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OK. | 00:00:03 | |
All right, welcome everybody. We'll call the City of the Holiday City Council meeting to order on Thursday, October 24th. A | 00:00:05 | |
council member. Brewer is excused tonight and we'll start with the pledge. | 00:00:11 | |
I'd like to leave this to the flag of the United States of America. | 00:00:22 | |
To the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:00:27 | |
Thank you. | 00:00:36 | |
OK. We do have one public hearing tonight on proposed amendments to Chapter 13, the Accessory Accessory Dwelling Unit public | 00:00:39 | |
hearing. So if you're here to address the council on that, you can wait till after public comment. If you're here to address the | 00:00:46 | |
council on any other item, we'll do it now during the public comment, which is now open. Anybody here to address the council? | 00:00:53 | |
There being then we'll close public comment and move to the public hearing on proposed amendments to Chapter 13.14, Point 031 | 00:01:03 | |
Accessory Dwelling units. I'll note for the record that we do have a e-mail comment from Natalie and Chris L Deary. I hope I'm | 00:01:12 | |
saying that correctly. Generally in favor of all the changes that were made to. | 00:01:20 | |
The accessory dwelling unit ordinance in 13.14 point 03/1. | 00:01:30 | |
Before we open up the public hearing. | 00:01:38 | |
Any questions or comments from Council? | 00:01:42 | |
I think we discussed it just briefly in the pre meeting. I think I can speak for the accounts. We want to press our thanks to the | 00:01:47 | |
staff. | 00:01:50 | |
For all the hard work, but also like to express my thanks to my colleagues here on the council because we really put some thought | 00:01:54 | |
into it. It was important. We wanted to make sure we were accommodating and protective and it required a fair amount of time and | 00:02:01 | |
elbow grease and and thought to to make that happen. I feel like we got to a pretty good spot. | 00:02:08 | |
Agreed. Yeah, John, if you'd pass that along to all that that were involved, we'd appreciate it. | 00:02:16 | |
OK, with that, we'll open the public hearing anybody to address the council on the Adu ordinance. | 00:02:24 | |
OK. There being that we will close the public hearing, I anticipate this will be. | 00:02:32 | |
On the agenda for on November 7th for a vote and we'll move right to item number 5 and I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember | 00:02:38 | |
Gray. | 00:02:43 | |
I'd like to introduce Pam Roberts, the general manager of Wasatch Front Waste and Recycling. There is a fee increase and she wants | 00:02:48 | |
to go over that. Pam is a fantastic manager, does a wonderful job and thank you. A pretty amazing motorcycle as well. And I would | 00:02:56 | |
have ridden tonight but I'm a little chilled so kind of cooled down quick there. | 00:03:04 | |
So before I jump into what the board discussions have been happening with. | 00:03:14 | |
The 2025 budget and proposed fee increases, I wanted to kind of go through a brief report of this picture that you see on this | 00:03:18 | |
front page of my report is our CNG fueling island. So we have 56 side load trucks that park at this island, 2 front loads as well. | 00:03:27 | |
And the front loader, the ones that pick up the dumpsters side load are the ones that come through your neighborhood. | 00:03:35 | |
And they park at that island overnight so they can get a a full tank of CNG and and hopefully make it through the day on the long | 00:03:44 | |
routes that they do. | 00:03:49 | |
And I also want to say thank you for to Board member Gray. You came out and took a tour of our facilities and saw the decaying | 00:03:54 | |
asphalt at this island and the safety issues and the board did approve a capital improvement and and taking 12 feet out replacing | 00:04:02 | |
the asphalt with concrete, reinforced concrete which is greatly appreciated $183,000 capital project which we desperately needed. | 00:04:09 | |
So thank you. | 00:04:16 | |
On the next page is the environmental stewardship. That's one of our big goals and we have rolled out different ways for residents | 00:04:24 | |
to divert waste away from the landfill for reuse of those resources. The biggest one is the curbside recycling and here you can | 00:04:33 | |
see that there was almost 1500 tons from January to through August that were diverted by that blue can we do have. | 00:04:42 | |
380 Glass Curbside Glass subscribers. | 00:04:51 | |
We also have the Megaplex complex. | 00:04:55 | |
Container at that location for central glass sites and there were eight trips made since the roll out of that. And so you figure | 00:05:00 | |
about once a month. So the total tonnage for for glass, we have the curbside green waste. There's almost 1700 subscribers here in | 00:05:08 | |
Holiday City. So a lot of residents have bought into that and using that service. We're very happy about that. | 00:05:17 | |
That helps also, you know, reuse that material. It does go out to the Salt Lake Valley landfill to their composting facility, and | 00:05:25 | |
it gets reused. | 00:05:29 | |
And then we have the curbside Christmas tea, that tree that will roll out in January. And right now you probably are aware that we | 00:05:35 | |
have the leaf bag going on. Even though that's not taken for a diversion, that's another resource that we use to make sure we get | 00:05:41 | |
rid of the the bulky waste that residents generate. There are 808 tonnes in the greeting trailers and that's roughly about 70 | 00:05:48 | |
trailers rented for that. | 00:05:55 | |
If there's no questions, I'll just keep on rolling. | 00:06:02 | |
This is one of the topics that Stephanie reached out to me to find out what's going on with HB 107 and how are we helping to make | 00:06:05 | |
sure that we fall? Well, first that we're following compliance and our requirements are that we report to each of our | 00:06:11 | |
municipalities how much recycling we're hauling and we needed to do that twice a year. We do it a little more often than that, but | 00:06:17 | |
specifically. | 00:06:24 | |
Related to HB 107, we created a page. | 00:06:31 | |
My wonderful staff created a beautiful page on our website. If you go in under the about tab and hit the district stats, district | 00:06:35 | |
statistic, this is a new page that has been created specifically to comply with HB107. And you'll see in your November newsletter | 00:06:42 | |
the diversion rate and then also all the recycling tonnage information to make sure that we're compliant with you and you can | 00:06:49 | |
publish that in your newsletter. | 00:06:57 | |
To meet your your requirements as well, we will have, or you can have a link directly to this page so that residents can go in | 00:07:04 | |
there and see that you are required to publish on your website as well as we are on ours. | 00:07:12 | |
Any questions about HB 107? Trying to make it easy for all of our cities and towns as much as we can. | 00:07:20 | |
One of our big goals is to have customer satisfaction. So we all know that the container program is very popular. So I have some | 00:07:28 | |
scrap stats for you. We call the seasonal container reservation, so scrap for short. | 00:07:35 | |
I love this illustration that's on the right. It's the then. So the before we had, we made a big change to this program and | 00:07:43 | |
started having residents reserve containers. We took them off the street. And just as a reminder, that was because of CDL driver | 00:07:50 | |
shortages and it wasn't, I think I've talked about that, but just as a reminder, starting in 2018, the industry started seeing CDL | 00:07:56 | |
driver shortages nationwide. | 00:08:03 | |
In fact, in 2018 there were 54,000. | 00:08:11 | |
CDL drivers that lost their licenses just to compliance issues and that was the Federal Motor Carriers Association started | 00:08:15 | |
requiring, requiring, excuse me, employers or the CDL holder to report any kind of compliance issues. So unfortunately a lot of | 00:08:22 | |
folks were out of whack. So since that time we, we experienced that not because of compliance issues, but just the fact that we | 00:08:30 | |
couldn't recruit or. | 00:08:37 | |
So our board has implemented overtime and I'll show you as we get into the fee increase, the wage increases to try to, you know, | 00:08:45 | |
be more attractive for those CDL drivers. And we did roll out an apprentice program just last year to get folks in that may not | 00:08:52 | |
have ACDL. They're 18 or older is the only qualification for that and that any valid Utah driver's license and we pay for their | 00:08:59 | |
CDL, we'll train them. | 00:09:06 | |
And then they we just had two folks graduated, graduate from that program and they're now out collecting waste and recycling. | 00:09:14 | |
So at any rate for Holiday City, we were able to accommodate. Let me just jump to that page online so I can see it. We were able | 00:09:22 | |
to accommodate eight, 834 of the just over 1000 reservations. That's a 77% accommodation for the city and district wide it was | 00:09:32 | |
about 74%. So it's a little above what we were able to do district wide. | 00:09:41 | |
I know that this is a very popular program. The board has had several discussions about how can we expand this service. One of the | 00:09:52 | |
ideas that has come forward and we're going to roll out for next season is basically limiting repeat reservations. So anybody that | 00:09:59 | |
reserved in 2024 would have to be on a waiting list for 2025 and anybody on the waiting list now in this for 2024 has first dibs | 00:10:07 | |
going into 2020. | 00:10:14 | |
Five, let's just try to get it out to more people as much as we can. We're just trying to be a little creative since it is so | 00:10:21 | |
popular and we have such limited resources to do that. | 00:10:27 | |
Any questions on that? | 00:10:33 | |
The next one is talking about employee satisfaction, another one of our big goals and engagement. I will say that we had two years | 00:10:37 | |
of not being able to purchase sideload trucks because of just basically we, the vendors change the pricing and we couldn't keep | 00:10:44 | |
up. And then there was a time they just basically said sorry, we don't. | 00:10:51 | |
We, you know, we're not able to accommodate you at all. So for two years we did not purchase sideload trucks. So we were behind in | 00:10:59 | |
our purchasing schedule. This year we've had 10, now just recently 11 that have arrived and I can say that our driver satisfaction | 00:11:06 | |
did increase. So going from a 10 year old 8 to 10 year old truck to a new one that the AC works, the windows work or whatever | 00:11:13 | |
else, you know, the arm is a little more. | 00:11:20 | |
Equipped and and slick and savvy. | 00:11:27 | |
That their satisfaction did go up. This particular picture that you're looking at, you're used to seeing the CNG tanks on the top | 00:11:31 | |
of the trucks. The the 10 that we ordered actually had the CNG tank on the back. | 00:11:38 | |
So that's a little new for us. So, so far it seems to be working well. In June, we did hold our national, well, excuse me, in | 00:11:45 | |
June, there's a National Waste and Recycling Workers Day and we always have a celebration with a food truck coming in the morning | 00:11:53 | |
and make sure we celebrate our team. The picture of the bottom, the woman off to the right is Laurie Turek. She was our first | 00:12:00 | |
graduate from the equipment operator apprentice and we did do a graduation. | 00:12:07 | |
For her Jesus real. Just graduated in September. | 00:12:15 | |
And then as always, I mean, since 2008, I've been working with leadership consultants to have resources for our managers, | 00:12:21 | |
supervisors and executives to make sure that we have the resources we need to develop our own skills for communication and | 00:12:26 | |
employee relations. | 00:12:32 | |
Moving into the meat and potatoes, so to speak, it was about, well, two years ago that I came before you as a council and talked | 00:12:41 | |
about the need to raise rates going into 2023 and prior to that it had been five years since our last fee increase in 2018. What | 00:12:48 | |
we know now is that five years was too long. | 00:12:56 | |
With inflationary factors that took place as well as the truck prices going up and then the $2.50 that we asked for was not | 00:13:05 | |
enough. | 00:13:10 | |
And Mayor Dellie, I remember you asking, is that enough? And at the time I thought, well, I hope so. So. Anyway, we're back and | 00:13:16 | |
the board has been having deliberations on the increased cost that we've incurred. This particular table at the top of this page | 00:13:23 | |
goes through the top. | 00:13:29 | |
Cost for us, with personnel being the highest, we are a service provider, we have 100. | 00:13:38 | |
And one Ftes and 65 of those are drivers. So the others are operation managers, fleets, so forth. Administratively, we have about | 00:13:46 | |
10 administrative staff, if you would. So I feel like we're lean as we can be and trying to get the front line taken care of. Over | 00:13:55 | |
the course of these years that you see before you, we've added 10 Ftes. Five of those were for The Apprentice program. | 00:14:04 | |
We are evaluating that program. We feel like it's successful. | 00:14:14 | |
Going forward, can we afford it? So there's some things we're looking internally of what can we do to adjust the wage increases | 00:14:18 | |
that the board has provided. You'll see up there that the starting wage, and that's somebody coming in with ACDL that has one year | 00:14:25 | |
of experience, that's starting wage went up $6.00 an hour over the course of time. The thing to note, in 2021 and 2022, the board | 00:14:33 | |
approved what we call the work for experience model. | 00:14:40 | |
For hiring and salary, so somebody comes in with 12 years of experience, they don't start at the starting wage, they'll start | 00:14:48 | |
wherever that midpoint is or above. We have a compression matrix that our compensation consultant put together for us. And if | 00:14:55 | |
somebody has a certain years of experience, they'll move within the salary range. So the average driver wage went from, you know, | 00:15:03 | |
basically jumped up $10.00 an hour within that time frame. So that's significant obviously for a significant. | 00:15:10 | |
But the benefit is we get more experienced drivers coming in and we can retain those drivers. | 00:15:18 | |
So the board has been looking at fee increase scenarios between 5:50 and 6:50 a month. | 00:15:25 | |
Recently, the board met in September with a proposed budget before them of 550 a month and then an incremental increase going into | 00:15:36 | |
26 and 27. | 00:15:40 | |
The board did give direction to bring forward a tentative budget of $6.50 per home per month and that brings the fee from 1950 up | 00:15:46 | |
to $26. That would start in 2025. Whatever the fee increase is that the board selects in this next meeting next Monday, it would | 00:15:56 | |
be effective in January, January 1, but residents wouldn't actually see that until. | 00:16:05 | |
We send out the quarterly bill in April and that's when folks would see that things that we're looking internally as | 00:16:15 | |
administration is trying to speed up our cash flow. And because we did consult with Zions Bank to come in and provide some | 00:16:23 | |
financial advisory services, one of the things that they did is look at our cash projections going forward and looked at the | 00:16:30 | |
number of days that we have cash on hand. It's a new way for us to look at that. | 00:16:37 | |
And we started seeing that, you know, at the end of this year, we're going to have 85 days of cash available. And we operate on | 00:16:45 | |
cash. We're an enterprise fund. We have no tax dollars whatsoever. So as you can imagine, we want to make sure we have enough cash | 00:16:52 | |
to pay our bills. So we're looking at maybe doing billing more often. | 00:16:59 | |
Which would be maybe every other week or every other month, excuse me, to bring in that cash sooner. So we'll get more creative | 00:17:07 | |
and talk about that with the board next week. That does of course Dr. up some costs. So we want to make sure we're not pricing | 00:17:13 | |
that out. | 00:17:18 | |
The board will be had a special meeting just this past Monday. It feels like it's been a month already since that meeting. And | 00:17:24 | |
then they're holding the tentative adoption Monday morning. That's when there's by statute, the board is supposed to tentatively | 00:17:31 | |
adopt the tentative budget in October according to district statutes. And then there's a public hearing scheduled on Monday, | 00:17:37 | |
November 18th at 6:00 PM. | 00:17:44 | |
And we have until December 16th for the board to actually make the final adoption. | 00:17:52 | |
And I believe we're going to need that much time to make sure the board has plenty of time to discuss, deliberate and make a | 00:17:58 | |
decision on the amount going forward. | 00:18:03 | |
I know it's a lot of information really quick. | 00:18:09 | |
And what questions might you have? Just one question, you had mentioned on the previous slide there, Stephanie, about you had an | 00:18:13 | |
increase in 10 FT ES. | 00:18:19 | |
Presumably due to service level growth. | 00:18:24 | |
Yes, and putting that in context. So you added 10 Ftes, bringing you to a total of. | 00:18:28 | |
The 100 and well, hundred now possibly 101 next year, but that's in debate. OK, so you're in the 90 range now. You're the 100 | 00:18:34 | |
range, yeah. | 00:18:38 | |
And most of them are drivers as I mentioned. And then five of those were for The Apprentice program that were driver positions | 00:18:44 | |
that were reclassified, but three of those positions were at a higher pay. | 00:18:50 | |
Of a driver, if that makes sense. So thank you for the question. So there were three administrative positions, a data specialist, | 00:18:56 | |
an administrative manager and I don't know if you really call the safety coordinator, administrative is more operational, but | 00:19:02 | |
those were key positions that we did bring on since 20. | 00:19:08 | |
2021. | 00:19:15 | |
So Pam that. | 00:19:18 | |
So our current rate is 1950 per month. Yes, Sir. | 00:19:20 | |
And the proposal is to go. | 00:19:25 | |
To what 26 right now is what the board has. | 00:19:29 | |
Talked about and given direction to bring forward. So that's the six 5650. | 00:19:35 | |
Yeah. So these increased costs are equate to about 5.8 mill over those six years and that includes the 25 budget, which really is | 00:19:44 | |
roughly. | 00:19:50 | |
You know, $6 per home per month and we were looking again at the cash projections and what could sustain us for, you know, could | 00:19:56 | |
we go three years. Unfortunately, the 250 only got us 2 and and it really didn't stretch very far. | 00:20:05 | |
Because of the uncommon inflationary pressures over the last. | 00:20:14 | |
Because I was looking, I was talking to Emily earlier about it looks like the. | 00:20:20 | |
Trending has been every four or five years, there's a 15% increase. | 00:20:24 | |
Because we've been running two or three percent, 1% increase. So this is this 30. So that's 33%, right. | 00:20:29 | |
650 would be over 30. Yeah. So the, and I think the big thing is that most fee increases were 3-4 years at the Max and we, we | 00:20:36 | |
waited 5. So, you know, I apologize. We waited too long. | 00:20:43 | |
