Transcript — Eagle Mountain City Council, 14 April 2026

Speaker A: Maybe if I start talking, the conversation will slow down. So I keep telling these guys we're about ready. And, uh, so we're gonna go ahead and get started. I just kind of as a— oh, everybody's here. I thought you were online. I was gonna make sure. Is everybody online and working good? Okay, then we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order at 3:06.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: It's our budget work session, and I'm pretty excited to see where this goes. So our first item was—

Speaker C: are you first, or—

Speaker A: all I have is discussion proposed budget. So I'm, I'm actually really proud to see you like full dress uniform. I don't know if I should salute, but I did invite— you can come on. You can come on up, but we— I invited Chief Smith. I know he said he probably had things to do, but he trusted you'd probably give a better presentation anyway, so.

Speaker D: That's not true.

Speaker A: I would say I can come out here.

Speaker E: I'm going to give him a full report.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker F: Any technical— oh, oh, something's happening.

Speaker G: There you go.

Speaker A: Ta-da! Alrighty.

Speaker F: Mayor, City Council, Mr. Reeves, I appreciate you guys giving me the time to meet with you today to talk about the budget request. And again, Sheriff Smith sends his regards. He's not going to be here. I talked to him earlier. He did give me a little comment to maybe present to you at the end. You know, he's obviously passionate about the contract, about being the sheriff of the county, and his expectations of our law enforcement service that we provide, not only to the residents of the county, but the residents of Eagle Mountain specifically. So I'll address that later. Thank you. Please forgive his absence, and appreciate you letting me take a little bit of time. What I want to talk about today—I kind of gave a similar presentation a little over a year ago, or around this time frame. For those of you that weren't here as council members then, this some of it will be new. Some of you that were here before, it'll be stuff you're familiar with to a certain extent. I'll just kind of cut to the chase and get to what I'm requesting, and and and it's about some staffing plan needs for the. for the Sheriff's Office here at Eagle Mountain. I leave this slide up. It's the beginning one. It's kind of what we do. I won't read it to you verbatim, but the top line is important, and I think it's very important. We are your police department, and we provide police services to the citizens of Eagle Mountain. We've done so since the inception of Eagle Mountain, and, and now it's, it's an official contract. We are not called out here daily for calls for service. We are assigned out here. We have an actual— What's your name? Office space that we utilize. We have 35 sworn law enforcement officers and some administrative staff. So let me get to that right here. This is, this is who we are in a nutshell. Um, we are the Eagle Mountain Division of the Sheriff's Office. You have a chief deputy, that's me. Um, then you have a lieutenant, you have an officer specialist, and you have 5 sergeants. Uh, one is our admin sergeant and the other 4 are patrol sergeants, and they each have, uh, 4 deputies assigned to them. And then you have one victim advocate, two special victims, two property crime detectives for a total of four detectives and the victim advocate. Also, under Sergeant Max Morgan, you also have three coordinators who deal with things like our RAD program, and then you have the VIPs, the volunteers in patrol. So down at the bottom right, it tells you kind of what our exact staffing is. Tell you kind of the layout. Our current service demand and coverage is 77,000 people is approximately maybe just a little hair less than that 76. Uh, number. Maybe even we're over 77 now. Um, 50.3 square miles. We do run 24/7 patrol operations. We have 4 patrol teams, as I mentioned, 1 sergeant, 4 deputies per shift. We run 12-hour shifts, um, basically a day and a night. They rotate about every 2 months. The, the teams will go to day shift for 2 months and then back to graveyards for 2 months. We have 2 animal control deputies. We have 2 traffic enforcement for a total of 24 patrol officers. on duty or as part of our contract. Now, at the bottom of that, you see some numbers. What happened last year after this presentation was given was the request, and it was the correct request, to give you a— not just a number of officers per 1,000 as why we need to expand, but what's our workload? What's the workload of the deputies that are assigned to work out here? And so, I did do a workload study, or at least I went through one and tried to do it the best I could and get as accurate as I can. I wanted you to see these numbers because I want you to kind of understand just a simple number, whether we need more or not. This number reflects how many people are assigned out here. At the current number of sworn officers, we have 0.45 officers per 1,000, or 1 per 2,200 residents. Lehigh City has 0.7, or 1 per 1,429. They're at about 100,000, maybe a little bit more than 100,000 people. Saratoga Springs and Bluffdale— I added Bluffdale because I was asked the question a while ago. I was what going to ask you that. those actual numbers are, but they are at about 1 per 1,000. If you divide them up, I think there's 14 patrol officers that are assigned to Bluffdale, and then there's another 60-something officers that are assigned to full-time Saratoga Springs. So they're at— Saratoga Springs itself is about 0.9 per 1,000, Bluffdale is about 0.7 per 1,000, but combined they're about 1 officer per 1,000 for the total population of both cities. Mm-hmm. They're close by. That's why I'm including them. I want you to kind of see what the surrounding cities have as part of that workload study. Lehigh City did one at the request of their city council members. They referred to the ICMA, which is the International City Council Management Association. I refer to the same thing. We have something similar in law enforcement, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, that also gives some standards. when it comes to law enforcement services in a city.

Speaker H: Mm-hmm.

Speaker F: Some of the things that the ICMA talks about in their initial study is what's called the Rule of 60. The Rule of 60 is your patrol allocation. The Rule of 60 in this case says 60 of the sworn should be assigned— 60% of the sworn should be assigned to patrol. Currently, we have 68.5% assigned to patrol here in Eagle Mountain, which puts us above the benchmark. However, we are light in administration, supervision, investigations and community outreach programs with the city. But we are light on admin, but we are slightly heavy on regular patrol. The ICMA refers to the 75% rule or 75% availability, and what they're talking about, that basically is what it says in the parentheses, meaning roughly 25% of the officers are unavailable to give a shift due to court and leave and training. Again, we're talking about authorized versus what's really deployable. We have— we are authorized 24 guys on patrol, But what you actually patrol with is about the 75% range because a lot of the guys are called to do different things, whether they're on sick leave, FMLA, whether they're in court, and things like that. So even though we're authorized at 24, effectively our deployment strength is consistently lowered due to leave, injuries, training, specialty commitments. That's not unique to Eagle Mountain. That is just law enforcement in general. And so we at Eagle Mountain, we try to maintain 4 deputies on shift at a time. A lot of times as we move forward doing that, the calls for service is requiring us to use a little bit more overtime to call in deputies to work those shifts. So our workload study, we have 25,000, or last year we had 25,699 or 98 total calls for service. That's an 18.6% increase of calls for service from the year prior.

Speaker I: Eric?

Speaker H: Yes, sir.

Speaker I: Commensurate with the growth? Excuse me, that number, do you think like that, that's commensurate with the overall growth of the citizens, or do you feel like that that's an increase in just actual crime?

Speaker F: It's an increase with the citizens. Um, I'll go out on a quick tangent real quick. Eagle Mountain City's safe, and, and, and I hope that's not being presented differently. Sometimes I'll read in social media, you know, we're turning into I hate to use a city like West Valley, but they say things like that. I think West Valley City is relatively safe too. They have their share of problems, but Eagle Mountain is not West Valley City. We don't have that crime rate. We are one of the safest cities in the state of Utah. You have citizen increase, which is creating more calls for service, more both law enforcement initiated and calls for service from the citizens itself, from 911 calls and other various ways that they call into the—

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker F: the Sheriff's Office to get assistance. So I would say that's attributed more to population growth. That comes out to about 70 incidents per day. That's 32 minutes average per incident, 38 hours per day spent handling calls for service. And I tell you this simply because this plays into the workload study. This doesn't include the backup units. When you do this study, you're trying to get as much real data as possible. There's only so much our computer systems can provide that we can analyze. We have to guesstimate on the rest. I chose not to guesstimate too much information on there. I didn't want to throw in the number of backup officers coming to a call if I didn't have the right answer for you, so I simply plugged in the data that I had. It didn't include the backup units. It didn't include report time or travel time— travel time to a call, but also travel time checking on duty, coming to work, and checking off duty and leaving work. And so, the Sheriff's Office, we, the deputies, check on duty from their homes, get in their vehicles, and drive to work, and they are paid for that travel time coming into work.

Speaker I: Just a follow-up question with the backup officers. Generally speaking, there's a protocol, I'm assuming, the number of backup officers that come depending on the type of call that it is?

Speaker F: I wouldn't list it as a protocol, but generally, just for officer safety, we want to try to, depending on the Depending on the call, we want at least 2 there. If you have a domestic violence, typically the deputy that shows up on scene, if he's not hearing an obvious reason he needs to go in by himself, he will wait for a backup officer. Very typical of a domestic violence call because we know through experience those are some of the most dangerous calls we respond to.

Speaker I: I just want to make some assumptions here, and maybe this is helpful to you. So if you have 4 officers on duty and 3 of them are on a single call, we now have 1, 1 person to answer the next call and then have to start Parsing out, correct?

Speaker F: It's very common. And not only is it common just for the type of calls, but, but take a DUI for instance. That's just another example. If you have a DUI, you make an arrest, the only jail facility that's close to us is Spanish Fork. So now you're going to lose him for an hour to drive down there, half hour for booking, and an hour to come back. So you're going to lose people. You can make it 3 on a call and have 1 available. And there'll be a lot— there are a lot of times where you won't have anybody available. And, and we sometimes will call on either the North County unit or surrounding agency to come assist us on that call. Call. So that happens quite frequently. So the ICMA talks about the workload, and the number that they focus on is what's called the saturated index. In other words, your staffing needs. It's the total number of officers committed to calls per hour divided by the total officers' time available per hour. They give the standard here. This came through ICMA itself. It said if it is consistently under 50%, you're likely your staffing is cushioned. If you're at about 50 to 60%, you are properly staffed. If you run over 60% for sustained periods, you are understaffed. In our case, running the numbers, our patrol saturation level is about 65 to 70% average during most periods and higher during peak hours. Peak hours vary, but typically peak hours on afternoon and in the weekends. Typically you run into about the 3 in the afternoon till about 7 or 8 o'clock at night. Usually you're dealing with traffic at that time when people are coming and going. You also have peak times in the morning as well. And so, but typically we're at about 65 to 70% work saturation or saturation index. That's what the level is. Our deputies are spending most of their available time responding to calls, which limits their ability to do proactive work. And I'll get into more later about what I'm— when I talk about proactive work. But so the question becomes, how many do we need?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker F: It's a tricky question, and, and obviously I think this is why I was asked to look at a workload, take the workload stance to find out what kind of work they're doing and not just base it off officers per 1,000 residents. And I think that's wise. I think that International Chiefs of Police Association is, is suggesting the same thing. But based on our call volume, our staffing level per shift Eagle Mountain needs about 5 to 6 deputies per shift as a minimum. We run about 4. Assigned to patrol, we should have about 32 to 34 deputies assigned to patrol. That keeps us at that cushioned level. An overall increase of about 8 to 10 deputies for patrol is, is what we need to have. Industry best practices focus on maintaining enough deputies on duty to handle calls while still allowing proactive police and safe backup. Proactive police, we're talking about community outreach programs. We're talking about the ability to work on neighborhood issues on a more long-term basis. We work shift work. A deputy working the day, working with a citizen on a particular project, might spend a day with them and then transfer to day shift, and now this person has to deal with another officer. So what we're trying to do as part of my request is going to be for some— a couple of full-time community-oriented police officers that can be out there working on long-term community issues. That's part of the patrol staffing plan, to increase patrol, but increase by 2 guys that I can use for strict proactive work to help with quality of life in neighborhoods. We're having that now. You have a lot of complaints that come forward. One of the conversations I had with the sheriff had to do with— he was here last night on a meeting— and it's visibility of law enforcement in the community. Eagle Mountain's lacking there. We're lacking on having our deputies getting out to areas because now they're becoming more inundated with calls for service.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker F: Now, when we talk about calls for service, even keep in mind, there's still part of that calls for service number is some proactive work. Now, we're talking traffic stops. We increased over the last couple of years our traffic unit to 2 full-time traffic, traffic units that help with calls as well when they can. But they are doing traffic enforcement. And as you probably saw, some of you that see the numbers, that number has increased on traffic enforcement. They are out being very proactive, and they're writing a lot of tickets. But they're being pulled off also to handle calls when patrol gets— when regular deputies are tied up. So that's what the need is.

