Council Work Session Meeting

0:06Welcome everyone to the work session for May 21st, 2026. Our meetings are public and you're welcome to join us in person by watching from the Council agenda page, Zoom, YouTube. You can join us in whichever manner you feel the most comfortable. This is a work session meeting which means there is no public comment. You can join us on June the 2nd at 7 p.m. for a formal meeting where we accept public comment.

0:38But we also accept in public comment all the time through mail at p.o.box145476, that's 145476, select city Utah 8414. You can also send us an email with your comments at council.commons at slc.gov or you can call us and leave us a message at 81535 7654. Any comments we receive on agenda items are posted on our website at slc.gov slash council. Our first agenda item is fiscal year 2026, 2027, budget discussion for the Department of Public Lands. We're going to welcome Alison Roland, Council policy analyst Kim Shelley, Director of Public Lands to the table, Tyler Murdoch, Deputy Director of Public Lands and Greg Evans, financial manager is available also. Alison, it's your turn.

1:42Thank you, Mr. Chair. In the FY27 budget, the Department of Public Lands, including the Gulf Fund, which is technically part of it, sometimes, is would grow by about 8.4% from last year to nearly $65.1 million. Gulf is by far the largest driver of these increases in DPL's overall budget and that's mostly due this year to the planned capital expenditure through the Gulf CIP fund, which is $17.4 million. Since Gulf is an enterprise fund, as you know, it will be briefed separately, but I wanted to start off with that context. Setting aside Gulf, the public lands budget would reach just over 34 million, which is a much lower rate of increase for fiscal year 27 at 1.8%. The biggest growth among the divisions would be

2:35in parks at about 1.1 million, which is around 6%. And there is also, public lands also has

2:44some specific things that make their budget a little bit different than most other budgets, including the fact that they pay their own utilities. They face continuing increases in charges and services, nearly $1.920,000, which is a 5.9% increase over last year. The federal

3:05government, they have to pay for supervision and care for properties that are in all the different stages of work that's funded by the 2022 GEO bond, and they receive new properties every year to take care of, for example, rights of way. So they're paying these charges and services and they're doing it on an expanding amount of property. Like other departments, personnel costs would also increase for FY27. These would come to about $853,000. That's a 3.2% growth rate. And in terms of full-time employees, the Department of Public Lands would actually contract, losing one in net terms, although it is adding and subtracting on several fronts. And Gulf would gain one more FTE for the first time in decades, I think. The title

4:02and salary grade of many FTEs would also change in both the public lands and Gulf sections of the department. That's mostly due to the fiscal year 26 CCAC market pay adjustment. So there are policy questions sprinkled throughout the staff report, and I will turn it over to Kim and Tyler to take you through it. Thank you, Allison. I appreciate that. And before we get started, I'd like to thank the Council for their support this past year. In addition to Executive Director Bruno and her staff, we really appreciate the, feels like a little extra support in helping me get my legs under me in this role. But I'd also like to acknowledge and thank the mayor for her leadership and support of Public Lands in the proposed budget. And also, I'd like to

4:49show my appreciation for the peanut board who's advised the department on a number of important issues regarding our work this year. So I'd like to kick off the presentation introducing the department's new mission statement, which is to strengthen community connection by creating, protecting, and sustaining welcoming parks and natural spaces for all. So this is something that the department has worked on in collaboration with our employees and their input to develop a new mission, vision, and value statement. All of this is rooted in our reimagined nature master plan. And the five divisions, I think, will benefit mostly from our internal values where we're uniting our work and uniting our employees in one effort. And that's primarily

5:35in strengthening community and sustaining and protecting our natural spaces. Next slide, please. Really, at the core of our work, it's supporting quality of life in Salt Lake City. I think that's also kind of a bottom line for what the Department of Public Lands does. And we work every day through every level of the organization to earn the public's trust through our actions. Next slide, please. As I mentioned, the department is comprised of five divisions. It also includes the park ranger program, the administrative team that includes our communications office, special event permitting community events and volunteer programs. Next slide, please. So next, I'll step through a couple of examples really quickly

6:21of our accomplishments this year. This is a video, but we won't take the time to play. But if you have an opportunity, this is the Jordan River. And it highlights a grant, a state grant that we were awarded in working closely with the city grants team of over $700,000 to remove and clear vegetation that along the Jordan River banks, and this improved the sidelines for public safety. We're really proud of that partnership with PD and others to increase safety along the Jordan River Trail. And it also reduced the wildfire risk and restored ecological health along this corridor. We're pausing right now because of the bird nesting season and we'll pick it back up and complete this work along this entire Salt

7:04Lake City segment of the river. Next slide, please. So our accomplishments are also related to our community events and volunteering. These events support the mayor's goal of keeping Salt Lake City welcoming to families and also their canines because Salt Lakers love their dogs. And this year we hosted 17 free community events with over 30,000 residents attending.

7:28This is in 2025 primarily. And we've also expanded our volunteer events to help keep our parks and natural spaces clean and welcoming and build community through that shared service. As an example, our volunteer events had many benefits including removing over two tons of trash just from the Jordan River Trail alone that was completed by 2,400 volunteers at 83 different sessions this year. And the labor hours are about 6,200 which is the equivalent of 3 FTEs. So that's not only an accomplishment but an efficiency as well. Next slide, please.

8:06So we've also made significant progress in advancing and delivering capital projects for the city to highlights that we were incredibly proud of are the 12 new Pickleball Courts in Glendale and opening of Glendale Park Phase 1. This is also a video if the council has time but a future date to look at how it's time let's video of a Paglendale Park Phase 1 came to be. Finally, we've, next slide, please. We've completed our asset management plan which is the first step of our scamps, our strategic plan. And this lays out a replacement cycle for the next 10 years. We're so excited about the, what this plan will bring to the department and the city and our ability to plan better as we're replacing our assets. Next

8:51slide, please. So this past year I found that the department is comprised of doers. They're innovative. They find efficiencies every day to allow them to do more with less and maximize the public dollars that we're entrusted with. So as an example, as an old playground equipment is being decommissioned, our property maintenance team will recover as many of the nuts and bolts and specialized parts and take into our building, catalog them and we'll store them for future use. This not only saved landfill space but it also saved the city money in the long run because we're able to reuse these parts that are often highly specialized and very expensive. I mentioned the volunteer hours equivalent to three FTEs. We've also modernized

9:36our work by using software to increase our efficiency. And then of course as our city continues to grow, trash is an unavoidable reality. So one of my favorite efficiencies are in-ground trash cans. I could talk about these all day. We have about a dozen larger than life cans have been installed. They're primarily along the night line and the Jordan River Trail. Huge benefits for the community, our environment and our employees as well.

10:04We're able to curb the amount of overflow compared to traditional receptacles. They can be found, as I mentioned, along the Jordan River Trail on the night line. We went from emptying receptacles at these locations around three times a week to emptying these large capacity cans once every three months. So that's a significant savings and I'm really proud of the team.

10:24This is something that came up from our frontline staff, an innovative idea. So we're really proud to implement that. Next slide please. So moving on to our budget. As Allison gave you an overview, so I'm going to step through in the next few slides a few more specifics. So next slide please. On balance, we're requesting about $900,000. So with the net reduction in staffing of one FTE, and I'll step through the specifics here as we move along. Next slide please. And we'll go ahead and jump to the next slide. The first budget inside is our personal services. This cost increase reflects changes in pension, health insurance, AFSCME pay increases, and largely out of the department's control. Next slide please. For inflationary and contractual,

11:20we're requesting a total of $588,424 for the coming year. This includes utility increases that are based on estimates from public utilities. We've worked very closely with them to make sure that this number is as accurate as possible. And it also includes increases in our contractual obligations. Next slide please. So in FY27 alone, the city will bring on approximately 22 new properties and amenities requiring over just $1 million to maintain them. And as Allison kind of touched on, some of these costs are proposed to be covered by the proposed property tax increase.

12:03So this is an area for the department where the property tax increase would be really important for our operations. These spaces will require dedicated maintenance for vegetation management, irrigation, litter removal, safety inspections, et cetera. So next slide please. We get into a few more specifics about these properties. As an example, we're bringing on two new parks and open spaces. The Folsom Trail is of course an existing amenity in the city. But with our expansion, we're adding six acres of park space. So this is additional property that will need to be maintained.

12:39We're also bringing on 13 new park amenities like Pioneer Park, where we're increasing the planting areas by 40% from traditional turf, which will require a higher level of care. And the Rotary Playground at Liberty Park will have an expanded footprint as well. In addition, we're bringing on seven new right-of-way and medium properties. One example is a 13th East Trail from 2700 South to Sugarhouse Park. That'll be transferred to the department here for maintenance very soon.

13:10The next slide please shows a specific breakdown of the cost for these properties if the council is interested. I want to highlight that these costs are prorated. So we're not assuming everything is coming along online July 1. So they are prorated, given our best guess and forecasting will come online. Next slide please. We're also requesting two new budget neutral positions that are converting seasonal or part-time hours to full-time equivalents. The first is in our Trails and Natural Lands Division and the second is on our communications team. Next slide please. Finally, we're requesting $200,000 for Wildland Urban Interface Fire Mitigation. This is also proposed to be covered by the proposed property increase. This is a bill on the work of the department completed last year,

14:02identifying our properties along the wuwee all across the city, not just in the foothills, and the necessary maintenance needs that we're also partnering in the release of the wuwee maps from the state's Division of Forest to Fire and State lands. So we would use this funding and collaboration with Salt Lake City Fire to create fire breaks and remove any excessive vegetation in these priority locations. Next slide please. So like all city departments, public lands identified budgetary reductions for FY27, which equates to about a 4% reduction from our FY26 budget.

14:42And I'll step through each one of these in the coming slides. Next slide please.

14:48We're proposing to reduce administrative costs, including travel and training by 62500. This doesn't in any way reflect reflect our commitment to training. We of course want our employees to be highly skilled, highly trained in the work that they're conducting, but we believe there's opportunities for us to think differently about training as well as travel. Next slide please. For FY27, we're also proposing to reduce our operational budget by just over $391,000. And this is spread across all operational spend categories, so it's really difficult for us to say what an impact will be. But typically it will be reduced reductions in purchasing of chemicals and fertilizers, sand and gravel. We don't anticipate that the

15:33public will see any reduction in services or in the public space, in care of these public spaces as a result of this. There may be minor delays in our response to smaller irrigation issues and restroom repairs, but that remains to be seen. So the next slide has all the details broken out of council members would like to do a deeper dive on what that reduction could entail. Next slide please. We're also proposing to reduce our charges and services budget by just over $622,000, which

16:09kind of is a lot. So we're step through the next four or five slides, what that really means. So we'll start with Pioneer Park lighting. So this is something that the department has done for the last few years. We light Pioneer Park December 1 through 30 through the 31st. That has come at a cost of $72,000, that lighting. We believe that there are other events that bring people downtown with the upgrades planned in ongoing at Pioneer Park. We believe it will be activated without this lighting event. So this is one thing that we're proposing to be reduced for on an ongoing basis.