And didn't and didn't ask for that. That is a pretty good bumper. Are you? | 00:20:52 | |
I mean, I would assume that. | 00:20:56 | |
You're in contact with other agencies and everybody has the same pressures. | 00:20:59 | |
So is this a common kind of increase other? | 00:21:05 | |
Agencies like yours are having to impose to keep pace. Yes, the way we keep track of what's going on another we look at other | 00:21:10 | |
cities. | 00:21:14 | |
Private haulers won't tell us their cost. I don't get to go to their board meetings, but they can come to mind. So I look at | 00:21:18 | |
cities, other cities that may be contract out or Salt Lake City does their own. Draper City does their own. | 00:21:25 | |
Salt Lake City, as you may know is has one of the highest rates with I think it's $33. | 00:21:33 | |
A month, but that includes their green so that all, all residents have all three cans. And that's one of the things our green | 00:21:41 | |
waste is subscription that's not even you know, talked about in here. We are going to increase that to make sure there's no | 00:21:49 | |
subsidy from the monthly fee going into the the green. So we're going to bump that up from 10:50 to twelve $1.50 a month on that. | 00:21:57 | |
So the I apologize, I lost my train of thought there. So I have so many things in my mind. | 00:22:06 | |
The, I guess the thing to note is that we would be second to that right now. Currently we are below Salt Lake City and Murray | 00:22:13 | |
City. Murray City is about 2150, I believe they, they provide biweekly recycling. And that's the other thing I've shown in the | 00:22:21 | |
board is, is not just the dollar, it's the service level, right. So are there, is there anything that residents would want to give | 00:22:28 | |
up so far I'm. | 00:22:35 | |
That there's not, you know, there wasn't a desire when I've been going out to the other municipalities in the district to reduce | 00:22:43 | |
to biweekly recycling that would reduce that, you know, fee going forward. But it does take down the service level and I'm not | 00:22:50 | |
hearing that there's that desire. I'm not seeing a whole lot of reduction in my Amazon boxes at my house. So exactly. | 00:22:57 | |
Exactly. And those that cardboard takes, from what we measure, that's 50% of what's in the blue can and it does take up a lot of | 00:23:06 | |
space. | 00:23:11 | |
And we appreciate any resident that will fold that up, cut the tape off, you know, just fold it up. We really appreciate that. You | 00:23:17 | |
know, I've heard in this anecdotal, but I've heard that. | 00:23:21 | |
A lot of what goes in the blue cans ends up to the landfill. I mean, is that true? Not true. I mean, do you not have data on that? | 00:23:27 | |
Like I'm so glad you asked. So one of the things we do part of our contracts with, we contract with Waste Management and we mainly | 00:23:33 | |
take Magna Currents and a portion of Taylor Taylorsville to them because they're in Salt Lake City and doesn't make much sense to | 00:23:39 | |
take a lot. And then we the lion's share goes to Rocky Mountain Recycling. So in our contracts it says that anything that's | 00:23:45 | |
recyclable. | 00:23:51 | |
Goes for recycling and then it's only residual, so contaminants that would go for garbage. | 00:23:57 | |
And our team keeps an eye on it and we also do sample sorts. And what that means is that our team will be our quality assurance | 00:24:03 | |
inspectors and sustainability coordinator will be on site at the recycling center to watch their staff sort through a load of | 00:24:11 | |
recycling. And what that also does is it tells us the contamination rate. You've heard that before, how much garbage is in that | 00:24:18 | |
blue can? And with education efforts, we've seen that. | 00:24:26 | |
Dramatically, there was a neighborhood in Kearns that went from 30% to 8 just because the the team targeted that area. And then | 00:24:33 | |
that of course helps to reduce the fee we have to pay at the recycling vendor. Garbage in, garbage out we have to pay. So at any | 00:24:41 | |
rate, yes, it goes for recycling. Any garbage in there does not. And we do have the Flyers that we get out for events as much as | 00:24:48 | |
we possibly what goes for garbage is less than what goes for recycling. | 00:24:55 | |
Correct. So recently a sample sort for Mill Creek. I'm gonna go visit them next Monday. | 00:25:03 | |
Theirs was 18% contamination. | 00:25:12 | |
If that helps kind of paint a picture that would go to the landfill, whereas 72% is going to go for recycling. I hope that helps. | 00:25:16 | |
Yeah, there is a lot of myths out there. There's so many myths out there. But yes, recycling is still happening and it is being | 00:25:22 | |
recycled. We watch them close. | 00:25:28 | |
There is a company just outside of, well just in Croydon. I don't know if you're familiar with Devil's Slide is on 84. I am | 00:25:36 | |
because I ride by there a lot, but there's a company called Geo Cycle and they purchase some of the plastics from the from Waste | 00:25:44 | |
Management Rocky Mountain Recycling. It may not be the most optimal use but they burn it to in their kilns when they make cement. | 00:25:53 | |
So it burns hotter than coal and it cleaner. If you want to call it that then then coal as well. But it is being reused again, | 00:26:03 | |
it's not the most optimal. | 00:26:08 | |
Use of of a recyclable, but it is those plastics that are harder to get rid of on the markets, so it is one way to reuse it. | 00:26:13 | |
Can you tell us a little bit about your communication plan with? | 00:26:25 | |
Residents about the rate increase, yes. So I've been going out. I call it the show on the road, coming out to councils. We've been | 00:26:28 | |
putting in newsletters to so that they know I'm the direct contact, they can call me. | 00:26:35 | |
Once we finalize what that fee increase is going to be with the board, we'll put it on Facebook. | 00:26:43 | |
Again, with contact information, they can let us know and then just any word that we can spread out there. | 00:26:49 | |
And, and please give any resident that has questions my phone number, e-mail, preferably not my cell, but that's OK. If they do | 00:26:56 | |
get ahold of it, I still answer it. So but yeah, questions will come up. And we, I was at Magna City on Tuesday for the second | 00:27:03 | |
time to talk to residents there. And, you know, there's concern and I certainly understand 650 a month, it may not sound a lot, | 00:27:11 | |
but that, you know, it's a McDonald's. | 00:27:18 | |
Meal or something like that I think is one of our board members talked about or Starbucks and I understand that, but for others | 00:27:26 | |
that's not the case. For others, it could be really strapping to to make sure they can take care of that as well as their five | 00:27:32 | |
kids. So very cognizant about that. | 00:27:37 | |
For folks that are truly indigent and they can apply through the county treasurer's office and get a reduced fee, so their fee is | 00:27:44 | |
cut in half. For anybody that is indigent and qualifies with with the treasurer, we cut that fee right in half. | 00:27:52 | |
Other questions? Comments. | 00:28:04 | |
I really appreciate your time. | 00:28:07 | |
Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, Pam, and great job. Yeah, thank you. And I really appreciate Board Council Member Gray | 00:28:09 | |
being on the board. She's very involved and surprised that you'll probably be asked to be vice chair next year. And let's make | 00:28:15 | |
that public. | 00:28:21 | |
Your your pay just keeps going up and up. | 00:28:29 | |
There's a pay company? Oh yeah. | 00:28:32 | |
My wife will bake cookies. | 00:28:35 | |
All right. Thank you. Thanks, Pam. Appreciate it. | 00:28:38 | |
All right. | 00:28:45 | |
We are on item number six, which is the ordinance. | 00:28:48 | |
Amending the city code to a lot short term rentals as a conditional use. | 00:28:53 | |
In the PO zone there was. | 00:28:59 | |
Supporting document provided by John and the planning staff that just kind of clarified a few issues that I. | 00:29:05 | |
That we had during our discussion last week. That's in the packet that I know everybody has reviewed. | 00:29:13 | |
Just kind of clarified a few issues, but. | 00:29:20 | |
You know, we had a pretty robust discussion in the follow up work session as it related to this particular issue and it's an | 00:29:25 | |
interesting issue. | 00:29:29 | |
I'll kind of set it up and then I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Gray. This application is in her district, even though | 00:29:35 | |
it is a a text amendment to a zone that affects the entire city's. | 00:29:41 | |
So we kind of had this discussion where it ended up was. | 00:29:49 | |
The staff and the Planning Commission had gone through their public hearing and their processes and they forwarded a | 00:29:54 | |
recommendation to the City Council, a negative recommendation that they were not in favor of text amending this zone that they | 00:30:02 | |
would be essentially in more more in favor. John, if I get this generally right, that if we're going to text amended zone. | 00:30:10 | |
Change the land use. It's a big deal. | 00:30:19 | |
It should take a full vetting and we've got this opportunity to review the general plan. We're just starting that really in the | 00:30:23 | |
next month or two, right? | 00:30:28 | |
And we will go through our entire city general plan and discuss these very kinds of issues that have, you know, long lasting | 00:30:34 | |
impact on how the general plan is going to direct the Planning Commission and staff and the council down the road. And maybe it | 00:30:39 | |
that's the best place for it to end up is. | 00:30:45 | |
You know, really think about citywide where we want to have where it's appropriate for us to to approve short term rentals. So it | 00:30:51 | |
kind of went from that to well, gosh, if we are going to have short term rentals, maybe this is zoned for it back to. | 00:31:01 | |
Maybe it ought to go to the. Maybe we ought to. | 00:31:12 | |
Align with the Planning Commission and staff and really let the general plan handle this process. So that's kind of where it ended | 00:31:16 | |
up. | 00:31:19 | |
Emily, I'll kind of let you take it from there and then we'll see how the discussion goes and see if we work our way into a motion | 00:31:23 | |
or if we work our way into a table till November 7th. | 00:31:28 | |
I think those are the two options right now. Well, I actually think you summarized it pretty well. I feel like I have gone back | 00:31:33 | |
and forth on this many times. I've reached out to John independently and Carrie and asked them some questions. | 00:31:39 | |
Because overall. | 00:31:46 | |
Excuse me? | 00:31:49 | |
I think it could make a lot of sense. Sorry, what happened. You're going to get emotional about it. | 00:31:51 | |
To have short term rentals in the PO zone. | 00:32:00 | |
I just as a general rule, I like to be very thoughtful and methodical about any decisions I make. And I just haven't felt like we | 00:32:02 | |
have had the chance to really look at this issue as comprehensively as I would like. I feel like when we have been doing this | 00:32:08 | |
external Adu issue, we've taken a lot of time and unfortunately a lot of staff time as well. But I feel like what we've ended up | 00:32:15 | |
with I think is something that we can be really happy with and. | 00:32:21 | |
Well, I think it's likely we might end up in the same place or a similar place. I I. | 00:32:29 | |
I just want to make sure that we do all of our due diligence. | 00:32:34 | |
In looking at short term rentals comprehensively for the city, if would we want to not just maybe limit them by zone, but maybe in | 00:32:38 | |
particular parcels along particular arterials. I just think that it it deserves thoughtful study and we're so I mean the wheels | 00:32:43 | |
are already in motion for. | 00:32:48 | |
Reviewing the general plan. So I think that's where I'm landing is that I, I don't think I know that the, the, the person who | 00:32:55 | |
brought this forward was concerned that it would put things off a long time. I, I don't think it's gonna put it off extensively | 00:33:01 | |
for, for their particular issue, but I think it will give us the time to really consider this. | 00:33:07 | |
The way that we need to is kind of where I've landed. So yeah, I don't, I don't know what anyone else is thinking on it, but. | 00:33:13 | |
Yeah, I agree, Emily. The thing about there are certain things we do that are fairly routine even, you know, even. | 00:33:20 | |
Specific parcel rezones can either be routine or not routine. | 00:33:31 | |
Certain text amendments can be routine, but changing the land use tables is never routine. It's, at least in my view, shouldn't | 00:33:36 | |
ever be considered routine because those are major earthquakes in the code, because some of them, in my view, the the land use | 00:33:43 | |
tables are really foundational. And so when you make changes and shifts, it doesn't mean you can't do that. That's our job to | 00:33:49 | |
evaluate those. But these are. | 00:33:56 | |
Foundational changes when you start messing with land use tables and things that you can do it, but I don't think it should ever | 00:34:03 | |
be routine and this feels a little bit overly routine. | 00:34:07 | |
Everything about on land use table changes. | 00:34:12 | |
I say change, but it's pretty much only additions because you can't really subtract land uses or, or it takes Herculean effort to | 00:34:17 | |
try to subtract, you know, an entitled right. That just doesn't happen. So whenever we're talking about land use table changes or | 00:34:25 | |
he's talking about adding and and so we need to be careful and contemplative when we're talking about changing a land use tables. | 00:34:33 | |
Like I said, it's, it's, it's heavily impactful because not only is it impactful for an applicant. | 00:34:43 | |
It's impactful for every parcel in that zone and every parcel neighboring the zone that you're about to change and any parcel | 00:34:47 | |
neighboring a parcel that could become rezoned. And so it really can have some strong ripples. And so I agree, Emily, I think at | 00:34:55 | |
some point when we go through this more contemplative process, we may end up in a situation where we we end up OK with it. But I | 00:35:02 | |
think we we. | 00:35:10 | |
Owe it to the code since we're talking about something so foundational to do not. | 00:35:17 | |
Think of this as as a routine, as a as a standard. | 00:35:24 | |
Zone change for a specific parcel. We ran into it not that long ago when we were thinking about. | 00:35:30 | |
You know, it's changing the land use table for the C2 and we came pretty close to doing something almost. | 00:35:35 | |
That was going to really bind our hands. We didn't realize that at the last minute. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm not comfortable with. | 00:35:43 | |
Making this land use change in this fashion. | 00:35:52 | |
Well, I'm the one that kind. I'll take the blame of the one that brought brought up the issue of well, if we were going to allow | 00:35:58 | |
this might be a good place for it. And then when I started digging into it a little bit more and started getting feedback. | 00:36:04 | |
The comment was made that I. | 00:36:12 | |
Short term rentals should really be considered more in terms of where they are located, not what zone they were in. Was the term | 00:36:15 | |
that was used that really caught me 'cause I think that's correct. | 00:36:20 | |
Short term rentals are going to become a bigger, bigger an issue in our communities and where they are located in our communities. | 00:36:27 | |
And I think that issue needs to be fully vetted and there needs to be a lot of consideration put into where we're actually going | 00:36:35 | |
to allow them. Not in particular in a, you know, just a specific zone, but where in a zone they might be allowed to be located. | 00:36:44 | |
That. | 00:36:52 | |
Discussion ought to be had and I think the general plan process and review process is the appropriate place for it. And I just | 00:36:53 | |
want to add to there are a couple of things that came up to 1 is that that? | 00:36:59 | |
This particular application was a change from an RM to a PO and R and short term rentals were allowed in the RM zone prior to the | 00:37:06 | |
zone change being made. That was one thing but the other, and this is just a personal thing for me and I know I brought it up with | 00:37:11 | |
the council before but. | 00:37:16 | |
I I'm not real crazy about when people insert a personal. | 00:37:22 | |
Reason why they need this particular text amendment zone change. In this particular case it was to create another short term, you | 00:37:29 | |
know, property on well. | 00:37:34 | |
When we consider stuff as accounts, we're considering a text amendment to a zone, not a, not an individual benefit that can derive | 00:37:41 | |
from that change. So when I'm going through this, and I know we all do, when we consider text amendment to the PO zone, we're | 00:37:48 | |
considering the entire PO zone and what the ramifications are going to be. And I think in this case there were. | 00:37:55 | |
Correct me John, like 38 potential zones that could be affected by this particular text amendment right, either they're currently | 00:38:04 | |
PO or identified as being potential PO zone changes. And so I that's a very long way of saying I have circled back and agree with | 00:38:11 | |
both Emily and Paul on this that. | 00:38:19 | |
I'm not comfortable with the broad text amendment change to this zone when we have an opportunity really review. | 00:38:28 | |
Short term rentals as a whole in the city over the next year and that would be the appropriate place to do it. So for that reason, | 00:38:37 | |
I will be voting not to support this text amendment to the PO Zone. | 00:38:42 | |
I thought it was a very interesting discussion and ended up also sort of coming to the conclusion that this may be an appropriate | 00:38:50 | |
place for the short term rentals. I I do think though that it was. | 00:38:57 | |
At this particular juncture, sort of being driven by 1. | 00:39:05 | |
Parcel and one situation and it seemed like. | 00:39:09 | |
The tail was wagging the dog a little bit and we didn't really have the time to work through. | 00:39:15 | |
Some of the fine tuning that we might want to do and so. | 00:39:20 | |
I think Emily and Paul both expressed well that we may end up in the same position eventually, but I don't have any objection to | 00:39:24 | |
going through a more deliberate process to make sure we're doing it the right way. | 00:39:31 | |
I have never been a fan of short term rentals, at least in residential areas. | 00:39:40 | |
And. | 00:39:49 | |
Last time when we met, we were talking and Mayor, you said that it's. | 00:39:51 | |
Allowing short term rentals in the PO zone would be a good way of getting them out of the. | 00:39:57 | |
Residential areas and I sort of grabbed onto that but and was warming up to the idea. But as has been expressed, I think. | 00:40:04 | |
Have allowing them in all the PO zones and the potential PO zones. | 00:40:18 | |
Would be concerning even like. | 00:40:25 | |
Is being proposed tonight. If it was a conditional use, I think that. | 00:40:30 | |
That would be concerning, and making it a conditional use would also be. | 00:40:36 | |