Speaker A: Chief?

Speaker F: Go ahead.

Speaker E: You mentioned the community policing and being proactive and different things like that. And we hear up here on the dais quite a bit from residents when people are doing different things, and we hear little pockets of it throughout the city. Are— and you're here when you hear— when we hear those things.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker E: Are there any of those common concerns that are expressed by residents that are very unique and would be great for community policing to help tackle some of them? So like e-bikes, some of those other things that we're hearing from people?

Speaker F: So great question. One of the discussions that have been made or being— that are being had is, is how do you enforce city ordinance and how does Utah County Sheriff's Office enforce city ordinance? And I know the discussion came up about getting our city ordinances onto the computer system that allows Utah County Justice Court to actually file charges and for us to actually issue citations for some of these city ordinance violations. You don't have that right now. The question is, who does that and how does that happen? And how do we create city ordinances to meet the needs of the citizens of the community? A couple community-oriented police officers now have the time and ability to work with Marcus and work with others to get these city ordinances on the MOT, the Master Offense Table, so it can be prosecuted in justice court. 2 proactive guys have the ability to do that. 2 proactive— I say guys, I mean law enforcement officers. 2 law enforcement officers can go into the communities. They can work with problem areas. Oftentimes you guys will hear up in, you know, from the citizens here about problems in their neighborhood, whether it be stop sign violations, speeders, and things like that, and that they don't see law enforcement there. Their complaint is valid. And sometimes we don't have the time to go into certain communities and to target traffic enforcement in these areas, or— and I say or because traffic enforcement is a temporary Band-Aid. What really needs to happen is a permanent fix. And you need a couple guys that can work with the citizens, that can work with our traffic engineers, that can work with people to permanently resolve the issues that are happening in these neighborhoods.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker F: Whether that be through speed humps, you know, traffic design, whether that be putting up more stop signs or whatever. It's permanent solutions that you could have a couple law enforcement officers work on. And it's a way to get them to also help enforce those code violations or the traffic violations. And again, so we hear about it, and their complaints are legitimate. A couple proactive guys I think are going to make a huge impact in that area for Eagle Mountain right now. Eagle Mountain is lacking in that area where you— enough proactive time or finding enough officers to spend proactive time on it.

Speaker H: I hope that answered your question.

Speaker E: I think that's really helpful because as we look at budget and everything else, it's helpful for us to respond back to the residents and say, we've heard you and your concerns about X, Y, and Z, and one of the reasons why we're proposing this is because it will help us address X, Y, and Z. So that was helpful. Thank you.

Speaker F: Every citizen in this community, not just Eagle Mountain, but I think everywhere around the country has an expected level of service from law enforcement. They expect something in their community. And as city council members, they're expecting you to kind of go to bat for that to make sure that we as law enforcement officers are taking care of problems in their city. And oftentimes you need somebody that can spend some time on that, not just a phone call and maybe stop by for 5 or 10 minutes and sic a traffic unit on it. That's not going to resolve the problem permanently. And I think full-time officers, community-oriented policing type officers, can go in there and help resolve these issues. So, I'll go on with this. So, based on the workload study, an increase of 11 to 13 sworn total is what we're looking at, what we need. Right now, we're too lean. We're not failing. We're not collapsing. We can still take calls. Eagle Mountain is a safe place. It continues to be a safe place. But if the manpower needs are not addressed, you run the risk of this turning into something that it shouldn't be.

Speaker D: Thank you.

Speaker F: Citizens should not have to call in and get an automated voicemail system about filing reports. They should be able to talk to somebody. And it's expected by the public. We don't want to turn into a city, a big city. I think that is not the direction Eagle Mountain wants to go. I think the citizens moved out here for a reason, and I think we should give them the proper level of law enforcement services. We're lean, and in this case, lean means fragile, and I think it's something we need to pay attention to. Thank you. Let me back up. I didn't read that last one to you. In short, based— shift— an estimate— this estimate is based on shift coverage requirements, realistic availability reductions, population size, geographical responsibility, and daily call volume, not on national averages. And why I put that in there is I just want to make it clear that in another slide later, I refer back to the officers per 1,000. I'm not doing that from a standpoint of you need to have 0.7 or you need to have 1 officer per 1,000. You don't. Eagle Mountain City does not need that number yet. Will it one day? I hope not. I hope you don't get to the point where crime requires you to have 1 per 1,000, or the traffic here that may require that. Now, you're on track, you're growing, and— but I think we need to keep up with the needs of what you have right now. Do I think 0.7 is the number? No. But I'll tell you what I do think the number is here in a minute.

Speaker J: Okay.

Speaker F: This covers the 2 slides. This 2— these 2 slides cover the needs that I'm asking for. Um, I'm asking for 1 patrol deputy per team. That's 4 for patrol deputies. I'm asking for 2 community police officers and a sergeant. Now, the sergeant will help supervise these community officers, but right now we have one of the sergeants. If you refer back and can go remember the slide I showed at first, That talked about Sergeant Max Morgan. Sergeant Max Morgan is— he's beyond span of control for the supervision, the job he needs to do. He has too many people underneath him. I mentioned we are also very lean on our administrative side of the house. We have plenty of patrol guys— or sorry, we have 68% of patrol guys, and which is according to the staffing, according to that ICMA study, it's above what the national average is. But we need to have one more per team to bring us up to 5 instead of just 4. And then I need a sergeant, and Max needs some relief. He supervises too many people. And so my request is going to be for the 4 patrol deputies, the 2 community-oriented police deputies, and the one sergeant, for a total of 7. I mapped that out here just a little bit more, why I need the patrol sergeant.

Speaker H: Yes.

Speaker F: you know, current supervisory load exceeds best practices and help restore proper supervision leadership. Patrol deputies, asked for 6. The study recommends 8 to 10. Do I think we need 8 to 10? I do think we need 8 to 10. Financially, you know, I'm trying to be aware of, of, you know, at least be somewhat fiscally responsible of how Eagle Mountain stands right now and, and where you are as far as taxing and so forth. But you need 8 to 10. But I think right now on patrol deputies, An increase of 6 would bring us to a level that I think is doable. It brings us to safe staffing levels on patrol to ensure reliable response. The community officers can address repeat calls, neighborhood and business engagement, proactive enforcement, and reduce long-term demand on patrol. The last sentence kind of, Councilmember Clark, addresses what you were asking. Community-oriented policing strengthens trust between deputies and residents, proactively addressing neighborhood concerns, reduce crime through problem-solving partnership, and enhance overall public safety and quality of life in your community. Here's the cost breakdown. One sergeant, 6 deputies is going to cost an additional approximately $1.44 million. This is going to bring our saturation index to about 55 to 60%, slightly higher than that during the peak hours, but that's about where you're at. I think we'd call that fairly comfortable. It's doable for now. What that number brings us up to is 0.55 per residence. I still think we're below, but I think we're getting up there where we can be reasonably. We can talk more next year when it comes to budget requests and manpower requests, but I think 0.55 starts to bring us up to where Eagle Mountain is right now. Maybe to answer Councilmember Wood, your question of I don't think it's crime that's causing the big problem right now. Is crime going up? It is. But you have the number of residents that are growing up as well, are growing as well. So, but I think it brings it to a reasonable number. Again, Lehigh City's at 0.7. Saratoga Springs is 1.1. If you look around the national averages, they're higher than that. But if you look at some of the other cities that we've looked at in this county with Provo, Orem, they have a much bigger downtown, much bigger daytime traffic problem. But they're sitting at about 1, you know, 1.1 per 1,000 residents as well. So do I think 0.55 is high enough? Not yet. But it definitely gets us to a place where our guys can breathe a little bit and maybe do some more proactive stuff around Eagle Mountain. And that's needed. So I wanted to break this down because I know it's been brought up a couple times in our— in the city council. I just want to clarify some things in case you guys don't know this. I think you're probably aware of it, but I want to be clear on kind of how your contract monies are spent. The average deputy, and the way the contract is sent out is we basically take the lowest-end deputy and the highest-end deputy and we say what's the average that they're making, and then we times that by the number of deputies that are working out here. So the average cost for the deputy out here in your contract with benefits and salaries about $140,000. $40,000. And then on top of that, you're getting billed for the motor pool part portion of it. Utah County bears the responsibility of spending the money to purchase those cars. Eagle Mountain spends the money to basically pay the recapitalization costs on those over the next 4 years. We trade those cars in to get new vehicles. Some of that equipment stays with the vehicle, a lot of it doesn't. Radios typically stay, light bars will stay for an extra cycle on that rotation. But they also need to be rotated out eventually as well. They have radar equipment inside the vehicles, video equipment. The deputy themselves has body cams and some other stuff. So it breaks it down what all of those costs are that are most of the cops costs that are that are apply on that contract. The fourth bullet point talks about administrative costs. You deal with your HR costs, evidence, crime labs, crime scene costs, records bureau. That's all lumped into kind of your overhead costs as part of that contract. And also they cover our crime reporting system, which is Spillman, our liability insurance per deputy. That's required by law. Most states or most agencies around the state are paying that. I believe that's about $1,100 a year that every single officer and deputy in the state has to cover. And the cities and counties are paying that fee, but it's per deputy. Is what they're paying for. That's required. And then of course there's a, there's a little bit of that money that goes towards SWAT response, SAR response, canine. For those of you keeping up here, you know, we had a, we had a big call down at the new QTS building this last Friday of a bomb scare. You had, I think, 6 canines from around the county, including other agencies, and, uh, and then you had other personnel that responded on that call. And a lot of those fees cover some of those response from those entity. You also have drone, which is part of that. We do have a full-time drone guy working out here that's part of the drone team. And so that's all part of that service. So total cost per deputy is about $200,000, and the sergeant's about $247,000, $240,000. That's where the number came up, $1.44 million, was basically that cost of the 6 deputies along with the 1 sergeant. So From the sheriff, he—you know—I've had a lot of conversation with him about Eagle Mountain and the contract. He values this contract. He values the citizens of Eagle Mountain, and he has an expectation of the service that we're expected to provide to the citizens. But more importantly, he hears quite often the expected level of service the citizens. Want in their community. He was here last night. He spoke with the citizens of Eagle Mountain. They have an expectation. They voted you in to kind of meet those expectations. And right now, I think we're short. We're coming up short on the level of service we want to provide the citizens of Eagle Mountain. And I think adding some of these deputies, these 7 staffing plan requests, gets us closer to where we need to be. And so we talk about wants and needs. This is a need. This isn't a want. I think the want, we get into the higher numbers. But right now it's a need. For me personally, my question to you is, is what do we— what do you— what do the citizens of Eagle Mountain value? And when you talk about increasing our staffing plan for law enforcement services, what type of law enforcement do you want? What do you value? And we want to provide the best service for you guys and And it's tied directly to staffing. We have some of the best, and in case there's other cities listening to this, which they're probably not, but I'll tell you, I think we got the best group of deputies in this county, if not the state and around the country. And they do an amazing job. They're young, they're motivated, they love being out here, being part of Eagle Mountain, and the level of service they're providing is incredible, I think. I think if you look at Google reviews, we do okay. So again, that's at the very end. I wrote, let's keep Eagle Mountain a great place to live. I think, I think it's a phenomenal place, and I think the citizens have an expectation. And, and that's kind of my presentation. I put on one more slide. I'm going to click to it because a discussion point came up about— I think, I think it was Councilmember Clark that asked me. a while ago about the impact of big businesses coming here. And you have a couple more big businesses coming here, but you just had a big business open up its doors in Walmart. And so I thought, you know, can I gauge how this affects law enforcement? I can only run stats, and I can tell you from stats, is there an impact on law enforcement services provided to Eagle Mountain? Does this impact our law enforcement needs?

Speaker E: Yes.

