Cache County Council Regular – 03-10-2026

That's all the that's all the evidence.

Yes. I'm gonna take one. Alright.

Thank you. It is 05:00. We're gonna go ahead and get started with our council meeting. It's nice to see a full house. Thank you all for being here. I'm officially supposed to do this. Plug your ears. It's kinda loud. Okay. This meeting is officially started. We'll go ahead and start with an opening by council member Mark

Kirk. Thank you, madam chairwoman. We've got a lot of people here, and we got a long agenda, so I will keep my opening really short. Thank you for being here. Thanks for the process of local government. Thank you for the opportunity we have that you've entrusted us with to sit here and feel this pressure. One thing one question I ask myself regularly is is my help helpful? And I hope that that can be an idea that we all carry. And when we take action, is our help helpful? Are we doing the right things for the right reasons? With that, I would like to include my marks remarks with a prayer. K. Thank you. Our father in heaven, we're grateful for the opportunity we have to gather for the business of Cache County this evening and here assembled as the Cache County Council. We pray as always that thy spirit will abide with us and that we may have the benefit of inspiration and guidance to our thoughts and and in review of the preparation that we've taken to, become informed for the purposes of the items on the agenda. We pray also for the blessings of thy spirit to be upon our community and and those people here in our valley. We're so grateful for the place in which we live and for the opportunity we have to associate one with another. We pray also Father that I will bless our area with continued, delivery of moisture through snowpack in the mountains. We're grateful for that which has come. We pray through snowpack in the mountains. We're grateful for that, which is come. We pray for wisdom and how to use the resources that that was made available to us. We also pray, Father, that that will bless, protect those who are, serving in behalf of our freedom and our and the liberties that we enjoy here. We're grateful, Father, for the laws of this country and the constitution. We pray that that will continue to inspire those around us and in service of the community to follow that which is right. We pray, Father, for the continued blessing to be upon Cache County. We say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Finally, will you rise and follow me in the pledge of allegiance?

Repeat after me. I pledge allegiance to the flag

of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Sandy. Thank you, council member. That was that was great. K. We need to review and approve the agenda. Is there anyone have something they want to say about the agenda?

Madam chair? Yes. I move that we amend the agenda that we add under I believe is it eight? We add number eight c to set a public hearing for March 27, ordinance twenty twenty six dash 16 amendment to Cache County code regarding wastewater systems in source water protection zones.

Okay. I have an amendment to the agenda. Does anyone wanna second that motion? I'll second it. Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we amend the agenda by adding eight C to set a public hearing for the next time that we meet for March 24. Twenty fourth, not seventh, is it? Yeah, March 24. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Alright. Does anybody else want to speak to the agenda? Yes.

Item six d, I would like to request that that motion that that matter be postponed to the meeting of March 24.

Fifth.

K. That should still give us time to correct it if needed before we end this purpose this year.

K. It's been moved that we continue, six b until our next meeting on March 24. Is there a second on that? Sandy

A member has to Yeah. That was a request from the executive. Request from the executive. Okay. Thank you. I I will, however, make that motion. K. I feel like we do need some I need some more time. I Yeah. On this item. I really do. K.

And we had a second down here? Okay. So we do have a motion and a second to continue that item until the March 24. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Now we move on to the minutes, the approval of minutes. And I have a, on the February 10 minutes, on '5 a, it just says that the executive made an appointment. It doesn't say what he appointed people to. It was to the weed control board. I just like that added in. Yeah. That was the only difference that I saw. If anyone wants to make a motion then to accept those minutes as amended. So moved. Second. On the amended. Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the meetings from February 10 and February 17 as amended. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Thank you very much. K. Report of the county executive and appointments.

Yes. I have two appointments that I would like your advice and consent. First of all, the library board, mayor, layer Larry Jacobson of Mill of Nibley has asked that he be allowed to serve on the board as well. The cities that are considering the library have expanded to include Nibley at this point. So I would ask that you give your consent and advice to his appointment

on the library board. Board. Do you know what number that brings the the board to? To seven? Okay. So it's an even an odd number. Number which is right. Perfect. Receive helpful. K. Does someone wanna make a motion to accept that? So moved. Second. Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we approve Larry Jacobson to be added to the library board for the Cache County Library. Is there any further discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Okay. K. I have a second appointment.

I

would ask you to provide your advice and consent with respect to appointing Brian m Abbott as our Kent County Development Services director. You know this position has been filled and had moved around for quite some time. We're very happy to, make this recommendation to you.

I would so move that we approve that appointment of Brian Abbott, development services. I'll second that. K. It's been moved and seconded that we approve Brian Abbott as our director of development services. Is there any further discussion?

I have a question. So we removed the requirement for the certification. I don't remember exactly what it was now. And then we put that we reposted that position. Got some applicants,

reviewed them. We have completed the interview cycle and make this appointment subsequent to that. K. Great. That's what I wanted to know. K. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Okay. Items of special interest. The main reason many of you are here, I'm sure. We are yes. We have to swear Brian in. We have to swear Brian in. Would you like to do that right now? Yes. Okay. We're ready to go. Thank you. If Brian's ready.

Okay. Return to the square

Okay. We good? We're good. All right. Okay. So now as we move to the appointment of our County Cache County Attorney, we are operating under code 20A-one-509.1, if anyone cares. Following Taylor Sorensen's resignation, the Republican Central Committee was tasked with providing us three names. The County Council has received the following names from the Central Committee, Chris Daines, Dane Murray, and J. Brett Chambers. The County Council has forty five days from the date of the vacancy to make an appointment. We've been operating with an acting attorney to keep the office running, but tonight we intend to select a permanent replacement to serve out the remainder of the unexpired term through the 2026. Our job tonight is to interview these three nominees and afterwards make a motion to appoint one of them. So the first thing that we'll do, I'd invite all three candidates to come and take the chairs up to the front. And there have been two public forums already where these candidates address the public. Tonight, the final decision has come to the council. So they're going to be addressing us. They're not gonna turn around and address you. And so if that's that's just the protocol that we're gonna do tonight. So just so that you understand that. So we appreciate all three of you being here. We really do. And we're looking forward to hearing from you. So what we will do is we'll hear from each of you a three minute opening statement, and then we'll ask all three of you to leave the room and come back in one at a time. And we will ask some specific questions of each of you. And so we'll just go ahead and start with you, Dane, if that's okay.

That's right.

So I've spoken before this council on many occasions, but I I don't think there's any occasion that has more stake on the county attorney's office future than right now. Back in 2022, when this council appointed me to serve as an interim county attorney after John Luthy left, I stepped into that leadership position when our office was under intense scrutiny, and I went to work right away with this council to make sure those problems that had occurred within the office never happened again. We didn't just change policies. We transformed our county's government. We reorganized the attorney's office, re reformed our finance division, separated the clerk and the auditor's office. We created the department of of personnel management to give some additional oversight to personnel decisions and and things along those lines. We we made these changes, and they saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grant money and ensured transparency and accountability and improved our governments. We also attacked other issues. We started the open space advisory committee during that time. We had the trash consortium. We had the health department mental health authority getting them into compliance with law. All of that is are things I've done as the interim county attorney. Now my opponents, they they like to talk about the 2019 budget. They claim that that spending's out of control. That ignores 30% inflation. That ignores the massive influx of cases both from population growth, from COVID, and it ignores that in 2023, after an extensive salary analysis by our human resources department, they found that on average, our attorneys in our office were making 39% below what people in other counties doing their exact same job were doing. This county council looked at that, and they decided to make sure we were keeping good qualified attorneys in our office by doing a a salary adjustment for them because they knew it was a direct threat to public safety. So when we're talking about the 2019 budget, what we're really talking about, if we wanna go back to that, is defunding prosecution of crime in Cache County because nine about 90 of our office's budget is personnel. The other 10% is is what it costs to do business, so there's no way to make significant cuts without firing attorneys. This comes at a time when our special victims unit's caseload has tripled over the last decade. It's easy to criticize when you haven't led the office. It's easy to minimize the difficulty and resources needed when you've never been a prosecutor, and I understand that that's where my opponents are coming from. But you have the benefit of judging my work, my leadership ability from experience. You've been able to vet me for some of you for for many years. My opponents wanna paint our offices sick or misfunctioning or claim the civil division is struggling, but I believe you and some of the other elected officials in this room today are the best judges of that. And I I say those claims are baseless. They're just convenient talking points for for opponents that just lack an experience on the criminal side. So I'm asking you to choose stability and proven leadership over convenient talking points. I'm asking you to vote for me to serve the remainder of the term of county attorney. Thank you. Thank you.

K. Mister Chambers.

Thank you. And I apologize in advance. I have, five kids, and one of the blessings of that is sometimes they bring home, sicknesses with them. So good evening. As you probably know, my name is Brett Chambers. Before I begin, I actually wanna pay the other, candidates a compliment. I think you have a tough job here tonight because I think mister Murray and mister Daines are both good attorneys and good candidates. But I'm here tonight because I believe that I'm the right person to lead the Cache County Attorney's Office. As we all know, this office has had five attorneys in five years. When that happens, the office starts over, cases stall, institutional knowledge leaves and the taxpayers have to foot the bill to rebuild again and again and again to rebuild that knowledge and that experience. I'm here to say I'm here to build a strong team at the county attorney's office. I grew up in Providence. I went to Mountain Crest High School. I wrestled in high school. I got my butt kicked. I wrestled into boys on the Northern End Of The Valley. I graduated magna cum laude from Utah State. Cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School is a top 10 program. I've practiced law in Cache Valley since 2014. My wife is from the Valley. We're raising our five kids here. My point is I'm not going anywhere. I want to bring three things to this office. The first is stable leadership. This office needs someone who's going to be staying long enough to build institutional knowledge, implement real systems, and be held accountable for those results. Accountable for those results. The second is civil experience. Most people when they think of the County Attorney, they think of criminal prosecution and we have good criminal law prosecutors and I won't change that, but the County Attorney is also the County's top civil lawyer. With road projects, development, zoning, water rights, contracts, and the growth of this Valley Of Singh, that work has never been more important. It sounds like there's a whole stack of civil work that has to get done and I'd love to dive into that and get right to work. My entire practice is civil litigation, business, real estate, land use. That's the gap in this office and it's exactly what I do. The third is fiscal accountability and responsibility. The office budget, as mister Murray referenced, six years ago, it was 1,550,000.00. He referenced inflation. Even accounting for inflation, it would be up to about 2,000,000 accounting for inflation. As of last year, 2025, it's grown to 3.59. In that same period of time, the population has grown by about 13% or 17,000. As some of that may be justified, but I consider it my responsibility to the taxpayers to look under the hood and make sure that we're being responsible with taxpayer dollars. And I'll close with this. I've I've served as the Cache County bar president. That's an elected position, elected by attorneys in Cache County and as a Utah State Bar commissioner, elected by attorneys in Rich County, Box Elder County, and Cache County. I've been endorsed by over 38 different attorneys in this valley. And on Saturday, the central committee held a straw poll where I received 46% of the vote, favored for this position. The attorneys in this valley trust me with this job. They know their responsibilities. They know what it requires. The committee delegates trust me with this job and what it requires. And tonight, I'm asking you to trust me as well. And I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you.

Mister Daines.

Oh, I am sorry. That's okay.

Madam chair and members of the Cache County Council, my name is Chris Daines. I pledge three solemn commitments to you and by extension to the people of Cache County. First, I will finish what I start. And this is what I mean specifically. If elected, I will serve from 02/04/2027 through noon on 01/06/2031. If you appoint me, I will serve from today through noon on 01/04/2027. And third, while I am serving, I will not move out of Cache County. My second promise is that I will work hard for Cache County. And this is what I mean by that specifically. I will dedicate to Cache County at least forty five hours per week on average. I will keep a daily record of my performance of this promise. I will not count vacations, sick days or holidays unless I'm actually working then. Third, I will be an excellent county attorney. This is what I mean specifically by that promise. I will be well prepared including with knowledge of the facts and the law. I will anticipate problems and opportunities and make plans to meet them. I will share my honest relevant opinions while always being helpful and polite. Thank you each for your service.

