Council Work Session Meeting

0:00Okay. Welcome to the May 19th, 2020, the Council Work Session Meeting. Our meetings are public and you're welcome to join us in person or by watching from the Council agenda page Zoom or YouTube. We hope that you will continue to join us in whichever manner you feel the most comfortable. This is a work session meeting, which there is no public comment.

0:29You can join us on May 19th during our 7 p.m. formal meeting to share your comments. We of course welcome your feedback anytime by mail at PO Box 145476, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114. You can also email us at council.commons at slc.gov or you can also leave us a message at our 24 hour phone comment line 801-535-7654. Comments we received on agenda topics are shared with Council members and posted on our website slc.gov slash council.

1:15Our first agenda item is item one, which is a fiscal year 2026-2027 budget council staff overview and we're going to turn the time to Jennifer Bruno. Our Council accept your director. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I will just share my screen. There you go. So this is just a perspective from the legislative branch looking at the overview of the budget as it's been presented by the mayor.

1:59Obviously, Mary Beth and the finance team did a great job going over how the budget is put together from a, you know, dollars and cents perspective, percentages, changes in different departments. This is a little bit of a higher level kind of conceptual overview of the budget. The role of the council, so this is one thing that we just to remind the council the reason why the council looks at the budget in the depth that they do.

2:29Let's see. Why is it not? Okay, sorry. Having technical issues on myself. The reason why the council looks at the budget is really to address what does the community need in real time? Every year that changes and the reason why you all are elected is to hear from your residents what are the needs they change every year?

2:53What are the ways that those needs can be addressed? Usually it relates to money. And so that's I think the main purpose of the budget. The other kind of values that we hold in terms of looking at the budget and the role that the council has in the budget is how any decision you make this year might affect budgets in future years, right?

3:14Because you can't necessarily bind councils, but I mean even this year we've gotten questions about how did we end up in this property tax increase situation and, you know, how did our decisions in the past bring us here? So that's something that will be a theme throughout several of the department budget discussions.

3:35That kind of also relates to that next bullet point of how any decisions you guys make this year might create unintended consequences both from a budget, personnel, citizen experience, perspective, right? Any decisions you guys make might have the ability to, for example, see less watering in parks or less mowing in parks, things like that.

3:57So we want to be sure to just disclose all of the potential consequences that might come from any budget decisions you make. And then I'm really proud of how our city ensures a transparent process for the budget so that we are very open with the public about how we're using tax dollars. Just as a reminder, our budget hub is link.slc.gov forward slash FY27 for any budget information for anyone who's looking.

4:32And then, you know, of course, all of that is rooted in the policy goals and priorities of the council, the policy goal of equity, the policy goal of transparency, the policy goal of taking care of our community, our assets, things like that. So that's another reason why. Just some high level takeaways from the mayor's proposed budget from the legislative perspective.

4:58This is the first substantial property tax increase in several years. And I think the mayor mentioned in her speech that it wasn't a decision taken lightly and that it was arrived at with serious evaluation. I think the next bullet point gets to what that evaluation was, which is that it cuts almost an equivalent amount from the overall budget of the amount of the property tax increase.

5:28One council member asked me how we would explain to citizens that they're paying more and potentially getting less. And I guess it was sort of a light bulb moment when I went to the grocery store recently and, you know, you are spending more and there is less in your grocery cart. And it's just that is the reality that we're living.

5:56I think that it's important for this council to know, though, that a lot of those cuts are potentially one time in nature. I think that the administration challenged departments to come up with efficiencies and they did an admirable job coming up with those efficiencies. It's always interesting to see how those efficiencies can last over time, right?

6:20And if those are efficiencies that can last into the future and especially as it relates to operations, it does use less money, less sorry, less one time money than in previous years, which Mary Beth and I have talked about for 20 years now. So I think it's one of those goals that we're always trying to achieve is aligning one time money with one time expenses and ongoing money with ongoing expenses.

6:48Something that you'll probably hear about from residents who might be employees of the cities that there's no across the board cost of living increase for employees. And this is the first year in a long time that that will be the case for city employees. And so because those employees are also experiencing inflation, that's something that's difficult.

7:07But I think if you ask any city employee, they're grateful for a job and not to be laid off. There is an increased investment in affordable housing, but it is in different formats. So last year, the investment in affordable housing was about $8 million. This year, it's about $10 million. That said, funding our future, the transfer, the typical transfer for funding our future that goes to the RDA for the NOFA is being paused for one year.

7:37I think there was a recognition that the Westside Community Initiative, so the money that the city gets from the tax increment from the Inland port has grown pretty significantly since previous years. And so it enables the RDA to continue investment in affordable housing without that NOFA, or sorry, without the funding our future dollars.

8:00But I think I'm just flagging that as a thing to consider in the long term. Those funding our future dollars for affordable housing are really flexible. Whereas the Westside Community Initiative dollars are by our own policy, guided to be West of I-15. That said, there's still significant investments in affordable housing from RDA programs and project areas.

8:24So there will still continue to be, sorry, CRA. I'll remember that at some point. There will continue to be investments in affordable housing in the different CRA project areas. And you'll hear more about the CRA budget on Tuesday. So we'll get into that more. It does also add 40 FTEs in critical service areas. So I think we talk about how to balance the budget while recognizing that it's not that the needs have decreased in our city.

8:53So the efficiencies that departments have realized have enabled. And then the proposed property tax increase have enabled the budget to add FTEs in critical service areas. And I left the fire department off here. But fire, justice court, legal system, CIP are kind of the main highlights. And there's a chart a little bit later that I'll go through that.

9:17This is something we talk about a lot in that each kind of decision you guys make, each big topic in the budget has balancing tests. It's not that there's a right answer or a wrong answer. It just means that you're balancing different outcomes of decisions. So I'm not going to read all of these. But as an example, the property tax increase.

9:42It does add to the burden on residents and businesses in the city. But on the flip side, it also helps reduce the structural deficit in the future because it aligns ongoing money with ongoing needs. It also reduces the city's reliance on sales tax, which is a volatile source of revenue. That is something that I think a lot of cities rely heavily on.

10:08We've seen our city grow in our reliance on sales tax. And that's something that I think the budget nerds of the city have appreciated. As a good thing, meaning we have a robust sales tax revenue source, but it is a volatile source of revenue. And if the economy turns and our budget is balanced on sales tax, that is a difficult thing to adjust, whereas property tax is a reliable source of revenue.

10:35So I'll just leave the rest of those for you guys to read another time. This is the general fund revenue trends. The only reason I'm sharing this is that, and the reason that there's a red, that it went down in this proposed budget. The main reason is because, and I think Mary Beth talked about this on Tuesday, the finance department is proposing to separate the CRA property tax revenue and the library property tax revenue into an entirely different account from the general fund.

11:09So I just wanted to flag that because we do these longitudinal charts of what's happening with revenues and whenever you make a policy shift, I think it's important to call that out.

11:22We've gone through this, I think, at the retreat. The only things that you guys can control, that the city can control our property taxes, use of fund balance, and then other revenue, which is essentially fees. You cannot control sales tax. You can if the state lets you. If the state authorizes you guys to enact sales tax, you can.

11:46This, I think we've also been through, this is just kind of showing the property tax distribution for a typical kind of Salt Lake City household. Just to highlight that Salt Lake City's portion of the property tax bill is about 25%. I've also separated out some of the bonds that are being discussed in both the city, the county, and the school district.

12:11I think especially the school district and Salt Lake City voters approving the school district's bond this last, I can't remember if it was last calendar year or before, but it's a very, very, very significant bond. And so that will be something that I think it will be important for taxpayers to look for and know about in future years.

12:31What most people don't realize is that the bill for bonds does not show up until the entity, whether it's the school district or the county or whoever, actually issues the bond. And so that could be two years after you vote. That could be five years after you vote. There's a ten year time frame for tax exempt bonds to issue those bonds, but I think that's important for people to know.

12:57So truth and taxation. So this has come up a lot in the last couple of weeks. Do your property taxes go up when the value of your home goes up? This is not supposed to be like a pop quiz, but no. You guys passed. Good job. So Utah is unique. It has a truth and taxation process that the core value of that truth and taxation process is to hold the government's budget the same.

13:33So if you consider that baseline property tax budget, that green line, as what the state wants us to operate with. So if you're the value of your home goes up, the rate of property taxes that .0000 whatever figure automatically goes down. And that automatic thing happens at the state tax commission level because we tell the state tax commission what is the dollar amount that we need that green line to be?

14:01Do we need that dollar amount to be $50 million? Do we need it to be $80 million? What they're assuming is that we have the same dollar amount year to year. So if your value goes up, the rate goes down. In theory, you're paying the same amount of money. Likewise, if your value goes down and this actually happened in 2009 when property values really tanked in the area, the rate actually floats up to hold the government harmless to values going down.

14:31So you could think about this in a case like Detroit. That might have been helpful for their government to have that system. They don't have that system there. So there are pros and cons to the truth and taxation system but this is the system we have in Utah. The only exception is new growth which is, you know, like you have a blank piece of property and the next year you have an apartment building on that blank piece of property and so now that property is considered new growth and the city is allowed to collect more money because of that property.

15:06Or if you say, like we're saying this year, that green line, that baseline property tax budget is not enough to pay for our bills. We need to increase that green line by $13 million and so we're going to ask residents what they think about that and go through a tooth and taxation process and we're going to raise that money.

15:24This is just a kind of hypothetical of what happens with new growth. So again, that baseline property tax budget is where we operate on a normal basis. If new development occurs in the city, that raises our new baseline essentially. So hypothetically, so for example in this budget, the mayor's finance team projects that will get approximately $2.5 million from new growth this year.

15:55They actually, they do a great job kind of projecting that based on building permits and certificates of occupancy which are kind of, which are really good indicators of is this thing an actual new thing or is this just a building that was remodeled. It doesn't always pan out and we don't find out the actual new growth figure until June 12th now by state law.

16:18So then we can collect additional money from that new development. This is intended to just be an overview of what your tax notice will look like in July. This is what most residents will get in July. I've blocked out. I just picked a random resident. I've blocked them out to protect the innocent. But I just wanted to highlight in that gold kind of bar on the left there, those are the only lines related to Salt Lake City.

16:48It's really important and our communications group is working on ways to make it more accessible to educate folks how to read through their property tax statement because that tells you which government should I call if I have concerns about the total bill that's at the bottom of that number. The other thing I wanted to highlight here that I think is not always obvious is in Utah, when you have a primary residence you receive a 45% value reduction.

17:24For example, this home is assessed at in 2024. This was from 2024. Is assessed at 787,500. But the taxes are assessed on 433,125. It's a benefit to homeowners in Utah, which is great for homeowners. It does cause the situation where when governments decide to increase taxes, whether it's the city or the county or whoever, it's kind of a disproportionate burden on commercial properties.

18:03Commercial properties do not receive that same exemption. They are taxed at the full value of their property. These are the amounts that are in the proposal for the fiscal year 2027 property tax increase. The state law was changed this last year to require a property tax impact statement, which I think is helpful from a transparency perspective, frankly, to let residents see exactly what their additional money is paying for.

18:33You can see 1.7 million of the property tax increase is going to fire. 908,000 is going to public lands. 432,000 to Justice Court. 172,000 to the attorney's office. 800,000 to Can. It might be helpful here to say, youth and family programming. The city has recognized that federal grants for youth and family programming have been eliminated or reduced.

19:04This is the city stepping into that space to make sure those programs don't end. Almost half of the property tax increase is going to CIP. The next slide will talk about exactly which projects in CIP are proposed to be funded with the property tax increase. And then several items that you can see in non-departmental. You can see that 961,000 is related to legal defenders.

19:28So I think we talked about that on Tuesday in the Justice Court briefing that the Justice Court is kind of a holistic system that requires if you are increasing in one area like judges, for example, you also need to increase in prosecutors and legal defenders because it's a whole system. So that adds up to the total $13 million increase.

19:48These are the proposed CIP projects that will be funded with the property tax increase. I think, I mean, from my takeaway, it seems that most of these items fit in the category of maintaining or fixing what we already have. I think maybe the one exception is the Vision Zero safety improvement. Citywide, which I know has been a huge goal of the councils.

20:15This also notes that if for some of these items, the property tax increase isn't the only funding source for some of those items. Some of those items are combined with the general fund or county funds or class C funds in order to make that total higher. So for example, street reconstruction, total investment in street reconstruction for the fiscal year 27 budget is 8.3 million of which the property tax is paying 627.

20:43This is a chart just kind of showing where the FTEs are changing. And again, I don't want to read through all of this text. Sorry for all the text on the slides. But this is to show the in red is where departments are proposing to eliminate FTEs and in blue is showing where some FTEs are contingent upon the property tax proposal.

21:08There are also several additional FTEs that are being proposed that are not part of the property tax proposal. You guys are fully empowered to decide which FTEs are funded with the property taxes and which FTEs should just be in the base budget. So this is what is proposed, but it doesn't mean that you guys have to stick with it.

21:31So some other consideration for residents as they think about bills, both property taxes and other bills is the decisions of other governmental entities, right? Like school districts decision for on raises, counties decision on properties to buy, things like that. And especially bonds. I've noticed that especially school districts are relying very heavily on bonds.

21:55And there are usually several years that separate when voters go to the polls, decide that they want new buildings for their kids. And then when the bill actually comes due, there's usually several years separating that so just as a good reminder of that. Again, the geo bond thing. And then utility fee increases, city and Rocky Mountain Power.

22:18And the administration has put together a handy calculator for people to figure out their rates. That's another thing that our communication staff has been working on with the administration's communication staff about how to make sure that's all transparently communicated to residents. And then this slide was actually left over from the retreat, but I decided to keep it in because I just can't help myself.

22:47This is diverted revenue. So I think that our city is in a unique position because we're the capital city. We get a lot of attention and we have a lot of very important projects that want to locate here, which is great. I think the flip side of that coin is that sometimes those projects, the funding for those projects can come with diversion of revenue that would otherwise come to the general fund.

23:13And so I think we have to keep that in mind as we talk about property tax increases and talk about how to balance the budget is that the reason we're sometimes in this especially tight situation is because several million dollars of ours has already been spoken for or has already been diverted. So that's that. Sorry for all the talking.

23:37Do you guys have any questions? And I see we have Council Member Wharton that's joined us online as well. So we have Council Member Wharton and Pietro online. That's what we're doing. Thanks Jennifer and appreciate that very much. And back to the truth and taxation. So those rules apply to all the line items in your property tax bill.

23:59So there's 12 line items I think we have in our bill. So each line item has that same requirement of the baseline new growth increases it, but otherwise it has to be the same there. And so when residents see a property tax increase, it could be from the county to school board, mosquito abatement, Metro water, Metro water, and central Utah water projects.

24:26So but ours, Salt Lake City, is those three there that you highlight in the middle? Yes, I think the maybe the one asterisk I would say is on each entity, the bond line item, is the one exception where an entity does not need to go through truth and taxation to increase the amount. But what we have to do is send the tax commission our exact bill or all of the bonds we have to pay.

25:01And then the tax commission allows us to set that rate on the bill to pay those geo bonds. Not our sales tax bonds. Our sales tax bonds are built into our general fund, but our geo bonds. So for example, the second tranche of the parks bond will likely, and maybe Mary Beth can correct me here, will it appear on this calendar year's tax notices or next calendar year?

25:27It'll be this calendar year. Okay. So that's something that Salt Lake City residents will see is the second tranche of the park bond, which they approved several years ago voting for. One more question on the pay raise side of the house. That's for the non-represented. Non-represented. Sorry, thank you for that question.

25:50Employees. Yeah. And that is, I don't know what the percentage of employees that is, but it's non-represented. It's not police. It's not the fire. It's not. Ask me. Yes. It's a non-represented employees on that side. That is accurate. And I probably should have clarified. There is a line item in each department that department directors can work within a line item, a certain amount of money.

26:16And it's based on how many employees are in each department to give market adjustments or pay increases to specific employees on a case-by-case basis. So it's not necessarily like to hold employees' stagnant in their careers. It's just recognizing the tight budget. Right. It is to bring those who are below, well below the market rate up to closer to or at least to the market rate.

26:40Yes. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions online? No. You don't see any hands up? Oh, looks like Council Member Wharton has a question. Thank you. Thanks, Jim, for that overview and explaining the truth in taxation. Can you talk a little bit about how given the $13.5 million, what would... So a lot of residents have said just cut, make cuts, cut back.

27:29Cut back on the extras is what I've heard a lot of. Can you talk about how just what that would look like in a situation like this when we have something as high as $13.5 million? Yeah. I think... And I would welcome if Marybeth or if anyone from the mayor's team wanted to speak more to it. I think what I observe is that there is a lot of cutting back in this budget.