Putting a burden on staff. And so I think I have gone back and forth, but at this point in time, I agree that we ought to wait and | 00:40:42 | |
give this further, further consideration. | 00:40:50 | |
OK. I think we see where it's going. The way the ordinance is written, it's written to allow the text amendment. Jamie, what's a, | 00:41:00 | |
what would be the best way to put a motion on the table for this to just? | 00:41:05 | |
Get it, get it on and have no votes or motion to deny that the text amendment. Are are you wanting to take it up after the general | 00:41:10 | |
plan process is complete? Is that well, I think it'll be taken. I think it will be addressed during the general. I assume it will | 00:41:17 | |
be addressed during the general plan process and the general plan will give us more guidance regarding what we think is | 00:41:24 | |
appropriate as it relates to stores. | 00:41:30 | |
So I think the vote, the votes obviously looks like it's going to go to deny this request to text amend the PO zone. So my | 00:41:38 | |
recommendation where you had an application for the text amendment is you have an obligation to act on that application. | 00:41:45 | |
You can't continue it indefinitely. | 00:41:53 | |
And I don't think you it's proper even to continue it if you intend to bring it up in six months or a year or whenever it is that | 00:41:57 | |
the city is done with the general planning process. So would the motion be to get a motion on the table to approve this and then | 00:42:03 | |
get no votes or just a motion to say to deny the request? Either a motion to approve or a motion to deny, OK. | 00:42:10 | |
Motion. All right. | 00:42:17 | |
Mr. Go ahead, Mr. Mayor, I motion to approve Ordinance 2024-16 amending Title 13 of the City Code to allow short term rentals as a | 00:42:20 | |
conditional use in the PO zone. | 00:42:26 | |
Second, OK, so we have a motion. And 2nd, so just to be clear, a yes vote would be an approval to the text amendment and no vote | 00:42:33 | |
would be to not allow it. OK, so with that, we'll go to vote Councilmember Gray. | 00:42:40 | |
Councilmember Quinn, no Council member Fotheringham, no Council Member Durham and chair votes no, so that tax amendment is denied. | 00:42:49 | |
Thank you, council. | 00:42:54 | |
Item number 7 is the consideration of ordinance 2024-17 amending section 11.04, point 010, clarifying the enforcement authority of | 00:43:02 | |
Unified Police Department for traffic regulations within the city. We talked about this in the prior work session. It's basically | 00:43:10 | |
just a clarifying sentence based on the separation of the sheriff from Unified Police of Greater Salt Lake. Any questions from. | 00:43:18 | |
Council to staff or council before we take a motion. | 00:43:27 | |
Mr. Merriman of approval of Ordinance 2024-17 amending section 11.04 dot 010, clarifying enforcement authority of UPD. | 00:43:34 | |
Second, OK, we have a motion, a second from council member Durham. We'll go to vote on this. Council member Gray. Yes. Council | 00:43:46 | |
member Quinn, Council member Fartherham, Council member Durham and chair vote Chess. OK, thank you council, before we move to the | 00:43:52 | |
city manager report. | 00:43:57 | |
Chief, as you know, as much as you're comfortable, I know we've had a lot of text amendments going back and forth on the incident | 00:44:05 | |
that took place. Would you mind just giving us an update you're comfortable giving us at this point? | 00:44:10 | |
On the House fire on the South end of the city and the officers and firefighters involved. | 00:44:16 | |
Thanks. Yeah, very sad situation with this fire that happened. There's one victim that came out of the home that was in critical | 00:44:22 | |
condition still at the hospital we had there was a firefighter hurt. I'm I. | 00:44:28 | |
Not exactly sure on that extent of his injuries, but a fairly minor. We had five of our officers that were suffer from smoke | 00:44:35 | |
inhalation and were trying to get into the house and help get that victim out. They went to the hospital and we're just all | 00:44:41 | |
released before I got here and and everybody's, everybody, all of our officers are doing good and they're all home now so. | 00:44:47 | |
But the investigation is still ongoing. We've got our detectives out there working side by side with Unified Fires arson | 00:44:54 | |
investigators to determine the cause and, and what took place in that fire situation. But you know, for a sad situation, there was | 00:45:00 | |
a lot of great collaboration between the two agencies and in bringing a quick resolution to this. So it could have been worse, | 00:45:06 | |
could have been a lot worse, It really could have. | 00:45:12 | |
You know it's in a. | 00:45:19 | |
A townhouse section so there's like 4 townhouses that are in there. Unfortunately, the damage is only limited to two of the | 00:45:22 | |
townhomes that were there and, and so but, but ultimately that investigation is still going and as I get more information I'll | 00:45:29 | |
certainly let you know well, I'll just pass along our our thoughts and prayers to the officers and the firefighter involved and. | 00:45:36 | |
And glad they're OK. Thank you. Thanks, Chief, Sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. | 00:45:43 | |
OK, Gina. Thank you. | 00:45:48 | |
A couple of updates for the council. First, I wanted to alert the council to a potential issue that may impact the base amount of | 00:45:53 | |
our budget contract with UPD next year. So at the beginning of the school year, as we always do, Chief Oil got a lot of requests | 00:46:01 | |
to look at changes and where we staff crossing guards. And as part of that exercise, we started asking questions to help us | 00:46:08 | |
balance to. | 00:46:15 | |
Number in the UPD budget and eventually came to realize that there's been an error for several years in how those crossing guards | 00:46:23 | |
were being charged to precincts. So seven of our crossing guards were being charged to Mill Creek instead of Holiday. | 00:46:33 | |
We think that's going to be about a $65,000 issue next year. | 00:46:45 | |
The good news is we don't have to go back and rectify that to 2018. We think we're going to be able to use some savings in other | 00:46:51 | |
parts of the budget this year to make that adjustment. | 00:46:58 | |
But it will it will impact our base for next year. So expect that to go up. | 00:47:05 | |
So just like to thank Chief Oil and others in UPD in tracking that down and sometimes you don't like the result of questions, why | 00:47:13 | |
are you asking him for tracking? | 00:47:18 | |
Thanks, Chief. | 00:47:30 | |
2nd, we talked a little bit across the hall about our 25th anniversary of incorporation that's coming up in November. We do have a | 00:47:36 | |
time capsule that was prepared 25 years ago. And what we're hoping to do is have the council open that and maybe film some of that | 00:47:43 | |
opening and looking at those those archives. | 00:47:51 | |
Before your November 7th meeting. So we're hoping that we could do that about about 4:00. | 00:47:59 | |
On your on November 7th if that would work for everyone. | 00:48:07 | |
That is slightly complicated by another thing that's happening on November 7th. Mike Kennedy, who is currently the GOP candidate | 00:48:12 | |
to replace John Curtis in the Third Congressional District, assuming he he wins on November 5th, would like to come and introduce | 00:48:22 | |
himself to our council at the November 7th meeting. We're still trying to nail down that time, but. | 00:48:32 | |
It also might be before council meetings, so we're going to continue to work on those times and then Stephanie will send out | 00:48:42 | |
appointments in Outlook. | 00:48:46 | |
So if you can't attend either or both, maybe all of those, that would be great. | 00:48:52 | |
Finally, I just wanted to mention to the council, I know I've talked with several of you as how Stephanie about some challenges | 00:49:00 | |
we've had in both delivery and timeliness of the journal, which contains our newsletter. Stephanie and I met with the | 00:49:07 | |
representative of the Journal today and we have some ideas about how we can solve both of those issues. Not surprisingly, that | 00:49:13 | |
might include a budget amendment, so. | 00:49:20 | |
We're waiting for some additional numbers. | 00:49:27 | |
We wanted to let the council know we've heard your concerns. We understand the priority is delivery and timeliness and so we'll | 00:49:30 | |
have more information about about how we can achieve those goals at likely the November 21st meeting. | 00:49:38 | |
That's it for me. Any questions? | 00:49:47 | |
Thanks. | 00:49:51 | |
Thanks, Gina. OK, we'll go to council reports. Let's start with Emily and we'll work our way down the line. | 00:49:52 | |
I just have one announcement. Bonneville Junior High is celebrating their 60th anniversary as a school this year. So as part of | 00:50:00 | |
their Fall festival on Thursday, November 13th, they are going to be doing all of the fall festival stuff and then also doing a 60 | 00:50:07 | |
year celebration of the school. So everyone's invited to that. I know a lot of members of the community have either gone there or | 00:50:15 | |
their kids have gone there and so. | 00:50:22 | |
Nice thing to remember and celebrate. Do you wouldn't know what time that is? 530 to 7:30. | 00:50:30 | |
Thank you. | 00:50:39 | |
Drew, you're up. | 00:50:43 | |
Just very quickly want to. | 00:50:45 | |
Thank Chief Whale for all the time and effort he's put in to untangling hopefully all the parking issues with at Morningside | 00:50:48 | |
Elementary. Sounds like we've. | 00:50:54 | |
We're In Sync with the Fire Marshall and so we, um. | 00:51:01 | |
The parents won't get kicked out of their drop off pickup area that they've been using, which is actually the fire line. | 00:51:07 | |
So anyway, thank you for all the time and effort that you put in on that. | 00:51:14 | |
Arts councils events have sort of wound down for a little while taking a break there as well as the UFA board has slowed down. So | 00:51:24 | |
the only thing I have is like to introduce one of the holidays newest residents and and and a constituents of my district District | 00:51:30 | |
3 Rosie Joy fathering him a one week old. | 00:51:36 | |
Check out now camera. There she is. That's all I have. | 00:51:43 | |
The only thing I have is tree talks on November 9th at the library. I think they have a panel of arborists this time, which is | 00:51:49 | |
always really popular. People can come and ask how to prune their trees, how to plant their trees. So if you are available, it's | 00:51:54 | |
all. That's an interesting one. | 00:52:00 | |
OK. | 00:52:07 | |
Boy, I think we covered everything across the hall. I do want to. I'm going to piggyback on Gina's comment about the budget. There | 00:52:09 | |
may be another potential budget. | 00:52:13 | |
Impact from unified police. | 00:52:20 | |
I'll just, I'll just make it brief, but eventually we're seeing a real. | 00:52:24 | |
Pick up in these mental health issues that are impacting communities and we have a right now we have a detective that really deals | 00:52:31 | |
almost solely now, right Chief, like I think you were saying 90% of his time is that Sonia? | 00:52:37 | |
Is our kind of mental health detective and. | 00:52:46 | |
Mill Creek has experienced experiencing the same thing, although Mill Creek is twice the size of us and, you know, a little bit | 00:52:50 | |
different Democratic but. | 00:52:54 | |
It's not an issue that is going away, it's an issue that's escalating. And so they brought up this idea of when we when we | 00:53:00 | |
separated from the Sheriff's Office, that asset left shared services and Mill Creek is very interested in bringing on a licensed | 00:53:07 | |
clinical social worker to liaise with their mental health detectives. | 00:53:14 | |
It's going to be a budget impact. I talked to Gene about it a little. We talked with Gene about it. | 00:53:23 | |
The chief about it. We agree that this is an issue in our community. | 00:53:29 | |
It's an issue that. | 00:53:34 | |
Is probably not fair to solely place on our police officers along with every other responsibility they seem to be getting heaped | 00:53:36 | |
onto their shoulders. | 00:53:40 | |
And so our sense was that our council would kind of be supportive of taking a look at this and partnering with if none of the | 00:53:44 | |
other agencies have the appetite budget wise for this. | 00:53:49 | |
You know, I kind of felt like our accounts would be interested in working with Mill Creek if Midvale didn't want to join in and | 00:53:55 | |
and bringing on that asset to work on a pro rata. We would obviously split that cost on a pro rata basis and bring on a licensed | 00:54:03 | |
clinical social worker to start working with our detectives, identify areas out in our community, situations out in our community | 00:54:10 | |
that are maybe common that we can start to deal with or just have that person to deal with. | 00:54:18 | |
Professionally, when we have a mental health issue taking place out in our community, so. | 00:54:25 | |
I think if we can get a thumbs up from the council, at least go forward with that. Certainly if when we know what the budget | 00:54:31 | |
impacts are going to be, we'll come back to everybody. But just wanted to kind of get a temperature that we're OK to go forward | 00:54:36 | |
with that with with Mill Creek and their precinct. | 00:54:42 | |
I would have would be whether or not it's the if UPD is the correct partnership for that or would be a Salt Lake County health but | 00:54:49 | |
the concept generated regardless of who we. | 00:54:53 | |
Do that position with. I think that makes a whole lot of sense. | 00:54:58 | |
Yeah, I think when you talk to our chiefs. | 00:55:01 | |
They generally say, I mean, people will say, why don't you just have mental health interaction? It's like, well. | 00:55:05 | |
Most of the time when you get the call, you don't know if. | 00:55:10 | |
What the situation is and and we are certainly not comfortable not having sworn. | 00:55:14 | |
Officers. | 00:55:21 | |
And it's generally called in a crisis. That's kind of where we're at at this point, but. | 00:55:23 | |
So I'm just curious with this social worker, would they come out with the officers or they'd be like consult like the officers | 00:55:28 | |
would call them or it sounds like they'd come out with them? | 00:55:34 | |
This is a fantastic idea. Well, and I think too, Chief I, I'm assuming that. | 00:56:12 | |
You know, not all of them, but many of them end up being recurring calls. | 00:56:19 | |
Recurring situations that if we had somebody in house could have direct contact with those people and maybe help mitigate calls | 00:56:23 | |
down the road. And that's the idea. Exactly it. And to help provide resources for that family and for that individual. Yeah, I | 00:56:31 | |
just, you know, I just want to make sure that it's going to have a cost to it. And I think that cost this year as the crossing. | 00:56:38 | |
The same with the crossing guards. I think we've got enough capacity. | 00:56:46 | |
With our precinct fund balance to absorb it but. | 00:56:54 | |
When we get into the next budget season, when we start looking at our police budget, we all just need to be aware that we're going | 00:56:58 | |
to see a different line item for our crossing guard budget and a different light. And we'll probably have a line item for this | 00:57:04 | |
piece too. So we just have to be willing to accept that that's going to be a budget impact. We're we're willing to accept, but my | 00:57:10 | |
own personal feeling is that these. | 00:57:17 | |
Mental health challenges we're having in our communities are not outliers, they're going to be ongoing and that we ought to be | 00:57:24 | |
finding ways to impact the issues. | 00:57:30 | |
More proactively than we are right now. And I think that's kind of the point. | 00:57:37 | |
Very well said, yeah. | 00:57:41 | |
All right. Thank you. | 00:57:44 | |
That's all I have. Stephanie, what's your call? | 00:57:46 | |
Go for here. OK, we only have one item to cover. I think I. | 00:57:51 | |
And then we will go into closed session. So with that, I'll take a motion to recess and we'll just stay here. | 00:57:58 | |
I move, we adjourn City Council session and move into closed session pursuant to Utah Code section. Sorry Paul, just recess to | 00:58:04 | |
work meeting. We've got one. | 00:58:11 | |
And then move into closed session, yeah, pursuant to Code Section 52-4-204 and 12/5 to discuss physical, mental health, | 00:58:18 | |
professional competence of individual potential litigation, property, existence, disposition. OK, just to be clear. | 00:58:24 | |
We're not going into closed session right now. I think we just take a motion to recess to work session. Let's take a separate | 00:58:31 | |
motion to go into closed session. So moved. | 00:58:35 | |
Second, all right, all in favor. OK, we are recessed from counseling in a work session, then we've got to go to a roll call on | 00:58:40 | |
that one. | 00:58:44 | |
OK, so. | 00:58:50 | |
Jamie covered some of these issues that council ought to be. | 00:58:53 | |
You know how to deal with some of these issues of social media. I think it came up during the whole bonding, the county bond and | 00:58:57 | |
what we can and can't say and the council had. | 00:59:02 | |
More questions and I think this is the follow up to that. | 00:59:07 | |
Wow. We have homework, even a handout. Wow. | 00:59:11 | |
This can be a tricky topic and So what I wanted to do today. | 00:59:16 | |
I want to give you just a really quick overview of the law and some of the things that have changed in the law. | 00:59:33 | |
As it relates to 1st Amendment and social media, I want to touch briefly again on election law and some of the things that are | 00:59:40 | |
unique to this time of year. | 00:59:45 | |
And then I've given you a rather detailed handout that talks about social media best practices. | 00:59:50 | |
And I'll, when we get to that point, I'll give you a little bit of background on what that is, how it came about, and I hope it | 00:59:56 | |
will be a useful tool to you. There just are so many nuances in how social media works. | 01:00:01 | |
How the different platforms function? | 01:00:07 | |
And each can be. | 01:00:10 | |
Each can impact what your obligations are as a public official and how you use them. | 01:00:13 | |
So Stephanie has up a presentation. She's already, she's ahead. And no, you're, that's great. You're in exactly the right spot. So | 01:00:18 | |
I'll have Stephanie tab through as I go through it. But there were two Supreme Court cases decided together this last spring. The | 01:00:25 | |
first one was called Linky versus Freed. The second was called O'Connor Ratcliffe versus Garnier. | 01:00:33 | |
They both related to public officials and their use of social media, and the question that came up in both cases was when is an | 01:00:42 | |
individual functioning in their private capacity and when as an individual functioning in their public or official capacity. | 01:00:51 | |
And the reason there's a difference in how both cases came up is there's a section of. | 01:01:00 | |
US Code Section 1983 that gives a private citizen A cause of action they can bring about against a government entity. | 01:01:06 | |
If that government entity restricts their free speech rights. And so these cases both came up in that way. Linke versus Freed. | 01:01:14 | |
