far exceed the impact fees we're collecting for the impacts on our city.

So you need to know that, and you need to understand that there is laws that limit what we can collect.

And being a fast growing city, it doesn't cover it.

So we're doing our best we can with what we have.

But these are the impact fees that we can collect.

Every five years we review one of them, sometimes two of them, but um they have to be reviewed and they have to be submitted to the state to justify what those expenses are.

When we just did one a couple of, was it last year or the year before on transportation?

When we did it, we said over the next five years and over the next 10 years, we'll install roundabouts because we expect traffic to increase in these areas, or this road would need to be widened.

That's how you plan for it, and then we can collect a percentage based on the growth from new development.

All right.

Next one.

Uh the MBA, the municipal building authority.

What you need to know here, we have to talk about this as a separate entity every year.

The mayor and council are the appointed board for this separate agency.

This is basically what manages capital bonds and leases, uh mostly bonds.

So when we have to borrow money to pay for something, that's what this is.

Uh, we talk about it separately.

It's technically a separate board.

We are all voting members of that board, and then we have to address it every year.

For the most part, if we don't have a new major capital expense, it doesn't change a lot.

We just continue to service the bonds that are paid for here.

But just need to know what that is because most people think, oh, MBA, somebody got a degree at college, great.

Uh no, this is a separate thing.

Okay.

Next CRAs, CDAs, RDAs, EDAs, and PIDs.

So RDAs, CDAs, and CRAs are basically versions of the same thing.

They're redevelopment areas.

These are things that we have to go, Noah and I go on a tour and we get them approved by all the taxing agencies, and we meet with them and explain what our position is, but it's ability to divert some tax to pay for something in that area that will help us economically or uh redevelop an area that's blighted.

Um, we have submitted these.

We have two RDAs.

When I say they're all the same thing, it's because you know, when I started here, they were all RDAs, redevelopment agents areas.

Then they were community development areas because the legislature wanted to change the acronym.

So we have one of those that happened under that era, and they've changed them to CRAs.

So now if we do when it's a community reinvestment area, we have two of those that we've developed.

Um they're all kind of the same.

They're redevelopment.

We get some money from the development that can go back into that area to cover some specific things.

An EDA is a little bit different.

Uh economic development area.

I don't do they still do EDAs.

I don't think they still do.

They're all CRAs.

They're all CRAs now.

So it was a they keep changing the law and name.

And and then they could have a new acronym after the session.

Who knows?

But what you need to know is the money has to stay either in that area or have a direct effect on that area.

So we could widen a road that gets to inside that area to help it develop economically.

But they're very, again, like every other fund, they have very strict rules on how you could spend that money.

And we're going to talk about those every year because we have money from that fund.

And if we can see a way that it helps that area, we want to do that.

Now, a PID is different.

And we just did a PID.

We have one.

It's different because we don't operate it after it's set in place.

It is a separate board that is not this board.

So our PID was turned over to the people who operate businesses in that PID, which uh is the Costco PID.

And basically what we did is we're collecting money from future taxes to pay back the infrastructure.

You will hear a lot about PIDs right now.

There are there's a movement of people trying to say PIDs are a terrible thing and they want them abolished in the state of Utah.

But what they're basing it on is not the way we use the PID, because the way that they're talking about PIDs, there are other PIDs.

There's a couple in Weeber County right now that are set up to where the developer gets that money back to make the development more profitable.

And I can understand why they would object to that, because there is a cost to be a developer.

It should be rolled into the housing.

They're saying in order to make housing cheaper, they're trying to say we're going to take taxes from these people, but it's an increased tax on those people.

In this case, the increased tax will fall on businesses that operate there for the benefit of those businesses.

So really all we're doing is paying for the infrastructure.

What paid for in our PID is the uh sewer expansion, stormwater expansion, road widening, and some trails money and the roundabout that has to be there in order to handle the traffic.

So all of the businesses that will pay into this are directly affected in a positive way.

It makes it possible for them to do more business and be successful.

So just wanted you to understand what those things are.

We probably won't talk about PIDs again, but we will always talk about CRA, CDAs, RDAs.

Okay.

And of which we have six right now, currently active.

Next slide.

Balancing staff requests.

Usually one of the last things we end up doing, and we've handled this a couple of different ways, is we've tried to make sure that we can handle the people that we need to service.

We are primarily a service district.

We're almost always out of money when it comes to this point in time.

So we have to keep in mind it when I first started on the council.

One thing that happened was everybody always leaned towards the emergency services and said, Oh, let's fund those first.

And there was never enough money for everybody else, but the city kept growing.

And we can't not service the extra miles and the extra parks.

They they have to, it takes people to do that too.

So we've tried to balance that.

This is a complete decision from council on where we put the money, but understand these just general principles that you know we don't have to do everything all at once, but we do have to have a balance so that we're we're not shutting down one department uh to keep another alive.

Uh next slide.

Uh budget, this is something I really want to people to catch on to.

Budgeting really is a year-round thing.

We talk about this all year in different ways.

So while we have official budget meetings to talk about ratifying the next budget, every decision we make that has a dollar amount affected or affects our income relates to what our next budget is.

All these council meetings have a budgetary effect on our next budget.

We have to keep it that in mind.

Every time you get a manager's report, you're getting data on our sales tax, whether it's increasing, decreasing your other financial resources that are coming into the city.

All of that data you have to, it's your job to collectively process and kind of keep a feel for how we're going.

We I mean, we are trying to keep that information in your hands, and it is the most difficult thing, probably is to understand how this all balances out.

Is that the last slide or do we have one more?

Okay, that's what I thought.

So again, we're not talking about specific uses today.

I wanted you to be familiar with some of the stuff that goes into the process and some of the terminology.

Because when we get in there, uh it's like every year there are people who talk about things like, oh, why do we pay this fee every year to license an attorney?

Well, because if he's not licensed, he can't be our attorney.

So yes, we pay that every year.

And then we have that throughout all departments.

Things that they have to we have to pay for them to register to be who they are.

Um that's that's part of our budget.

Um, you know, so anyway, any questions?

Are we having a budget retreat then or not?

We will have a budget retreat that is when we get the numbers together for people.

We will have that.

We haven't got it scheduled yet.

By the end of this month, we're supposed to have all the requests here.