Speaker F: So just for fun, I put together this. I wanted to go through in 2025, quarter 1, 2, 3, and 4. So it's just, you know, January, February, March, quarter 1, and then we go on from there. This is in a grid surrounding— this is not calls for service to Walmart. This is in a grid where Walmart is located. I simply said, how many police incidents did we have in this grid in the first quarter of 2025? We had 61 or 62. That can be traffic stops. That's not a lot. That can be traffic accidents, that can be calls for service, theft, or anything. But in that grid, this is our grid that we use in our law enforcement mapping system. We had 62 in quarter 2, we had 63 in quarter 3 when Walmart opened on August 27th, we had 108, and in quarter 4 we had 141. That is not a reflection on what Walmart is doing good or bad. It's simply the impact that it has there on law enforcement and all calls for service in that specific specific area. Um, between Q1 of 2025 and Q1 of 2026, there's a 73% increase. It's one portion of the city. Um, this does not mean things are going downhill in that area. It's not. It's just simply more traffic, more people doing more things. It's impacting us when, when, uh, when new business comes here like a Lowe's, a Smith's, In the south end of the city, you're— it's going to impact us. It's going to impact our law enforcement and our ability to respond effectively in times of need. We can handle all the traffic accidents in the world, but when you have a Part 1 or Part 2 crime or a Priority 1 or Priority 2 crime, we get tied up and our response times become slower. So again, I'll leave with you the thought of, of, uh, there is a want.

Speaker J: Yes.

Speaker F: And I want more guys. I want a lot more guys. But there's a need, and 7 almost meets that need. At minimum, I think a 7 is a reasonable request for the residents of Eagle Mountain. Very reasonable. What they need is more, but 7 is a reasonable request. So, questions?

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker H: So if a backup unit comes from another city, who pays for that? Are we— is that time tracked and then—

Speaker F: No, it's tracked on data. It's not tracked on payment. Each city, it's part of just kind of an interlocal agreement. It's nothing signed. They don't sign an agreement between other agencies. It's just what they do. And we do it in reverse sometimes. There's a difference between Utah County Patrol units and Eagle Mountain Utah County Patrol units. We're 2 different agencies essentially, even though we both work with the Sheriff's Office. We handle calls here, but occasionally you get a call out in Five Mile Pass and we're the closest person there and there's somebody with a life-threatening injury. We're going to go on that if we're available. We get there, we don't take the call, we just handle the emergency portion of the call. Utah County deputies will show up and handle the actual call. They will spend the hours on report writing, a follow-up, going to the hospital. arresting somebody if need be and booking them into jail. We won't do that. We will just simply go out there to help. Saratoga will do the same for us quite often. We'll get backed up on calls, we'll need a backup officer, and they'll come into our city and they'll assist with backup. That is not a payment thing. We don't— Eagle Mountain or Saratoga wouldn't charge us, and, uh, and when we do that for Saratoga, we won't charge them. It's just an understanding between the 2 agencies.

Speaker H: And then a question on the animal control. So when your officer goes out on animal control, Someone's animal misbehaved, is there a fine that's getting issued to that animal owner to compensate for the time that we need to spend for your services there?

Speaker F: No, there's not a— there's a citation that can be issued, but we don't charge them on an animal control call. We go out and handle the call. Now, if the animal gets placed in some— one of the animal shelters, they're going to have to pay a fee to get the animal out, but there's not a additional charge for them to come out there and handle an animal control call. Unless a citation is issued, then they're gonna have to pay that fine for the citation.

Speaker I: Is your animal control officer also a law enforcement officer?

Speaker F: They're part of the patrol numbers we gave you. Yeah, so you have— Utah County changed that some years ago. Animal control used to be just— it was a— it was still a law enforcement officer went on duty, but they were paid less and only handled animal control calls. It changed many years ago. Now for us out in Eagle Mountain, we have 2 animal control officers, but they are patrol deputies. They're full-fledged patrol deputies, and when things get busy, they handle patrol calls. But in Eagle Mountain— Eagle Mountain has its fair share of animal calls. And so we warrant 2. We probably could warrant— this would be a want.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker F: Could we deal with another animal control guy? Absolutely. We have 2. We're trying to get them set up so they work basically 7 days a week. Not 24/7, but we try to keep them in that Monday through Sunday. We want them on duty at some point just because of the amount of animal control calls we get here. There's a lot.

Speaker A: So— Can you go back to that first slide that, uh, it was one of the first slides that kind of showed that breakout of— yeah, essentially. And you know the animal control guys. I think Jim Bingham one of our longtime— he's— so he's the ACO in that chart.

Speaker F: And so, Jim— yeah, Jim's been around for a long time. We have another guy named Walkenshaw. Unfortunately, Deputy Walkenshaw came here a couple years ago, and, uh, or a year ago, um, he's now putting in his 2-week notice. He's going to go to Salt Lake City, and so we'll be short on animal control until we get that filled. Um, he's absolutely a great guy, but he, he received a great opportunity to go up to County north, and Salt Lake City is going to pay him accordingly. And so we're going to lose him soon, which is unfortunate, but we'll get hopefully a replacement for him soon, get us back full-staffed again. Okay, there's the slide. You have a question, Mayor?

Speaker A: I didn't particularly. I just wanted them to see kind of what this was going to be. So these 4 to the right, he's asking for a 5th guy on each one of those blue slides. You got a sergeant, a 5th guy. Max Morgan's on the left. So splitting— maybe you could explain how you split that. So 2 SROs under each sergeant with a new— and then 1 ACO under each and 1 traffic, or what's—

Speaker F: We would leave them as groups together. So Max would probably continue to do the SRO and the ACO. The goal is to take a community police officer and and the traffic, they sometimes can work real well hand in hand. Because a lot of times, the issues we're dealing with in neighborhoods are traffic enforcement issues. And if you assign our 2 community-oriented officers to deal with— to work with citizens in the community, and if they need to utilize the traffic unit, they can each go through their same sergeant. So typically, it'll be 1 sergeant over 2 COPs and 2 traffic units, is ideally what we'd like to see. Thank you.

Speaker H: Chief, thanks for this information. How long have you worked in Eagle Mountain or kind of overseeing our—

Speaker F: Well, that's a trick question. No, it's not a trick question. I, I was assigned out here a long time ago as a sergeant. Corey Ride and I were sergeants together way back in the day. We were opposing shifts as the 2 sergeants out here. Then I left after a while, and I've been out here since January of last year.

Speaker H: Okay, so just a year and a Okay, that benchmarking data is really helpful for me to just understand where other cities sit for deputy or sergeant— I'm not going to get the language right— deputies per population. I'm curious if that number has changed over time or has it been getting worse? Was there a point in the past where we were at 0.7 and we just have not been adequately funding our Sheriff's Office, and we're— it's getting to where we're early on. Yeah, like if we're just super thin and tight on the budget.

Speaker F: When the first— when the city was first created, we had some deputies that would come out and take calls, and eventually we started to assign people out here. Eventually you got a sergeant, then you had 2 sergeants, then pretty soon you had 3 sergeants, administrative sergeant, and you always had a lieutenant over it. And, and then you had deputies that were assigned out here, but At first, it was probably close to 0.7, 0.8 way back in the late '90s, early 2000s.

Speaker H: Early on.

Speaker F: But then that started to change. And what happened really is over the last couple years, I think it's in 2 years you increased by 17,000 or 18,000 in population. And then more than that as you went back further. You can still see, I think the increase is about 6-point-something, 7%. population increase over the last 3 years. And, and I think because of budgeting issues, and I very understandably so, um, that number's gone down. So you dwindle down. Uh, when I first got here, I think we were at about 0.49, 0.5 last year. And then, um, with— because of shortages on requests, it went down from there, and now we're at 0.45.

Speaker H: Yeah, okay.

Speaker F: Yeah. And so that— I made a comment about, you know, we don't want to become a big city. What happens if If you're not careful and we continue to drop like that, a couple things are going to happen. You're going to have sticker shock to the citizens when you tell them we have to, we don't have a choice. And you're going to have to increase manpower. The worst-case scenario, tragedy happens, which causes cities to then throw a lot of money at law enforcement. I think every chief in the country will say we don't want something tragic to happen before the city council takes action. We would like to see action taken before tragedy strikes. Thank you. And then we don't want you to turn into a city. If you ignore the numbers of law enforcement officers needed in a city, pretty soon you do run into the risk of becoming that big city that you don't want. You don't want the crime to start to take over. You don't want people to be, you know, doing things in communities that disrupt your livability. You don't want your quality of life to diminish in the, in the areas that you're living in. And the people that are moving here, they have an expectation of quality of life. And if we're not careful on the— not paying attention to the number of officers you need in the city, that'll diminish. And we don't want that to go down. We want quality of life to either to stay or get better.

Speaker H: So thank you.

Speaker J: Yep.

Speaker F: You were a lot tougher last time.

Speaker A: I already beat you up.

Speaker D: You did. You did.

Speaker A: Make no mistake. I've— Chief, I had to ask him if he needed a cry room for a minute. It wasn't that bad.

Speaker F: Yes, it was. But no, it wasn't bad at all. But your questions, Mayor, are great. All of your questions are great. And if you have more, I'm happy to answer them. Again, I'll stick back to the comment I made before. Is, is there are needs and there's wants, and we know what that means. Um, this is no longer a want. The city needs it and needs it desperately.

Speaker H: So can I, can I just share a comment, not, not a question, uh, just an observation that I've had living in Eagle Mountain for almost 20 years? Our, our property taxes have not increased from, from the city. We, we have not kept up. So the property taxes that I pay today on my house are the same as what they were 10 years ago. But the cost per deputy that covers my neighborhood, that has increased. And so while people see populations coming in and new growth, that doesn't really keep up for the fact that the property tax has not been increasing on a lot of homes in Eagle Mountain. And I don't think a lot of citizens really recognize that. And so this ratio, what you're telling— what you just shared with us is we probably started out at a 0.7% coverage ratio. That's what I'm going to call it. Now we're at 0.45%, and because we have not, um, kept up with the cost of inflation, we are— we're now behind. Now we're getting to the point where it's like we need to hire 7, you know, deputy sergeants. Like, it's just going to continue to get worse unless we really address the fact. And I would agree, this is a need, not a not a want. Like, safety in our community is probably the highest priority I think that I have. Roads, safety, those are things that governments should be addressing, and I think that's what our citizens kind of expect us to be watching. So I appreciate your presentation. Can I get a copy of this?

Speaker F: Absolutely. Okay, thank you. Matter of fact, I'll email it to all of you as soon as we're done.

Speaker A: Just to kind of piggyback on that, I want to give you a little context, and I know Chief's You know, when McDowell was here earlier and probably right around your first year-ish, Colby and Carolyn were still on council. We were at the 1 per 2,200 and we increased that year. Just out of my head, I came up with a number of 1,750, which both McDowell and I think Knutson agrees that today is a pretty, that gets us to that 0.65-ish, 0.64 was it, I can't remember, per 1,000, right?

Speaker J: Yeah.

Speaker A: And we got there. The problem is, is the next day we built another house. So, um, it's only been 4 or 5 years when we, we got to that number. Then the second part though that I think is interesting, because our citizens say, well, you're adding— you're increasing my taxes because we have to add officers because of growth. But what you pointed out was that your taxes haven't gone up forever, and inflation. So I think the difference is that same officer the last time we raised taxes, like 2003 I believe, which we'll learn from Kimberly, is paid more today. So you're not increasing taxes to pay for more officers, you're increasing to pay for the one that's still covering your house, and the new people are paying more to add to the other 7. So kind of the context on, on how that works. So Brett had a comment and we'll come right back.