There was a city manager. He had a private Facebook profile. He later switched it to a personal page. | 01:01:22 | |
His the way he identified himself in the profile was quote Daddy to Lucy, husband to Jesse and city manager. | 01:01:30 | |
And he posted mostly about personal items, but from time to time. | 01:01:38 | |
About city and official. | 01:01:43 | |
Activities. This was during COVID and he took some time to talk about what restaurants were open and closed to solicit feedback on | 01:01:47 | |
how the city was handling things. | 01:01:53 | |
And he ended up having a rather nasty commenter that would comment, disrupt, do things on that page and blocked that individual | 01:02:00 | |
from continuing to post. That's who brought the lawsuit. | 01:02:07 | |
In O'Connor Ratcliffe versus Garnier, it came about a little bit differently. There were two individuals that were campaigning to | 01:02:14 | |
be on the school board. | 01:02:18 | |
In California, they created a Facebook page and a Twitter handle that they use for campaign activities. | 01:02:22 | |
Both of them won their election. They then became. | 01:02:28 | |
School board members and they continued to use these same campaign Facebook and Twitter feeds. | 01:02:32 | |
As official members of the school board, their obligations before that and after that were different. | 01:02:39 | |
And they then similarly let's see if you want to go to the next slide. | 01:02:46 | |
There was an individual that had, I think they didn't even do it manually, they had a program set up that would do this, but | 01:02:54 | |
anytime they posted something, this individual would post lengthy and repetitive comments on their social media posts. So it would | 01:03:02 | |
basically blow it up. So they couldn't use it effectively to get feedback or to liaise with their constituents. | 01:03:10 | |
So both. They then deleted the comments and blocked that individual from commenting altogether. | 01:03:18 | |
On Lynn Key versus Freed, there was somebody that was just always negative every time. | 01:03:25 | |
He wouldn't post on anything and so again the comments were deleted. | 01:03:31 | |
So both of these went to the Supreme Court. I mentioned Section 1983, I won't belabor that, but it it essentially is if an | 01:03:34 | |
official actor on behalf of a government entity prevents anybody from. | 01:03:40 | |
Enjoying their constitutional rights, that person can bring a cause of action. | 01:03:47 | |
And the question again was how do you distinguish between personal and official communication in the social media context? | 01:03:52 | |
So the Supreme Court gave a true prong answer to that, they said. | 01:03:58 | |
That. | 01:04:03 | |
Person's social media activity constitutes state action or is official if they actually possess authority to speak on the state's | 01:04:04 | |
behalf. | 01:04:08 | |
And they are purporting to exercise that authority when they speak on social media. | 01:04:13 | |
So on the Freed and the Ratcliffe cases, they articulated that rule, remanded it down to the lower courts. We don't know how that | 01:04:20 | |
will shake out. | 01:04:24 | |
Quite yet, on Linke versus Freed, there's been one other decision of the. | 01:04:29 | |
Circuit Court that handled the initial appeal, but it really was elaborating a bit on the Supreme Court decision, but not giving | 01:04:36 | |
you much more detail. | 01:04:40 | |
What we do know in the decisions is that you can be, quote, official and acting on behalf of the government entity even if you're | 01:04:46 | |
not the person the government entity says. | 01:04:51 | |
Your designated to speak on this. If it becomes the custom or the practice for you to be that person then it can be deemed | 01:04:59 | |
official communication. So what does that mean for your your personal social media? | 01:05:05 | |
Use. There are a few guidelines you can take out of those cases. The 1st is if your page is purely personal and you never use it | 01:05:12 | |
to interact with constituents, to post official notices, to seek communication. You can keep it as personal, but you have to be | 01:05:19 | |
disciplined in that use. | 01:05:26 | |
The moment you make one post that would. | 01:05:33 | |
Seek feedback on something if for example on your upcoming general plan process you were to post something saying Give me your | 01:05:38 | |
thoughts about the general plan. | 01:05:43 | |
You would convert your private page to an official page. | 01:05:48 | |
And you? | 01:05:52 | |
Would have to treat those people that interact with you and respect their First Amendment rights in how you do that. If on the | 01:05:54 | |
other hand, you had kept your personal page personal and all it was was a welcome. | 01:06:01 | |
To the new Fatheringham granddaughter and all of the well wishes that come with that and if you had somebody that in that thread. | 01:06:09 | |
Chimed in and said how dare you vote against the Adu ordinance. You might then be able to delete the comment if you had kept your | 01:06:17 | |
pages personal because you would say that's a personal page. I've never used it for anything different. | 01:06:24 | |
You may, on your personal pages, repost official city communications. So if in the summer, for example, the city were to have a | 01:06:32 | |
concert series and you post on your personal page, hey everybody, here's the city's announcement on the concert. You're not | 01:06:40 | |
seeking feedback. You're not saying anything different than what the city has said through its official channel. The courts have | 01:06:47 | |
said that that kind of communication is OK and it would not convert your personal. | 01:06:54 | |
Into a private account. | 01:07:02 | |
I want to talk really quickly about election time activities because there is a little bit of an overlap and then. | 01:07:06 | |
I want to Orient you to how to use this as a resource and then answer any questions you may have about your own social media use | 01:07:14 | |
SO. | 01:07:18 | |
Really quickly on election season. Just a reminder that as a public entity, the city can't use public resources on election | 01:07:22 | |
activities. They can't use it for e-mail, for convening, for advocacy, for any of those kinds of things. | 01:07:30 | |
Public resources can mean buildings and locations. It can also mean your phones or your computers if those are paid for by. | 01:07:38 | |
The city and your official e-mail account also is in that category because the city pays for that e-mail address. So just be sure | 01:07:46 | |
to draw a line and use private resources for those for any kind of election activity or election. | 01:07:54 | |
Content. | 01:08:03 | |
Jay, I have a question. So if for example, you are using your private e-mail account that somebody reaches out to you regarding | 01:08:05 | |
say an election issue on your city e-mail? | 01:08:12 | |
Can you respond to that or do you need to like copy it over to your private And I think you're OK to give an orienting response | 01:08:19 | |
that would be, I can't talk to you about that topic with my city e-mail, but let me respond on my personal account or on my | 01:08:25 | |
campaign account or whatever it is you maintain. | 01:08:31 | |
And then keep in mind that you all enjoy First Amendment rights, and so there's not anything in state law that would prohibit you | 01:08:39 | |
from exercising your First Amendment rights. You just have to be careful about what resources you use to do it. | 01:08:45 | |
Not that you can or can't do it, Jamie. So yes, it's a Garnier case. The issue is not. | 01:08:52 | |
The issue was whether they had converted their campaign accounts to a. | 01:08:59 | |
Public account and had to honor First Amendment correct, not an issue of campaign. That's right. Expenditures, OK, that's right. I | 01:09:03 | |
had nothing to do with campaign finance campaign expenditures. It was all about at what point do they become official. | 01:09:10 | |
The word the statute uses is state actors, but state is broadly right. It's not the state, it's government. | 01:09:18 | |
And so it's when are you acting in your official capacity as a member of government? | 01:09:27 | |
So I did a a presentation on this topic at a league conference about six months ago. And with me on the panel was somebody from | 01:09:33 | |
the league, but also a communications director for a city here in the valley. And we put together a version of what I provided to | 01:09:40 | |
you. I updated it because there's been some updates since the spring on what has occurred. So it's not exactly the same as what we | 01:09:47 | |
distributed then, but I do think it's helpful. | 01:09:54 | |
Because the person who helped put it together had a much more in depth. | 01:10:02 | |
Understanding of social media than I do, I from time to time will post a picture of my kids or a dog but that's about it and so | 01:10:06 | |
on. | 01:10:11 | |
What I want to make clear, I guess as you read through this first, is that every platform is unique in how they allow you to make | 01:10:18 | |
and post content, how they allow you to interact with people, and how they allow you to moderate content. On some platforms, you | 01:10:24 | |
can moderate comment by comment. | 01:10:31 | |
Or post by post on others. You're only allowed to moderate user by user. | 01:10:38 | |
And there are differences in that as it relates to your First Amendment obligations and how you might use the platform. So an | 01:10:43 | |
example on Facebook, you could have something that is outward facing only, meaning you would never receive comments or use it to | 01:10:50 | |
interact with people. You would just use it to make announcements and to send things out. So it may be a, hey, next week we have a | 01:10:58 | |
really important council meeting. I hope everybody will come, you'll give the details of it, but nobody. | 01:11:05 | |
Once nobody interacts, it doesn't become a public forum. | 01:11:13 | |
Other than a source for you to communicate outward. | 01:11:17 | |
If you were to make the same post on Instagram, you have to, on a post by post basis, turn the comments on and off. You can't do | 01:11:19 | |
it globally. And if you forget on a post to turn that off and then people begin responding and communicating, you would probably | 01:11:27 | |
have to treat that as a public forum and allow those comments to remain even if they were negative. | 01:11:34 | |
If, well, let me walk through it in a structured way kind of from there, but just know from the outset that you will have to be | 01:11:42 | |
aware of what platform you're using and what its rules are for how you can. | 01:11:48 | |
Allow for contact content and interact with it. I'm not going to go through line by line on this, but I want to Orient you to the | 01:11:55 | |
categories. So on the first page you have general communication, and these are some of the common questions we got from elected | 01:12:00 | |
officials about whether to have social media. | 01:12:06 | |
Whether and how to interact with people on social media. | 01:12:13 | |
When you can make decisions about how to delete things or how to. | 01:12:18 | |
Moderate content and then some advice on whether to have. | 01:12:24 | |
Multiple accounts, a personal account, and an official account. | 01:12:30 | |
And then some questions about podcast YouTube and whether you can be accountable for false claims on accounts working from the | 01:12:35 | |
back. You can you're accountable for what you say and so if you say something that's defamatory or threatening or. | 01:12:43 | |
Criminal conduct, you would be responsible for that. Or civil liability for those kinds of things, you also could be responsible | 01:12:52 | |
for that. | 01:12:56 | |
One of the reasons we have YouTube and podcasts on here is because. | 01:13:01 | |
That's a lot. You think less about what you say out loud than what you put in writing. And often, when elected officials are on | 01:13:07 | |
those kinds of forums, they might. | 01:13:12 | |
Not clarify when they're speaking their own opinions and when they're speaking on behalf of the city or representing the city. And | 01:13:19 | |
so you'll just want to be clear if you do participate in those things that you identify at the outset, that I'm here as a member | 01:13:25 | |
of the council, but I'm not speaking on behalf of the city. I'm one council member. | 01:13:31 | |
Speaking my viewer, my opinion on things. | 01:13:38 | |
Section 2 is on or B on. Page 2 is blocking accounts and restricting comments. Section C is on deleting or hiding comments. | 01:13:42 | |
What what you'll basically want to know here is that there? | 01:13:53 | |
You'll want to have in place policies or principles that you'll follow for who you can and can't block and who you can and can't | 01:13:58 | |
restrict. | 01:14:02 | |
I have a client where. | 01:14:07 | |
The mayor posted something and one of the first responses was maybe now's the time to exercise our Second Amendment rights. | 01:14:10 | |
That was over that line of where it was clearly threatening, and she relayed that onto law enforcement. | 01:14:18 | |
Consulted with me and my advice is. | 01:14:25 | |
You you can block that kind of a user. | 01:14:28 | |
From posting on your content, but if it was scaled back a little bit and it simply said. | 01:14:32 | |
Now's the time to fight. That could be interpreted as fighting against the issue, not fighting against an individual. So you will | 01:14:39 | |
want to be mindful of if you have content that you feel is threatening and you want to block it, give our office a ring and we can | 01:14:45 | |
walk you through. | 01:14:51 | |
Where to draw those lines you can restrict. | 01:14:57 | |
Some comments that are not related to a post. | 01:15:01 | |
If you had somebody that was advertising something or a business service that had no relationship at all. | 01:15:05 | |
If somebody were to post something pornographic or vulgar. | 01:15:12 | |
You can restrict that kind of content clearly, and then if somebody posts information that is. | 01:15:16 | |
Threatening, defamatory, discriminatory, gendered. You can restrict those types of things. | 01:15:24 | |
The. | 01:15:33 | |
Section D on page 4. | 01:15:34 | |
Goes through the issues of. | 01:15:38 | |
When might you want to have a personal account versus an official account and? | 01:15:40 | |
If you do have a personal account that you use both for personal content and for official content, how to manage that? And then | 01:15:46 | |
Section E are some of the perils associated with participation in community forums, where you might participate in an official | 01:15:53 | |
way, but you're not the moderator of the forum. And so you may not have control over who's blocked or who's restricted. And where | 01:16:00 | |
that can become a problem from a liability perspective is if the owner of the forum. | 01:16:08 | |
Removes users, but you're there in an official capacity. And I have seen this and it comes up a lot in community development and | 01:16:16 | |
planning type decisions where there's a popular community forum in a certain city and a council member will join that forum, | 01:16:23 | |
participate in the forum and they will use that forum to seek comment. | 01:16:30 | |
On an upcoming vote and then if there's comment that is Askew from what the forum. | 01:16:38 | |
Moderators preferences or views are they remove people without that council member knowing. | 01:16:45 | |
And you can expose that council member to. | 01:16:51 | |
1st Amendment liability if that kind of thing happens. So that's a general overview of the resource. I don't. | 01:16:56 | |
I'm happy to answer questions, but I don't want to belabor all the details here in the meeting today. So I have a question about | 01:17:04 | |
the community forums. So would you recommend then not participating in forums where you don't have control over who is moderating? | 01:17:11 | |
I don't know that that's entirely realistic because you may have really important constituent groups and you can reach them that | 01:17:17 | |
way. What I would encourage you to be is precise in what your role is and how you're participating. So. | 01:17:24 | |
If for example, there was an important like today, you had a public hearing on an item. | 01:17:32 | |
If you were to go on to a public onto a forum and want to talk about that topic. | 01:17:37 | |
Just be clear to say I'm here in my role as a council member, not as a spokesperson for the city. | 01:17:44 | |
And this is not nothing we talk about here will be considered as a public comment. | 01:17:52 | |
During the public hearing, the place for that public hearing is, you know, share the details. | 01:18:00 | |
Of where that would be. And I think if you're really clear on identifying your role and why and how you're participating, that | 01:18:06 | |
you're generally OK. | 01:18:10 | |
You can't have issues if you have more than one council member on the same forum and that relates to Open and Public Meetings Act | 01:18:15 | |
and so just be aware of that if you have a. | 01:18:20 | |
Quorum present on that moderated board that. | 01:18:25 | |
Somebody probably ought to peel off so that you don't. | 01:18:29 | |
Run afoul of that. | 01:18:33 | |
So. | 01:18:37 | |
Mayor Wilson is holding a press conference tomorrow at 10 at the Capitol on the bond issue. | 01:18:39 | |
And people are showing up to kind of show their support. So how do you navigate that? Is it? | 01:18:44 | |
Like if I show up, essentially I'm showing up as a citizen that is saying I'm supportive of this bond. | 01:18:50 | |
Issue and if somebody asks me something. | 01:18:59 | |
Do I have to deliberately say I am not speaking on behalf of the city, not in that context, because you wouldn't be there using | 01:19:03 | |
city resources and as an elected official you have a lot more latitude. | 01:19:09 | |
Then if your city manager were to attend that same meeting while on a business day while she's working, then it may become an | 01:19:17 | |
issue because they're doing it on the city dime. | 01:19:24 | |
While they're employed. But if any of you were to attend that here that event. | 01:19:32 | |
And to participate and speak, there would be no problem with that. You could even identify yourself as the mayor of the city of | 01:19:38 | |
Holiday. | 01:19:42 | |
You just wouldn't be giving voice to things on behalf of the city. They would be your views as you and elected official who holds | 01:19:46 | |
that office. | 01:19:51 | |
Any other questions? | 01:20:00 | |
If anything comes up, you know, if anything comes to mind after we speak, give me a ring. | 01:20:02 | |
Send me an e-mail, I'd be happy to advise you on. No, you're going to have to like all of our. | 01:20:08 | |
Profiles Monitor. So Jamie, I do have one like I was just looking while you were talking at my own social media and there are | 01:20:15 | |
occasions where I will share a post of the cities that is inviting comment. | 01:20:22 | |
So like getting one. Let's use Spring Lane as the example. We're at the city of soliciting public input. I share it saying tell us | 01:20:31 | |
your views. I think council members do that as well. Does that change the dynamic? Should I going forward, should I just share the | 01:20:40 | |
cities post without inviting comment? I would probably do that otherwise you risk converting your. | 01:20:48 | |
Personal page into an official page. And I guess here's the difficulty with this. I pulled the case the Circuit Court case on | 01:20:58 | |
