09 12 2023 CACHE COUNTY COUNCIL MEETING

To welcome everybody here to county council meeting on, the September 12. We appreciate everybody being here, all those that are here for fun, and those that are here to to actually present. We appreciate it, and we hope that you guys will do your best there, all of you. I am actually going to be doing the opening tonight, and I would like to do my opening in the form of a prayer. Our father in heaven, we're indeed grateful to be able to gather together here this and take charge and do the affairs of this Cache County that we love. We're grateful for each other, the abilities that we have and what we can share. We're grateful for opportunities to serve, to serve the people here, and to all be blessed together. We're grateful for the opportunities, again, of service, of, being mindful of of those that are that have come before us, those that have given their lives for our freedoms, those that serve through emergency medical, or police or, fire, we pray that they will also be blessed in every way possible. We're again grateful for this opportunity. We would at this time also ask thee to be with us, that our insight will be deep, that we'll be able to think things clearly, that we'll be analytical and understanding in what needs to be decided this night. And this we humbly do in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. And if you'd all stand and we'll do the pledge of allegiance, please. Micah. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, Thank you very much. Excuse me. We do have an amended agenda. I would entertain a motion to approve the amended agenda. So moved. Second. Moved and seconded that we approve the amended agenda. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. That's right. We do have a delay, and we would like to welcome Mark Hurd. You're on the phone here. He is still in the process of healing. Heal fast. Okay? We'd like to see your face someday.

Next next meeting. Okay. Good.

Good. How about the minutes from the previous on August 22 and August 31?

I would move that we accept the minutes from August 22 and August 31.

I'll second. Moved and seconded that we accept the minutes and approve those on August 22 and August 31. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Motion passes.

Now turn it over. I don't mean to go too fast here, but turn it over to the county executive for his report. Alright. Thank you, mister chairman and council. I have a couple items to report on this evening. First of all, I just would like to mention that we had our third annual suicide prevention concert and event this past past Saturday at the Fairgrounds. And it was a great, great and very successful event as it's been the last two years. And I just wanted to take a moment to thank everybody who helped with that. The Suicide Prevention Coalition, all the members of the committee, and our sponsors, especially. We had many sponsors in the community, and the council was was the largest sponsor. Thank you so much for the wraps tax funding that you provided for that event. As as in the last couple of years, we have thousands of attendees, and we had a resource fair before the concert with more than two dozen different different agencies and nonprofit organizations. In the morning, we had a breakfast for first responders. That's been something we've included in the event for the last two years where we've provided an opportunity for first responders to to not only be thanked for their efforts, but also to be connected with resources to help them to process things that they've dealt with. So I just really want to thank everybody for a very successful event. It's a very good cause, and I think everything went really well. So thank you. And, also, along that same line of thanking people, we had a dinner last week, and I know council members were at their USAC meeting weren't able to attend, but we had a dinner last week to thank everybody who helped with the fair with the county fair and again it was a great event with many of the volunteers and committee members and employees to help put on that very complex and and very important event every year. And and I was able to attend that and express gratitude on behalf of the county to everybody who helped out with our county fair this year. Again, extremely successful event. We had a, last week, a airport board meeting and, working on several things. Just wanted to give the the council a heads up. One of the issues the airport's been really struggling with is snow removal, and Logan City has previously provided snow removal services and assisted the airport with that. And after last winter, they notified the airport they would no longer be able to assist with snow removal at the airport. And. Since then the airport's been looking for another solution. It seems like we're probably pretty close to them working out a deal with our County Public Works department to help them with that and as you know the airport is technically a separate legal entity from the county. It's a airport authority board is made up of representatives from the county and Logan City as well as couple of citizens. And, just wanted to give you a heads up that that's been there's likely to be an increased costs associated with the county public works department coming in providing that service, which is part of the reason I'm sure that Logan City wanted out of that that arrangement because it was I think not cost effective for them. So you may be seeing some changes in the airport budget and request for funding in relation to that. So just wanna give you a heads up about that. Also, wanted to thank our our clerk, mister Benson, for a successful election. Thank you so much. We had a primary election with four cities having primaries across the valley, and that's a really big task. And he he pulled it off and and did a great job. Thank you very much for fulfilling one of the most important duties of our government and helping us to to be able to vote and choose leaders, so thank you. Also, I had an opportunity last week to meet with the the new superintendent of our school district who happens to be here this evening, Todd McKee, and we had we had a good discussion about a number of things in our community, and I was going to talk about one of those in particular, but they're actually on the agenda tonight to talk about, so I'll let them talk about it. But I just want to welcome him to our community, and after meeting with him, I'm glad that we're in good hands and seems very capable and committed to serving our students well. So thank you for being here tonight and for your service. The next item I just wanted to mention, I've been approached by several people in the community, both citizens and elected leaders from different cities, about discussions related to recreation facilities here in the valley. And some of some of the discussions have been about city facilities, some of those discussions have been about shared facilities. And in in these discussions that we've been having, there's been a consensus that maybe we need to put a group together to talk about this, about how we might be able to work together to figure out the best solutions for recreation facilities for community, whether that be something that Logan City does on its own or that North Logan does on its own or that Nibley does on its own or that they partner or that we all partner or that the county is a partner. So there's been a there's been some discussion about putting together some type of a committee to look at options, to look at funding, to look at governance, to look at potential locations, and to give some recommendations on how that might play out. So I I know there's been some discussion about some committees that I've put together in the past and and the council's desire to be more engaged or involved in that process. So I just wanted to bring this up tonight, so council members could think about what process you would like us to go through. If you'd like me to bring a formal proposal to create an official committee to to look into these recreation needs, or or if you're okay with me just putting together an ad hoc committee, I'm happy to do it either way, whichever is your preference. I don't see this as being a long term committee, but something that would look into look into the needs and and issue a report and probably be a short term thing. So I just wanted to mention that, so you can think about it. We can have some more discussions, maybe, at the executive order 2023 Dash01 that I signed last week, creating the Office of Personnel Management within our County. According to State Code 17 dash 33, we are supposed to change our our form of personnel management once we have more than 200 employees who are not public safety employees. And we've been around that threshold for a little while with with with 400 ish employees and about half of them being in the sheriff's office, but our human resources director feels confident that we have surpassed that threshold and the statute sets forth that that I can designate that we switch to that office of personal management as notated in the statute. And so I did that officially last week by executive order. And I know the council has been working on this as well and that you have an item on your agenda today to implement the that statute into our County code. And I thank you for doing that. One of the one of the changes that is made by implementing that new system is that we would have an office of personnel management and that we would have a director over that office. With my executive order, I appointed our HR director, Amy Adams, as the interim director of the Cache County Office of Personnel Management because that that appointment requires advice and consent of the council to to become permanent. And so with that being said, I would like to present Amy Adams name to the council at this time for your advice and consent to appoint her as the permanent director of the Cache County

Office of Personnel Management. Not

the interim? She is interim. I did appoint her as interim last week when I did the executive order. Order. So And now you're presenting her to be the permanent?

To

be the director of the Office of Personnel Management.

Well, I would make a motion that we approve Amy Adams to be the new Director of Personnel Management in Cache County. Second.

Moved and seconded that we approve Amy Adams as the as the permanent Yeah. Or the new director of the of the personnel management. I had one question. Do we need to go through do we need to wait and pass our ordinance

No. First. We can go ahead and move on this. Okay. It's been created by executive orders of the council. Okay. Pursuant

to the Okay. Are there any discussion? Hearing none, proceed to vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes.

Okay. Thank you very much council members and that concludes my report for this evening.

Thank you. Let's jump right into items of special interest, review and approval of the ARPA applications for the county departments. Elma, let us have it. Alright.

So this has been a quite a process, and I want to just, I'll talk about the county departments and the component units. Earlier, the council approved us an allotted amount of $750,000 for additional projects from the county departments and component units. At the July, an application was opened with a deadline of August 11. We received 10 applications from county departments and, I believe, three component units. The applications were reviewed to make sure that they qualified for ARPA, and then they were sent on to the Budget Committee at the August. The Budget Committee has met a couple of times and talked about not only these, the county department applications, but also the nonprofit, which I'll talk about a little bit later. I want to draw your attention to a couple of files that I'll be referencing. These should be in your packet. There's a handout or a, a file. It's, starts with zero six, and it's August 2023 ARPA applications, if you'll find that, file. Yes. No. I'll be talking about the internal. The internal will be the County Departments. So if you go to the internal tab there, let me see here. So on the internal tab, they have listed there the three component units as well as the other departments that have requested. There's a column with the amount requested and then the suggested amount. I wanna explain how that suggested amount came about. After the budget committee had reviewed the applications online and met a couple of times, on the last Budget Committee meeting on September 5, the Budget Committee sat together and went through and identified those amounts on the suggested amount column. Hopefully, you see that, and that totals just shy of the $750,000 Then there's a couple of other or a couple of other files that I also sent, and I understand that they are in your packet as well. They start with zero six with some dashes and a one, and it's ARPA applications. This gives a score summary, and there's two tabs in that file as well. There's the county departments and component units and then one for the nonprofits. I'll just be talking about the county departments, and if you were to go through that, you could see that the scores that were submitted were all added up there just so you could kind of see how they scored. Last week, a link was sent to the council so that you could review the applications for the county departments and the component units, and now, I guess, is the next steps. I talked to Phil. He wasn't able to be here this evening. But if you were to have a discussion, if you had enough quest or if you had any questions, we could answer them the best we could. We've got some budget committee members here as well, and if it was approved, it could be put into the budget, for the county departments. So any questions on the county, departments and applications for the from the county departments and the component units to apply for ARPA funds.

I'm on the budget committee, but I'm wondering why two things. I I wanted to see the public defender get the needed because I think we're backlogged there. And then also and I wasn't there till the last budget meeting. So this is trying to help me understand why we didn't give anything to the election box ballot because that seemed, from what I had heard, something that was certainly needed as well.

I I think the the budget committee, if I can speak for that, they felt like there wasn't enough information in that application. It needed to be a little more fleshed out, a little more detail in it as to why or how those funds were going to be spent. It was just kind of a I think it was a $100,000 request, and they wanted to know if there could be some more detail involved in that before or they had made a recommendation.

And that included the municipalities that were involved in that. Yes. And what we weren't clear on what they would be providing or anything on that too. So we needed some more clarification on that. And as far as we knew, there was not a time frame on it. No.

But we're taking all of the money that we've allocated. And so to me, this is the cost the county is gonna face down the road or some of the municipalities. And so there lies my concern because there's some of these things on here that I don't know that the county is gonna face the cost in it.

One of the things that we discussed in the budget committee, not in the last many, but the one previous to that. Well, maybe it was discussed in the last one, but I know for sure in the previous one we discussed that. There would be some of these needs that would not be met in this round because there was almost 3,000,000 in requests and we only had 750,000 to distribute. But one of the things we discussed is that we set aside 400 and something No. Yes. Over 400,000 as a cushion. Yes. 435,000. And 35,000. So one of one of the thoughts related to that was primarily that those funds would be used for cost overruns if if there were any of the already funded projects where we needed to contribute more to get it done. But secondarily that at a certain point in the future we would come back and just spend those funds and allocate them to these projects. So our thought was that. When we when we come back next year and we set kind of a tentative deadline of, what, January?

Or Yeah. Sometime during the 2024 because all of the ARPA funds that we receive have to be Committed. Committed. I By the end of next year. By the end of by 12/31/2024.

Our thought was that sometime early next year, we would come back and take another look at everything that's already been funded, see if it if it looks like it has enough funding to get it done and if so then allocate that $435,000 to some of these projects that were not funded yet. So so there there's a potential that we could fund that

ballot box initiative with some of that $435,000

I had a question earlier that I I don't know if if, you looked into this. The the county administrative facilities assessment, the $36,005.95, did we have an actual bid on that? Yes.

I reached out. There is a bid on that. It's dated from July 2023. So a recent bid. And it came in just right around that amount requested. So there is a a bid Actual bid. An actual bid for that. Yes.

This was the request that originally started out at a 100,000?

Correct. And I think that was just kind of a placeholder at that time and then they proceeded to get some a a bid to finalize that number.

How do you feel about that? Paying someone 30 almost $37,000 to just tell you what we may already know?

I know oh, I'm sorry. There's been some concern expressed to me that maybe this is not something that is well spent, and that maybe the departments would be better served by notifying us of their own needs, you know, in in their own departments. But I don't know.