16:47Next slide please. Other other reductions in this category include reducing our special special project fund. This fund is allowed us to pay for things like workspace modifications, as our space needs have grown with the department, contracts to support development of our public private partnership and sponsorship model programs, things like that. The department has been able to tap into and provide those additional resources. We're also proposing that our trails and natural lands division budget be reduced for their contractor work by $100,000. We believe that recently awarded grants will offset the impact to Salt Lake City residents that utilize these spaces.

17:30The urban forestry division budget will also be reduced in its proposal by $100,000. And this is where we think the residents might experience a delay in service or we anticipate between 800 to 1,000 fewer trees will be pruned yearly as a result of this reduction. Next slide please. We're also proposing a reduction in park security. We estimate about a 34% reduction in patrol hours will result in this and we're working closely with Salt Lake City PD to mitigate any impacts with this proposal and we're confident that the public will not experience any safety concerns in our public spaces as a result. Next slide please. We've summarized all of that in this slide for council members and staff if you're interested. Next slide. Finally, we're proposing a reduction

18:26in staffing within our park ranger program. This was not an easy decision for the department. This is something that we thought very carefully about as we looked at what's facing the city and how we could be part of the solution. We're proposing to reduce the ranger team from 17 to 14 FTEs which would save $280,000 in personal services. As everyone on the council knows, the park ranger program has continued to evolve and grow over the last few years and what's really helped them measure their impact is tracking their activities daily. So they use survey 123 to track almost every single interaction that they have which is incredibly helpful for us because based on this data, we know that in 2025 the park ranger program completed nearly 16,000 patrol hours in our public spaces,

19:16made 245 calls to dispatch, had about 9,300 dog compliance conversations with Salt Lakers and about 2,890 check-ins for our unhoused individuals in our public spaces and something, a service that they also provide for the city among many is they refilled over 3,800 dog bag dispensers across the city. So we're doing our part to help Salt Lakers keep our spaces clean and welcoming. So these are just a few examples but with the reduction in staffing that's being proposed, we estimate about a 22% reduction in operational capacity. So from FY26 to FY27, there will be a dip in many of their metrics and just want to make sure that we're upfront and transparent with council about the impacts on that. Next slide please. Here again, we did a lot of

20:11summarizing in the slide deck so we have another summary of our budget requests and reductions. Next slide please. And without, we're happy to take any questions. I realize I went through a lot really quickly but I appreciate your attention through that presentation. We appreciate how efficient you were in your presentation. I'm not messing around today.

20:30No. I like that attitude. Council members? Questions? Council member Young.

20:40So thank you, and I appreciate these are hard decisions to make. Obviously, I can look at any single one of those and make a case for why that would be valuable in terms of keeping consistency in both personnel and services. So I appreciate the thoughtfulness and when she went through and said, yes, like these are hard decisions but being a part of a tight fiscal year, this is what makes sense for us and I value that expertise. My question actually has to do with your GEO bond appendix and the question that with those reductions, does that change the timelines related to the implementation and the actions we expect to see in that area?

21:28The short answer I'll give you is no but Tyler will give you a better informed answer if you don't mind, Tyler. Yeah, thanks, council member. And yeah, the answer is no. We're not making any reductions to that team. I think we have that team fully staffed right now. Things are moving along. We're not looking to make any changes to the timelines of the GEO bond. Okay, helpful. Thank you.

21:52Council member Carlson and then Council member Dugan. Okay, Dugan first and Carlson second.

21:59Thank you very much for the presentation and the growth and all the work you've done over the last years and I really appreciate all the work you've done in conversations with my residents in my district. You've been very helpful and engaging with my district and it's been a heavy lift but I really appreciate all the work across the board. A couple of things that come in my district but also just across the city and one is the budget for the urban forestry and the sick mortries. I know part of the sick mortries is just bad timing. The freeze hit all of our trees really hard and probably hit those sick mortries because they're aged even harder and just the with what you have here and the and the needs for those. Is there is there additional needs to support those

22:56trees because I know that some of it is just natural work on that but can you kind of touch on that when I have a few other questions but that one is on the sick more trees. Not just my neighborhood but across the city. Yeah, yeah thank you for that. I'll go ahead and start out and we'll ask Taito to fill in. So yeah the hard frost that happened was unfortunate and that it really impacted our sick mortries that were just starting to leaf out and it's when in like district six you have you know tree lined or streets lined with sick amores or one variety. It's really impactful to residents right. They're really seeing how these trees are declining. So we're really

23:38is our urban forestry tells me we're a little bit too early to tell what the impacts will be but we don't think it'll be great. We're hopeful that our trees can come through. What we are asking are the residents if you do have a London plain or a sick mortry in your yard that you give it some extra water. This is really going to help. This is something that we're doing with the trees that we are responsible for is giving them some extra water during this time and we're going to hope that hope for the best. If residents do have answers or questions as well about the how their trees are looking I would really encourage them to reach out to urban forestry place a service request and our team of our first will come out and help assess where the trees are

24:18at and maybe what actions could be taken. All right appreciate that very much. A few more. Go ahead you have a question on and of course that kind of leads back to the whole water conservation effort. I mean you're big use your water but you also have the biggest you got all the land we need water in the land and we need to actually use water. Your conservation efforts I know utility bills have gone up for everybody including you but also your your water conservation efforts to you know

24:45support the our parks but also support our great felt like and can you kind of walk us through some of your efforts there. Yeah I'd be happy to um you know first of all because you're just kind of setting the stage we recognized our responsibility as a city department to be the example right and into the residents and our visitors can turn to and can learn from us. As we've done some initial kind of assessment we've gone through and working with public utilities gone through what the expectations are and we're adhering closely to the drought mitigation requirements and that but also just kind of a foundational thing I do want to mention public utilities had a water user and that's not the exact term document completed for them in 2023 which went through and and really highlighted the

25:34areas of different categories and water users and I was very encouraged that our public spaces across the utility primarily led by and maintained by public lands results in less than 4% of the water consumption. That's a really good starting place for us you know residential and industrial uses I think residential was around 53 other institutional uses were around 14% so I was really encouraged that past actions have led to keeping our water usage low relative to to those other categories.

26:12It doesn't mean we get to take our foot off the gas we get to continue to make those reductions so as we look forward we have worked really closely with council and we appreciate the support over the last few years we have about 10 irrigation upgrade projects that have allowed us to either put in tree specific irrigation allowed us to put in drip irrigation and convert some of our turf which is a heavy water use overhead spray water use to more regionally appropriate plantings and then going forward in all of our projects that is always something that our planners and landscape architects are leading out with so not only in our geobon funded but our CIP projects as well and there are reductions happening across our public spaces and Pioneer Park is an example

26:59and Donner Park in your district that as those come online I hope that we can use those as shiny examples for our residents of how we're making a difference. Great I have one more question to pass on the last one was that I know the hard decision about the park range is reduced net but I also know you made a couple thousand you know I can't remember the number now on calls to PD for services do you think that you're going to maybe see an uptick of calls to the PD for services or support because they're reduced park rangers and are we shifting more expensive research or calls to the PD from what we could handle on ourselves in the parks I mean it's kind of it's a city budget but it's also a department budget. It's a good question. Yeah it's a really

27:48good question. I don't anticipate that as a significant increase and I think that's primarily as a result of the park rangers are doing three primary components. You have your you know your public safety you have your education and you have your connection piece which is and so I think the public safety piece is already only a third of what they're doing right now and where I think we'll see a drop in the park ranger is likely most significant in the programming and education piece.

28:16So I don't anticipate that being significant and I think one of the reasons is the department we felt comfortable making this recommendation is the strong results that we're seeing from the recently funded parks police teams that are out in our public spaces. So we are seeing a lot more activity in those spaces and we are seeing really incredible results in all of our public spaces when it comes to safety due to that team being active in those spaces. Okay sorry one more question. Okay let me jump you around is it following up with that one? No no no let's do clarification. Yeah I just want to say thank you for your presentation and I'm often walking Liberty Park in the morning and I'm seeing the employees whether they're seasonal or part time

29:01or full time in that park beautifying it and always with a smile on their face and so so appreciate the work of public lands department. I have a couple questions. The first is I remember I did a tour early on of the propagation program where you were protecting and harvesting and keeping intact many of our native seeds and seedlings here in Salt Lake City. I wanted to understand how that was reflected in the budget and then I've got a question about the park rangers after that.

29:31Great question and thank you for participating in that tour. I think it's one of the programs we're really really excited about as a department. We have put over 30 to 40,000 native plants in our parks just in 2025 alone last year and are on track to do the same this year with both volunteers and growing partnerships. So that program is growing. It's not decreasing in one of the one of the full-time positions that we have requested with the budget neutral is for that program specifically.

29:59It's to fund a full-time greenhouse manager that is a shift from seasonal budget to that full-time position. Thank you for explaining that and when I had an opportunity to do that tour I felt like we were doing the work of the future and for the people of the future protecting our biodiversity. My next question is about the park ranger program and understand that there are some proposed staffing changes as it relates to that program. I would love to kind of understand some of the thought process about the ratio of park rangers to leads to supervisors and what's the what's informing kind of your proposal related to that. Yeah let me start with just to clarify one of the positions. We had one supervisor who was responsible for supervising 18 park rangers. So that was a

30:55real problem for us over the past two years. Didn't allow enough field time for those individuals to be supervised. We have a very young workforce within that team. So that is one of the positions we we change. We reclassified an existing vacant position into another supervisor. So we now have two supervisor positions and on a clarify that a lot of their work still is in the field. Their intention is to stay in the field with the teams as well. So they each oversee now seven park rangers.

31:23So that's the ratio. One supervisor to seven park rangers.

31:28We're doing. Thank you. My last question is about the rack. And you know I look at the budget and go wow the rack is a great place to play. They got great fields, great amenities and people pay pay to play on those fields. But our revenue is pretty flat line. But our expenses and our costs continue to go up. I just want to express that we probably need to look at how we charge and fees that area. And maybe change that around because I love the fields but I also feel like we shouldn't be paying a lot more money every year into those fields every year. And really reassess our fee schedule for the rack area. Definitely. I before I have Tyler add a little bit of context. I appreciate you acknowledging how great those fields are. And they are an economic powerhouse

32:25in that district. I think they just celebrated their 10th year anniversary. And the economic impact has grown every year. And last year we had a record year of $25 million as a result of the entire season in 2025 for the rack. So it's really exciting what they can do for our economy. And that's also a credit to the operations manager. I just want to give a shout out to Chris Laughlin in his work. But Tyler can speak to just what we've done with fees and how we approach that and maybe opportunities in the future. Thanks Kim. And yeah I do want to just go back to the economic piece. You know this weekend we're hosting one of the most important tournaments of the year at the rack. So MLS Next is in town. We have a lot of people will be in town for this event. Those

33:13are the types of things when you look at the economic impact. You know I don't know that the actual tax revenue we're generating from that economic impact that is something to consider though and probably something we should do more analysis on. Recreation centers as a whole are not profitable business. And I think that's just the reality of these spaces. And so when we look at our rates we really have to be looking at our competition. So right now in the state of Utah we have one regional competitor when it comes to our athletic complex and that's in Provo. Our rates are exceeding those today on all levels currently. And so I think we really need to look at the cost benefit of that and where that competition may have an advantage over us. So right now like I said we look at daily

33:55rates and hourly rates of both of those exceed the Provo center. I think we should do a further analysis regionally both in Boise and Phoenix to see how that compares. And then we do have one other facility coming online in Salt Lake Valley and Herrmann anticipated in 2028. So we're cautious about that right now. And I think we do see a growth in the CFS every year. For rates it's about three to six percent. But I think that's something we could certainly look at on a regional scale and to see how we compare with other cities outside of Salt Lake. So really the line for the department is revenues relatively flat at least the graph was showing that. But the overall impact of the people coming in their hotels, food, metal cars, all that stuff is huge across the city budget

34:46compared to what the rec itself revenue number is. Okay that's great to understand and hear. Just growth and that just from one year we had a seven million dollar growth and economic impact in 2025 over 2024. So that has grown from when it started closer to 10 to 12 million. So we've grown that economic impact up to 27 million or 26 million this year. I have a customer young and then customer warden. But before customer warden I might jump in because I have to step out and then I can say my piece if that's okay. Okay that's what we are.