Linqvy freed it's around the table highlighted, but the the court said kind of an alarming thing and it it was. | 01:21:06 | |
They have reopened discovery in that case so that the plaintiff can look at more Facebook posts than just the ones that they knew | 01:21:15 | |
about beforehand. | 01:21:19 | |
And what it is going to end up being is open season on that individuals Facebook page where they'll pull apart every post to see | 01:21:24 | |
whether there was any official action. | 01:21:31 | |
And if there was official action, how he behaved relative to people that commented on it. And the court made a point to say this | 01:21:39 | |
will require a post by post analysis. And I don't know about you all, but I I don't want that kind of scrutiny on things I might | 01:21:46 | |
have said 10 years ago about an ice cream place in Alexandria. | 01:21:54 | |
That just so. | 01:22:02 | |
I'm out. That's that's I guess the concern be if you're precise in in that and all you're doing is reposting and directing people. | 01:22:06 | |
To make comment, I think you're perfectly safe, but I would be clear in reposting it to say. | 01:22:15 | |
You click this link, go to the city's website or Facebook feed, or wherever the source is. | 01:22:22 | |
To make your thoughts known on this. | 01:22:28 | |
It does get hard because our you grow a personal network overtime, right? | 01:22:31 | |
And especially for you elected officials who represent a district. | 01:22:36 | |
You probably have a really good population of your district on that profile. And so it it is a useful way to communicate with | 01:22:40 | |
people and to get their input on things. And we're just in a time right now where. | 01:22:48 | |
The law hasn't totally caught up to where technology is, and so you have to be just a little bit guarded and a little bit careful | 01:22:56 | |
about what you do. | 01:23:00 | |
So and I think that's all fantastic going forward. It's those 10 year ago things that I'm a little concerned about. | 01:23:05 | |
I'm imagining though that it would not be helpful or advisable for anyone to go and look at those tenure posts and hide them to | 01:23:14 | |
meet them. You you. | 01:23:20 | |
If nobody commented on them at all or interacted with them at all, then you probably could delete them. | 01:23:26 | |
If anybody did comment on them, preserve it. | 01:23:33 | |
And Stephanie can tell you what your. | 01:23:38 | |
Records retention policy says about those kind of things. At some point they'll expire, right? And you you will be able to safely | 01:23:42 | |
delete them. | 01:23:47 | |
But if you do delete them, and especially if you delete them, comment by comment or post by post. | 01:23:51 | |
Somebody may try to claim. | 01:23:58 | |
Gina's deleting this because they didn't like what I said. | 01:24:02 | |
Awesome. Thanks. | 01:24:08 | |
Sorry. | 01:24:11 | |
Jamie, I'm sorry, I just have one more question on the on the community forums. So for like our neighborhood chat, most of the | 01:24:12 | |
time it's like whose dog is this kind of conversation? But like today I was like. | 01:24:20 | |
Everyone's like, what are all the, you know, for the fire station or the, you know, the police and the firefighters out for? So I | 01:24:28 | |
just said I talked to the city manager and it just gave a brief update. Do I need to distinguish when I'm doing those kind of | 01:24:35 | |
things? I think that kind of post would be pretty clearly an official communication. | 01:24:41 | |
Even though you're not. Even though the city doesn't have a designated spokesperson. | 01:24:48 | |
You're relaying that because you have an official position with the city that makes you Privy to information that others may not | 01:24:54 | |
have. So you say I shouldn't do that or sorry, you're OK to do it. What you just need to know is, you know, if somebody comments | 01:25:00 | |
on that and they say the way the city handled this is. | 01:25:07 | |
And they they state their opinion. If you disagree with that, you can still state your disagreement, but you can't delete their | 01:25:15 | |
post just because. | 01:25:19 | |
Yeah, you don't like it? That's fine. | 01:25:23 | |
OK. Thank you. | 01:25:30 | |
Thank you. | 01:25:31 | |
All right, Paul, now all right. | 01:25:33 | |
Mr. ADJOURN, City Council and moving to closed session pursuant to Utah Code Section 52-4-204 and 2:05 to discuss property | 01:25:37 | |
acquisition and disposition. | 01:25:42 | |
2nd. | 01:25:48 | |
OK, Motion and a second Emily. | 01:25:50 | |
I did. | 01:25:56 | |
Drew, Yes. Yes. Paul, yes. | 01:25:59 | |
Yes and chair votes yes and we are in closed session. We'll start as soon as we get a thumbs up. | 01:26:03 |
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OK. | 00:00:03 | |
All right, welcome everybody. We'll call the City of the Holiday City Council meeting to order on Thursday, October 24th. A | 00:00:05 | |
council member. Brewer is excused tonight and we'll start with the pledge. | 00:00:11 | |
I'd like to leave this to the flag of the United States of America. | 00:00:22 | |
To the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:00:27 | |
Thank you. | 00:00:36 | |
OK. We do have one public hearing tonight on proposed amendments to Chapter 13, the Accessory Accessory Dwelling Unit public | 00:00:39 | |
hearing. So if you're here to address the council on that, you can wait till after public comment. If you're here to address the | 00:00:46 | |
council on any other item, we'll do it now during the public comment, which is now open. Anybody here to address the council? | 00:00:53 | |
There being then we'll close public comment and move to the public hearing on proposed amendments to Chapter 13.14, Point 031 | 00:01:03 | |
Accessory Dwelling units. I'll note for the record that we do have a e-mail comment from Natalie and Chris L Deary. I hope I'm | 00:01:12 | |
saying that correctly. Generally in favor of all the changes that were made to. | 00:01:20 | |
The accessory dwelling unit ordinance in 13.14 point 03/1. | 00:01:30 | |
Before we open up the public hearing. | 00:01:38 | |
Any questions or comments from Council? | 00:01:42 | |
I think we discussed it just briefly in the pre meeting. I think I can speak for the accounts. We want to press our thanks to the | 00:01:47 | |
staff. | 00:01:50 | |
For all the hard work, but also like to express my thanks to my colleagues here on the council because we really put some thought | 00:01:54 | |
into it. It was important. We wanted to make sure we were accommodating and protective and it required a fair amount of time and | 00:02:01 | |
elbow grease and and thought to to make that happen. I feel like we got to a pretty good spot. | 00:02:08 | |
Agreed. Yeah, John, if you'd pass that along to all that that were involved, we'd appreciate it. | 00:02:16 | |
OK, with that, we'll open the public hearing anybody to address the council on the Adu ordinance. | 00:02:24 | |
OK. There being that we will close the public hearing, I anticipate this will be. | 00:02:32 | |
On the agenda for on November 7th for a vote and we'll move right to item number 5 and I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember | 00:02:38 | |
Gray. | 00:02:43 | |
I'd like to introduce Pam Roberts, the general manager of Wasatch Front Waste and Recycling. There is a fee increase and she wants | 00:02:48 | |
to go over that. Pam is a fantastic manager, does a wonderful job and thank you. A pretty amazing motorcycle as well. And I would | 00:02:56 | |
have ridden tonight but I'm a little chilled so kind of cooled down quick there. | 00:03:04 | |
So before I jump into what the board discussions have been happening with. | 00:03:14 | |
The 2025 budget and proposed fee increases, I wanted to kind of go through a brief report of this picture that you see on this | 00:03:18 | |
front page of my report is our CNG fueling island. So we have 56 side load trucks that park at this island, 2 front loads as well. | 00:03:27 | |
And the front loader, the ones that pick up the dumpsters side load are the ones that come through your neighborhood. | 00:03:35 | |
And they park at that island overnight so they can get a a full tank of CNG and and hopefully make it through the day on the long | 00:03:44 | |
routes that they do. | 00:03:49 | |
And I also want to say thank you for to Board member Gray. You came out and took a tour of our facilities and saw the decaying | 00:03:54 | |
asphalt at this island and the safety issues and the board did approve a capital improvement and and taking 12 feet out replacing | 00:04:02 | |
the asphalt with concrete, reinforced concrete which is greatly appreciated $183,000 capital project which we desperately needed. | 00:04:09 | |
So thank you. | 00:04:16 | |
On the next page is the environmental stewardship. That's one of our big goals and we have rolled out different ways for residents | 00:04:24 | |
to divert waste away from the landfill for reuse of those resources. The biggest one is the curbside recycling and here you can | 00:04:33 | |
see that there was almost 1500 tons from January to through August that were diverted by that blue can we do have. | 00:04:42 | |
380 Glass Curbside Glass subscribers. | 00:04:51 | |
We also have the Megaplex complex. | 00:04:55 | |
Container at that location for central glass sites and there were eight trips made since the roll out of that. And so you figure | 00:05:00 | |
about once a month. So the total tonnage for for glass, we have the curbside green waste. There's almost 1700 subscribers here in | 00:05:08 | |
Holiday City. So a lot of residents have bought into that and using that service. We're very happy about that. | 00:05:17 | |
That helps also, you know, reuse that material. It does go out to the Salt Lake Valley landfill to their composting facility, and | 00:05:25 | |
it gets reused. | 00:05:29 | |
And then we have the curbside Christmas tea, that tree that will roll out in January. And right now you probably are aware that we | 00:05:35 | |
have the leaf bag going on. Even though that's not taken for a diversion, that's another resource that we use to make sure we get | 00:05:41 | |
rid of the the bulky waste that residents generate. There are 808 tonnes in the greeting trailers and that's roughly about 70 | 00:05:48 | |
trailers rented for that. | 00:05:55 | |
If there's no questions, I'll just keep on rolling. | 00:06:02 | |
This is one of the topics that Stephanie reached out to me to find out what's going on with HB 107 and how are we helping to make | 00:06:05 | |
sure that we fall? Well, first that we're following compliance and our requirements are that we report to each of our | 00:06:11 | |
municipalities how much recycling we're hauling and we needed to do that twice a year. We do it a little more often than that, but | 00:06:17 | |
specifically. | 00:06:24 | |
Related to HB 107, we created a page. | 00:06:31 | |
My wonderful staff created a beautiful page on our website. If you go in under the about tab and hit the district stats, district | 00:06:35 | |
statistic, this is a new page that has been created specifically to comply with HB107. And you'll see in your November newsletter | 00:06:42 | |
the diversion rate and then also all the recycling tonnage information to make sure that we're compliant with you and you can | 00:06:49 | |
publish that in your newsletter. | 00:06:57 | |
To meet your your requirements as well, we will have, or you can have a link directly to this page so that residents can go in | 00:07:04 | |
there and see that you are required to publish on your website as well as we are on ours. | 00:07:12 | |
Any questions about HB 107? Trying to make it easy for all of our cities and towns as much as we can. | 00:07:20 | |
One of our big goals is to have customer satisfaction. So we all know that the container program is very popular. So I have some | 00:07:28 | |
scrap stats for you. We call the seasonal container reservation, so scrap for short. | 00:07:35 | |
I love this illustration that's on the right. It's the then. So the before we had, we made a big change to this program and | 00:07:43 | |
started having residents reserve containers. We took them off the street. And just as a reminder, that was because of CDL driver | 00:07:50 | |
shortages and it wasn't, I think I've talked about that, but just as a reminder, starting in 2018, the industry started seeing CDL | 00:07:56 | |
driver shortages nationwide. | 00:08:03 | |
In fact, in 2018 there were 54,000. | 00:08:11 | |
CDL drivers that lost their licenses just to compliance issues and that was the Federal Motor Carriers Association started | 00:08:15 | |
requiring, requiring, excuse me, employers or the CDL holder to report any kind of compliance issues. So unfortunately a lot of | 00:08:22 | |
folks were out of whack. So since that time we, we experienced that not because of compliance issues, but just the fact that we | 00:08:30 | |
couldn't recruit or. | 00:08:37 | |
So our board has implemented overtime and I'll show you as we get into the fee increase, the wage increases to try to, you know, | 00:08:45 | |
be more attractive for those CDL drivers. And we did roll out an apprentice program just last year to get folks in that may not | 00:08:52 | |
have ACDL. They're 18 or older is the only qualification for that and that any valid Utah driver's license and we pay for their | 00:08:59 | |
CDL, we'll train them. | 00:09:06 | |
And then they we just had two folks graduated, graduate from that program and they're now out collecting waste and recycling. | 00:09:14 | |
So at any rate for Holiday City, we were able to accommodate. Let me just jump to that page online so I can see it. We were able | 00:09:22 | |
to accommodate eight, 834 of the just over 1000 reservations. That's a 77% accommodation for the city and district wide it was | 00:09:32 | |
about 74%. So it's a little above what we were able to do district wide. | 00:09:41 | |
I know that this is a very popular program. The board has had several discussions about how can we expand this service. One of the | 00:09:52 | |
ideas that has come forward and we're going to roll out for next season is basically limiting repeat reservations. So anybody that | 00:09:59 | |
reserved in 2024 would have to be on a waiting list for 2025 and anybody on the waiting list now in this for 2024 has first dibs | 00:10:07 | |
going into 2020. | 00:10:14 | |
Five, let's just try to get it out to more people as much as we can. We're just trying to be a little creative since it is so | 00:10:21 | |
popular and we have such limited resources to do that. | 00:10:27 | |
Any questions on that? | 00:10:33 | |
The next one is talking about employee satisfaction, another one of our big goals and engagement. I will say that we had two years | 00:10:37 | |
of not being able to purchase sideload trucks because of just basically we, the vendors change the pricing and we couldn't keep | 00:10:44 | |
up. And then there was a time they just basically said sorry, we don't. | 00:10:51 | |
We, you know, we're not able to accommodate you at all. So for two years we did not purchase sideload trucks. So we were behind in | 00:10:59 | |
our purchasing schedule. This year we've had 10, now just recently 11 that have arrived and I can say that our driver satisfaction | 00:11:06 | |
did increase. So going from a 10 year old 8 to 10 year old truck to a new one that the AC works, the windows work or whatever | 00:11:13 | |
else, you know, the arm is a little more. | 00:11:20 | |
Equipped and and slick and savvy. | 00:11:27 | |
That their satisfaction did go up. This particular picture that you're looking at, you're used to seeing the CNG tanks on the top | 00:11:31 | |
of the trucks. The the 10 that we ordered actually had the CNG tank on the back. | 00:11:38 | |
So that's a little new for us. So, so far it seems to be working well. In June, we did hold our national, well, excuse me, in | 00:11:45 | |
June, there's a National Waste and Recycling Workers Day and we always have a celebration with a food truck coming in the morning | 00:11:53 | |
and make sure we celebrate our team. The picture of the bottom, the woman off to the right is Laurie Turek. She was our first | 00:12:00 | |
graduate from the equipment operator apprentice and we did do a graduation. | 00:12:07 | |
For her Jesus real. Just graduated in September. | 00:12:15 | |
And then as always, I mean, since 2008, I've been working with leadership consultants to have resources for our managers, | 00:12:21 | |
supervisors and executives to make sure that we have the resources we need to develop our own skills for communication and | 00:12:26 | |
employee relations. | 00:12:32 | |
Moving into the meat and potatoes, so to speak, it was about, well, two years ago that I came before you as a council and talked | 00:12:41 | |
about the need to raise rates going into 2023 and prior to that it had been five years since our last fee increase in 2018. What | 00:12:48 | |
we know now is that five years was too long. | 00:12:56 | |
With inflationary factors that took place as well as the truck prices going up and then the $2.50 that we asked for was not | 00:13:05 | |
enough. | 00:13:10 | |
And Mayor Dellie, I remember you asking, is that enough? And at the time I thought, well, I hope so. So. Anyway, we're back and | 00:13:16 | |
the board has been having deliberations on the increased cost that we've incurred. This particular table at the top of this page | 00:13:23 | |
goes through the top. | 00:13:29 | |
Cost for us, with personnel being the highest, we are a service provider, we have 100. | 00:13:38 | |
And one Ftes and 65 of those are drivers. So the others are operation managers, fleets, so forth. Administratively, we have about | 00:13:46 | |
10 administrative staff, if you would. So I feel like we're lean as we can be and trying to get the front line taken care of. Over | 00:13:55 | |
the course of these years that you see before you, we've added 10 Ftes. Five of those were for The Apprentice program. | 00:14:04 | |
We are evaluating that program. We feel like it's successful. | 00:14:14 | |
Going forward, can we afford it? So there's some things we're looking internally of what can we do to adjust the wage increases | 00:14:18 | |
that the board has provided. You'll see up there that the starting wage, and that's somebody coming in with ACDL that has one year | 00:14:25 | |
of experience, that's starting wage went up $6.00 an hour over the course of time. The thing to note, in 2021 and 2022, the board | 00:14:33 | |
approved what we call the work for experience model. | 00:14:40 | |
For hiring and salary, so somebody comes in with 12 years of experience, they don't start at the starting wage, they'll start | 00:14:48 | |
wherever that midpoint is or above. We have a compression matrix that our compensation consultant put together for us. And if | 00:14:55 | |
somebody has a certain years of experience, they'll move within the salary range. So the average driver wage went from, you know, | 00:15:03 | |
basically jumped up $10.00 an hour within that time frame. So that's significant obviously for a significant. | 00:15:10 | |
But the benefit is we get more experienced drivers coming in and we can retain those drivers. | 00:15:18 | |
So the board has been looking at fee increase scenarios between 5:50 and 6:50 a month. | 00:15:25 | |
Recently, the board met in September with a proposed budget before them of 550 a month and then an incremental increase going into | 00:15:36 | |
26 and 27. | 00:15:40 | |