And so we probably should talk at this point about a day when you can spend a day, get out your calendars, and we can tentatively look for.

Now, we have done them a lot on either Fridays.

Um before I was here, sometimes they used to do them on a Saturday.

It you tell us if there's a better day, we could do it on a Monday if that was better for everybody.

Is there particularly days that are better?

Are we looking at April?

We're gonna look at March first.

Probably March, late in March.

Is there a day that's better?

Should we continue to look at Fridays?

Fridays are good for me.

Okay.

So uh the There is a Friday the 13th.

There is, and we're not doing it there.

Let's give it.

Is the 20th or the 27th better for anybody or not good for anybody?

I'm out of town on the 20th.

Okay.

Anyone else?

It's great.

Yeah, it's fine.

All right.

Well, let's target March 27th for our budget retreat.

We'll try to have the budget prepared and in your hands in time for everybody to look through that.

And um, it will be requests and it will be tentative, and we'll negotiate things out.

Between now and then we'll have a work session where we will talk about priority uh priorities.

I don't think there's a reason to have a separate day off for that because we haven't needed that much time before for several years because of all of our long-range plans.

Is that okay?

Yeah.

So you anticipate before the 27th.

That we'll have a proposed budget and the needs that the department heads say is needed and kind of an idea where that money's coming from.

Yes.

Roughly.

Yes.

And we'll talk about it on that day, department by department, step by step, fund by fund.

Okay.

That's our tentative plan then.

Thank you.

I hope that was helpful.

For you know, I was trying to get into the stuff, the questions that I asked when I was first doing this and stuff like that.

Okay.

Next on our discussion is discussion for proposed citywide branding guidelines.

And I'm going to invite Kara up, our marketing and communications person.

Let's talk about being on brand.

Want to be on brand.

So we're really making an effort to be more consistent, third look, our fill, our colors, just so that we're more representative and more visible when we're out in the community so people can see it, identify it, and know, okay, this is a city representative, these are city materials, and to also give our internal employees the ability to have templates that they can use to know kind of the boundaries and just you know, set forth a few guidelines along the way.

Any questions about the style guide?

We've gone through, we've made some adjustments to the logo just to make it cleaner.

We've created department logos, um, just provided some, you know, templates that they will be able to access along the way.

And then that way I'm not getting little onesie twosies requests for it.

Can I get this EPS map?

Can I get this?

AI see the city council one in there.

Oh.

Do we need a city council one?

I guess we must.

I'm like, where's my shirt?

Okay.

I was looking.

It's forthcoming.

So soon.

There's a lot of ribbon that wasn't coming out.

Over sight.

We've never had credit.

That's good.

We should do that.

Love logos, very nice.

Uh, procedurally, what we'll do is uh there would be a resolution at the next meeting to adopt to officially adopt this.

Uh there'll be room in the language if there's like minor tweaks that we can just so we don't have to come back every time there's a little you know adjustment to a dimension on a font or whatever uh for minor tweaks.

It would give us room administratively to make those tweaks.

But if anything significant as far as like changing the main colors or the logo or the you know the the look and feel of it, then we would come back to council.

Nice.

Very classy.

Nice, very nice.

Stay classy Syracuse.

On that note, that's okay.

I'm good with that.

So the next thing we're gonna do is talk about council assignments and appointments.

And um, just so you know that there's a couple of things I want to cover on this.

Number one, if you take the assignment, we really need these jobs to be done, which means we're gonna talk about what they really mean and make sure that people assigned can do this.

Now, one thing that we did in the past is um uh I changed this when I came on to try and divide this up so that we had equal balance so that one person wasn't covering all the work and somebody else is not helping out.

So um we put them into classifications so that one person isn't bearing all the load of like at one point we had like somebody covering all the schools.

That's a huge requirement and just overwhelming because there's so many meetings and they happen at the same time.

So you can't be to everything if you're covering all of it.

So the first category that we have is we have a liaison to the different schools that are here in the city.

And what we do with that is you're supposed to reach out to the community council from that school, let them know that you are assigned as a liaison to help them if they need to bring something back to the city.

You're not in a position to commit anything.

So if they say, Oh, can we come and use a park for free?

That's a decision that has to be made somewhere else by all of you.

So you can never commit that, but you do need to let them know that you're a point of contact.

You can help get that back to the city and tell them what's going on.

We have traditionally done uh all of the elementary schools and we have done the Arts Academy as a collective because they now will have four campuses here.

And um, so that's one, and I have been working with them directly because of all of the construction lately.

I'm happy to continue that.

Uh, or if somebody wants to take that on, we can do that too.

I'm not fighting anybody for that.

The high schools you have to be really careful of because the high schools do have a lot of requests.

So make sure that you bring those requests back because that happens.

Uh so but we also have two schools on there I wanted to talk about in general.

So uh Horizon Horizon Junior is technically in West Point, but 60% of their student body is here.

And so I think that we treat that one, it's a new school this year.

I think we should treat that one the same as we do Clearfield High, where about 50% of their student body is here.

So we have a representative that works with them.

And we're gonna have a new school that won't come online until September.

Uh, but that's listed as new school in Syracuse.

That's the one down on 2000.

We don't even have a name for that yet.

I have asked.

And then the other one in question is we have Island View Elementary, which is technically on the edge in West Point, but my understanding is 70% of their student body is actually in uh the bridgeway and the area around Rock Creek Park.

So if the majority of the students are ours, we probably want to reach out and just let them know that we could help if they need that.

But this has 12 assignments, and there's only five of you.

So tell me how uh and the other thing is I I want to go back to my first year.

I played referee a little bit and gave everybody a first choice before anybody got a second choice.

And then the last time we did this, somebody started bullying their way to all their choices.

And I'm I'm gonna go back to giving everybody a first choice.

Shall I begin?

You yes, do you have a first choice?

I do.

I would like Horizon Junior High School.

Okay, that one's Julie.

Syracuse High.

Syracuse High for Andrea.

Bluff Ridge Elementary.

Lough Ridge Elementary.

Brett.

I'll take Sarac Jr.

Syracuse Junior.

Okay, second choice.

Island View Elementary.

Island View, good one.

Um Legacy Junior Legacy Junior, okay.

It is not.

I'll take ClearSid.

Still on the draft board.

I'll take Clearfield High School.

All right.

Brett.

Uh Syracuse Elementary.