28:02In fact, it's just about the same amount as the property tax increase. So each department was asked to find 5% of their department budget in cuts. Not all of it ended up... It was evaluated obviously with the needs of the city. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that each department was cut by 5%, but you'll see in the key changes that each department has made pretty significant cuts.

28:33I think I flagged for you guys in the beginning of this though, one concern I could see is how sustainable are those cuts and are we going to find that what a department thought that they could do without or push off for a couple years is really needed. I observed that in the aftermath of the 2009 budget crunch where there were a lot of cuts made out of necessity and then we realized that a lot of those cuts were really two essential functions of the city.

29:08So yes, so there are a lot of cuts in that. And I think we can focus on that as each department comes to brief you guys. I think that would be helpful. Yeah, I mean one that comes to my mind that was impacted even when I came on to the Council and we did funding our future in 2018. And that was that we, before the recession we had two road crews that just worked around the clock and all repairing.

29:43And one of them was cut and we didn't bring that back until after the road study and as part of funding our future and found that the bike cutting mat and having it gone for essentially 10 years, the overall quality of our roads was going down every year and we were, it was kind of compounding instead of us keeping up with the problem or reducing the problem like the roads were crumbling faster than we could repair them because we only have one crew.

30:27Are there other examples that you can think of that you said that you had some thoughts come to mind from back then? I think that the other area that was cut pretty significantly in 2009 was seasonal and maintenance dollars from public lands which at that point was in, I can't remember the name of the department now. It was in a big, it was in a different department.

30:56It was in its own department but it was cut. Public services I think. I think it took several years maybe a decade for us to kind of bring that back and I think that to some extent, I think what we hear from residents to some extent is still maybe lingering effects of that. I don't see that level of cut coming in this budget.

31:24I think the benefit of having this budget, the cuts in this budget being part of the mayor's deliberative process and not be, if those of you who are around in 2009 remember, we had to make a lot of those cuts in the middle of the fiscal year so it was kind of midstream cuts. So the options are a lot more limited when you're cutting in the middle of a budget year than when you're looking forward into the next budget year and can be a little bit more strategic and so just my general observation for this budget is that those cuts are a little bit, they're a little bit more strategic.

32:03I think it doesn't necessarily completely erase the need to be vigilant about when we realize that cuts are not sustainable. Thank you. Thank you Jen. I always love hearing you talk about the budget and how animated you get and how clear you explain it to all of us and to folks joining us online. So I want to follow up on what you were talking about in regards to some of the cost savings found this year particularly one and zero in on vacancies.

32:39I understand we are saving money this year by holding a position vacant and we've seen a number of vacancies across departments. What happens next year or the following fiscal year 28 and how does the city plan for anticipate that decide to never fill the position, close it down versus say hey we realize we actually are having some real service impacts by not having these positions filled.

33:07So that's my first question about vacancies and I have a couple others. Great. I think I mean that's a great question. And we, I want to say most budget years there are vacancy savings in several of the larger departments especially just based on turnover and retention. I think it's actually kind of a responsible way to do budgeting meaning it doesn't leave money on the table that you know is not going to be needed.

33:36Like you know at a certain point there's going to be an upturn over where you're going to have a month or two of a position of salary savings. I think and I'll you know look to Mary Beth if you want to add anything but I think what they'll probably need to do what each department will need to do is for fiscal year 28 evaluate if one if the vacancy savings is sustainable.

33:58So if the let's hold on for this tight year is something that is a longer term thing. I know that's what we'll be doing in our department is evaluating if these vacant positions are truly not needed. And I think that that's where you're seeing some of the reduction in FTEs that some departments have decided to make which is them kind of forecasting it's not just about vacancy savings it's about where did they actually need positions.

34:27But that's a that is definitely top of mind for concerns for the fiscal year 28 budget. Thank you. And as you can see I'm thinking about this budget about decisions made in the past that bring us to this present moment and recognizing that decisions we make this year affect future years. And so I'm really taking kind of that whole timeline perspective.

34:52We've got you know we've got a reliance that we've had to use on on our fund balance and that's happened in previous years and we're using it again this year. Next year may not be an option for us. So I'm curious as we both find these efficiencies but there's also a property tax increase. How can I understand what's going to happen with our structural deficit in the next year or two.

35:18I think that's where I think we will lean heavily on the finance department to look into some of the revenue tools that we talked about a little bit on Tuesday. The transportation utility fee and the venue event tax parking taxes. I think there are still some revenue streams that that we can look at. I also think that just to be perfectly candid I think that some of these vacancy savings will probably cause departments to reevaluate you know how services are deployed which may cause entire shifts so that what would have been a structural deficit because maybe you have you know ten positions to do a job that maybe only takes three is not a structural deficit because the department has decided we can do this job with three positions instead

36:13of ten. I think that to a certain extent there's a structural deficit every year right because you have health insurance costs inflation with contractual agreements that departments have with people to some extent the pension system Utah retirement systems tells us every year it's sort of like a surprise here's your bill.

36:37This year it was better but in other years it hasn't been so to some extent there's not a there's there's no way to completely avoid a structural deficit but it's just about how do you how do you manage the size of it. Okay Victoria your time. Thank you and yeah Jen thanks this is really helpful to have us a sink to kind of centralized review like this.

37:07I know that some of the things that we need to do carry some political challenges. These I know that you know developers who go to municipalities that are newer than us pay more in certain fees there than they do here just because we haven't adjusted our rates or been without the political pressure to adjust them since like the 90s literally and so if you incorporated after like 1992 and you have a higher rate than us and so we're developing a modern city on an antiquated rate scale.

37:41Can you maybe help under with understanding that this probably isn't a right now thing but maybe like a future looking information. I'd love to know what some of the barriers are on some of those future revenue things just to prepare and I'm happy to get into whatever political trench I need to to make sure that the city is in solid financial shape and that we're not going back to our our residents especially those who are on restricted incomes to ask for more property tax increase but I'd love to know just to prepare myself psychologically mentally politically socially you know for those because it seems really important that we don't just keep relying on property owners for our revenue increases.

38:25That's a really great point and I think the fees that come to mind that we maybe are not recouping as much as we could are impact fees. I know that the administration is working on updating the impact fee study to come up with a you know more updated true cost of those impact fees public utilities as well charges impact fees and they haven't updated in several years and so I think the goal was to bring all of the city's impact fees back to the Council for approval.

39:02I can say the last time that the impact fees were reviewed there was a substantial political conversation about the balance of well we can't just give these people a bill you know based on I mean we do a study to say it costs you know X dollars let's say two thousand dollars it costs two thousand dollars per unit that's built in order to fund the needs that are going to happen as a result of that additional unit.

39:33There's a calculation that happens after this sort of objective calculation which is does that mean that we're stalling development in our city and if we charge two thousand dollars are we going to kill development in our city and sometimes the answer is no or sometimes the answer is we might kill development and so instead of charging two thousand the Council could decide to say we're going to charge fifteen hundred and so that was that was kind of the conversation the last time the impact fee study was brought to the Council and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a similar calculation now there's a lot of competition with even neighboring cities right to say do we want housing built in our city or in

40:11neighboring city where maybe impact fees are cheaper so there's that the other I think tricky one to be perfectly honest in our city is going to be the transportation utility fee because two of our major nonprofit partners in the city the University and the LDS Church will probably see a pretty significant change in how they're interacting with the city in terms of dollars and so that's probably a conversation that will have to happen on a political level as well in order to realize that money but I think that will be happening over the next year so that's a in the couple months problem.

40:52Okay thank you for the questions everyone thank you so much Jennifer for the overview and for helping us understand this this budgets for this year and how we're going to approach this discussion moving on to item number two which is fiscal year 2026 2027 budget discussion for the police department we're going to welcome at the table Michael Sanders council policy analysts chief Brian Reed SLC police chief and Shelley Dietrich financial manager great thank you chair so the FY 27 police department budget is proposed to be approximately $142 million which is an increase of a little over $7 million or 5.24% from last year this budget continues funding for 13 FTES which would be funded by the Utah inland port authority proposed under

41:58budget amendment number five which is actually currently under consideration additionally it proposes adding four other FTES with this budget proposal none of the proposals from the police department budget will rely on the property tax increase as we discussed assuming all FTES are approved the police department would have staff of 797 positions 600 623 would be sworn officers and there'd be 154 civilian staff notable items from the budget include funding for the real-time crime center and drone is the first responder programs and additionally and additionally the social worker program and mental health responders have been moved from the non-departmental budget and into the police department based budget with that all yield the floor to chief

42:51red. Sorry first of all I want to thank Michael for all of his support and help through this process so thank you I want to thank the council executive director Bruno and not just for this but just I'm calling her quite often and then mayor Mendenhall for the support in this budget as well. I just want to start off by saying that our police department feels very supported by the council over this past year and we have some indicators that are showing our morale is is up in the in the police department and we want to keep that momentum going we really emphasize being a learning organization so when mistakes are made we sit down as a team we don't point fingers we learn and we improve and so that's a posture that we want to take

43:37in the police department and the value in that is that people are making decisions and learning and we're becoming a stronger organization. Next slide next slide just a couple accomplishments that I want to highlight this year we started we put together a new mission vision values this is was an exercise that we did with our police officers and professional staff this this exercise and our new mission vision values is really aligned our organization and kind of put us all on the same page and as I mentioned being able to push decision making down to the lower levels because we're all aligned has been very valuable.

44:25We are currently fully staffed now all of those officers are not going to be deployed until November December timeframe but we are currently fully staffed and excited about that and we're starting to see the impacts of those those officers as they come out onto the to the street and if I go to the next accomplishment we we saw an overall decrease in crime last calendar year year to date this year we're down it's actually 21% I checked with our data people today year to date compared to the same time period last year this includes violent crime going down so we're we're having some some great successes there are officers are out working very hard I will also in and I don't have an in here but our call response

45:08times are are also dropping over the past year and we're seeing improvements there as well so generally the goal of this of this budget and these budget requests are to help us continue to bring crime down improve call response times and which will then allow us over time to reinvest our officers time into community engagement a traffic safety which is a problem in the city we're having too many fatalities around traffic safety and then also investing more in our youth to get in on the front end so we have less issues down the road with these youth.

45:45Next slide when we talk about efficiencies we're still kind of in the process of writing our strategic plan and in getting some key metrics in place so we can see efficiencies improving one of the big ones is we're working on at 12 hour shifts we think that's going to improve staffing across the city and put officers in out on the streets at the time at the times we need them the most we're working closely with the union and the city on this to make sure we're thoughtful in some of these changes around shift shift allocation.

46:20We're also working on a number of efficiencies we'll talk about over time later but we have brought over time cost down this past fiscal year and we anticipate in our request we'll reflect a continued decrease in overtime as we get more fully staffed and become more efficient. And then we're going to talk a lot about in our budget today the our real time crime center and expanding our drones first responder program.

46:44This is an alternate response and we're finding that we don't have to send officers to a number of calls when we send the drones or we give officers better information and improved response. Maybe a case where we don't have to send an officer at all but it may be a social worker and so we're finding some efficiencies there which is great and then the last thing that I'll mention is we've worked really hard with our partners across the social services and criminal justice system and for instance in the real time crime center we're partnering with the University of Utah and the Utah Transit Authority they're providing resources so that we don't have to come to you and ask for that.

47:22We're working closely with DPS and DNR Department of Natural Resources on the Jordan River and they're putting a lot of resources into our city and helping out there and then of course you meant Michael and mentioned the Inland Port Authority who's putting a significant investment into our police department all saving the Salt Lake City tax payer.

47:41Next slide. Michael mentioned our overall budget you can see a breakdown and you can see the mayor's recommended budget request of 7 million with the 17 FTEs, 13 of those being the Inland Port if you want to go to the next slide. You can see most of our budget is made up of personnel. So we're really excited that the Inland Port Authority invested into the police department and we'll have a 12 additional officers and an evidence technician which will help us in the northwest quadrant with some of the challenges that we're having out there on the west side of Salt Lake City so we're excited for that.

48:19I wanted to just briefly mention FLEET. Last year the council, the mayor's office supported a number of a pretty good investment into our fleet. We still have a long way to go with our fleet and in certain cases we have several cars that are past service life that need to be replaced. In certain cases we're actually investing more in maintenance and repairs and the car is worth.

48:43So we're just asking for continued support and investing in our fleet and getting over the hump with the situation that we're in. It is a public safety risk but also it's a recruiting retention tool. I mean when officers do care about the cars that they're driving and so that's their office and so when we compete for the best officers in the state our officers are constantly looking at salary, equipment, training, development opportunities, support from elected officials so it's important.

49:12So we're going to go ahead and get to the next slide. These are the key changes in the budget which is in the budget book. We'll go over these one at a time and feel free to ask questions along the way. If you want to go to the next slide we can just get right into it. The school district approached us last year and requested two additional school resource officers for the district.

49:36This is that request. The thing to note here is half of the funding will come from the school district so even though it shows this amount half of that will be reimbursed back to the police department for those two FTEs. We're working with the school district on ensuring that our school resource officers and they're doing an amazing job by the way but they're investing in individuals particularly kids who are at risk and so a lot of what we're doing we're kind of retooling how we use our school resource officers working closely with the district and we're seeing some amazing outcomes and you'll see here in the coming weeks an amazing story from one of our school resource officers and how they invested in some youth and we're excited for that to

50:14come out soon. Any questions on that one or should we just keep going and you'll interrupt if. Chief. Go ahead. So I on the school resource officers request from the school district. My understanding was that they split them with the school district and split the cost with them. So is this the half the cost of for two?

50:38This is the full cost half of that will be reimbursed back to our budget. We just have to get approval from you to get the to get the full amount and then it will be reimbursed so that will be cut in half. Okay and what happens in the budget with this $125,000 is that going goes back to the general fund or the state's within the personnel.

51:02Revenated general fund. Okay. Thank you. Do you have? Yes. Chief I wasn't quite sure. Was the because we had the SRO discussion at the state level and then we had at the school board level. Was this a state mandate that we increase the SROs or just just come from the school district or was it like a highly recommended from the state level or do you remember.

51:27So the legislature passed a bill that requires schools to have a guardian private security or school resource officer. So the schools can determine how that breakdown is. So I think part of this is affected by that. It's the school district's request and they they in talking to the superintendent they prefer school resource officers to private security or guardians.

51:54So that decision I'm totally supportive of you. My question really was more like it was a a these are the three ways you can do this but we're not going to give you any funding you therefore. It was mandated but not funded. I should say it was mandated that's right. Yeah I think I think that the requirement was put in place and I don't know what type of funding was provided.

52:16They didn't provide any funding for that. I would think I think school districts would say not enough. Okay. I don't know for sure what funding was provided to school districts. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Sorry. Next slide. The next the next request is one FTE for a drone pilot. This is an officer position. You know we're going to talk more about the drone our real time crime centers we go through this presentation today.

52:46I think the main point that I would just make on this drone pilot. We're doing everything we can to find internal resources. So we've we've reallocated internally to add positions to our real time crime centers. I mentioned the University of Utah and UTA are committing some resources but this will be a drone pilot that will help us get off of the ground.

53:07These drones are arriving to calls in one to two minutes where officers are taking depending on the call anywhere from six and a half up to 15 minutes. And so a lot of cases are being cleared by these drones. So we just think this alternate response is a real investment in getting call response times down, getting better information to our officers.

53:29I would also add that we we deployed for the fire department. So that's another efficiency that we're finding that we've deployed on fire calls, fires in the hills or in buildings and to give them that overview. So that's what this request is. Next slide. This next request is related to our real time crime center. This individual will be an analyst who will work within the real time crime center.

53:58One of the main focuses of this analyst will be threat management. You know in this day and age there's a lot of threats coming in to the police department. We have to assess those threats. We have to research and do do background work on those. This analyst will do all of that, provide for event research. We have a lot of events in the community and so that this analyst will support all of those efforts.

54:23Next slide. Coming back to the overtime. Just to give some background. So we're projecting overtime costs for FY 27 at $6.5 million. This would represent almost a 10% decrease from FY 26. And if you go back to FY 25, we were at $8.2 million. So this fiscal year we've been able to reduce overtime by almost 13%. And we're projecting to get that down another 10%.

54:54So this request of $1.7 million represents that 10% decrease. We will always have overtime in the department. We're requesting this one time because we want to see what we're going to be able to do this year with alternate response with becoming more fully staffed. And we think maybe hopefully we can even get it down more.

55:13But we're requesting one time just to make sure we have the overtime as we get our officers trained and put out into the field. Go ahead. Kind of like along the lines of the overtime side house. We get a lot of you get a lot of requests from the University of Utah for all the events that they have at the stadium and other places.