Speaker C: Yeah, just, just, just some thoughts. I mean, I've been here a couple of years now, been through— this is This is my 5th budget season, and it seems like every year that this is a topic that we come to and that we address. And we've really tried to be sensitive, Councilmember Pugh, to make sure that we're giving them what we can, but within budget constraints. And I think— so the process of that is— and I remember Chief McDowell standing there and Mayor Gray at the time on the council, and we had this very robust debate and discussion discussion about, well, what's the number? And I don't remember the exact number that he asked for, but we had a discussion and we, we added 2 more to the budget, 2 more than Chief McDowell asked for, because it is a priority for us. The problem comes from the funding mechanism is not keeping up with the demand. And so our citizens, they say, well, but you're adding all of these new people who should be paying for that. And they are, but they're paying for it at a rate that's 20 years old. That's the problem. And so we're having to make up that shortfall from other funding sources. And so everything suffers. The, the Sheriff's Department suffers in their personnel. So does our city staff. And our ability to meet the basic needs of the city are becoming more difficult, not less difficult. And, and so I just— I mean, here's what's going through my mind and some of the questions I wrote down. I thought, he wants 7, what can we do to provide 8 to 10? I'd really like to know, how can we modify this year's budget to give him 8 to 10 that he really needs. And I don't know what that means or where we'd have to cut. And that's probably what we're looking at if we choose to do something like that, is where are we going to claw back $600,000 if we're going to add 3 more deputies beyond the 7 he's requesting? And then how are we going to fund it? Because it's an ongoing cost and expense. And I know, I know Kimberly's going to talk to us a little bit about that, but that's the seriousness and the weightiness of what we're really dealing with. And now having been here 5 years, I'm understanding this a little better than I did in year 1, perhaps year 2. And being a property tax owner and, and, and an owner of a rental home in Eagle Mountain, I don't want to see my property taxes go up. But they haven't for 22 years while I've been here. They have for every other taxing entity but the City of Eagle Mountain, every one of them. I mean, they've gone up significantly. Because they've needed to, to meet their needs, and they haven't postponed that like we have. So I think, I think there's some room for growth and discussion, but that's the question I'm going to ask each of you to consider, is what would it take to get to the 8 to 10 that he really thinks he needs to provide that level of service? Because if we're not providing adequate policing services, why are we sitting here?

Speaker I: Well, that's kind of along the lines of where I'm heading. I don't think this is going to be a surprise to you. I'm disappointed that we have not built this into our system, frankly. I mean, I think as a citizen— I'm not going to speak as a city councilmember— as a citizen, there's an expectation that I have of public safety, and that's the number one thing for my family. Roads, water, sewer— that all comes after the fact that I want to know that my kids can play in my front yard without having to worry about me sitting in the front yard to make sure that they're going to be safe the time. And I think that that's what our citizens expect. And I, I don't mean for this to sound negative. It's gonna sound negative, but this is my 3rd budget season now, and it seems like public safety is an afterthought every time. To me, and I'm hearing this from the citizens, this is the first priority. This has to be the very first thing on our list of things to take care of And then we're gonna have to make everything else work. To Brett's point, I agree, 8 to 10 is what we should be shooting for. It's not even an excess, it's just to get it to baseline. I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation by our citizens. So I agree, I think it's something that we need to, this budget, figure out a way to do that. But we need to put a mechanism in place. And if that is a tax increase, Then we need to tell the citizens this is the reason why. Yes, we're increasing. I've watched this budget discussion Saratoga Springs is having online right now, and it really is kind of laughable, actually, how naive citizens have become about how things are paid for. Yes, you're increasing number of households, but your liability goes up, your public safety goes up, and that's just to cover your house that you just built. That doesn't account for the fact that the people have to be paid a living wage that's commensurate with what that job requires. And to Zach's point, or Brett maybe, I can't remember which one of you said that, we're paying it based on a 2003. That's ridiculous. And so we get sticker shock every time we see $250,000. We're like, well, God, we can't, that's $1.5 million. Yeah, that's what it costs. There's different equipment that's available now. They're not just walking around with a radio and a gun anymore. They have equipment that they're wearing on themselves. They have equipment that's in the car that records and provides safety for them, but also when it goes to court so that the person that is being arrested, that their rights are being protected, but also the law enforcement officer that's doing the arresting is being protected. I— we can't keep having this discussion like this is an afterthought. It's— to me, the mechanism needs to be put in place by us, the policymakers. It can't just be approving a budget. We need to put a policy in place that as we grow, we're going to increase by this many officers every single year. And if it becomes to a point where the contract is now too expensive for us to do, then we evaluate at that time. But at that point, we should be having that discussion of how do we get to the number we should be at. If we're supposed to be at 48 officers and we're at 20— what'd you say the number was right now?

Speaker F: We're at 35 total.

Speaker I: 35 total. And how many sworn?

Speaker F: That's at 35 sworn.

Speaker I: 35 sworn. So we're already deficient by 13 of where we ought to be. I just— we need to do a public relations program to get out to our citizens and let them know, number one, what the cost of this lifestyle that they enjoy is. That's number one. And public safety needs to be at the very beginning of that discussion. Number two, there is a cost associated with living a peaceful life, and it is the taxes that we pay. Our taxes from Eagle Mountain haven't gone up, and this misnomer that our taxes keep going up is caused by other agencies. And yes, that's part of life too. You have to pay for schools and you have to pay for the fire services that we have and for the county. They will continue to go up, yet we continue to not raise our taxes and our costs are going through the roof. We're looking at the same type of problem that we had with our sewer and our water, and we're acting like we can just keep band-aiding this. I, I think the time has passed for us to do that, and we need to be serious about this as we were about raising the fees for our water, raising the fees for our sewer. We have to fund our public safety.

Speaker G: Excuse me. I wholeheartedly agree with all of the comments that have been made by the council. I mean, police and public safety services are our essential core as far as you look at our model and the essential services we provide and the quality of life we provide. provide and the economic prosperity provide, all of that's built on a foundation of public safety. And if you're looking at the funding of public safety, if that is your core value, then your core revenue stream, which is property taxes, really should equate to that. Now, I know there's a discussion right now, it was just mentioned here a few minutes ago, maybe we need to make cuts in other places. I, I think what we're seeing is that there— we don't— Kimberly has said it many times, we don't have an expense problem, we have a revenue problem. We, we are not keeping up. And so for years we have run lean. There's really not the area to cut in other areas to make this happen. What we need to do is create a policy like, um, like Councilman, um, Wood has just said. We need a policy that is perpetuated over time. And if that is to have public safety safety tied to public property taxes, we have to recognize that in the state of Utah, we do not have a cost of living adjustment in our property taxes. COLA does not affect— you can go to— I don't know how many of you got a notification that your Netflix bill went up or that your Disney+ bill went up or that you pay more at the gas pump or you pay You know, this hits you all the time, all the way through. True. But people will complain about local government. They won't necessarily complain about these other areas. And yet, you know, the cost to the Sheriff's Office Department alone just for fuel is an issue with a city of our geographic size. And so if we're gonna do this, we need to do it with a policy that's in place. And I look at Saratoga Springs and I say, you know, Saratoga Springs, They have a very admirable policy that they either— they used to have, you know, 57 or 58% of their public safety covered by property taxes, and it has gone down, and they're just trying to get it back up to that area. My question when the mayor brought that up to me is, well, where's the rest of it being paid? Well, it's being— and the mayor answered me, he said it's being paid from other general fund sources. Well, what are those other general fund sources? There's sales taxes.

Speaker A: There's sales taxes. Well, who's paying those sales taxes?

Speaker G: It's the 70% leakage rate from Eagle Mountain City into Saratoga, into Lehi, and whatnot. We're paying that difference so that they're at 100%. And so the more we have Walmart, the more we have Smith and Lowe's and whatnot, the less that's going to be impactful. It'll create a greater workload, but it'll mean that we're leaking less dollars out. But we should never be putting our public safety at the risk of the fluctuation of sales. It should be a core value tied to a core resource, and those two should be married together. And we're not— we weren't intending to talk about our long-term— our how to get there. That's probably going to be for the next budget meeting. Today we're talking about public safety and transportation. We'll do that in the next budget meeting. But we wanted to make you aware that We have a fundamental issue that needs to be corrected and policies need to be put in place. And while it might be admirable for the councils of the past to look back and say, I didn't raise property taxes, that has really set us up as a city to be at the very fragile state that we're at today that you've inherited. So good financial stability. You look at Provo and other agencies, they have not only high sales taxes because they're an economic base, And they have, you know, good fees for services and whatnot, but they also have high property taxes because they're a fiscally sound, well-managed city with diversified revenue sources.

Speaker A: While you're thinking, I'm going to add something to that. And this is just a comment, and then I want to bring it back to kind of how we tackle this. But last night I went to that debate, same meeting that Sheriff Smith was at. And every single person stood up there and said, I won't raise property tax, or boast that I've 8 years, I've never raised property tax. And every time I would holler out, irresponsible. All you did was kick the can down the road for us to do it. And so, as much as I don't wanna just raise taxes or raise taxes, anybody that boasts that they never raised tax just means that they left the problem for someone else. Now, with that, But what I want to bring back to the discussion a little bit is then how do we tackle this with either 7 or 8 or 10. I wanted, especially for you guys that haven't been here when maybe Councilmember Wright and I kind of tackled that with McDowell, and I don't know how I came up with this because I didn't know what I was doing, but I said, is there a way to do half now and half later? And we said, okay, let's give him the 4 I think that he asked for in the budget year, which would be a July hire and then 2 more in January mid-year because that only costs us half the year's salary and then it's ongoing expense. So what I would float out there is some kind of— I'm just telling you guys to think about how you want to do it. I think that each team needs to have 5 people. So I think that immediately as funds come in— don't have a heart attack, Kimberly— immediately as we've discussed might be September, not July, before we actually get this going, and that's a conversation for later, right? But that we maybe look at the 4 deputies to add 5 to each team. I think that— I understand that Max is overworked, but I know that he's tough and he can go maybe till January is what I'm getting at. And then you add, and maybe instead of 3 more, we add 4 more or a 5th one if we get to that. But I'd say 4 and 4 gets us 8. Do the 4 deputies to make sure people are safe because I think that to me That's the first concern. And then workload on our proactive stuff might be a mid-year thing. So go over here and then back.

Speaker G: Okay, so I just want to cover 2 points. Point number one, how we get there, like I said, we're planning on talking about in the next meeting. And so we can get into that because we don't want to get into the minutiae. We definitely want to— we have a hard stop at 5, so we want to make sure you have time to go over your transportation information. But the second thing is, the mayor touched on something about September versus July. If for— there has been a change to state code this past year, and because of that change in state code, whatever you might do or choose to do when it comes to a property tax has to go through that truth in taxation process that we know you would need to go through. But state code changed so that you cannot spend any of those dollars into until the truth-in-taxation process is over, which is now 30 days after your public hearing in August, which would be September anyway. So we just want to make sure it's really clear that if you make any kind of changes, whatever you— how you go about, you can decide that later. But if you do, it's likely not going to occur until September anyway.

Speaker H: I just want to bring up a couple, a couple other things maybe good for citizens to know, and that is Today, under State of Utah law, it's not legal for us to separate out commercial property tax and residential. If you have property taxes, you can't break it up and say, well, we're just going to have property tax for commercial and not for residential. And there's a ratio— what is it, 50 cents to a dollar residential to commercial?

Speaker G: The only difference is your primary home gets a reduction, a 50% reduction, 55% reduction on your first home if you live in it and the whole bit. Commercial and— it's 45, 45, 55. That's right, 45% reduction. 45% reduction on your primary home. Your secondary home, your rentals and things like that, no. And commercial has no reduction.

Speaker C: So you get it, you get a TIF on your home of 45%.

Speaker H: Yes.

Speaker C: On your commercial, you pay it at 100%.

Speaker H: That's right. So, so for those that are thinking Just increase taxes on the businesses. They're creating income. My home is not creating income. That's a state of Utah law issue. And that's one thing I've brought up with John Magnus this next year is to push the legislature to have a split tax to give the cities the ability. Like we've been talking about data centers, hearing about data centers and all the revenue that's going to come pouring out of data centers. And, you know, eventually that will be a reality, but that's not a reality reality today. Right now, what we have in front of us is there is a need, and we have to find a pathway there that may be a property tax increase. But I just want to clarify that for the record so citizens know property taxes were tied with commercial. So if we increase it for residential, it's going to increase commercial and vice versa. It's not a split tax.