Sandy? That was kinda what I was thinking that that maybe and I don't know if I wasn't a part of those discussions, but my thought is I'd rather give that $37,000 to the public defender that they had asked for. I feel like the each department could probably tell us what their future needs are.

If I could provide a little bit more background information to Duke on that. I actually proposed that, I don't know, probably two years ago now, and the initial reason I proposed it was to get a professional opinion from an architect about our space needs here on this campus with the hope that we could use a larger chunk of this money to actually build on to our campus and expand it here. We got $25,000,000 initially, and my thought originally was with $25,000,000 that we could use some portion of that, see how see what our space needs are, and then actually build an addition a new building or an addition to one of our existing buildings on this campus. That proposal was not supported. And so the money and since then, the monies have been spent. We're down to now just a a little bit more that we're that we have left to spend of of these the original 25,000,000. So it's it's it's questionable what the value of of this study would be at this point, because if it comes back and says, yes, you're right, you're out of space. You need a lot more space. You need to build this many more square feet. We've spent the money that that that I proposed two years ago that we use to expand. There would be value still to to having an architect come in and tell us that because potentially we could we could potentially do some remodeling or retrofitting of existing facilities to better utilize our space. For example, there was one proposal to maybe make the the 3rd Floor, maybe even the 2nd Floor internal use only and not have that those be publicly accessible spaces and then and then use or maybe remove mall walls and use the hall space as office space. That's one potential idea. We did do an internal survey. I apologize. I don't have it with me tonight, but we did do an internal survey and asked departments approximately how many more spaces they felt like they needed, what they thought their growth was gonna be in the future. And I I thought that was shared with the council some months ago, but not we can reshare that with you. So there has been somewhat of an internal study already. The the consensus though with everyone on this campus is that we're out of space. We don't have enough space. We don't we don't need an architect to come come in and tell us that we need more space. Everybody recognizes that and acknowledges that. What what the thought was with this was to? To look at. Maybe how we could better use our existing space and if we were to add more space, how much we would need to give us a little bit more dialed in estimate of how how much space maybe where we could put that. Should we just expand the building next door? Should we do something new out in the parking lot? How would we weigh the additional parking needs related to that? And that's what architects do. They come in and give their professional opinion about those types of things. So that that's what this is. And this has been discussed by the Council many times and has not been funded thus far. But the the budget committee did support this. And I I will share with you also that every time this has been discussed in the past and and not supported, the the staff on this campus have have been discouraged because they they have felt like and and I know this is not the council's intent, but they have felt like their needs have not been addressed, and they need more space. They know a daily basis how short their spaces on a shortened supply their spaces, so they have expressed to me that they really want us to do something about our space needs, and this is just an initial step that would give us a little bit more information. However, I totally agree with supporting the public defender's request. I think that's a very important need. I would support any additional funds we wanna give there.

Other comments?

Yeah. I I mean, I understand that we're out of space and that we do need to to look at that. I just feel like $37,000 is a lot of taxpayer money that could be when we're ready, like, even if we get a study done right now that tells us what we need, can we do anything about it? And by the time we can do, is it gonna have to be done again? So my personal vote would be to put that to the public defenders, but that's I'm I'm willing to listen especially to those that were in the budget meeting and the budget committee.

I agree with you, Sandy. I do. I I'm still so disheartened about how we were we had already given permission to sign some contracts on some land and we had all to per and to pursue another building that was down at the Fairgrounds, which nothing's been done and that would have opened up a lot of space for us up here. And spend $37,000.36595 for I'm I've I just don't think that's a good reward for doing something that we should have been we we could have easily moved on and and had something in the works already. So I would I would actually be in in favor of also moving that that amount down to the public defender myself. But so any other discussion?

I'm in agreement when I put my ratings in. I did give the public defender his 100,000 and, to the staff of the county. I understand that we're squoos, but at the same time, I'm trying to be wise in hopefully cutting some costs that are gonna come to the county anyhow. And that's why I'm looking at it this way. I'm not saying that space isn't needed, but so I've ranked that the public defender get that so that we can keep that going because of their backlog and we go forward from that. The other stuff I'm fine with. So Yeah. Well, I would propose or make a motion that we move the county administrative complex facilities assessment of 36,595 back down to or down to the public defender.

Move and second, we move that 36,595 down to fund the public defenders request more, add additional to their $65,000 bring them closer to their $100,000 request. Is there any discussion on that motion?

I agree with what's being said. I just I I know that I've talked to a couple of department heads and they're very concerned about the space that they have available in their areas. And so I just want to make it clear that I do understand that, but I do agree that we need we should give that money to the public defender. If any of those department heads want to come and visit with me or anything like that,

other property that you mentioned, mister chairman, is still property owner has advised us that the soonest. It would be available is five to seven years from now. That date is never changed and. It's always been a future prospect to be able to acquire that additional property and those discussions are still underway. Nothing's been lost in that discussion, but the soonest that that would ever happen is five to seven years ago just because of their needs and how they can move. So even if we are able to close that deal, it's five to seven years from now. We'll get that extra space.

Any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. K. It's unanimous that we move that. Any other discussion on this portion? This is all internal.

You know what, mister chair? Can I just I I had called Alma earlier for a clarification and just for everyone else to know that first line, the 75,000 to Bragg for poverty mitigation? I wanted to clarify that that wasn't going for an administrative cost to administer another program, but that that money actually goes to people who need further training to get out of poverty. And so I was really happy about that, to to hear that. And so just I thought that explanation

might help. Yeah. It's to pay for the training for the individuals to get out of poverty. Good. Yeah. So I like that one.

Okay. We'll, we'll then put that one on with those changes, put that on hold. How about the next one? Okay.

So the nonprofit so the the applications for the nonprofit were sent out the August. There was a deadline of August 18. We received, 38 applications in, as the finance, division went through and and reviewed that. It was discovered that the Bear River Health Department, which you just approved, it was moved over. I should have clarified that. Hopefully, that's not a problem. Bear River Health Department is not a nonprofit, so we moved them over to be receive the funding from the 750 for the county departments and component units. So that leaves 37 nonprofits to review and be considered for the award of the $515,000 that was allotted that you allotted for the, the nonprofits. The applications, were sent to the budget committee, the August, and the, finance division still was reviewing the nonprofits with their financials. And towards the August, we had completed that review and sent that over to the budget committee so that they could discuss it in their their meetings. And then there was a a link sent to the council the September so that you could review the applications and all of their financials. There's a couple of files that I want to go over. Again, going back to the 06/2023 ARPA applications, This lists and you'll need to go to the external tab on this one. That that has all of the nonprofits that applied for the ARPA funds and the amounts requested. And you'll notice that about the ninth one down there, the Bear River Health Department was moved over to the other allotment. So it came to quite a bit of money for that $515,000 that was allotted.

And, Alma, could you explain the wraps

Yes. Part on that? Yes. So let's go to that file. So this file that Councilmember Tidwell referred to is 06DashBDash one nonprofit ARPA applications. It's an Excel spreadsheet. So it was requested by a member of the budget committee that we go through and look at the CARES money that the County paid out to nonprofits and also wraps and restaurant awards that were given to these these nonprofits that were applying. And so this this spreadsheet that you see, we've got each of the nonprofits listed there. So I'm gonna start at the top. It says, ARPA nonprofit number one, Cache Valley Civic Valet. So for each of the nonprofits, we have the amount they requested, whether or not they received CARES money in 2021. If they did, that amount was put there. And then over the last four years, any ARP or excuse me, any wraps or restaurant monies that were received. And then the total over this to the right there, the total wraps that they had received. Then in, there's some columns. Let's see. I think it's l, m, and o is some suggestions from, some of the budget committee that suggested the allotted or recommended amount for each of the or for each of the nonprofits. To make that a little more clear, I I put together a handout that I didn't get to you, and I'll give that to you so you can just kind of look at it. So this this this coming around, there was three reviewers that made some suggestions for the different, nonprofits. So there's three different, suggestions there. They all add up to the 515,000. And again, there is a file that that you have that has the scores from the budget committee, and that's zero six and some dashes, one and ARPA applications is a Excel spreadsheet. And if you go to the nonprofit tab in that file, you can see the calculated scores or the accumulated scores. So there's a few suggestions that I could put out there. There's a lot of applications to review. There's 37 applications from nonprofits. There was a big ask and not very much money. So maybe you could here's some things to think about. You could award possibly to a few nonprofits and use up all the money, or you can make smaller rewards to a lot more nonprofits. And and there's another suggestion that we could, you could all make recommendations and I could, summarize those. And then in a future meeting, you could, review those and and decide at that time, or I'll do whatever you wanna do.

What's what's the pleasure of the council?

I'd like to take a little bit more time and give some input.

Yeah. I'd like that too. I think that would be a good idea if we could all look at them.

And and you have apps you have access to all of the applications. There's the application, and then there is all of their financial information. The finance division went through and summarized that in this one spreadsheet. You can you can actually go and click in this spreadsheet. It's the nonprofit ARPA application. We kinda put not our recommendation, but just our summary under qualifications, and there's also a link that you can go to each one of their financial summaries. But you can also look at all of their financial information.

Alma, could you give an explanation on Paws Wellness?

I should've council member Goodlander asked about that, and I I didn't have time to look at it. There was so many. I can't I can't really remember. That's my problem. What was what was the question It was Paws Wellness. Looking for or I would really happily What are they? What's It's a brand new five zero one c three. It was just formed within the past year.

There are a number of pretty involved community leaders who came together to to form that organization, and their focus is mental health. Elevating mental health is their mission, and they they actually have looks like an impressive event that they're doing this kind of their inaugural event about mental health that they'll be holding next month. And the I believe she's the director of PAWS is Esther Lee Molineaux, who was the longtime director of the Family Place, probably the most successful nonprofit in our community. She's now come together with a number of community leaders to form this new organization, Paz. Paz is the Spanish word for peace, and that's that's their goal is to help people to, to achieve peace in their lives. As we know, mental health is a major struggle within our community, and that's something that they've taken on.

Thank you.

So do you wanna digest this for, and then put it on the agenda for the next meeting? Mhmm. And, we'll just keep them together. We won't approve we've done the one change, but you have a question? Well,

Micah and I had discussed that we could put a Google Sheet together with the names of them, the request that they have, and then we could put in columns that you could indicate what you suggest you would like to award to each of them. I know there's a lot of applications to review. Hopefully, there's not been any technical issues, but if if you want me to do, like, a a little summary, I could copy out a summary and give you a a sheet like that. Thank you, executive Zook, for knowing what pause was. Or anything that we can do that we could do to help you make this, difficult decision?

I think that would be really That'd be really helpful. Yeah. And then we could just Well, there's several several of these have were eligible for RAPS tax

and were rewarded with the RAPS tax. Correct. And then they came back in and applied again here. Yeah. Could you put an asterisk if they have had it or something? Well, we can look on that sheet there. And then there's some that there there are some though that weren't eligible for RAPS tags, but Right. Also perform, you know, a lot of very needful Mhmm. Things within the community, but their their options for funding are limited.

Correct.

And so I think that ARPA funds, personally, I kind of would look at more of those that are not eligible for the necessarily the RAPS tax, And more that are in, you know, in dire need of funds that just don't come around every year. So, that's, you guys look at that, that's what I, I just see a lot of these, I've seen applications from the RAPS several times and Mhmm. Keep getting money and and I, then there's some that just flat out do not,

you know go ahead. Calvin and I could put something together tomorrow and then if you guys could all have that filled out by the end of next week before council next council meeting, we can kind of aggregate what the majority of you all can determine and create one recommendation that you guys can look at and say, oh, no. This isn't enough or that's too much. And then two weeks from now, we'll have a more in-depth discussion about it. Kinda like what we just did with the county departments. Okay. I think that would be good. So send that out to each of the council members and we'll do that. So

Okay. Well then we'll put it back on the agenda for next meeting and and then probably do the final on that one. Yes. But you still have some input. Yeah. Still fill it out. That'll be great. Okay. Then let's go ahead and thank you very much, Alma. Thank you, Alma. Okay. Now, Sean, I know. We need to actually just jump down while you're getting ready or something. Let's go down to set some public hearings if we could, and I believe we even have a couple here. So don't stop. Just get ready to go there. So I would entertain motions for eight a and eight b for setting the public hearings for the twenty sixth. I move that we set set the public hearings for

September 26, approval for a lease of the John C Bailey Building to the Bear River Health Department and also for September 26, public hearing for resolution twenty twenty three fifteen, opening the 2023

budget. I'll second it. It's moved and seconded that we set the public hearings for 09/26/2023 for the approval of the lease of the John C Building, the bear to the Bear River Health Department and for resolution twenty twenty three-fifteen, the opening of the 2023 budget. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Let's go ahead and let's go ahead. It is that time that we need to have the public hearing for the drainage districts. Anyone? Who wears that information? You got that information on here for us? Yeah. Public hearing, drainage, district, vacancies.