35:28So this is about the budget but maybe a little tangential. So on slide 13 you addressed the utility increases and you have a lovely visual of a sprinkler. Only because it's been kind of top of conversation amongst our friends at the county related to what steps we're taking to hold ourselves accountable to the concerns of the drought. I'm just wondering if you can address did that did that play a factor in your budgetary considerations for what type of water usage we're looking towards? Yeah let me start with that one. Yes it certainly does. I mean our growth in the budget just over in our water budget which is just under 3.3 million annually right now in 2022.

36:23It was just around 1.5. So that budget growth in three years not from usage just from the rates has increased in nearly doubled in three years. So it has a huge impact on our budget and why the department is motivated to try and find where areas where we can save. I think the biggest piece for that us in 2022 when we faced a similar situation in reductions we put a blanket we put a blanket reduction across our park system. In hindsight that was a mistake and we are seeing implications of that on our trees at our urban forest. We really significantly impacted those.

36:59So when Kim mentioned the 10 infrastructure projects that we've completed in the past two years one of the key pieces of that is adding root watering trees and irrigation to our tree system. That allowed I'm going to use the nine lines example in a couple of degrees district but that site specifically every tree is on a root watering system. So we in the case that we go to stage three this year we can shut off 90 percent of our irrigation on the nine line and keep our trees alive and that's really what we're prioritizing is that infrastructure replacement in our budget to try and be able to make us more flexible to have properties we can draw down 90 percent and not see tree impacts. We don't have that opportunity to do that at Pioneer Park Liberty Park if we draw

37:40down that 30 percent we're losing urban forest. So and thank you that's super helpful. I'm just in case we get questions because maybe they're already coming in. If we have someone who's concerned about seeing sprinklers on at a city property is it my SLC like where's the best way for folks to communicate? That is the best way to to communicate so that will come directly to us and then we can as dispatchers our teams out almost like within the hour so I would encourage folks to use that.

38:12Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to jump in the line and I will pass right after that. I will pass the time to you. I was typing the questions I guess I do have time but the I would like to divide my comments into two district two specific and the mainly more generic the overlap in some places but I feel like the just for the sake of clarity on my mind mostly.

38:40I would like a little more information and it doesn't have to be right now about the Folsom trail and what the neighbors should expect. I feel like we have been talking about that for forever and I want the expectations to to match some level of reality for my neighbors. It's not been great since we started this process and it's it felt like it's been a lot of promises and now maybe we're ready to see something that is exciting in there beyond concrete and dirt and weeds.

39:12So that's one then second the disaster of killing hundreds of trees on North Temple last year or the year before and what my neighbors can expect as far as the reduction of the tree maintenance that you're proposing on this budget and if that is going to affect some of those trees

39:36side note to that you know I seen that the trees that we planted on 300 west you know a year or half ago are sprouting from all over the place many of them are dying forward from lack of maintenance right now and it's almost frustrating to see that we you know the impression that some of my neighbors might have is we're ready to cut some ribbons and then forget about the projects and I would love to see a response to that answer to that question as far as how could we maintain those trees and side note to that it relates to the 1000 tree program that you know I will love a little more information I know it was mixed back at the beginning and the success of it and now I think that we are you know doing a little more proactive planting and

40:28more thoughtful planting on where those can actually thrive and survive I appreciate the

40:40the objective I was I struggled with the outcomes and I think that my neighbors my love and update on that piece and then we'll love to learn a little more about the

40:57the programming that the park rangers do a little more details in general as far as that piece and what you mentioned in the slides as far as that they are the contacts with neighbors you know you know a little more definition what that is and what they do as far as that work so those are really my general questions I have a few smaller ones that if you allow my stuff send those to you it will be amazing but I want to finish this by saying that they the public lands the pouring has stepped up big time you guys are doing a lot it's incredible to see that you're balancing an incredible amount of new amenities and at the same time balancing the maintenance which is good stuff and it's breaking all over the place and you and the last you're demonstrated

41:55your your focus is there and that you are stepping up to the needs of our city even with tight resources I'm happy to see that I'm happy to see that we are seeing more from that department and my neighbors are are seeing more better care for our spaces I appreciate if you have any comments great if no I will love for an answer later I'm just just high level and we would welcome an opportunity to be more thoughtful in my responses and look forward to receiving those from staff and we can prioritize those thank you for the encouraging words I'm grateful that that your constituents have noticed the the extra care that the department and has exerted over the last year and we'd like to build on that in the coming years so thank you thank you

42:47Council Member Carlson I will pass the baton to you for managing this meeting but Council Member Warden was in line for a comment all right thank you

43:00yeah not to be redundant but it really I have also noticed the improvements in the department my constituents have commented to me on improvements just general better maintenance more responsiveness so I really really appreciate that and I'll also just say that

43:24so and will you please pass that on to all of your crews because that is that makes such a huge difference you know the parks are and public lands are the way that I think most residents interact with the city or they associate with the city and so to me that's really important to be getting that positive feedback that kind of leads me to my concern that and I heard your previous answers to my colleagues about this but just expressing my worry about reducing the park rangers as well because I understand a lot of residents have said you know are these entirely necessary like what exactly you know what is this something that we need especially with the other budget constraints and when I explain to them that you know all of it's not just doing nature walks

44:31or things like that that they're helping offset the costs of much more expensive resources like to plant police officers or animal control or all those other things I think they they understand better so but I'm satisfied with the answer that you've given I'm still nervous because I really I have fought to increase that program and I've seen the benefits of that so I'm worried about not having all of the rangers if there's anything you want to add to the answer but don't feel like you have to

45:07yeah that's right thanks council member worton really appreciate the words

45:12I think there it's fair to be a little concerned about that drop and that reduction in services I do think it will not be significant and noticeable this year and I think that because of a couple things one is because of the additional presence of of police in the parks that's really helped address some of them more urgent issues and then one specific area that we're trying to increase the efficiency within that program is trying to work our programming and our outreach and our communications that the Ranger program does to existing events whether that's volunteer events or other community events and so doubling in on that requires us to have fewer rangers spread across the city doing separate events and trying to key in on that so I think there's some efficiencies

45:56there we certainly will see a drop and a decline but we hope that those efficiencies can help replace and offset some of that and then the the last thing that I wanted to bring out just because we we did already vote on like the funding releases and everything for the foothills and moving forward with that

46:17wanted an update on the the committee that is going to kind of oversee that and that is as a subcommittee of PNET how is that going? So we're currently working with our PNET board to define what that was the scope would look like and so we'd be happy to follow to follow up with a written response at a future date probably in June well after our June meeting we'll have more clarity on that.

46:44Okay that would be great I'll just say at the outset I think for me one of the the reasons why I supported the I guess the plan or I thought it was the right call to make this a subcommittee of PNET and not create like a new board or whatever is that it doesn't have to be comprised just of PNET members and so I really want to make sure and just reemphasize how important I think it is that we have other non-PNET members part of that group. That's all thank you.

47:22Council Member Pietro. Thank you representing the other side from what Council Member Wharton just said I have at least one constituent who I know you all know well and it is catching to others that often question the Rangers and even in our discussion here I've heard it said that they are helping us with cleanliness of the parks they're helping us with pet interface in the parks they're helping us with homelessness interfacing and they're helping us with nature education.

47:49I would really love this year to get clarity on what success looks like for this program if it's all of those things fine but I just have never had clarity it feels as though they were started as an alternative response during racial issues trying to de-escalate public spaces then the homelessness crisis put an additional burden on them so I would really love I know Megan is working on this and the stuff that I've seen coming out of Megan is stellar but I would really love to reiterate that I don't want to use my gut and a couple complaining constituents or a couple satisfied constituents as a metric for whether this is a good investment of public dollars I would love to know what the objective measure of success is how close we're approximating it and if us

48:34doing it in house is the best use of our dollars or if there's other methods to make our tax payer dollars especially during a crisis accomplish the other things so thank you I agree with everyone else I'm seeing an incredible improvement right now I'm living at Riverside Park because it's Rose Park baseball season and that new scoreboard makes us so stinking happy on the west side and those lights in partnership with LHM are like just remind us of the goodness that is coming from the city in the department so thank you for everything but that that is also I have like my neighbor's words they love our golf course and thank you to everyone at golf who has helped to make it as independent as it is so that we can continue to justify only a few people complaining that we

49:15have grass in the desert but everyone else thinks it's fantastic so thank you I'm really excited by the direction of the department I don't disagree with any of that just saying okay I don't and I think one of those constituents that you mentioned is also talking to me so all right any other questions okay thank you so much yes so before we move on to our next item regarding the golf fund we will have a property tax review from analysts council policy analyst Allison Rowland it will be very quick because they have neatly summed it up in three items so these are three items that

50:08the Department of Public Lands will use the new property tax increment essentially on should you all adopt it those are new properties so seasonal staff salaries for new properties that's thirty one hundred thousand dollars roughly the operations cost for new properties that's three hundred and it's almost three hundred and ninety seven thousand dollars and on the wild land fire interface mitigation which director Shelley mentioned which would be two hundred thousand dollars so those are the the big three things that they plan to fund with that new tax if it is it up thank you Allison any questions from council members on that okay let's go ahead and proceed with the golf fund right now I have 35 windows open so given just a second I think we all have

50:5835 windows open all the time okay so yes Matt is here to speak about the Fi 27 budget for the second year in a row golf expenditures are expected to surpass its budget its revenue budget by a significant amount that used to be something very scary and it actually now is is an indication of good things because the Fi 27 revenue of though the Fi 27 revenue will be 14.9 million which is about a 5.5 percentage point increase over last year but golf has now enough savings in the golf CIP for 26.6 million dollars planned for this year in expenditures that's a 30 percent increase over previous years as a reminder I think some of you weren't here in those days but the council actually passed twice I believe they they required the golf fund to to charge an extra dollar and

51:58then now it's up to the extra two dollars on each nine whole round of golf so so that has added up over the years like like little things do over time at the same time of course the golf has been said the golf fund has been subsidized by the general fund for about a decade unlike other Salt Lake City enterprise funds sorry this is unlike other Salt Lake City enterprise funds but it's a common practice for me other municipal courses around the state we we had to dig deep to find that information but I believe the finance department fair did that out the subsidies in Salt Lake City's case have allowed golf to use its two dollar nine whole per round CIP fee to fund capital investments rather than only covering operations costs the Fi 27 budget would actually reduce that

52:48subsidy to the golf fund from 1.8 million last year to only 500,000 this year so it has dropped dramatically I think it was up as high as 2.2 million so golf is steadily and surely becoming profitable again the key elements to this year's golf fund proposal include increasing the staff by 1 to 35.15 ftes and that is I don't remember the last time golf got an additional employee I think it was about 10 years ago or more and it would help with this big investment project 17.4 million in CIP improvements as a reminder this CIP golf CIP is not the same as the city's wider CIP this is that special fund so I will turn it over to Matt to say to say all the exciting things.