Syracuse Elementary across the street.

What should we give to Abe who didn't show up tonight?

All the remaining.

I'm okay to still stick with SAA because that is a little bit of a complicated one where they have four campuses and one administrator.

So I'll take that one.

That takes that off the board.

So what we have left is we don't have any juniors.

We have the new school in September.

I'll take that one because that's going to be most of the year off.

And so that won't be too hard.

And that leaves us with Bluff and Buffalo Point.

Bluff point, uh yeah, Buffalo Point and Hook.

Those two go to Abe.

I'll teach you not to show off Abe.

Well, the kids, the kids will love the dog.

All right.

The next group, this is a group that is hardly ever used, but we need two employees to be on the uh designated as employee appeals board member and two to be the employee appeals board alternate.

For years we have not actually had to call a meeting of these boards, but I do need four of you designated there.

Does anybody have a preference?

I can be either.

I can do either too.

I'm voted to employ employee appeals board member.

Okay, she's a board member.

Next one to raise their hand.

Paul is a board member.

The other two of you are alternates.

We'll leave Wave off of this one.

What I have grayed out here is the assignments to the Utah League of Cities and Towns.

We have not agreed to participate this year.

It's an expense that we have not really seen any benefit from.

So if that comes back, we'll just leave it there.

But right now we don't.

Here's the weird part.

We can participate in absolutely everything they do.

You can even show up and vote, and they wouldn't know the difference because they just take these mass votes.

I'm not encouraging that, but I don't feel like our voice is represented at all.

We've brought some things forward, and uh the feedback I told you last year was these things are hard.

Um, that's what we would pay them for, and so we're not going to continue to pay that.

Let's scroll up.

Group C this is the fun one.

These committees are out there, and I want to describe what these things do.

The architectural review board meets as needed.

So it only meets occasionally when we have a new development that has to be reviewed for like a business.

Does the style guide does the do they have enough parking?

All those things are questions.

And you don't have to be an expert at this one because Royce, our planner, has done such an amazing job.

He has a whole PowerPoint that lists the questions and what they mean.

So you just have to show up and listen to Royce present it and then answer the question.

Does this have an entrance that's clearly designated?

Does this have the parking that uh is suitable for this business?

And here's what they're offering, and here's what we think it uses.

He does all the hard work.

You just we just have to have a board that says yay or nay.

Is this usually during the day or during the evening?

During the evening.

In fact, Royce has been so anxious to get people there.

They bought pizza the last time they had this meeting.

So it's a good meeting.

Yeah, good meeting.

We got serve pizza, and yeah.

And it like I say, it only meets two or three times a year.

That's an important board.

It is an important board.

The next one is the arts council.

Now I've been with the arts council for a long time because I do have a an MFA in in fine arts.

So I kind of work with these people.

And if somebody else wants to join that, they're welcome, but I'm going to stick working with them because we've been doing a lot together for a long time.

It's wonderful.

And just for clarification on most of these, you're not actually like a voting member of that committee.

You're a liaison to the city council from that.

Yeah, I don't vote on the arts council stuff.

I'm just their the go between on the architectural review board.

It's almost always going to be a unanimous consensus discussion.

So I don't think there's a voting issue there.

Now, here the next one on the list is the Davis Chamber of Commerce.

And we do need a liaison there.

And I will tell you what's come up here.

I'm actually appointed by COG as a Davis County Chamber Board of Governors member.

So I go to their things anyway.

But here's what I think is really important on this.

I would love to see somebody else step up and also join me at some of their events and get to know some of the other people on the Davis Chamber because the Davis Chamber does a lot of things that we have gotten no value out of.

Every year they recognize four or five businesses in different categories for new business of the year, um, established business of the year, entrepreneur of the year, new innovative innovation in business.

Yeah, they have like six awards they give out.

We have never won a single one because a message was sent to them years ago that we have our own chamber and we don't associate with them.

Um, honest to goodness, we need to associate with them because they have grant money, they have a lot of things they can help people with.

Um, they can help businesses with startup funds, they have access to the Davis Fund as a recommending board, which is again for business startup.

There's a lot of things we can get out of this by getting our businesses recognized.

And I last year I tried to submit some stuff, but we had no support for what businesses would fall in these categories.

And we you really need to during the year kind of say, you know what, this business is really doing great.

They come for ribbon cuttings for big things like the hospital because the hospital is a member of the Davis Chamber.

Um we want them to be here a lot.

We want to use the financial resources they have that are collected already from our taxpayers and given to them.

We want to bring some of it back.

So I would love to have somebody else help me with that.

Um really is a little bit about having going to their lunches and um, you know, meeting the people and kind of finding out what else is going on around and what we can compare our businesses to.

That reputation was was damaged or whatever in the past.

What kind of rapport can we build now?

Is it going to be possible?

We need to figure out we we need to let them know that we are open to working with them.

And I've been trying to do that.

They have me, you know.

I I go to the, you know, their stuff and they know me, but there's still a little bit of a message that there's a separate chamber and out here.

And I don't think that we're getting the same out of that group as we get as we could get out of the Davis chamber.

And that's where I would like to see us.

I would like to see countywide us starting to get the recognition in their newsletter of announcements of our businesses instead of just the ones from Leighton and Kaysville and Farmington.

Those all get so much value out of the Davis Chamber.

Ever because the message was sent, we have a separate chamber.

We don't.

We don't.

Um, the next is disaster prep committee.

We need a liaison to go work with the disaster.

They do the cert program every year.

Um, they do some preparation, they submit some articles, somebody to work with disaster prep.

Um that's a good board.

Uh, the next one is museum advisory board.

Now, this one meets during the day.

So if you can't do that, don't volunteer for that one.

But um, we do need an advisor there to talk about what's going on at the museum and how we can integrate the regional museum more in what we do.

And um, there's so many activities.

Our employee Neldon has been amazing.

He has taken it from where they had about 800 people a year to 8,000 this last year, visitors there.

He's done some great community outreach and made it really fun.

So we just need somebody who can actually go to their board meeting and and see if we can't do more there.

North Davis communities that care.

We need a representative.

This is a coalition of cities.

There's five cities that are in a district together, and what they do is they talk about student health and family life and things.

This was started when we seem to have a real trend of some kids harming themselves about five years ago.

And this was an effort to try and help prevention there and help with self-esteem in the youth.