Oh, I apologize. It's the next one.

Appointments.

Okay.

We have the names that have been presented to us to be appointed to the Board of Trustees. For District Number 4 was Anthony Hall. For, Drainage District Number 6, we have, James Summers, or Eric Summers, sorry, whoever you wanna go by, I'll call you Eric. And then Hunter Sigurd, for also for District Board Number 6. We'll now open up the public hearing for anyone that wants to share any insight on those. Say nobody. Do you wanna stand up and introduce yourselves at least? I don't see Anthony here though. But I see the other two.

Hunter wants to take it. Hunter? Okay.

Go ahead. Come up here and, yeah, people need to see you.

May run for office someday. Don't do. My name is Hunter Sigurd. I live in District 6 out in Lewiston. Excited to be here. Dennis Jackson called and mentioned that there was a vacancy and asked if I would throw my name in the hat. So grateful to be considered for the position and willing to help, however.

Thank you. Eric?

Eric Summers. And I just wanted to throw my name in as well. I actually I thought the appointment before was four years. So I was a little surprised when my name surfaced as far as not being done. We have accomplished a lot of different things out there in the last couple years through the annexations of the different districts, and we've learned a lot as far as where we can improve with the way that the wet spring was this last year. So I would like to continue on and see some of those improvements made from, you know, the money that's been allocated and and work to progress the drainage in that district. So, yeah. That's where I'm coming from. Thank you.

Anyone else wanna speak in with this public hearing? Move to close the public hearing. Is there a second? Second. Move and second, we close the public hearing. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Public hearing is closed. Let's go ahead with the eight D. We're gonna move with that one real quick too, the public hearing for ordinance twenty twenty three dash 31. Mister Nelson, will you share just some short info and then we'll open it up? Sorry about that, Sean. Appreciate you being ready for for a moment.

Thank you, counsel. So we have a rezone application for, Parcel 9276. It's approximately it's the reason the request is from a 10 to r u five. The the property acreage is 32.67 acres. So, essentially, they're wanting to go from a 10, which allows for one unit per 10 acres, to RU five, which allows for one unit for per five acres. And so right now, they'd be able to develop about three lots on the property. Now, the rezone, they could potentially develop six lots on the property. There is some oh, this sorry. I don't know if I mentioned where this property is. This is located, North Of Richmond and to the East of Lewis Lewiston. And so it's actually just pretty close to the Idaho border. So you see as I zoom out here a little bit, here's the Idaho border up here. And Richmond is down here. Here's Lewiston. So there are a few hillsides on the property that could potentially affect its overall developability. Our current sense of lands does not show that the hillsides are to the point that they would be undevelopable. But that's something that as they came in to develop, we'd look at a little bit more in detail. The Planning Commission did give a positive recommendation on it. Citing that they felt like it fulfilled the purpose, stated within code for the RU five, to allow for residential estate development and low density patterns that can allow for rural subdivisions of smaller scale agricultural use. They also felt that if the recently adopted Cache County General Plan supported the rezone application. Are there any questions?

We'll have some maybe in a moment here. So let's go ahead and we'll open up the public hearing. Although, anyone who wanna speak in behalf or against this, please come up, state your name.

I'm Clint Hanson. I own Advanced Surveying. Sam Douglas is my client. I'm the apathy of the rezone. But we feel like it's in our best interest of the property. The way it sits right now, it used to be Boyd Larson's, and we've been working to execute his desires for the property, and we were able to do that with one of the parcels. And and now there's multiple parties involved, and we're trying to figure out a way to just, you know, get this thing the way he wanted left. And and, you know, if you turn on the zoning map, there's another five acre rezone that's not more than three quarters of a mile to the east. There's another one to the west, a little over a mile. We kinda sit between what's already kinda been approved by the, you know, for the our other neighbors, and we just kinda want the same rights and ability to use our land in the same way they have. So and and it's nice because this one, we have there's actually a water line that runs through it. We have one culinary water hookup. Sam knows more about the water situation, but, you know, the water tanks are sitting just right there. And, ideally, we would like to get everybody on culinary, and it it it's mostly possible. But right now, we're just proposing a single law after we get the rezone, and then we're gonna have all these different owners within the subdivision. And we kinda wanna get it zoned now so we don't have to get six or seven different people's signature to to piece this together later. So that's kinda planned. So I'll let Sam talk about the water for a minute because I think that's an important part of the value of this property to be five acre. So

Thank you. Any other again, just state your name and

Good afternoon. My name is Sam Douglas, lifetime resident of Cove. This piece was owned by my uncle, Boyd Larson. I know inevitably that growth comes And this is just us being prepared and being on top. And, right now I'd just like to give my son an opportunity to have a home on this piece of land. The water, I've got one, share it's of The Cove culinary, and I had been talking to the mayor of Lewiston. The water tank is just right up above, and it would just be my cost to bring in the lines and anything that that pertain to the lots. So I can't think of anything else, but I appreciate you letting me take the time to stand and speak.

Thank you. Anyone else that wants to speak? Second up. Move the second. We close the public hearing. Miss Wilson, is there any questions that we have for him? I have a question. The road that goes We didn't close the public hearing. Oh, did we? Oh, we didn't. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. We're trying to move through this. Goes sorry.

No. The question I had, the road that goes right down through and bisects the property, how much acreage is on the one side of the road? Do you know?

Not right off bat, but I could measure it real quick. I don't know that it really matters. I mean, it would obviously affect

the lot sizes that they could do regardless of the zone. Right?

Are you five? So

But if there's, like, seven acres there, you couldn't put two lots on it. Correct. Because of the road. Correct? Yep. There's eight. There it's eight acres. Yeah. Okay. Just I was just curious how that how it all came together.

Yeah. It's maybe that's I have this measurement is 9.56 for that section. Agree.

Okay. Okay. Any other questions you have for mister Nelson? Okay. Let's go ahead and discuss it. Let's just jump down. Oh, so we got people that here that are that would probably, instead of waiting through everything, let's go through, jump down to 10 a real quick. There, I would entertain a motion or any discussion on the resolution twenty twenty three dash 15 on the appointments.

I move to approve resolution twenty twenty three dash 15 appointments to the Cache County Drainage Districts three, four, five, and six as presented.

Suspend the rules

to do that? Yep. It's initial. So we'll suspend the rules. Yep. That move is there a second? I'll second that. Moved and second, we suspend the rules and pass resolution twenty twenty three dash 15 on the appointments. I guess there aren't any appointments for Three. Three? Five. And five, but there is four and six and I know four and six are active and doing things. Is there any discussion on that? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? You're officially appointed. So now if we just by the way, for your information, there are like seven drainage districts in the state of Utah, and four of them are in Lewiston. So maybe we ought to look at maybe just making one. Making life easier. So but it and it can be done. So, let's then jump, if we can, down to ordinance f 10 f real quick. Is there any discussion on that?

Mister chair, I would like to suspend the rules and make a motion to approve ordinance twenty twenty three dash 31.

I'll second it. Move and second that we suspend the rules and pass ordinance twenty twenty three dash 31. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Okay. Now let's go back up here so we can give some proper time. Sean, do you have other people with you? I do not. Just me. Have you got patients? I sure do. Really?

Anything for you, mister chairman. Cheap

well, we've we've got actually if we would it be okay if we jump down to D real quick, and then we would turn it back to you if that's okay. Let's go to, the presentation regarding upcoming bond for Cache County School District. You guys have been sitting here very patient. Now you know what we do. You'll never attend our meeting again. I don't know.

Thank you. As was stated earlier, our superintendent, Todd McKee is here. I also have Tim Smith, assistant superintendent over our, secondary schools is also with me. My name is Gary Thomas. I am the assistant superintendent over elementary schools. And while my computer wakes back up here. And that's what I was afraid of. Everybody's watching, so let's try this again.

So much pressure.