53:41Thank you again I appreciate this this opportunity to present the golf the golf funds budget if you go to the next slide as Allison has talked about over the past six years we've seen a dramatic increase in our demand in golf and and it couldn't have come at a better time because we were very very much struggling and very deep inside a very deep hole. Sure is that better great so we've been when looking how do we get out of that hole obviously revenues a big part of that so over the last six years we've been able to take the CIP money and as Allison said this is separate from the the general fund CIP and so as an enterprise fund golfers are funding us entirely and then the additional money that's that's charged each time they play goes into this fund to try to address

54:37a number of capital improvement projects that that have not been done in a very long time. So over this last six years we've been able to allocate 23 million dollars for projects that we estimated a year or two ago we re-estimated about 47 million dollars of need there so obviously that's a that's part of that big hole that we're in but within that time period we've been able to significantly improve our position. Next slide please.

55:10Some of the accomplishments from in over the last year include some basic some basic maintenance items

55:19mostly golf golf path repairs at Bonneville Forest Del Glendale, Mountain Del and Nibali Park. These were significant because we have gone decades without improvements there so it improves the overall not only the the aesthetics of the golf course it improves the experience for the golfer when they're renting a golf cart and it also extends the life of the golf courts golf carts that we're that we're investing in as well. We also continuing the design portion of the Rose Park irrigation system it's been a very long process we're about 70 percent into that design phase. Part of the delay has come from over the past year we were initially looking at installing two settlement ponds there but once we we projected the cost of that out we

56:06realized we could probably only afford one so we've had to do some additional civil engineering to have the one pond be able to perform all the functions that we needed to but I think that's going to be a significant significant project for that golf course one in that we're reducing turf by the target is 25 percent and then by going to a more efficient system we'll be able to reduce our water use there by 44 percent so that's a significant project costs for constructing an irrigation system have escalated significantly year over year so we're having to account for that too and that's reflected in this budget. We have also installed two new golf simulators at the forestel golf course which is going to be kind of a new a new business for us and so we're interested

56:58to see how those are received by the public and we opened those in March of 26. Next slide please. Some of the efficiencies that that we found in and a lot of this goes to the public lands department for helping us we urban forestry does not extend out to the to the golf enterprise fund so typically we're just handling that through a very small budget in the past and and whatever our employees are able to do which that's a limitation of both knowledge and equipment but public lands has helped us access five separate contracts that we can that we're able to utilize and and through the the golf CIP fund to fund those projects but we've been able to attack a lot of our dead tree issues that we've had at a number of our golf courses and so I it's we're we're in the millions

57:48of tons of dead plant material that we've removed which is it's from a fire risk standpoint that's that's very important for us from a course aesthetic standpoint but it also allows us to be able to replace some of those trees with with new trees and just better health for the other trees as well. Next slide. So as Allison said to our our fiscal fiscal year 27 budget request is $31 million and we're adding one full-time employee. Next slide. The big part what what that allows us to be able to function its in the golf fund is is revenue obviously because we're not the goal is to be completely self self-sustaining and not have any general fund transfers over to us and but we feel that over the past five years to eight years specifically has helped us be able to gain our footing.

58:47So we're as a division we're very grateful to the support that we've received over that time. As part of this budget this is the revenue side of things our green fees and we implemented another fee increase at the beginning of this year but as this this is applied to fiscal year 27 that's one point six million dollar addition of revenue driving range fees of a hundred and seventy eight thousand cart rental fees three hundred and twenty eight thousand an additional hundred thousand in retail sales and so when you when you subtract out the the previous general fund transfer that's what that's showing there there's some other revenue that's involved in that too but that's so that's a a negative one point four million which still leaves us with a positive seven hundred and

59:31thirty two thousand so we're we're able to absorb the removal of those those funds back into the general fund and so there shouldn't be a negative impact in the short term for us. Next slide please. To give you some some data behind why we're projecting again as much of a revenue increase that we have this is this is a long long slide if you can see it there starts back in fiscal year 13 when we had nine golf courses including the golf course at the airport through fiscal year 25 and you can see the growth that we've had specifically in the last four years and so where we are this year compared to last year we're we're still 14 percent ahead of where we were last year so this this trend will continue in an upward in an upward way so that's that's exciting and it

1:00:24also demonstrates that the health and the in the golf market right now. Next slide please.

1:00:33This this little chart here is a is a a different way to kind of track multiple items that impact golf so we what a start is is anytime somebody shows it but the golf course whether they play nine holes or 18 holes we count them as one. We compare it with playable days based on what a playable day is depends on the weather if it's above 90 degrees or if winds above 20 miles an hour or if it's below 45 degrees just to give you some examples it falls outside of that playable day

1:01:06so for example you can see in 2025 we had 273 playable days and using that metric that I go back several years to as well back to 2012 we've never had it that high so what that represents is a couple of things one we had a very dry year last year it was a very hot year and we also had a lot of play in December which we normally don't get so that boosted that number up this also this allows me to kind of see what type of utilization do we have and and weather is the biggest factor that affects us so when you take all of those factors into consideration we're at 110 utilization so that we're very we're very busy some of our golf courses Bonneville for instance will book up within 15 minutes once we release the tea time so you can see we still have some

1:01:57some demand to play with some price elasticity to move up that's why we felt comfortable in in increasing our rates again so this puts when you look at our revenue that we received in 2025 was was over 14 million and in total golf course revenue that puts us at our revenue at 34 dollars and 86 cents per start if you compare that to where we were in 2019 we were at 26 dollars and 92 cents and so that's that's extraordinarily dramatic and it's not something that I would ever would have predicted but it explains why we were able to fund a lot of these projects next slide please from an operational expense standpoint

1:02:40we are we're projecting another $265,000 additionally in personal services 128,000 operating supplies charges and services another 672,000 capital equipment an additional 275,000 as we continue to try to chip away at equipment needs that we have so it's it's this is the time for us to reinvest and we're also as as Allison mentioned we're adding a full-time position and she's correct it's been it's been over 10 years since we've added a position in fact in six years ago we reduced our FTEs by two we we combined some some tasks and took away a couple of assistance but we've had such an increase in our our volume of play at Rose Park for instance they're doing 30,000 more rounds than they were two years ago so we're adding a full-time assistant professional at the Rose Park

1:03:41office to help to help with that next slide so as a summary our capital projects within this budget will be 16 and 16.6 million including the ESCO which was an irrigation improvement project that was done a number of years ago and so the annual payment for that that is 500,000 of that is coming from the general fund transfer but the total cost is 565,000. Next slide so this is a very hard slide to read even for me looking at it but what what this does is kind of show you the $47 million of projects that we've identified and that we're trying to fund over the next several years and what we've been able to do so going from fiscal year 23 on up through this budget of fiscal year 27 it kind of tracks each one of these specific projects that we have whether it's cart constructions

1:04:44clubhouse repairs or construction of new clubhouses repairs the damage culverts driving range improvements new irrigation systems at the Rose Park golf course the Nubley Park golf course the settling ponds which I referred to at Rose Park it's a couple of new maintenance buildings parking lot resurfacing restaurant course restrooms T-box leveling at all of our courses so there's a there's a lot of that's a lot of need that we have and so to be able to to fund this in fact

1:05:16when we project this out we we will have almost half of that $47 million that will have been funded through user fees so that's that's again that's a significant accomplishment that I think as well

1:05:33and that's all that I have and so I'm happy to hear any kind of input that you have or I'm happy to answer questions as well thank you director councilmember Dugan any others okay then thanks my lord I appreciate and I'm really uh uh uh impressed how well golf has transitioned transitioned over to last six years since I've been on the council and we had a lot of tough talks in 2020 and 2021 but they know you just a steady increase here uh in reducing the funding for the general fund I mean we talked about the uh the work here but these costs are coming from your CIP budget not from the general fund and the general fund is just paying off the debt of the esco so and and the work you know that was a again a future vision on on the irrigation is out at Rose Park

1:06:22and other and Nubley so we those are needed to actually they cost money but they are saving a lot of money going forward and and are actually also improving just the golf courses themselves because they were so needed necessary items so I really appreciate all the work that you've done in the golf and also up at Bonneville the answering all my questions taking care of my my golf course I guess my golf course the golf course my district it's not my golf course but

1:06:51it's it's Matt's golf course he's right I can direct complaints to you is that what you're saying no no no no you can give him but I appreciate all the all your work you've done there on the on the you know people also say hey the golf uses a lot of water but the work that you've done with the the grass the drought tolerant grass they're we uh working on the uh watering systems can you kind of give us a uh how much water you saved or reduced or put it out in a context for for neighbors at saying hey we we've done this much on the on the conservation side of the house along with just keeping the golf course green and healthy certainly you know obviously water is the most important resource that we have that's that's what keeps our turf alive and we recognize fully that

1:07:42more water does not equal a better product in fact we try to keep our our fairways as dry as we can and still keep them looking somewhat green um you may recall back in 21 the last time we were in the mayor's um phase two of the the city's drought plan um we dialed back a lot of the um a lot of watering in out-of-play areas so the driving range outside of our our main holes you know around the perimeter of the golf courses and in fact it Bonneville was very stark if you remember what that what that actually looked like um we can do that for a short period of time to go that hard and I think we at that point we it was around 28 percent that we cut from our five-year budget um and over the last couple of years we've tried to recoup some areas where we lost turf but um so it's it's

1:08:36it's hard to say what specific number that we're trying to do obviously we've been we've been directed to stay within our five-year budget and reduce 10 percent of watering around our club houses um and so we've elected to rather than use water to clean our golf carts on a daily basis we're either switching to just two times a week and some courses are are using not using water at all to clean the carts um so that's that's one thing that we're doing um the dealing with um the courses that we have we do have a couple of of newer irrigation systems um Bonneville is the newest it was put in in 2015 and Glendale was about 28 years before that so and everything else is is 40 or more years old um so having an efficient system is is the best way to

1:09:28be able to deliver water efficiently and and how um we we judge how our staff judges how much water we need to put down um changes uh a few years ago we were able to work with public utilities to get weather stations installed at four of our golf courses so what these these operate on the course within within the turf environment and community members also benefit from this as well so if they had if you have a smart timer on your uh on your irrigation system it pulls what's called the vapo transpiration data that helps to determine how much you need to put down or when you can pull back um with that's a that's a good way of doing it but it's not um it still takes time um our golf courses use that as a baseline um I'm gonna get to a point here in just a second I'm not