Thank you. Thank you all for your statements. K. I'm gonna ask you all to to leave the room. Our lovely Kurt Webb is gonna stay with you. He's gonna escort you out there. Lovely. Lovely. Lovely. He is a lovely person to work with. Okay. Good. Sorry.

K. Not under oath. I know. I know.

Okay. So what's gonna happen next is we'll bring them in one at a time, and we have a set of questions that we're going to, to ask them. And I've told most of the council, but I'll I don't know that I was able to tell Mark, that we'll start with someone different each time so that we can just go around. And the seventh question will be mine each time. And we'll Andrew's gonna tell us when it's nine minutes. Okay? So Bryson, would you please ask we'll go the opposite direction. We'll ask Chris Daines to go first, please.

Where do you want us to start on the questions?

Joanne, if you'll start the first question this time.

This is more reverent than church. I don't

know how far away they went. I don't know where Kurt took them.

Did you take them down to the basement? I don't know.

Took them next door.

Yeah. Extra one of those. See? Right. I mean, you want an extra.

And, mister Danes, we'll ask you to to address us from the podium just so that it's clear on the YouTube channel and that everyone can hear. Bryson, do you wanna close the door?

I grab it.

And we'll we'll for this section, we will be timing. There's a a strict ten minute time limit. We have seven questions so you can gauge your answers to that. Excellent. K. Alright. Go ahead. Joanne's gonna begin. I have the first question.

What do you see as the top legal priorities for the Cache County right now?

I think the top legal priority is to straighten up the office of the county attorney. And that that is fundamental because if the county attorney's office is running well, then we'll discover what those other priorities are. But that's priority number one is to straighten out that office.

K. Kegan. Great. Yep.

Do you think the attorney's budget needs to be reduced? And if so, what is one specific thing you would change or improve about how the office is currently managed to make it more efficient?

Well, as you probably all know, my position is that the Cache County Attorney's Office doesn't include any prosecution. So when it comes to the budget for the Cache County Attorney's Office, it will be quite small in comparison to the overall, budget that you've allocated to what used to be called the Cache County Attorney's Office. The official name of the office should be the office of the District Attorney of Cache County. That's what you named it, effective January 6 at noon of twenty twenty five. But but so if but if you're asking me, it will be way slimmed down if we're only talking about the office of the Cache County Attorney. Thank you.

K. I have question three. How would you, as county attorney, ensure that the county upholds both strong due process protections and effective prosecution? How would you balance those priorities and practice?

To be straight with you, I wouldn't because I'm not the prosecutor if you appoint me to be the Cache County Attorney. That would be the job of the district attorney to pay close attention to those issues.

K. Thank you.

Dave, why don't you go ahead?

Land use decisions are one of the most important issues we deal with. What is your experience with land use law and how would you ensure that our off that your office gives clear, direct guidance rather than rather than advice that simply avoids risk?

Thank you for that question. I have a a history of being involved in land use going back to the early nineteen eighties. I I argued a case before the Utah Supreme Court called Chambers versus Smithfield, in which we, in which the Supreme Court decided in our client's favor that the, Smithfield City variance ordinance was substantively off and was procedurally off. And we fixed that with the county, with I'm sorry, with the Utah Supreme Court. I my name is on a number of different, appellate decisions having to do with land use. I'm quite familiar with that area. How

do you ensure ethical standards are upheld both in dealing with with county employees as well as when dealing with sensitive or controversial issues?

I think the first thing there is to pay very close attention to my duties under rule 1.13 of the Utah rules of professional conduct. That outlines what the duties comment, I think it is one of that, talks about the specific duties of the cash count or not cash county, but county attorneys and government attorneys. And the the main thing is that if I adhere strictly to the standards of professionalism, there shouldn't be any problems. And I would set an example for those in the office of being discreet and maintaining confidences and being straightforward when the occasion calls for it.

Thank you. DWS number six. Yep. Can you provide an example of a complex civil legal challenge you successfully navigated?

That's gonna be very hard because in order to do that, I would have to stick to what's on the public record. And I wouldn't want to highlight any particular cases that have to do with I have duties of confidentiality to my clients. So I will just say that I've handled many very complex cases And maybe I should go back to Houston. I represented Petroleos Mexicanos in Houston for a while. I represented North American Mortgage Company in in in Houston. And and so going back that far, I'm not endangering any of my more recent clients.

Okay. Mister Daines, will you please address any conflicts of interest you may have if you become the county attorney?

Well, I I, I do have a partner, Jonathan Thomas, who practices quite a bit of legal defense work. Immediately upon being, appointed or being elected, taking office as county attorney, I would have to completely disassociate myself from him because having him in my office would be a conflict of interest. And and right now, I'd I'm not aware of any others.

Are you big one. Are you still a financial partner with him in the partnership?

I would I would immediately cease to be so. K. Perfect. Thank you.

K. Thank you very much. We'll we'll, let let you leave for a minute, and we'll get mister Chambers to come in. Thank you all for your patience. This is a big deal. I think what I'm gonna we'll have Mark start the next one, if that's okay.

Yep.

But you might have to do number six. You might have to do the two of them. K. Well, they really did take them somewhere away. Headphones in the blind. I know. I know. I thought they'd just be in the hallway. Welcome, mister Chambers. Thank you. We'll we'll let you stand. Yes, please. We're going to have a strict ten minute limit on this portion of the meeting. Okay. And Andrew will signal when there's nine minutes left, but there are seven questions. So if if that helps you to gauge your answers for that ten minutes. Yeah. And we'll go ahead and start with Mark.

K. What do you see as the top legal priorities for Cache County right now?

The top priorities for Cache County, I think, as I see it, is to get the civil department working well again. As, you know, as I've mentioned before, I think that we have great criminal law prosecutors in the office, but unfortunately on the civil side, I think that they need some help. They, there isn't a lot of a lot of trial experience, experience going through, road issues that are going to be coming up. And so with, with the development that is happening in the Valley, that requires a strong civil department to be able to handle that. And so the, the very first issue or the, the top priority I think is to get the civil department working well again and and and to make sure that it's strong.

Thank you.

Do you think the attorney's budget needs to be reduced? And if so, what is one specific thing you would change or improve about how to how the office is currently managed to make it more efficient?

So this is hard to answer because I because I'd I'd love to be able to get in and and go through the budget and and become a lot more familiar with a lot of the line items. But as I have gone through it, one specific item that I'm concerned about and and that I have questions about is, for example, so years ago, the the budget for the, for the, the case management software was about $30,000 a year, and that was in about the year 2021 that that changed. And it's gone up to about 120,000 since then. And so I understand as an attorney with case management software, usually the trade off if you're going to be improving case management software is that you're going to be having increased, efficiencies with personnel. And so if we're suddenly if we're spending more on personnel and we're spending more on software, I have questions about that. I'd I'd like to I'd like to understand why the contractor or the vendor that the county is working with, why that's increased. And, and and I anticipate that if I were if I were selected for this position, those are the sorts of items that I'd love to be able to go through item by item, identify, okay, we're paying $90,000 more for software. What has changed about the software? What was working before that suddenly we couldn't be using that after? I understand that for an office of for approximately 13 to 15 different attorneys, the cost that the county should be paying for software. And respectfully, I don't think that it's a 120,000. So that that's just one item, one type of item that I'd like to be able to get into. But, yeah, that's really important to me to get in and to identify what efficiencies we can we can have with the budget.

Thank you.

K. How would you as county attorney ensure that the county upholds both strong due process protections, effective prosecution, and how would you balance those priorities and practice?

First of all, I think that it's important to have, to have good strong relationships and communication with our law enforcement partners. That's the number one. What I would love to do, I'd love to I'd love to make sure that I'm having regular meetings and coordination and communication with law enforcement, in all the different communities, of course, with Sheriff Jensen as well. And to make sure that that that's happening. There's always, always a fine line. There's are always going to be people upset about whether we're taking enough cases to trial, whether, we're having, too many plea bargains, that sort of matter. And ultimately, that's going to fall on the county attorney and the county attorney's office. Those are the sorts of decisions that we have to make. It's also important to have good communication with the public defender's office. I, as I, as I've worked with and communicated with the public defender's office, they've identified a number of areas that, the prosecutor's office, that we could probably be more efficient. So, for example, oftentimes plea bargains and negotiation that's coming just shortly before trial. And when that happens just shortly before trial, there are a lot of inefficiencies that can happen, a lot of expert costs, things that are being spent unnecessarily. And so, if we're gonna be taking a case to trial, I want to make sure that we're actually taking it and that we're, and if we're going to be making offers, let's offer them earlier in the process, not, not at the very end because, that's that's not good for anybody in that situation.

K. Thank you.

Next one's mine. Land use decisions are one of the most important issues we deal with. What is your experience with land use law and how would you ensure that your office gives clear direct guidance rather than advice that simply avoids risk?

Thank you. So my practice, involves land use. It's, it's a major part of my practice. And again, with the growth that is happening in in Cache County, there are going to be a lot more there's a lot more balancing that is going to be having to happen. Of course, everybody wants to make sure that housing costs are low, but that requires additional development and then, you know, water rights, things like that. So in my practice, I often represent, individual property owners against, municipalities and sometimes even against the county. And so I have that perspective. I would love to bring that experience in, to represent the county as well. My philosophy on, and also what the law requires with, with land use oftentimes is that if a use is not specifically prohibited, then, then generally it's allowed. And, and so the counsel and advice that I would be giving to the Cache County Council as well as the Planning Commission is to make sure that whatever whatever land use decisions that we're enacting or that we're going through is based in the code, it is based in the ordinances. It's not just what we want to happen, but let's make sure that it's actually textually based. And if it's not, let's put that into practice so that in the future, we don't deal with that situation again.

Thank you.

How do you ensure ethical standards are upheld both in dealing with county employees as well as dealing with sensitive and controversial issues?

Thank you. That starts at the top. It it starts with whoever the county attorney is. And I think that that flows down. That whoever is in that office, they look to the county attorney to set those standards to to set, the path that they're going to be following. And so first of all, that's going to start with me, that whatever I'm doing, that I'm going to be making sure that I'm complying with my ethical obligations. If there are conflicts of interest that arise, the rules of professional conduct require, require a few different things. So if there are any conflicts that arise, it requires disclosure to the client. It requires disclosure as well as, separating yourself from the case. And that's what I would follow is that, I don't anticipate having any conflicts of interest with with cases, but, you know, living in the Valley, that's just one of the things that can come up. So if conflicts of interest do arise, I would step away from that. But also with with employees of the county attorney's office, making sure that they understand what our ethical obligations are and that we're complying with, and and those same disclosure requirements as

well. Thank you.

Keegan, you do the next one. K. Can you provide an example of a complex civil legal challenge that you successfully navigated?

I can. And, and it was actually against Cache County. So it was years ago and it involved a, a dog kennel of all things. And at that time, there were some individuals that wanted to have a dog kennel out in Cache County. And it went through the planning commission. The planning commission listened to a lot of uproar from neighbors, from other people that didn't want to have the dog kennel in the community, which I understand. But at the same time, the county ordinance did not prohibit the use of that use of the property. And so the county Planning Commission had prohibited that. And, and we tried to work with the Planning Commission, tried to work with the county. We were unsuccessful. And so eventually we had to file a lawsuit. And, and we were eventually successful through the district court in how in allowing our client to be able to have the dog handle out in Cache Junction.

Thank you. It looks like our ten minutes are up. The last question was about a conflict of interest, but you already addressed that. So I think we're okay. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. And we'll excuse you for a minute. You're very quiet. Thank you. There's some seats over here if you

Mister Chambers' website, I'm gonna go with my name.

Welcome, mister Murray. We're going to ask you a series of seven questions, but we have about ten minutes. So if you want to gauge that as your answers. Okay. Andrew's gonna signal when there's nine minutes left, and we'll try and get to the last question if we can. Okay. So we're gonna go ahead and start with Nolan this time.

What do you see as the top legal priorities Cass County right now?