Alright. A little over a year ago, we were tasked with the idea of putting a committee together to look at the growth in our district, and to see if it was time to look at some buildings. And so, we put a task force committee together. Tim Smith and I, asked our school board members to each pick two or three peoples from their precinct to, to serve on that committee, which they did, and we have spent over a year going through some of this information. I will not share with you the three inch binder that I have, nor that we shared with that committee, but yet a synopsis of what they came up with in a resolution, that our board voted on just a couple weeks ago. So with that, we are, there are 41 school districts in the state of Utah. We are the eleventh largest. Sometimes we think of this little Cache County, school district up here, but we're kind of a big player in the state. We have nearly 20,000 students, and we have 25 schools currently. We serve 27 community communities. You are well aware of who those communities are, so we're not going to spend a lot of time there. Our last bond was in 2013. It's hard to believe that it was that long ago, but it was ten years ago, and that bond was for $129,000,000 What we were able to do with that was build our two new high schools, one in Millville and one in North Logan. We also did some seismic upgrades to Providence, Millville, Summit, and Sunrise Elementary Schools at that time. We put a new elementary school in Lewiston, and we converted Cedar Ridge, Willow Valley, and White Pine Middle Schools all to elementary schools at that time. We retired the Lewiston and Wellsville elementaries, and actually tore those down, And then the Park Elementary School, we actually donated to the city of Richmond. We were able to build a new cash high, our alternative high school. In the last ten years though, our district has grown by 4,197 students. And that gives you a little idea of which years were kind of our hot ones, and which were a little less, but almost 4,200 students in the last ten years. This information right here is about a year old. This is when we put the Task Force Committee together. These are the numbers we shared with them. It's what we used to make our decision, and so we wanted to keep it consistent and congruent with that. So, at that time, and currently still, we are operating with 11 elementary schools over capacity, and one of our middle schools over capacity, and 38 portables. That's how we operate over capacity. If you look off to the right on that second sheet there, the little monopoly houses represent the number of portables at those schools. The reason there are two columns of capacity though, one of those is where we sat without all day K, and at that time, the state had not funded all day kindergarten. We knew it was a hot topic and something that was being discussed, and so we ran those numbers with all day kindergarten. And that's the second column there. And as you know, the state did fund all day kindergarten. Currently, right now, we have about a third of our schools are able to offer all day K. They have the room in their school to do so. About a third of my buildings, are doing a hybrid. Maybe they've got one extra classroom, so they're offering all day k for that one group, but the other four sections are half day. And then I have about a third of my schools that do not have the opportunity to offer all day k at all, because there's just not room. Interestingly enough, depending on which report you look at, the State has been watching us for a number of years, and they've surveyed the the parents of our State. 94 to 96% of the parents in this State want the option to have all day kindergarten. So our Building Task Force Committee was charged with the following. How to resolve 11 elementary schools operating at above capacity. How to provide all day kindergarten for all 27 of our communities. How to resolve the three middle schools feeding our four high schools. If you'll remember, when we had our last bond and we built our two new high schools, it put us in a little bit of a weird situation where we had three middle schools now feeding those four high schools. That caused us to do things like bus kids from North Logan all the way through town to Providence. And so, we made a promise at that time, if we could, next time we could have the opportunity to build and to bond, that we would look at creating a true feeder system for four middle schools to feed four high schools. One of our current middle schools has the inability, though, to operate any more than they are. They are already at capacity. The core of that building is the halls, the gym, the cafeteria, the office, those, you know, you can add additional classrooms, but the core of that building just really can't take any more. They were also charged with how do we meet the needs of the community without raising the tax rate. That was very important to this committee. And how to best position our district for future growth, especially in our fastest growing communities. So, the Board, passed, just a couple weeks ago, a bond resolution for $139,000,000 that we proposed putting on the ballot for this November. With this, we would like to build two new middle schools, one in Nibley, and one in Hyde Park. We'd also like to convert Spring Creek Middle School to an elementary school. Build a new elementary, probably in Hyde Park. We actually own property in Hyde Park and Smithfield. So it could go on in either of those, but we're looking at the Hyde Park, lot right now. And implement some safety and security enhancements in all 25 of our schools. So the advantages of this is it allows us to move our sixth grade back to the middle school. That's really in this country where sixth grade is, in about 75% of our schools. It's also where the curriculum resides. It resides in a secondary rather than an elementary setting. And every or every sixth grade teacher that I've talked to thus far is excited to get back to the middle school. It's where they want to be. It solves the capacity problem at our elementary and our middle schools. It provides access to all day kindergarten for all 27 of those communities. It also provides that four middle school feeder, system into our four high schools. It meets the needs of the community without raising the tax rate, and it positions us for that future growth. So, what exactly are these projects? New Hyde Park Middle School. We own property. If you think of where Green Canyon sits, that build there's that road that runs just West of Green Canyon, and that roundabout at the north, right now they're punching that road through to what we call Hyde Park Lane, where the Maverick is there in Hyde Park. We own property about halfway between Green Canyon and that Hyde Park Lane. This is where we propose putting the middle school. This is the floor plan of that middle school. We actually have hired an architect to draw this, draft this, so that we could go to the public with some idea of really what we planned on doing. This building has been built twice down in the, Weber County School District, and we've taken some field trips, gone down there, walked through this building, and and pretty familiar with it. The architect is actually located up here in Cache County, and we've been able to make some adjustments and tweaks to that building. The new Nibley Middle School would sit on the same lot where we have Heritage Elementary. When we opened Heritage Elementary, we bought enough property. We usually try to have about 10 acres for an elementary and about 20 for a middle school, and we were able to purchase enough ground at that time on that same plot for this exact, idea. Something new for Cache County School District, but it's something that's done across the state and across our nation. We staggered the start times of our elementary and our middle school by an hour, so that really makes it a little easier for for the, the two schools to operate, side by side simultaneously. This building would look identical to the other one. Just much like we did with Green Canyon and Ridgeline, those are the same floor plan. We just changed the outside a little, so they are a little unique. But we save a lot of money by doing that, and the contractor can save some money by doing that too. And so, we'll order twice as many, of the materials that we need. We'll also, once they've built it once, they're just more efficient that second time through. The, the elementary school that we anticipate building, this is a floor plan that we have used four times already, and it's one that we really like, and so we anticipate probably using that same floor plan that we have used for our last four elementary school builds. Spring Creek Middle School, to an elementary conversion, that's a pretty easy move for us because Cedar Ridge, we did that with the last bond. Cedar Ridge and Spring Creek are sister schools. They have the same floor plan. So we know exactly what we need to do to go into that building and change it to an elementary. And we've actually started, made a couple of those moves already in that direction. School safety. Enhanced communication. Not all of our schools have the same level of an intercom system, that ability to talk from the office to a classroom and vice versa. And so, what we'd like to do is set a minimum bar for all of our schools to have the capacity to do so, and to have that be high quality. Access control is something that we started last year with our elementaries. We have a doorbell system that, we kind of lock everyone out until they can check-in with the office before they're buzzed in. Controlled entry, that's something that we have in some of our schools. Once you're into some of these buildings, you have access to the entire building without ever even checking in at the office. We have other school buildings, some of our newer ones, where we can route everyone through the office, so that they can check-in, they can state their business, and we can then control whether or not they have access to the rest of the building. And we would like to do something that would allow us to have that controlled access in all 25 of our buildings. And then surveillance cameras. We have a mix there. Some of our custodians and our principals have gone out on their own and tried to do the best they can, but those might not be the highest quality. We would like to have a little higher quality surveillance cameras in our schools, and one that, law enforcement would have access to also. So, to complete these projects, we are proposing a $139,000,000 resolution to be placed on the ballot. If approved by our voters, this bond would be paid off over the sub subsequent twenty years. First question we always get is, you know, will my tax rate increase? And we anticipate no tax rate increase with this bond. What we want to do is layer this into to our current, bond service debt, but just extend that for another twenty years, rather than raise the rate. So, the next question we always get is, will my taxes increase? Only if the value of their property increases, whether it be a business or a homeowner, if their property value increases, then if that rate stays the same, of course, they're going to be paying a little bit more. But, so the taxes could go up if the value of their property goes up, or the value of their business. Right now, for our current bond, our debt service, we the average home in Cache County is $524,000 And that average homeowner, is paying about $234 a year for our current debt service that we pay. That's that's the the yearly payment. And for a business of that same value, it's about $426 a year. So, whether the bond passes or not, that's what people are currently paying for our debt service in the Cache County School District. If the bond passes, we would just extend the number of years those property owners would continue to pay that. And, we put that on a twenty year note, if you will, but we have a habit of paying those debts off early, and we also have a habit of being able to restructure those, or kind of like you guys understand that better than a lot of people out there, refinancing, if you will. The last ten years, our school board has restructured enough that we've saved over $10,000,000 on our current bond debt that we have. And like I said, we pay that off early. So, with that, do you have any questions for me, or for these guys? That's why I brought them. Gary, did did you say the existing bond is paid off, or is being paid off faster? It's it is being paid off faster. Matter of fact, we just restructured a few months ago one more time, and and saved some more money. And later when we when you when you buy a home, you you take out that mortgage right at the beginning as you build or you buy. As we build, with our bond system, we take that out over the course of a number of years. It takes us a number of years to build these. And so so, that last 01/2029 wasn't all taken right at 2013. I think the last, that we borrowed against that was in 2017, if you will. So so it gets staggered over the years that it takes us to build. By the way, one of the things not in the slide, but oftentimes is a question that comes up, when would these schools be built? We have actually identified a contractor also for these projects. And, of course, if the bond doesn't pass, that architect and that contractor just go away. There's there's not a job. But if so, they anticipate starting to order things as soon as January, because there's a lot of lead time that they need on HVAC systems, some of the electrical, some of that stuff is way out. But they're telling us that they can have those two middle schools, built, completed, and ready for us to move in in the 2026. That new elementary school would probably fall a year after that.

Yeah. What would you do with Providence Elementary, the existing Providence Elementary?

Great question. We would still use it to River Heights right now has six portables. Providence needs a portable, but there's just not room on that property portable. So, we would not we will continue to use that, absolutely. Yeah. It might be a little bit of boundary adjustments or some things like that to fit everything in there, you know, to relieve pressure on some of those others. We've got a couple ideas on how we could, split some of that up. But we will continue to use every building that we have in the elementary plus add those two, a new one on the North, and and and essentially a new one a new elementary to us on the South. I've

known about the plan for the Nibley colocation of the middle school with the existing elementary school for a number of years, but I've and you were the principal there, actually.

Yes. I opened Heritage. Yeah.

But I've never really thought about them both operating at the same time and in the same place, essentially, till tonight.

How do you do that? I've never seen one of those. Do you stagger the start and out times? Well, we stagger our start with our elementary and our secondary now, because we use the same buses. So our secondary schools start an hour before ours our elementary schools do. So what happens is the transportation department gets all of our kids to the secondary schools, then those same buses turn right around and go out and start picking up all of our elementary kids and bringing them in. So, we don't start any of our elementaries until 09:05. So, those other schools will be well underway by then. Yeah.

I'm just wondering about the timing of the about the timing of the bonds and interest rates, and where we're at on that. What's your thoughts? Yeah.

You know, we looked at this a year ago, and and contemplated pretty serious whether we should do it then. And, the interest rates were probably a little better, a year ago. But at the same time, the cost of construction was higher a year ago. And as we've talked with the general contractors, they're getting a lot of subcontractors coming in right now, and they're looking for work. And so, it seems like when the interest rates go up, then the price goes down, and when the price goes up, the interest rates go down. What we will do is we will be monitoring that as close as we can, and we'll be looking for an opportunity to restructure those and to get a better rate as soon as we can. But we know it's a little higher than it was a year ago. Absolutely.

Yeah. What kind of public outreach are you going to do before the election?

This is one of 10 presentations I will be making this week. We are going to Tim is going to every secondary school. I'm going to every elementary school, and we're doing that twice. We're going to talk to the faculty and staff one time, and then we're going back to talk to the PTA, the school community council, and any other, public members that want to join. We're also offering to go to any city, any of those communities that we serve, and go before their mayor or council and make a presentation. We're also going to all four of our high schools in an evening, once it gets a little closer, and doing public meetings there. In addition to that, it's, the web page. I've got some, some pass along cards. Matter of fact, feel free to take one, two, three of those, whatever you'd like. There's a QR code on there that will give you this exact presentation, along with some additional information, some frequently asked questions, and it'll we're doing all of those things, and and anything else that someone might suggest to us. Interestingly enough, I told you we have 38 portables right now that we're operating out of. The last bond ten years ago, we had 32 portables. So we are where we were plus some as far as the amount of growth that that we're trying to to mitigate right now. Other questions? Staffing these new schools, you're gonna find a problem in that with teachers, or what's your thoughts there? You know, it's interesting because people think, oh, you build a new school, you gotta hire 30 new teachers. We won't hire any new teachers. We already have every one of those kids. We're already educating every one of those kids. So what happens, teachers follow students. When I opened Heritage, I opened that school at over 500 kids. But what happened is I pulled a 100 kids out of Nibley, and I pulled 200 kids out of River Heights, and I pulled and as I pulled those kids from those different schools, four teachers followed those 108 teachers followed these 200. And what it did is it gave us some room in those other schools, but we didn't have to hire any new teachers. Now, you do have an additional administrator, a secretary, and a custodian. So there is a little bit cost there, but not nearly what we think when we think, oh, you're opening a new school.

Other comments, questions?

Comment. Parents must be less tolerant of kids because when I was a kindergartner, my mom wanted me home. So

Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Wo

Well, she did teach she did teach you grammar. She did? Yes. I learned all my words from her. Oh, yeah. Well, more languages. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, you know, we we've been taking the heat for you, for the school districts for quite a while. Well, thank you. You bet. And I I know you guys appreciated it. And and then a few years ago, I remember a little pie chart that we now send out with the taxes as to where all the all the taxes that are collecting, where they all go. And then all of a sudden, the number of phone calls that they they actually they went down drastically, and I'm afraid you guys got them. Right? So we're sharing that burden now, and I think that's that kind of educational thing, I think, is valuable, though, when people do pay taxes, they see where it goes. There's, you know, they're still gonna be they'll have concerns, and they'll probably, you know, be loud, but that's the I guess that's right of being a taxpayer, sharing your opinion. But at least I think that when we continue to do that, we can all take, share the responsibility of the as to how we educate our kids, and how we pay for roads, how we pay for safety, all these things. Kids are a great investment. That's enough. We don't mind investing. That's that's really you know, and our state has a kind of a history of wanting to invest in the kids. So Yeah.

Well, you guys understand that as well as anyone or better than most, and so we appreciate what you do and and your service in this capacity, and also your understanding and and and helping share that load with us. So thank

you. Okay. Other questions, comments? You wanna just just stand up at least to introduce yourself. You know, you

I I wondered if I was gonna be able to get by with that much. Good evening. I'm Todd McKee. I'm the new superintendent. I'm privileged to be here. It's been a whirlwind of a summer for me and my family. But from the very beginning, it's been clear that Cache County is a special place. And so I'm grateful to everyone that's helped me with that transition. As you can see, I have a great staff to support me, and they've helped me immensely, particularly coming in. It's it's not what you would anticipate as a new superintendent, to be handed a bond proposal. But, you know, I think that the numbers speak for themselves, and we have a situation here that we're trying to address the best we can.

Did you find your half million dollar average home yet? Last time when we talked to you, we didn't look at it. Yes. I I am a a taxpayer of Cache County. Okay. Okay. Any other comments? Thank you for coming and good luck. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay. Sean, again, we appreciate your patience. You'll be hooked up and unhooked, what, three times now?

Well, you know, I haven't quite got my steps in for the day, so that's alright.

Just so we didn't give you enough time to make it more words and longer. So

Notice how I'm awkwardly quiet to that. I'm not gonna say the same thing. No. I I kind of expected as much. I mean, you guys know me well. So I joked with Alma earlier as I was talking about the presentation that I had to give, being on deck after him and and said, well, I only have 33 slides. You think that's too brief? I kid. But I noticed that nobody found that funny because you thought that that was real. And that's fair. I I only have 11.

Three to mend the gender.