1:10:16gonna to bore you with all this but um the other way is that is that we do it is by looking at the plant actually the turf and seeing the signs of stress that come from not watering and so the the superintendent will will moderate how much water they're putting down based upon what they see one thing that we're looking at doing we're we're investigating a new technology that allows us to attach sensors onto our our maintenance equipment on the mowers and utility carts that we drive up and down the fairway a few times and it takes readings every 10 inches of the moisture coming off the plant so that having this technology we we assign it to our um our software and we're able to make adjustments in real time based upon what that plant actually needs so what this can do for

1:11:02us is help to reduce maybe I think up to 10 percent more based upon where we're putting putting the water so we can we can really dial in where that water goes and and there's no doubt that's still a lot it's still a lot of water that we're using but any little thing that we can do will help and I think you know not only from a conservation standpoint but an economic standpoint that's important to us just our water budget represents about 1.4 million dollars which is which is a very large chunk of our budget so it's um we're we're not only driven by wanting to say water to be a good steward but from an economic standpoint as well so to to answer your question we're staying within the same guidelines as we did in 21 to be able to dial back in those areas so

1:11:47people will notice and should expect to see big dry patches within the golf course property but there's certain certain assets on the golf course that we still will water regardless of the greens and the teas we need those those are expensive assets to lose if we don't if we don't keep those viable so from a because our water rates continue to go up year after year we're not seeing a lot of dollar savings but we are staying within a volume budget for that so hopefully as we continue to fund these new irrigation projects and specifically the Nibley Park one I think what will help us because that's a manually irrigated golf course as I'm sure that you know and that's not a very efficient way to

1:12:31distribute water yeah I appreciate it very much and thank you for all the hard work and it's nice to see that the you know the general fund going to golf is now just paying off the debt and in a couple years that'll be over and and golf will be self-sustaining cross-board and I attribute that all to you and your leadership so thank you very much thank you

1:12:55yeah I don't think there's a greater redemption story than the golf fund

1:13:01and so and yeah I think it's all thanks to you and to the support that you get from the rest of the department so I just want to extend my very sincere appreciation and gratitude and this is great no notes well we can't take credit for it to be honest I still and this is across the golf industry so I think our focus has been how can we best you know take advantage of the situation and make the courses better and so I think that's that's where our employees can feel good about that you know the product still remains excellent and the customers really love playing there and the residents and visitors love it as well so all right thank you so much thank you our next presenter will be trying to go in the right direction here are we at a break time is that right yep

1:14:08let's does a 10 minute break feel appropriate great let's take a 10 minute break and come back at 240 all right welcome back everyone from a brief break I just wanted to state for the public record that item a3 will be heard at a future meeting that item was about the fleet fleet fund

1:30:27for now we're going to move on to our fifth item which is regarding the department of public services fiscal year budget 2026 2027 council policy analyst Kate wear it will join us at the table along with Jorge Chamorro public services director and some others okay great thank you

1:30:52the public services department is composed of seven different divisions or excuse me six different divisions one of those divisions is the fleet internal service fund which will be heard separately overall the proposed public services budget for fiscal year 2027 has a 2.8 reduction in their request compared to the adopted fiscal year 2026 budget a few key policy considerations for you to review today include the proposed staffing changes which include one new limited time full time employee to serve as a ballpark and administrator the elimination of 11 unfilled part time crossing guard positions and outside of staffing also the discussion of the efficiencies and cost savings achieved by the consolidation of the rapid intervention teams throughout the city into the urban services

1:31:51division next funding sufficiency for a street maintenance and asset conditions and finally the proposed new public facing electric vehicle charging station fee with that I'll turn it over to the department council good afternoon all right I see our presentation is over there on the screen and wondering how is your first budget sees ongoing I've got my coffee we got snacks I promise you this is going to be as straightforward as possible so let's go with the next slide please

1:32:39all right as Kate mentioned the public services department has six divisions including the newly formed urban services division fleet I'll mention fleet because we have a separate briefing as as you mentioned earlier that will be scheduled at a future time the department has 303 full-time employees in addition to 126 part-time slash seasonal employees the bulk of them are in the crossing guard program and we will talk a little bit about that in future slides

1:33:19while we manage the facility's asset renewal and replacement plan it's always important to note that our department is at the receiving end of project planning and new initiatives that once are completed the maintenance responsibility will land on on us so again we are at the receiving end and the likely the likelihood of having future impacts on on projects approved today is high next slide please all right this is the bragging slide right yes accomplishments we're going to start with the first one two large facilities we assume full responsibility for them one of them the ballpark and the second one the all-library building across the street

1:34:12what this means is that now we have a responsibility to keep them secured as well as in good work in order because we are seeing activation of those spaces particularly the all-library building that will house multiple uses another accomplishment new this year as I mentioned earlier the urban services division sorry council member warden we couldn't change the name it was already in the books

1:34:44I couldn't be mad I couldn't really want myself so it's it's engraved all right

1:34:51this division had the consolidation of cleaning services and continues to yield positive outcomes on service level and efficient operations just sharing a few metrics here last fiscal year it would have taken over two weeks to address a report of an RV an occupied RV to be addressed right now we're looking at just shy of five days to be completely resolved another metric bioclean times were significantly reduced going from 24 hours in average to this year less than seven hours to be completed these are business hours all right the third accomplishment that I would like to share is related to roadway condition it was very encouraging to see the roadway condition report showing substantial improvements signaling that when you couple reconstruction investments with

1:35:50consistent maintenance their results are incontestable all right next slide all right talking about efficiencies after receiving the oversight responsibility for the citywide clean up service contract there was a concerted effort to you avoid duplication of services later in this presentation I will I will mention what is the tangible benefit of that operational improvement secondly we reviewed the state contract rates and realized that a more competitive pricing is available to the city through a different phone carrier so those are going to be ongoing savings as well there is a slide with more detail on that coming up lastly the city architect has been delegated procurement authority for projects outside of the right of way generally speaking

1:36:50improving a timeline for contracting and scope development helping our partners in the public lands department with moving projects quicker than in the past all right next slide please

1:37:08all right so here is where the rubber meets the ground all right here's a quick overview of our annual budget we have reductions to it to about two million dollars and I will go into details on our requests um in in for fiscal year 27 um netting uh decrease in our ongoing budget

1:37:39to uh 48 million dollars so going from 49 to 48 next slide please we are going to start with reductions we have five listed uh today and we're going to start by saying that these reductions it was a good exercise to look at where can we adjust but also difficult decisions when it comes to operational budgets the total amount on reductions ongoing is just over two million dollars I mentioned earlier that looking into uh our options through a state contract we have a cell phone service provider that is offering us offering us a better deal reducing our ongoing um budget by 50 000 dollars secondly um I'm going to spend some time here uh our projected use of the advantage services contract for fiscal year 27 shows a reduction of a million dollars what this means is not just reducing the

1:38:49level of service this was not reducing for the sake of reducing the contract we have um plenty of capacity in the clean city team to address uh the requests from the public uh that allows us to reduce the the contracted funding by one million dollars it's it's basically half of what we we're allocated in 26 all right the next one is the reduction of 11 vacant part-time positions as crossing guards this does not compromise the required level of coverage for school crossings which currently is 37 essentially the 11 positions that we are eliminating um are stemming from days in which it was really hard to keep um crossing guards employed um as you know there is only two hours that they work per day school day uh one hour in the morning one hour in the afternoon it is

1:39:53it is not for everyone and it was really hard to keep people employed so we wanted to keep a buffer of of positions just in case we needed to be a little nimble in coverage but as I mentioned the reduction of this thankfully right now we have 70 some employed crossing guards more than enough to cover the required ones and the optional school crossings the next item in our table is the reduction of uh three hundred thousand dollars in capital expenses this category of expenses is mainly used for one time small projects that will come our way that require a quick turnaround and may not be able to wait for a full CIP process

1:40:40uh lastly there are a series of operation and budget reductions in the divisions of streets urban services and facilities and these are mainly related to um non-essential travel some um landfill and non-landfield waste fees so thankfully we are not seeing the level of volume that we have seen in the past to pay for disposal of waste a big reduction in in the facilities budget is related to utilities and the ballpark to the tune of 156 thousand dollars we are we're eliminating that we as as you probably know the CRA will cover the cost of maintenance and utilities so we will be working with them to to pay those bills but no longer in the facilities budget

1:41:38all right so that's our list of reductions next slide please I'm going into our requests so we have three listed the first one is straightforward essentially is the cost of doing business is going up and is divided in three categories contractual inflationary and utility increases

1:42:03if we can please get to the next slide there is a little bit more detail on each one of those three categories we're receiving an increase on contracts each contract with the city has an e-scol- cost escalation every year typically tied to CPI so we're accounting for that in that category across the department inflationary is for supplies and materials and utilities is just a increase that we're projecting for this coming fiscal year

1:42:38next slide please all right request number two these are basically making a right to many of our employees specifically in the group of signs and markings we got these positions approved about three years ago unfortunately at the time the equipment was not allocated it would be extremely helpful to use one time one time allocation of funding to purchase two utility trucks so this individuals can fully be utilized currently they are sharing vehicles and they are working in in pairs if we can split them each one with their own vehicle the maintenance capacity will be increasing the science and markings group the ongoing piece that you see on the table is fueled basically the third vehicle that is being requested here was not funded in previous years either is

1:43:44for our supervisor group in the facilities team allowing them to be a little bit more nimble and provide support to those individuals working in in different buildings throughout the city

1:43:59right next slide please our last request is for our one time limited building and administrator the CRA and the city have entered into a use agreement for the ballpark facility the city still owns the facility and we are asking for an individual to be in charge of overseeing that facility coordinating with the contracted vendor cornerstone there is a long list of daily weekly tasks as well as pre-event and post-event inspections that need to occur unfortunately we don't have the capacity in facilities right now to dedicate a person we are expecting a higher level of activation than when we saw this fiscal year all right next slide please in the CFS you will see a new fee being introduced this is public electric vehicle charging currently the recommendation after the cost analysis

1:45:19performed by central finance is to charge up to 25 cents per kilowatt hour this in essence

1:45:31will allow the city to determine what the rate would be depending on location it was our intent to use this fee to promote turnover but also to recoup a little bit of the cost of offering this service across the city currently there is no fee it's it's free for all there are just limitations on time that that a person is allowed to charge their vehicle in each charging station also we wanted to is the use the opportunity to add this fee now as part of the budget process however sustainability department as well as public services are working on developing a plan and share with you all where there will be a dynamic nature of what locations should have what fee and what locations will remain free to encourage use and adaptation of electric vehicles that is that is still to come now the

1:46:33fact that we are including this fee in the CFS for fiscal year 27 doesn't mean that July 1st all of the charging stations or any of the charging stations will start charging 25 cents it's just putting a placeholder and allowing us to once a the plan is adopted we can we can implement it all right

1:46:57how was that for a straightforward presentation next slide please all right

1:47:05thank you director council members questions council member petra thank you um I that was a masterful presentation thank you for it um on the charging is that in addition to the parking fee so currently they stalls where there are charging stations they are not metered so um so this would kind of be in lieu of a parking fee correct do we expect any increase in expenses to allocate that charge them can we use the same technology that does metering is is there a cost associated with this so the current the current charging stations are configured to a zero fee and it can easily be be set up yeah so this is already something we're in possession of we just have fantastic yep and then the second thing is on the manager for the ballpark do we expect