Um, it's an interesting committee.

Um, and Julie's been serving on there, we can pass that around some too.

The next one is the planning commission.

And I know Paul's done this for two years, twice four years, and that's a long time because that means every Tuesday night you have a meeting.

So I'd love to see somebody else do that one and give him a break because that's a long time.

Didn't you skip over parks advisory?

I did not.

I left it off the list, and I'll tell you why.

I'm looking at the old one.

Yes.

Got both.

I took it off the list because we don't have anybody who wants to be on the parks advisory committee.

We've not held a parks advisory committee.

And the reason we haven't held the meeting is because we really take care of everything they actually want to do in our five-year plan.

You know, parks committee has always been people say we want you to spend money on a this park, but we do a five-year plan and we update that five-year plan every year.

Most of the people I've interviewed when I put out, I put out four notices that said, hey, we're going to try to build up the parks advisory committee.

And when I ask people, so what would you know, what is your interest in the parks advisory committee?

Well, I've I'm gonna spend this money, or I'm gonna tell you we're gonna do this.

Those things are council decisions.

The other thing I get is how much does it pay?

These committees do not pay.

So I've had I've had at least 60% of the people who've applied for committees, not just that one, but that one in particular, say, I'm no longer interested when I tell them there there is no fee.

You don't make money.

In fact, some people think these are full-time committees and they get an extra full-time salary.

They're shocked when I tell them otherwise.

Um so I took it off.

You can you all can vote differently, but I think the five-year plan is actually better than that committee has ever done.

Sure.

So I took it off this year.

Um, the next one is youth court.

We do need somebody to be the contact person.

Now, just so you know, you won't be in all of their youth court stuff because there are rules and it has to be run by the kids.

So it's it's run really well by somebody who is the advisor to the group, but we need a liaison that meets with them at least quarterly and says, How's it going?

Do you need something from city council?

How can we help you?

Because they meet here in the building and utilize most of our rooms because they are very active and very positive.

So know that you're gonna have to cut a couple of times in the evening to deal with youth court.

The next is a representative to liaise with the Miss Syracuse pageant.

Now, this was kind of brought about a few years ago, and say we wanted an official representative just to keep in touch with them and make sure that we're supporting them as a city.

We have a two-fold mission there.

One is they give a lot of service, and we want to recognize that and what they do.

The other part is we do help them with a place to hold their pageant and do their uh stuff.

So we take care of donations that cover the facility.

We do they separately go out and recruit money for scholarships.

And that's a division that I think is important because in the past, 10, 12 years ago, we used to give the scholarship money, and they kept wanting to raise that.

And we said, look, we don't give this everywhere else.

What we should be giving is the facilities money, which at the time was far more than the scholarship money.

And that helped them offset to where they can go out because they can get donations for um businesses can't write off money donated for the facility, they can for scholarship.

So that's a great relationship we want to keep.

Now we have two people already assigned, and I want to recognize this to the America 250 committee uh for events, but we also are going to have a separate fundraising project.

It can be the same two people, but I wanted your input as to whether you felt like it should be the same two people or if we should involve two other people in the fundraising part of it, which is just one element of the whole thing.

You guys tell me how that should go because that is going to be a big that fundraising is going to be a big project.

Who's on it right now?

Andrea Andrea and Julie.

I would think it makes sense to have the people involved help with the fundraising efforts.

Okay.

Are you two okay with it?

That's just me.

I think that makes sense to you.

All right.

I just I let me I'm gonna make this statement right here.

So a lot of cities, in fact, almost all of them, 90% of the cities in the in uh the county, they have a rule where their council members apply to the mayor, and the mayor makes the decision and tells them what their assignments are.

I really like asking you what you want to do because I want you to actually do it, not be, oh, I got the crap assignment this time.

I'm not ever going to go to that meeting.

I want you guys to be involved in deciding.

So I'm okay with that variation, but just so you know that that's what other, you know, they've already handed out assignments that were assigned by the mayor.

I'm okay that we do this if in the future you want to change for the next mayor.

I'm okay with that too.

The collaboration there.

We appreciate it.

I prefer it this way.

Uh the new one is um, I I thought uh these next two are question marks.

New business ribbon cutting coordinator.

So we have not had very good participation from council and ribbon cuttings.

And I think it's really important that we have at least a council member at every ribbon cutting.

It doesn't have to be everybody, but we should make sure we should coordinate and make sure at least somebody can be there to represent the city.

Now I try to go to all the ones that I can, but because some of them are scheduled during the day or something, I can't make all of them.

So, or and sometimes they schedule them on top of each other, which we've I know Noah's department has said, well, there's another one here at this, you know, in this across the city at the same time.

I think that only happened once, but we had to divide and conquer because so it might be worth it to have somebody to check in with who you check in with is the business licensee person, maybe once a month and say, Do we have any ribbon cuttings and coordinate with the council and make sure somebody can be there?

I think that might be a worthy assignment, but you tell me if you think that's good or I just want to see this make sure somebody's there.

I think it's a great assignment.

And I want it.

Okay.

Does she get to keep the giant scissors and her possession?

No.

Sorry, Billy, I tried.

The city owns a pair.

So we we we uh we have a pair from the city.

The shovel.

The other one that I'm gonna question is youth council, because this comes up from time to time.

There are cities who have youth councils.

Some of them are active and productive and some are not.

The problem that we had in the past with youth council is it changed every time we change the advisor.

And really, if we're gonna have a youth council, there should be a program that is defined of what youth council is, and most important when we're recruiting kids to be on it, what do they get out of it?

Now there's a couple of things that are part of the youth council program.

There's the day at the legislature for youth councils, and that's a one-day thing where you go down and interact with legislators.

That's great, but it's not all that youth council is.

So, yes, we could take kids down there for a day and they get lunch and they meet with legislators.

That's already happened for this year because it happens before the legislative session starts.

So this would be we're we're talking about forming a youth council for the next year.

But the other thing has been some years we had them heavily doing service, and that kind of burned them out every month.

They were supposed to find a service project, and that kind of nobody wanted to be on it the following year.

Um year they tried to bring them to council meetings and say they had to follow what we do and kind of shadow the issues.

That wasn't really interesting to youth of that age.

We're talking about high school students, really.