Well, thank you very much for the opportunity. I am here before you this evening for the annual process for what's been rebranded, the rural county grant program, acknowledging that there are a couple of new members to the council. I don't want to skip over this or gloss over it, but I also, again, don't wanna beat a dead horse if you're feeling comfortable with it. But, as you likely know and for the benefit of those watching at home or or the recording, this is an annual grant process made available through, direct appropriation from the state legislature through the governor's governor's office of economic opportunity or GOEO. And as such, Cache County, Boxelder, Rich, and many others, 24 to be exact, counties are considered rural because of our population. Cache County is the largest of all those considered rural. And so we qualify for this rural county grant. And what it does is it enables, counties up to and not to exceed dollars 200,000 grant with an application that's qualified on requesting funds for earnest economic development purposes. And those can be fairly broad as the county might define it in in accordance with their needs, either being unique or just, you you you know, your flexibility as was the original intent of these two sponsors, representative Carl Albrecht and senator Scott Sandle, one of our very own. Grant program that enables counties to request up to and not to exceed $200,000 per year under the rural county grant program that you used for the first couple of years for an in house county, economic development position. And last year, And last year at this kind of transitional moment, together with Box Elder and Rich, moved it over to Bragg, Bear River Association Of Governments for those that may not know what the acronym stands for. And that's where I've been housed for the last year, performing those, fairly traditional economic development purposes. So these first couple of slides are just going over that. I'm happy to answer any questions or pause there. And council member Mark Hurd, I I know that you're online. If you have any question, please don't hesitate to, just interrupt me. So, as part of the rural county grant, you must employ as a recipient of the grant. You must have a constituted CEO advisory board. CEO stands for County Economic Opportunity Advisory Board. And the CEO advisory board is just that. Their advisory, you're probably very familiar not only with those of you who've been here for a minute, but, also with the tourism tax advisory board. Same kind of process. So you must employ the economic development advisory board or economic opportunity, advisory board. And they make suggestions. And that's what I'm here to advance to you this evening for your consideration, To reacquaint you and not to steal the thunder, you have two council members that are on this board representing your interests, that are representing the county. And in, at least one of the two cases, Sandy Goodlander is also a business owner together with her husband. So she kind of gets to double dip. There are a minimum of five required seats. There's someone representing municipal interest, someone representing the county, someone at large, someone representing, workforce development, and someone representing the business community, the private sector. And so we we have that and then some. And at any time, councilwoman Goodlander, if you feel like interjecting from our last meeting, what took place for the conversation, please feel free. And so with that, I have the following recommendations. There are five, And they go up to, but not to exceed $200,000 You see here a quick list, but these subsequent slides go over what those specific ones are. The first one is mirroring the exact allocation that this county made towards the shared arrangement with Bragg last year. There is not a request for increasing that for any inflationary or other kind of measures. We, of course, operate on a calendar year. And so the county has not yet expended what was utilized for last year's appropriation. I would feel much better, you know, modifying this after we have a full and complete year, but I don't suspect anything like that. So this just endeavors from the advisory board to mirror exactly what was used last year. The next one is the, next consequential by dollar amount. It is an assessment of the Logan Cash Airport. I noticed that earlier in this meeting, the executive kind of gave a a report where at least it was referenced very quickly that what you already know and would acknowledge that Logan City and Cache County co own the airport and are co responsible for the expenses.

That mean time's up or

Nice. Okay. We're moving quite a long You're doing good. Yeah. So this endeavors to assess with other potential stakeholders, the county and city may I mean, this is not precooked. This is just a a what if. And this is part of the the rationale behind this as an option for one of the suggested projects is to say, what is the long term viability of the airport look like? Particularly being approximate or excuse me, approximate to an urbanized area. There's been a lot of conversation in the three years I've been up here as to the potential for regional carriers. You may be aware that Ogden Municipal Airport lost their regional carrier service just last year. When Provo, expanded their, municipal airport as a regional carrier, they essentially stole Ogden's daily commuter, service. And Ogden has its own conflict because it's underneath the flight pattern of Hill Air Force Base just like Airport Number 2 in South Jordan is underneath international airport. And both of those are gonna be subservient to those larger causes. That provides what I believe to be a unique opportunity for us. But we don't have it just by ourselves. Brigham City could also kind of take some of that market. This study endeavors to find out how realistic a daily commuter might be in the future or not. And certainly looks at as our community continues to grow and we have either annexation plans that abut the current airport or are now extended extended right up to it. What does a long term fee schedule need to look like to make sure that deferred maintenance and depreciation can be matched on the airport? And, you're uniquely aware of some of the challenges including a windstorm that blew out some glass, and kind of the expensive of that earlier this year. So that's one suggestion by the advisory committee. Another one is a SWOT analysis. A traditional SWOT analysis is strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Anybody familiar with business loan process would definitely recognize this because you should do that before you understand whether or not you should go in business. And certainly, whether or not you have the capacity in a business to repay any kind of loan product that you might have for it. Well, communities are much the same way, just, you know, a little bit different. And this is, a proposal with an established program that exists in partnership with the University of Utah and their ASAP program, which is an assessment to to gauge, if you will, those four quadrants would be if you were looking at the horizontal axis, what are you good at versus what are you not good at? Like, what kind of skill set does your, workforce possibly have? You know, do you have a university like we clearly do? Do you have freeway access, rail access? Things that would make a a, an inherent or unique opportunity for a community that has those assets. And then on the vertical assets, access would be what leaders like yourself would want to be as the community grows, what you wanna be as you grow up. And so once you, you know, have high markers in both what you wanna be as you're moving forward with growth and what you're good at, those are kind of low hanging fruit to go after for corporate recruitment or retention.

Happy to explain that further too. But, yes, Sandy? You you sent me an email that had a video about that, a six minute video, which I knew we wouldn't have time to watch tonight. I think I forwarded that to everybody. I don't know if you guys got it or if you had time to watch it. Just it explained it a little bit more. Perfect. Thank you for doing that. Yeah.

And so that that dollar amount is not to exceed $10,000. What's proposed here that I I should not gloss over is the advisory board suggests that rather than the county just utilize its grant funding to potentially include smaller jurisdictions, AKA cities and towns, that we say, hey. We could build a matching grant program, which is if you would like to be part of this assessment, then put some skin in the game and it could be as little as, you know, a thousand and $2,500. In early discussions with the ASAP program, they'll do it for anywhere from 5 to $2,500. If we do multiple cities that they feel like they can do at the same time, they'll give us a discount of $2,500 per jurisdiction, or as much as, you know, 5,000 if it were a major kind of urbanized area, AKA Logan City, which I'm not proposing. They have their own economic development program. But, you know, again, with your guidance and that of the advisory board, we're we're happy to flush that out a little bit further. Next one is targeted recruitment. Now, I realize that and so does the advisory board that recruitment of businesses can be a little bit challenging in light of the current economy. We are, in our latest numbers, the July, Cache County still is the enviable 2.3% unemployment rate, which is considered under, full employ well, over full employment. Meaning, we don't have enough qualified folks for the job openings that are out there. Doing anything that recruits more competition in the workforce can be of a challenging. But 20% of the state's overall economy is focused on aerospace and defense. And the advisory board and other, you know, economic develop, economic development influencers and leaders within the community have suggested that riding coattails or drafting to use a racing term on the aerospace and defense would be advisable. And I don't disagree. But if we were to just overtly try to compete with the Northrop Grumman's and Lockheed Martin's and Boeings, we would be notably trying to compete with bigger dogs in this, space like Weaver County, Centerville, Layton, you know, folks that center around Hill Air Force Base. However, we have a niche that we're good at already that wouldn't take market share away from them or try to attract their businesses. And that is the, the success of Space Dynamics Lab or SDL and their small satellite. For two years in a row now, I've gone to the campuses as well as others during the conference. And this year, they had more European countries that were hosting a booth during the small satellite, conference than they did North And South America combined. We already have a unique, probably very understated presence in this marketplace. And I see this as a really great opportunity for a targeted approach for recruitment because it's skilled labor. It's high wages at or above median wage. And so this suggests from the advisory board that we have a targeted approach, towards getting those companies to to come and create a home base here or, pun intended, a satellite office. Alright. Last suggestion is the impact of arts and culture. You see here on the top right that the state of Utah is the fourth highest in cultural industry employment share of total state employment, fifth or thirteenth in 2011. So we've grown in our industry compensation share as a total of state compensation, meaning that contrary to some people's belief, arts and culture does pay well and pays livable wages and eight in GDP share and so on and so forth. But these are statewide numbers and they're a few years old. I recognize and appreciate that the chairman alluded to earlier RAPS tax. And you know, as a council that reads those applications, just how important that is and how successful the program is. But what I and others in the community would like to know conclusively is what is our share? What is Cache County's share of the dominance that this is? And so they've recommended a not to exceed $5,000 to participate in a program that, brings together other statewide assets to delve into these, industry sectors and find out really just how much does Allen Echols and Utah and lyric theater and, I wanted to say Danes. Am I right? The Danes Theater on campus. I'm drawing a blank right now. Thank you. Summer citizens and the like. Right? So this endeavors to spend some money there. What we end up with is a total rural county grant that the economic develop economic opportunity advisory board is recommending to this body an application that I would submit on behalf of Cache County not to exceed the $200,000 allowed in the breakdown that you see there. And, again, just to kind of reiterate, this is my last slide. This is the this is the suggested very summary form. The the fields I have to fill out are are much more expansive than this. This is, what is recommended to submit by the October 1 deadline for that grant process for fiscal year twenty four. And, again, just reiterates the need for the advisory board and that it comes to you, and you are the local legislative body. I give the same presentation tomorrow night to one of the other Bragg entities. So, anyway, yeah, I'm happy to address any questions that you might have.

So in the email that was forwarded, there was talk about agricultural and the agricultural side of Cass County. And I I see it's not in here, but I wanna put a voice to that. I mean, you know, that Gosner's gave a great amount of contribution to the cancer center here at Logan Hospital. If you look at the amount of employment done by the agricultural, you look at Nours Foods, you look at Weaks Berries, you look at Goshenier, there's a substantial contribution to the economy from the agricultural side. And I'm just putting a vote in there that there be something considered for that. I note that in that email, it was discussed about agricultural, but I can't tell you why it wasn't brought into this part right now.

So I really appreciate this opportunity. You'll uniquely appreciate this. So I'm speaking more to the room and those in the recording. You heard again a presentation that you'd previously received from the Gray Salt Lake commissioner Brian Steed last week at a at a workshop. And we all know how important water is. Everybody does. But there have been a number of conversations in the last year, notwithstanding last year was the worst, you know, drought year, about what there may or may not be for a water grab to utilize Northern Utah as our responsibility somehow to fill the Great Salt Lake and and kind of forsake others' responsibilities further to our south. And I, along within economic development realms and a couple of committee hearings, have kind of reared up on our in our defense and said, woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Now, don't get just don't go bagging on the export of alfalfa and other agricultural products because that feeds folks. Right? And if we should have learned anything from the pandemic, it was just how vulnerable those supply chain challenges, became and food was key among those in the early days. And so, you know, together with your sister counties within Bragg, ranching and farming is a big deal. And as you noted, and I kind of wish right this second that the school district folks were here, those employers currently pay those kind of bonds. They currently pay a lot of property tax. They currently employ a lot of our people. So, councilman, Gunnell, you're you're not wrong that there's not a specific project towards that. But I suspect it would be ferreted out in some of the participating communities for that SWOT analysis for communities because some of those communities are very reliant upon ag products. To highlight a couple of the projects I've been working on so far this year, Pepperidge Farms is expanding. They they kinda got out of the barn before their their process where they could have utilized a a state grant. Utah flour mills was before you a couple of months ago. They're gonna be, you know, kinda symbiotic to the expansion of Pepperidge Farms. Those are great. Those are obviously gonna be very important to Richmond and the Northern part of the valley. And there's a project by code named Project Apollo that has been very interested in us and the most interested at the South End where a couple of other businesses that I know you know and are relevant to this topic, JBS and West Point Dairy, they want it to be proximate to West Point Dairy, and some other assets that are down there. So ag, like you know, is gonna continue to be very important. I and others believe that ag can continue to be important and probably ought to be for a number of reasons I don't wanna expand on just for brevity's sake as well as, like, the satellite industry and that there's room for both, that it doesn't have to be kind of an either or scenario. So I'm agreeing with you. I'm just hoping to qualify that I'd rather than just tell you some quick words of, oh, I agree that there was some explanation. What's that?

You said they weren't quick words. That's fair.

You take a lot of heat. No. I deserve it. Laughing with you. Okay? Yeah. Yes. So so if they're I mean, again, they're an advisory board to you if you have specific projects in mind. That's certainly how I will be directed by you to apply for the grant. But I don't know if anything specific we we talked about it in the favor that you've mentioned in that email. I suspect it'll come out in SWOT analysis if there's something specific in mind, I'm all ears.

Now you you're part of Bear River Association of Governments. Right? Yes, sir. And you cover also the other two counties? Yes, sir. Is any of this

money gonna be covering or do they have separate monies coming They have separate monies. And okay. How they're gonna spend it within their county, you'll be part of that also. Right? Yeah. I have to so yeah. Excellent question. Thank you. When I alluded to giving a presentation tomorrow night, I'll be doing the same sort of equivalent for Box Elder County tomorrow night and Rich County later.