The board did give direction to bring forward a tentative budget of $6.50 per home per month and that brings the fee from 1950 up | 00:15:46 | |
to $26. That would start in 2025. Whatever the fee increase is that the board selects in this next meeting next Monday, it would | 00:15:56 | |
be effective in January, January 1, but residents wouldn't actually see that until. | 00:16:05 | |
We send out the quarterly bill in April and that's when folks would see that things that we're looking internally as | 00:16:15 | |
administration is trying to speed up our cash flow. And because we did consult with Zions Bank to come in and provide some | 00:16:23 | |
financial advisory services, one of the things that they did is look at our cash projections going forward and looked at the | 00:16:30 | |
number of days that we have cash on hand. It's a new way for us to look at that. | 00:16:37 | |
And we started seeing that, you know, at the end of this year, we're going to have 85 days of cash available. And we operate on | 00:16:45 | |
cash. We're an enterprise fund. We have no tax dollars whatsoever. So as you can imagine, we want to make sure we have enough cash | 00:16:52 | |
to pay our bills. So we're looking at maybe doing billing more often. | 00:16:59 | |
Which would be maybe every other week or every other month, excuse me, to bring in that cash sooner. So we'll get more creative | 00:17:07 | |
and talk about that with the board next week. That does of course Dr. up some costs. So we want to make sure we're not pricing | 00:17:13 | |
that out. | 00:17:18 | |
The board will be had a special meeting just this past Monday. It feels like it's been a month already since that meeting. And | 00:17:24 | |
then they're holding the tentative adoption Monday morning. That's when there's by statute, the board is supposed to tentatively | 00:17:31 | |
adopt the tentative budget in October according to district statutes. And then there's a public hearing scheduled on Monday, | 00:17:37 | |
November 18th at 6:00 PM. | 00:17:44 | |
And we have until December 16th for the board to actually make the final adoption. | 00:17:52 | |
And I believe we're going to need that much time to make sure the board has plenty of time to discuss, deliberate and make a | 00:17:58 | |
decision on the amount going forward. | 00:18:03 | |
I know it's a lot of information really quick. | 00:18:09 | |
And what questions might you have? Just one question, you had mentioned on the previous slide there, Stephanie, about you had an | 00:18:13 | |
increase in 10 FT ES. | 00:18:19 | |
Presumably due to service level growth. | 00:18:24 | |
Yes, and putting that in context. So you added 10 Ftes, bringing you to a total of. | 00:18:28 | |
The 100 and well, hundred now possibly 101 next year, but that's in debate. OK, so you're in the 90 range now. You're the 100 | 00:18:34 | |
range, yeah. | 00:18:38 | |
And most of them are drivers as I mentioned. And then five of those were for The Apprentice program that were driver positions | 00:18:44 | |
that were reclassified, but three of those positions were at a higher pay. | 00:18:50 | |
Of a driver, if that makes sense. So thank you for the question. So there were three administrative positions, a data specialist, | 00:18:56 | |
an administrative manager and I don't know if you really call the safety coordinator, administrative is more operational, but | 00:19:02 | |
those were key positions that we did bring on since 20. | 00:19:08 | |
2021. | 00:19:15 | |
So Pam that. | 00:19:18 | |
So our current rate is 1950 per month. Yes, Sir. | 00:19:20 | |
And the proposal is to go. | 00:19:25 | |
To what 26 right now is what the board has. | 00:19:29 | |
Talked about and given direction to bring forward. So that's the six 5650. | 00:19:35 | |
Yeah. So these increased costs are equate to about 5.8 mill over those six years and that includes the 25 budget, which really is | 00:19:44 | |
roughly. | 00:19:50 | |
You know, $6 per home per month and we were looking again at the cash projections and what could sustain us for, you know, could | 00:19:56 | |
we go three years. Unfortunately, the 250 only got us 2 and and it really didn't stretch very far. | 00:20:05 | |
Because of the uncommon inflationary pressures over the last. | 00:20:14 | |
Because I was looking, I was talking to Emily earlier about it looks like the. | 00:20:20 | |
Trending has been every four or five years, there's a 15% increase. | 00:20:24 | |
Because we've been running two or three percent, 1% increase. So this is this 30. So that's 33%, right. | 00:20:29 | |
650 would be over 30. Yeah. So the, and I think the big thing is that most fee increases were 3-4 years at the Max and we, we | 00:20:36 | |
waited 5. So, you know, I apologize. We waited too long. | 00:20:43 | |
And didn't and didn't ask for that. That is a pretty good bumper. Are you? | 00:20:52 | |
I mean, I would assume that. | 00:20:56 | |
You're in contact with other agencies and everybody has the same pressures. | 00:20:59 | |
So is this a common kind of increase other? | 00:21:05 | |
Agencies like yours are having to impose to keep pace. Yes, the way we keep track of what's going on another we look at other | 00:21:10 | |
cities. | 00:21:14 | |
Private haulers won't tell us their cost. I don't get to go to their board meetings, but they can come to mind. So I look at | 00:21:18 | |
cities, other cities that may be contract out or Salt Lake City does their own. Draper City does their own. | 00:21:25 | |
Salt Lake City, as you may know is has one of the highest rates with I think it's $33. | 00:21:33 | |
A month, but that includes their green so that all, all residents have all three cans. And that's one of the things our green | 00:21:41 | |
waste is subscription that's not even you know, talked about in here. We are going to increase that to make sure there's no | 00:21:49 | |
subsidy from the monthly fee going into the the green. So we're going to bump that up from 10:50 to twelve $1.50 a month on that. | 00:21:57 | |
So the I apologize, I lost my train of thought there. So I have so many things in my mind. | 00:22:06 | |
The, I guess the thing to note is that we would be second to that right now. Currently we are below Salt Lake City and Murray | 00:22:13 | |
City. Murray City is about 2150, I believe they, they provide biweekly recycling. And that's the other thing I've shown in the | 00:22:21 | |
board is, is not just the dollar, it's the service level, right. So are there, is there anything that residents would want to give | 00:22:28 | |
up so far I'm. | 00:22:35 | |
That there's not, you know, there wasn't a desire when I've been going out to the other municipalities in the district to reduce | 00:22:43 | |
to biweekly recycling that would reduce that, you know, fee going forward. But it does take down the service level and I'm not | 00:22:50 | |
hearing that there's that desire. I'm not seeing a whole lot of reduction in my Amazon boxes at my house. So exactly. | 00:22:57 | |
Exactly. And those that cardboard takes, from what we measure, that's 50% of what's in the blue can and it does take up a lot of | 00:23:06 | |
space. | 00:23:11 | |
And we appreciate any resident that will fold that up, cut the tape off, you know, just fold it up. We really appreciate that. You | 00:23:17 | |
know, I've heard in this anecdotal, but I've heard that. | 00:23:21 | |
A lot of what goes in the blue cans ends up to the landfill. I mean, is that true? Not true. I mean, do you not have data on that? | 00:23:27 | |
Like I'm so glad you asked. So one of the things we do part of our contracts with, we contract with Waste Management and we mainly | 00:23:33 | |
take Magna Currents and a portion of Taylor Taylorsville to them because they're in Salt Lake City and doesn't make much sense to | 00:23:39 | |
take a lot. And then we the lion's share goes to Rocky Mountain Recycling. So in our contracts it says that anything that's | 00:23:45 | |
recyclable. | 00:23:51 | |
Goes for recycling and then it's only residual, so contaminants that would go for garbage. | 00:23:57 | |
And our team keeps an eye on it and we also do sample sorts. And what that means is that our team will be our quality assurance | 00:24:03 | |
inspectors and sustainability coordinator will be on site at the recycling center to watch their staff sort through a load of | 00:24:11 | |
recycling. And what that also does is it tells us the contamination rate. You've heard that before, how much garbage is in that | 00:24:18 | |
blue can? And with education efforts, we've seen that. | 00:24:26 | |
Dramatically, there was a neighborhood in Kearns that went from 30% to 8 just because the the team targeted that area. And then | 00:24:33 | |
that of course helps to reduce the fee we have to pay at the recycling vendor. Garbage in, garbage out we have to pay. So at any | 00:24:41 | |
rate, yes, it goes for recycling. Any garbage in there does not. And we do have the Flyers that we get out for events as much as | 00:24:48 | |
we possibly what goes for garbage is less than what goes for recycling. | 00:24:55 | |
Correct. So recently a sample sort for Mill Creek. I'm gonna go visit them next Monday. | 00:25:03 | |
Theirs was 18% contamination. | 00:25:12 | |
If that helps kind of paint a picture that would go to the landfill, whereas 72% is going to go for recycling. I hope that helps. | 00:25:16 | |
Yeah, there is a lot of myths out there. There's so many myths out there. But yes, recycling is still happening and it is being | 00:25:22 | |
recycled. We watch them close. | 00:25:28 | |
There is a company just outside of, well just in Croydon. I don't know if you're familiar with Devil's Slide is on 84. I am | 00:25:36 | |
because I ride by there a lot, but there's a company called Geo Cycle and they purchase some of the plastics from the from Waste | 00:25:44 | |
Management Rocky Mountain Recycling. It may not be the most optimal use but they burn it to in their kilns when they make cement. | 00:25:53 | |
So it burns hotter than coal and it cleaner. If you want to call it that then then coal as well. But it is being reused again, | 00:26:03 | |
it's not the most optimal. | 00:26:08 | |
Use of of a recyclable, but it is those plastics that are harder to get rid of on the markets, so it is one way to reuse it. | 00:26:13 | |
Can you tell us a little bit about your communication plan with? | 00:26:25 | |
Residents about the rate increase, yes. So I've been going out. I call it the show on the road, coming out to councils. We've been | 00:26:28 | |
putting in newsletters to so that they know I'm the direct contact, they can call me. | 00:26:35 | |
Once we finalize what that fee increase is going to be with the board, we'll put it on Facebook. | 00:26:43 | |
Again, with contact information, they can let us know and then just any word that we can spread out there. | 00:26:49 | |
And, and please give any resident that has questions my phone number, e-mail, preferably not my cell, but that's OK. If they do | 00:26:56 | |
get ahold of it, I still answer it. So but yeah, questions will come up. And we, I was at Magna City on Tuesday for the second | 00:27:03 | |
time to talk to residents there. And, you know, there's concern and I certainly understand 650 a month, it may not sound a lot, | 00:27:11 | |
but that, you know, it's a McDonald's. | 00:27:18 | |
Meal or something like that I think is one of our board members talked about or Starbucks and I understand that, but for others | 00:27:26 | |
that's not the case. For others, it could be really strapping to to make sure they can take care of that as well as their five | 00:27:32 | |
kids. So very cognizant about that. | 00:27:37 | |
For folks that are truly indigent and they can apply through the county treasurer's office and get a reduced fee, so their fee is | 00:27:44 | |
cut in half. For anybody that is indigent and qualifies with with the treasurer, we cut that fee right in half. | 00:27:52 | |
Other questions? Comments. | 00:28:04 | |
I really appreciate your time. | 00:28:07 | |
Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, Pam, and great job. Yeah, thank you. And I really appreciate Board Council Member Gray | 00:28:09 | |
being on the board. She's very involved and surprised that you'll probably be asked to be vice chair next year. And let's make | 00:28:15 | |
that public. | 00:28:21 | |
Your your pay just keeps going up and up. | 00:28:29 | |
There's a pay company? Oh yeah. | 00:28:32 | |
My wife will bake cookies. | 00:28:35 | |
All right. Thank you. Thanks, Pam. Appreciate it. | 00:28:38 | |
All right. | 00:28:45 | |
We are on item number six, which is the ordinance. | 00:28:48 | |
Amending the city code to a lot short term rentals as a conditional use. | 00:28:53 | |
In the PO zone there was. | 00:28:59 | |
Supporting document provided by John and the planning staff that just kind of clarified a few issues that I. | 00:29:05 | |
That we had during our discussion last week. That's in the packet that I know everybody has reviewed. | 00:29:13 | |
Just kind of clarified a few issues, but. | 00:29:20 | |
You know, we had a pretty robust discussion in the follow up work session as it related to this particular issue and it's an | 00:29:25 | |
interesting issue. | 00:29:29 | |
I'll kind of set it up and then I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Gray. This application is in her district, even though | 00:29:35 | |
it is a a text amendment to a zone that affects the entire city's. | 00:29:41 | |
So we kind of had this discussion where it ended up was. | 00:29:49 | |
The staff and the Planning Commission had gone through their public hearing and their processes and they forwarded a | 00:29:54 | |
recommendation to the City Council, a negative recommendation that they were not in favor of text amending this zone that they | 00:30:02 | |
would be essentially in more more in favor. John, if I get this generally right, that if we're going to text amended zone. | 00:30:10 | |
Change the land use. It's a big deal. | 00:30:19 | |
It should take a full vetting and we've got this opportunity to review the general plan. We're just starting that really in the | 00:30:23 | |
next month or two, right? | 00:30:28 | |
And we will go through our entire city general plan and discuss these very kinds of issues that have, you know, long lasting | 00:30:34 | |
impact on how the general plan is going to direct the Planning Commission and staff and the council down the road. And maybe it | 00:30:39 | |
that's the best place for it to end up is. | 00:30:45 | |
You know, really think about citywide where we want to have where it's appropriate for us to to approve short term rentals. So it | 00:30:51 | |
kind of went from that to well, gosh, if we are going to have short term rentals, maybe this is zoned for it back to. | 00:31:01 | |
Maybe it ought to go to the. Maybe we ought to. | 00:31:12 | |
Align with the Planning Commission and staff and really let the general plan handle this process. So that's kind of where it ended | 00:31:16 | |
up. | 00:31:19 | |
Emily, I'll kind of let you take it from there and then we'll see how the discussion goes and see if we work our way into a motion | 00:31:23 | |
or if we work our way into a table till November 7th. | 00:31:28 | |
I think those are the two options right now. Well, I actually think you summarized it pretty well. I feel like I have gone back | 00:31:33 | |
and forth on this many times. I've reached out to John independently and Carrie and asked them some questions. | 00:31:39 | |
Because overall. | 00:31:46 | |
Excuse me? | 00:31:49 | |
I think it could make a lot of sense. Sorry, what happened. You're going to get emotional about it. | 00:31:51 | |
To have short term rentals in the PO zone. | 00:32:00 | |
I just as a general rule, I like to be very thoughtful and methodical about any decisions I make. And I just haven't felt like we | 00:32:02 | |
have had the chance to really look at this issue as comprehensively as I would like. I feel like when we have been doing this | 00:32:08 | |
external Adu issue, we've taken a lot of time and unfortunately a lot of staff time as well. But I feel like what we've ended up | 00:32:15 | |
with I think is something that we can be really happy with and. | 00:32:21 | |
Well, I think it's likely we might end up in the same place or a similar place. I I. | 00:32:29 | |
I just want to make sure that we do all of our due diligence. | 00:32:34 | |
In looking at short term rentals comprehensively for the city, if would we want to not just maybe limit them by zone, but maybe in | 00:32:38 | |
particular parcels along particular arterials. I just think that it it deserves thoughtful study and we're so I mean the wheels | 00:32:43 | |
are already in motion for. | 00:32:48 | |
Reviewing the general plan. So I think that's where I'm landing is that I, I don't think I know that the, the, the person who | 00:32:55 | |
brought this forward was concerned that it would put things off a long time. I, I don't think it's gonna put it off extensively | 00:33:01 | |
for, for their particular issue, but I think it will give us the time to really consider this. | 00:33:07 | |
The way that we need to is kind of where I've landed. So yeah, I don't, I don't know what anyone else is thinking on it, but. | 00:33:13 | |
Yeah, I agree, Emily. The thing about there are certain things we do that are fairly routine even, you know, even. | 00:33:20 | |
Specific parcel rezones can either be routine or not routine. | 00:33:31 | |
Certain text amendments can be routine, but changing the land use tables is never routine. It's, at least in my view, shouldn't | 00:33:36 | |
ever be considered routine because those are major earthquakes in the code, because some of them, in my view, the the land use | 00:33:43 | |
tables are really foundational. And so when you make changes and shifts, it doesn't mean you can't do that. That's our job to | 00:33:49 | |
evaluate those. But these are. | 00:33:56 | |
Foundational changes when you start messing with land use tables and things that you can do it, but I don't think it should ever | 00:34:03 | |
be routine and this feels a little bit overly routine. | 00:34:07 | |
Everything about on land use table changes. | 00:34:12 | |
I say change, but it's pretty much only additions because you can't really subtract land uses or, or it takes Herculean effort to | 00:34:17 | |
try to subtract, you know, an entitled right. That just doesn't happen. So whenever we're talking about land use table changes or | 00:34:25 | |
he's talking about adding and and so we need to be careful and contemplative when we're talking about changing a land use tables. | 00:34:33 | |
Like I said, it's, it's, it's heavily impactful because not only is it impactful for an applicant. | 00:34:43 | |
It's impactful for every parcel in that zone and every parcel neighboring the zone that you're about to change and any parcel | 00:34:47 | |
neighboring a parcel that could become rezoned. And so it really can have some strong ripples. And so I agree, Emily, I think at | 00:34:55 | |
some point when we go through this more contemplative process, we may end up in a situation where we we end up OK with it. But I | 00:35:02 | |
think we we. | 00:35:10 | |
Owe it to the code since we're talking about something so foundational to do not. | 00:35:17 | |
Think of this as as a routine, as a as a standard. | 00:35:24 | |
Zone change for a specific parcel. We ran into it not that long ago when we were thinking about. | 00:35:30 | |
You know, it's changing the land use table for the C2 and we came pretty close to doing something almost. | 00:35:35 | |