So when we start getting into things like where the concrete should go in your driveway over a meter, they're like, oh, kill me now.

So um so those weren't really good uses.

But if we had a mission, now I'll tell you what some of the others do.

Some of the other councils do things like they will help at public events, like um Clearfield does a lot of public feedings for lack of a better term, where they'll have they'll like at their fourth of July, they will have a mass breakfast that the council serves and is paid for by the city.

We don't do that.

Um, but that's their big event is 4th of July, and their youth council helps with the service there, and they're expected to show up.

The youth council in Clinton, uh, they actually have some activities where they talk about uh classic issues in government.

I don't know if that's going really well.

I've had some mixed feedback on that one, but all I'm seeing is if we bring back the youth council, it has to have a purpose, and it has to have a plan, and it has to be something that's repeatable, so that we don't say you're the advisor.

What do you want to?

What do you think youth council should be?

Because we'll have to get a community advisors, have to have multiple adults, and we'll have to have a liaison.

So, council, I'm I've said a lot on this one, but I'm opening it up for your discussion.

Is there something that we should do with here or should we just let well the thing is okay?

So youth council takes money, yes, it does take some money.

And um, yes, the youth council does those those two activities, the two big activities, the legislature.

They also did you USU a training conference with the youth court, the youth court and the youth conferences from all over the state would come to that low into Logan for and spend the night, which is money, which is money and liability, and I think that that's and and surprisingly that was you know many years ago, but it was paid for, and then traditionally the youth council did the same thing every year.

Help with the pumpkin walk, help with the Easter egg hunt, um sit in the parade, go on the parade, um, set up a booth at heritage days.

Um do the meet the candidates night.

We did those every year.

We did the same thing.

So those kids that were in high school for even if they were on it for those four years or three years, yeah, you know, got that same experience.

We also gave scholarships at the end, a thousand dollars, not to every one of them.

So it did take money.

Um, not that it needs to be that elaborate anymore, but it's it's it's a it's a big, it's a big deal.

Yeah, and it requires uh it doesn't have to be a council member, but it requires a dedicated adult advisor, yeah, much like youth court that has a passion that it spends the time, is organized, uh reaches out to the youth, gets them organized and what what we're doing and all and then like the eighth thing that was always done every single year was the road cleaning.

Remember the old the funny old sign we had up on Antelope that said Syracuse, it was all mixed mixed up with the wording.

We had that portion of the street that we would clean every, you know, whenever we did it like twice a year.

So should we bring this back?

Is it a worthy expense?

Because it would take some money.

Is it something?

I mean, I get mixed messages because sometimes they get people say kids today, they're just not into that kind of thing.

They're less concerned about uh being a part of something like that.

Then I have other people that say, Oh, how sad is it that Clearfield has a youth council and Syracuse doesn't if it's not going to be done well, I don't want to do it.

I want to do it only if it's going to be done well.

I mean, is it it's kind of a matter of seeing if we could get a volunteer or two volunteers?

So I was just thinking, I mean, we could we could set uh we could set a uh goal or what we want to achieve fairly easy, but we'd have to have some advisors that are willing to donate their or give their time to it.

Should I advertise for an advisor and see if there's an interest?

I think so.

Could that make the decision?

That was probably if we don't have anybody, then that probably makes the decision for it.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good idea.

Then that's what I'm gonna do on that one.

We will not set aside a liaison until I have advisors interested, but I will advertise for the next two weeks and see what we get.

All right, so now that we've talked about all of these, is there anything else that you think that we should be doing as representation from the council to help out with?

Okay, so now I'm gonna go the other way.

Brett, I'm gonna give you first choice.

Which one of these do you want?

I'll do 11.

11, the ribbon cutting coordinator.

Great.

He wants the giant scissors if you really want that.

I mean, really, I don't I I have other options.

You can have okay.

I'll get you a pair of scissors.

We want as many of you as possible to come to one.

I know we'll be we just want to make sure that at least somebody comes to one.

Paul, your pick.

I think I will join you at the Davis Chamber of Commerce.

Great, Paul.

Sorry, Julie.

I'll get a first choice.

Andrea.

Get you another set of scissors.

Oh, do oh that's that's it.

That's not all right.

That's it.

All right, I'm I promised Julie that I got.

She'll mark those.

We're gonna she got pushed out last time for that.

So I'm gonna let you take it.

Okay, architectural review.

That's supposed to be my second one.

This is why they have the mayor.

That's why the mayor's why there's a referee.

All right, so um you have to eat pizza if they have to Julie Miss Syracuse, then Julie is Miss Syracuse, architectural review is Andrea, Dave's chambers Paul, and uh okay.

So we have disaster prep museum board, um ctc planning commission.

Somebody needs to take planning commission so that we can share that burden.

A yeah, all right, it's Abe's on planning commission.

Oh and it does require a report every meeting we that be sent to the council.

That's really important.

Yeah, okay.

Abe just got planning commission.

Um youth court, and that's it.

So all right.

So next we've got wait.

I don't have art council.

I am.

I'm just gonna continue the arts council.

Disaster preparedness.

We don't have that one yet.

Second choice, who wants that one?

Uh are we going back in order?

I haven't even had a first time.

You got the Syracuse.

I'm oh yes, you gave me Monsieur.

I gave you my trio.

If we go back the other way, so start with Julie.

Okay, Julie, so America 250.

That's just temporary, though.

That's just till I think you're gonna heritage days, and then that so you we've got youth court, CTC, museum advisor, and disaster prep.

You each get to pick one of those because if Abe's gonna do planning commission, that's a big one.

I'm gonna let it just have that one.

Well, I I am happy to stay on the CTC.

Okay.

I've been um the chair for the policy aspect of it, and for the last year.

I haven't reported much on it, but I've never missed a meeting.

You're still there.

I've never missed a meeting.

I'm working with Seth and with um Mike Mike and okay, and and everybody else.

So I don't mind staying on that.

Okay, unless any anybody wants it.

So we've still got youth court, disaster prep, and museum and board.

Youth court for Andrea.

I think so.

So we got call disaster prep or uh what's the other one?

Museum Museum.

Disaster prep.

Okay.

So can you do the museum?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's a good fun group to work with.

So all right.

So we've got those narrowed down.

That's the fun group.

Now, this next group, we we're looking for council members to help out just to help with and make sure that there's volunteers for these things and to help make sure that the event is ready to go if they need anything from council.