Yeah.

And and they have twists on this. Their advisory boards are similar, right, in their composition. They they they have the same five seats that are required with those perspectives in mind. Rich County has been giving small business grants. Yeah. They're kind of wanting to back away from that, and they're going to do an economic strategy for specifically tourism Garden City area, because they they're taking note at how quickly that's growing. And they and they think simultaneously it's fantastic. Tourists during the summer do not become kids that they have to build new elementary schools for because they're just there visiting with their parents and grandparents, you know, during those warm summer months, which is great, sorta, kinda. Everything is really busy with a lot of folks from out of town during the the tourism months. But then the the sleepy qualities of town return back to the locals after the tourism season. They wanna kind of assess what that means in much the same way that I mentioned the arts and culture study here. They kinda wanna do the same sort of beefier assessment on tourism at the, you know, northern part of the county. Box Elder is looking to what what this county has done with Bridgerland Technical College for the last couple of years, Box Elder is now very keenly interested in duplicating that with Bridgerland as a partner there since they cover the same area in Tremont and Garland area. And then that that reminds me, councilman, you you mentioned ag. We we've talked about here the inland port scenario and what it might mean for, Cache County. The good news is I'm getting my feet more than wet down in Box Elder County where they've now formally adopted the Golden Spike project area. And one of those areas that that that project plan encompasses because there's a portion out by Corinne. There's a portion in Brigham City next to their airport. There's one on the Tremont and Garland area. If you're familiar with the old Daisy Boy plant, it, it involves that. One of the one of the owners of that that facility, most of it has been leased to Northrop Grumman for kind of a manufacturing side, but they have a lot of older office space that's available. They're thinking about working out a deal through this rural county grant program where they might attract Bridgeland to set up a satellite campus for the same kind of programs that Mark Alexander has done such a great job here to do to to promote local entrepreneurism and, you know, local small businesses that could become a big business one day. So, yes, mister chairman. They they have their own monies and their own kind of twist.

You answered my question in the last four words. You're good. Mhmm. Mhmm. Appreciate that. Any other questions, comments?

So what are we looking for tonight? Yeah. What's your this? Is that what we're looking for? Ideally,

the the council the advisory board has put to you this proposal here for the allocation of the $200,000 that they would, with your approval, seek me to apply for the the following fiscal year twenty four money. Yes.

Can I just say too, because I'm on that advisory board, but we just met about a week or two ago? I can't remember exactly. But these things were the only things brought forth, and that's why I was hoping to convey to all of you that because because we could approve something two weeks from now. We've you know, that we could finalize the the proposal. So if somebody had an idea, we're talking roughly $40,000. If somebody had a better idea, those were just the ones that were brought forth at that meeting, but they were the only ones that were brought forth. It wasn't like, I wasn't prepared.

We reviewed some from last year's survey that last year's advisory board members. There was a lengthy survey you may remember I sent you that was much like how I talk. It was very long. And, there were 14 plus proposals of what ifs and the members variously weighed in on what they thought were good ones. And we kind of reviewed that too, but that was just rehashing ones we had looked at. Some of these are are from that list.

Yeah. And I don't disagree with any of these. I'm not saying but I'm just saying as a council, there could be more if someone had an idea of something that would fit better for economic development, it would be My voice is something for agriculture.

We'd

have to have something put together in the next week or two. And that that was, you know, maybe even for next year, we could be more prepared and have more time to come up with some ideas because it'll probably be roughly about that much money.

So

if if we wanted to do something different, it would have to be probably finished by next the next council meeting because the the deadline for the application is October 1. Correct? Yes. Okay. Yep. So I just wanna make sure everyone kinda understands, what those parameters are. With this grant,

Cash County doesn't have to dish out anymore?

No. The and particularly with It pays your wage. It pays your salary, everything for you, and Cash County doesn't have to Correct. Between what the three counties put in to the Bragg arrangement and then some that you retained that are specific, you know, to Cash County. Because this 200,000 must be spent for the benefit of inside Cash County. The money is received from the other counties and the way that I account for it with Bragg's, you know, internal mechanisms, that has to be spent, you know, accordingly in those counties. And you said this and other monies? The other counties monies that they pay into Bragg. The governing board members, which are 15 in total of Bragg, they they are familiar with the bigger, broader budget that includes, you you know, like, this county makes this allocation to Bragg. The other counties make a much smaller allocation to Bragg because it's based upon population. And then yeah. Yeah. I I Okay. Trying to be brief. Sorry.

Well, I guess, how do you feel about it? Go ahead and send it back. And so far, it's got I think that's got my approval. So if if you can try to push something, you know, for ag there.

If I to make you feel more comfortable, though I would love the extra headroom of knowing I've got this cemented, like, two weeks earlier than coming into the next commission or, excuse me, council meeting. Is is there an idea that you have that would incent or somehow induce greater profitability for existing ag or to incent agricultural products, I'm I'm happy to reach out to my peer group throughout the state as well. I've not readily heard something that's come to mind during the conversation tonight. But if you have an idea, I'm happy to take that under advisement and kinda use this as a template for the time being and and request that I be on your next agenda for formal adoption. I just don't want you to feel rushed, but I don't have an immediate thought come to mind. Or as councilwoman Goodlander has mentioned, we could further marinate something. Here's another thought too. Gosh. I hesitate to do this. But Goyo would allow a modification midyear just like you guys do a budget agreement or a budget amendment.

They allow that. Yes? No. I think would be, helpful, Sean, would be, some kind of an industry cluster study, related to food production and agriculture to look for potential potential partnerships or potential business attraction focuses. For example, a business that if we could identify some of the existing existing byproduct relationships. Is is is there a company that's taking all their dairy fat and shipping it two states over to be turned into butter? Is if if that's something if that's the kind of thing we could identify, then maybe we could say, hey. If we had a butter manufacturer here, then they could use this and we could attract that kind of thing. So I I just think that based based on something that's actually happening, we have a butter manufacturer. They're taking dairy fat from people. But right now, they're taking that dairy fat from Chobani up in Idaho and bringing it down here. But I wonder if there are other opportunities like that where we have either agricultural producers or, food processors who have partnerships with people long distances away that maybe we could attract them here. So maybe some kind of a study to identify those type of opportunities.

To that play, that so ag is very core to the inland port play this county may have. Several of your businesses that I've I've already mentioned, and there's several others, West Point Dairy and JBS. They're they're they're keen to what could be another rail spur just parallel to the active line right now that could help them get their products, whether it be their offal or their blood meal or bone meal kind of, you know, byproducts as executives have just noted. Even Project Apollo, one of its requirements in looking at any available sites throughout the whole state, we just put in our 2¢, you know, to, hey, look up here was a rail proximity as well as being immediately adjacent to another food manufacturer with excess steam. I mean, very specific. But the inland port play actually is is a big part of supporting ag. Yes. It could also have benefits to manufacturing, generally speaking, or light industrial. But for our county, I perceive that in the north and southern part of the county where we realistically probably have an opportunity to create a project area with the inland port, it will be heavily in favor of agriculture. But that's a great point, executive. Yeah.

I I have just one other thought, and I would have to ask my farmer my fine farmer friends. With all the talk about water and the optimization of the farmers using better water practice or better watering practices to save water. I know there's some expense involved with that. Could we maybe spend some of our economic development in helping, you know, having a a matching program or somehow Mhmm. Helping to finance some farmers to save water, which helps our Salt Lake. And I don't know if that's even a possibility or a thought because I know there are I think the state just set aside money to to help pay for some of that, but could we further that along? I Yeah. I had mentioned this in our meeting, and I'll just say it again just because it's important to me. But I feel like a lot of these are studies, and a lot of times the studies are so important, and then you can grow from there and and make a big difference and have a big impact. But sometimes it just seems like we're spending a lot of money studying things where if there was something we could actually finance or put boots on the ground, for the taxpayers, sometimes that goes a long way too. So

That's a really good point about matching the grant. Sorry, councilman. They won't turn away any help on the water now. I did reach out to Circle b Irrigation about the discussion on that, and that water process is expensive. Extremely expensive. But I also wonder, could we not leverage our money and try to foster a scholarship for some type of program at Bridgerland? Or I mean, nearly every agricultural process needs maintenance, Needs somebody who is good in welding, in mechanics, or anything. You take Dozener Cheese or Dozener Foods, they've gotta have maintenance. Shriver's gotta have maintenance. If we said, okay, to promote agriculture, can we help with Bridgerland and helping in some kind of education scholarship or something in that area as well? Helping somebody in welding, helping somebody in maintenance tech, something in that area that I mean, nearly every industry out there, agricultural big, is gonna benefit from promoting something of education through Bridgerland in that area.

Absolutely true. Mark's noted that that's what a lot of their and you likely know missus Mellon as one of the AVPs over there. So I'm mildly familiar with their programs. But, yeah, that's a great point.

Yeah. I love both of those ideas. I am in fact, we have a local company who has developed that has developed an irrigation technology that they are rolling out now at farms in the region and throughout the state and even around the world that is an innovative technology. It's really a combination between some high technology and old technology that has really improved the efficiency of water use on farms. And I believe they are working toward, or maybe hopefully have already implemented some of the state funding that's been made available. Mhmm. But maybe we can identify a missing link in that if if there's some missing link that we could use these funds to help actually roll out those those products that they are selling. Because it's it's, I think, a great program, increases efficiency significantly, and saves a ton of water. So but but maybe maybe, Sean, you could identify some if there is a missing link, this would be a great opportunity.

Yeah. I I and I love it. Just one final point that several of these comments have made me think of is, Sandy, you kind of alluded to amplifying an existing state program. The rural film incentive exists as a state program for rural counties to be able to get additional film commission money to incentivize a local film production, which, by the way, we have one here. And if you would like to know more about that, they're seeking extras for some scenes in the valley next week. Be happy to forward you a a flyer if you can help disseminate that that Julie and I are helping with. But one of the counties, Box Elder, that I'm working with is adding some of their money of this to amplify the state program. In other words, film is very successful when there's not a sag or rider strike as there has been for a few months in Southern Utah. But it hasn't seen a whole lot of success and traction up here North of of Salt Lake. And some would like to, change that and kind of diversify their local economy. So Box Elder is is considering using some of their rural county grant money for that. You do the same thing in the way you just mentioned the state programs for water wise, elements. I I I love that. Council members, just for the sake of trying to move it along, is there a portion of this where right now each one of these proposals was written not to exceed? You see there on the bottom not to exceed this, not to exceed that. This was based upon the advisory board's, you know, kind of ex expectation of what these these projects, each one of these being considered a project, the the line items not to exceed. But do you feel comfortable maybe modifying some of these numbers? And, Sandy, not to speak for the other advisory board members, but, you know, that sets some set some money aside like executive Zook just said that maybe absent of going a whole other year before we intentionally address this, maybe set some money aside that we would work with the advisory board and then come back in to to you and say, okay. This is this is maybe a matching program, a scholarship program for ag or water wise that, you know, we'd carve out of this?

So we don't have to specifically identify every penny that we're that we're doing right now? This is just more of a these are the goals where we wanna go? Part of my submission is I have a spreadsheet that I have to attach to the application process and then a bunch of narrative fields. And

if I say, like, language we've used here not to exceed, you know, the the total aggregate of 200,000 is what you get. There is a part b program not to further the conversation tonight, but it's competitive. As long as this stuff has a real earnest connection to economic development, these rural counties are almost guaranteed the $200,000 through the governor's office of economic opportunity. There's another program called the rural communities opportunity grant because you have the opportunity to apply for it. It opens mid October and closes mid November. And it's competitive. So it's based upon everybody else that applies that same season. And it's up to $600,000 per applicant. And they like to see and they reward in whatever formula they use when there's a more regional approach. That might be a really good opportunity to work with Box Elder and Rich or somebody else that's regional. That's an option as well. It's just not guaranteed. There is a bit of a hitch in the giddy up because we you you cannot apply for it again if you have an open grant already under that program. And we do. We have one for childcare. And we have a couple of applicants that I'm I'm actively working with. One who's imminently likely to submit under that program and get a $25,000 reimbursement. That that is a 40% match that the finance department has already allocated with your direction, from fiscal year twenty two. So that that this isn't a new request for money or anything like that that's sitting there. But we have until February 8 well past the closing period of a new application to spend down that money. I fear that another applicant I'm working with may not be ready and I'll know within a month, give or take, if they're going to feasibly be able to meet that. And I feel within that month, I'll know whether they could meet anything October excuse me, by February 8 when our deadline is to spend it down or not. If we don't have any expended if we have unused expended funds, I just simply tell GoEd, we didn't use them all. And we can close-up our application. We can do that by the time that the deadline reopens. So I'm really getting to the weeds here. I'm sorry. That wasn't my intention. But there's other ways we could also apply for either scholarship money or something that's ag specific. There's another opportunity. It's just not as guaranteed for the twelve month cycle as this could be.