Speaker G: It's probably also important to note that each of the data center agreements that we have with RDAs and whatnot have it in there contractually that we can't change property tax only on that. Even if it wasn't a state of Utah law, we can't change it only on them unless we change it citywide anyway.

Speaker H: Well said, thank you.

Speaker A: So I think— I don't know that I understand exactly, so I want to clarify. I know what you're saying, but so that people understand, let's say we raise the tax by $1. What we do is rate tax rate, the going to cost the residential unit $1. What you did is raise $1, you give 45 cents back to the other person. So the business still pays the full $1, but you only pay 55 cents as a homeowner. So if you raise it $2, the business pays $2, you only pay $1.10. So, so it does go up more for every dollar you collect more in the other sites, even though the number's the same. You get a rebate for everything you go up. So I want to make sure that's clear, that the, the rate that is levied is the same, but then the rebate is still the same on the total levy.

Speaker H: Yeah, I understand that. I think in a perfect world where we're looking at commercial and we're excited about that growth, in a perfect world we'd say if it's commercial, they're making money, they have the means to produce the income to pay a property tax. Where my grandma living down the road in retirement, her property is not producing any kind of income tax.

Speaker C: Sorry, I mean that's what the discount on residential already does. That's what it already does. It's already set up that way.

Speaker H: Well, I'm saying for to take residential to zero would mean that you'd have to take business to zero, commercial to zero. Yes. And a split property tax, you'd have the ability. to say in the future commercial pays property taxes, residents don't.

Speaker C: Yeah, but even though it's all— it's the same rate that's levied, I mean, I know that you all understand it. It's 55 cents for a residential unit. It's a dollar for every business unit. So I think—

Speaker E: I think Councilmember Wood has a thought. I was at the same meeting that Mayor was at last night, and it was disturbing to me how quickly the candidates were like, I'm not going to raise taxes and I hate RDAs and they're awful and blah blah blah blah blah. And as we were driving home, I was ranting to my husband about the fact that they don't understand what has happened as a result of it and the taxes we collected before versus what we collect now. And I was also talking about the residential TIF. So I, I think that Even my husband, who hears me talk about this stuff all the time, didn't completely understand the 55/45. So we probably need to do a better job of helping just everyone understand that. Thank you for the presentation that you gave, because over the last year, you and I have had many conversations about really helping us know what the ideal is, a baby step to that, and where we're at right now. And I think that you Thank you. You nailed it. I appreciate you breaking down what it costs per deputy because there were some really bad misinformation that was shared, and I think that this is a better snapshot of that. For me, I agree that we should be shooting for that 8 to 10 range because it just means that if we don't try for that this year, we're going to end up having to do it in a subsequent year, and we don't know what the economy is going to be like the next time we have to look at this. Um, but for me, I also want us to prioritize getting the master offense list updated with Eagle Mountain law and citations so that we can be, um, enforcing our city code. But I also see the need for us, as part of this whole conversation, to be looking at the cost of a justice court and moving forward on that, because we've been talking about that for over 18 months And we're nowhere closer to it. And I do agree that we should get serious about creating a policy about how public safety funding increases are tied to population increases. So I appreciate all the thoughts that have been shared, but I do want us to remember master offense list and justice court are key components to us addressing the concerns that the residents have shared with us.

Speaker A: Rich, did you got something? If it's—

Speaker F: so you're good.

Speaker A: I just want to make sure that to kind of pull this thing, because we do have to get to transportation. Are there any— I know funding is kind of what's taking this over, and that's for a future meeting. So, uh, specifically on the needs and why and call volume, and, you know, and you guys were way nicer than I was to Chief, but anything that we need to address that way so that we can get on to some of the other—

Speaker I: So I'll just be quick. I mean, basically the reality of it is, is that there is a cost of service to have public safety. And as your population grows, that cost goes up. There's a, there's a cost per person to have a police officer available to come when there's an emergency. They're in an accident, accident's happened in their home, somebody has perpetrated a crime against them, whatever those things might be. And to think that as the population grows that we're covering it with that is the same mentality we used to have, that we're going to pay for everything by adding more rooftops. That just means our deficit gets wider and wider and wider every single year, and then we deficiently produce the number of law enforcement officers that are required for that, so that the next year it's even worse than it was the year before. That, that kind of mentality and policy, we have got to stop doing that. And it's not just public safety. We have been operating like that for so long. And frankly, if it really is that we have to have an unimaginable tax increase to get us back on track, then let's be responsible. Other city councils did not have the backbone to do it, and they're so proud of not raising taxes like that's some big beacon to shine in the sky to say, I screwed all the future residents of this city, because that's what's happened. And it— I, I take huge offense to listening to people tell us how they haven't raised the taxes. All you've done is make it so that we can't pay for anything. That's how things are paid for in a city, in a county, in the state, the federal government. They're paid for by the social contract we all make together as citizens For those services to be provided, and that's going to come out of two places: our pocketbook when we spend it, and our pocketbook when we where we live. And I don't love all the taxes; let's be clear on that. But I mean, what what other options do we have? Do we just keep pretending like it's not a problem, and go let's say we only give him four, and then what next year? He needs twelve, or he needs eighteen next year. And so what are we going to do, give him 6 till it gets to the point where he's not wrong, where we've now created these pocket areas of crime that would now need— we need 25, and we start creating these areas where we need 30 because police officers don't want to go into this area anymore because it becomes so dangerous for them to be in there. It is irresponsible, and we need to quit thinking about, oh, let's see how we can fit the public safety into the budget. The public safety should be be first. Let's fix everything else around that, in my opinion. That has to be the first consideration. Let's get everything else to work around that so that we provide a safe— we don't have more roads, by the way. So you're going to have more traffic on there, more accidents on there, more road rage, all of those things. Who's going to solve that? We're going to have individual citizens start doing that? Because that's really where we're sitting.

Speaker E: Mayor, I don't know if you're aware of it, but the Planning Commission canceled their work session for tonight. So if we do go a little over, it's not the end of the world.

Speaker A: It's up to you guys. Um, I, I think the more we can get done, we're here. But I think Kimberly has a hard stop at 5.

Speaker F: Just Kimberly has a hard stop at 5 for personal reasons.

Speaker E: It was the only thing. All right, never mind. Hard stop at 5 for committee.

Speaker A: Okay, so, uh, no question. Great discussion. Uh, any last words?

Speaker F: I appreciate you guys letting me talk to you. I appreciate you hearing my requests. Um, I shouldn't just say my request. This is part of the sheriff as well, and he's passionate about this. He loves the city, loves the contract, he loves being the sheriff over the county. He's a great boss to work for, and so he brings to the table the same passion I have for the need to provide the best law enforcement services to the citizens of Eagle Mountain. I'll say it, before I say it, I'll keep saying it, Eagle Mountain is a great place. It is a safe city. It competes with some of the other cities around here yearly for being the safest city We are one of the safest cities in the state. And that's a good thing. We want to keep it that way. Law enforcement officers want to keep it safe. They don't want to go call to call. They want to clean the city up anywhere it can be cleaned up. They want quality of life to stay or get better. And my job is to fight for these positions. The second part of my job is to make sure that the deputies that work for me out here in Eagle Mountain provide the best level of service we can. And right now they're doing a great job, and we want to continue that. And so again, thank you for hearing me out. And if you have no further questions, that's all I have.

Speaker A: Was that the statement from the chief?

Speaker F: You said he had a statement from the sheriff. Yeah, no, that was it. I said it earlier on there on the PowerPoint. He said a lot, but, but I just wanted to relay that he did talk about It's about expected level of service, and the citizens have that, and they have it everywhere, but in Eagle Mountain they really have it. And we contract— Utah County Sheriff's Office contracts with Eagle Mountain, and we want to provide what's expected of us at that expected level of services that the citizens want. And so we're here to do it, but, but we need help with people.

Speaker A: Yep. Well, thank you very much, and I hope you heard for all these guys, and I'll just I just echo that we agree that you are our police department, and I hope you feel supported. And let every single officer here know that we love and support and appreciate what they do for us as a community.

Speaker F: Thank you. We do feel that, by the way. We do. We absolutely do. And the recognition we get and the chance that I get to stand up here and celebrate some of the deputies that work here, I'll take advantage of every chance I get. So thank you, guys.

Speaker J: Mayor and Council, as we move on to the transportation component, which will be the first segment as we start to talk about our 5-year capital improvement plan, I do want to stress that, yes, I have a personal commitment that now exists from that, but I know how precious and valuable your time is. You guys have made the commitment to come here. I have plenty of staff that can readily support what this is, and if that is something that works for you, please continue to move forward as needed. I wanna take just a minute at the beginning of this meeting to acknowledge Chris Waldron. So he is someone you guys probably haven't seen before. He is one of our amazing finance staff that sits behind the scenes. Chris is our capital project accountant. that works very closely with Public Works and everything in terms of tracking our projects and preparing the 5-year capital plan. And we wouldn't be where we are today without the work that he puts in and the coordination that he does with all the other staff too. So he's one of those who will be sitting over there, probably won't be part of the conversation because we're going to turn it over to David to work on his presentation, but I did want to make sure and recognize Chris for that work and Terrence as well for everything they do to coordinate this. So we will turn it over to David and have him start.

Speaker D: Mayor, council members, it's good to be here. I've got a presentation to show you, and I can email afterward if you would like a copy.

Speaker F: Thank you.

Speaker D: So today we're going to be talking about 27 transportation projects, kind of the methodology we use to come up with the 5-year capital plan. This is my first time with the budget cycle, as well as Chris. So we had a good time working together, working off the IFP and the Transportation Master Plan. And we spent a good time working in the software Planet to see what it can do for us, how it can help us with the budgeting. We ended up figuring out a good project delivery system where every year we're trying to have funding for design and construction. And we're trying to do it in a way so we're finishing up design— like right now we're finishing up design projects. And then for that design project, we have construction funding, the majority of it coming out of the next fiscal year. And in doing so, we can get a better estimate for the cost of the projects from the engineer's estimate from design instead of just going off of the IFP, which we use to plan for. And they're usually higher just from the nature of the projects. They use the standard UDOT template, so things are always kind of inflated a little bit, but that's a good thing for your, for your planning long range. But doing this delivery system, we're able to kind of sharpen the pencil and to know what the projects will actually cost us in the following fiscal year. So we've done that, and that's helped us save over $1.5 million on projects that we have coming up for design this construction season. And it's also helped us to find projects that are underfunded. We found there was one I'll talk about that was underestimated in the IFP. So the first project we have is SR 73. and Ranches, and then the high-T intersection at Campus Drive. This is a project that's— I'll go to the image real quick so you guys can see it. This is where we're adding a high-T traffic signal, or continuous green, at Campus Drive. So traffic heading south will be unobstructed, they will continue. When the light turns red, it will stop the northbound traffic, and then people can egress safely out of Campus Drive into an acceleration lane And then merge into the 2 southbound travel lanes. During this project, we also adjusted the scope a little bit because we saw the impacts from Walmart were creating issues with this intersection, especially with the highway coming up soon. So we're adding a second dedicated right turn lane. So we have 2 right turn lanes. We're going to have 2 through lanes and 2 left turn lanes. What we were seeing a lot was there's currently a right turn lane and a through and a right. And because of all the now more through traffic, it was causing the rights to back up into Campus Drive and other issues at the intersection. So by doing this, every lane has its own dedicated movements.

Speaker A: If you can use the pointer, that will help us a little bit.

Speaker D: So now— can you guys hear me okay? So now we have every movement has its own 2 lanes. So we have 2 rights, 2 throughs, And 2 lefts. And before, we had a large median here, and to get into the left turn pocket, it was crazy. The through was blocked. So if you were trying to go left, you couldn't even get into the turn pocket. And this is already a fast cycle for that left heading westbound. So now you have a nice left turn pocket. You can get in right away, and you have dual lefts here. And given the configuration of the signal, it won't add any extra timing because they've already accounted for the dual rights. So So it works very efficiently with this flow.

Speaker I: David, I've got a question. I think this intersection is actually a good illustration of one of the questions I wanted to ask about how we paint, because what ends up happening— you're right, they end up blocking Campus Drive off. Yep. Have we started implementing a painting system that basically says leave the intersection open? You've seen those in some places.