55:38And is it fully paid for all of the services that we provide at the university level? Is that a separate contract or how does that work? It seems like we have to deploy a lot of officers for a lot of their things. It's got to be mostly overtime because it's not. So all of the University of Utah sporting events are reimbursed by the University of Utah.

56:04Greek row, they reimburse for officers to work overtime shifts on Greek row. As I mentioned with the real time crime center, they're putting personnel and helping us invest in that as well. And then our public order unit, they're going to be putting officers on our public order unit. So I feel like we have a really strong partnership with the University of Utah.

56:27And I'm sure if there's any concerns, we could go to them. But I feel like it's a pretty fair relationship that we have going. Most of the overtime is reimbursed. That's more a bit true. Thank you. When we say overtime, is this the overtime that covers the basic functionality of the city? Our officers still will have the opportunity to do overtime when community entities are asking and paying for that?

56:55Is that accurate? Or are we discontinuing that as well? Oh boy. I'm sorry, Council member. Can you maybe just ask that question one more time? It's a little hard to understand. Oh, sorry. So when you say overtime and what we're paying for here, that's the overtime that covers functionality within the city that is when we've been understaffed, people taking extra shifts to make sure that the city doesn't lag behind.

57:28But the overtime where entities in the community pay for our officers to do either special events or some ongoing security, those sorts of things. Is that sort of overtime still stays? Is that correct? Yeah. So we have like the Delta Center who reimburses us, City Creek who reimburses us. We have a lot of contractual overtime that's reimbursed.

57:49I think this amount, and Shelley can correct me if I'm wrong, represents the overtime that we expend for mitigation shifts, for overtime, for demonstrations, for instance, those are very expensive for us. And just regular overtime for call outs for our investigations division, our special operations division for just normal operations.

58:09It does include special events, but those are reimbursed as part of the special event process. Thank you so much for your patience. Thank you. Other questions on this request? Okay. We'll go to the next slide. Okay. So this is actually a reduction, a one-time reduction. We're currently holding open eight vacancies. These vacancies are within our professional staff, our civilian staff, which goes across basically all of those divisions.

58:44I just want to say our personal staff do an amazing job in the department, sometimes in the background. We don't see their work as much, but our police department could not operate without them. So this is quite a sacrifice on our professional staff to hold these vacancies open. But we're committed to doing that. And as you mentioned earlier, Executive Director Bruno will evaluate through the year to see what we can do on the long term here.

59:10But it is definitely a sacrifice for our professional staff to do this. We appreciate them. And the positions may vary through the year, but we're committed to holding open funding for at least that amount. And if we can do more, we would do more. We'll have to evaluate as the year goes on. Next slide. This next request is nearly $400,000 for our real time crime center technology.

59:39This is for cameras, drones, our LPRs, replacements. What we're trying to accomplish here is to get kind of on a five year rotation. So some of this, the funding will go to new tech, new cameras. We pull trailer cameras and we get requests constantly to put a trailer camera here or a trailer camera there or a pole camera in the city.

1:00:02So this is allowing us to increase the number of cameras, but also replace equipment as it ages. So that's what this request is. Yeah, because of America, Carson. Do you have a sense of the breakdown of what is a replacement of existing equipment versus purchasing of new equipment? On a percentage basis, I do have a slide here.

1:00:28I'm just going to look at a percentage basis. We can get this detail to you. I would say it's probably a 50, 50, or 60, 40 split between new and replacement. 60% new, 40% replacement. I mean, without doing the math on the spot here, I can get you the specific. But I think it's a little bit more of a difference. I mean, without doing the math on the spot here, I can get you the specific.

1:00:56But I think it's a little bit more if we're trying to hit it in the middle there. Thank you. But I can get you specific details. That's when we're doing. We have this discussion before on the grant funding and stuff like that in the contracts we have with the cameras and the other surveillance stuff. And do we have contracts with the flock group?

1:01:17We have no contracts with flock. Okay. I just appreciate that. I'm not going to be very disgusted before, but that came up again. No one. Thank you very much. I want to do back in the replacement. So these replacements, we're always going to be replacing new ones and old ones. Is it like a cycle right now that the city has cycles on the computers?

1:01:39It's whatever it is, three years or something like that. Is that the same thing where they have about a lifetime of three years, two years, something about nature and that's- I mean, technology is changing fast, but I think on average we're thinking about it about a five-year rotation, give or take. Give or take, right.

1:01:55Give or take. And again, we know it's a tough budget year. Like if this has to be one time, you know, that's- we understand whatever we can do to be a team player, you know, we'll do that. But yeah, we're trying to get on an- we want the ongoing funding so we can just have a replacement that will grow at some, but will- mostly it's for replacement.

1:02:15In the past, I learned about moving these cameras, the trailer cameras and installing the pole cameras was challenging. So are we trying to find a way, well, what is the system that we have right now to move them faster or install them faster and- because we may have even more. So that's even more complication. Yeah, right now we have officers that are doing that and one of the things that we're looking at is that the best model or should we use our civilian response team and that's kind of I think what we're looking at.

1:02:52So we use, you know, our officer resources more effectively and so I think we're trying to look at a model of moving toward maybe a civilian-based, you know, team that could do something like that and we may have internal resources just to kind of work on that. And follow-up question regarding this item and are there license plate readers within this budget line item too?

1:03:18There are. Yeah, and many of them are for replacement. We can also work with you on what you're comfortable with but yeah, there are license plate reader in there. Any other questions? Chris Wharton. Hi Chief, thank you for the presentation and thank you for talking about the work that we do at the University of Utah Police Department for Greek Row.

1:03:49I think I put in a request to meet and talk about that because I think there are some opportunities for more efficiency there in talking with the dean of students. So I just wanted to highlight that and say that I'm interested in hearing more about that and we can have a separate meeting. The other thing I wanted to ask about is just that from my residents, I have heard a lot of really positive feedback about our officers and about the department being more responsive to kind of neighborhood issues, just a presence in the neighborhood and then also traffic concerns, things like that.

1:04:43And those continue to be the number one thing that constituents reach out to me about and I know that it's expensive to do targeted enforcement and to be out there doing tickets and that our officers a lot of times they have to take priority calls but can you speak to what in this budget is going to help with that problem because again it is the number one thing that residents reach out to me about and it's not even close to the second and third place things that they reach out about.

1:05:22It's speeding, it's speeding in school zones, it's traffic noise that is so disruptive that it's having health impacts and it's responsiveness to those same sort of issues. Can you just speak to that in this budget? Yes, I mean one the overtime will continue to allow us to do some of that targeted enforcement and I think also the investment in the real time crime center will allow us to respond to issues.

1:05:59So in February we ran a pilot where we deployed our drone as first responder which we're going to talk about in the next budget item. We deployed that drone to certain calls for service, lower priority calls and we were able to clear nearly 40% of those calls without sending an officer. That's really significant for two reasons.

1:06:21One, it means we can send officers to higher priority calls and get their quicker or it means we free up officer time to be more proactive. Again, as I said earlier as we get in the presentation, traffic safety is a problem in the city. I mean we're losing more people to that than homicide right now and so we do need to reinvest and I think as we get fully staffed, as we have the overtime, as we invest in the real time crime center alternate response that will free up our officers to be more present.

1:06:52We started a foot patrol in the downtown area which is proving to be very successful and popular and we want to be able to spread that across the city and have our officers have more beat integrity. When the department was down on staffing and crime was up, not just here but across the country, police departments really just had to respond to the highest priority calls and everything kind of fell by the wayside.

1:07:19I'm confident that over time with full staffing, with this investment, we can start starting to handle these quality of life issues and be more responsive, be more connected to the community and work on some of these issues. I hope that answers your question and on the second point, we'll have my team set up a meeting with you council member on the University of Utah.

1:07:41Thank you. Thank you. Thank you chief. So the first thing I want to just draw attention to is clarifying that the inland port is rightfully returning tax into the city. There would not be a need for the additional officers if the development after wasn't happening and we would be able to pay for these officers if the taxes were flowing as typically designed.

1:08:14However, the state has come up with this brilliant idea of an authority to preempt that taxation. So I am grateful for the collaboration, but I really think especially in such a difficult taxation year, it's very, very, very clear to our neighbors that this is not an act of grace or charity. It is an act of rightful returning of taxes to a primary country of the city.

1:08:40The second thing is in concept, I am in support of anything that amplifies the effectiveness of our skillful police force, anything that returns us to community based policing and allows us to engage in our neighbors. This is not a new problem chief that I am putting on the public record that our data usage, AI policies are not in a place yet where we can fully be confident with some of these investments.

1:09:10So as we are investing as a council, I want us to challenge ourselves to also be investing as policy makers in making sure that the way we use the data, the way we use these tools, the way we collect and repaint things is in the best interest of civil liberties, civil rights of all people. We don't legislate for the people who abide by the law.

1:09:34It doesn't matter to me how much premeditation is required in murder for the first degree because I haven't murdered and will not murder. We have to have protections for those who will violate though. So I am not worried about you chief. I'm not worried about the officers that I engage with. I am worried about making sure that as we move forward, we have policy that protects the rights no matter who is doing what, where in our city.

1:10:00So I just want to put that on the public record. Thank you council member and we're happy to work with you on that and we want to have a sustainable, we want to have a sustainable program so that we can utilize the technology appropriately. So we're always happy to engage. Thank you. Chief, one more thing. In 2024, the budget of 2024, 2025, I believe that's what the budget was.

1:10:29The council shared their focus on the Jordan River. And I believe it was before you joined. And I wanted to our intent then and maybe I can be corrected by our own staff here about what we were intending there was to create sort of a group of officers that were just hyper focused on the river and the river trail and going up and down.

1:11:08And that was a big deal for our community on the west side but certainly generally for the whole city. I am not sure where that is and I would love an update and if that has changed, I would love to get an update. So last fall, we deployed the two green space bike squads that were obtained off of a federal grant. The city council had to put some money in.

1:11:35You put some money in as well. And so they've been deployed since October and they're operating over in that area. And we hope you're seeing them and we hope you're filling the effects of their work but we feel like we're making a lot of good progress over on North Temple along both and will continue to keep at it. One thing that we are also looking at is we've seen really great success with the downtown foot patrol is looking at areas like Sugar House and North Temple and do we start utilizing that model as well and in those areas and so we're having those discussions as well.

1:12:14Great. Thank you. That would be amazing for me too and maybe for Council Member Pietrto to share with our community councils about how that discussion ended up and something tangible that the department is doing. Certainly beyond that I think it's very obvious to us that live on the West side the improvements on North Temple and the Jordan River Trail, it's significant and a significant positive change.

1:12:42And there is still some work to do but it's, you know, please I would like you to share with the officers that are working in the area, we're very thankful to see that improvement. Thank you for that and we will share that and I will tell you we are committed to the residents of the West side and making sure they have public safety and we will keep at it.

1:13:03And you may not always see the bike squad on bikes, they do a lot of work with the drug activity that we sometimes see in the public so if you're not always seeing the bike squads on bikes that's why but they are out there working hard, very hard. All right, next, let's see where we at here on the next slide. Okay, next slide.

1:13:33The contractual increases, this is just an inflationary increase for things like uniforms, gear, ammo, safety equipment and other supplies. This factors in at about a 1.86% inflationary increase. Again, you know, if it can be ongoing that's great because those costs probably aren't coming down but you know, we'll be a team player.

1:13:56But that's that request and then the last one, this is specifically for our drone's first responder program and this is for the ongoing costs for the five drone docks that will be placed across the city for our drone's first responder program. As I mentioned earlier, we cleared nearly 40% of our calls in a test in February with these drones.

1:14:21It's going to improve response times and we're going to be able to, just a couple examples, one, we were able to speed up officers when a woman was threatened by an individual with a pipe. We were able to not send officers to a call where it was relayed as a violent person with a weapon which was not the case. It was someone having a mental health crisis.

1:14:45We could send social workers or not them to send an officer at all. And we were able to pull an individual off of the parking garage with the drone guiding officers in to the location which would have taken much longer to find her. So this is going to be a game changer. Again, I want to emphasize that we are not patrolling with these drones.

1:15:07We're not randomly flying them around. We're flying them to calls for service. When they fly across the city, we're keeping the camera as much as we can. The camera pointed up so it's not pointing down as it flies across the city. We're getting it to the call. It's giving our officers real-time information. And then we're bringing it back.

1:15:27We keep a record of the flight, the flight path, the case number, the reason for the flight. And that's all recorded. And that's what the cost is there. And the next slide. And I think that's the last slide. Any questions? Any last questions? Councillor Nusson. Do you want to call us? No? Call the cars and then? Thank you, Chief, for your presentation.

1:15:59My first question, I don't, I think I know the answer to, but I think it's helpful to at least since this is public record, have an opportunity for residents to understand the answer to this question as well. So when the city published, when the mayor publishes her proposed budget and residents of Salt Lake City just take a look at the pie chart of, you know, how much is going to each department.

1:16:22They look at the pie chart and they say, wow, the majority of our funding is going to the police department. You've got a deficit problem. You're going to raise my property taxes. Why not just cut from the police department? So help me provide an explanation when residents say to me, well, why don't you just balance your budget by cutting all of the resources that you've put in towards your police department?

1:16:50Well you're asking a biased person probably that question because I am a police officer. I think generally public safety is so critical and we hear concerns. Council member Wharton brought up concerns in neighborhoods with speeding or by school zones. You know, we've obviously the issues around homelessness, which is not all homelessness that we are experiencing when we see those things on the streets, much of it is, but some of its criminogenic behavior, violent crime, all of those things to have a safe capital city, I think you have to invest in a police department.

1:17:27Now, as I mentioned, we're looking at efficiencies and when, you know, we have to look out a number of years and so we're trying to figure out how we're going to model what resources we need. We feel like that this investment in the police department in the short term is going to continue to bring call response times down.

1:17:44We're already seeing that with those improvements. We never want to be comfortable with what our call response time is. We always want to try to get that down. Our priority one call response times are six and a half minutes as of April 2025. If you're threatened in some way, six and a half minutes is a long time. So that's actually a good call response time nationally, but we want to try to bring it down even more.

1:18:13So the investment in public safety drives people in the community to get out and get into their parks. We've had a lot of complaints with drug use in the parks and we can't take our kids to the parks or certain public spaces. So we do need the investment, but we want to be cognizant of people who are concerned that we're getting too much money and find ways to be more efficient for sure and we're committed to doing that.

1:18:38Thank you, Chief. And then just a follow up question to that because I feel like this is kind of the number one question that I get pretty often is people look at the budget, they look at the Pige graph and say, well, just cut from there, it'll solve all your budget woes. I don't think it's that easy. But I'm asking this question just for the public record and so people understand more about how our budgets are formed.

1:19:02So I think it's something like maybe 92% could be getting this wrong, but 92% of the police department budget is associated directly with personnel. Personnel costs include health care, pensions, salaries, et cetera. What are some of the drivers of those personnel costs and help me understand how things like labor agreements factor into that?

1:19:27So we do have collective bargaining, so we are under an MOU with our unions, so those costs are factored in there as well or factored in there. When you talk about recruiting, you know, if you want the best officers, you want the best talent and when you're competing for a limited resource, we have to compete with other departments across the state and nation.

1:19:49So a lot of it is driven by just market, the market, what the market is for an officer. But yeah, the MOU controls a lot of those costs for sure, the collective bargaining. You know, I'll always say this, we're always willing to sit down. If people are concerned, I'm willing to sit down and hear them out and see if they have ideas.

1:20:12I mean, we take feedback and we try to improve and get more efficient and we're always willing to sit down with people and see if we can get better. Thank you, Chief. Sorry, my last question. In thinking about this proposed investment in the real-time crime center and the highest and best use of officer time towards those higher priority calls, how do you think looking forward maybe over the next five years, this will impact the staffing needs of the department?

1:20:42Yeah, I mean, I think our alternate response, I think the real-time crime center, we're may help us not have to ask for more officers as we move toward the Olympics and, you know, the capital city is just getting large. I mean, we have hockey now, we have basketball, there's potential for baseball in the future, the University of Utah is expanding.

1:21:02I mean, we just have more traffic, more events coming into our city all the time. That's a lot of people. So there are high demands on the police department. I'm hoping that this alternate response can help free up time to respond to those calls more quickly. And I also hope to council member Wharton's concerns that he hears from his residence that we can also free up officer time just to engage on those quality of life issues, the traffic safety, the noise, just engaging with our youth so that we don't have issues with our youth in the future.

1:21:38So I think the real-time crime center will help us get to a place where we can be more efficient and effective. And we're seeing it work pretty well across the country. Consume will be true and then, Consume Brienne. I just wanted to thank you Chief for being somewhere in the community. Trustees, whether we're asking you to go talk to the Inlet Court or we're asking you to go meet with homelessist advocates, every time I hear that our police department is in the community.