You know, the lure of a lot of economic growth and draw to a lot of outsiders to Cache County is the rural aspect that we still have. We're losing it. And that's where possibly some money put into, you know, how can we keep how can we keep some of this agriculture land? How can we keep these open spaces? I know we've we've tried a few things, but it's kind of it's become very specific in certain areas. But the agriculture, the production areas, and stuff like that that is dwindling. Getting smaller. Parcels are getting smaller. Farms are getting smaller. Number of dairies that went out this year is a crazy amount. You know, it's just we need to somehow it's part of this economic development, because those people, when they come here, they not only wanna be able to live here, but they also wanna enjoy the open space that we have. So, you know, it all comes together and just not just being productive, not just having, you know, a good business, but those people that come here, they wanna be able to still take, you know, charge for these roots that they all everyone wants to kind of jump back to at at times in their lives. So

I I will say that I I you you may be familiar with the Ag Park project from 6 County, another AOG in the southern part of the state. Along the I 15 quarter, they've gotten together within their AOG framework like Bear River Association of Governments is an AOG and said, we want to intentionally become kind of an epicenter of agricultural processing. We could very easily have that kind of positioning with Box Elder County. Just some food for thought. I didn't mean the pun intended, but it works. But that that could be something that council member you know, that that that could be something to explore because that's regional. Right? Because you'd have the I 15 corridor. Box Elder County has a lot of refrigerated warehouse space that the inland port is going to utilize as part of its marketing effort. That of course helps the food production. Anyway, that's something that we could explore. Let's see. Sandy and Carl, you're the two governing board members along with executive Zook and the two mayors. We we could explore that as an option and then even bring that to the advisory board and back to the council for the

I I have to give a presentation next month to the Bragg governing board. Here here's the thought for tonight, just for the sake of moving on. I I was there with the other advisory board members and these were all well intentioned projects and and well, well received. I can't think of one thing that I would say, please take that off and replace it with ag. But, and because of the time constraints where we have to approve something in the next two by the next two weeks, basically, why don't we leave this for now? If someone can come up with a identifiable project within the next two weeks that we could replace or add in, great. If not, we can approve this, get the money coming, and then didn't you say, like, if like, say, the the airport strategy study comes in at $12,000 instead of 20. Or, you know, we can revisit it, but let's just make sure our application gets in, that we have something identified. And these are all, you know, these are all good, worthy projects. But let's try and focus more on ag for next year or maybe even if somebody in the next couple of weeks could come up with something. So we put this on the docket

subject to change for the next For the next. Meeting on on the twenty sixth and then We'll pass something that night. K. That work? So vote next meeting?

K. Any any further information you'd like me to work with Micah to provide or just time them all before the next meeting?

If you also come up with some ideas Okay. Pursue some agriculture input, that would be great. K. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Sean. Let's go to ordinance, on 10 b, ordinance twenty twenty three dash 33. Financial controls amendments. Please. Micah.

Alright. Ordinance twenty twenty three dash 33. This is a ordinance that was based off of a presentation that we received three weeks ago at the last council meeting from executive Zuck. We've been working together with some of the, the the county attorneys. I I had to step out of the meeting this morning, but I understand this was discussed this morning at Ordinance and Policy Review. And, in Ordinance and Policy, there were some changes that were kinda passed out of that committee, some amendments. So I actually have an amended version. But for now, I will discuss what is before you. So this is I'm not gonna discuss the amended version yet, the the one that was published in the media packet, and, and it's also the one that is in your packets. Council members, you do not have the amended version. I have it on my computer, though, and it's it's not there's no substantial changes. So there are four sections here. The first deal with compensation of employees. The first is county officers. So this is elected county officials. Per Utah state code 17 per Utah state code, county officers shall not receive any type of additional compensation from the county, including but not limited to incentive pay bonuses, special projects pay, beyond you know, all other kinds of additional pay, beyond the salary set forth in this chapter other than I set forth an ordinance by the county council. So this is, pretty simple. This is limiting the pay, the salary of any elected county officer to that which is set by the county council in ordinance. And if you go to county code, you can anyone can go to county code now to this section, two point two eight point zero three zero, and you can see what the salaries of the elected officials in in Cache County are and that that that is set by the council regularly. Second section deals with the compensation of county employees. So these are non elected county employees. So and this one is one sentence. Any additional compensation beyond the the employee's base salary or wage must be approved by the county council. Pretty simple. Again, any pay must be set by the county council. Where this becomes this actually, though this is a simple simpler policy than the previous one. This, in practice, is actually a little bit more complex because we have employees that are paid additional pay beyond their base salary through, you know, working contracts, working overtime. But the intent is that, you know, overtime pay is part of a department's budget. And then a contract that would is paying employees additional work, that is that contract is approved by the county council. So this it is all that needs to be approved by the council.

And there and there's some details coming with some of these things that we're talking about. Right? Yeah. In the policy?

Yes. So Yes. And and Set them in policy and not have to approve them every time they happen. Correct? That's that's the intent. Yes. In the intent. In the intent. In the intent. In the intent. In the intent. In the intent. In the intent. In the intent.

Yeah. We're try try to keep those annually on any of those pay or practices. Yeah. Yeah.

Next, we have recategorization of expenditure accounting. This deals with a report that the office of the auditor, in practice, it would be the the finance division, which is under the office of the auditor. The auditor shall prepare a monthly report of all expenditures for which a change has been made to the general ledger account, initially assigned to the expenditure and distribute that report to the county council and executive. That is is legalese for every month. The auditor will submit a report to the county council and the executive listing any recategorizations of any expense. So that will that that will provide the both the the the two main auditing authorities outside of the auditor himself with that information, those two auditing authorities being the counsel and the executive. And with this, we now have all three auditing authorities in the county, with a reg receiving a regular report of all recategorizations. Finally, grant time reporting. All employees, including exempt employees that work under grants that require reporting of employee time shall track and submit hours worked through the system required by the subject grant. All employees, including some employees who work under grants or administer grants must attend training on the administration of that grant. What this is saying is that if you if an employee is working doing conducting their work under a grant and that grant requires employees to track their time. This is saying the employee shall track their time. And and then that's that all employees working under grants, they must attend training on the administration, the proper administration of that grant. And so they are familiar with the correct procedures so we can maintain compliance with the with that grant. So that is the ordinance before you now. Earlier today, in ordinance the ordinance and policy review committee made some substitutions, some amendments to this policy. Now, the first is actually they're actually adding additional this is adding new a new line in an existing so this is the red line version in existing code. So the previous council meeting, the council you passed 20 ordinance twenty twenty three dash 29, which made some changes to procedures related to travel expenses. This is simply adding that any travel should be authorized prior to any expenditures related to that travel being made. Councilman Goodlander, I think this is this is you're right. This is what you wanted to add in, that we need to make sure that that authorization is happening before the travel is actually happens. And then the second change was related to grant time reporting. Can I I'm gonna ask our attorney to give some explanation on that one?

So looking at your version, there's actually something that needs to be added about the training to this version Okay. In yours and not in mine. And this is not in not in yours but is in mine. So the the reasoning I I changed just a little bit of this language is after speaking with with the Ballarat grant administrators as we're getting ready, we realized there's a little bit more that needs to be tracked than what would be really functional in Cassell. So we've been working with them on a time tracking sheet for our employees to use at their approval. And, what I was worried about with whatever grants we have is whatever system we pick, if it's not functional for the grant, having to come back and try to come up with a new time tracking system to be approved. So rather than having a one size fits all for the whole county, it's one size fits all for the grant that needs to be approved by the grant administrator and then must be submitted to the elected elected official over any department that has time tracked grants on a monthly basis to ensure not only is it complying with their department, but also with the with the grant that's being given to that department by their administrators, if that makes sense.

Do we have very many grants that require time tracking? How how onerous is this? Like

So I don't know as far as other departments. We have two different grants for the attorney's office of victim services. They'll require some time tracking, more so for the attorney's office, I believe. But I don't know if there's other departments that might have Alma would know.

Most of our other grants do not require That's what I thought. They're usually for specific programs or even construction projects. And

so it's not that common. Okay. So this wouldn't be too complex. It would be very, very doable. Yes.

So

if the council would wants to make an amendment to ordinance twenty twenty three dash 33 to this,

we would need to make a motion. That was the change that we added this morning. Yes. Yeah.

In policy. But it hasn't been sent out to us yet, like, it's not in our package. That's the addition. It's not in your package.

That's the addition right there. But we we can't I would need to make a motion to it. If you feel good about that to accept that statement, everything else was sent out to us. Yeah. I'm fine with that.

I'll make a motion to approve that.

Second. Second. It's moved and seconded that we add this statement here onto, under the grant time reporting section. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes, so we'll add that to it. So Well, what about the and then the travel expense part? I'll be out. Do a motion Was that motion

was this

also added? Yes, that included that. Okay.

Perfect.

That's actually a good statement.

K. This is the ordinance before you now, then that this version.

So yeah. K. Thank you. Thanks, Micah. Let's hurry in. There's some others. We get a few others. How about the personnel management 2023Dash34? Yeah. I I'm happy to discuss that that Taylor Taylor Reddy is there for it? Okay. Real quick. And then CBTD, you're still on deck. Sorry. You know, we're always waiting for the bus. So sorry about that. We're a long time. Okay. That's a good comeback.

Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. This is following up on our County Executive's report that he gave earlier in this meeting that the County has been flirting with this for some time now, but under state code, Utah code seventeen thirty three, it requires that any county that has greater than 200 employees not covered by the peace officer, mayor system, or the fireman's civil service commission, that we must comply with the provisions of Utah code seventeen thirty three. And so as executives have outlined that requires that we create an office of personnel management administered by a director of personnel management. So this ordinance, if we just go to the red line here, it removes the old outdated language in our county code and adopts Utah code seventeen thirty three as amended for our county merit system for employees not otherwise covered by peace officer or fireman civil service merit systems. The one remaining, section that is left over, says that no county employee, no career service county employee may hold any elective political office of the county during his or her employment. That is something that the councils council put into place, and it's not specifically contradicted by state code, so it remains. So unless you instruct unless you decide to do away with it in the future, that's that's a remainder. And in the future, so we will come again before you here in the next couple weeks with some technical changes to the rest of the code, where it makes reference to a human resources director, we're going to go through the entire code and change that to personnel management director. So that's a preview teaser for what's coming up next.

I just had one question. Yes. Not really a question, but I don't know if I'm reading it correctly, but on the this no, the the new part where it says Cache County, and then it says, title 17 chapter 33 as amended as and for its county merit system. There's an as and. Like, is that grammatically correct or am I just like, I don't know legal language. Yes. That's that's correct. That's correct. Okay. It just sounded funny to me. I didn't know if it was a typo. It's yeah. It's a little bit wonky wording, but that is correct. Legal things that I like to have in there, you know. I don't These legal guys, I don't know about them. It's it's a challenge. No. That's great. Thank you.

That's all I've got. Thank you. Are you ready for a motion?

I'm trying to find something that I was wondering about. I don't see it in here. Okay. So this this here is personal manage or the personnel management act here. Is it it's already been it's basically to reinforce and then put it into county code That's correct. Whatever the executive order did.

Yes. The executive order creates that office and this is us adopting the states

our the required code. Okay. And I wanna I I guess that's what I'm wanting to make sure what's make sure that it's clear that that office, basically, they provide advice and information to the county council and to the executive

together. Right? Yes. By adopting this code, we're adopting what all the requirements that are and powers and duties and responsibilities of the personnel management director as it's spelled out under state code. And state code, what that says is that the director of personnel management advises, encourages, provides reports to the County Council in their creation of policy, in their creation of code regarding human resources. So, all all of that's in state code, and we can pull it up if you'd like.

Yeah. You want it?

Yeah. I'd move to adopt ordinance twenty twenty three dash 34 for personnel management amendments. Suspend the rule. And suspend the rules. Because this is initial.