1:48:01revenue from the use of the ballpark that might offset this expense if we do I don't imagine that would show up in your budget would that show up in some other part of the budget

1:48:11yeah there's a revenue expected from coming from the CRA so so those events so the CRA is going to manage it but you'll be maintaining it right the agreement with the CRA is the events that that their contracted services charging will be passed back others a percentage that will come back to the city so there should be a functional option to this then okay thank you I just want to comment that in the CRA budget they include maintenance costs so it's about a million dollars

1:48:43so you're aware of that this thought those revenues will go to offset and so the maintenance costs are those mostly like the supplies and materials and this is the personnel is that how we're divvying things up public services has the knowledge and the know-how of how to maintain the facility and they're going to go out and buy the supplies so that that know okay perfect thank you appreciate it thanks and thanks for all the work on the streets of the house and so that's my questions more focus on that side so on your your goals and metrics you know you got two lines the first one is on the millen overlay so we got 10 miles a year it seems like our goal and 10 lane miles a year and is that limited by just the equipment that we have to do

1:49:32the the millen overlay and does that keep us in the positive as far as doing millen overlays so that it doesn't revert to a full street reconstruction because if after a while if you can't do the two mill two inch millen overlay it's going to go into full reconstruction because the condition is going to get worse is that does that keep us leveled or are we having this slow decrease in going to see more streets go into the full reconstruction because we're not keeping up with the millen overlay millen overlay side of house does that make sense yeah I think just to clarify your question you're saying if we did more millen overlay would it prevent more from falling into reconstruction do we have the proper balance yeah and I think more analysis is probably needed because engineering

1:50:29has the purview of that assessment that's done of all the OCI so we can talk with them about that

1:50:39we could do miller millen overlay millen overlay is one of our more expensive surface treatments but the benefit of it is higher than any of the other surface treatment streets provide so it does offer a lot of benefit and there are there's like a group of candidates that are eligible for it but then there's a large group that just aren't even eligible for it anymore and so we would want to talk with engineering about like what is that pot that's right on the edge about to fall off of eligibility and if we did more could we keep up with it more now the millen overlay process takes longer than our other surface treatments so as you increase the lane miles of that one our overarching goal of all lane miles would just decrease but it's kind of a balance of quality

1:51:18versus quantity because the millen overlay increases the OCI rating on average by about 50 points which is a huge benefit and prevents reconstruction in the long run ships seal and slurry are still important aspects of street maintenance that you wouldn't want to get rid of completely so

1:51:37a year or two ago we changed our lane mile goal to just say like 120 lane miles of all surface treatments to allow us to kind of year by year dial up and down each of those elements as need predicts but we can continue to coordinate with engineering to look at that specific category of are they still eligible for overlay or not yeah and I'm I'm gathering it because my next question was you know I look at the recent studies that we just completed this past year right and if I did my math right you know 66 percent of our lane miles

1:52:12or our streets are at 56 and above are and whether that's either fair fair and above condition right and and the 120 miles that we have is the goal I think the goal says 150 but it seems like you're trying to hit 120 is does that keep us in that same ballpark or are we slowly going into the lower categories of the OCI and because we're not maintaining them at that higher level enough lane miles at the higher level to keep them at that higher level so are we doing are are we doing enough chip and seal and slurry and overlay to maintain our 66 and maybe even move some and then keep the other streets that finally do get reconstructed in that category staying that category so we're not spending the high dollars on total reconstruction and keep the low

1:53:08dollars on the chip and sit over the way so that's from I'm sorry that may that be totally clear but I think the the answer to that question will be it's a fair assumption to say yes and a good reflection of it is if you compare the the the results of the survey from last time to the most recent one they they only element that was added was a millen overlay three years ago and that has been a huge improvement you saw between reconstructions and the addition of that program how much we were able to move to the upper half of our condition so at this point I would say it would be a good assumption to say yes and we would we would check our homework four years from now and the next survey I think it would be a good assumption to say yes we are we are keeping up because every time there is

1:54:08there is a reconstruction for for our team is is new material to work with because if it was already on the on the reconstruction condition so on the bottom of the path you know touch it we wouldn't touch but now they they reconstructed a segment now it's on the top now we need to keep it at the top right for as long as possible yeah so that's kind of my point is like do we have enough funds to keep all those sheets on the top and then once they get reconstructed keep them all keep all of them up there because hopefully all your sheets would be in that conditions and so you just your maintenance side of the house budget would be more but higher and the engineering side of the house would be

1:54:48lower because we're not reconstructing them so that's what I'm trying to do we have enough money to keep our sheets there so we're not having deferred maintenance and ended up in the right category yeah so it would be it would be a close coordination with engineering to say this is how much this is our our capacity every year is it is it enough to you with the new results and knowing that from five years ago to now we're in a better better shape with what we currently have still is it a good a good projection for the next four years but but right now we're we have enough funds to keep our streets that are in good conditions state and good condition categories I would say yes yes thank you okay council members any questions on this side I have a question okay go ahead

1:55:43um so I just wanted to first off and say that almost a million dollars in savings of a contract is huge and so I just want to applaud that reexamination of of of that contract and also appreciate that in this budget it seemed like you were going through all the couch cushions even thinking about cell phone use and saving an additional fifty thousand dollars in in your cell phone use contract so I really wanted to appreciate the thoroughness with which you were trying to identify savings and reductions in a challenging budget year um I wanted to you probably anticipated this ask some questions about the ballpark um position um would love to hear a little bit about um the thought process regarding the time limited nature of the position and whether or not um a contract rather

1:56:39than a full an FTE were explored as options I'm gonna take the first step at that so the timeline it would be for as long as the ballpark exists in its current shape and for as long as this year and the city have this partnership to activate the building and make it available so it doesn't become a vacant property so that's the time limit we we hope that it is the redevelopment is is in the next two years but I know that there are multiple layers that come into play to to determine that timeline now the second question related to you contracting I'll let JP answer that because uh Kate mentioned uh the know-how and that's that's relevant in this conversation yeah the the know-how's is really key that the ballpark's probably one of our most complicated if not the most complicated

1:57:40facility that we have and between the grounds a three-story building and all of all of the parts of it I think you might wonder why couldn't we just hire a property manager I think it would end up costing us far more in the long run for that employee plus all of the coordination and that would continue to take where at time we're going to need that internal expertise to figure out um for that person to figure out all the ins and outs in addition to the events and the coordination with the CRA that needs to happen and then the CRA's vendors it would be extremely difficult we wouldn't even know where to start and who to hire is a contracted service thank you for that um I'll just take this as an opportunity to share a fun fact which was that earlier this week on um May 19th

1:58:30mark the 33rd anniversary of groundbreaking at the ballpark stadium and I only remembered that because I saw plaque in one of the council offices back here acknowledging that that moment so I understand it's an aging stadium but uh you know significant investment of public resources and time and energy but it is a beloved site in the neighborhood especially as it begins to reimagine its future thank you. Hi any more questions okay thank you for the presentation appreciate the time moving on to uh gender item number six fiscal year 2026 2027 for the budget discussion for the fire department we are welcoming Michael Sanders council policy analyst chief Carl Leave uh SLC fire department chief and uh Alicia Kacabow financial manager at the table

1:59:25Michael is your time thank you chair so the fire department includes the office of the fire chief and three divisions the FY 27 proposed fire department budget is 59,302,822 dollars which would increase the budget by approximately 8.26 percent the department is proposing to fund 10 new FTEs nine firefighters and one civilian supervisor slash fire inspector and this budget proposes 10 months of funding for these positions it's proposed to fund these new FTEs through the proposed property tax increase and this would bring the total FTE count of the fire department of the fire department to 416 and additional 276,200 dollars in property tax increase revenue is proposed to be used to fund other operational cost increases for the department and with that I'll yield the floor

2:00:20to chief leave thank you Michael I appreciate that go for it next slide before I get started just want to introduce those that are with me today I've got my sits and chiefs in the back here chief Stafford chief melon and chief fox in that order left to right and next to me as Michael said is my new finance manager Alicia Kacabow she comes to us kind of in a circular life experience a native of Utahn and has spent some time in New Jersey in California and we were fortunate to have her because she has vast experience in fire department operations I'll just let her introduce herself really quick that's okay council chair yes go ahead good afternoon my name is Alicia Kacabow it's nice to meet you all yeah I'm born and bred here in Salt Lake City little louder sorry

2:01:19born and bred here in Salt Lake City grew up in Mill Creek area and left lived back east for quite a while and then I was with several agencies fire agencies in California my last role being with Orange County Fire Authority which was a pretty big outfit in California and just returned back I'm still transitioning from from San Diego back here and just very fortunate and grateful to be with Salt Lake City fire great reputation so I'm happy to be here thank you welcome thanks Alicia I appreciate okay council thank you for giving us a little time to talk about our proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 I'll start with an introduction overview of where we are and who we are I think most of you are familiar with that but just to quickly go over that we are at 406 employees

2:02:12we were operating out of 14 fire stations across the city last year we responded to approximately 45,000 calls for assistance that includes gold cross calls as well and then we run out of eight specific department divisions. Next slide please. Oh okay okay quickly I just like to go over our accomplishments and then over some efficiencies that we received or we saw over this past fiscal year number one gold standard of fire departments ISO class one this is difficult to achieve less than 1% of fire departments in this country have this rating the ISO is the insurance service office and this is notable because the largest insurance companies look to the ISO to determine the community's risk so this tangibly benefits our community and lower insurance rates so we're very proud to have

2:03:09this and we we've had this now this ISO class one for the past set we're in our seventh year now so we're very proud of that you'll see that branding on our fire engines the firefighters are well aware that they're class one and so do other firefighters across the state. Next early this this past late I should say late this past year we completed our station one bay extension this was notable for our operations for literally two years we were operating a truck in that station that was a reserve apparatus because it's the only truck we could fit in that specific station so we needed to lengthen those bays to get the actual up-to-date technologically modern truck and for over those two years we made it happen because we needed that truck in the core of the

2:04:00city so we operated a reserve for that many months and then we had to go out of service completely for the remodel fortunately it took it was right on target took about eight months we expanded that bay and now we have the latest most modern apparatus in that station third bullet here we completed a memorandum of understanding with the Salt Lake City School District this is a very important link we have with our community our cadet program is associated with with the school district they complete classes such as introduction to public's public safety jobs fire fire they they learn about the fire activity and fire science they can get their EMT certificate they can get a red card which is a wildland certificate recognized nationwide

2:04:52and this is a great opportunity for young people who really aren't sure what they're going to do but they enter this fire program and interestingly enough in a couple hours I'll be talking at their graduation they can graduate with up to 15 college credits with this program and they get a head start on this kind of job and many of them are interested in becoming firefighters if not police officers or other trades involved in public safety and they go on to apply for those jobs so we feel really good about linking the department with these with these young people our fourth bullet we eliminated toxic aircraft firefighting foam we call it a triple F it is full of of you've all heard of the P what yes yeah PFAS it slipped my mind PFAS and it is extremely hazardous both humans and