1:22:10You all are representing the city, you're reshaping, fresh where it needs to be. This is, I'm feeling these surveys in my constituents. Public safety without exception is the number one place my constituents want in Washington. And that would be kind of difficult because when somebody could say public safety they mean social workers, when some people say public safety they mean the sworn officers.

1:22:36And I'm just really thankful. I want to come to the public and very thankful for your leadership, for the officers who have been serving the west side and the whole city so faithfully. And I look forward to being creative with you about how we keep our city safe and continue to grow in the face of all of the folks and issues we have come here with.

1:22:58Thank you, Council Member. President Woyeung. Thank you. Chief Raddon to the team again. I echo Council Member Pichos-Thanks. One of the things that I think is also helpful to highlight is the way that your department has successfully been using data to be able to drive resource allocation to be more thoughtful with the resources we have.

1:23:26Just because, again, not everybody has insight to that, I'm wondering if you could give kind of like the two minute overview of how, like the data that you gather really helps to direct resources in a more effective way so that if I could speak so broadly that we're almost doing more without having to increase staffing as the city has grown.

1:23:51Sure. I mean, one example because this was the big issue when I came, joined the Salt Lake City Police Department was some of the issues around the Jordan River Trail and some of the homeless related or transient related calls for service. These are community members calling in or businesses or whatever indicating there's problems.

1:24:12So we have a heat map that we look at every week to see where the bulk of those calls are coming in from community members and then we will deploy our homeless resource center, officers, our social workers and even our patrol officers into those areas to try to see what the issue is. I can give an example in downtown.

1:24:34We were having a hotspot and we found out that we had drug dealers who were coming to that location and that's why we were having some of the issues that we were having. So that's an example of the way that we're using data to try to deploy our resources more efficiently. Thank you. I appreciate the example because for me, knowing that you're using that data-driven approach gives me confidence as a council member related to the asks that are coming through related to your budget.

1:25:08And I appreciate seeing the connection between those two. And I think to me, it also gives me confidence in how you're both looking to be at the forefront of innovation, to be thoughtful about our use of resources, where we need the human response aspect, whereas where we may have alternative opportunities to be able to be thoughtful about those deployments.

1:25:33And just wanted to say that that does give me a lot of confidence in the budget request that come forward just knowing that that's a day-to-day practice of Salt Lake City Police. Thank you. And we're writing our strategic plan now and we're going to continue to develop better key performance indicators metrics. So we have some work to do still, but we're definitely utilizing data and it's helpful.

1:25:59Thank you. Thank you. We're good. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, everyone. You, Council. We have a scheduled to break that we passed. So now I would like all of us to consider continuing with the discussion. I hope if anybody has strong opinions against. Speak now. Okay. We're going to continue with item number four, fiscal year 2026, 2027 budget discussions.

1:26:30This is about community and neighborhoods department now. We're going to welcome at the table Alison Rowland, Council policy analyst, Tammy Hansaker, Director of Community and Neighborhoods, Mike Ocurlow, Deputy Director, Brent Beck, Financial Manager. Alison, it's your time.

1:26:56Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, it always strikes me that can is a very diverse department with building services, engineering, housing stability, planning, transportation, youth and family, and then of course the Arts Council, which is going to be briefed in the next bit, but in spite of that, you guys managed to pull it all together.

1:27:24So I'll just go over the basics quickly and then turn it over to the people who really know. The proposed FY27 budget is 41.4 million, which is just about the same as FY26. The staff size will also remain just about the same. The largest cost savings, 700 and 2000 change, will be achieved through an attrition savings pool, which is essentially holding vacated positions open for four to five months rather than filling them immediately.

1:28:01Other cost reductions come from cuts in the high pass program and this is for general ridership, not for special populations like school kids and their guardians, and from a variety of smaller items like the city match for Fix the Bricks, which now that the federal program has expired, basically the program will be closed.

1:28:23The most significant increase costs are an $800,000 one time youth and family, I was going to say subsidy, it's a subsidy I guess, that's fair, to replace federal funds which have disappeared as well, and give the youth and family division time to try to find additional sources of revenue for their programs. And 330,000 ongoing for taking over funding for the VOA, homeless outreach team, and shelter the homeless resource center liaison.

1:29:01Those are the two really big increases. And there are policy questions sprinkled throughout the staff report, so I will turn it over now to Tammy. Thank you. Thanks to the council for the opportunity to present community neighborhoods FY27 proposed budget. I also want to thank Alison Roland, she's been great to work with as always.

1:29:28Before we dive into the budget proposal itself, I want to begin by recognizing the exceptional team behind this work, the accomplishments reflected in this budget are the result of a dedicated talented and mission-driven department. Alison outlined all of the various divisions within the department where a large department with a broad scope of work.

1:29:50Next slide please. Every division within the department plays a critical role in serving residents, strengthening neighborhoods, supporting community partners, and improving or implementing council priorities. Our expertise, creativity, and commitment to public service are reflected throughout this proposal. Next slide please.

1:30:15Can's recent accomplishments are numerous, too numerous to list, but a sampling include the completion of the $89 million funding our future street bond that resulted in 122 miles of street reconstruction, 310 miles of payment resurfacing, 60 miles of sidewalk urban gutter, and we added over 2,700 new trees and plants.

1:30:39We have also been working hard within building services to create efficiencies with building inspections, and we are currently current on all rental inspections, which is a great accomplishment for that team. We have found efficiencies by cross-training building inspectors. By doing so, we are building internal capacity, improving institutional knowledge, increasing responsiveness, and providing long-term value to the city.

1:31:07On the transportation note, we have successfully navigated the requirements of the transportation bill from 2025, which recently sunset SB 195, and we are currently going through the steps to comply with SB 242. That process now entails negotiating with U.D. on an agreement between our two entities. We are also continuing to implement thriving in place the anti-displacement plan that the Council adopted a few years ago.

1:31:40This effort includes various aspects, including those in planning and housing stability. An example of a success is the tenant resource center that started in the fall of 2024. To date, we have assisted over 2,200 individuals through that portal, which is great. We are also, another accomplishment is continuing to provide high quality summer and after-school programming in spite of significant federal cuts to our grants.

1:32:13Next slide, please. In terms of efficiencies, over the past year, we have focused on operational efficiencies and long-term sustainability of the department from a financial aspect. This includes implementing the commercial and mixed use zoning district consolidation. This consolidation reduced the amount of zoning code, also reducing resources necessary to administer the code, and it created efficiencies for developers and property owners.

1:32:45These efficiencies in administering the code actually allowed us to shift staffing resources to work on adaptions of, or drafting of community plan updates. We transferred the advantage service contract to public services to centralize cleaning efforts and to provide for staffing and funding efficiencies. The mayor mentioned this in her budget presentation to you that transfer allowed the city to find, I think it was like a million dollars in savings.

1:33:14We are also coordinating with public services to optimize administrative office space. That includes re-imagining the old library. This will allow the city to utilize existing real estate instead of looking to bond to build new administrative office space. And then within youth and family with the budget cuts that have been faced, we've optimized budget expenditures.

1:33:38We're really looking at how we plan for an order, supplies, for youth programming. We've gone up and down through that budget to cut where we can and create efficiencies to make the delivery of services as streamlined and efficient as possible. Next slide, please. Allison provided an overview of CAN's budget. As she mentioned within CAN's budget, we're about flat from FY26.

1:34:12Also on this slide, you will see a new revenue change. That's new revenue that we're proposing for the general fund. And then we also looked through our non-departmental expenditures that are attributed to our department and we found about a million dollars in savings there. Next slide. So the new revenue that I just spoke about is $177,000.

1:34:41This wouldn't be new revenue for the Department of Community and Neighborhoods. It would go into the general fund. But as the Mayor's Office asked us to look at cuts, we looked across the board at where we could either generate new revenue or reduce expenditures. And in generating new revenue, the Green Vehicle Program was implemented several years ago.

1:35:05And the initial policy reason for implementing this program was to encourage individuals to buy EV vehicles. And in looking at this program now, we really think that the EV market is strong and the city's policy in regard to EV parking really isn't influencing the EV market anymore. So if we eliminate this program, it would be a net of $177,000 in new parking revenue for FY27.

1:35:35We worked with finance on that number, but it would actually be even a greater amount of revenue in future years because the finance department built in a few months to phase that program out. The other reason we are proposing to eliminate the program is the EPA publishes an EPA smart way vehicle list on an annual basis.

1:36:01And our city code is actually tied to that list. And there have been recent changes with the current federal administration, with the EPA and how that list is managed. So there's actually lack of clarity right now on what new cars qualify. The other consideration with the program is there are still green stickers out there on vehicles that qualified as an efficient vehicle several years ago, but would no longer qualify under current lists.

1:36:31So that is one proposal for new revenue. The second item on this slide is access and belonging. This is actually revenue or budget neutral. This budget was in the mayor's office. Last year, access and belonging staff moved from the mayor's office to community and neighborhoods. So this is operating budget that was left in the mayor's office that we're asking to transfer over to CAN.

1:36:53It is budget that is used to operate the programs, including welcoming week, the if-tard dinner, partnership events, new American projects, and know your neighbor volunteer fingerprinting. The third item on this slide is the police department lease contractual increases. We are contractually obligated for this budget through lease agreements.

1:37:21So community and neighborhoods, the real estate services team, we manage lease agreements throughout the city, including the police department. So this would be increases for the crime lab, the community connection center, and the police substations. Next slide, please. VOA and shelter the homeless, $330,000. We're requesting this to be ongoing funding within CAN's budget.

1:37:48This is actually not new funding. It's currently funded through a BA and FY26. And in previous years, it was actually those contracts were funded through the state mitigation funds. Last year, the city shifted the priorities of the state mitigation funds from efforts that were being carried out through CAN to the police department because the state wanted cities to prioritize public safety with those funds.

1:38:16So we want to build in the VOA and shelter the homeless into housing stability's budget. VOA is for a homeless outreach team. This team is actually working a lot with the Connect program in PD. It's for engaging persons experiencing homelessness for that program and also engaging that population like if there's an encampment mitigation.

1:38:42And then the shelter the homeless contract, that is that one, $80,000. That would be for a homeless services liaison for the homeless resource center. And this liaison is actually an FTE employed by shelter the homeless that mitigates issues, coordinates with stakeholders and does community outreach with regarding the resource centers.

1:39:09And then our fifth request is a large one. It is $800,000 for youth and family. This would be funding to keep youth and family programming relatively stable compensating for the loss of federal funding. Of note, even with this $800,000 request, this would, if the council approves this request, the division would still be over $500,000 less in budget in FY27 than in FY26 because there have been other federal budget cuts.

1:39:46But in talking with the team and looking at how we can optimize the $800,000 would keep programming for K through six and teens stable. We would consolidate adult programming. Right now we have an adult programming site in the Fair Park neighborhood as well as at Sworensen. We would consolidate adult programming at Sworensen and find some cost savings there.

1:40:09And like I said before, the division has already found some efficiencies and cost savings. So we feel like $800,000 is the minimum that would be needed to keep programming relatively stable. I am sure you will agree that these programs are critical in supporting working families within our city and investment in youth and family collectively advances public safety, educational outcomes, workforce training and community well-being.

1:40:36So we feel strongly that this is would be good money spent if the council decides to approve. Next slide please. Let me, let me, let me, uh, to reject, uh, Council Member Dugan. Yeah. Thank you, Tammy. I agree with you on that number about the youth and family services. Can you kind of give the city and the council the metrics that you kind of make that decision for you?

1:41:03I mean, what are you tracking there as far as how many youth and families in K through six graders that you're touching by that funding and what you're not touching because you've lost that the other $500,000, I think you just mentioned that you're going to still find efficiencies. Can you kind of give us a broad view of those metrics that you're using to justify that?

1:41:27Because I think it's incredibly valuable, uh, and it's necessary, but it'd be nice to know some of those metrics that you're tracking with that. There are a lot of metrics we are tracking for the youth and family division and programming. I don't have them memorized on the top of my head. We have, we actually have that data put together in a wireframe that we can send over, but the program tracks enrollment, um, the programming is offered on a sliding scale basis in terms of the fees for the program.

1:41:57So most of the kids qualify for free or low cost programming because they are from lower income families. So we have, um, income information on the students and the, the participants. In looking, in working with the team and Liz Rich is here if you have any specific questions on, on metrics, otherwise we can email those afterwards.

1:42:20But in looking at the, the $500,000 reduction, if we get the 800,000 that we're requesting, in talking it through with Liz and also with the mayor's office, we want to be responsible with taxpayer money and we really looked at programming and the, the benefits that the programming is providing the community and the adult programming is very valuable.

1:42:45It's, it's well used. It's like computer labs, um, ESL, I think there's some financial literacy training, other things like that. We really feel like the, um, services for youth that K through six and the teens is essential to keep intact for the community. So we really looked at then consolidating the adult programming at Sorensen and just creating other efficiencies that would limit the cuts to services for youth.

1:43:14Does that help? Yeah, it does. And I just wanted to, and there's probably a lot of pressure to, for the services to it's, it's not like you have a lot of empty seats. You have more requests than. Right. Weightless. You have the weightless. And the program has, um, Liz who's a newer director. She's been with youth and family for a long time, but she stepped in the director role, um, a bit, a bit over a year ago, I believe, um, she's really been creative, been forward thinking, um, she's been a lifesaver and working through all of these funding cuts.

1:43:53We've also, um, experienced other challenges like we had programming at the Fair Park. Um, and then we moved to the Lied Boys and Girls Club, but the Boys and Girls Club is now selling Lied. So now we're talking to the, the about moving programming into the Northwest Rec Center, which the county has been great to work with.

1:44:12So, um, there's been a lot going on with youth and family. Appreciate that. And I'd love to see some of those metrics just to, you know, for, there's probably a lot of questions about that, but because it's a big number, but I think that the, the cost benefit is, is huge. So appreciate that. Thank you. I'm going to go over the course.

1:44:29Um, thank you for this presentation this far. I think I want to follow up on Council Member Dugan's questions about the 800,000 for the youth and family programming. And this really coming, um, about this year because of federal funding cuts and, and changes related to that. And so I think my question as I'm thinking about this is, are you thinking about this kind of as a bridge year and then in fiscal year 28, finding additional resources to support this line item or how are you thinking about for future years?

1:45:05That is a great question. And I meant to mention that this is an 800,000 one time funding request. So we're not requesting ongoing. Um, that being said, we are still, it's still to be determined whether we can find other resources or other grant opportunities. We also want to look at local grant opportunities, philanthropic opportunities.

1:45:30So we want to spend the next year, uh, analyzing and looking at other resources. We also recently, um, hired a national consultant who did a three year strategic plan. And I think one of Allison's policy questions to you was if you want us to present that strategic plan to you, that plan was in process when funding cuts started to happen.

1:45:52So it does talk about some options with funding. So, um, I don't have any good answers for you now, but it's something we are working through. And just wanted to clarify really quickly, um, because I'm trying to mention it each time department is before us that is related to the property tax. So, um, the 800,000 for youth and family is part of the 13 point five million dollar property tax increase proposal.

1:46:20Thank you. I meant to mention that as well. The next item is a $700,000 cut from non departmental from vacant building maintenance. Um, this funding, um, for the current fiscal year, a portion of that has gone to the Fisher Mansion. I think it was 400,000 is going to Fisher Mansion. So we have been strategically looking at, um, improvements to, uh, vacant and underutilized city properties to help keep those buildings, um, well maintained and improved as we look at, um, disposition strategies.

1:47:00So currently Fisher Mansion received some of the money. We also use the money for just ongoing security and maintenance expenses. So we're proposing to cut the entire pot of money, but obviously we still need a strategy and a source for paying for, um, maintenance and utilities and lawn mowing and whatnot. So we are going to use the surplus, we're proposing to use the surplus property account for those basic expenses up to 200,000.

1:47:29The next item is a $50,000 cut from non departmental transit outreach, education and marketing. This, um, amount that can receives in its annual budget is $100,000. So we're proposing to cut it in half. And we're also proposing to broaden the scope, not just to the transit network, but, um, CIP and road projects in general to do outreach and engagement with the community.

1:47:58The third one, uh, for our reduction request is the Hive Pass. We were faced with tough decisions with this budget proposal and perhaps the toughest decision is to propose the cut to this program. The Hive Pass program currently provides discounted transit passes to residents regardless of their income. There are about 440 users of this past month.

1:48:25We made this decision for two primary reasons, um, faced with the budget, um, challenges that we are this year. First, we want to ensure that the transportation funding is doing the most good for the most in need. So we are leaving the low income pass program intact. That program partners with service providers to provide daily and monthly transit passes for the city's most vulnerable residents.