So we assigned somebody to pumpkin walk, heritage days and safety jamboree, and we've actually assigned a couple of people to heritage days and safety jamboree.

But I do have on there the America 250 assignment, and two people have already got that.

So if you really, if one of you that are already on that really want to help with one of the other ones, you can, or we could just debate those three out to the other three.

Your call.

Oh, I don't really want to help with pumpkin lot.

You're in.

It's fun.

You're in.

You're the liaison for the pumpkin lock.

Who wants safety gabbery or heritage one?

Not really.

I mean, I was the safety jamboree liaison once.

And I don't really know what I did.

I showed up some submeetings.

What I'm asking you to do is do something.

I showed the up to help set up and it was already kind of done.

But I I'm I don't really have a preference to you.

No, I don't care.

No, I don't know if you if you don't want to do that other one again.

I'll I'll do either one, I don't care.

I mean, sure.

I'll I'll I'll try heritage days.

Okay.

Okay.

Chris is gonna be so happy.

All right.

Uh would be Brett.

So no, no, no, no.

Safety.

No, sorry.

Safety Jebberry would be Brett, and we're gonna put Abe on that one too.

On thank you.

Because that is a big event.

It keeps growing and just making sure they've got people to work with.

All right.

Yes, you got as the advisor for the youth council.

So I'd be happy to be the LA's office with that.

All right, then I will do that if it comes forward.

You just get Emerson.

So she'll be youth council if we get an advisor.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, if we do it, she'll be there.

The mayor pro tem is my call.

I'll assign that in the next meeting.

And the canal boards we give to Robert because they get really technical about watershares and where things are going and the knowledge is important.

So all right.

Any other questions about assignments?

I think this went well, and I really do appreciate you getting involved in telling me what you want to do.

Because that I think is better than me telling you what to do.

So we'll keep doing it that way as long as I'm here.

All right.

Um that's why you didn't get it because you have to do the scissors this way.

I know where the scissors are.

Okay.

The next one on the list is municipal code of or pertaining to special service districts.

I brought this on to the agenda for one reason.

We have a different policy for different boards, and I think it's because it got changed multiple times over the years.

I think it makes more sense if we have one policy that governs all of the appointed boards.

So any really strong feelings.

The the standard is the mayor makes a nomination and it's with the advice and consent of council.

Does anybody feel like there's a better way to do that?

Because technically, this the mosquito board says if you replace somebody mid-term, the nomination has to come from the body, not the mayor.

But the sewer board says it has to come from the mayor.

The garbage board doesn't say so.

Uh we just let's make it one policy for all of them, is my thought.

I'm fine with that.

Yeah, that's great.

Okay.

Now you're uh biennial review for the CD or CED.

Sorry, I jumped the gun there.

That's all right.

You're all good.

Good evening, council.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Um this is a good opportunity to discuss with you guys.

Make sure we're our department is uh executing through your liking.

Uh our team works really hard.

Uh we have a lot going on.

The city's growing very fast.

Uh, hopefully you've had a chance to review the items in the packet.

Uh it's I I put it more in report form.

Okay, uh, but I'm happy, you know.

So hopefully it's not it's not exactly a PowerPoint, but should I just go through each line item?

Okay.

So um as we've discussed, there's there's mission and vision uh statements and for the community economic development department.

Um we have Syracuse City has an effective strategic plan to support community business development.

Um there's been a lot of discussion at the council level about this recently.

Uh sales tax, our number one revenue um and property tax is also related to the business development.

So our our KPIs key performance indicators um should be an objective look at whether or not we're being successful in those categories.

Uh this is the first time we've we're reporting on these.

Um the number one is the sales tax revenue, which has been growing every year, uh 6.6 increase.

Um we're excited to see what uh it does when Costco opens up.

We're or our we have high hopes.

But um 2025 was 7,863,000.

Uh next one is population growth.

I found this to be interesting.

Um there's kind of a trend.

Uh if you of population growth leveling off a little bit, but if you look between uh 2020 to now, um we're we're looking at like uh 20.

Um that's the last paragraph.

21% change of population between 2021 to 2024.

That's big.

That's a lot.

And look at the county four percent.

That's how we the state seven percent.

If you look at like Washington County and Utah County, that's boosted that, and then but then the US is only 2.6.

But then if you look at look at ours between 24 and 25, it's it's only 1.9.

Um, and then between 23 and 24 is 2.7.

Uh we are still growing fast, nonetheless, may not well, it's it's also um these numbers are reported annually, and the 2025 number hasn't really came out yet.

So uh we do our best to try to look in the crystal ball and see where we're at, but but the population is growing, which as we've discussed, poses budgetary uh challenges for the city, but also our sales tax uh formula is uh I think many people don't know that our the bigger a population, the more sales tax you get.

Um number of new businesses established annually.

We we have um uh a business licensing uh clerk that's full-time.

She does a really good job of keeping track of all of our businesses.

Um and uh the total businesses in the city, um 1,695.

If you look at that, most of those are home-based businesses.

We have a very entrepreneurial population.

There's a lot of garage businesses, a lot of cool random things.

Sometimes they grow and then they create a problem in the neighborhood, and then which is usually a good problem because then they get to go to a brick and mortar most of the time, and we try to keep them here.

Uh if you look up at the above that, thanks for scrolling through this.

Uh so if you subtract the the two numbers, you can see the business growth.

563, that's a lot of new businesses.

Um that's the highest number of new businesses.

Was 224 or 2024?

Was that uh are we missing a number or is that really uh two?

I don't think I did the math wrong.

I think it for whatever reason it just leveled off, but we also went to a new reporting software.

That's fair.

So maybe maybe kind of anomaly between I report on this every year in my January newsletter, and 42 seems right for 2024.

500 is not right, but um for new, but I think there's a different stat there.

It seems it feels like a lot, but it could be like I said, it could have been the way I pulled the report from the software, and it does include home-based businesses.

Yes.

And I usually separate those in my response to the community that they're different numbers.

Yeah, that does it is possible.

It's anomaly.

We're trying to pull these.

It could be if we include the home base business, though.

It could have we've had a lot of new businesses home-based.

When and as the population increases, just the more and some of these businesses are like taxes, you know.

Yeah, but to license to do taxes for somebody.