Speaker D: We— yep, do not block. Yep. And I'll show you on Woodhaven. I'll show you what that looks like. We're considering doing something here as well. What this signal— it may not need it because we're going to have a smart traffic signal here where as traffic starts to back up, it's going to flip the signal, and so traffic will stop before it gets the chance to actually back up into it. So we don't think we need the striping for that effect because we'll have that technology there to prevent that. So we can definitely look at that, but I don't think we're going to need it for this particular Is that a significant cost to do something like that? To add the striping? No, it's pretty cheap. The only thing is we're going to have this guidance turn lane here, and so it would block it. We could try and squeeze it in right up here, but we're going to have this guidance lane here to help vehicles kind of navigate. So that's the only thing, but we can make it smaller and just squeeze it in. It's pretty easy to do.

Speaker A: I have a couple questions too, and it's obviously going to add cost, so I'm going to have to I'm trying to think this through, but this right turn lane right here is also the only turn lane that feeds into both of these rights.

Speaker I: That's where the problem is.

Speaker A: Which means there's still only one through lane that goes— well, then the other one feeds to the left turn because the— so the top one is both through here, but then it feeds the left because there's So if you're going left, you're going to be in that lane. There's only one true through lane. So really, to solve that, in my opinion, is can we take a— just like I advocate in all the others— and do a deceleration right turn right here?

Speaker D: So this turn lane was actually— it's kind of goofy with the marking. And of course, this marker's not working. It is a right turn lane, but we foresee people using it more as a through. And we've even considered doing like an arrow with a through and a right, because they will feed right into the right lanes as well.

Speaker A: And there's no reason to add a deceleration lane right there so the other traffic could continue?

Speaker D: We can. There's just not a lot of movement with this right turn here. There's just very— we looked at the movement here. There's not a lot of right turns here.

Speaker A: Okay, so that was part of my question. And the other one, again, so there's going to be no right-hand turn right here— or sorry, left-hand turn northbound left into— correct?

Speaker D: That's correct.

Speaker F: Correct.

Speaker A: So, so could we extend this? And it's the same reason. I actually use this left turn lane a ton. Whenever I'm going home, I use this a lot. And there's only room for stacking currently on the inside for 2 or 3 cars, and then it bleeds into block because you're talking about the through on the right currently. There's also a through that gets blocked because of the left stacking.

Speaker G: Yeah.

Speaker A: So both through lanes get blocked there. And I realize that there's 6 lanes there and hopefully that doesn't happen. But if this lane stacks back into here, it will still affect that lane. So I'm just asking, maybe your traffic models— I'm not an engineer. I'm just asking if we can stack just a touch more on that left-hand lane.

Speaker D: So it may be hard to see, but this is the turn lane. It starts at the intersection.

Speaker H: Correct.

Speaker D: So it's a single that goes into a double at the intersection. So when we ran the model, we don't foresee that being an issue because we have to back up into the intersection.

Speaker A: Like, well, you can get right into that left turn pocket. When that light finally turns green, this left-hand becomes empty because of the stacking in the right-hand.

Speaker D: Yeah, correct.

Speaker A: And so that's why I'm asking for a little deeper.

Speaker D: Yeah, and when they modeled it, it may look odd, but like you have this long turn pocket right here because, yeah, yeah, cars may want to go into this first one, but this is also a turn lane. So when it, when it's cues, you'll have this release and all of this release too.

Speaker A: So you think it's adequate? There's no reason to—

Speaker D: Yep, absolutely.

Speaker A: Man, I just look at growth and think that if we can add those 2 things—

Speaker D: It's tight already. And the problem is we still got to have this decel for the left's turn in here. We will sacrifice that. That's the other problem. They would have to stop pretty abruptly to make that stop. So it's tight. It's very difficult. I wish we had more space, but—

Speaker I: David, just— Craig asked a question just quickly. This— we're going to still have left-hand turn lanes out of here, right?

Speaker D: So you will— from Maverick, you will not be able to go left this way. This—

Speaker I: no, no, heading east out of the Maverick parking lot. Heading east out. So you're— that's— you're going west. So west is here. Yep. East is down here. So if we're leaving here and I want to go— nope, here, can't do that. That's now gone.

Speaker D: Correct. This, this, this is a concrete median right here. That— so this will be obstructed too, which is also part of our bigger picture plan. This is going to be a 7-lane road, so we want to try and limit left ingress and egresses as much as we can. There's going to be a lot of traffic in this.

Speaker I: Are we restricting U-turns there too then? Because they're going to try to do that, you know that.

Speaker D: Which way you think?

Speaker I: Northbound U-turn back southbound. So this, this is one big concrete median, like there's no way to get up to the intersection So he's saying, are you going to see a U-turn right here? People going to get in?

Speaker D: I'll look, but I think there's already a sign out there that they can't make that U-turn.

Speaker I: Well, I'm aware that there's probably a sign, but you're now cutting that access off completely for anybody heading this direction. So now it's only going to be here and here.

Speaker A: Well, I think it becomes inconvenient. It's not cut off completely. What they do is turn left at the light that's right there.

Speaker D: Yeah, turn left. There's a light at Stonehenge right here. There, they can also go across the intersection and come back down.

Speaker A: So if they're coming from down here, they just have to turn sooner. Now it's going to take some training, and it's not— it's not ideal.

Speaker D: All these improvements, unfortunately, something's going to have to give. Unfortunately, we can't move everything. Thankfully, there's, there's a signal right here at Stonehenge. People can go down and access the Maverick this way and come back out.

Speaker I: So I think that would be good for us to share that with the residents. That access is going to be closed, access off of Stone Ridge— Stonehenge or whatever it's called.

Speaker D: And we plan to do that along with notifying businesses and things like that, because this is just for the long-term safety of everybody. This is going to help the Maverick people too, because right now, as you know, turning in there is pretty sketchy. Getting out is dangerous. So we want to, you know, public safety first and foremost. So, so for this one, we were able to kind of save some cost. Here's kind of the breakdown of the 27 costs. We have a little bit in design to finish up in '27, construction costs, contingency, and then public art. That's kind of what that project looks like. I'm low on time, so I'm going to kind of keep plowing through if that's all right. This one I won't go over much. This is finishing up Mid Valley, um, Road heading west to Eagle Mountain Boulevard. There's a little bit of funding there just to kind of close the project up, just so you're aware of it. Um, we're also doing some improvements in front of Frontier Middle School to improve some of the drainage out there as well. So we repaved in front of the middle school, and we're just kind of fixing some of that up for the kids and for stormwater.

Speaker I: Hey, just a quick question about the name of the road that they changed. Can we have any input on what that's called, or is that a done deal?

Speaker D: I have a meeting with them on Thursday. I'll ask.

Speaker I: I would love to have a discussion about that since it's our road.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker I: I have a suggestion. I think the Lake Mountain Corridor makes a lot more sense than And the whatever ridge we're calling it that has no— no one has any idea what that even means.

Speaker G: I agree.

Speaker I: We should have a discussion about it.

Speaker D: I think it's a good name. I will bring that up. This is Trailhead and Pony Express, our intersection right out here. This was one that was underfunded. It was only $500,000 because that's what it costs to put in a traffic signal, just a traffic signal. And as you know out there, there are goofy islands in the way. There's all kinds of geometry issues. So we had increased this budget. We're also removing the rapid beacon flashers that are— that no one pays attention to anyway. So this will add better crossing, better for pedestrians, better lefts turning southbound. So that's what this is going to look like. When you leave City Hall Stagecoach, you will not be able to go left across here. There's a median here for what the— that's needed for the left turns. So we'll have a sign here if you want to go left here. You either have to go down south or you go through the roundabout and come back. And the reason why is people making that left, they're going to block the traffic that needs to leave when that signal flips. So it's a little goofy because it's a very wide road and intersections so close together. This was our best worst idea we came up with. So it does add deceleration lanes on Pony, which is great for moving traffic. On both directions. We've widened the left turn lane heading southbound here as well. We've added bulb-outs on either side to help shorten the crosswalk distance. And this— we're keeping this roundabout. We are removing the landscaping to just save on maintenance costs in the long term. We're adding a truck apron here so trucks can make that turn. And then we'll have our dedicated left turn and left out.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker D: What else?

Speaker E: Are we going to have support groups for residents that are upset about the traffic circle being removed?

Speaker D: Although I think we had what, 4 protesters when the other roundabout went away. So we're keeping one roundabout, so, you know, we should get some props for that at least. So yeah, yeah, no, there was 4 islands. You're right, we're keeping the other one that's over on the east side too. So that's what that'll look like. That project cost increased. Like I said, the project went up a lot because there's a lot of flat work. During this project, we're also redoing the paving on the west side. This paving over here, it's probably some of the original paving. It's very old and very beat up. So while we're in this area, to save costs, we're going to replace all this paving as well, redo the whole configuration, new traffic signal. To the north, there's that rapid flasher that's up there by the elementary school. We're going to pull that out now that we have this dedicated walking path here, because again, these are pretty hazardous with the speeds we see out there. So we're going to remove that trail and that hazard, so people are now forced to go to the intersection. So that's why you have the increased cost, because of all these other factors we added.

Speaker E: Just as an understanding, where we're going to remove the flasher, that's the pedestrian cross there. Is there some sort of signage, or like, what do we do to help people know that they can't cross there anymore besides taking the light away?

Speaker D: Well, we're taking the light away and we're removing the trail too. Like, that trail that deviates off the main trail, that's all going to go away. And so you'll have to just walk through dirt. We're replacing the medians too, so it won't look like there was ever a trail there. We're getting rid of the striping.

Speaker E: Okay, thank you.

Speaker D: So, and there's really not a great reason to cross there. There's nothing really in that vicinity anyway, so it makes sense for people. Exactly. So people should go to the crosswalk down here at the signal. Silver Lake and Woodhaven turn lanes. This is one that we added the turn lanes. This is along Pony Express Parkway. The problem with Silver Lake was you had 2 lanes. You had a left and a through on the right. And with all the development that occurred to the north from Mount Saratoga, the throughs were inhibiting the rights to make a right on red heading east onto Silver Lake— onto Pony Express. So to fix that, we're adding this nice long right turn lane. So in the morning, it still shows the existing striping, but it will, it will be a left, a through, and a right. So we'll remove that existing. So the throughs can now be dedicated here. The rights can turn right on red in the morning commute. While we're doing this project, we saw that Woodhaven is going to have the same, one of the same issues because of the new commercial rider station that's going to the north. We were concerned about that as well. So we're asking for a little bit more funding to knock out this one as well. The difference in this one, you'll see, we're keeping the through and the rights and the right. And the reason because of that is this is a commercial development that does not continue on north. So when the heavy AM peak traffic— Rich and I live over there. This one backs up, my gosh, it's at least 500 feet in the morning. So we like the idea of having dual rights that can go in the morning, but we don't see the throughs being an issue because there's a commercial up to the north. They're not going to be open and, you know, people heading that way in the morning. During the day, they can have lights if needed.

Speaker I: The straight right, are you going to actually have 2 right-hand turn signals?

Speaker D: At the intersection? Yeah.

Speaker I: Okay.

Speaker D: Yep. In fact, we have enough signal heads out there already, because of the power, uh, power lines, we had to add more anyway. So we already have the hardware, it's just reprogramming them. That's— there are some signs up there that we'll replace to show what the movements as well.

Speaker I: This is a little, little off track here. When the lights went out a month ago, whatever it was, when they reset, they're off. So it's stacking really, really bad in the morning now. We're going all the way back past Ridley's again.

Speaker D: Okay, that's good feedback.

Speaker I: So we need to We need to reset whatever happened. I think Woodhaven and Mountain View corridor is where it begins, but it's stacking Clear Pass, Ridley's now in the morning. So people are missing the light like 2 or 3 times.

Speaker D: Heading on Pony Express?

Speaker I: Heading east.