1:48:53And we are also proposing to leave intact the school district program that provides passes to school aged children and guardians. We also are prioritizing the frequency of the transit network. We didn't want to look at any cuts there. So the city contributes about $10 million a year for the go routes, the frequent transit network and for the on demand programs.

1:49:20And so looking within the transportation division faced with, um, budget challenges, we felt like the Hive Pass since there isn't an income qualification. That was where we could take the reduction over the low income, the school district partnership and the frequent transit network because it's essential to keep that frequency up with the network.

1:49:44The other concern with the Hive Pass program is it's getting more expensive to administer. So to keep administering it at the current level, we would actually have to ask for additional budget. So right now the budget is I think 350,000 to provide the passes. Um, but the amount, there's also an amount to administer the program.

1:50:05And I think currently it's 60,000 and that will be increasing to about 150 if we don't cut the program. So we would actually have to ask for money to keep administering the program. That's what we're doing. Thank you for that explanation. Yeah, it is a hard decision to make there on that one because as you said, it's a valuable service.

1:50:29We want people in public transportation and this is a nice way to get people and keep people in buses. Do we have a number of how many of the, I think it's 404 years, that use the pass would qualify for the low income support for a pass if they were in that, if they had taken that route and said the Hive Pass route. Do we have an idea and?

1:50:55I don't think we have any idea because I don't think we collect any sort of income data with the Hive Pass applications. You don't have to. Yeah. Because that's not part of the eligibility criteria. And is there, there's probably other multiple sources for passes. Companies provide passes. We have low income passes. Is there, we're going to be providing information for people who currently get the Hive Pass.

1:51:24Where there's other options for them to get a pass. Because it is a service that they're using and they're using the pass because that's what they want and how do we make sure that they still provide the public transportation and they still get to work in that regard. I can coordinate with the transportation team on IDIS for that.

1:51:43I do know a lot of employers provide passes like Salt Lake City does. But I don't know if we have a comprehensive list of those sources and I'd need to talk to the transportation team about, and maybe UTA about other IDIS for communicating programs and offers for transit passes. Yeah, I keep on, I'm trying to push more and more people on public transportation because it helps everybody.

1:52:13It helps people who aren't on the public transportation because they're secure cars. It also helps people get to work and affordable living. So I'd love to have that communication so we can absolutely use all the different services for everybody. Not just the easiest one which might have been the Hive Pass. Yeah, one idea, maybe we've done this with housing and with other areas within CAN.

1:52:36Maybe we could create a webpage with resources and IDIS for transit passes. Thanks, Emma Carlson. In regards to the on demand, I think that's, if I remember, right, it's about like 3.5 million. Maybe as a follow up, I'd love to see how many riders are served by that program, number of trips that that program helps to supplement.

1:53:06We can get you that information. Our partnership with UTA with the frequent transit networks is interesting in that we are subsidizing the frequency of the transit network and then as the system and the frequency is in place for a while and then ridership increases, that's actually bringing in more revenue to UTA and our subsidies then being reduced.

1:53:33So we're actually seeing some of those positive impacts start to happen so we can provide that information to you. Thank you for the update. Since we're talking about the Hive Pass, I've been reached out. Many members of the community reached out to me about what this looks like to the city. The impact to individual families.

1:53:56You highlighted how tough this was to decide between all of these programs that took good in our community and choosing between all of them is not easy. So thank you for looking through your budget and trying to hopefully make tough decisions and prioritizing what programs does the best for the most people. I would like more information about the subsidy, the Hive Pass that is income qualified.

1:54:37I wonder if ending this program will increase the demand on that portion of the Hive Pass. I struggle with the right out completely ending of it but I would love to get more information as well about managing this program and what does it cost to manage it and you've mentioned that it may require even more resources to manage it.

1:55:07I would love more information about that as well. So certainly this is one of those programs that I struggle with. When you are looking at your own department, it makes sense that you're looking into these programs. I would like to see it certainly for us. It's appropriate to do this as look at it holistically through all the different departments in the city.

1:55:35I'm more inclined to find savings in other places within the city to try to potentially hopefully try to make an impact or keep something like this going. Which is not on you and it's within us. I know that 440 individuals use this pass and it seems significant to me. In some ways, this connected and this joint is maybe to what the goals of the city are.

1:56:05This is not on you because you have a tough decision to make and try to find the most impact for the money that we have. You met the task that the administration gave you which is try to find savings within your program. Councillor MURPHAN. Has a question. Thank you, Tammy. I appreciate the presentation. Yeah, Cam is one of our biggest departments and is vast in terms of all the services that are provided.

1:56:38Thanks for recapping all of that. I don't want to like micromanage or say that not every anecdote that we see is representative of system laws or whatever. But I do get quite a few requests throughout the year from people that are either businesses in my district or constituents that say that they filed for this permit or asked for that and that there are delays or inefficiencies in the system.

1:57:23A lot of times I just want to say like to our credit and your staff's credit. Most of the time when I look into those the delay is actually on the petitioner or it's something that they sent back to them for that something is incomplete or whatever and they didn't know that or they missed an email or something like that.

1:57:55But sometimes it is delay on the city's part or that there's some kind of like it seems like extra or more processes that could be streamlined. So I'm really interested. I appreciate that what you've already done to add to that. I'm convinced that there are more efficiencies that we can do out there. And so I just it would be really interested to hear more about that in the coming year.

1:58:32I think you said that that was something that you and your team were going to study. So I'm really interested to hear more about that. Thank you for that feedback Council member. And I know this has been an ongoing topic of discussion and the administration has often talked about efficiencies and improvements that we are looking into.

1:58:55I think the time is right for some major analysis to take place for those processes. I have the utmost confidence in the building services and the planning team and engineering. One tricky thing is that building permitting crosses departments. So there are like public utilities is involved in other departments. But the mayor's office is supportive of looking into significant changes.

1:59:28Another kind of sea change that we're experiencing is the new IMS director has come to the table really wanting to be part of that discussion and looking at because process improvements a lot of times have to come along with technology improvements. We've been using the same technology for a long time and he's really interested in going down that path exploring improvements and ideas and alternatives with us.

1:59:56So I'm excited to see what we can do over the next year. Okay. Well, thank you. Yeah. And I think, you know, to the extent that we've done a lot of these big changes to consolidate. Zones and things like that in planning. I think we should try to do like commensurate. Like efficiencies in house within our own systems to.

2:00:27Yeah, to address that, even though I know it's multi departmental and that, you know, when there are constraints based on technology, but I would just love to see that. Let's look at these things more confidently and prioritize that. So thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks. Council Member Young. Thank you. I just wanted to dive a little bit deeper on the youth and the family programming because that is one of the pieces that would be funded by the proposed property tax increase.

2:01:06Can you give us like maybe a couple more details about that to help folks understand why those programs are so essential to our families and residents in Salt Lake? Sure. Youth and family provides after school programming, summer programming. This is not only benefiting the kid providing positive social outcomes. There's educational standards that the programming meets, so it's not just daycare.

2:01:39There's an actual education component to the program. And it's also essential for working families. This allows working parents, single moms to be at work while their kids are doing something that provides knowledge and social skills. So we really feel that the program is essential. If you look at the demographics of the kids that participate in the program, in the programming, it's a lot of extremely low income, vulnerable populations, new Americans.

2:02:14So it's really essential. We feel to keep this programming at a stable level. But like I did say, we looked critically at where the money was going, how we would create efficiencies. And we're asking for the 800 and cutting from the current budget, 500,000, because we felt like if we were going out and asking for property tax funds to be used for these programs, that we had to be critical and use our funding as wisely as possible.

2:02:48Thank you. And I appreciate those additional details. I would just for the broader community conversation, drawn analogy to cuts that we recently saw happening at the county level and kind of the public outcry associated, like with those cuts when they were part of consideration. And I appreciate you looking at efficiencies within that space, but tying it to a key core demographic and a need that we want to continue to meet within our community to allow those working parents that opportunity to, you know, provide educational opportunities for their kids to meet.

2:03:33These are very similar conversations. So I just wanted to draw that analogy in terms of kind of the rationale and the justification for that aspect of this request. Can someone repeat your. Did you say teacher? Yes, I did. Okay. Tammy, I'm going to thank you for this presentation and for the amazing work that we know you do.

2:04:04I want to start off with the zoning. I think it was really interesting to hear that there's a lot of process moving. The consumer Victoria Pitro, the sound is not very clear. So maybe the connection is a little poor. I wonder if you can slow down the. So we have time to translate in our brain. Is this better? Yes. Okay.

2:04:35It's stupid blue tooth. Sorry. I'm being a mom while I'm being a councilwoman. Um, no, Tammy, I just wanted to say thank you as usual. This is pretty remarkable stuff here. Your knowledge and expertise in protecting the city on such wide ranging things is really remarkable. Um, first of all, on the zoning, it's really interesting to hear to see the economic impact of this really exciting.

2:05:00I'd love to track some data throughout the year to see what it looks like for adoption and what's actually happening with our land use to have a comprehensive idea of how successful or how much we need to modify. But this is a really, really interesting data point. Thank you for bringing it. Um, secondly, I'll look for a similar data point with the high pass.

2:05:20If we do end up cutting it, if, uh, I don't, I don't, I say yes because council member Dugan is really persuasive and if he finds a way to not cut it, I know we won't. But if we do end up cutting it and we see a change in ridership as a result, I really would love to revisit that and make sure that we collect that data point so we can have a robust discussion going forward.

2:05:40But then finally, I want to join the youth and family programming chorus. I openly admit that this is a place where I am possibly the greatest hypocrite because for a long time, I've wanted this programming to be transferred to something more privately funded just because, you know, I want to keep as much free for the core city services.

2:06:03At this moment in time, this is to me a core city service. If we haven't transitioned it, our families who rely on this service do not have the bandwidth to absorb this and the, you know, $2 a year that'll be returned to the property tax holder. If we don't fund it is not worth the collective impact of what we can do if we do fund it.

2:06:26So for me, this is a core city service at this point. I am so thankful for leaders like Liz and you, uh, representative Romero who make sure that we have bang for our buck. But at this point, I am viewing youth and family services as a core city service. While I do look forward to us finding ways to privatize and reduce reliance on the general fund for it, I am fully in support of it and I'm going to go to the mat to make sure that we don't do it.

2:06:54I'm thankful to you and the mayor for finding a path, even in a tough budget year for us to protect these families. Thank you.

2:07:05Quick question. I noticed that advantage was, you know, reabsorbed within, you know, the department. I'm little worried. No, it's still on public services. It's still. So we still have a contract with advantage services. Yes. Well, actually, oh, you're talking about on the next slide because I'm actually not done with my slides.

2:07:28Oh, so I really can I have the list of things that I want to chat with you. I can I can be efficient. No, no, you are being efficient. I am just a good student, I guess. Keep going. Keep going. There's two different advantage services contracts. So one is still in can. So and for the record, we would love to preserve the Hive Pass program, but we we know there are it's a challenging budget year.

2:07:57So we will leave it at that. Next slide, please. We are also proposing a $125,000 reduction in non non departmental that goes transfers to the Arts Council Foundation. This would reduce the city's transfer to the Arts Council from $1,025,000 to $900,000. This cut would cause reductions in programming such as the busker fest, Mondays in the park, springboard for the arts professional development or other programming.

2:08:34If historical practices followed, it would be the Arts Council Foundation Board that decides what specific programming would be cut. And the foundation board could look at because they leverage the city's money with grants and other fundraising. So they could look at grant opportunities or other sources of revenue within the foundation to cover programming.

2:08:58We have I think the next agenda item is the Arts Council. So we can get into this more. I remember Pua, I know that public art is very important for you. So this isn't the public art portion of the Arts Council. This is the transfer to non departmental that is mostly for programming. The next item is $50,000 proposed to be cut from planning for a historic preservation consultant.

2:09:24This funding has been used over the past few years to update historic survey records for local historic districts. We feel that we can transfer these duties in house. We still have some consulting money that would remain within planning for the expertise that we need like for architectural historians and other consultants.

2:09:44The next item is a $50,000 cut for engineering's public outreach consultant. This would cut that funding entirely. Council member Young, you I'm sure are familiar with these services with the Sugar House Street reconstruction project that funding paid for the consultant that did outreach with the community. We feel that with the although we would miss this funding, we feel that with the completion of the streets bond and with shifting our priorities more from large reconstruction projects to local streets that we can manage without this funding and do those efforts in house.

2:10:27The next one, if you go to the next slide, housing fix the bricks match. There was a federal requirement through FEMA. We no longer have FEMA funding for fix the bricks, so we do not need this $84,000 match. Reduction number eight is the neighborly software for $60,000. This wouldn't be a cut in services. We would be shifting the software expense from the general fund and charge it to federal grants like CDBG.

2:10:59The housing funding our future contract, this $92,000 reduction from funding our future, it actually wouldn't result in a loss in services because the tenant resource center is administered by the Community Development Corporation of Utah and you just awarded funding to CDCU for that program through the funding our future round.

2:11:23So this reduction would not result in loss of services. Next slide please. The homelessness contracts, we haven't been using an amount every year that's allocated for portable toilet rentals for $32,000. So we're proposing to reduce that, but we are proposing to have a $12,000 increase for advantage services a place for your stuff.

2:11:50So this would increase that contract from $85,000 to $97,000. So that's for the storage program. The last program is still administered through CAN, but the cleaning is administered through public services. And then the last two are vacancy savings essentially. There's actually an engineering seven position that's currently open that we've agreed to hold open for the entire year because we've consolidated engineering management efforts within transportation.

2:12:22We don't want to eliminate that FTE yet because we want to make sure that this is a viable path forward. I did listen to the earlier briefing and I think Jennifer, you described our approach to vacancy savings spot on. We have a large, the last item is a $702,000 attrition vacancy savings pool. We did not want to eliminate any FTEs right now.

2:12:48CAN is a large department with about 250 employees, so we naturally get quite a bit of vacancy savings over the year. This is more than we typically get, so we are planning to hold positions open for a longer period of time. And we also want to look at any efficiencies or combining of job responsibilities over the next year, but we really wanted to take the next year to kind of analyze how that shakes out.

2:13:14And I think that is it. Again, I appreciate the partnership and support from the Council and I'd be happy to answer any more questions or hear any more feedback. Councilor Duhlin has more questions. No, I just want more questions about the Fix-A-Break program. So is that program now because the FEDs aren't supporting it?

2:13:35Is that eliminated or is it still a Fix-A-Break, which is not? So the Council has allocated over some previous budget rounds some funding from CDBG. So there is a smaller pot of money that is still being used for Fix-A-Bricks. The FEMA program, there was not an income requirement for recipients of the program, but since it's CDBG and HUD, there is an income requirement with the smaller pot of money that we still have.

2:14:06Okay. Got you. Thank you very much. I have a requirement and that's where the general fund allocation came in play. So we don't need that anymore. So that's why we proposed that reduction. Got you. But the program is still ongoing, but there's now more of the income threshold for that. And a lot less money. And a lot less money.

2:14:29Right. Okay. Thank you. There's no hands up. So I guess it's my turn. So the cleaning portion of the advantage, can you explain a little more about how we're going to maintain service levels? You know, a little bit, tell me a little more. When Jorge presents public services budget, he can get in much more detail than I can with that because the new urban services team has been operating for almost a year.

2:15:07And we did transfer the advantage services portion of the cleaning to public services for administration by that team. And it's my understanding that they have found a lot of cost savings with that contract and transferred a lot of that scope of work in house. Okay. That's helpful. Evie, the North Temple substation. And you have the downtown, the region street substation and the North Temple substation as part of the increase for $60,000.

2:15:36How much is that? How much of that is the North Temple? And are we using it? Because I, isn't that necessary right now? And I know it's probably the smallest portion of that increase. It is very small. I can't remember the exact amount off the top of my head, but I do remember it's a five year lease. It's the downtown site is an actual precinct.

2:15:58The one on North Temple is just a bike substation. I did ask the police department a while ago if they're using it and they did say that they use it. It's not a high amount of rent. I do remember the first year the city actually paid zero rent and then I think it went up to like 1200 and it ticks up every year, but it's not a lot of money.

2:16:22Yeah. I remember that they offer because I was part of that conversation very early on. It took us a year to actually get pulled off so that free year was. But I would love to, if we are constructed to maintain that rent, that makes sense. But I would love to ask the department, if we're going to vacate that place to start looking at it sooner rather than later and still getting locked in to a continued rent when we might not need it.

2:16:55Ultimately, it may not be a lot of money and they might see value on it. But I would love more information about that. Then there is, you mentioned EV parking, which I think makes sense to make that change. Is the EV electrical portion the cost of the electricity for those charging units within your department? It isn't.