Let's see, let's keep going down.

Okay.

So on number one, also I'll add that uh we do have on our website.

If you look as far as our strategy, we we have an economic development strategy that's published on our website, and it talks about uh the types of businesses that we want to go after and key areas of growth, things like that.

Uh, number two, the community economic development department staff is knowledgeable, responsive, and provides effective communication with citizens and businesses.

Uh so just like we were talking about, there's uh we have continue required continuing education.

Uh we have certifications.

Uh I am uh AICP, which is American Institute of Certified Planners.

So there's there's conferences and things like that.

Um but it's also uh you know, we want to make sure that the citizens uh can trust us and know that we're available to answer questions and things like that.

So our KPIs, um, there's quite a few of them I'll go through here.

Uh number of inspections completed within target time frame.

So the legislature has helped us out on some of these standards.

Uh we are required to be able to get an inspection within three days of a request.

So uh there's 4,784 building inspections in 2025, which is that's a lot of inspections for 365 days a day a year.

So um, and we're happy to report that 100% were completed within the required time frame.

Uh the next one is also a state mandated thing.

We're we're required to have 14 uh process and application within 14 days or they should they can get their own um review done it.

So we've had we're in the thousand club, which is kind of new for the city until four years ago.

We had never a clips the thousand mark.

So we're we're pretty we're steadily in the thousand club now.

Um of course all of them were completed within the required time frame.

Um we certain applications are required to have a public hold a public hearing.

And those applications require things like postcards and signs and posting them certain places.

Um we had 45 public hearings last year, and we met all of the legal requirements.

Uh number percent of online service requests responded to and resolved within target time frame.

So code enforcement, which has also been a topic of recent discussion at the council level, uh can become uh somewhat controversial with the residents not feeling like issues are being resolved.

And this last year, there's a little bit of a unique situation with uh a new freeway and state-owned land and surplus land and not knowing what the service level has been.

So a lot of those cases were carrying on.

Uh so I I think that this next year we'll find that we have more clarification on what the standards will be with what to expect from UDOT, which might not necessarily be a change in the level of service that we receive, but it will at least we'll know what to expect with from some of those UDOT properties.

Uh but yeah, there's 382 unique requests through the C Click Fix platform, which is shared with other departments, and um so 87% were resolved within 60 days, um, which is above the target.

But if if you look at um some of the the fine grain, I don't think it's in this report.

You know, there are there are some cases that do take longer than 60 days to resolve.

Um, and sometimes there's somebody that has a health issue and they have junk in their yard, and it's the winter time and they're trying to get it towed, or you know, it's so there's certain circumstances that are our co-enforcement officers really good at working with the residents to try to get things resolved as quickly as possible.

And that's why the target right now is at 80, not like 100%, because there's there's a good percent of those cases.

You got elderly people that have issues with their yard, and so they don't necessarily have a lot of resources to take care of their yard as well.

And so it sometimes it takes time, and we'll work for with them longer than 60 days.

So we we we account for that in the target.

Yeah.

Uh code enforcement, there's definitely a balance between sympathy and making sure things get done.

Uh training hours, we have 11 awesome employees.

Uh, we have two building permit techs that man the front counter, one building official, three building inspectors, two planners, one business license professional, and one code enforcement officer, and of course the director.

Uh so we did 222 training hours, which compared to like a fire or police, that's really low.

Um, I know I have to have 15 hours a year, is all for mine, but we we do a good job of keeping our accreditations and we any opportunity we have to learn and take.

Um, number of applications or requests processed online.

We're fully online, which uh we've since COVID happened, we made a big push to not have paper applications anymore.

Uh we had 63 planning applications.

I said a thousand building permits.

Um that number was needs to be updated 300, whatever that was.

The last paragraph is the 300s for co-enforcement, and 1695 business licensing applications.

Um most of that's through civic review, except for the code enforcement.

But yeah, a lot a lot of going on.

Okay, number three community economic development department takes active steps to recruit and grow the business sector of the community.

Uh, as we were doing the KPIs, I remember this is a big one that Jordan was specifically wanting to get more information on.

So um percent increase in business related revenue.

This is a metric that we're still trying to develop.

Uh because our our revenue sources come from property taxes.

Uh you know, so the goal is to try to distill that down whether or not we're increasing our revenue.

Uh, one of the challenges in putting this together, we found that the property tax isn't necessarily reported that way in a lump sum.

So I've reached out to the to the county assessor and trying to get that for next time.

May take some GIS mapping and stuff to get a list of parcel parcels that are considered to be non-residential and then manually have to uh sign their assessed value and then multiply by our tax rate and derive it that way.

Um, but what what we did have available um was our property tax, our total combined property taxes, which is increasing.

And we know that uh you know, we've had lots of discussions about holding the rate and all that, but we'll get into that.

But but despite all that, we're still increasing.

Um, personal property um for 2024 was 88, and 2025 is 73, which went down.

Personal property is very minimal in the big picture.

It's things like fancy equipment inside of warehouses, and I think that's a depreciating thing too.

So that maybe there was other companies accelerate their appreciations, yeah.

It's normal to say that.

Yeah, one of the interesting things like the US coal storage, all of their racking and stuff inside of there is just as valuable as the actual building itself because the building's just kind of a shell.

Um, and then of course, sales tax.

Um, this is excluding the cost of the population, it's just point of sell.

Um like we previously reported, it's up.

Um that's uh sales tax is monthly, but property taxes annually.

Okay, number of new jobs.

So when uh we get a new new business license application, they're required to tell us how many employees they have.

Uh so we went through manually, and this is um just the commercial businesses to go through one by one, the 1600 would be a lot of a lot, but um there were 28 new businesses, commercial businesses reporting 107 employees, so most of them were 10 to 15 employees.

When we get Costco, that will be a huge employer as well as uh cell stacks generator.

So we're really excited to get that.

On business license renewals, do we have to do we collect how many employees they have or update on?

I don't think so.

I think I just didn't mind and it doesn't ask.

I can't remember.

I think it's generally up or down like are you still gonna be in business.

We could add that though next year.

That'd be a good idea.

Since especially we have so many that are renewing.

Okay, uh outreach events.

Um the mayor touched on the the chamber.

I went to a lunch a couple weekends ago, and that is something so we do have the West Davis chamber, but um, but the the county level chamber is good too, and I've been trying to participate more with them.