That was going to really bind our hands. We didn't realize that at the last minute. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm not comfortable with. | 00:35:43 | |
Making this land use change in this fashion. | 00:35:52 | |
Well, I'm the one that kind. I'll take the blame of the one that brought brought up the issue of well, if we were going to allow | 00:35:58 | |
this might be a good place for it. And then when I started digging into it a little bit more and started getting feedback. | 00:36:04 | |
The comment was made that I. | 00:36:12 | |
Short term rentals should really be considered more in terms of where they are located, not what zone they were in. Was the term | 00:36:15 | |
that was used that really caught me 'cause I think that's correct. | 00:36:20 | |
Short term rentals are going to become a bigger, bigger an issue in our communities and where they are located in our communities. | 00:36:27 | |
And I think that issue needs to be fully vetted and there needs to be a lot of consideration put into where we're actually going | 00:36:35 | |
to allow them. Not in particular in a, you know, just a specific zone, but where in a zone they might be allowed to be located. | 00:36:44 | |
That. | 00:36:52 | |
Discussion ought to be had and I think the general plan process and review process is the appropriate place for it. And I just | 00:36:53 | |
want to add to there are a couple of things that came up to 1 is that that? | 00:36:59 | |
This particular application was a change from an RM to a PO and R and short term rentals were allowed in the RM zone prior to the | 00:37:06 | |
zone change being made. That was one thing but the other, and this is just a personal thing for me and I know I brought it up with | 00:37:11 | |
the council before but. | 00:37:16 | |
I I'm not real crazy about when people insert a personal. | 00:37:22 | |
Reason why they need this particular text amendment zone change. In this particular case it was to create another short term, you | 00:37:29 | |
know, property on well. | 00:37:34 | |
When we consider stuff as accounts, we're considering a text amendment to a zone, not a, not an individual benefit that can derive | 00:37:41 | |
from that change. So when I'm going through this, and I know we all do, when we consider text amendment to the PO zone, we're | 00:37:48 | |
considering the entire PO zone and what the ramifications are going to be. And I think in this case there were. | 00:37:55 | |
Correct me John, like 38 potential zones that could be affected by this particular text amendment right, either they're currently | 00:38:04 | |
PO or identified as being potential PO zone changes. And so I that's a very long way of saying I have circled back and agree with | 00:38:11 | |
both Emily and Paul on this that. | 00:38:19 | |
I'm not comfortable with the broad text amendment change to this zone when we have an opportunity really review. | 00:38:28 | |
Short term rentals as a whole in the city over the next year and that would be the appropriate place to do it. So for that reason, | 00:38:37 | |
I will be voting not to support this text amendment to the PO Zone. | 00:38:42 | |
I thought it was a very interesting discussion and ended up also sort of coming to the conclusion that this may be an appropriate | 00:38:50 | |
place for the short term rentals. I I do think though that it was. | 00:38:57 | |
At this particular juncture, sort of being driven by 1. | 00:39:05 | |
Parcel and one situation and it seemed like. | 00:39:09 | |
The tail was wagging the dog a little bit and we didn't really have the time to work through. | 00:39:15 | |
Some of the fine tuning that we might want to do and so. | 00:39:20 | |
I think Emily and Paul both expressed well that we may end up in the same position eventually, but I don't have any objection to | 00:39:24 | |
going through a more deliberate process to make sure we're doing it the right way. | 00:39:31 | |
I have never been a fan of short term rentals, at least in residential areas. | 00:39:40 | |
And. | 00:39:49 | |
Last time when we met, we were talking and Mayor, you said that it's. | 00:39:51 | |
Allowing short term rentals in the PO zone would be a good way of getting them out of the. | 00:39:57 | |
Residential areas and I sort of grabbed onto that but and was warming up to the idea. But as has been expressed, I think. | 00:40:04 | |
Have allowing them in all the PO zones and the potential PO zones. | 00:40:18 | |
Would be concerning even like. | 00:40:25 | |
Is being proposed tonight. If it was a conditional use, I think that. | 00:40:30 | |
That would be concerning, and making it a conditional use would also be. | 00:40:36 | |
Putting a burden on staff. And so I think I have gone back and forth, but at this point in time, I agree that we ought to wait and | 00:40:42 | |
give this further, further consideration. | 00:40:50 | |
OK. I think we see where it's going. The way the ordinance is written, it's written to allow the text amendment. Jamie, what's a, | 00:41:00 | |
what would be the best way to put a motion on the table for this to just? | 00:41:05 | |
Get it, get it on and have no votes or motion to deny that the text amendment. Are are you wanting to take it up after the general | 00:41:10 | |
plan process is complete? Is that well, I think it'll be taken. I think it will be addressed during the general. I assume it will | 00:41:17 | |
be addressed during the general plan process and the general plan will give us more guidance regarding what we think is | 00:41:24 | |
appropriate as it relates to stores. | 00:41:30 | |
So I think the vote, the votes obviously looks like it's going to go to deny this request to text amend the PO zone. So my | 00:41:38 | |
recommendation where you had an application for the text amendment is you have an obligation to act on that application. | 00:41:45 | |
You can't continue it indefinitely. | 00:41:53 | |
And I don't think you it's proper even to continue it if you intend to bring it up in six months or a year or whenever it is that | 00:41:57 | |
the city is done with the general planning process. So would the motion be to get a motion on the table to approve this and then | 00:42:03 | |
get no votes or just a motion to say to deny the request? Either a motion to approve or a motion to deny, OK. | 00:42:10 | |
Motion. All right. | 00:42:17 | |
Mr. Go ahead, Mr. Mayor, I motion to approve Ordinance 2024-16 amending Title 13 of the City Code to allow short term rentals as a | 00:42:20 | |
conditional use in the PO zone. | 00:42:26 | |
Second, OK, so we have a motion. And 2nd, so just to be clear, a yes vote would be an approval to the text amendment and no vote | 00:42:33 | |
would be to not allow it. OK, so with that, we'll go to vote Councilmember Gray. | 00:42:40 | |
Councilmember Quinn, no Council member Fotheringham, no Council Member Durham and chair votes no, so that tax amendment is denied. | 00:42:49 | |
Thank you, council. | 00:42:54 | |
Item number 7 is the consideration of ordinance 2024-17 amending section 11.04, point 010, clarifying the enforcement authority of | 00:43:02 | |
Unified Police Department for traffic regulations within the city. We talked about this in the prior work session. It's basically | 00:43:10 | |
just a clarifying sentence based on the separation of the sheriff from Unified Police of Greater Salt Lake. Any questions from. | 00:43:18 | |
Council to staff or council before we take a motion. | 00:43:27 | |
Mr. Merriman of approval of Ordinance 2024-17 amending section 11.04 dot 010, clarifying enforcement authority of UPD. | 00:43:34 | |
Second, OK, we have a motion, a second from council member Durham. We'll go to vote on this. Council member Gray. Yes. Council | 00:43:46 | |
member Quinn, Council member Fartherham, Council member Durham and chair vote Chess. OK, thank you council, before we move to the | 00:43:52 | |
city manager report. | 00:43:57 | |
Chief, as you know, as much as you're comfortable, I know we've had a lot of text amendments going back and forth on the incident | 00:44:05 | |
that took place. Would you mind just giving us an update you're comfortable giving us at this point? | 00:44:10 | |
On the House fire on the South end of the city and the officers and firefighters involved. | 00:44:16 | |
Thanks. Yeah, very sad situation with this fire that happened. There's one victim that came out of the home that was in critical | 00:44:22 | |
condition still at the hospital we had there was a firefighter hurt. I'm I. | 00:44:28 | |
Not exactly sure on that extent of his injuries, but a fairly minor. We had five of our officers that were suffer from smoke | 00:44:35 | |
inhalation and were trying to get into the house and help get that victim out. They went to the hospital and we're just all | 00:44:41 | |
released before I got here and and everybody's, everybody, all of our officers are doing good and they're all home now so. | 00:44:47 | |
But the investigation is still ongoing. We've got our detectives out there working side by side with Unified Fires arson | 00:44:54 | |
investigators to determine the cause and, and what took place in that fire situation. But you know, for a sad situation, there was | 00:45:00 | |
a lot of great collaboration between the two agencies and in bringing a quick resolution to this. So it could have been worse, | 00:45:06 | |
could have been a lot worse, It really could have. | 00:45:12 | |
You know it's in a. | 00:45:19 | |
A townhouse section so there's like 4 townhouses that are in there. Unfortunately, the damage is only limited to two of the | 00:45:22 | |
townhomes that were there and, and so but, but ultimately that investigation is still going and as I get more information I'll | 00:45:29 | |
certainly let you know well, I'll just pass along our our thoughts and prayers to the officers and the firefighter involved and. | 00:45:36 | |
And glad they're OK. Thank you. Thanks, Chief, Sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. | 00:45:43 | |
OK, Gina. Thank you. | 00:45:48 | |
A couple of updates for the council. First, I wanted to alert the council to a potential issue that may impact the base amount of | 00:45:53 | |
our budget contract with UPD next year. So at the beginning of the school year, as we always do, Chief Oil got a lot of requests | 00:46:01 | |
to look at changes and where we staff crossing guards. And as part of that exercise, we started asking questions to help us | 00:46:08 | |
balance to. | 00:46:15 | |
Number in the UPD budget and eventually came to realize that there's been an error for several years in how those crossing guards | 00:46:23 | |
were being charged to precincts. So seven of our crossing guards were being charged to Mill Creek instead of Holiday. | 00:46:33 | |
We think that's going to be about a $65,000 issue next year. | 00:46:45 | |
The good news is we don't have to go back and rectify that to 2018. We think we're going to be able to use some savings in other | 00:46:51 | |
parts of the budget this year to make that adjustment. | 00:46:58 | |
But it will it will impact our base for next year. So expect that to go up. | 00:47:05 | |
So just like to thank Chief Oil and others in UPD in tracking that down and sometimes you don't like the result of questions, why | 00:47:13 | |
are you asking him for tracking? | 00:47:18 | |
Thanks, Chief. | 00:47:30 | |
2nd, we talked a little bit across the hall about our 25th anniversary of incorporation that's coming up in November. We do have a | 00:47:36 | |
time capsule that was prepared 25 years ago. And what we're hoping to do is have the council open that and maybe film some of that | 00:47:43 | |
opening and looking at those those archives. | 00:47:51 | |
Before your November 7th meeting. So we're hoping that we could do that about about 4:00. | 00:47:59 | |
On your on November 7th if that would work for everyone. | 00:48:07 | |
That is slightly complicated by another thing that's happening on November 7th. Mike Kennedy, who is currently the GOP candidate | 00:48:12 | |
to replace John Curtis in the Third Congressional District, assuming he he wins on November 5th, would like to come and introduce | 00:48:22 | |
himself to our council at the November 7th meeting. We're still trying to nail down that time, but. | 00:48:32 | |
It also might be before council meetings, so we're going to continue to work on those times and then Stephanie will send out | 00:48:42 | |
appointments in Outlook. | 00:48:46 | |
So if you can't attend either or both, maybe all of those, that would be great. | 00:48:52 | |
Finally, I just wanted to mention to the council, I know I've talked with several of you as how Stephanie about some challenges | 00:49:00 | |
we've had in both delivery and timeliness of the journal, which contains our newsletter. Stephanie and I met with the | 00:49:07 | |
representative of the Journal today and we have some ideas about how we can solve both of those issues. Not surprisingly, that | 00:49:13 | |
might include a budget amendment, so. | 00:49:20 | |
We're waiting for some additional numbers. | 00:49:27 | |
We wanted to let the council know we've heard your concerns. We understand the priority is delivery and timeliness and so we'll | 00:49:30 | |
have more information about about how we can achieve those goals at likely the November 21st meeting. | 00:49:38 | |
That's it for me. Any questions? | 00:49:47 | |
Thanks. | 00:49:51 | |
Thanks, Gina. OK, we'll go to council reports. Let's start with Emily and we'll work our way down the line. | 00:49:52 | |
I just have one announcement. Bonneville Junior High is celebrating their 60th anniversary as a school this year. So as part of | 00:50:00 | |
their Fall festival on Thursday, November 13th, they are going to be doing all of the fall festival stuff and then also doing a 60 | 00:50:07 | |
year celebration of the school. So everyone's invited to that. I know a lot of members of the community have either gone there or | 00:50:15 | |
their kids have gone there and so. | 00:50:22 | |
Nice thing to remember and celebrate. Do you wouldn't know what time that is? 530 to 7:30. | 00:50:30 | |
Thank you. | 00:50:39 | |
Drew, you're up. | 00:50:43 | |
Just very quickly want to. | 00:50:45 | |
Thank Chief Whale for all the time and effort he's put in to untangling hopefully all the parking issues with at Morningside | 00:50:48 | |
Elementary. Sounds like we've. | 00:50:54 | |
We're In Sync with the Fire Marshall and so we, um. | 00:51:01 | |
The parents won't get kicked out of their drop off pickup area that they've been using, which is actually the fire line. | 00:51:07 | |
So anyway, thank you for all the time and effort that you put in on that. | 00:51:14 | |
Arts councils events have sort of wound down for a little while taking a break there as well as the UFA board has slowed down. So | 00:51:24 | |
the only thing I have is like to introduce one of the holidays newest residents and and and a constituents of my district District | 00:51:30 | |
3 Rosie Joy fathering him a one week old. | 00:51:36 | |
Check out now camera. There she is. That's all I have. | 00:51:43 | |
The only thing I have is tree talks on November 9th at the library. I think they have a panel of arborists this time, which is | 00:51:49 | |
always really popular. People can come and ask how to prune their trees, how to plant their trees. So if you are available, it's | 00:51:54 | |
all. That's an interesting one. | 00:52:00 | |
OK. | 00:52:07 | |
Boy, I think we covered everything across the hall. I do want to. I'm going to piggyback on Gina's comment about the budget. There | 00:52:09 | |
may be another potential budget. | 00:52:13 | |
Impact from unified police. | 00:52:20 | |
I'll just, I'll just make it brief, but eventually we're seeing a real. | 00:52:24 | |
Pick up in these mental health issues that are impacting communities and we have a right now we have a detective that really deals | 00:52:31 | |
almost solely now, right Chief, like I think you were saying 90% of his time is that Sonia? | 00:52:37 | |
Is our kind of mental health detective and. | 00:52:46 | |
Mill Creek has experienced experiencing the same thing, although Mill Creek is twice the size of us and, you know, a little bit | 00:52:50 | |
different Democratic but. | 00:52:54 | |
It's not an issue that is going away, it's an issue that's escalating. And so they brought up this idea of when we when we | 00:53:00 | |
separated from the Sheriff's Office, that asset left shared services and Mill Creek is very interested in bringing on a licensed | 00:53:07 | |
clinical social worker to liaise with their mental health detectives. | 00:53:14 | |
It's going to be a budget impact. I talked to Gene about it a little. We talked with Gene about it. | 00:53:23 | |
The chief about it. We agree that this is an issue in our community. | 00:53:29 | |
It's an issue that. | 00:53:34 | |
Is probably not fair to solely place on our police officers along with every other responsibility they seem to be getting heaped | 00:53:36 | |
onto their shoulders. | 00:53:40 | |
And so our sense was that our council would kind of be supportive of taking a look at this and partnering with if none of the | 00:53:44 | |
other agencies have the appetite budget wise for this. | 00:53:49 | |
You know, I kind of felt like our accounts would be interested in working with Mill Creek if Midvale didn't want to join in and | 00:53:55 | |
and bringing on that asset to work on a pro rata. We would obviously split that cost on a pro rata basis and bring on a licensed | 00:54:03 | |
clinical social worker to start working with our detectives, identify areas out in our community, situations out in our community | 00:54:10 | |
that are maybe common that we can start to deal with or just have that person to deal with. | 00:54:18 | |
Professionally, when we have a mental health issue taking place out in our community, so. | 00:54:25 | |
I think if we can get a thumbs up from the council, at least go forward with that. Certainly if when we know what the budget | 00:54:31 | |
impacts are going to be, we'll come back to everybody. But just wanted to kind of get a temperature that we're OK to go forward | 00:54:36 | |
with that with with Mill Creek and their precinct. | 00:54:42 | |
I would have would be whether or not it's the if UPD is the correct partnership for that or would be a Salt Lake County health but | 00:54:49 | |
the concept generated regardless of who we. | 00:54:53 | |
Do that position with. I think that makes a whole lot of sense. | 00:54:58 | |
Yeah, I think when you talk to our chiefs. | 00:55:01 | |
They generally say, I mean, people will say, why don't you just have mental health interaction? It's like, well. | 00:55:05 | |
Most of the time when you get the call, you don't know if. | 00:55:10 | |
What the situation is and and we are certainly not comfortable not having sworn. | 00:55:14 | |
Officers. | 00:55:21 | |
And it's generally called in a crisis. That's kind of where we're at at this point, but. | 00:55:23 | |
So I'm just curious with this social worker, would they come out with the officers or they'd be like consult like the officers | 00:55:28 | |
would call them or it sounds like they'd come out with them? | 00:55:34 | |
This is a fantastic idea. Well, and I think too, Chief I, I'm assuming that. | 00:56:12 | |
You know, not all of them, but many of them end up being recurring calls. | 00:56:19 | |
Recurring situations that if we had somebody in house could have direct contact with those people and maybe help mitigate calls | 00:56:23 | |