2:17:25It's a political piece. So I would love to have that conversation as well. So I'm going to flag it for all of us to make sure that we have that conversation as well. As far as this position of properties, it's a question I have. That is, I keep learning about new properties that we own and we have owned for a while. And I would love to find out what are we going to do with them because they cost us a lot of money to maintain.

2:17:51I still don't know if there is a grand plan to dispose of them or to develop them. I felt like this is a conversation we had for a little while. Maybe because it's an administrative thing, it makes sense that we may not be privy to the details. But when we have budget struggles, to me, it comes to mind all the properties that we own.

2:18:20Is it possible that we disposing or some of them make sense to try to cancel out some of the costs that we have? Yes, it's one time money. But we have made decisions like that in the past and currently too. So I would love to know a little more about this position of property within the department. We'd be happy to have that discussion.

2:18:45Thank you. Any other random questions or not random or based, smart ones? No? Okay. Could I correct just quickly what I said before. It looks like it's sustainability and public services that take care of the EV chargers. Okay, we're looking forward to that discussion soon. Thank you so much for the update. I cannot speak highly of the work that you guys do in the department.

2:19:11It's just incredible. So really, we are very lucky to have you as a team leading the city. So thank you. Well, thank you. A lot of the credit goes to the division leadership. I think a lot of them are behind me. Thank you. Council members, we are not too far behind. We made up some time somehow. Oh, the break. That's how we ate on that break.

2:19:42We're still good, right? We can do this. Yes, we do have a quorum. Okay. I will speak slowly to give you a little more time. Oh, God. One at a time. We have quorum issues. Take turns. So moving on to item number five for this is again, fiscal year 2016-2007. It's a budget discussion for the Arts Council now. We're going to welcome Sylvia Richards, Council Policy Analyst, Atholicia Baca, Arts Council Director, Lauren Loral, Canon Elder, Arts Council Assistant Director.

2:20:23Sorry for all of the blame it on my English. So thank you. It's your time, Sylvia. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is, as you mentioned, the Arts Council Briefing, which is a division of the community and neighborhood development department. This division supports local artists, arts, organizations, and cultural programs. It is funded through the general fund and arts foundation contributions and includes nine full-time employees plus part-time and seasonal staff.

2:20:58The proposed budget for the Arts Council is 1,275,844, which is the first time that we have a budget is reduction of 5.8% as compared to fiscal year 2026. As a result of proposed cuts, the division may need to consider canceling smaller programming events, which Tammy just mentioned in the CAN budget and Felicia or Laurel will address in their presentation.

2:21:28The Arts Council, the CAN department, the mayor's office, provided information during small group meetings and transmiddles earlier this year in response to Council member questions and the adoption of a legislative intent to review the Arts Council's funding, programming, and priorities. And with that, I'd like to turn the time over to Felicia and Laurel.

2:21:55Thanks, Sylvia. Thank you all for having us here. And I want to thank some of our board members and staff for being present. We know this is a year with really difficult decisions for the administration and Council, and I wanted to say as part of this organization for the past eight years, we've had a lot of conversations about how we do things and what we facilitate, but I have never once had to doubt the administration or Council's belief in the power of arts as essential to the social, cultural, and economic fabric of our city.

2:22:31This isn't the case everywhere and we never take this for granted. We've had a banner year and we're so excited to share it with you today. Throughout this presentation, we'll refer to a number of items in your Transmetal and Council questions. Next slide. This year we completed a public-private partnership that raised $1.4 million, including the largest singular grant to our organization for a public art with over 100,000 attendees, 13 projects in every city council district in over 50 events and broad international press, including the New York Times.

2:23:11We started eight capital public art projects this year, more than any year in the last decade with many more in progress and more on that later. We were selected as a national partner of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival for living traditions, the nation's most renowned folk festival and tripled our fundraising goals, and we hope you'll all join us starting tomorrow.

2:23:33Despite higher venue costs and reduced capacity during the transition to the Civic Center, the Twilight Concert Series, an 8% increase in ticket sales from 2024 to 2025, the series continues to activate town town and the Civic Campus while remaining affordable and accessible to residents who might not otherwise have the opportunity.

2:23:55According to an economic impact study, last season the series generated more than $1.6 million in downtown economic activity, continued to support the careers of local emerging artists and even drew a surprise appearance from Post Malone, whose tickets are an average of $150 to $700 in Salt Lake City right now. As part of our continued goals to reach new residents, this is evidenced by 23% of our grant applications being new first time applicants.

2:24:27And lastly at the Council's request, we conducted a review of annual mural production in five comparable cities and found that our program produced 33% more murals than the cities included in the comparison and more to come on that. Next slide. We just, because we're an arts organization, wanted to share some images of what we do.

2:24:50This is Olafur Alias and Symphony of Disappearing Sounds of the Great Salt Lake at Memory Grove, which served 25,000 diverse residents, the Living Traditions Festival, and then one of our public art projects life on state serving emerging artists. Next slide. Our Twilight Concert series with our appearance from Post Malone, our new ballpark mural program and bike rack murals in the Foothail Trails.

2:25:20Next slide. This is an image of some of the programs that our project grants support our murals at Liberty Park and a public art project in the Fair Park that was recent. Next slide. So from our conversations last year and for those of you that might be newer, we thought it would be good to revisit our organization's structure as it relates to the budget.

2:25:49We are a governmental nonprofit as defined by state code, which is an independent nonprofit that receives most of its funding from various public entities. We were created in 1976 as a mission-aligned nonprofit advancing shared civic goals while maximizing and leveraging public and private investment. In 2020, the structure was reevaluated and Salt Lake City reaffirmed the implementation and impact of the structure with the administration and moved forward to fortify it with an annual operating agreement and public benefit analysis.

2:26:20We are governed by this operating agreement with Salt Lake City and a non-departmental contract. We undergo an annual independent audit that's integrated into the city's audit and we report and are accountable to state, county and federal entities as well as several other private foundations. We have 64 private funders across our programs this year.

2:26:41To really simplify this structure, it looks like two arms. The Arts Council Foundation operates programs including the Finch Lane Gallery, Living Traditions, Oscar Festival, Poet Laureate, City Arts Grant among others and we also support non-capital components of public art here. City public art funding rests on the city side of operations and includes CIP funding as well as the facilitation of many other funds for public art outside our division.

2:27:08Next slide. Part of this oversight structure is two primary boards. The Arts Council Board oversees foundation policy budget and strategic oversight and acts as an advisory body to the city and mayor on arts and the art design board recommends public art projects for mayoral approval by ordinance. Next slide. So with the non-departmental funding that we receive, we think about it as going into three different buckets.

2:27:39The city arts grants, the public programming which we've talked about which includes things like living traditions and twilight and busker and then facility maintenance of our beloved little 1930 home. Next slide please. We raise on average and we're really proud of this, 30 cents on every taxpayer dollar except for the last four or five years we raised 55 to 65 percent of our total budget and we again we have over 64 private funders for our programming this year.

2:28:19Next slide. We are examining a number of strategies to incorporate the budget cut and those have already been discussed a couple of times today. We are looking at cutting the busker festival which happens at the end of May. Jordan River strolls is a part of this program. Mondays in the park. The city arts grants could see a reduction and other supplemental public art would be just the outreach that happens aligned with that.

2:28:51We will work hard to maintain the service levels and quality that we have. The criteria that we are considering is in the orange box. We are preserving programs with high impact of artists and public served or maintaining diversity of programming to preserve grant funders. We are preserving revenue generating programs.

2:29:14We will consider recommendations of course from you and from our board based on our strategic plan. We will consider eliminating programs with escalating costs in the future and we are considering what other services are being provided with similar offerings external to the city. Next slide. So we also wanted to talk about our public funding because our public funding makes up about 30 percent of our raised dollars.

2:29:45So we get a significant grant from the zoo arts and parks fund. The zoo arts and parks fund has two tiers and we are in the tier one group. And the tier one group make up the largest of the cultural entities in the city. For example, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Tracy Abyary, Red Butte Gardens are all tier one organizations.

2:30:10We are the only local arts agency which is a special designation within that tier. And in terms of the formula for the way tier one organizations are funded, it's based on two things. It's based on a qualifying expenditure and then the services that we offer. They do look at the narrative that we provide on the diversity of the programs that we offer.

2:30:36And this year we got about $215,000 in that grant. The Utah Division of Arts and Museums is the state funding and we are defined as the only local arts agency within Salt Lake City. The state defines a local arts agency as an agency that provides diverse programming and also can provide grants, supporting policy creation and public art.

2:31:02This LAA status could change if we had large shifts in our mission and funding could be the basis for a reduced grant award. If we were to significantly change the breadth of our programming or serve considerably fewer residents that could also impact our award. Additionally, the state is already anticipating a reduction in their FY27 general operating support grants of 30% due to a change in the funding the state received from the legislature and that's going to result in approximately a $14,000 cut to us this year.

2:31:42We received federal funding. It's a grant specifically for the living traditions festival. And the federal administration under President Trump has again requested or proposed complete elimination of the national endowment for the arts which is where that funding comes from. We're hopeful that this will be again a bipartisan supported national endowment for the arts effort.

2:32:08And it has survived previous cuts. We are hopeful it will survive this recommendation. And in recent years we have averaged between $25,000 to $45,000. So we are hoping to again see something like that next year. It's also important to know that all this government funding, these sources, compose again 30% of our non-departmental funds but we are prohibited from spending any of these grant funds on public capital expenditures.

2:32:44Next slide. Now we're going to transition to focusing specific on public art centered on some of our conversations that we've had over the last year. So again coming the Japan town mural, the new mural to come out of the blue and then another image of the ballpark murals. So in this slide as you can see we partner and leverage many funds in the city for public art and investment in dollars has been steadily increasing.

2:33:21As I mentioned in FY26 we started more individual projects than in any past decade with over 15 projects or so in process right now. And we also created a very much needed maintenance fund in 2022. Please note in this chart that percent for art funding is in red. So this is the only fund within our own budget, the jurisdiction of our own budget.

2:33:45We're incredibly grateful to all our partners in the CRA and public lands and enterprise funds and many others that support these efforts in the city for us to facilitate as an agency on our behalf. And that CIP funding you'll see it here distributed in the year that the project starts but again we're looking at I believe this year we're at about $151,000.

2:34:08Next slide. So we're going to, oh you. I get to share the good news about the murals and the challenge that you gave us to look at the cities that surround us and some of the things that have been done there. This is a photo of one of the murals in the ballpark, the 10 murals that were commissioned this fall. Next slide.

2:34:38So we're actually really grateful that you invited us to look at what other mural programs are doing and how we could aspire to them because we are thrilled to share that we are actually doing really well in terms of comparisons. We looked at five Utah cities and we had 33% more murals in terms of the annual murals produced in that report done by an outside consultant.

2:35:10So this slide highlights some of the murals that are complete and some that are in progress. So we partnered with Love Your Block and in your meeting materials there are photos of some of the Love Your Block murals from the last year. The 33% higher number doesn't include any of those Love Your Block projects, although we love working with Love Your Blocks and we do collaborate with them.

2:35:38We just wanted to make sure you were aware of those. We adapted our grants program in order to fast track a funding tool for murals through the grants and this year we had four murals funded through that. And then in yellow you can see the murals that were completed this year. We had one permanent with Bloomberg and two temporary murals.

2:36:04We had the 10 ballpark murals and then we had the blocks mural that we partnered with. We are coming up this year. We have a Japan town that was recently announced and it was in an earlier slide. We have the Poplar Grove Picklebawl Court. We have the Jordan River Parkway is going to be receiving four murals. North Temple will be receiving six murals and then I know it's a different surface but out of the blue the whale is going to get a facelift and that is considered a mural as well.

2:36:40We also are working on donations. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that but we are in the process of accepting the rack into our collection. Or the rack collective into our collection. Okay next slide. Just one quick question. Mostly for bragging rights. You said you compared a Salt Lake City mural production to five piercities.

2:37:02What were those five piercities? We like bragging rights too. We have Salt Lake, Murray Midvale Provo and I'm blanking. It's in your pocket. Did you say Ogden? No I did say Ogden. So Ogden. I'm glad that somebody is smarter here. What was the total of the middle you are using? Those cities had a total annual production of 12 at its highest point annually.

2:37:31Collectively they have more than that because some of them have had programs in the past but of recent year totals. 12 is the most and so again ours were 33% higher but not including any of the love, your block efforts or even the facade improvement program that we partner with in the city. So you're comparing how many murals they are producing?

2:37:51Just a total number. Yes. Salt Salt Lake is a size of a council district. Actually smaller than a council district here. They are creating 10 every year. That is a good point of comparison. I like the trend that we're seeing. They do have a really high quality geography and physical landscape is important. High, high quantity of light industrial manufacturing buildings and less buildings that have historical requirements not to be painted or property owners that are vigilant about not having murals that may be beloved and that are torn down that affects development.

2:38:30So there's some factors that are hard to compare there. The next slide was taken this week. This is Cosmo and Cosmo is in his new home. I think it's a he is in his new home and we're really thrilled that he's landed and there's some fun stuff coming up with announcing that as well. Next slide. So we have received feedback this year that we can do better and we are trying to do faster and more and better but we are trying to streamline some processes to make our public art processes more accessible.

2:39:11I want to walk you through a few of the things that we've been working on. We facilitated more donations of artwork to the city. We've talked about Cosmo and the rack. We also are happy that down the hall we have Martha Hughes Cannon now living in this building. This is a statutory process for accepting a donation. We have drafted a city wide guide for internal departments and community members to aid in the facilitation of community sponsored public art.

2:39:43The 14 council project or the $14,000 through the legislative intent in the seven council districts is well underway and it will be completed this year. We are actively working to structure a tri governmental partnership with the state and county to facilitate public private partnership for public art to be placed in Salt Lake City.

2:40:05And this Robert Indiana love sculpture is an example of that effort. We are currently working on both loaning out and borrowing artwork at City Hall. And as a reminder, we are we help to ensure the public benefit funding for public art in the downtown entertainment cultural and convention district for public art in the coming years totaling no less than $5 million.

2:40:31So that is coming up as well. Next slide please. So there is also a list contained in your transmittal of ways that we're hoping to work more closely together in the future. But I wanted to share some potential mechanisms that other larger cities have in place that could be a model for our city in the future when they expand their public art programs.

2:40:55These are tools. Of course, we'd have to consider with our city family. We could expand the percent for our program to enterprise funds. Right now we do have that program that we partnered with the CRA on and we could formalize it with other enterprise funds. We do not have a percent for our program within the transportation or streets, budgets, many cities do.

2:41:19There are planning and development based incentives that we could develop for concessions on planning and zoning where we could require allocations for public art. We do this with the CRA. Many cities have impact fees with required cultural allocations. And as we build more business improvement districts in the city, we have an incredible partnership of course with our downtown alliance.

2:41:43But for things like Sugar House coming online, we can request requirements for cultural programs in there. Next slide. And looking ahead for the rest of the budget year. This is an installation coming to Pioneer Park which states the name of the park but when viewed from other perspectives is modeled on different languages and their various patterns.

2:42:10Next slide. The following public art projects are projected for completion in FY27 with many more not listed here coming in 2028 like Fleet Block, Glendale, Fairmont and McClellan. But we'll have Pioneer Park, the Donner Trail Park coming on. 20 sculptures in 20 different bond parks, the reinstallation of the goals of Salt Lake City with the CRA and again many more projects.

2:42:37Next slide. Other milestones for a budget that we're looking forward to is our CIP project for the Finch Lane Gallery renovations launching the Poet Laureate program fully re-envisioning the Mayor's Artist Awards in the 40th anniversary of our Twilight Concert series. Mayor again, thankful to be here and looking forward to working together more in the future and we appreciate the constructive feedback that we've received and we're happy to answer any questions.

2:43:05The members. That's what we're doing. Appreciate all the work. We all need art. So I really do appreciate all the work you're doing and the transformation from the concerts right here on the Civic Center. So that was a great... I know we had to make the move but also it seemed like it was still a great venue and it worked out well.

2:43:36So we were kind of worried there a bit but I appreciate that. And I also appreciate all the murals and the public art. If you ever go to a city that doesn't have any art, you really realize that there's a lack of beauty in it. So any big city and any good city has good art so appreciate your work and provide this for the art and the music.

2:43:57Thank you. Thanks. My questions relate to performing arts. Sure. The Twilight series. I mean we're approaching the 40th year of the Twilight series. That's correct. The select city has changed a lot since you know for the last 40 years. Sure. I will think there's a tradition to select city. I would love to dig in a little more about the revenue that this series creates.