Is there a second? I'll second. Move and second that we suspend the rules and pass ordinance twenty twenty three dash 34. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. We'll come back to the financial controls here in a second. So k? Great. Can we go ahead with CBCD?

Or have you got something else you wanna do with the Well, I the The The While I'm up here, we could jump into yeah. While I'm up here, we could jump into drug manufacturing. Cut and dry. So let's just jump take two seconds to do that. Yes. This is just a resolution. That's for the manufacture. Changing our county policy. So, this is a technical point that was highlighted to us by some of our grant administrators of one of our grants that our county policy currently does not specifically prohibit the manufacture of alcohol, illegal drugs, or intoxicants on county property, or during work hours while employed with the county. So it is county policy that county employees follow the law and manufacture of illegal drugs would be against the law. But this just makes it even more specific for any employee who's confused to whether or not they can manufacture drugs. And and also alcohol. So we can't we have to get rid of the still. No distilleries.

Yep. Still still's gotta go.

Or any other intoxicants. So if you if you can think of it and it intoxicates you, don't make it at work. So that's this is a pretty easy resolution that I would encourage you to pass. Thank you.

Okay. I'll make a motion that we pass res or suspend the rules and pass the resolution twenty twenty three dash 13.

Second. Move and seconded. We suspend the rules, pass resolution twenty twenty three dash 13. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Did anyone have any questions on it? If If you do, we know you're guilty.

Thank you very much.

Okay. We'll now turn it over for resolution twenty twenty three dash 12. I guess the you guys, your board has to change. Thank you, members of the council.

The state legislature changed the Utah code that governs the composition of special districts. They changed it so it's a minimum of five, maximum of nine. Presently, we have 19.

So we're gonna have some layoffs. You'll get a lot more done now. What's that? You'll get a lot more done now. Well, we'll see.

But the resolution before you is the board's best recommendation on how to achieve that. We're functionally kind of cutting the board in half. And, you can see the composition and makeup by the different, geographic areas. The benefit to the council, here tonight is previously, Sean Bushman, who is your representative, he shared his one vote with, I think, River Heights and Providence? Correct.

So third. Your one third is 19. Present in the present

proposal before you, cash counsel will have representation of one full vote. So our request is that you support this as a unanimous, present proposal from the 19 members of our board.

I think probably ought to Pretty straightforward. It is. Gotta do this because of code. So

Well, I'll make a motion to suspend the rules and approve resolution twenty twenty three dash 12.

Seconded. Moved and seconded. We suspend the rules and approve ordinance for resolution twenty twenty three dash 12 on supporting that board apportionment for CBTD. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Aye. It is unanimous. Thank you. One last thing. So we appreciate you supporting the composition.

On a personal request,

Sean's been a tremendous contribution on behalf of Cache County to the the CVTD. I would personally ask that you retain him. It's your authority and jurisdiction to appoint your own member, but he's been a tremendous asset to this board and represents Cache County well.

Will we need to no. Maybe he was gonna say that. Will we need to reappoint once everything is done? You need to reappoint. Okay.

K. We'll try to bring that one back then for Thank you. The next meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Executive Zuck, you'll bring What what what will the time frame be that? When will we need to do it? We're gonna try to implement this entire thing by January 1.

So post it. Next week. So in January is when we need to reappoint?

Absolutely. Prior would be better. Okay.

Could we do it before you finish that? Like, if we did the appointment next meeting, would that be okay? Yeah. Okay. It can be done.

K. Thanks for your patience. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. I thought they waited this Okay. Let's go back real quick to the financial controls amendment, ordinance twenty twenty three-thirty three. Any discussion on that? We have already amended it to include those changes. And I know we had actually talked about a lot of these even when we were in discussions of, with the previous resolution that we passed a few weeks ago. So

I'll make a motion that we suspend the rules and pass ordinance twenty twenty three dash 33 financial controls amendments as amended this evening.

Can I ask one question? You bet.

Hang on. Is there a second? I'll second. Second is to go ahead and discussion.

Okay. So we're talking about the financial controls. I know there's a there's an ordinance or policy in there about gifts or travel or anything else. It would seem that there ought to be a statement in here about those because that's a financial remuneration if you accept a gift or a travel or anything else. Does that make sense?

Are you referring specifically to, like like, employee pay? How a gift or travel may be considered employee pay?

Like like, additional pay? It can be a benefit that is immense worth worth pay.

Isn't I remember us looking at that specifically in when we were going over these ordinances and it's specifically stated. I can't tell you the paragraph

and and And I agree. It it is in there, but it seems if we're having to do this, that we've almost put it in at this time as well. I don't know. Legal? What's your thoughts?

I think there's already there is state code to that. Yeah. Yeah. There isn't a state code that's that

prohibits receipt of gift or travel.

Gift and travel in some ways would be two different issues. Because you could if you travel down for a conference, that's obviously work related and and that wouldn't I don't know if that would be classified as That would be because compensation. Compensation. Gifts receiving of gifts for officers is certainly part of state code. That doesn't mean we can't Officers and employees. And employees. Okay.

K.

But I I I don't I don't know that specific off my head. I I think it's $50 limit for elected officers, I think. I And

I I believe we adopted the county officers and employees ethics act at the end of last year, which incorporates those sections of code into our county code. So they have related to gifts and and travel and those other impermissible benefits. Those have been incorporated into our code in the prior year during the the last, by the last council.

Okay.

I can look into that as well.

Any other discussion? Hearing none, we'll proceed to vote. All those in favor of suspending the rules and passing ordinance twenty twenty three-thirty three on the financial controls, say aye. Aye. And any, any opposed? Motion passes. So, okay. There was the one pending action that'll be carried on, and we'll look at that, I guess, at the next meeting on September 26 of nine a. Okay. Yes. You homecoming parade, UAC convention. Go ahead. I'll put me down on the UAC convention. Put me down as well. I have a question on the USU home homecoming parade though. Remains every year.

Homecoming parade.

Any other?

Put me down, but I there's possibility I might be out of town but I don't know. Certainly.

Anyone else wanna get their names down? We gotta go look at calendars. I could put me down for both. Yeah. Please consider the calendar. K. You can put me down for both, Micah. Okay. If you have other information there, it'll be back on there for the next report. Council member reports.

Catherine. Yeah. Thank you. I'm gonna pass these down to everyone if you could take a look. As part of the COSAC, the open space committee. We've they've done really good work in meeting and trying to we've adopted bylaws, and they've now come through a a two phase process on how they want to evaluate proposals that will be given to to them. And this is the first process and this is the application that they've outlined here. And they've asked me to come back to the council and get a gauge if they would if the council would like to have an update, whether it be in the format of a workshop or just the chair coming in and directing comments to us on how the work is going. And also if the council is okay by releasing or accepting applications for well, as far as just letting people fill out this first phase. Because we're that the next phase is a scoring phase with which we're still developing right now as a committee. So this is just allowing the interest parties to come and kind of let their interest be known.

So

you want me to come back and educate us or wait till the What what would the council's direction be at this point? Is I is I guess what they've asked me to come in and say, would would they like would the council would we like them to come and speak to us about what this is? Or are we, okay with this for what it is right now and allow them to start receiving or allowing people to submit applications using this for the phase one? Because again, the next phase is like a scoring, and we're still determining how we're going to score, the proposals. What do you think? Did I miss anything, Steven? Steven looks like you sit on the edge of a seat. Is there anything else that they would ask?

It's okay at the council. So the COSAC committee has been meeting a couple times a month to establish a process to be able to receive applications to receive funds for the open space bond that was recently passed. They want to do a two phase application process. They want to do initial phase, which is what the application in front of you is for. And they're currently working on the application and review for the second phase. Essentially, they wanna do two phases because they want to kind of allow applicants to get in applications and to do a preliminary review of what that application is and kind of what they're hoping to achieve. And so I believe what the committee is wanting to know is if they're okay if the council's okay with us, with the county posting the application and so that applicants can start prepping and filing applications with the committee, in order to start in order so they can do the first reviews and then move them to round two as they're creating, that process.

Thanks, Steven. Yep. Does there have to be any kind of legal review of this before we can put it out on the website or anything?

Do you know? Oh, you said what I asked.

Okay. Sorry.

Well, he's looking at that. I think it would be good to have members of that committee come and share what's what's happening. Yeah. Because I know I have received several phone calls from individuals Mhmm. That are makeup of the committee. Okay. And so they would like to I think what needs to happen is we need to have them report

where they're at, why Right. And and that's they just wanted some directions. So before we can actually start receiving applications, we will meet on Monday, and I can convey this to them that we would appreciate as a council. That's what that's what I think would be very beneficial because in public forum, they could actually hear it. And, mister chair, would you like that to be in a council meeting or in a workshop or what would you like? I think it ought to be in a council meeting. Okay. Yeah.

We can bring that forward to the committee this night. We're meeting with them on Monday and I'm sure the chair, Chris Sant, would love to come and present and talk about the process they've gone through so thus far.

K. K. Thank you. I will return and convey that to the committee.

Appreciate that. Thanks, Steven. Others?

Any I I see no reason that this couldn't be posted.

K. Thank you, Jane. Thanks, Jane. Okay.

Any other I there's one question I have regarding Jack Draxler has called me and wanted to know where the council is regarding approval of bond money.

As the council has Well, it's up to it's our purview as a council to have the flexibility to move as we need to, but we're still trying as a committee to set some framework in how we're going to assess proposals and and applicants.

He he's just concerned about the rates, I guess, and but we'll just have to move as we move, and that's all there is to it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara.

That's all. Thank you. No business.

Margaret? Yes. I have a couple things. I'm just gonna pass this out because I'm on the UAC board, and they the board approved a rate increase for the counties, and this gives an explanation of how that's going to take place. If If you have any questions, let me know, and I'll try to get an answer for you as far as that goes. And if we could get a copy of that to Mr. Benson, make sure his assistant gets a copy of that, so she can give it to him. And another thing just so you're aware, we are going to be changing the executive, change of when UAC executive committee is elected. It's going to be changed from November to spring so that they can have a better chance to be be prepared for the legislative sessions that are coming up. And let me see. I'm just going through my notes really fast, so I can get this done. And then also, one of the things that the board passed just as last week, and I'll be glad to get a copy of this out to everyone too. It's a proposed resolution in support of election integrity in the state of Utah and the contributions of the election registration information center, which is Eric for short. And it's just saying that, the counties of the state of Utah and the clerks of these counties are responsible to maintain an accurate and updated voter registration list to be used in all elections within the state of Utah. And it goes on, and like I said, I can give you a copy of this. Be it further resolved that UAC expresses its support for continued participation in, ERIC and encourages collaboration with other member states to further improve the accuracy of voter register registration lists and be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be sent to appropriate state and local officials as well as to ERIC's governing body to convey UX endorsement of ERIC's mission and its commitment to advancing fair and accurate elections. If anybody wants a full copy of this, it's a one page, I would be happy to give it to you. I also want to, they, UAC has steering committees and that they do like participation from the county officials to participate in these. They they are trying to have a call once a month on these. They, I have signed I signed up for to participate in each of these, but these are the the committees, operations, taxation, public safety, community development, and human services. I'm finding that I cannot be on all five calls all day for for this one. So if any one of you are interested in participating in any of these, please let me know, and I will let you at know and make a change to, you know, who's going to be there for that or be on those calls. It is a Zoom call. K? When do we want our summer party that's now turned to fall and maybe winter? So when do we want to happen upon that? Anyone have a date that they prefer?

Don't worry. What do you have in mind to do, Barbara?

Well, Gordy and John White have already offered to do the, what do they call it, shrimp boil. And it's usually held at Gordy's house. So I don't know. Depends on when anybody's around or when the most people can be here. Is it families or just us with us? I guess most of you are just It's the council and and partners. Okay.

Got it. Saturday, September 30.

That's fine, but I won't be here. Give us some ideas. Usually, we've had it on, what, a Tuesday or a Thursday night. It's usually, like, the the Tuesday off. Yeah. The Tuesday not that we have a council meeting. That's what we've had in the past.

So we're looking at Is this the third of of October bad? No.

I'll be at that one Utah summit. That I'm sorry. Yeah. We'll be down at the 1 Utah Summit. Oh, there you go. Sorry. You have October 17.

That would work for me. That works for you? Yeah.

K. I will verify with Gordy and John on that and report back on that. But, any other questions on that? No. My last item is is I am not here for meeting on the twenty sixth. I will be gone out of town.

Don't have anything to report. Nothing.

Okay. And I I don't have anything either. So okay. With that with that all in mind, we'll adjourn.