So I think there's two, and I'll start with the civil. The the county is experiencing tremendous growth. Just before this meeting, there was a a meeting where we were talking about subdivisions. And that rub between keeping the county rural and people wanting to use and develop their land as they see fit is gonna be something that the county is gonna be dealing with forever. There's there's lot of undeveloped agricultural land, and that's that's where a lot of our our biggest issues that the county is gonna face civilly is gonna come from from an infrastructure standpoint, from, issues that arise between between neighbors, between the use of land. I think that's going to be something that is going to be a major issue for the county in the foreseeable future. I know the county has a great general plan that's a lot of thought has been put into to guide us, and the planning and zoning commission and the the council does a great job. There's always going to be a rub there between, public the the public good and someone's private use of their property and the the rights that they have, and that's always going to involve the county government and county attorney's office. Then on the the criminal side, we've seen in the last ten years, it's not just through population growth, that the Internet creates significantly more crime. Reporting has gotten better. Law enforcement's investigations have gotten better. And as our county grows, we have to be able to grow with it and make sure that we're providing the same service that we've been able to provide. So victims of crime in our community are taken care of so people who are dangerous to our community are removed. I I saw the the Utah courts publish some numbers the other day, and it showed that between 2000 or 2020 and 2024, the search warrants for electronic service providers in Utah went up by 400%, and search warrants overall went up by 50%. That's a good indication of the number of cases coming shrinks and, some of those really terrible things that are online and how they affect our community become more prevalent. It's going to have have a strain on law enforcement and strain on our office. K. Thank you.

Keegan, do you wanna go next?

Yeah. Do you think the attorney's budget needs to be reduced? And if so, what's one specific thing you would improve about how the office is currently being managed in order to make it more efficient? K. Thank you for that question. And I I mentioned this earlier that,

our budget has grown, and there's there's some reasons for that over the last few years. If you look at the actual data, our our '25 2025 cost per capita was $24.80 $24.80 per person in the Valley. In 2026, we tightened our budget. We made some cuts to the attorney's office. And now under our current budget, it's $24.40 per person. That's the lowest per capita cost of any class three county in the state of Utah. And if you ex exclude Summit County, which has a a tremendous budget for their attorney's office. It with Summit County, the the average of the other class three counties is about $40 per capita. If you exclude them, it's about $26.43. So I I think the county council and the county executive's office and the county attorney's office have done a really good job at making sure that we we have a tight budget in the county attorney's office. And I know there's when you look at on paper, it it does look like it's expanded. But if you look at at the other counties budgets, they've done the same thing during those same times, and we're actually doing better than them. And so I I think there's always ways that we can cut our budget. I think every year as you go through the budget process, you look at what money have we spent that year? What is our caseload looking like? Because if it at some point, I I don't see this actually happening. But if our caseload did drop significantly, then you maybe would need to take a look at cutting back. But that's just hasn't been the case over the last decade, and I don't see it being the case in the future.

Thank you.

How would you as county attorney ensure that the county upholds strong due process protections and effective prosecution? How would you balance those priorities in practice?

So I I tell people all the time, the the prosecutors protect people's rights way more than defense attorneys do because we see all the cases where there where there is an obvious problem, that we can correct with law enforcement where an officer made some type of mistake and it's a good good corrective tool. I think that's that's a a good balance there to we are our job is to do justice. It's not to get convictions. So when we're looking at a case, we're looking at that case to make sure there wasn't a violation of someone's constitutional rights, to make sure that there is sufficient evidence to support the charges. And so I one of the the best ways to do that is make sure we have a professional prosecutor's office with experienced attorneys who have the proper training and the proper experience and the proper oversight. That's a big reason that I think this council, going back several years, made sure that we had sufficient budget to keep attorneys. Because when you have constant turnover, when you have overworked attorneys who are handling too many cases, they can't take a close look. And they can't look at those those cases and make sure there aren't things sliding through the crack where people's rights are being violated. So I think that's that's what my eye would be on is making sure we have the resources so our attorneys are well trained, so there's lots of oversight and those cases aren't slipping through the cracks.

Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah.

Land use decisions are one of the most important issues we deal with. What is your experience with land use law and how would you ensure that our that your office gives clear direct guidance rather than advice that simply avoids risk?

So I've worked for the county's attorney's office starting as a law clerk back in 2015. That that first summer, really all I worked on with Lee Edwards was some land use issues, and that's where I I cut my teeth, specifically, Cache County's land use issues and some of the things that we face all the time. As interim county attorney, we dealt with with many issues as as a county council and the county attorney's office. Issues with roads, issues with with with with planning and zoning. So that's where my experience comes from is spending time in the office, advising this council, advising the other attorneys in our office on land use decisions. And I think that's that's an area where we need to make sure our county is strong, our civil division is strong, where we we have the resources to make sure that we're giving good advice to our land use authority, and we're we're giving the, we're giving them the opportunity to make the right decisions legally so we're not ending up in expensive litigation later. I think the biggest the biggest part of the county attorney's office isn't going and fighting civil cases. It's preventing civil cases from ever happening to begin with and making sure we're complying with the law. And so that would be my goal is to make sure we comply with the law, and we're not getting sued for the comply with the law, and we're not getting sued for applying to those persons.

Five. Mhmm.

How do you ensure ethical standards are upheld both in dealing with county employees as well as when dealing with sensitive or controversial issues?

So as I I referenced in in my opening, over the last several years, there have been some issues with with the county where there's been questions about about ethics. And I think the the best way to make sure that that we're following the ethical rules, we're not violating anything, is to do everything open and public to make sure there's transparency in everything we do, not looking for loopholes, ways around around those guardrails that are put in place to make sure that no one's getting close and no one's violating the law. One thing that that I did as county attorney is for the first time, we got, written policies and procedures for our office that are published online. Just telling how we deal with everything. That's actually something that's been required by state law and then wasn't until I became interim county attorney that we actually got something put together. Now it's posted online. And I I think that's that's a really good thing for the public to be able to go and look at at our offices, ethical requirements. What we're looking at when we're screening cases, what we're looking at when we're offering plea deals, and that's clear to everyone. It's not something that that's always a moving target because when there's a moving target, you can always say this was in the gray area. When there's a clear defined line, then it's easy to see when someone's crossed it.

Kate Dane, would you please address any conflicts of interest you may have if you become the county attorney?

I have no conflicts of interest. I filled out my conflict of interest disclosure. I don't have any stake in any business that does or any business. I've I've been a a public servant my entire career from when I was 24 years old. I don't have any ties to businesses. I don't have any ties to anything that deals with the county in a financial standpoint. So I I wouldn't have any that would arise.

Thank you very much. Thank you. K. We'll invite you to just stay. And, Kurt, if you'll bring yes. They're gonna give their final each each one of our candidates will now give a two minute closing statement. And so we'll wait for the others to come back in. Thank you. If you gentlemen have a seat, and we'll, go ahead and and do our closing argument or not closing argument. Your closing I'm I'm an attorney now. Right? No. It's a closing statement. And, mister Chambers, we'll go ahead and start with you this time, if you would. Two and it's two minutes. And and Andrew will give you a signal when it's close to, like, you've got twenty seconds left Okay. If you need it. Excellent. And I have I'll keep this brief. I I appreciate the questions tonight. I appreciate,

being able to address the council and being in this position. I I hope my answers gave you a sense of what I would do with the office and the direction that I would take. You heard from three candidates tonight. I'd ask you to consider this. Every candidate in this room can tell you what they'd like to do with this office. What I'm offering you is a track record that matches the need. The office's biggest gap is its civil side. I spent my entire career this office's biggest problem has been turnovers. My roots are here and I'm not leaving. This office needs someone who will treat taxpayer dollars the way that they would treat their own. Again, I've been endorsed by over 38 attorneys in this valley. On Saturday, the Central Committee, I was privileged to have 46% of the straw poll more than any other candidate. The people who know this work best are telling you that I'm ready for it and that I can accomplish it. That's the office that I intend to build, and I would ask for your vote tonight.

Thank you. Mister Murray, would you go ahead and go next?

Thank you for the opportunity to talk today and, speak with you. I it's it's great to answer your questions, but I think more than just the questions I answered, this council's had the opportunity to see my work firsthand. We've had the opportunity to to vet my work, to vet my commitment to this office, my commitment to ethics, the ability to reform failing systems, and my dedication to fiscal responsibility within the county. We've seen what happens in other counties when county attorneys are elected who don't prioritize the prosecution side of the office. They alienate law enforcement. They leave an office that just fails victims. I'm asking for an opportunity to ensure that doesn't happen to Cache County. I've shown I can lead the attorney's office through difficult times. I've proven myself capable of handling both tough criminal cases and providing excellent legal advice to the county on the civil side. I think the choice between this council for the council tonight is the choice between someone who's a proven leader within the office who has the has the confidence of the staff that I've worked with for years, the confidence of law enforcement. I've been endorsed by the fraternal order of police. Over 90% of their men members voted to endorse me. That's over a 168 members within Cache County. I think that's telling that the the people who interact with our office the most and whose whose work relies on our work have endorsed me. I'd ask that that you you vote for me to fill the remainder of this term to appoint a leader that the people in our office and law enforcement trust. And, I thank you for for the consideration and, for all the work you do for the county.

Thank you. K. Mister Daines.

I'd like to close with a reminder and three suggestions. Article four section 10 of the Utah constitution provides, all officers made elective or appointive before entering upon the duties of their respective office shall take and office of interim county attorney is an appointive one. When you appoint an interim county attorney, whoever it is, the swearing in should follow close behind so as to minimize gaps in legal authority. My first suggestion is that you amend today's agenda as follows. First, amend item six a to insert the word interim before Cache County attorney. Second, add item six a, Roman, six, appointment of interim county attorney since that's not suggested by the sequence of of how that goes. Third, that you add item six a seven, the swearing in of the interim county attorney. My second section my second suggestion is that you direct a person authorized to take oaths to administer the oath of office. Judges, court clerks, justices, and notaries public are authorized to administer oaths. The oath of office is and we heard it today, so I won't repeat it. My third suggestion is that you have the interim Cache County attorney sign a written form of the oath and immediately deliver it to the Cache County Clerk. The written oath need not be fancy. It will serve even if it is entirely handwritten.

Thank you for your service. K. Thank you. And thank you all for, going through this process and being willing to put yourself forward. We really appreciate it. The decision now rests with the council. It is our time to decide how we want to make that decision, and I would accept a motion.

Adam, chair, I appreciate that all that's been shared and all that's been said. And as far as I in listening to everything that I've heard and as far as the what's been shared in some of the the public meetings that that's been held. I think being involved directly with what's been going on the past few years and what has been painted is very different. And, because I've also been there, and and I I have to give a lot of credit to our attorney's office for everything they've done to to keep, Cache County solid. And, in talking with a lot of the individuals and people that work within the office and, and walking shoulder to shoulder with a lot of their their, people in the sheriff's deputies, and and the morale is actually very strong and supportive. And I would like to keep that going. And, therefore, I move to accept the name of Dane Murray to fill the position of Cache County Attorney.

Okay. I have a motion. Is there a second to that motion?

If I may comment before I make a second? Please. So to all three of you, thank you for running and being here and talking with us. To those in the public who have reached out to me, I value your opinion. I value your insight and the information you gave me. I took it very much in consideration. This is a tough choice. All of you have some very, very good experience that I believe could help the county in many, many ways. But I also know that the decision is tonight, and it's for a short time because then there will be election in this fall that I suspect all three of you will be participating in. And I have appreciated those who reached out, and the decision lies upon us, and it's not an easy one. But at this time, I will second the nomination given by mister Erickson.

K. I have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Does anyone want to yes. I would simply like to add that I'm also very grateful for the opportunity I've had to meet two of the three of you in this process. And I'm very grateful for your willingness to serve. And the priority of this office is, I think, probably at the top for each of us as far as the the future effort and and the focus that we in Cache County are are continuing to work through. And I appreciate the pressure, but recognize that we have a responsibility to those who have elected us to represent them. That is a huge factor

representative of, you know, the electorate, that we do kinda have a responsibility to go where they spoke and, you know, represented a good share of the county for mister Chambers. So that makes me feel like as a representative to represent the electorate, but that's kind of my responsibility here.