2:44:29Sure. The cost as far as what really cost us and salaries and putting it together. Also I would like to dig in a little more about the economic impact, the economic impact that you mentioned. Oh sure. Absolutely. And dig in a little more about that. I know that we're now competing with other venues and other concert series in Salt Lake City.

2:44:55And I'm not sure, well I really appreciate I attended myself to Twilight before I joined the Council. Now I wonder if the role of the city has shifted a little bit about this. And again I value the work, I value the series. I wonder if the role in the last you know almost 40 years has changed a little bit. And if the place of Salt Lake City is to compete with other concert venues and other concert series.

2:45:24But again so that information will be awesome for me. I appreciate the presentation. I appreciate big time the change and the direction, the transparency and the work that you have put on, your team has put on to level up the department, the division, sorry, no requirement. So any information about those things will be great.

2:45:52I can speak to that right now. Okay so some of you might remember I'm looking at you. The Twilight concert series used to be produced in house and it was an economic challenge on the city. In 2019 I believe I was tasked with restructuring the way that program ran. So we produced the series with a private vendor. The cost of that program of course since those times has increased the total cost.

2:46:18Like for Twilight concert series in total for that program this is not what we pay but for total production of that concert series it's about 1.2 to 1.3 million dollars. We pay a hundred and eighty thousand dollars on a contract to get the same value for the residents of Salt Lake City. So outside our staff salaries that help facilitate that program it's a hundred and eighty thousand dollar contract.

2:46:49The economic impact is generated from a study that we participate in with an organization nationally called Americans for the Arts and we participate in that study with the state, with the county, with the cultural core and many entities nationally to generate the impact, the economic impact of attending non-profit arts events in cities.

2:47:11The last study we participated in was in 2022 and the way that we generate this number is that it's based on the average per person spending when a resident comes downtown. They're taking public transportation, they're getting babysitters, they're going to food, they're getting, they're going to bars, they're patronizing places downtown and based on the attendance of the Twilight Concert Series in that series which is 41,000 people.

2:47:40That's how the math is created of generating the economic impact of the series. And we do think the program is unique as I mentioned post Malone tickets right now are $150 to $700. Most concerts in the cities are about $70 to $80 for nationally touring bands. We do think that gathering and belonging for music experiences, of course you can do that in the city but the uniqueness of this program is the affordability and accessibility.

2:48:12Another feat that we pull off with this program which most national bands do not favor is allowing local musicians to open for them. We're really about professional development and launching the careers of young artists in the community and this is a key component of that program. And third like tourism and economic livability of downtown, that's a really important part of the program.

2:48:39It's been important to us that that program stays downtown for those reasons, it's close to public transportation. So we do believe the program is very unique in its accessibility for residents where they might not have opportunities. But the sound, this is not, the sound in those microphones somehow just cuts out and it comes back immediately.

2:49:01And I'll just say with performing arts in the program that we have proposed for potential elimination we really are looking at services that are duplicative in the community potentially services that have the escalating costs in the future which we've identified the busker fest is that. And ones that other again service providers could do and ones that don't jeopardize our grant funding in terms of people served and impact in the funders that we have.

2:49:31Many of our programs are bundled with certain funders as well. So again that criteria is how we made that determination. Will you expand a little bit maybe I'm not sure how many employees do help with putting them together of the concert series. Oh yeah we have one staff designated for performing arts on our team which does a variety of programs, living traditions, busker festival, Mondays in the park performing arts generally.

2:50:06As I mentioned Twilight and busker fest are also contracted services for us so they can be a little bit more low touch. But we all work across all our programs so there's a number of staff that have a different role in Twilight. Okay any other questions? Everybody is very quiet. Okay I think we're good. Thank you. Thank you.

2:50:33Council members we have we're almost done so let's five minutes behind that's not too terrible. Let's move on to item number six, culture call summary on the blocks update. We're going to welcome Sylvia Richards again at the table and she's staying at the table. And we're going to welcome Lucas Horns, the blocks program manager, the Brewer downtown Alliance executive director.

2:51:10Is your time Sylvia? Thank you Mr. Chair. This briefing is an update on the blocks arts district formerly known as the cultural core. Blocks is a city and county initiative focused on growing and celebrating Salt Lake City's creative community. This is a review of year nine and a preview of the plan for year 10 and with that I will ask the baton on to Lucas and Dee and Felicia if she still wanted to participate.

2:51:52Hi Council great to see you all I'm excited to report on what the blocks has been up to for the last year and give you a preview of what we have on the horizon. First off I want to introduce myself I realize I'm a new face since you last had this briefing about a year ago. My name is Lucas Horns and I took over for Brittany Helmers as program director of the blocks about six months ago.

2:52:12Next slide please. As you all know the blocks is a visionary initiative of the city and county to promote downtown Salt Lake City as the premier arts and culture destination of the Intermountain West. Next slide please. Our boundaries per our contract with the cultural core run roughly from 600 West to 300 East and North Temple to 400 South.

2:52:39Next slide please. Our team is made up of myself and Kai Henriksen he regrets not being able to be here today he's taking a much needed vacation to visit some family in Colorado. Next slide please. Our cultural core budget committee is made up of eight members. These are representatives from the city and the county. A lot of these names are familiar to you those names on the left are your city representatives.

2:53:05Those on the right are the county representatives. Next slide please. Oh and just to note we meet every two months the cultural core budget committee. The monitors are spending and ensures that our programs and spending are meeting the goals of the cultural core action plan. So what are the goals of the cultural core action plan?

2:53:23As much as I hate reading off of a slide I think these are all really thoughtful and important and I think that our programming really touches on all eight of these so I'm going to go through them quickly. One celebrate and promote Salt Lake's rich array of arts and cultural activities and experiences. Two support increased collaboration and creative development among Salt Lake's creative community.

2:53:46Three enhance Salt Lake's brand and support increased visitation from the region and in the Mountain West. Four expand and diversify audiences for Salt Lake's arts and culture. Five foster downtown as an inclusive diverse and welcoming place. Six support downtown residential growth. Seven enhance the downtown business environment and eight enrich the urban experience and sense of place.

2:54:10These are lofty goals and so I want to go over how we're achieving these goals. Next slide please. I've really boiled our work down into three focus areas. First of all is our programming and events. We put on a lot of our own programming, activations, public art to add to the art's offerings in downtown Salt Lake. And just to note that we really focus almost entirely on producing free all ages programming as not all arts organizations are able to offer this downtown and we see it as a really important niche to fill in downtown's arts offerings.

2:54:41Secondly is marketing and promotion. We have over two dozen arts organizations who are consistently performing or exhibiting in downtown. This is the highest concentration of arts activity in the region and we want to amplify all the work going on so the community really recognizes downtown as an arts destination. Between our combined followers with the downtown alliance we have about 300,000 followers between newsletter subscribers and social media followers and all 300,000 of these folks get updates weekly about all the fun events and things happening in downtown.

2:55:13And lastly fostering collaboration. As part of the downtown alliance we see ourselves as a really unique player as an arts organization that also has really intimate meaningful ties to the business community. We like to bring stakeholders into the same room that are business owners, property owners as well as arts organizations to really recognize that a thriving arts environment does uplift the business community downtown.

2:55:37Next slide please. I want to go over some metrics and just to note that I'm reporting metrics on the calendar year. Our programming runs during the warmer months and so it's important that we report on a calendar year because as we're expanding and introducing new programs we're doing that planning on the calendar year.

2:55:56And so to measure the efficacy and impact that these new programs, expansions, new campaigns have it's important that we do it on a calendar year although our fiscal year does run same DZers July to June. So looking back on 2025 in numbers we put on 26 events and activations that was up 17% from 2024. We commissioned seven works of public art downtown that was up 40% from 2024.

2:56:23We hired 140 artists and performers from the local community up 82% from the year before. And lastly we, art ticks venues sold about 750,000 tickets. This is not our programming but we use it as an important metric to gauge the health of the general arts scene downtown. You'll notice those ticket sales are down 8% from 2024 and I'll go over why that is in a later slide.

2:56:49It's not concerning don't worry. Let's go over the next slide please. Looking at our marketing in 2025 we posted to social media 1.4,000 times star 300,000 followers. We sent out 52 weekly newsletters. This is our this week downtown series written by the downtown Josh Jones. These newsletters have a 40% open rate which if you know anything about newsletters is pretty remarkable and a testament to the value people find in these newsletters.

2:57:19Next slide please. We were in the press quite a bit this year for our last year, excuse me for our different some of our public art commissions as well as activations we were doing on Main Street. Next slide. And now I want to talk about show a little bit of data to back up the impact that our programming had last year.

2:57:44This is showing home distance by miles from downtown for people who visited art ticks venues. So on the y-axis there you have the percent of visitors to art ticks venues. That's capital theater, Echles and Rose Wagner. These are not all the arts venues downtown but they are representative of where people are coming from to visit arts in downtown.

2:58:08On the x-axis you have their home distance by miles. You can see about a third are coming from within 10 miles, another third are coming from 10 to 30 miles and another third are coming from more than 30 miles away with a lot coming from over 250 miles away. What this data is showing is that we are achieving our goal of establishing downtown as a regional art destination with so many visitors coming from across the region and frankly across the country.

2:58:36Next slide please. Just a quick question. This is an interesting chart. Can you explain maybe some of the reasons for the 250 mile radius in terms of more people coming from that radius versus 30 to 50, 50 to 100 or 100 to 250? Yeah absolutely. That's because that includes the entire country and so we have a lot of, we have visitors from all 50 states by ticket star arts venues and so 250 miles to 2,000 miles is a much bigger area than 150 to 250 miles if that makes sense.

2:59:20That's why there's such a large number coming from 250. I'll just type in with what I know from the, so I serve on the board of the Echols theater and so we dove into a little bit of the, because we were seeing kind of similar trends. I actually think it's a credit to the national level of acts, both music and you know Broadway kind of touring performance and the value that you get as in terms of like comparing, if you're going to go see a Broadway show in Chicago versus here, the value of Salt Lake City is a much cheaper place to go and so we're seeing that a lot of people are choosing to see those national touring acts because the Echols theater is more affordable than seeing in San Francisco or you know somewhere like that.

3:00:03100% and it speaks to our local arts organizations as well. Ballet West is at par with any ballet company you can see as well as the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera and the ticket price is going to be a lot cheaper and you're going to have a much more enjoyable state depending on which city you're going to. Next slide please.

3:00:21So once these visitors are coming from across the region and coming into our downtown, they're not just visiting arts venues, they're spending money in our downtown. We know arts are an economic driver. Last year in 2025, 317,000 of the visits generated by our downtown art ticks venues. Those visitors went to restaurants or retail directly before or after visiting the theater.

3:00:46This data comes from Place or AI just as a side note. But that's showing that the arts are attracting visitors and those visitors are not just coming for the arts. They're coming into downtown to put their money into the local economy. Next slide please. Now I want to get to those art ticks ticket sales trends. So as you can see over the last four years, those numbers have gone up and down quite a bit.

3:01:12This is actually more due to the variability in the number of shows at the Echols Theatre. Echols Theatre relies on a lot of touring shows and that number just varies greatly from year to year. If we take Echols out of the equation, next slide please. When we look at just capital theater at Robyn O'Hall and Rose Wagner Theatre, you can see that there is a steady incline in ticket sales year over year, including from 2024 to 2025.

3:01:38Next slide please. I want to quickly go through some highlights from 2025 in terms of our programming. Next slide. 2025 was the second year of our co-create program. This is our artist and residence program where we invite artists to envision a place making project in the downtown. We had five projects last year including Echols of the Great Salt Lake.

3:02:00This was a new symphony piece performed on Galavan Plaza inspired by the Great Salt Lake. Next slide. We had Sonder SLC. This was a photo gallery that's still on display in the Vasilias-Pristos walkway by artist Kelly freshman. Next slide please. Little Stages was a program envisioned by local community organizer Tim Sullivan who wanted to create these pop-up stages that were easy for buskers to carry around the city and set up to essentially build mobile concert venues.

3:02:32Next slide. Absolutely amazing animals. Was a large scale mural produced by artist Dallas Graham on the back of a parking garage on Edison Street. Next slide. The Day of the Dead festival was put on by local muralist Beto Conejo that brought around 200 attendees to Fice Gallery for a large festival. Next slide. Moving on from Co-create.

3:02:552025 was also the second year of our Steppen on Main program. These are the three concerts put on on the front steps of the Echols Theater every Friday night from June through September. These performances ranged from anywhere from jazz to Brazilian dance to drum groups and everything in between. Next slide. We also put on the third annual Mariachi Fest at the Echols Theater bringing four Mariachi groups, one national from New York and three local Mariachi groups.

3:03:25Next slide. Curbside Theater was a partnership with SB Dance. We programmed that show on the rooftop of a parking garage on Pierpa Avenue. This offered a really cool venue and a free dance performance in downtown with sweeping views of the mountains and city skyline. Next slide. And lastly, we continued our urban plane air program.

3:03:45We brought 19 artists to the farmers market to paint scenes that they saw at the market and then sell their work at a pop-up gallery at the market the following week. Next slide, please. I want to talk about some of our programming we have on the horizon in 2026 now. Next slide. We're continuing co-create again this year and I'm really excited to announce the three projects we've selected.

3:04:10The Wish Exchange Place will be an installation that will be interactive on Exchange Place up for three months by artist Alejandro Moyen, Kathy Tran. Bees around the block is a series of sculptures on Main Street envisioned by urban planner and designer, Landing Krasick. Standing Room Only is it will be a series of dance performances as well as installations at former theater sites in downtown.

3:04:33This is by a local choreographer and dancer, Constance. Next slide. Fridays on Main. This is an expansion of our Steppen on Main program. I'm really excited to include two more stages in addition to the Steppen's at the Echles Theatre. We'll have a second stage at the, um, at, we're Galvin Center in your Sykes Main Street and a third stage at Exchange Place.

3:04:54We're going to put live music and dance performance up and down Main Street every Friday night from June through September. Next slide. The art garden. This is a pop-up art exhibition and beer garden held at the site of the former Utah Theatre on Main Street between 100 South and 200 South. This, um, is a partnership with the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art who will be building out to art exhibitions and will be partnering with local breweries to serve beer.

3:05:23And although there's beer, this space is still all ages. Next slide. Urban Plan Air. We're expanding this program as well. We're relieving the market and we're bringing 30 artists to paint 30 iconic buildings around downtown Salt Lake. Our art will then be displayed in the windows of the buildings that they feature. Next slide.

3:05:42We'll also be expanding our curbside theatre program to additional performances on parking garage rooftops because this is such a unique, interesting place for a show like this. Uh, we'll be moving over to the parking garage right here at the echles, uh, excuse me, on Exchange Place that offers really beautiful views of this building and the mountains, as you can see there.

3:06:03Next slide. Curtain Up, this is a first of its kind event to celebrate the start of the 2026-2027 art season. This will bring all arts organizations programming in the downtown into one, under one roof, uh, to, to celebrate the start of the season. We'll be screening a short film that previews each art organization's upcoming season from the ballet to the opera to modern dance companies to Yumoka and everyone in between.

3:06:28This will be on September 8th. I'll be sure to send you an invite soon. Next slide, please. And then we have some really exciting marketing campaigns, um, really painting the picture of downtown as a arts destination showing the breadth and diversity of artists working in downtown and public art that we have here in downtown.

3:06:49So be sure to follow us on socials to, to keep up with those campaigns. Next slide. And so much more. I don't want to go into these too much detail. Our programming is quite extensive, but we have continued ongoing programs such as our exhibition on Maine where we display public art on Main Street on our kiosks. We loan assets to artists like lighting, sound systems, stage for free if they're working downtown.

3:07:15And then we've done a number of partner events. Um, already some of these occurred this year such as signs was a block party we did with Sundance and Vice Gallery during the Sundance Film Festival. Our kick ass was a circus performance we put on at Gallivan Center with Utah Presents. Maryachi Fest will be happening again on June 20th.

3:07:35Pogo Fest is a multi venue music festival that will be also happening on June 20th. Uh, we'll be putting up an outdoor stage as part of that festival on exchange place. The cycle nation installation is up right now in the Vasilios Periscos walkway. I recommend going and checking it out at night. It's a cool interactive sculpture that lights up when you crank these hand cranks and the Bach Hour installation will be displayed next month on Abravina Plaza.

3:08:00This is a collaboration with the Gina Bach Hour Foundation. We'll be building a large scale sculpture built out of pianos for that. Next slide please. These are our partners that we're working with on all of these programs. They range from property owners to developers to businesses and of course the majority of the arts groups working downtown.

3:08:19Next slide. I wanted to offer just a really high overview of our budget for FY 27 which begins on July 1. Um, you will be receiving in a transmittal a deep more detailed breakdown of our budget. This budget was approved by the Cultural Corps Budget Committee just this week. But we also found out just this week that we'll be receiving open streets funding.