down the road. And that's the idea. Exactly it. And to help provide resources for that family and for that individual. Yeah, I | 00:56:31 | |
just, you know, I just want to make sure that it's going to have a cost to it. And I think that cost this year as the crossing. | 00:56:38 | |
The same with the crossing guards. I think we've got enough capacity. | 00:56:46 | |
With our precinct fund balance to absorb it but. | 00:56:54 | |
When we get into the next budget season, when we start looking at our police budget, we all just need to be aware that we're going | 00:56:58 | |
to see a different line item for our crossing guard budget and a different light. And we'll probably have a line item for this | 00:57:04 | |
piece too. So we just have to be willing to accept that that's going to be a budget impact. We're we're willing to accept, but my | 00:57:10 | |
own personal feeling is that these. | 00:57:17 | |
Mental health challenges we're having in our communities are not outliers, they're going to be ongoing and that we ought to be | 00:57:24 | |
finding ways to impact the issues. | 00:57:30 | |
More proactively than we are right now. And I think that's kind of the point. | 00:57:37 | |
Very well said, yeah. | 00:57:41 | |
All right. Thank you. | 00:57:44 | |
That's all I have. Stephanie, what's your call? | 00:57:46 | |
Go for here. OK, we only have one item to cover. I think I. | 00:57:51 | |
And then we will go into closed session. So with that, I'll take a motion to recess and we'll just stay here. | 00:57:58 | |
I move, we adjourn City Council session and move into closed session pursuant to Utah Code section. Sorry Paul, just recess to | 00:58:04 | |
work meeting. We've got one. | 00:58:11 | |
And then move into closed session, yeah, pursuant to Code Section 52-4-204 and 12/5 to discuss physical, mental health, | 00:58:18 | |
professional competence of individual potential litigation, property, existence, disposition. OK, just to be clear. | 00:58:24 | |
We're not going into closed session right now. I think we just take a motion to recess to work session. Let's take a separate | 00:58:31 | |
motion to go into closed session. So moved. | 00:58:35 | |
Second, all right, all in favor. OK, we are recessed from counseling in a work session, then we've got to go to a roll call on | 00:58:40 | |
that one. | 00:58:44 | |
OK, so. | 00:58:50 | |
Jamie covered some of these issues that council ought to be. | 00:58:53 | |
You know how to deal with some of these issues of social media. I think it came up during the whole bonding, the county bond and | 00:58:57 | |
what we can and can't say and the council had. | 00:59:02 | |
More questions and I think this is the follow up to that. | 00:59:07 | |
Wow. We have homework, even a handout. Wow. | 00:59:11 | |
This can be a tricky topic and So what I wanted to do today. | 00:59:16 | |
I want to give you just a really quick overview of the law and some of the things that have changed in the law. | 00:59:33 | |
As it relates to 1st Amendment and social media, I want to touch briefly again on election law and some of the things that are | 00:59:40 | |
unique to this time of year. | 00:59:45 | |
And then I've given you a rather detailed handout that talks about social media best practices. | 00:59:50 | |
And I'll, when we get to that point, I'll give you a little bit of background on what that is, how it came about, and I hope it | 00:59:56 | |
will be a useful tool to you. There just are so many nuances in how social media works. | 01:00:01 | |
How the different platforms function? | 01:00:07 | |
And each can be. | 01:00:10 | |
Each can impact what your obligations are as a public official and how you use them. | 01:00:13 | |
So Stephanie has up a presentation. She's already, she's ahead. And no, you're, that's great. You're in exactly the right spot. So | 01:00:18 | |
I'll have Stephanie tab through as I go through it. But there were two Supreme Court cases decided together this last spring. The | 01:00:25 | |
first one was called Linky versus Freed. The second was called O'Connor Ratcliffe versus Garnier. | 01:00:33 | |
They both related to public officials and their use of social media, and the question that came up in both cases was when is an | 01:00:42 | |
individual functioning in their private capacity and when as an individual functioning in their public or official capacity. | 01:00:51 | |
And the reason there's a difference in how both cases came up is there's a section of. | 01:01:00 | |
US Code Section 1983 that gives a private citizen A cause of action they can bring about against a government entity. | 01:01:06 | |
If that government entity restricts their free speech rights. And so these cases both came up in that way. Linke versus Freed. | 01:01:14 | |
There was a city manager. He had a private Facebook profile. He later switched it to a personal page. | 01:01:22 | |
His the way he identified himself in the profile was quote Daddy to Lucy, husband to Jesse and city manager. | 01:01:30 | |
And he posted mostly about personal items, but from time to time. | 01:01:38 | |
About city and official. | 01:01:43 | |
Activities. This was during COVID and he took some time to talk about what restaurants were open and closed to solicit feedback on | 01:01:47 | |
how the city was handling things. | 01:01:53 | |
And he ended up having a rather nasty commenter that would comment, disrupt, do things on that page and blocked that individual | 01:02:00 | |
from continuing to post. That's who brought the lawsuit. | 01:02:07 | |
In O'Connor Ratcliffe versus Garnier, it came about a little bit differently. There were two individuals that were campaigning to | 01:02:14 | |
be on the school board. | 01:02:18 | |
In California, they created a Facebook page and a Twitter handle that they use for campaign activities. | 01:02:22 | |
Both of them won their election. They then became. | 01:02:28 | |
School board members and they continued to use these same campaign Facebook and Twitter feeds. | 01:02:32 | |
As official members of the school board, their obligations before that and after that were different. | 01:02:39 | |
And they then similarly let's see if you want to go to the next slide. | 01:02:46 | |
There was an individual that had, I think they didn't even do it manually, they had a program set up that would do this, but | 01:02:54 | |
anytime they posted something, this individual would post lengthy and repetitive comments on their social media posts. So it would | 01:03:02 | |
basically blow it up. So they couldn't use it effectively to get feedback or to liaise with their constituents. | 01:03:10 | |
So both. They then deleted the comments and blocked that individual from commenting altogether. | 01:03:18 | |
On Lynn Key versus Freed, there was somebody that was just always negative every time. | 01:03:25 | |
He wouldn't post on anything and so again the comments were deleted. | 01:03:31 | |
So both of these went to the Supreme Court. I mentioned Section 1983, I won't belabor that, but it it essentially is if an | 01:03:34 | |
official actor on behalf of a government entity prevents anybody from. | 01:03:40 | |
Enjoying their constitutional rights, that person can bring a cause of action. | 01:03:47 | |
And the question again was how do you distinguish between personal and official communication in the social media context? | 01:03:52 | |
So the Supreme Court gave a true prong answer to that, they said. | 01:03:58 | |
That. | 01:04:03 | |
Person's social media activity constitutes state action or is official if they actually possess authority to speak on the state's | 01:04:04 | |
behalf. | 01:04:08 | |
And they are purporting to exercise that authority when they speak on social media. | 01:04:13 | |
So on the Freed and the Ratcliffe cases, they articulated that rule, remanded it down to the lower courts. We don't know how that | 01:04:20 | |
will shake out. | 01:04:24 | |
Quite yet, on Linke versus Freed, there's been one other decision of the. | 01:04:29 | |
Circuit Court that handled the initial appeal, but it really was elaborating a bit on the Supreme Court decision, but not giving | 01:04:36 | |
you much more detail. | 01:04:40 | |
What we do know in the decisions is that you can be, quote, official and acting on behalf of the government entity even if you're | 01:04:46 | |
not the person the government entity says. | 01:04:51 | |
Your designated to speak on this. If it becomes the custom or the practice for you to be that person then it can be deemed | 01:04:59 | |
official communication. So what does that mean for your your personal social media? | 01:05:05 | |
Use. There are a few guidelines you can take out of those cases. The 1st is if your page is purely personal and you never use it | 01:05:12 | |
to interact with constituents, to post official notices, to seek communication. You can keep it as personal, but you have to be | 01:05:19 | |
disciplined in that use. | 01:05:26 | |
The moment you make one post that would. | 01:05:33 | |
Seek feedback on something if for example on your upcoming general plan process you were to post something saying Give me your | 01:05:38 | |
thoughts about the general plan. | 01:05:43 | |
You would convert your private page to an official page. | 01:05:48 | |
And you? | 01:05:52 | |
Would have to treat those people that interact with you and respect their First Amendment rights in how you do that. If on the | 01:05:54 | |
other hand, you had kept your personal page personal and all it was was a welcome. | 01:06:01 | |
To the new Fatheringham granddaughter and all of the well wishes that come with that and if you had somebody that in that thread. | 01:06:09 | |
Chimed in and said how dare you vote against the Adu ordinance. You might then be able to delete the comment if you had kept your | 01:06:17 | |
pages personal because you would say that's a personal page. I've never used it for anything different. | 01:06:24 | |
You may, on your personal pages, repost official city communications. So if in the summer, for example, the city were to have a | 01:06:32 | |
concert series and you post on your personal page, hey everybody, here's the city's announcement on the concert. You're not | 01:06:40 | |
seeking feedback. You're not saying anything different than what the city has said through its official channel. The courts have | 01:06:47 | |
said that that kind of communication is OK and it would not convert your personal. | 01:06:54 | |
Into a private account. | 01:07:02 | |
I want to talk really quickly about election time activities because there is a little bit of an overlap and then. | 01:07:06 | |
I want to Orient you to how to use this as a resource and then answer any questions you may have about your own social media use | 01:07:14 | |
SO. | 01:07:18 | |
Really quickly on election season. Just a reminder that as a public entity, the city can't use public resources on election | 01:07:22 | |
activities. They can't use it for e-mail, for convening, for advocacy, for any of those kinds of things. | 01:07:30 | |
Public resources can mean buildings and locations. It can also mean your phones or your computers if those are paid for by. | 01:07:38 | |
The city and your official e-mail account also is in that category because the city pays for that e-mail address. So just be sure | 01:07:46 | |
to draw a line and use private resources for those for any kind of election activity or election. | 01:07:54 | |
Content. | 01:08:03 | |
Jay, I have a question. So if for example, you are using your private e-mail account that somebody reaches out to you regarding | 01:08:05 | |
say an election issue on your city e-mail? | 01:08:12 | |
Can you respond to that or do you need to like copy it over to your private And I think you're OK to give an orienting response | 01:08:19 | |
that would be, I can't talk to you about that topic with my city e-mail, but let me respond on my personal account or on my | 01:08:25 | |
campaign account or whatever it is you maintain. | 01:08:31 | |
And then keep in mind that you all enjoy First Amendment rights, and so there's not anything in state law that would prohibit you | 01:08:39 | |
from exercising your First Amendment rights. You just have to be careful about what resources you use to do it. | 01:08:45 | |
Not that you can or can't do it, Jamie. So yes, it's a Garnier case. The issue is not. | 01:08:52 | |
The issue was whether they had converted their campaign accounts to a. | 01:08:59 | |
Public account and had to honor First Amendment correct, not an issue of campaign. That's right. Expenditures, OK, that's right. I | 01:09:03 | |
had nothing to do with campaign finance campaign expenditures. It was all about at what point do they become official. | 01:09:10 | |
The word the statute uses is state actors, but state is broadly right. It's not the state, it's government. | 01:09:18 | |
And so it's when are you acting in your official capacity as a member of government? | 01:09:27 | |
So I did a a presentation on this topic at a league conference about six months ago. And with me on the panel was somebody from | 01:09:33 | |
the league, but also a communications director for a city here in the valley. And we put together a version of what I provided to | 01:09:40 | |
you. I updated it because there's been some updates since the spring on what has occurred. So it's not exactly the same as what we | 01:09:47 | |
distributed then, but I do think it's helpful. | 01:09:54 | |
Because the person who helped put it together had a much more in depth. | 01:10:02 | |
Understanding of social media than I do, I from time to time will post a picture of my kids or a dog but that's about it and so | 01:10:06 | |
on. | 01:10:11 | |
What I want to make clear, I guess as you read through this first, is that every platform is unique in how they allow you to make | 01:10:18 | |
and post content, how they allow you to interact with people, and how they allow you to moderate content. On some platforms, you | 01:10:24 | |
can moderate comment by comment. | 01:10:31 | |
Or post by post on others. You're only allowed to moderate user by user. | 01:10:38 | |
And there are differences in that as it relates to your First Amendment obligations and how you might use the platform. So an | 01:10:43 | |
example on Facebook, you could have something that is outward facing only, meaning you would never receive comments or use it to | 01:10:50 | |
interact with people. You would just use it to make announcements and to send things out. So it may be a, hey, next week we have a | 01:10:58 | |
really important council meeting. I hope everybody will come, you'll give the details of it, but nobody. | 01:11:05 | |
Once nobody interacts, it doesn't become a public forum. | 01:11:13 | |
Other than a source for you to communicate outward. | 01:11:17 | |
If you were to make the same post on Instagram, you have to, on a post by post basis, turn the comments on and off. You can't do | 01:11:19 | |
it globally. And if you forget on a post to turn that off and then people begin responding and communicating, you would probably | 01:11:27 | |
have to treat that as a public forum and allow those comments to remain even if they were negative. | 01:11:34 | |
If, well, let me walk through it in a structured way kind of from there, but just know from the outset that you will have to be | 01:11:42 | |
aware of what platform you're using and what its rules are for how you can. | 01:11:48 | |
Allow for contact content and interact with it. I'm not going to go through line by line on this, but I want to Orient you to the | 01:11:55 | |
categories. So on the first page you have general communication, and these are some of the common questions we got from elected | 01:12:00 | |
officials about whether to have social media. | 01:12:06 | |
Whether and how to interact with people on social media. | 01:12:13 | |
When you can make decisions about how to delete things or how to. | 01:12:18 | |
Moderate content and then some advice on whether to have. | 01:12:24 | |
Multiple accounts, a personal account, and an official account. | 01:12:30 | |
And then some questions about podcast YouTube and whether you can be accountable for false claims on accounts working from the | 01:12:35 | |
back. You can you're accountable for what you say and so if you say something that's defamatory or threatening or. | 01:12:43 | |
Criminal conduct, you would be responsible for that. Or civil liability for those kinds of things, you also could be responsible | 01:12:52 | |
for that. | 01:12:56 | |
One of the reasons we have YouTube and podcasts on here is because. | 01:13:01 | |
That's a lot. You think less about what you say out loud than what you put in writing. And often, when elected officials are on | 01:13:07 | |
those kinds of forums, they might. | 01:13:12 | |
Not clarify when they're speaking their own opinions and when they're speaking on behalf of the city or representing the city. And | 01:13:19 | |
so you'll just want to be clear if you do participate in those things that you identify at the outset, that I'm here as a member | 01:13:25 | |
of the council, but I'm not speaking on behalf of the city. I'm one council member. | 01:13:31 | |
Speaking my viewer, my opinion on things. | 01:13:38 | |
Section 2 is on or B on. Page 2 is blocking accounts and restricting comments. Section C is on deleting or hiding comments. | 01:13:42 | |
What what you'll basically want to know here is that there? | 01:13:53 | |
You'll want to have in place policies or principles that you'll follow for who you can and can't block and who you can and can't | 01:13:58 | |
restrict. | 01:14:02 | |
I have a client where. | 01:14:07 | |
The mayor posted something and one of the first responses was maybe now's the time to exercise our Second Amendment rights. | 01:14:10 | |
That was over that line of where it was clearly threatening, and she relayed that onto law enforcement. | 01:14:18 | |
Consulted with me and my advice is. | 01:14:25 | |
You you can block that kind of a user. | 01:14:28 | |
From posting on your content, but if it was scaled back a little bit and it simply said. | 01:14:32 | |
Now's the time to fight. That could be interpreted as fighting against the issue, not fighting against an individual. So you will | 01:14:39 | |
want to be mindful of if you have content that you feel is threatening and you want to block it, give our office a ring and we can | 01:14:45 | |
walk you through. | 01:14:51 | |
Where to draw those lines you can restrict. | 01:14:57 | |
Some comments that are not related to a post. | 01:15:01 | |
If you had somebody that was advertising something or a business service that had no relationship at all. | 01:15:05 | |
If somebody were to post something pornographic or vulgar. | 01:15:12 | |
You can restrict that kind of content clearly, and then if somebody posts information that is. | 01:15:16 | |
Threatening, defamatory, discriminatory, gendered. You can restrict those types of things. | 01:15:24 | |
The. | 01:15:33 | |
Section D on page 4. | 01:15:34 | |
Goes through the issues of. | 01:15:38 | |
When might you want to have a personal account versus an official account and? | 01:15:40 | |
If you do have a personal account that you use both for personal content and for official content, how to manage that? And then | 01:15:46 | |
Section E are some of the perils associated with participation in community forums, where you might participate in an official | 01:15:53 | |
way, but you're not the moderator of the forum. And so you may not have control over who's blocked or who's restricted. And where |