Thank you. Keegan?

Yeah. I

I feel like there's been inadequate discussion prior to making a decision on a specific individual at this point. I understand there is a motion on the floor, but I would like to better understand where each council member was coming from as it relates to priorities in the county. We've heard several different things. We've heard of balancing growth and development standards. We've heard about budget. We've heard about the need to, review specific things within the budget. We've heard about the balance between civil and criminal and where we're the weakest. So I think my decision I I feel like it ought to be based on what we think the priorities of the county are, and then I think we need to choose the right person at the right time, which isn't to say that any one of these gentlemen isn't qualified. And I I do appreciate the time and your willingness to serve and endure public scrutiny and all the things that come with that. So that's where I'm coming from. So

if it's

if we need to vote on a specific individual because there's a motion on the floor, I'll have to make my decision based on what's before me.

But I would like to hear further discussion on those points. And just so all of you know, the seven of us never have we we are so careful not to discuss things before we come to meetings. There has not been a group discussion of any kind. And sometimes that hampers the things that I would like to do. I'd like to be able to to talk to my council members, but, we are very strict with our open and public meeting laws. We don't we really haven't discussed this. And so in some ways, that can be a little frustrating, but it also protects us from ever being giving the appearance that we made a decision before we got here. And so I want you all to know that. I feel like my decision tonight is based on experience that I've had. There have been some tough times with the council with some of the issues that we've had to deal with. And we have received excellent guidance and been able to count on that that guidance. As far as as, Joanne, to your point, I know that there was a straw poll done, but it was done with precinct leadership, not any delegates. And I and I know that more than half of the delegates there did not vote for mister Chambers. And so I did take that into consideration, but that that wasn't a big part of my decision. And I just feel like that that I feel really confident about the decision that I will make about the vote that I make tonight. And so I have a motion. I have a second. Is there any further discussion?

Could I make just one more comment? Yeah. You bet. I want to congratulate these candidates because that's a very hard decision on my part. Yes. I voted a lot of times, and I don't ever remember that this hard of a decision. So congratulations.

I think each one of you could serve very, very well. And I agree with that. And then and I wanna echo Nolan's comment. The people that have contacted me from the public and from law enforcement and different community members that have talked to me about it. I really appreciated everyone's input. And so with that, we'll take a vote. We have a motion and a second that we nominate Dean Murray as the interim county attorney.

Those in favor, say it. And we'll do this, Scott. Do you have a question?

Point of order, madam chair. While I believe mister Erickson's motion is still in order, I think that a perhaps more representative and inclusive vote might be more appropriate to say, for a motion to and appoint, one of these three gentlemen as the next, filler of their the office that they're going for, I believe I I say this only as a basis from for the appointment of a new council member for the Logan Municipal Council. That way, everyone can express who they they truly would like

as the next office holder, but that is just a mere suggestion. You don't have to follow it. K. Is there anyone that feels like they would like to express more than what they have already before we take that vote? I'm happy to take whatever discussion, anyone feels is appropriate.

I think we've all had a chance to see our piece. Piece. I say call the question. Okay. K. Those in favor, say aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Nay. Nay. Okay. So that's four four to two. K. Thank you. Congratulations. And, Bryson, do you know the process that we do now? Do we take care of that now? Yeah. I have both of us ready. Okay. And thank you all, both. Really, we appreciate it.

I gotta find the right one first. One second.

We need to amend the agenda or is it

I don't know. Probably. Are we okay?

Yeah. Okay. Let's have him off the road.

He is the We'll just give a minute for people to leave the room so we can have some

some light. Just stand there, Daine.

Questions today.

Maybe get someone to close the door and ask people to be quiet down a little bit. It's pretty loud.

There's still there's a majority. So

I think there's a couple more people that wanna come out.

I love Jersey. Yeah.

I thought about this a lot.

That's big.

Hey. Congratulations, mister Murray. Yeah. Congrats. Thank you. Yep. We look forward to working with you, and we'll have Bryson, present the oath of office. Okay. Now the exciting stuff's over. We get to do some really exciting business. No. It's all exciting. Okay. The next thing on our agenda is a board of equalization item. Do you mind if we just take a first recess? Yes. We're gonna take a just a two minute recess really quick.

All it is is I'm counting. Just gonna use the restroom. Yeah. Go ahead.

I think we're just missing our executive. Well, give me a minute. Everyone have their microphones back on. Border equalization isn't in our package. It's not. Andrew? It's not in our package. Seven

have to hit the top? Yeah. You hit the It's the very top folder. That blue thing right there. It's a folder.

It's okay. Oh, that's right. It's it's out of order for me. Yeah.

I don't know. Is George coming back, do you think? Or I don't know. We can we can start without him. Close the door, and we'll go ahead and just get started. Okay. Yep. Okay. Next on our agenda is a board of equalization matter, and we will turn that over to Diana Schafer from our tax administration supervisor.

Ladies and gentlemen, do I have a motion to enter board of equalization?

I so moved. And I'll second it. Moved and seconded that we move to board of equalization. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay.

So not terribly exciting. These come to you every year. These are things get close closer to the mic or put it yeah. How about now? Perfect. Thank you. Same. Same. Same.

Maybe if the crowd was bigger.

Right. The the the main event left. So this we're just doing cleanup now. So these come to you every year. We have the exclusive use exemptions where they have to apply annually. These are charitable, religious, and educational. So we've reviewed their packets. They've been uploaded to the Google Drive so you could all, have a look at them. We have 35 tonight. I'd like to do them in three groups. For expediency, we have 21 religious, 10 of the charitable, and four educational. So which ones do we wanna look at first? And religious, perhaps. They're usually the easiest. Religious. Yes. We have 21 of the religious. Do we have any questions on any of them? They're all previous applicants.

That was my question. Are any of them new applicants? Previous applicants,

and there's only the one interesting one that has kind of a mixed use, which is our Episcopal Church over here on the corner of 1st Mhmm. And 1st. Any changes in the percentage of that? I didn't see No. No. No changes in their percentage, but they do support, the warming center, the summer fest, and the pride. So they have to they have to provide documentation on all three of those that they are nonprofit and their gift to the community, which they have. Yep. But other than that, the rest of them are strictly religious use, and so come with a recommendation for approval on all.

K. I would accept a motion.

I would so move that we approve all the religious exemptions that have been described there

in our packet. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the religious exemptions. Is there any discussion? I would like to publicly thank the Episcopal Church for the what they donate to the warming center as being part of the homeless council. I can tell you what a service that is to our community, and they give a lot to to allow that in their space all winter long. And so I wanna thank them before I ask for a vote. So it's been moved and seconded that we accept the religious exemptions. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K.

So moving along to the charitable, we have 10 of those prepared for you today, and all of them are previous applicants. We have a couple that have a percentages, which we have, common ground, which has a percentage, somebody's attic, and the Whittier. The Whittier rents to some nonprofit and some for profit, but they split that out and we do it as a percentage of income as we have since 2014. With somebody's attic, they used to have they have a Smithfield and a Logan location. With the Logan location, they've taken over that and have been setting up an office. We went and did a quick site inspection. In in Smithfield, they still have the apartment over, so that is why theirs is at a percentage rather than a full exemption. And then also with the common ground, we have a percentage on them because so they have their Logan facility, but then up at Beaver on federal land, they have that building. And 50% of the building, they use 50% is used for lockers and for profit. That's why that one is at a percentage. Any more questions for me on the charitable we've got? Anybody have questions for Diana?

K. I would accept the March Are we missing a couple?

I'm sitting there going trying in my mind, there was, like, a it's just in my mind, but, there were a couple that we I'm not seeing.

So we have I'll bring another group to you next week. Okay. Okay. Because some of them, we're still waiting on some documents from them. That's right. These were all perfected and reviewed and ready for your review. Next week. And then the following, we have some hearings on the seventh. I think Sandy and Dave signed up for the medical hearings. Yep. And so I'll come to you the week after that for the final three. Okay. Does that answer your question, Dave? Yeah. Yeah. So I I just because we're supposed to have 60 and we're only looking at 30. There there's a few that weren't here and they're all coming later. So Yes. K. Is someone prepared to make a motion about the charitable organizations?

I'd move that we accept the recommendation and support the exemption for the charitable charitable organizations.

Second. Second. K. It's been moved and seconded that we accept the charitable exemptions that have been presented to us. Is there any further discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

K. Moving along of the educational? Yes. We've only got four of the seven educational ready for you. All of them are previous. Two of them are just for personal property, so they're small. Other than that, the

Okay.

Any questions for me on the educational you have in front of you? Those looked good.

Anyone wanna make a motion about those? I'll make a motion that we approve the four educational facilities as was mentioned by our Diana. Second.

Been moved in Two seconds. And double seconded that we approve the property tax exemptions for the educational groups that have been presented to us. Any further discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed?

K. Thank you for your consideration. I'm gonna just hand these to you for signature. K. They're just in your little full depth. And then if you'll just give them the price since there's 35 signatures, I'll get them tomorrow. It'll take me a minute. I can't do very good at this.

Yeah. Let's just set the public here. Okay.

K. The next, do we need to remove ourselves from board of equalization? That's right. K. Someone wanna motion that. Motion we

move out of board of equalization.

Seconded. K. It's been moved and seconded that we go out of the Board of Equalization. And those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Set public hearings. Can I get a motion that would include a and c, actually? Moved to No. It wouldn't because this one's for the fourteenth and the other one's for the twenty fourth. So it would be two separate motions. It's moved to set the public hearing to the Melville, Nibley, and Cornish Cemetery district

maintenance district board vacancies as well as set a public hearing. And that's on April 14, 05:30, and set a public hearing for ordinance twenty twenty six dash 16, amendment to the Cache County Code regarding wastewater systems in source water protection zones on March 24 at 05:30.

K. Second. It's been moved and seconded that we set those two public hearings. One will be April 14, and one will be March 24. Is there any further discussion on that motion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Now I'm sure some of you in the the audience are here to for our public hearings. And so the first one is the Shepherd rezone. Do we have Brian?

Appreciate

their patience. Good evening. How are you?

I thought everyone was here for me, but they all left. Now I now I feel really bad. I'm Brian Abbott. He's the director of development services. Tonight, we, have a few things. First being the shepherd rezone. We have that. Kind of a brief overview is to zone seven acres from agriculture a 10 to rural r U two. This is a max potential of three lots in the R U two zone. The nearest rural zone is approximately just under two miles southeast of the subject property. That was the Baldwin rezone that was approved in 2017. It is within Paradisetown's future annexation area and it's located just under a half mile north of the Paradisetown limits. Planning commission recommendation. This was a public there was a public hearing held there 02/05/2026. The planning commission recommended approval of the rezone to the county council on a six to zero vote. There's some of their conclusions where that this rezone request is compatible with the purpose of the R U 2 zone. The request is consistent with the Cache County general plan and this rezone will have minimal impact to the surrounding area resulting in a maximum of three lots. There's already one, so there would really only be two new lots. K. Any questions with that

one? Thank you, Brian. Is there anyone here from the public that would like to speak to this project? And thank you all for your patience. I know this has been kind of a long night. K. Is if there's no one here to speak, then we'll close the public hearing on that one. So moved.

Second. Case Rose, anyone?

Oh. He's from the Shepherd family. Do you want him to get up and talk? Yes. This would be the time. This is the time. This is this is the public hearing. You could probably turn the lights back up a little bit. Would you please state your name for the council?

Dave David Shepherd. Thank you. This is the property we grew up on, my parents' place and they've both since passed and we wanted to try and liquidate it so we can move on. We're all getting old. We're on deck and so we wanted to put that, take care of it and a few family members were interested in having a piece of it but we wanted to divvy it up a little just to make it more affordable to to individuals and try and try and get it settled.

K. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions for mister Shepherd? K. Thank you. Thank you. Now we can move to close the public hearing.

So moved.

Second. It's been moved and seconded that we close the public hearing on ordinance twenty twenty six dash zero eight. We'll move on to the next one, Wellsville Safe Storage LLC rezone.