3:08:41Thank you very much. And we're excited to apply that and expand the exciting programming we have this summer even more. The new budget you will receive will reflect that additional funding as well. Next slide. And with that I'll turn it over to you all for any questions. That's our members. I put them in my mouth so I can barely speak.

3:09:13Will you expand a little bit on the open streets funding? I'm a little confused about that. I thought we made some changes regarding the opening and whatnot. Is that it proposed? I think it's my understanding that some funds within the city and potentially was open streets was redirected to other programming and in budget amendment four you all approved an additional hundred go to the blocks contract.

3:09:51So not exactly open streets programming but to the mission of the blocks. Sorry for the confusion. We did. I think that in last year's budget we did. I guess it's the current year. It was a budget amendment. And I could. It was my understanding it was redirected. I could be even speaking but it was in BA for the extra one hundred.

3:10:14That helps. That means okay. Okay. That helps a lot. I will it's impressive the amount of work that you're doing with the funding that you're getting. You know I love to see more fun things happening in pop downtown and to see more activation in our in our city. So impressive work. Any? No thanks. Okay. I'll go up. I see some hands.

3:10:43I don't know which one was first. I'm going to give time to Council Member Petro first. Thank you and thanks for the work. The numbers on the performances and the statistics that you gave are any of those redundant with what we saw from the Arts Council and if not how do we decide who gets to count what as part of their programming or does everyone just get to claim it because we contributed to it.

3:11:11Yeah that's a really good question. Yeah so the events and activations that I was counting for 2025 and 2024 were blocks produced events and activations where a blocks staff member was present. So there you there shouldn't be redundancy between anything that the Arts Council produced. Thank you so much. That's really encouraging to hear.

3:11:32Yeah. And one mural. Oh dude. That's the only redundancy I'm speaking for. Pefilicia and Felicia for one second. Council more warden. Thank you for that presentation Lucas that was really comprehensive and I'm really excited about all the programming that's happening and what we're going to be able to continue to do and just wanted to congratulate you in this new role and look forward to working with you as one of the partners.

3:12:13Thank you. And the last question I have relates how do you get 40% of people to open your newsletter because no one opens ours so any tips for the Council? It's amazing. If you're already subscribed to it it's a really well written newsletter that has a lot of whimsy in it that I think people look forward to every week.

3:12:32So it's a credit to Josh Jones's writing I think. We need whimsy. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Oh no. Chris do you have more questions? Oh sorry. I think he's probably gone. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Council members this concludes the portion of the agenda. We're going to move on to the report announcements from the executive director.

3:13:03Lehuwa. The B team here. The B team. No quite. Always the team. You have Linda came and passed out a handout and this is something that we did when the Council had the last vacancy and Cindy Lou may come up to the table so that she can help me correct. She will correct me if I say anything not quite right and she will make sure the record is clear.

3:13:35You can throw the hand sanitizer towards us. Yeah. Do you want to. So this is an important update. This is an important update. This is to confirm the timeline for filling the vacancy in district four. The timeline has been created based on a conversation with actually the three of the members here in person during the chair vice chair meeting on Tuesday.

3:13:59The calendar is a visual look of what I would run through in this outline handout that you have as well just to confirm if it's okay I'll just read through this and you guys can stop me if you have questions. So the process basically is outlined in state code and it requires that the council would receive applications and conduct interviews with eligible applicants and then select a new council member within 30 days.

3:14:32Based on the way the counting works out Wednesday was day one and the 30 days would end on June 11th. As of the number of meetings that the council already has on your calendar due to the budget I don't anticipate that you would need to add any new council meetings but you can confirm that for me as we walk through this.

3:14:58There's also been a question so I just wanted to go over a little bit of general info. There's been a question just about how it works when council member Young was selected and appointed to fill the vacancy in district seven. There she needed to hold elections because of the amount of time left in the term in this situation because there's less than two years left in the term.

3:15:22Whoever you appoint will serve the remainder of the term and then elections will still be held in fall of 2027 for the next term beginning in January of 2028. The reporter's office will also post the applications on the website once they have been or the names of the applicant and the paperwork on a website once those applicants have the eligibility has been verified.

3:15:49So that information is available to the public along with also a conflict of interest form and we'll see how this plays out in your timeline down below but just wanted to know Cindy Lou pointed out that there's a new state code requirement that conflict of interest forms would be placed and available online for seven days before the council appoints the new candidate.

3:16:14So that is another extension that needs to be accounted for in our 30 days. Are we allowed to request the conflict of interest form with the application? Exactly it will be. So they won't be a verified candidate until they submit that. Okay so it's part of the process. It will be part of the application. Okay. Okay and then also you will have a resolution placed on one of your upcoming agendas that just clear addresses the voting different voting circumstances.

3:16:48It's a new state code requirement as well that that information is formally adopted so that everyone knows what to expect about how voting will occur. So I'll just run through the dates. As we said May 13th, yesterday, Wednesday May 13th was day one. And so from that time our office Cindy Lou and the recorder's office Keith and his staff have been coordinating on getting an ad posted.

3:17:14There's a requirement for a legal ad to be placed in the paper. It will be placed with this Salt Lake Tribune and Utah Legal's and it basically outlines what the timeline will be when the application period opens, when it closes and when the council anticipates you might hold the interviews and make an appointment. So in that time not only will the public notice go out but also your council staff communications team will kick into gear.

3:17:49There will be social media posts, website updates. They have a vacancy hub website that goes through and explains a lot of the information that people can expect. We also take emails from anyone who wants to receive notification as we progress through this process and also notice will be posted in the city building and the recorder's office is also able to post that in the district for library and other community gathering spaces too.

3:18:19So I would say we will go ahead and do those steps but you guys can tell me if you don't want any of those things to happen. Could we add additional things? Yeah of course. Could we, can we ensure that the newsletter and the social media pages for the district are updated? So those are in that email list and the following those pages.

3:18:45Of course. Get it, get the nudge. Yep absolutely we will do that. So the application period would begin next Monday May 18th and then it would extend through Monday June 1st at 5pm. The council's past policy and practice has been to keep the application period open for two weeks so that is that two week period especially given that there's a holiday in the middle of it.

3:19:12The application obviously will follow the state code requirements for what information needs to be provided and then in the last time the council held this process we also included three to four questions on the application that the applicants would provide written answers to when they turn in their application. I'm going to keep it going but I have a question for you on when the application period closes but we'll come back to that.

3:19:44Given applications being completed and provided to the council if the application period closes on Monday June 1st then realistically those would be the recorder's office could provide a complete packet of all of the applications to you by Tuesday morning on June 2nd. Given that do you want to consider having interviews held on Thursday June 4th or do you want to wait and see how many applications you have to review and then decide on an interview and appointment schedule?

3:20:23I think it would have to be on the number of applications we have but even on Thursday if it's just only a few I almost think that we need more time especially than that's the budget because we have the budget going on also that I would recommend the ninth as a first date that we could actually interview it and select.

3:20:45And the reason that's helpful too just to insert is the seven day conflict of interest posting requirement. If you wanted to definitely plan on Thursday June 4th we would want to change the application close date. So the name will meet that because the application is done from the first that will be enough time for that piece.

3:21:08I would. And I think this time 90% seems reasonable to me. Okay. Sarah's saying that. Sarah's saying that. Okay. Okay that's perfect and then that also allows you flexibility. I love you. Thank you. It also allows you flexibility if you did need to delay the final appointment for one more night for whatever reason than you would have until that Thursday the 11th.

3:21:34So we will just kind of reserve that as ninth and 11th. Okay. So that takes us through those last few items. Next page direction needed date a item one we already covered also item two and then so application questions I've listed here the four questions that were used on the district seven vacancy application. I modified them very slightly just to account for the fact that this is a different district.

3:22:10If you wanted to review those and give me any edits and council members online I'm sorry I should have mentioned that you have this information in your email either from Kristen or me earlier this afternoon. And so if you wanted to review those questions and either give those to me now or by tomorrow I could follow up with you all tomorrow to get any edits to the questions.

3:22:32I personally think that there are accurate questions that are they follow the pattern of you know that we have followed in the past but if maybe if any council member has changes or suggestions but then by you know Monday you know we go with this questions or no time right now. Yeah. Well I think it's tomorrow Friday would be good so that by Monday the application is available.

3:23:04So if you don't have any suggestions on changing them then let's you know submit them by tomorrow. Perfect. Yeah no edits here. Okay. Neither. Neither. Neither. Thank you. Perfect. Okay we'll go with those. Don't even wait. Then we can have it already online. In the interview format in the past the council had on the night of interviews.

3:23:38State code requires that you give everybody an opportunity to address the council. The way that you've handled that in the past is to give each of the applicants five minutes to address the council on any topic they want to. Do you want to continue with that practice for round one? Generally yes. Let me ask a very fine question.

3:23:57So we are required to give every applicant every single one of them an interview opportunity an interview and it has to be in the public meeting. Correct. It does and it does have to be eligible so only validated applicants. Okay. If someone does not meet the requirements that are outlined in state code or does not submit their conflict of interest they would not be available to be interviewed.

3:24:23Let me ask about the time. Do we have to tell them how much time we're going to give them? Yeah that's my question. I'm wondering if it's like possible to give a range and then adjust and give them a final number based on how many applicants we have. That's what I'm thinking here. What do you think is a good minimum number?

3:24:44I feel like between three and five but that's what I was thinking. Yes. So if we have 20 people apply we might go with the three. So that's sort of the general sum. The way that we've provided that information to the applicants in the past is once the application period is closed and we collect all of the applications I have sent them an email to just let them know what to expect in terms of next steps and so we could even just wait until at that time tell them whatever you all have decided.

3:25:17Okay. Okay and then in the past also we come up with a plan in case there's a round two, round three, round four and the way that we've done that in the past is round one is over the council takes a vote to reduce the number of applicants who move on to round two and then you give them a question and let the applicants address the council just on that one question and you give them two to three minutes to respond to that.

3:25:47Are you okay with that as a process for round two? Could we do some ring choice voting? Oh ring choice voting might be interesting. Is it the same question for every applicant in round two? I think that's what we did last time. It is. No. It is what you didn't know. No. We got different questions and I think that that is one of the things I would flag feels a little inequitable and I just wonder if there's a way like like I said you can have one applicant step out, one answer and then come back in and answer so that they're answering the exact same question because I know in the final round we were answering different questions.

3:26:31Yeah that's what you're saying. I believe Chris. It might be worthwhile and I'm going off out of my lane but perhaps if there's an opportunity to pool the various questions so that you could determine which ones you want to ask as a group and have that consistency before the meeting that would help. You don't have to share them with the public until you present them but it would help with the congruence of all of you providing what you're interested in for the round two or the final round.

3:27:04I like that as an option. Cosimo Wharton. So this will be my seventh time going through this process and it is never flawless and it's almost always we discover some kind of flaw from the previous way that we did it. I mean I think that one way to avoid that is to give some questions or give a list of questions and let the applicant select which questions they want to answer and that might give us, you know we could have some questions that we want everyone to answer and then some questions that it's like you can pick which one of these you want us to know and then that way we might be able to kind of get not be getting the same thing over and over but also be getting new and relevant information but I'm sure that there's probably some flaw in

3:28:08that as well but that's the best thing that I've thought of to address this. What about to just merge some of the ideas? We select some questions for round two and we let them pick out of those questions to which one they want to address. Sure. I don't know. But I remember the process that I went through. I mean the flaw there that you guys didn't select me but that was the biggest flaw.

3:28:41Chris looking at you. I know. I'm aligned. But we'll never forget that. The people of District 2 promptly informed us. They disagree. So I'm glad that they did because this is not this is the least the worst part about being on the council. No, no, no. I don't care. So, Nugan. This is my question. We're not giving them the questions until we give them the questions at round two.

3:29:10Yeah I think that's what we're asking here is that from Sarah's point we can maybe pick out of a hat or we say we're going to select these questions to give them in round two. This question you've given them round three. Isn't that what Sarah flagged us so they can odd the process? But we give them all the same question but we don't tell them that question until we come to that round two.

3:29:33Is that what you're saying Sarah? So I just remember that there was a fishbowl and there were random questions that were in there and they drew out a question and I got to answer it and then they drew out a different question and another candidate got to answer it and at least from my perception and memory of it I felt like I got an easier question and I felt that for the other applicant in that process.

3:30:01Hearing some of these and I think maybe this was a council member Wharton or maybe council member Young's suggestion. I think for round two I like the idea of like here recommended questions and then letting the applicant select from that pool of recommended questions. That was your suggestion. I know what somebody's idea I'm trying to give credit, try to give credit.

3:30:25Whose ever idea it was I've aligned in that direction so that we hear a diversity of responses and we are able to kind of compare answers across candidates for those who decide to answer the same question. I would like to suggest and this is my first rodeo on this so happy to defer to other council members. I imagine there will be around three and possibly around four.

3:30:52Maybe maybe not. I would like to leave subsequent rounds after round two open for more specific and tailored questions to the candidates. I will be okay with that. What if we throw a wrench in this whole conversation the last five minutes who hates the idea of of range is voting. I mean we you know that's how voters elect people which is ranked and you know we just use the process and it's just done in one ballot.

3:31:24It's a little harder for your side potentially. The reason I would say I'm hesitant to do that but we do break it down and we need to look at the percentage here. If you have five candidates up there where do we break the line off or take the top two? We need unanimous or is it you know you only need four? So it needs to be a majority but we also have to determine how if it isn't a majority, how the next segment next group of people would be defined that's part of the resolution that the attorney is preparing in response to the state legislation.

3:32:07So they asked that to be clarified before the process is defined. So what I can offer is that the attorneys are working on the resolution to outline that plan in respect of how you've done this in the past and we would circle a draft back to you for your review of that voting process so that we secure the reality that it must be a majority.

3:32:30Okay and the other thing is in the past we've had somewhere we had two candidates that were neck and neck and we went through a couple different rounds and it changed some votes there to make it so I think that would have and we selected the right candidate but we may not have selected the right candidate if we had the right candidate.

3:32:54So that's why I'm only hesitant on that. It may shorten the process but it may not be the best outcome. I'm okay if we don't do that and we stick through the process that we have in the past. We do it one round and then we have some questions that we pre-select and we let them decide for which one they want to answer.

3:33:22That sort of meets both worlds of issues here. You keep consistency but at the same time allowing us to some flexibility on some of the questions and then we maybe to your point, Council Member Carlson, allow for some flexibility if there are more rounds. Anybody has any thoughts about that process? My only worry is having a question come out that hasn't really been vetted from the rest of the Council Member and then directed to those.

3:33:57I think the questions that we ask no matter where we ask should all be vetted and we all should agree to those questions. Not have, you know, Dugan say this is my question now that we've gotten all this stuff. It should be vetted by all of us and we kind of it's written and we just. So let's do this for round number three.

3:34:14We don't just get to throw a question out there. We coordinate that question. We're going to in the majority manner. Yeah. You know, four of us at least decide what a question to ask if it is round three. Yeah. And then we ask that question. So we don't just throw random questions either. And maybe random questions, but maybe a majority of us agree into that.

3:34:35Okay. Perfect. Clear as mud. Clear as mud. Great. Most of it is clear as mud or is actually really clear. And then on this voting process thing we'll report back to you guys. We'll probably take time in another announcement to just get really clear on that. No, and I appreciate it is a very clear process. I do appreciate the staff working on these.

3:34:57I know that we're working through the budget, working through all of the things. It's a big deal. I also appreciate the consistency that this Council, you know, is following in this process. And following the same, generally the same process we always followed to solve this issue. So I think that means a lot to me. And I think it should mean a lot to the community.

3:35:21So thank you. Sorry. Just one more question. Because that's the word of the hour. I imagine that applicants may have questions about, can I talk to current Council members about their experience to introduce myself and what I'd like to do confirming that that is allowed in the process or are there any restrictions or items we should be aware of when talking to applicants?

3:35:52Thanks for asking the question. There's been an adjustment in the practices in order to keep the relationships clear from your voting, right? So there have been an opportunity, generally what has been followed in my recollection and like who would correct me if I'm wrong. It was that if someone wanted to speak to you or wanted to hear more about their experience, it was encouraged that they provide a recommendation letter or that they put something in writings that it can be within the public record and it could be directed, it's essentially directed to the entire Council on their priorities so that it's beyond the application.

3:36:26It's just a recommendation. It's not required. It's totally optional. But there is not a legal component about any relationship or discussion you have with any of the applicants as a Council member. And I would refer to Mark for any legal guidance. Okay. Thank you everyone. This meeting is a... Sure. Thank you. Bye.