Speaker D: Yeah, and unfortunately a lot of that is, it is on the Saratoga side, it's Mountain View and, 'cause I go that way too sometimes, it's Mountain View and Pony Express. And some of that's a capacity issue. I mean, I can talk to them about that. I know I just had them fix the one in front of the middle school that one was off, but some of that's just capacity. Like that intersection along with SR 73, I know, um, Councilmember Ryding mentioned as well, these are just at capacity. They're so full. That's why, because that's going to get improved to 6 lanes coming down there as well, and it's needed now. So—

Speaker A: And Councilmember Wood, I just wanted to point out, I know you and I have— I drove over there, but the striping in this area to make sure it lines up. So I don't know if you have address your concerns, but I think this—

Speaker D: Yep, so, well, so that's what that looks like. And then we're going to make this a little bit bolder, the Do Not Block sign that we were talking about earlier, uh, Councilmember Wood. So we're going to add this, um, 8-inch box around it. It really stands out. People don't always follow that in the morning. So that one, we asked— we're asking for a little more funding to cover that one for '27.

Speaker I: Do you think there's a benefit on Pony Express to doing that? Or do we— because so if you're— they're not doing it on Silver Lake Parkway. That one's open. It's usually Copper Bend and Woodhaven that they're rolling across, and then the light turns and nobody can go. I don't know if there's any advantage to doing that. I mean, I'm not a traffic engineer. If you guys think that that's going to fix some of that stacking problem, but if it really is just a capacity thing—

Speaker D: in my opinion, it's a capacity thing. And the reason why I would not recommend doing that on Pony Is because if we do it there, we're going to want to do it everywhere. This is justifiable because of the proximity of the adjacent road, so it makes sense. But Pony Express is just getting full.

Speaker I: The unfortunate thing about this specific area is it impacts everybody in the city. If this backs up, then it causes backup on Ranches Parkway, and that exacerbates all the way back past Ranches Parkway into the next light alone. Lone Tree. So somehow we've got to find a way to have the traffic at certain times of the day on Pony Express supersede the importance of people turning right out of the neighborhoods.

Speaker D: And it is— we already have optimized, given priority to Pony Express. But I'm glad you mentioned that because I have a slide toward the end about fixing that solution. So here's one of the big ones: Ranches Parkway median removal. This is a project that we just submitted for MAG. I sent it out over 2 weeks ago. We are presenting to MAG on April 27th, and we should hear back if we get the project awarded on May 4th. This is one we will remove the medians from Pony Express all the way to SR 73. These medians are wide enough, approximately 36 feet, some to 38, where we can put in 2 travel lanes, one in each direction, a center turn lane. It will also remove the medians, which will greatly help public safety as well when they're responding to calls. They can now turn around in, in between intersections. Um, we will have some concrete median at intersections, um, but not more than a few hundred feet just for queuing and for, you know, oncoming traffic. But the rest of it will be striped throughout. We're also proposing improving the intersection at Pony Express and Ranches. Of course, this is Pony Express, here's Ranches. So we'll have dual lefts Dual rights for our big heavy turn movements here. Decel, um, right dedicated right turn lanes, right turn lanes, right turn lanes, just to keep the traffic off of Pony so it's moving. This is a big project.

Speaker I: On that, if you'll go back to that previous slide, so if you're heading north, uh, we'll say from Lone Tree to that intersection, the stacking in this lane right now is what's causing this lane to kind of fail. It's backing over the top of it and it's really giving one lane. Can we extend that?

Speaker D: I do. Yep. In fact, I've got an image that I can show you if we have time. I can— or I'll send it to you later. I've got a conceptual image that we're going to pull all the way back. We're going to block. We have to start limiting intersections along Pony Express. Yeah. We need to stop giving full access to every single intersection.

Speaker I: Agreed.

Speaker D: So the one that's directly west of this, it's going to be blocked off. That left turn pocket is going to extend all the way back to avoid that issue. So going forward, that's going to be our plan. And it's unfortunate. We will do public notices and, and open houses. But if our biggest complaint is traffic, this is how we fix it— by making our one of two corridors more efficient. So I'll send you that concept plan I have that we submitted for MAC to all you guys as well. So this is one of our worst corridors in the whole city. It is at 33,000 vehicles a day, and it's just like a shy away from going over capacity. This will get us another approximately 18,000 vehicles per day just adding these 2 through lanes and the turn movements. We would also add 2 traffic signals along the corridor, kind of at third points. So I think the first one's at— I think it's Trail Box and then Braxton. And then same thing, we're going to limit full access on the other ones because those left turns now are already sketchy. And now we're going to add 2 more travel lanes out there. This will also help pedestrians as well, having a dedicated place for them to cross along the corridor.

Speaker I: So do you feel like that we're at a point where we just need to put a policy in place that exceeds what we have been doing about, uh, access from an intersection? Do we need to broaden this and, to your point, eliminate some of these left-hand turns?

Speaker D: Yeah, we do. In fact, in fact, development sector have been working a lot of this We're trying to limit that. When we see development, we're having those conversations. The latest one, Eagle Crest, we talked about concerns about wanting left egresses out. It's like, no, we have concerns with that. Now, left ingresses are easier to make, but those left outs are very tricky, especially if we're going to, you know, 7 lanes.

Speaker I: I think that's a good thing for us to take a look at tackling, because not just on Pony Express, I think Eagle Mountain Boulevard, because it's going to continue to fill with commercial uses. And if we keep creating driveways into we're exacerbating our problem.

Speaker D: I agree, and we're, we're doing that. We're trying to add more ride and ride-outs and better space out the full accesses. So we submitted this for MAG. We're asking for funding to get this project going now for '27 for design, um, later funding— ignore these numbers for now, I'll talk about that later. That's kind of what the project will be eventually for full construction. But again, this is This is one of our worst corridors in the whole city. We want to get ahead of this and get— the MAG funding is not till '29-'30, but we want to get ahead of this problem now because it is such a big issue.

Speaker A: And because of some MAG issues, they're talking about pausing a year and kicking everything back. Yeah, one of the things that I tell you guys, I fight with MAG all the time, and in a nice way, as nice as I can, but it has to do with the difference between if we're a approved prepaying and then getting reimbursed compared to those who wait and then ask for an amendment because the cost went up. Uh, you know, it's unfair to us who prepay to spend less.

Speaker D: Uh, so lots of other cities— yeah, we're, we're one of the best ones who fronts these costs and saves money. We're like, we saved money on the roundabout removal, and we have that for some of the widening of Pony Express. And so they like that. They take that consideration for our project selection, so they appreciate that Yeah, and I think that this just—

Speaker A: I'm throwing that out there only to say that if this gets approved, you know, it looks like a 2029 project and we're already failing. My ask or proposal that we consider funding that and then waiting for reimbursement.

Speaker D: Yep. Next one is Pole Canyon and Pony Express Parkway. We're seeing a lot of traffic, not just from residents but from commercial as well. at this intersection. The current intersection is already really goofy aligned the way it is. Here's Pole Canyon. The pavement doesn't even align in its current configuration. There's no deceleration lanes currently on Pony Express, so the traffic here slows down immensely in the morning. And then in, in the evening, the lefts trying to get out can never make it with this traffic heading northbound. I've seen vehicles driving the dirt road here and cut across traffic, all kinds of shady stuff out there. So it's just— and the worst thing is a lot of this we know are, you know, from construction, but you have residents trying to come home, going over to Scarlet Ridge Parkway Fields, and they're fighting this traffic. So what this project would do is it would widen the intersection. The rest of the road would come with development, but for now we would widen the intersection so it properly aligns. We'd have a deceleration lane here, traffic signal, With again the priority being the north-south movement, but it would still have those protected lefts.

Speaker I: So the widening there, you're going to try to accommodate a couple left-hand turn lanes to be able to turn onto Bonney Express? That's okay. Yep. And that's, uh, eastbound traffic to northbound traffic?

Speaker D: Correct. Yep, east to north. Yep. I mean, we need to widen it so much because the current left lane is here, and so we need to get it fully widened And so they line up, because you don't want lefts offset. That creates blind spots and hazards for turning, and you can't see oncoming traffic. So it makes sense to do the whole full widening and fix it now than just, oh, we'll do this later and this later. No, we should fix it and fix it right. And then later development can widen it, you know, and do the full section later on. So for that project, we're asking for design funds so we can get started on design. And then same thing, we can look at 28 when we come back and kind of sharpen the pencil I ran this estimate, and then what does that look like, uh, going forward for the next fiscal year?

Speaker I: Uh, just to— it's probably not a question for you, maybe for— is Brandon here? Brandon, that section that's to the west of that intersection, Pole Canyon Road, Pony Express, do we have any idea development-wise when we are— we will start to see that develop on the other side of the road where we can have participation from the developer? Or are we so far out on that that it's, it's really just going to be an intersection and it's going to sit there for a while?

Speaker D: And I'll let him answer that, but I do know Firefly has a lot of that roadway that's in there.

Speaker I: All the way to the Pony Express?

Speaker D: I believe it's all the way to Pony Express.

Speaker B: I haven't heard anything from them about developing that road anytime soon.

Speaker I: So maybe this is one of those opportunities for us to work out a deal with them to get the road that we need to be built in exchange for some something that's of benefit to them so we can have the road available for the use of our citizens.

Speaker D: Would be helpful. They could use it. So my last one is Mount Airy widening. This is one that would remove the medians on Mount Airy to SR 73. Currently the medians go from Mount Airy down here to, uh, Inverness. And what we're seeing is because there's only one lane at the intersection. The lefts are blocking the right movements in the morning, and so cars know that, and so they blow through this neighborhood and take this right and right out with acceleration lane. What we want to do is remove this median, make 2 lanes here, so this is the more appealing traffic that will eventually divert traffic. And we talk about speed management, you know, Chief Knutson was talking about, and, you know, stop signs are not a great way to manage speed or speed humps. The best way to fix speed is geometry, is making roads more appealing, or to restrict, you know, roads with striping or other features. This would help alleviate a lot of that potential traffic that's blowing through this neighborhood by making this the ideal road, because you can continue straight and hop on the highway faster. So that's one way we want to kind of propose this project. We're asking for design funds to kind of get going on this, and then same thing, looking at construction for the following year.

Speaker C: David, I just leaned over to Council Member Clark a minute ago, and I'm just gonna— I want to say this so everyone can hear it. It's super refreshing to me to see us proactively planning to fix some of the mistakes we've made in the past. And to— I mean, like the Pole Canyon and Eagle Mountain Boulevard. I just— I'm just so entirely impressed and grateful that you're part of our team and that the engineering staff is really looking at this And I know that that's you and Vince, and mostly you when it comes to traffic. That's the entire group. But I just— it's so refreshing to see us trying to solve these problems that have existed in advance of them becoming much worse. So thank you.

Speaker D: Thank you. So that's Mount Airy. Our last one— I forgot about this.

Speaker I: Quick question.

Speaker D: Oh yeah, go ahead.

Speaker I: When you're looking at these, and obviously some of these have big numbers and and we're trying to tie them to other funding sources. If you see some of these that you're like— I'm gonna use Mount Airy as an example.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker I: If we were to do this now, this would have this kind of an impact now. There are one-time funds that are still available to the benefit of the city that we could say, okay, you know what, this is something that we think might be a good idea for us to use those funds on because it creates an immediate impact that helps out X amount of people. I'm not saying that it has to be Mount Airy. I'm just using that because it's on the screen.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker I: So if you come across something like that and say this brings an immediate impact, now it's going to have a widespread benefit. We don't have funding sources per se, uh, with impact fees or whatever, but there are some of the sources that we have like our utility funds. Citizens are all going to be able to use something like that. I would love for you to make a suggestion and say, what do you think?

Speaker D: Okay.

Speaker I: Because it gives us the ability to say, yeah, I mean, yeah, we're going to have to spend $200,000 or $300,000 on this out of those utility funds, but it's going to have this kind of an impact on relieving traffic that— I mean, that's number one complaint of all of our citizens is traffic. And then we can solve some of those things by utilizing funds that belong to them to solve the problem, in my opinion.