Wellsville say storage rezone. Some surrounding context. That's located off of Highway 8991. It's just north of the American West Heritage Center. East of two Cache County owned parcels meant for future outdoor recreation use. It is in a view corridor identified by the Cache Open Space Committee. This is South of south is Wellsville city boundary, but access is off of the county road. Here you can see, the surrounding areas, of this parcel are all in a 10. Then there's a small and industrial over at JBS, and there's some a little bit of commercial on the far side in red, near the Nibley. A brief overview is to rezone eight acres from the A 10 to the industrial zone. The industrial zone would allow for storage and warehousing, self-service storage facilities, transport services, general vehicle repair, crematorium, etcetera. Planning commission heard this on 02/05/2026. They recommended denial of the rezone to the county council on a four to two vote. Some conclusions is not consistent with the purpose of the industrial zone. Uses are not consistent with surrounding land uses which are agriculture. Inconsistent with the Cache County general plan, future land use map, agriculture, and ranching. Inconsistent with Wellsville's general plan of residential farmland meant primarily for agriculture production. The nearest industrial zone is a little over a mile and a half to the Southeast and access is from a minor local road. This classification does not allow for commercial or industrial development.

K. Does anyone have any questions for Brian? K. Thank you, Brian. K. This is a public hearing. If there's anyone here to speak for the Wellsville safe storage rezone. And we're gonna I didn't say it before, but I we try and limit public hearings to three minutes. Okay. Comments. Try to keep it short. Close, Scott.

Scott Wells with Wellsville City. We this is not in our city limits, but we see the benefit of having industry. We are not choosing to protest or be against this rezone.

K. Anyone else want to be here to speak for this?

My name is Margaret Bos Christiansen Bosworth, and I'm part owner of this land with my brother, Douglas Christiansen. And this is a piece of our family ground, and our major farm is down around the Little Bear River. And it's very inconvenient for us to pull up, pull equipment up the lane, up all the way up there to farm eight acres and haul swathers, bailers or whatever back down to our farm. So for many the past quite a few years, we've been leasing it out enough to pay the property tax on it. So it's been kept in good condition. Our farm is a century farm. So we I'm sorry, the land means a lot to us. And this is a piece that we've decided that would be great for, for a business. And we've had people approach us. I, years ago when the, the land, west of us was purchased from Cache County from Ted Hall. I do not know why at that time they did not approach us on buying the eight acres. So it's all one continuous piece, but it didn't happen. We and my brother, we have approached the American West across the street different years about buying it, having an access for them for parking, camping, whatever, utilizing that land because we do not want just some garbage place in there. We had a lot of people ask us. We've approached Utah State. They were not interested at the time, so we've just held on to it for years, wanting something decent to be put on that land. We're not just selling this ground. We're gonna be part owners of this. That's how important it is to us to have a nice place there. We've had the church approach us on buying the land. So we have just been waiting and after we talked to the Baldwins and thought this storage unit would be the best opportunity for the planning, we says we want something looking nice. We want landscaping. It's not gonna interfere whatsoever with the American West, entrance, their sign or anything the way it's located because it's longer going north to south. And so, after talking with them and being, like I say, an investor, we are still going to be part of this that we think this is the best use for this land.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Is there anyone else here that would like to speak from the public?

Yeah. I'm Mike Baldwin. Just wanted to give some reference to that, planning commission vote. They were found it ironic to sit here and listen to the as the attorneys, talked about the, conflicts of interest. You did have two, members of the council that were definitely in conflict. One falsely rep represented the America West Heritage Center where he'd been on the board, so So a competing land use, and then the other actually owned storage sheds that you rezoned for him in Mendon, along the, COSAC corridor just like you're stating that this is the open space corridor too. So I think having them not be able to vote would have steered the planning commission's recommendation as well. So k. Thank you. Just just to be explicit, can you state which way you think it would have been steered which one would have been? One was missing. And if you would have those two that couldn't vote because the conflicts of interest that they represented, I think you probably would have a three to two vote in favor. Thank you.

Dumb question. We don't know that.

And I'm Travis Baldwin. I just wanna point out that you guys have also I know in the essentially against this, you guys have rezoned agriculture eight ten to industrial. You did a year and a half ago. Well, actually, less than a year and a half ago, out in Smithfield from agriculture to commercial and industrial. I know you guys have done that many times. Again, my brother just stayed out on Highway 30. Nothing out there. Beautiful view. It was rezoned to commercial and industrial out there also. So you guys have done that in the past. Any questions for us?

Okay. Thank you, mister Baldwin. Appreciate that. K. Is there anyone else in the public that would like to speak to this project? K. Will someone motion to close? To close. Public hearing. Second. It's been moved and seconded that we close the public hearing on the Wheelsville Safe Storage LLC rezone. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The next one, the Greenfield Mill overflow and office space.

Well, this is a a rezone for the flour mill out North Of Richmond. So the last few years, it's been rezoned a couple of times from or excuse me, to industrial use. One for the flour mill directly across the highway. There is another industrial building, and and now they're trying to turn what was what is a home right now into industrial so that they can use it for some office space and also for some truck staging area. This last year since they've been in business, there's been a lot of trucks along that road parked on the side, kind of a real hazard there. So they're hoping that they can stage the trucks over there and then drive them straight across the road in into the flower mill. So just a brief overview to rezone 2.89 acres on two parcels from a 10 to industrial located on the Northwest Corner Of Highway 91 And 116600 North. The nearest industrial we just talked about is the flower mill, Pepperidge Farms, also right there. The parcels to the north and west are part of an open space bond application, So this will probably be the last development in that area Planning Commission heard this 02/05/2026 Planning Commission recommended approval to the county council on a vote of six to zero their conclusions where the property is consistent with the industrial zone. The nearest parcels again that are have been zoned industrial are right next to it and Richmond City provided comment that they had no issues with this reason.

Okay. Thank you. Do we have any questions for Brian? K. Thank you. Is there anyone from the public or from the proponent that's here to speak for this project?

K. I have to close the public hearing.

Second. Moved and seconded that we close the public hearing on the Greenfield Mill Overflow rezone. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. The next issue is twenty twenty six dash zero seven, opening the amendment of the Cache County budget. Is Matt here? Yep. Do you do you wanna come in? This is a public hearing.

Sandy, do you want me to make any comments on this?

I just I I understand what it is, but I just would like you to explain so that we know everyone knows what we're voting on. Certainly.

So in, in 2024, Cash County, exercised their option to draw a $5,600,000 tranche on the $20,000,000 open space bond that the voters had approved. After receiving, after those bonds were sold, Cache County then had that $5,600,000 on hand. It took the county some time to find, the appropriate, open space that they wanted to invest in. And during that time that we had that $5,600,000, it was invested at a rate that was higher than the 2.99% that the bond was offering. And under code section one forty eight f of the internal revenue code, that that's not permitted. The government federal government does have a vested interest in in managing the municipal bond market that's over a trillion dollars and they want to avoid municipal entities or counties doing just exactly what happened with us. That is issuing a bond for x and then receiving more in terms of interest. So we are addressing that problem now with asking to open the budget for $175,000, to, remit those excess earnings to, to the federal government.

Okay. Thanks, Matt. Does anyone have any questions about that for Matt?

I would just like to state, it did take some time, but the county was working very vigorously to use that money, and it took some time. It took some time. I understand there were some problems and things fell through that was It did end up in a very, very good piece of property being open space. So I'm sorry if we have to get this back, but it was a very good move. Absolutely. This took some time. K. Thank you, Matt.

K. This is a public hearing. Is there anyone from the public that would like to speak to to this issue? Okay.

Sorry. Move to close public hearing.

Second. Moved and seconded that we close public hearing. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Now we go to our initial pro proposals for consideration of action. So the first one that we will discuss is the Shepherd rezone. Brian, do you wanna come up in case anyone has any questions for you? Okay. I had a something that I wanted to and I'm I'm hoping I can find it again. There was a play I know that the planning commission voted to recommend this to the council. There is a place in this ordinance that says that they recommended denial. Like, it's it's it's and I don't know if it's in this the actual ordinance or if it was the very first the part where where we looked at it first. Anyway, we'll have to find that. I I I know it was in there. I found it, and I could it it didn't it didn't have, like, a number right next to it, so I couldn't remember where it was. But I'll help you, and we'll look through and make sure that that so I'd like to make that amendment to this motion before we pass it, that that there is a place that I know is incorrect and that we want to correct that. Okay. And I will and I apologize. I'll find it. So other than that, let's let's bring that to the discussion of the council. Is there anybody that has any questions for Brian about this or anything that you would like to discuss before we take a motion?

I had one question, and maybe it could be because of grandfather or whatever. But does this go against a ordinance that we passed not very long ago?

I don't think so. I think it actually falls into an ordinance we passed. There's there's three lots or less. Or how about the quarter mile, the distance? It it is over that.

Yeah. But I believe this came through before That's that's what I was wondering. I'm hoping that, you know, something like the timing. I think it was probably already in process before that was that ordinance was enacted. Right? Correct. Okay. That was my question. Just didn't wanna make sure that we were

Okay. You know? Brian, I found it on the the very first file that we looked at where it says public hearing required. It says the county planning commission, this hearing was held on February 5, and the recommendation is to deny the rezone was to deny the rezone was made on February 5. So that's it's under the public hearing required is where that needs to be corrected. Okay. So I knew I read it. I just couldn't remember where. K. Does anyone else have further discussion, or do you want to make a motion on this one?

I'll make a motion

that we approve this rezone. Perfect. Anybody wanna make a second on that?

I'll go ahead and make a second.

K. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the ordinance twenty twenty six dash zero eight, the Shepherd rezone. Any further discussion?

Point of order, mad madam chair. I think since it's an initial proposal, it would need to be suspended as well.

Okay. Can you add that the rules? Okay. The motion is to suspend the rules and approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash zero eight. It's been moved and seconded. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Alright. The next one is the Wellsville safe storage. This one, I was at the planning commission meeting when this was discussed, and it was a difficult, discussion. I I don't know anybody has any questions for Brian or if anybody wanted to discuss this.

I don't know if you'll be able to answer this, but mister Baldwin brought up a precedent for approving parcels along the corridor.

I think a year and a half ago is what he mentioned. Was did that come up in the planning commission, or do we know which parcels he's referring to so we can It was on a different quarter. It was on S R R 30 heading over to Tremont, but it is that is identified as a corridor, but it was not anywhere near the one that we're discussing tonight.

But it is on a on a gateway corridor. I was just curious what the comparisons were because I think this one, I wrote down the nearest industrial zone was 1.6 miles away, and I just wonder if that was true on the other as well. If we don't have that information, that's okay. Yeah. I don't know about that one. I the the one

yeah. I'm not sure the how far it is. K.

K. Any other discussion? What what do you guys think about about this property?

I am conflicted. So I understand the property owner having property rights. I understand the those who are buying it. I have a I love the idea of the corridor, but I think the corridor beauty has some situations in it. If you don't own land on the corridor, you're very happy to keep the corridor open. But if you don't land on the corridor, then you're like you've just been slapped, and that didn't work out very well for you. I know in our earlier meeting today, we discussed where industrial would be. Given the point that the Baldwins brought up about some things, I would like to continue this as we discuss more options or not options, but just get a little more information onto it is the way I feel at this point. K. I wanna be very careful that we proceed in the right manner. I understand this puts you guys at a situation of waiting for it. But before I make a decision, I would like to understand some of the things that you asked, Keegan, and getting a measurement. And also, as I talk to the planning and develop and understand industrials, It was mentioned there's industrials and we approved in other areas. Yes. We have. But I also sit and say, okay. Wellsville City is right next to this and could annex it, and I'd love when industrials are in cities because the county has a hard time providing municipal services to some of these areas. So we've gotta watch that. So that's my reasoning. I'm just trying to be careful and fair.