2:05:47the environment we made the conscientious decision in collaboration with the airport to get rid of this type of foam it's still being used in many commercial airports and in his industry as well as the military but we have been operating with this product for years and it makes all the sense in the world not to be operating with this product but it is not without an investment on both fire departments part to just to find a disposal site for this and the airports part to to support you know a different type of form a more advanced foam which is called F3 so we finally got rid of that it was literally 18 months to two-year process to find a place for this okay next slide please

2:06:30let's talk about some efficiencies over the last year these are all directly related what what I believe they all have in common is we didn't add any full-time employees to accomplish any of these so the top three here we signed a temporary fire fire out of operations to our fire prevention bureau to reduce the weight to get a fire systems inspection accomplished we've slowly been increasing that time to receive those so developers new business owners they want to get those permits as quickly as they can think most of the council understands that so we have taken people from operations we've temporarily signed them to the bureau to accomplish that secondarily in the second bullet we created a wildland coordinator position

2:07:14we didn't have this position before the LA fires last year in January and wildland quickly has become our number one risk here in Salt Lake City and for most fire departments that have any kind of an urban interface so we've taken another person from operations we made them the wildland coordinator this is a very experienced wildland firefighter who is helping the department up with their training certifications helps us with incident command we are as prepared for wildland as we can be right now with the position like this third bullet restructured our community relations division it was time for the fire department to to up its game as far as our communication with the community we needed actual professionals in public relations and

2:08:00social media and that's we can't always find that with firefighters traditionally we've had firefighters rotate through our community relations and they do the best they can but they're not professional digital media you know professionals now we have found those we've replaced some of those firefighter positions we have a communications manager we do now have a digital media coordinator a professional and we have someone just dedicated to social which is where people get their information now whether I like it or not I know that's how they're learning about the fire department so we've made we've made some real significant gains gains in the way we communicate with the people we serve fourth bullet we retained our core operations over this past fiscal year with no additional full

2:08:48time employees from last year's budget I know that these are difficult times for the city but when people call 911 and they need a firefighter they're getting them there is no delay if your local fire engine or fire truck isn't responding you're gonna get the nearest apparatus someone is coming to the call so we're pretty proud to say that we have been completely responsive and we're providing the same high level of service this past year that we have previously lastly another efficiency I think the mayor's office has been very clear as has the council quite honestly about the need to collaborate within the city to try and become more efficient to try and utilize the skills and the various proficiencies that we do have already employed and I think a great example is

2:09:38the fire department has been collaborating with the police department better than we ever have in the past the firefighters and the police officers have always gotten along we've always had a positive relation and in fact in administration we've always gotten along with police administrators as well and the police chief but boots on the ground things that are actually happening now I've never seen that in the past 10 years that I've been the chief or in my career specific examples would be the drone program that the police department operates we are a big fan of the drone program council members we have we see great value in operating drone over our fire incidents has mad incidents reconnaissance for any type of incidents we have in the foothills maybe a rescue

2:10:23of someone on a trail so the fire department's in support of the police department's drone program whatever they're whatever they're asking for I would recommend that because they are there for us it's been really positive other things that we provide the police department they've been operating with our mobile command vehicle over the past couple years because they haven't had a sufficient vehicle and although it's red and it's branded Salt Lake City Fire they still use it they're not really happy about it sometimes but it is a good vehicle to have and they've needed it and we're happy to provide that for them we also provide in the fire department SWAT paramedics for their SWAT operations and they have provided one half of a lieutenant to operate

2:11:10with our emergency management liaison to the police department which is really a big deal for emergency management because almost in every incident police and fire working together so for us to have a direct link with their administration with a lieutenant who's housed currently in the emergency management area on the third floor and the PSP is really valuable to us so these are just some examples of what's going on as far as collaboration with your police and fire departments next slide please okay overview of our fiscal year 26 budget on the left is our current budget 54.7 million encompasses 406 full-time employees no part-time employees our request scenario to the right is 10 additional employees the cost of 1.5 million dollars other budgetary changes in the

2:12:04amount of 2.9 million dollars 9 7 million dollars our total proposed budget for this next fiscal year would be 59.3 million we also have a cut scenario of 50 000 next slide please this is a general overview of the request scenario and then we'll get into the details so the change as far as personnel services on top that's all encompassed basically in step increase and personnel cost per the mou agreement with the firefighters contracts and inflationary those are the contracts that we need to operate the fire department utilities other contracts that just occur and inflate year by year zero for capital the other change 40600 is a uniform increase per the memorandum of understanding with the firefighters then the new insights of 10 additional employees for 1.57 million and

2:13:01a ba4 which is specifically focused on wildland which was 88 000 one-time and 75 000 ongoing which is specific to up staffing during red flag days and then some equipment for a firefighters wildland equipment so the totals at the bottom a current fiscal year budget from 54.78 if we add 4.5 million our fiscal year 27 total is going to be 59.3 million dollars let's talk about some of the details next slide please okay insight number one as i talked about contractual increases total increased fires anticipating for the year year contracts this is the cost to operate the fire department on day to day insight number two as i talked about is a uniform increase per the mou with the firefighters and insight number three here's the first additional fte this is a civilian supervisor for the fire

2:13:58prevention bureau as i alluded to when we started this our our bureau is being overwhelmed by quite frankly the growth in the city city is growing by approximately 10 over the last five years and service demand for instance is increased by 18 percent so if you just look at that kind of

2:14:19average you know that we're seeing just in in service demands you can see how the development is going and saw like as well people are coming to salt lake so we have businesses that are coming here we have contractors that want these fire system assessments and we're trying to get to them as quickly as possible but we haven't added to our fire prevention bureau in over 10 years quite honestly any additional assistance so permits are increased these by 600 over the last three years we have been reassigning as i said operational firefighters on a temporary basis to the bureau to take up the load we just teach them data entry and how to do some of the administrative things that our inspectors need to do so we can get them out in the field and do the inspections

2:15:03also house bill 48 we have wild and urban interface new ordinance that need to be taken care of new assessments but with our our properties that are in the interface and that's all managed by the fire prevention bureau so the the load on the bureau is increasing dramatically and has increased over the past few years i have asked for assistance in the bureau before but quite honestly the the bureau assistant always falls to be the third priority or the fourth priority even i'm talking within the fire department there's always something that we need it's it's time now where i just had to get help for the bureau next slide okay insight number four this is the other nine additional fte's this is

2:15:45firefighters for a fourth truck in salt lake city it will be housed at at station three in sugar house the cost of this apparatus is two point four million dollars and we've been waiting three and a half years to see this truck and nationwide this is how long it takes to get a large heavy fire unfortunately as i said we're going to put this in place in sugar house the increase in high rise building development the number of people that are moving into that area the density we're seeing within the sugar house area and these are this is what we call kind of a high-risk population many very old people in sugar house as well as very young with children and the people that are in sugar house right now what we're seeing is these are residents as we call it heads on the pillow

2:16:35these are people that are there 24 seven so we've got some real risk going on a sugar house without that vertical capability of a truck to get a truck from the core of the city into sugar house when we need it there's a significant delay who knows what time of the day it's going to be and what we've seen recently just two days ago we had a fire out at a warehouse west of redwood road there was some debris there was some junk but we have four trucks and play out there at that scene we only have three trucks that means i had a truck from west valley and a truck from south salt lake on the way in when you need a truck you need a truck we had a high-rise fire in february in the avenues we had every truck that we had on scene there and we all know what happened in sugar house

2:17:21several years ago now we almost lost that whole block i needed every truck i could get there throughout the valley so trucks are like a giant toolkit for the firefighters to have one in sugar houses of great value to salt lake city insight number five additional resource if we're going to add a fourth truck to the city operations frontline we're going to need to retrain retain the truck that it's replacing these trucks are highly technical they're big they're heavy but they break and if a truck breaks i need to have the reserves to fill the spot of that truck because i don't want communities across the city going without truck capability for any extended periods of time and the usually the repairs on a truck

2:18:05is not a week long it can literally take weeks to months to get it back so it's very important we we retain that truck and keep it as a reserve next slide please lastly we have a cut scenario through the city as i said fifty thousand dollars next slide we'll talk about the details of that

2:18:30fifty thousand dollars will come from administrative costs travel cuts training that we do outside of the city sometimes we conduct the training for other departments sometimes we attend the training but we'll make up that fifty thousand and we'll get that paid back to the city the next slide and that's what i have for you council members so i'll take any questions if you have them council member young oh you're shocked i'm first um so thank you and thank you for the opportunity to um kind of consider the needs i think one of the things that's not reflected in this budget but i think it's good for the general public to know is that you know our salt lake city fire department does not wait for these moments to be able to do a review of resources

2:19:22and do a reallocation and so i am obviously probably more red and than than you know your day to day resident related to some of those changes but i'm wondering if you could just kind of share what some of that process has looked like i know you recently we moved um one of the um smaller um emergency response vehicles um over to the west side you know to be able to be more responsive if there's just additional kind of context to that reallocation process um for the good of the group thank you council member young yeah we make data-driven decisions in the fire department but i also like to look at the the holistic view of what we're trying to accomplish uh throughout the city and make common sense decisions as well oftentimes we're limited by the

2:20:15size of our facilities quite honestly and we've seen this um throughout the city over the last several years we have squads that are located in the core of the city yet they're not in the ideal locations where i would want to deploy a squad and we look at service demand we look at the types of calls that we're receiving whether when we're talking about chat or we're talking about squads we're talking about mental health calls substance abuse calls or just trauma that can be addressed by a squad and doesn't need four firefighters and you know a two million dollar apparatus those are important decisions that we make all the time and and i'm highly in tune to trying to be as efficient as possible in the way we respond salt lake city fire department we

2:21:01pride ourselves on our progression we'll try a lot of different things i'm not afraid to look over the fence and see what other organizations are doing but we also lead out on a lot of these things a chat program for instance i can't find another chat program that's operating exactly the way we are deploying from fire stations having a social worker on scene within minutes and addressing a substance abuse problem or a mental illness problem and then getting that person onto the services that they really could use and then following up that is pretty progressive and we get a lot of requests to talk about that and we go outside of this the city and speak about it as well but it's the same with fire when we look at sugar house when we knew we needed additional truck

2:21:47you know we're looking at things like what what's going to happen in the future not just what's happening now but in an area in your district council member you already have 12 to 13 mid or high rises in place you know a lot of them are residential and already on the docket you know what's planned or what's in development is another 12 so everything's going vertical and we think about what we're going to need in the worst case scenario where we're going to need a truck and this is where we're going to need to put it the other three trucks are located you know towards the core of the city there's a couple on the west side of the city there's one right downtown and we feel good about those locations but this will make us feel a lot better thank you and I think it's to me at

2:22:30least one of the ways that we've been talking about it with my neighbors is the fact that you know the city is highly invested in being a part of the solutions in the affordability space part of that solution of affordability includes height and density in areas that may not have previously had it and I think it's important and appreciate and applaud you and your team for the city to also keep pace with the appropriate emergency response safety net both in terms of personnel as well as having the appropriate equipment so that that doesn't become our limiting factor in terms of being able to help to address some of those affordability issues across the city so thank you for that you're welcome thank you.

2:23:19President Wood-Dugan.