They also uh have a what is it called?

The the showcase at the conference center annually.

I'll go to that too.

Um, but yeah, we um this discuss the discussions with business leads uh is continual, and some of these things just take so long.

I've been in the works for years and years and years, so there's lots of discussions ongoing for a long time, like the Costco and the Olive Garden, Big Wall Kingdom.

Um all these things include a lot of work behind the scenes before we see things.

Um the business expo that the Davis County Chamber puts on has been a really good source.

We've gotten several businesses out of that.

Um, I attend that every year as a member of the board of governors, and it's been a good source for leads.

For sure.

Um, resources allocated business development.

This is staff time and wages and the RDA budgets, 161.

Uh the next chart will show some of the larger or one of the larger cities has an economic development specialist, which would boost that, but um they have double our population.

So I I did call around and did a staffing comparison.

This isn't exhaust and exhaustive of all of the surrounding communities, but uh looked at Kaysville, Clearfield, West Point, Leighton, and you can see um you know, every community is unique in their staffing needs based off of the things they have going on in their population levels.

Um, but if you base it off of employees per 1,000, the highest, you know, the city with the most employees per 1000 was actually West Point, but that's also because they have the lowest.

They don't feel like one of the fewest employees.

You can have like one employee and it sits them over.

So yeah, that's 0.56.

We were the second one, uh, 0.32.

And then third one is Clearfield.

And the grand scheme of things, we're all pretty similarly staffed, except for if you look at Leighton has 16 employees in the CD department.

They're twice our size, yeah, literally twice our size and more in in square.

I think what kicks our numbers up really high is our need for inspections, and that's because of the massive growth, and we can't be without that.

So that won't last forever, but it certainly is a high demand right now.

That's why I put together this next table is because we have more home permits, which spur a lot of inspections and a lot of total permits.

So if you look at that next table, 587.

This is just through the ChemGuard um website institute website, and they only had January through September for all of the communities, but 587 up to September.

Um, and then 99.

I know that last year I think we ended up with like a hundred almost 150 home permits.

And so if you look at in the gram schema theme of who's who has the most staffing per permits, you know, late late and doesn't really have all that many permits for the number of, but I know there's there's more that goes into it, but when somebody when something's actually built is kind of the end culmination of a lot of work um over time.

Uh we were kind of middle of the pack uh with our 11 employees, 0.018.

Um this year we're not asking for any staffing increase.

I think we've got it where we need it.

Uh let's build along with good thing because it doesn't look like uh we're doing a lot of staffing increases this year.

So uh yeah, that's CED in a nutshell.

I feel like we have an amazing team.

Hopefully, you've got a chance to interact with some of our our team and they all do a really good job and proud to be able to represent them and hopefully get some of you guys' feedback and you know, hopefully we can always be improving.

Uh we'll do this again in two years.

Any questions for Noah?

Thank you, Noah.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Excellent.

I'm gonna piggyback on CED here just for a minute because I would just want to get your feedback.

Um I have been following, as most of you know, a lot of different development things just online and in discussion groups um as a mayor.

I just got right before I left the house, an email that interested me considerably.

So I have been invited as a part of one of those forums as a mayor to go to a conference that is out of state.

I am thinking about going on my own dime, but I want you to, I just want to get your feedback if you think this is a good thing or a bad thing.

The conference is going to be held in uh Grand Prairie, Texas, which is the Dallas, basically.

Um 10 miles a suburb of Dallas.

It is called Creating Epic Destinations, and the whole thing is around small cities that have helped create a destination income by people coming there for some kind of draw.

The conference is free, uh, so I don't have to pay anything there.

I would pay my own plane and and room.

Um, but do you think this is something I should continue to explore?

I don't want to come back from a conference having spent my own money and have you say that's a horrible thing to be looking into.

Who do you think we are?

Um what I would hope to gain from going is there they talk about um they talk about a project that happened in 2024 in Greeley, Colorado, where they uh brought in a development group that did an indoor water park, and uh consequently the state was willing to invest in an indoor hockey rink uh to go near it because of the tourist attraction, and the state subsidizes it up to 50 percent.

They're also in Texas did a uh sports arena in Grand Prairie, and that's why the conference is there, and because they uh worked on this sub on this arena, they got developers to put in a 412-room hotel and a conference uh attachment to that.

Now I'm not expecting anything on that scale.

We're not these are cities basically, these are cities of about 80,000 people.

So I don't see us in that same thing.

But my vision on this is maybe I learned something that we could scale down that would help draw people to our city.

Um I think it's great.

Good resources.

I mean, I'm not asking for money, I'm just asking for your thoughts.

Go fund me.

Does the city have a budget for that?

Uh I wouldn't feel good about telling the public that I spent money on a tour somewhere, but but I it it's really interesting to me because uh is what we've tried to figure out is how do we become a destination?

Costco is a shopping destination.

How do I build on something like that?

Because the revenue would really help our community.

Well, and also just with all the attention that the Great Salt Lake is getting.

I think I think we can we can market ourselves as a destination community, but just to learn how to felt that's I mean, I think you should get some sort of a study.

I agree with Right.

All right, it's two days.

Maybe you all let the city pay for my meal while I'm out of town.

No, please.

Uh the the plaintiff, I always looked on Southwest, I can get there for under 100 bucks.

So that's not gonna be an issue.

All right.

Well, I just do it.

I just barely got this.

I haven't even told my wife I'm thinking about going.

Yeah, but she can't because I can't afford it.

Um but really I'm not going as a junket, I'm going as an exploratory.

I I'm glad I got on the list because it's free.

So that's that's that's neat.

I think you should go for sure.

Thank you.

All right.

Good ideas.

I might learn something.

I might learn something.

Yeah.

Okay.

I have the dates open, so it could work.

All right.

Never know.

Anything else that needs to come before the body?

Then we are adjourned for the night.

And thank you, everybody.

There are a lot of good things that happened tonight.

Oh shoot, forgot about that.

Muscle class.

I'm adjourned from that meeting.

Uh only so that we can go to our official business meeting so that we can consider going into a closed session because we do have to talk about one issue that is land development.

So uh can I get a motion to go into closed session?

Motion we go into closed session.

Second.

All in favor.

Aye.

We're going into closed session.

I think we need Noah.

Steve, no.