Some of my concerns were that the road that goes into the property is not standard for an industrial zone, so that would have to be addressed. And I I I like your idea of continuing this, Nolan. I think I still need I'm not sure what I think, but I do know that I have it gives me pause to think about putting an industrial zone right there where all the recreation is. And only because of a beautifully landscaped storage unit is one thing. But once we change the zone to industrial, we lose all control over what goes there. The it could be anything that's allowed in an industrial zone. And so that weighs kind of heavy on making that decision when we put it there. It once we've changed that zone, it stays that way. It's really hard to claw back and take a zone away. And so I think those are some things that that we can all think about. And does do you does anyone want to make a motion? Are you okay with continuing it? Do you wanna give your opinion? This is the time to let us know as a group what you think about this project.

I have to comment that if if we have more time, it would be good to review all of the allowable

businesses that can go in an industrial zone so we know what the future could be. Yeah. I think that's in our I think that's in your packet. We have a list. Yep. Yeah. There's a list. There's a list. Quite extensive. Mhmm. It's on exhibit a.

So there's there's a lot of things that could go there. That's the tough part about a lot of these decisions is it's not what is being proposed. It's what could be there forever.

And I and I've said this again, and I'll just say it again tonight. Land use is use is probably one of the hardest issues that we deal with. I think that, you know, personal property rights are so important, and sometimes balancing the needs of the whole community is is a tough tough situation. So with that, if no one yes, Joanne. Tell us what what you're thinking.

I drive by there a lot. And I think it would be really great. I think, you know, that Wellsville could or the South End of the valley. I agree with them having a storage place would be great. I don't think the looks would be bad. So I really like it myself. K.

Alright. Anybody else? I

I think this would actually start changing that particular area right there. I think it would have, you know, the beginnings of a of a huge change in that area. It is typically an an entrance area for Wellsville. And, I I personally I've right now, I I think continuing is good. We can find out and dig into it a little bit more. But, this is a hard pill to swallow for it to to change that and have the possibility of a whole bunch of different ish or in industrial things that could go in there

more so than just

storage units.

So my And since everybody else said something, I'll say something really quick. But I think that I'm grateful for the opportunity to take some more time to review this particular request. But, additionally, you know, we have another example of where it's unclear if this is the right fit for the zone that is being requested. And I would like to see us continue the effort as in as, you know, the governing body and with our zoning to to make that a little more clear for everyone, folks making requests that so they they know it's clearly this is the appropriate zone to ask for this item. Help us with some of the questions about, you know, yeah, we rezone it for this purpose now, but we're also opening the door to these many other things that in a sense, what I'm saying is do we need to split some of these zones up and make it a little more clear to which zone is the right zone to request for certain business types. It's a big undertaking, no no doubt. But we're and we're continuing that way. So I think this fits in that spirit, and I think a little more time on this one for more even more thorough review is a good idea.

Brian, could you be in in the next few days, get a map of all the industrial within two miles either direction of this this exact property and send that to all of us so that we can review that, please? Industrial within two miles. Would you like commercial as well? Commercial and industrial, please. K. And and delineate which one they are for us. Okay. Thank you. K. The next one is the Greenfield Mill overflow and office space rezone. That one was recommended for approval six to zero by the planning commission. Does anybody want to speak to that one?

Madam Madam Chair, I know that area very well. And, it is up north of, me and, I I know the previous use on that property. I know its proximity right to Pepperidge Farm, the Utah or the Greenfield Mill, and I think that sets a really good use for that mill in its proximity, as that mill is also, I believe, in the process of also expanding some storage needs, to fulfill all the needs that that they're trying to, expand to. And it's a I think it's a good thing in addition for the agriculture community. Therefore, I would move that we suspend the rules and pass ordinance twenty twenty six dash 10 on the Greenfield Mill overflow and office space rezone.

I will second that. K. It's been moved and seconded that we suspend the rules and pass ordinance twenty twenty six dash 10. Is there any further discussion? I just like to say I like the idea of having it be more safe to have those trucks off the road. So with that, I'll ask for a vote. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Alright. The last one or the next one, we have some ordinances that Andrew is gonna present to us.

Yes. One

second. I've prepared some slides, so give me a second. Okay.

Good evening, counsel. This initial proposal is for ordinance twenty twenty six dash 11. This did go through OMP. I will preface with that. But the ordinance itself would be enacting a requirement for a centralized tracking of appointments, memberships, and terms of boards and committees within the county. Just an overview. Yeah. In short, it proposes that those would be enacted for essential tracking place for memberships of boards and committees. The proposal did pass the council and ordinance policy and review committee with a three to zero vote for a recommendation on passage. Some additional context. The status quo in Cache County is that there is a fragmented and decentralized tracking system of all the information. The tracking of information relating to memberships, terms of appointment, and other information of Cache County boards, committees, and other categories of appointment is fragmented among various offices and parties. For example, in practice within the past few years, since Mike is hiring and then my hiring, the tracking of the cemetery district boards and the drainage district boards has fallen under my purview where whereas some other committees have fallen with the office of the executive. There are some other parties that have other tracking information as well. There's no centralized location for it. In other counties, they typically designate the county clerk or the clerk auditor if they have one to be in charge of the tracking of this information.

K. Preston, you okay with that? Oh, yeah. Yep. So the Already. Like, pretty old. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All good.

So the content of ordinance twenty twenty six dash 11 proposes an enactment to county code that requires that the county clerk be designated as the central location for the tracking of all that information. And that second, when that when an appointment term is nearing expiration, the cash cutting clerk shall notify the appointing authority to begin the process of of filling the upcoming vacancies. If you'll notice, with the few rounds of appointments to the cemetery district boards, for example, all those happened after the terms technically expired. That was because of a lack of poor tracking in that specific one. I take responsibility on it. However, that being said, if we have one party that is designated to do that specifically, I think that that would create a more proficient process in terms of of managing all of this. But that is essentially everything. I've talked to the county clerk about this proposal to go through OMP. Do you guys have any questions?

I think this is a great step to keep track of all those boards. Does anyone wanna make a motion? You have to suspend the rules. I'd

suspend the rules and make the motion that we adopt ordinance twenty twenty six dash 11 as described.

I second.

K. It's been moved and seconded that we adopt ordinance twenty twenty six dash 11. Any further discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

K. The next one. Yep. That one's also me. So this next ordinance is twenty twenty six dash 12. It enacts the requirements for online publication of county council legislation. In short, ordinance twenty twenty six dash 12 proposes the enactment to county code regarding the online publication of legislation that has been given final approval or consideration by the county council. The proposal did pass the council ordinance and policy review committee with a three to zero vote for recommendation on passage. Some context is the status quo in Cache County is that there is no official public online location to access county council legislation that has been given final approval or consideration. Some additional context is that it is very common for local governments to publish, finalize local legislative acts online for public access and viewing. Other counties typically designate their county clerk or clerk auditor to be in charge of this and of tracking this information and making sure that it's published online often with the assistance of the county's IT department. The content itself of the ordinance requires that the Cache County Clerk be designated as the party responsible for this. Oh, must have uploaded a incomplete version. I do apologize. But the ordinance, if I recall, off the top of my head, requires that two things be provided, which I can actually provide right here. The first one would be the requirement of a an online voting table. This would include the type of action such as an ordinance, the description of the action, which is essentially the title, the motion, the date of the vote, and then the vote of each council member. I took this directly from Washington City in Utah. The second requirement of the ordinance is the publication of an online public legislation index. This is an example from Logan City. It would essentially be somewhat similar in that you can search for any specific year or a title of a piece of legislation that has been given approval or final consideration by the county council. This way, people can go ahead and view the direct legislation themselves instead of have to call the county clerk or myself begging to know where x y z ordinance is, which can be a little little frustrating sometimes. And but you will also notice that in your packets provided, there is a proposed amendment that I wrote. So after talking to the county clerk and then reviewing some of the information that was already being provided, I I wrote this up. The proposed amendment would eliminate the requirement for a centralized and global tracking table. The reason for this is the change would address the practical challenge of manually maintaining a standalone document for over 1,000 pieces of legislation or other council acts. Rather than relying on a separate tracking system, the clerk would use a system currently under development that displays the final recorded versions of each in each legislation file, which contains the already included recording votes. So, essentially, instead of having to have a global and centralized master voting table, the only requirement would be that the ordinances or resolutions or other legislative acts have their own voting table, which is already included in every other legislative act. For example, this is a resolution that was passed about a month ago. This way, under this amendment, there would be less of a chance for erroneous information to be uploaded for the public's viewing. It is a bit of a manual process to go through and mark who voted yes, what, when, where. But the proposed amendment would still promote transparency and still require the online publication of those documents.

So what part did you add, Andrew? The what amendment did you say you add? So I believe it's listed as zero d

proposed amendment.

I just see d. While

while you're looking for that, if I could just restate, you're essentially saying this would index existing content rather than create a redundant and and a redundant document with the potential for error. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. Bryson's nodding because we didn't give him a big enough raise to do that pretty much.

Click a link rather than retype everything. Yeah. Yes.

And I'm already working with IT department. Yep.

Yep. The idea is that if we just delineate this in county code, future county clerks will understand that this is your requirement of their office specifically.

I think in the not too distant future, you'll be able to generate that table via AI if it has the data to index it anyway. Yep. Well, AI makes mistakes Yep. For now at least. Well, I mean, someone else could could do that if they wanted to create that. Yep.

K. Does anyone have any other questions for Andrew?

Does thirty days give you enough time? Yeah. I mean, we're working with I was working with IT about this months ago before

the warranty even came about. So yeah.

He was there in o and p two and Yep. We didn't just throw all of this on Bryson because he wasn't there. Yeah. He was there to

But the discussion something we would do. We would Yeah. We'd throw it on if he wasn't.

He's getting it either way. But He wasn't.

K. I think it's Somebody wanna suspend the roles and make a motion? Madam chair, I believe a more

well, if the council would desire, I think an appropriate motion would be to at least first consider the amendment to the ordinance and then perhaps a final vote. I can't find the amendment, Andrew. I would scroll to the very top and then refresh the file. Sometimes it takes a minute to load. And the amendment would be in blue at the bottom, or where would we see it? That blue part? You would go back to the main part where it lists all the items, and then you would scroll to the top and then refresh it. This is item nine Nine d. D. K.

Two two point two point four e is The addition that you made. Right?

Under the amendment or

I still don't see an amendment, Andrew. I just see c c and d. It just goes They just have to wait to have the amended version and Yeah. I think But why don't we wait? I do apologize. This product was uploaded. Let's continue this one. Okay. But appreciate that detail, though, and we'll we'll it'll be on the

next

meeting. Right? Yeah. Do you guys have any questions regarding either the amendment or the proposal?

No.

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you.

Hey. Nine f. Mister

Funk.

This is a house This is a housekeeping, item. In speaking with the executive, he's got a lot on his plate. And, he suggested that we remove a couple of travel approvals that, go to him that he has to approve and route those, over to the auditor's office. Additionally, one other item that we wanted to move off the executive's plate, is his requirement authorized POs over $2,000. That's already something that my office is doing, and it would just make sense to centralize that in my office. He's got enough that he's got going on. Finally, we wanted to address the issue of per diems. Right now, the issue of per diems is a matter of county statute, but that county statute conflicts with county procedure. We already have a procedure for per diems in, the county policy handbook, and it's a good one. It's tied to the GSA. Whenever the GSA changes their rate, our rate moves automatically. So there's no reason to have it in statute and burden burden the council of that. So we suggest removing that statute.

K. Do you have any questions for Matt? Is that pretty much approved every year when we go through the Well, if that's approval, you know, of all of the reimbursements and of all the the fees and everything. True. It it it would be if we followed that. But it So if we just take it and just it's attached to it already, just leave it attached to it. Yeah. It becomes a policy.

That's quiet. Will you restate the purchase orders, POs, anything above 2,000?

Right now, there's a there's a a clause in in statute that says that anything above 2,000 for a single item needs to go through an additional step for the executive. But, again, the executive's pretty busy and that seemed a bit unnecessary. When it was written, we did not have an auditor's office. But now that we do have an auditor's office, I go through those POs anyway. And so I'll be able to make that review and

And I appreciate that. But is there any limit to what that purchase order gets before it's viewed by another eye?