2:23:22Thank you Chief, appreciate it very much and appreciate the great work that your department does and can't but old guy glasses jumping on what Katamay Young was just talking about the resources there and and then you kind of mentioned the chat team I mean we the chat team has been invaluable to the city across the board it reduced the wear and tear on your vehicles the big vehicles it's responded quickly and it's it's the right people at the right place at the right time and but we also probably see that we may possibly need an additional team or more whether it's a chat team or an mrt team and marty team yeah in the in the near future and could you what resources would be required to to add another chat team and would another chat team help reduce

2:24:15some more wear and tear on your vehicles and also some more less responses required from the police side of the house or other sides that the chat team could actually save us resources in the long one but causes may be a little bit upfront yeah thank you council member um yeah the the chat teams are a great return on investment given what we're spending on an SUV we have a fire fighter on the chat team we have a mrp which is a medical response paramedic that's a civilian not firefighter train because they don't need to be and then with to make a chat we have a social worker so you have those three distinct capable resources on that SUV and they are bouncing around the city every day to the vast majority of the type of calls that we see so to answer your question

2:25:09yeah right now we have two of those chat teams in service on a daily basis one on the west side station six and one on the east side station five now we have a third squad which does not encompass the social work component at station two which is in district district three council member warden's station right by west high so to answer your question if we wanted to add another chat team we really would need to add only two social workers and put them on that squad by west high and that becomes chat so that's a simple that's a simple answer that we could do that or we could add a fully capable another SUV another firefighter another medical response paramedic and a social worker which would be four times the amount but that would give us four in the

2:26:02city I think that personally council member duke and I think as a fire chief it seems reasonable and rational and fiscally responsible maybe to consider adding just the two social workers to the squad that doesn't have a social work component and then we're operating with three chat teams across the city so I appreciate it because I would like to I know that it's not this current budget we're talking about right now but I would really like to explore that additional cost because I think that the benefits would be best as you said you know the return on investment is great not on just on your expenses of maintenance of your vehicles but also the city's expensive of

2:26:45you know ambience ambience is PD calling out PD when we again we put the right people in the right place at the right time and adding those two maybe a small expense with a big return so I'd like to explore that possibly in the near future after this budget session because we think it is coming time to do that very good we'll forward that cost on to you in the council thank you council member betro thank you thank you chief can you tell me are we is our pattern of growth and call response typical nationwide you said that we experienced 10 population growth and I assume when you say that you're speaking about the people who live here we're not talking about the flexing during the day of so but we're experiencing 18 increase in calls is that typical is that

2:27:39something we expect to see for fire departments or is there something anomalous that maybe we should be looking at and doing education I can't speak council member specifically to you know the data for other cities but I would think that's fairly typical cities that are thriving are growing so service demand is increasing the more people that you have in the city more people coming to live in the urban area the more calls you're going to have whether that's police or fire department calls you know just it happens so if we still see an increase in population we're going to continue to see an increase in service service demand and with the development we're potentially seeing with s e g you know and on the in north temple in the power district the ballpark it's going to draw

2:28:32more people to the city which is great we all love the city but it's also going to draw more requirements for public safety services you're just baiting me to get on my authority so box about how we have all of this preempted diverted revenue but the demand but this it actually is causing me to think of some really interesting things because it's really popular in current nationwide new sources to talk about how cities run by certain political parties are not as well managed because the property tax is high but the truth is those of us sitting in this room in my neighbors and I and then all of us we're subsidizing everyone's enjoyment of the city because we're ensuring right now through a property tax increase that when everyone comes to the city

2:29:16they can guarantee that they're going to be safe when they don't have the resources to take care of a person who's homeless who ends up here that person now has a resource so this isn't actually a political thing at all this is the nature of concentrating population another example I was noticing is that at the University of Utah we have 125 more calls for service in a trajectory that is increased so when the rest of the state and region sends their kids to Salt Lake City to study at the preeminent research university in the area again because that is a nonprofit state entity we are subsidizing that is is that a typical increase for service as well or is there another educational piece I'm really I'm really wondering if I like you guys to work smarter not harder I

2:30:01respect everything that you do and I'm so proud of the public safety apparatus that we have here but I don't believe in just asking you to work harder haphazardly if there is things that we need to be doing to educate people on how to not set fire to the floor of their dorm room or whatever is going on here like I feel like that's a really great collaboration we should be asking for yeah I agree we do respond you're correct the data is accurate the last year we responded to approximately what 1,850 calls at the University of Utah and we have a good relationship with them up there but it seems the expectation is Salt Lake City Fire provide those emergency and fire service campus wide and we go there 1,850 calls doesn't cripple us by any means but it's significant it's

2:30:54certainly not insignificant and we've never charged for those services we've never had a system where we could charge for those those services but we discuss it a lot I get a lot of questions from from councils in the past about how often we're going there but I don't have the means to charge them of course just I'm happy to do so but there just doesn't seem to be a system in place or maybe there maybe there's not enough of a desire to do that that's that's up to you know not not the fire chief but we do respond and we will be there same as we are from anyone else so yeah in a way that could take away services from other other areas I this year I'm going to be deeply interested in ways that we can work to make sure that any growth in service demand

2:31:44is actually warranted and there's not a lower hanging fruit like helping people understand what other options are available maybe being safer my final question exists around the dry conditions that we're already seeing and anticipate to get worse do you foresee should we have even more catastrophic outcomes from the dry weather do you foresee a need for increased over time for firefighters are there other ways that we offset if we need you all more than we needed you last year do you think that we should be prepared to do we need to be looking forward to setting some things aside to support you more thank you for that for that question council member yes you have actually mayor's office the council has been supportive budget amendments specifically budget

2:32:32amendment for from last year provided us with some money to get additional firefighters into the city to be in the interface eyes and ears of what's happening during the worst conditions so that is immensely helpful because the faster we identify these fires and the faster we can get on them the risk dramatically reduces for what you know the damage that can be incurred so yes you have been supportive in addition just getting our department up to speed with the kind of equipment specifically wildland equipment that our firefighters need to operate in that environment is super important because at the foundation salt lake city fires a structural department so wildland firefighting is a relatively new concept for departments such as ours

2:33:18but we have experienced firefighters and as I talked as I talked about we have a firefighter coordinator now and we have other firefighters have managed these kind of scenes in california sometimes out east even as well but now we are up to speed and that's thanks to your your support and the mayor's office I think we're where we need to be thank you you're welcome thank you chief I um two questions um I'm gonna start with the one on the new yorky uta since it was brought up um if you deployed and I'm sure that you didn't have to deploy heavy apparatus for all those calls but if you did deploy that we're talking about you know over two million dollars of you know costs to our city um you know assuming some standard costs on deploying a

2:34:07heavy apparatus to to a call it's a significant amount of money um our city is you know absorbing through the calls so I would like to explore how do we reduce the calls from your university of uta and what can we do to proactively reduce that but then potentially figure out if we're a way of like recouping some um and I know that some of them may not be politically or system-wide but I wonder if some people are found negligent um for causing the call uh in the in the process of the state seeking restitution uh if the cost of deploying an apparatus could be included into that um this seems like maybe nuance into this whole thing but it's only fair if if someone in those few cases where someone is found to be negligent uh which it may not be the majority of those calls um

2:35:08you know if the cost of you know deploying you know those thousands of dollars of equipment could be somehow maybe even partially uh recouped um I mean it's it's a lot of of calls for service that you guys are doing and it's also incredible the amount of calls for substance abuse and mental health issues that you guys respond I mean like more than 60% of your calls are that um it's is

2:35:36it paints a picture about the issues that we we experience in our city um and the the question and I would like to explore if there is a path if it's if it really requires a legislative act from other layers of government to help us do that on the recouping or or or charging some costs in there um regarding permitting um I wonder if your department has um adapted um to uh the new way of office spaces that we have popping up all over the city where companies uh rent um office space uh and they jump around or it's a shared space and there is multiple uh business license coming into the same space um and what I've experienced is that the fire department will reissue uh you know a permitting process when you know the space might have

2:36:38been uh checked not too long ago maybe a few months ago but because of that shifting around of those of those uh of those companies within the same building or the coming of a new company um into the same space um the the the department a standard reissues the the requirement of uh you know getting that permit issue again by the by you guys um I wonder if there is a way of adapting to the nuance of this like coal working spaces and this new um way of office but we see in this in this day and age I wonder if there is a way of potentially finding some efficiencies in that side. I think we can certainly look at that council member I'm we want to facilitate the approval of these inspection permits as quickly as possible doesn't serve certainly doesn't serve

2:37:33our goal you know to delay that it's probably our number one biggest well it is for fire department our number one criticism and I'm quite honestly we don't have many fortune is the permitting right permitting and codes sometimes we have to say no to developers because it doesn't meet the fire code uh we don't take any pleasure in that there's a reason the fire code exists you know to save lives but on the on the permitting question um that you posed I would love to facilitate that and look into how we can make that easier faster more efficient for the end customer which is the developer or the business owner the you know the resident who's aspiring to start you know a fledgling business that's it's a task to go through all of the code you know mandates that they have they

2:38:20exist for a reason but we don't have to make it tough so we look at all all the options I can illustrate that example at some point a little more because I sort of have a little experience on it and I I wonder if there is a way of simplifying the process it may be a win-win but yeah I appreciate any any other comments okay because I will thank you some oh council more just one more sorry about you know I have to mention the areas above the foothills and then city creek and all of that are there um you once told me that if you had increases in your budget and that you would put that more towards education than then maybe some of other things that people have brought up in the community do you see any opportunities to do that within the budget that you proposed or

2:39:16would we only be able to do this the same amount of education that we're doing right now I think with the additional particularly the budget amendment council member warden that's going to allow us to not only up staff so we have better the view of the interface particularly you know you have a lot of that in your district but also those personnel be doing fuel mitigation efforts so that will be reducing you know the risk the the trees the dead foliage that they're going to see on some of the most common areas that's going to be directly impact the risk in the urban interface it's also then allow them to interact and communicate with your neighbors with the community up there in all of the interface because the most if we can

2:39:58get firefighters out and talking to people door to door and and we still just last weekend we were we were out um in the urban interface putting out flyers about ready set go you know prepare for a wildfire and we talked to people in their yard while they're working that's the biggest return on investment when we put people into the neighborhoods but we also have free offers to come to people's properties and talk to them about defensible space how do you reduce the risk of wildfire we're doing that quite commonly right now so the additional personnel the additional funding the additional financial support is tangibly noticed in our ability to interact with our communities okay thank you thank you so much chief for your presentation thank you all of you welcome

2:40:49I appreciate the time thank you council member thank you good job we'll be we'll be rough next time

2:41:02council members we we are done with the agenda for now as you as you probably notice in the agenda it includes an N number seven which is the tentative item as required by the law which is fiscal year 2026 2027 budget property tax impact schedule which is posted in in the agenda and available for anybody that wants to see it there is not report from chair and vice chair and that is is there a report from the executive directors no okay and we need a motion to go into closed session for a strategy sessions to discuss collective bargaining and attorney client matters mr. chair I move that we go into a closed meeting for the purpose of discussing employee bargaining and to receive advice of council second

2:41:52yes I have a motion by council member warden and a second by council member dougan I'm going to call the question council member young I council member petro I council member dougan yes throw me off council member warden I council member Carson yes and I may I this moves yeah this goes unanimous we are close right now thank you and we are adjourned after the closed session