Speaker D: That's helpful. Thank you. The last one we added on, I kind of forgot about, was this study. This is looking at connectivity south of the city. This is kind of where the future Cedar Valley Highway kind of connects down. How does Pony Express connect into that? East Expressway, where does that terminate? There's been a lot of discussion with development down south. What does it look like? What property do they have? What does the city need to secure? And this would have a study looking at That future development, how does this road tie into some of the other areas down there as well? So we feel like this is an area of the city trying to be, again, proactive. We're not ignoring— because there's nothing out there right now, right? And then development comes, it's like, oh, we can't put a road through there now. So we're trying to get ahead of that and look at that and get ahead of like a future Mid-Valley, basically.

Speaker I: One last question. I didn't see anything on here about the completion of Airport Road, the width expansion. Do you have an idea when you want to— what budget you're trying to fit that into?

Speaker D: No, because that is not a major road right now. It's a great secondary or third relief, but even now the vehicles on there, it's not that much. It's great to have there's an accident for redundancy, same with Mid Valley, but that expansion is not a super priority right now. I'm trying to focus on the hot ones, like I'll talk about in a minute, Ranches, Pony Express. We are working on— I will tell you this, we're working on Airport Road and East Expressway. We are working on the right-of-way layouts. So we are working on doing the legals so we can get that corridor secure and then, you know, work on developing that road and building it out as we need to.

Speaker I: Thanks.

Speaker D: But there are some other fires we got to put out first, unfortunately. Okay, so kind of wrapping up my presentation, future concerns. This is a screenshot from the latest Transportation Master Plan that we finished Late last year, and you can see here's Ranches Parkway 33.3. I think it's 33.6 or 33.8 is overcapacity. So we're just there. Red is overcapacity. No surprise, Point Express, right? And then SR 73 as well, way overcapacity. So the concern— what I want to propose is addressing the issues and resolving some of these issues before. before the highway, uh, Cory Bee Ride Memorial Highway, starts construction. It's planned to program in '29 with construction starting in 2030. So I wanted to propose some projects we can look at to get them done before the highway starts. Because when this highway starts, the rumors I've heard, it's going to be a frontage road system with 4 to 6 lanes in the middle. And I've heard they're going to start on the north side and come down to have as little impact to this highway as possible. But all that traffic has to go somewhere. They're going to be using this, and what's going to happen is we're going to get traffic diverted from here already onto a road that's already over capacity. So what I'd like to do is propose some projects we can get done before this starts. So what I'd like to propose is if we could do the Ranches Parkway median removal project as well with widening Pony Express from Mid Valley Road all the way to the border, and then coordinate with Saratoga Springs and go all the way to Mountain View Corridor. I have been discussions with Saratoga Springs; they are open to that. They also have the right of way to go to seven lanes on their side as well. They don't have as much as us, but they have plenty, which is great. On Pony Express, we already have all the right of way preserved. So you know, big props to past city. Folks who did that because this is already— right-of-way is already secure on here. We have 202 feet through this whole corridor on ranches. Right now we're proposing just removing the medians. That'll get us the capacity we need now. Eventually we're going to look at kicking out the curbs 12 feet and putting in some shoulders for added safety. We're planning to do that when the east sewer line comes in because we'll bury that on the, on the east shoulder. So that'll be a later one, which will give a safety other redundancies, but the capacity we can get from removing the medians now, and from these numbers you can see we can get almost 20,000 vehicles a day on both sections of road. So this will get us, this will get us there well before the highway, and then even without Mid-Valley Highway, this will get us kind of flush where we need to be.

Speaker I: Will the section of Pony Express there qualify for the MAG funding still?

Speaker A: It will.

Speaker I: Because I know we got them to pay for the widening the first time, but that because it connects to Saratoga Springs and they want to be a participant in it, that should qualify, right?

Speaker D: And I have strong feelings that it will. In fact, we joked at the last MAG meeting because AF is proposing a project for the latest TIP. Saratoga Springs has also proposed another Pony Express project, and they respectively called it Pony Express Widening Phase 20 and Phase 21 because MAG has funded so much of Pony Express, from AF to Lehigh to Saratoga and to us. So I think this would be an excellent project for MAG funding. I talk about it here as well, kind of in the 2028 cycle. So again, I'm just showing the need. I don't know the hows, and that's for our wonderful friends in finance. But the thought I had as a suggestion is maybe doing some kind of bond or another alternate revenue source in the short term to get the cash so we can start doing these projects now. We do know, um, with— here's the current MAG funding cycle. We have already submitted Ranches Parkway for the current 2028 TIP. Funding will be available in '29-'30. Pony Express, we— I believe we could also submit for the '28. I think it has huge regional significance, especially because it does connect, you know, multiple cities together. I think this would be a very good project, and I think it would score well on the MAG funding. It is a little expensive, but I still think with more and more projects in the TIP are going up in price. It used to be like $10 million was like the threshold. Saratoga had a project— or no, it was AF had a project for Pony Express widening, $17.5 million, and it's probably even higher now. So we're seeing more and more projects go up in pricing. That's why I think both of these could be potential MAG-funded projects. Again, they're not guaranteed, I'll know back on Ranches in the beginning of May if this is awarded or not. But this is one proposal I wanted to show if the city could look at this or alternate funding sources to get these 2 important corridors done before the highway construction begins.

Speaker A: Well, my question was also both— most of these projects, especially this one too, is impact Yes, absolutely. And I don't know if that's— has that project been contemplated previously in our IFFP? Are we collecting on it now?

Speaker G: No, because all of our capital facility plans need to make their way through council with IFFPs and IFAs.

Speaker A: Yeah, so this one— so what kind of scares me a little bit is the speed at what we're moving and cost and everything else. Go to that next slide. Because this is all IFP. Yeah, and if we— so this right here, this, this, if we do that, erases all of our other opportunities because once it's built, unless it's approved before it's built, MAG's off the table. Same with IFFP, you know, as far as our— it has to be a project prior to that. So We need to get those in now before we get in too big a hurry. And then we can bond and then get reimbursed. But I'm— we need to hurry, but we also need to get those things done.

Speaker D: And Mayor, on the timing, and that's why for this project we submitted now. And so if we front the design costs, we're just doing design. We haven't touched construction yet. And our thought was the same thing for Pony Express. We could potentially do the design in '28, like early '28, or, you know, And then construction would follow afterward after it's been submitted. So we're not disqualifying ourselves.

Speaker A: But I thought the funding for the SR 73 was supposed to finish in '29. You're saying start in '29.

Speaker D: They're going to start programming in '29. Yeah, because they still have to do— they just started 2100 and they're doing Pioneer right now. They're going to finish Pioneer, keep working on 2100, go to Mountain View, And then 73. Yeah, they got ways— we're last on the list right now. But it makes sense because you want to start from 15 and you go down to us. So that's all I have for my presentation. Happy to go back or answer any other questions.

Speaker G: So we know that you're running out of time and all that type of thing. I just want to reiterate that How we get there is the next discussion, and we, we are working on different plans for all of these different things for you to consider and different options and what makes the most sense for the residents of Eagle Mountain City.

Speaker A: So I'll step in for just a second because I know we have 2 minutes to 5. It's been requested by Councilmember Wood that we stay, whether that's just for regular discussion I don't know if there's anyone else that would like to stay, but at this point, if there's not any specific questions for those who need to leave specifically that can be excused— I know Kimberly needs to be excused, right? Is there anyone else? And then as far as staying, I've heard from Councilmember Wood. Is anyone else in favor?

Speaker I: Do you feel like we have other things to discuss? I don't know what's in front of you. Is this it?

Speaker G: This is— we've met our expectation. We did it within the time that we needed to, and we'll continue this process in the months ahead. A few weeks in.

Speaker I: If there's no reason to stay, then don't stay.

Speaker A: OK, well, if there's anything else to— any projects, maybe there's something that you guys want to talk about that maybe— I know one thing that I could ask David is right-of-way. Councilmember Huish talked to me about right-of-way on Airport Road, and I know I went took pictures, and I know by Pony Express is super wide. We have all that, but as it goes, it is a little bit confusing whether or not we own all the right away.

Speaker D: Do we have that right away? Yep, on Pony Express we own all the right away. No, airport. Airport Road, no. So Airport Road, we have. I'll go the parcel map, but we have the big chunk that comes off Pony Express at the angle, and then we don't have it going forward.

Speaker A: Next to the airport, I think, is where I saw that was the narrowest. And then of course we— correct, this was Holmes, which we built fencing and stuff for the, the mule deer. So that's, that's one that, uh, sorry guys, after we talked, I went and kind of filmed that and I was like, I'm not real sure. So do you want to address that?

Speaker H: Yeah, the question was just there, there are people that walk on Airport Road. It's just wide enough for 2 cars, but people are jogging, running along it. And so the question is just to connect the north part of the city to the south part of the city with some kind of path or trail. My question was, do we have the easement? Do we own the land where we could put in a 7-foot pathway? And I've talked to Brad Hickman about this, but I don't know that we own any land east of Airport Road, that stretch.

Speaker C: I don't believe we do.

Speaker D: We're, we're currently working, working on the legals Yeah. To secure additional right-of-way. I've seen people walking out there too.

Speaker H: Don't own it today, but we're working on figuring out who owns it.

Speaker D: Yeah. And a lot of times, you know, trails, park strip, that comes with development a lot of times. You know, we're focusing on kind of front-loading the road just for connectivity. And that's something we can look at, especially with the property owners out there as well. If there's a desire to do that, can we get reimbursed for it? So I think there's options we can look at. But first and foremost, we are trying to get the right-of-way secured. So we can do that in the future.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker I: I think one of the things that you said is resonating with me— how it's being used, how, how much traffic is being used on it. If, if you're looking at that and you're saying it's not being utilized, then for me, we need to prioritize other places. It doesn't mean we should ignore it, but perhaps we should plan for its future use in our trail system master plan that we just talked about. out. If we haven't planned for one there, there should be one. And that's things that we can plan for in the future. But I think if, if it's not being utilized, which is unfortunate because it was a lot of money to build that road that nobody's using, um, is there a way for us to use it?

Speaker G: They use it mornings and afternoons.

Speaker D: Yeah, it's greater AM commute than PM commute.

Speaker G: In comparison to the other roads. And for example, when we shut down, um, Eagle Mountain Boulevard with paving, we're going Yeah, it's great to have that redundancy.

Speaker D: It's a great road to have. I'm not knocking it. It's just as far as the volume—

Speaker I: No, I think it's an honest assessment of it. Yes, it's being used, but it is not being used like our other north-south corridors are.

Speaker D: Mr. Hickman.

Speaker B: I just want to add one point to the trails. So we got to be really strategic in how we do that too. Because, I mean, to answer your question, yes, you could go throw a trail in there, but what's the full road profile going to be? How do you build it so that we don't have to tear it out to build it again and pay for it twice? And those are some of the mistakes that we've made in the past too, where we've jumped the gun. And so we're trying to be very strategic in how we do that to try to maximize the dollars.

Speaker A: And so, Brad, to be fair, that's why that— the right-of-way came up is because I had mentioned in that conversation that there's already in the road profile. So even if we just built it, but we can't build it once because we don't own the, the furthest part that we need. So that's exactly the question.

Speaker B: For sure.

Speaker H: Yeah, there's elevation from Airport Road down to the, the farmland there. So I just thought if we owned it, we could start dumping dirt there.

Speaker G: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it's hard to project in some of these areas what grade the development will even happen at too.

Speaker H: Right.

Speaker B: So that's— there's a few unknowns, there's some variables, and we just gotta make sure that we take all those things into consideration before we pull the trigger and say, hey, we're gonna move forward and put this trail in.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker B: But it's definitely on the plans. It'll have a trail network along it. I just can't say that it's gonna be built next year or the following year. I don't have a timetable for it yet. Okay, thanks.

Speaker A: Rich, is there anything else to talk about then? If— then I'm open for a motion.

Speaker D: I have to move.

Speaker C: Motion to adjourn.

Speaker F: Second.

Speaker A: All right, it's been moved and seconded. Moved by Councilmember Wood and seconded by Councilmember Whiting. All in favor?

Speaker C: Aye.

Speaker J: Aye.

Speaker A: We are adjourned at 5:04.