No. Maybe this is the time to add though that it would always only be for a budgeted expense. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Correct. So So do Talk about that. It's entirely dependent on the budget that you and the council have already approved. And that's clarification that I like. Thank you. And we we did talk about 2 thousand's the right amount, and do we really need

two keys being turned at the same time for that? And and in o and p, we decided the auditor was sufficient. So that's Depends on depends on what I get to buy with those two keys. Yeah. But that was the discussion that came out of that just to give you guys context. Thank you. I appreciate that context.

And let me just say we've talked about this. I'm all in favor of this. It just we're creating lots of paperwork with people keeping track and trying to run around and get signatures. To do it correctly, I would need to pull the budget each time, identify the line that's appropriate for this travel, and compute how much travel they'd already done, whether this is in excess of their budget, all of which Matt does. And and to do this well, that's what I would have to do. It takes way too much time to have two people doing the same thing. If it if it's out of line with the budget, it will show up real soon, and Matt will know it better than anyone else. So I just don't see any reason to belabor this.

And maybe to state the obvious, Matt holds an elected position. He isn't

Yeah.

Yep. So would the I have a question. Would it carry on to other auditors Yes. Later on, so not just you in particular? That is correct.

But not as good as me. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. That's a paid endorsement. Catch me after.

K.

Move to suspend the rules and approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash 13. Right? Mhmm. Amending the county the Cache County personnel policy and procedures manual. Section eight dot u, and the Cache County code title three regarding duties of the auditor asset purchases and travel expenses. Second.

It's been moved and seconded that we approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash 13 as stated that we suspend the rules and approve this. Is there any further discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Moving on. The Hansen annexation. K, Brian.

Alrighty. We have the Hansen annexation in Dudley. It's on Hollow Road. I don't know how many of you are familiar with that. There's four parcels totaling 28.19 acres on the East Side Of Hollow Road, South Of Nibley. It includes 2.6 acres of Hollow Road right of way that provides the continuous connection to Nibley. The annexation will result in the full right of way of Hollow Road from the subject properties north to the Nibley city boundary. The annexation will create an unincorporated peninsula on the West Side Of Hollow Road. And we did receive, one petition opposed to this annexation. Go to the yeah. So the yellow here, that will be what's left in Cache County Corporation after the if the annexation were to go. We have Nibley there in the at the top of the screen, and and Hiram is to the west and south of that.

I see the Bryson, can you turn off the chandeliers for a second? There's so much glare. Thank you. I see at the top there, Brian, it doesn't even look like the point touches Nibley. Like, is it com completely detached from Nibley City's boundaries? Is that the green yellow? No. The blue part.

No. It's tough to see with that line, but it is connected right there. Yep. Where the mouse is.

Okay. I I couldn't tell for sure from the map. Yeah. K. Did everyone get the letter that was written about the Hollow Road, water district Yeah. We did. And how this might affect them? Do we Brian, can you tell me Nibley City's purpose for this annexation?

I I don't have a specific purpose. I believe there's it's for a development. K.

Alright.

Anybody want to So we're surrounding citizens notified of this petition Correct. Within 300 feet? Is that And then then we got one. Way up from the water company. Yeah. Mhmm.

But no resident?

Almost think on this one, I'd like more information from Nibley City. The owner of the peninsula and not want to be annexed? Correct.

Did we just discuss a situation like this before? Mhmm. So Yeah. It's like It makes this

I have a I guess, maybe you got a public comment on this.

This is not a public hearing.

So have information on that for cancer system.

Okay. We can get them next time. Yeah. Yeah. But I think we'll Sure. We will contact you, or would you please let some of the council members know it's not precedent to open to the public right now? Talking about. K. Yeah. I just wanna stay in in order, but I'd love to hear your information if you could let us know. I would too. And we'll We did talk to our surveyor

about this exact thing, and he says as long as all of the cities are in agreement with and the county, that there can be that

Island like that. Peninsula. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we've done it before in smaller parcels a smaller peninsula, but I don't know that I've seen one this big and, like to study it a little bit more.

This this just creates a really unmanageable situation for the county. Yeah. I I'd like to investigate this further and get more information as to why we should

Yeah. I don't see a reason I haven't seen any reason why we should do it. It just doesn't look very In in most other places that we have, there's been there's been a larger

portion of it that was contiguous. Yes. You know, coming to, like, a points and That that's just we're I mean, this could start happening

everywhere in the county. Mention one problem. The road is is on the one side. Yeah. The only thing you can happen to me is up maintaining this road Mhmm. Was Right. Or this little teeny strip of land. Yeah. And, Matt and I do not want more situations like that. Do we, Matt?

Just just to make sure for the record State your name. Will you state your name and who you are, please? I will. Sorry for that. Matt Phillips, public works director. This annexation came before the council a little while ago, and one of the recommendations to the council back to the applicant was to make sure that they take the full road. So this annexation includes all of the county right of way. That yellow stuff that you see along there is basically an undevopable hillside that's just right off of the Public Works Building. So this includes all of the roads. So Okay. That was one of the conditions moving forward with this annexation was that Nibley take all of the road. And so that little sliver at the top is that portion of the road that was would have left us a gap between, you know, a road gap. And that was one of the requirements that was portrayed by the council back to Nibley when this came to the council.

And is Matt, why why is this being done?

That part I most of the time, we're not privy to what the developers are planning or what kind of development might be coming for Nibley, other than we're just getting that request by those landowners to come in. So I think there's there might be some people in the audience that know that, but I don't know that question. But I know that other one I believe is the Tuningham property. That's yellow. Most of that is still the Tunningham's property, and I don't think he's interested in annexing at this point. But a lot of that's on developable land. In my opinion, it's steep slopes, got a lot of heavy vegetation, but just wanted to make sure that the council was aware. This includes all the road to that very south end of the blue and the yellow. You're saying that Narrow Peninsula is the road? No. That that not the road. No. That is a very steep, probably one hillside that's vegetated along Hollow Road that you probably can't build any homes on. Okay. So if that's the case,

why would we allow that narrow hillside to be the connection so that we have to maintain that box of land at the end of it? What is that? The box of land is just a couple of older residential

farmland. Again, the Tuninghams, I think, own a big large piece on there and and some other they just don't they're not they're not anxious in annexing at this point.

Sliver is above that either. Yep. I feel like our discussion has been great, and I feel like there might be some

help from member of the public if you would choose to put in the I can allow that. I think we I need to think we need more information.

So so can we invite Yes. The gentleman Yeah. Over there who will volunteer to speak to her? Your name and and what your position is.

No. I appreciate that, Jeanie. My name is Lance Anderson. We're part of that. As Matt said, we've we've been on this annexation since August and July, and it came before the county. The county said, hey. You know, we we showed half of the annexation of the road. County said, nope. We don't want that. We want the whole road. So we annexed from the blue all the way clear to the top of the yellow. That has all been annexed into will be into the city. With some of that area. There's like one or two strips that was part Nibley, part county, but now all the road from the blue all the way to Nibley City of Hollow Road will be in the city. And we've had to redo the plat a the requirements and conditions that came back from staff and from you guys. And so that's what we're bringing back is those updated conditions. On the yellow box. So just like that that is there's two homes there. And, actually, it part of this issue that took us a little while is back, I don't know, maybe in the eighties, there were two parcels that were in Nibley that they're actually served by Nibley City with water and sewer, but half of their parcel was in and a half of it was in the county. And so we grabbed those two parcels. That property owner signed the petition. They own the property across the street. They have a house on it. They are served by a spring that comes out of out of the hillside, and they're just like, we're just waiting, you know, a little while to, but they plan on annexation in the future, but they did not want to come in right now. It is just flat farmland with a house on it. I understand that, and I recognize that you have to choose. But you can annex them

without their consent if you have sufficient value when you do, don't you? Yeah. But the problem was is they were on the other side.

It's the same property owner. She owns three properties. And she just said when I asked her, and she said no. Well, you know what? I'm gonna recommend the council say no. I don't want to have a peninsula

of county land up a strip of unusable land and have a box there and have our zoning and everything else apply to that box up there.

That just makes no sense to me at all. Well, the only other issue is that little strip. I just don't I don't know if I've done the math, George, to see if we can annex the whole petition without signatures.

Well,

sometimes you get a no. Yeah. And I I I just the idea of of leaving that to some future set of issues between the cities and having a piece of county land stuck in the middle between two cities, I think is

we we need to avoid that. Okay. Did you say you were with Nibley City? Well, I've been working with Nibley City for a while. I am not I am with the petitioner, with the Hansons. But, again, we've been working on this since July with input from everyone, and they said, yeah. This is a go. But we had to bring it before you because of the creation of the peninsula. Now one of the why you say, hey. Why is Nibali? I wanted to ask or answer that question. Nibali City Sewer is right there at the tip of the blue. Their water is right there at the tip of the blue. Their master plan and their annexation plan all include this area. And then we've already gone through the planning and zoning commission and had preliminary approval of the zoning and everything. So that's it's for development. And so that's that's where we're at. We're coming back to say, hey. Now we've got the all the road in.

Now we've created the peninsula. So that's where we're at. Getting the whole road in is is part of it, but I don't want peninsula like that sticking into cities owned by the count or still part of the county unincorporated

area. Yeah. And they used to and then I know this is just a comment. It's just that one of the things, like I said, from state legislature that they changed a lot of the annexation code in the last ten years is they allow this if a green cities agree to it just so there wasn't stop of development. Like if, for example, if the yellow was saying, hey, we really don't wanna come in, it still allows the blue area to come in because that's their wish and the city's wishes to do that. And that's why we're before you is because the people in the yellow said, yeah. We're not ready to come in, and so that's why we're before you.

K. I think we need more time on That's the information. More time on this one. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you, madam chair. Yes. I think that was a good idea. Okay. Matt, we're back to h, the the meeting that just keeps going.

It's raining.

Is he here? Matt Funk. Sorry. This is this is the budget opening.

I'd love that we do.

Hey. So you guys have all heard the explanation of the arbitrage and why we need to pay this money. Can I get a motion about this, or does anyone want to discuss it further? Yeah. I thought and I need to pull up the dollar amount, but I thought there was a change to the attorney's office in this. See, when I was looking at the details of what it's at. We didn't request a change. It's like a $30,000 attorney change. I didn't I didn't request any change. There there's I think it was on the line item where it said tax 9%. That sounds familiar.

How was that?

You can't sneak those by me, Matt. The only change we're making here is is to is the $175,000.

Okay. So we we may need to amend it before we make a motion if it does have that in it.

The the at least the document that I The three packet, there's just two lines. There's the draw from fund balance on OpenSpace, and we allocated it to miscellaneous services arbitrage. That's that's the only Let me see if I can find I know you might be you might be looking at the bottom two pages. We normally don't include those in in in the budget amendment. That's that's in case there was an adjustment to the tax administration fund. There's not,

an impact on the tax administration fund. Oh, maybe that's what it it was let's see. I'm looking at page 32, top of the page, tax administration

allocation rates. Yeah. That's that's Attorney 9%.

I apologize. $22,000

change. That's that's not relevant here. Okay. We're not making a change. We're only changing the 175,000.

K. I'm not sure I didn't cast. I didn't do anything.

Blame the new guy. Yeah.

Jump in. K. I'm ready for a motion on this one.

I'll make a motion that we approve a resolution 20 twenty six dash o seven Dash a of resolution opening and amending the Cass County 2026

budget first amendment. Would you make suspend the rules to make that motion? This initial? I suspect Yes. We're still on initial. Hey. This is a resolution. Oh, so it's a resolution, so we don't have to suspend the rules. Excuse me. Okay. Somebody needs some better training. K. I'll stay where I'm at then. K. Perfect. Been moved and seconded that we approve resolution 2026Dash07. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Perfect. Okay. The last one. The resolution making appointments to the Cache County RAPS Restaurant Advisory Committee. That one is me and and Andrew. So there was some back and forth between our attorney's office and our executive. There was a state code that said that the legislative body appoints the RAPS Committee. Our our county code said the executive makes those appointments. And so, mister Daines had already gone forth and tried to conceded. Yeah. You are the ones make the appointment. And it's the same people. And so I would like to let's see.

This is recorded, by the way. Pardon me? This is recorded, what you just said. You can see.

K. So we need to make appointments to the RAPs committee. And those names are not in our packet, are they? No. I didn't see. Oh, they're there? Okay. I was hoping we'd have those in our packet. Okay. So this is gonna keep the makeup as it has been. We have two council members, Dave Erickson and Catherine Buse. And then we have one representative from each of the other five districts represented by the council, and those names are Damon Cann, Joe Needham, Bruce Cook, and Jim Atkinson. And so those are the names And Kathy Robinson. And Kathy Robinson. Sorry. I knew I missed one. Kathy Robinson. So I would like to propose those names to be appointed to our RAPS Committee to to be able to go through the the applications that have been submitted so far this year.

I make a motion. We approve resolution 2026DashO9Dash a, making appointments to the Cass County Raps Restaurant Advisory Committee.

Second. So moved and seconded that we approve resolution 2026Dash09 as it has been presented. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Thank you. Those guys have a big job. Those notebooks, the binders with applications are

Good thing you gotta pick up. Monumental.

We appreciate your recommendations. K. Pending items, a twenty twenty six dash to zero five. Brian, we're year on again.

Yeah. Sorry. Probably tired of me.

Keep rolling, man. Keep getting it done.

This is an ordinance amended, amendment for frontage and access requirements. It's not even here.

Pull it on my peeler.

Is that one in our packet, Andrew? I'm not seeing it. Under 10 a? I don't have a 10 anything I got signed. Not present there. Nine I to 11 d.

Yes. I do apologize. I take responsibility for that. K. But I believe if you go back, it should be in the previous council meeting packet as the same item.

Do you have something you can put up on the screen for us? That would be helpful. I remember this one, but I While he's pulling that up, Brian, you can go ahead and tell us talk to us about it.

So this is gonna we're just trying to clear up our code. There was some confusion about frontage and where we can access our lot whether it has to be from in that frontage or it can be from somewhere else. So we combined a couple of definitions in our code, the lot parcel frontage and property frontage, And we put that into one definition called lot parcel frontage. And then we have added to those definitions. I'll I'll read the whole thing and let you know what we've added. It says that portion of a development site that abuts a public or private roadway, and then we added street or highway right of way. And for any portion of the property not abutting a public or private roadway, street or highway right of way, a line drawn parallel to the public or private roadway, street or highway right of way and located at the front yard setback. And then this is the some of the older language. It says for the purposes of determining setback requirements on corner lots, all sides of a lot adjacent to a roadway shall be considered frontage. And then we've added the primary access to a parcel lot shall be from the required frontage abutting the road, street, or highway, right of way unless a variance request is granted by the Land Use Authority. So, this kinda came up. I don't know if we have the picture of what we what you have in your packet. Yeah. Right there. So, the yellow line up toward at the the very left of the screen, my left of the screen, that was the required frontage that they met for their lot. But they're coming in through that red line. You know, the we we require frontage and fire department and public works require access and sometimes our frontage and their access don't meet a line. And so what we've done here is, is provide language that says you have to come in from the frontage that you're using for your access. K.

Any questions with that? No. I think that one was pretty straightforward. Okay. I does anyone have quest anybody have more questions for Brian, or would somebody like to make a motion?

Are there very many parcels out there that were put together, you know, that are sitting there, okay, we we went there and we had it redone. Frontage was put on, everything. And now all of a sudden

Yeah. That's the first one that I'm aware of, and that's what prompted the change. I'm sure there's some others out there.

I'm sure I'm sure there's another one out there.

Maybe West of Smithfield, maybe.

I'm just kidding. No. Further north.

Yeah. We you know, when they then, you know, I'm speaking for a friend. They were basically this is what they had to do, so that's what they went and did to basically make that a lot. Yeah. But they're still using a different access. Yeah. We hope, you know, the addresses

for this one is up on that main road, and now they're entering somewhere different. It's it's not good for our fire department or emergency. Anyone that needs to get access to the address will will not match what what How about if the access

is is good for the fire, you know, that they're using? Basically, they have the frontage stuff, but they're

using a joint access to the another parcel that I I think that main access that that they submit has to be provided. If they come in somewhere else, as long as that main access is provided, come into their house

that way? But they do they They didn't want to impact the field where they had drawn and they've gone in for the application. Yeah. So which is valid, but then it's on the application. So Yeah. They need to stick with what's being submitted. So

k. I I bring that up just because of the number of accesses. Sure. I think that that you're trying to limit or even highways,

roads, and that are trying to minimize the number of accesses on Yeah. That road. I think as long as they've got a correct one that meets our code and that's the one that's addressed and there were mailboxes there and it's always accessible, I'm too worried about the other accesses.

I'll tell I'll tell that person.

Thank you. Send him a note. K. Does anybody wanna make a motion on this one?

We're have any further questions? I might as well finish this route. K. K. So I would make a recommendation that we approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash o five dash frontage and access ordinance amendment.

Second. It's been moved and seconded that we approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash zero five. Is there any further discussion?

Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I'd like to stick up for that guy, but I won't.

I think I've I've heard he's he's an okay guy.

Alright. It's time to use this four wheeler and track.

K. 10 b. This is the removal of the class b road segment from our road system. Our executive has told me that they are still in that negotiation, and we've been asked to continue that for one more meeting. And so if everyone's okay with that. One or two? We'll give you one. I'll give okay. I'll go done this twice. You got one more. You got one more. One more. And then we're just resolution on the It's kinda like the library. You have to hold someone's feet to the fire at the deadline to see something happen.

Okay. I'll take that. Keep it.

So k. We will continue that one. K. Other business. The April 28 County Council meeting, it falls in during the same time as our as UAC conference in Saint George. It's the same night. So the proposal would be that we move that meeting to April 21. So that means in April, we would meet on the fourteenth and the twenty first. If everyone's okay with that, I would take a motion. Or what do we have to have a motion, or do we just that's what we decide we're gonna do. Because we approved it. Something we approved at the very beginning on all the schedule. We have to have to amend it. I'll do that by resolution or do by do that by votes by vote. By vote. Excuse me. K. So does someone wanna make a motion that we do that?

Sure. I'll make a motion we change the April 28 meeting to April 21. Thank you.

I'll second. Moved and seconded that we change our April 28 meeting to April 21. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Has everyone signed up for their online online board of equalization training? The the all day in person training is tomorrow. If anyone was had elected for that training, it's tomorrow and the next day. But we all have to sign up for online training. Is everybody good? Mhmm. K. I still haven't heard from the state when that will be available, but hopefully soon. K. The twenty twenty six legislative conference, is everyone RSVP'd to Andrew so that he can register and get hotel rooms for that?

Is everybody okay. Is that the Saint George one you're talking about? Yeah. That's Saint George. It's the '20 I don't see him. My eyes are bad.

K. The Smithfield Health Days Parade. It's parade season coming up, guys. Is anyone available to be in the Health Days Parade on May 9 at 10:00? We need if we don't have enough people, we won't have a truck. But I think if we have enough people

are you gonna be there? I will be, but not participating in the county's entry if we have it because I will be doing my own campaign. Got it. K.

Let everybody just think about look at that date and think about it, and we'll we're not we're not registered for that parade yet, are we, Andrew? Okay. Within the next week, try and get back with Andrew about that if we need to have an entry to that parade. I still I'm not sure either. So I'd say go ahead and get the entry. Yeah. That's a big deal. Call and get get the what he said. Get that entry, and then we'll,

yeah, we can open it up to other

Yeah. People in the county to come join us. Yeah. That's true. I could see who else wants to come. So go ahead and register us. And tell him we'd like to be in the front. We'd like to be in the front. Put you on the floor. You'd look good on a float. Yeah. There's some people that were sworn in today that probably really wanna be

part of that.

K. That's up in his neck at home. Good idea.

Alright. I wanted to before we go into executive session, we're not we probably won't do council member reports tonight unless anyone has a a dying need that they want to talk about. But I did wanna give a report on the NACO conference that I went to because I haven't spoken to you guys about that yet, not all of you. And, I had a really great experience there. It was as much value as we get from going to UAC together. I felt like our presence the Utah presence at NACO was very important. They lined out five different pieces of legislation that NACO has been directly involved in through the the influence of the people in those committees. And a lot of them had to do with public lands, and we were able to hear from the director of the forest service. They are passing legislation that will in fact, they've already signed a deal with our governor to turn some of our forest service land back to our control so that we will be able to control some of our land, and that's directly due to NACO. There was also money for the SRS, the school oh, remind me. What's SRS? Resource. School the the money we should have been getting from the federal government schools. Rural schools that we should have received a check. Matt? Where's Matt Funk? Right here. I think they said we were gonna receive a check within the last two weeks. Did you get a check for about $300,000 from SRS? Not from where I was. Okay. I'll check on that. But there there were several things that they brought up that the the NACO organization has been able to do that benefits our county. And, I think we should consider more involvement in that process. And I don't know how that would look like. They meet three times a year. There's a legislative conference in February that's always in Washington, DC. Then they have the WIR, which is just the Western Region. And then there's always the yearly, the yearly conference. So there's three conferences. I'm not suggesting we go to all three or that we send more than one or two people, but I think maybe we should look at our budget and consider lending our influence to that group because I think that there's some value to that. So Lend my influence to the next Hawaii meeting. I know. They're going to Hawaii in May, and everyone that all the people that were you there from Utah that I was talking, he said, okay. We'll see you in Maui. I'm like, no. You won't see me. But I don't that's the WIR, which if you'll remember, three years ago, the WIR was in Saint George and many of us went. And I thought it was very valuable information that we received there because it just was appropriate to the Western States. So,

anyway, as we move forward, let's maybe look at that. Thanks for being willing to take one for the team. Exactly. Yeah. I'll stick my notes. Madam madam chair, just on the council reports,

I would like to mention just because it was a well attended public meeting, that the county library board did meet the newly appointed board. I say newly because all but one Was brand new. Member was new. They met last week. I recommend you view the recording. It is up on the state's public meeting minutes for libraries, and it will be available on the county website, I believe, soon. If not already, I haven't looked. But, anyway, there's there was a great discussion, but excuse me. For the detail I just mentioned, it's all a new board. They spend most of the meeting just becoming familiar with what it is they're now responsible for. And with that in mind, it it does kind of I don't know if truncate's the right word, but it does compress the ability for any of the good things we had asked for or expected from the library to be done with a request that we through the funding that we chose to ask them to do more with less. But now the leadership group is starting over and so they have even less time to actually affect some of those positive things we would like to see them do. I just want you to be aware of that as a reality that their next meeting may not be till a very short time prior to the June deadline of when the funding would run out if things hadn't changed. So there will be some cuts, I'm sure of it. But and the executive was then I'm just summarizing the library board meeting from last week as a report. The executive did receive a direction from that board as to take some actions, and I'm sure we'll hear and see some good things from that later. I don't I don't know that you need to respond unless you want to. I'm not putting you on the spot on purpose.

Said, but the directions that I understood them were to stretch out their budget for the remainder of the year so that they have through the election so that Providence can run an election to see if their citizens wanna be taxed to pay for the library.

So same dead same budget, different deadlines?

Yes. Summary? I I will with I made

I've there's some unincorporated money money that comes out of wrap for the unincorporated area that I might use if I need a little extra to get to the the time period. But I'm not requesting any additional funds.

K. Yeah. Great. Thank you for that. Thanks for that report, Mark. Did anybody else have anything specific that, from the last school Not urgent. K. If not, I would take a motion to move into executive session.

Move that we go into executive session for the strategy set sessions to discuss purchase, exchange, or lease of real property, or discuss the proposed development agreement, project proposal, or financing proposal, and strategy sessions to discuss pending or reasonably imminent litigation.

Second. K. It's been moved and settled that we move to executive session for the reasons stated. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Here we go. We haven't been here long enough. Thank you to everyone that stayed here for this. This is a long

coming back. Alright.