Cache County Council Regular Meeting – 12/02/2025

We're gonna go ahead and get our meeting started. Thank you to everyone who is here. I'm supposed to do this. Everybody, don't jump. So dainty. Yeah. I know. Well, it always it always makes me jump. Okay. So we're gonna go ahead and start with an opening by council member Catherine Buse.

Thank you, Sandy. My, my mom, who's my hero, gave me a book called The Attitude of Gratitude. And she said said that if adopting the attitude of gratitude reminds us that gratitude is not just a feeling, but a way of seeing the world. And I think that that is, something that we can particularly at this time of this season, we can, adopt as we look into our communities and as we look outside of ourselves. And, I thought that that was, particularly, applicable right now. Also, I would like to, lead us in the pledge of allegiance. So please stand. 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, Catherine. Hey. We need to approve the agenda but we need to make an amendment to the agenda. If someone wants to make that motion. What was the amendment? I'm sorry. We need to add six d. We need to add six d. It needs to be the survey results from our ARPA

ranking. I'd I'd then go ahead and move to approve the agenda with the addition of six d, the survey results of ARPA. No. Second.

It's moved and seconded that we approve the agenda with that amendment. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hey. I would accept a motion to about the minutes for the November 17 and November 18 meetings. Anyone had a chance to look at those?

I'd move to approve the November 18 minutes.

Second.

So

Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the minutes from the November 18 regular council meeting. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Does anyone want to make a motion about the November 17 meeting?

I move to approve the minutes from the November 17 special council meeting.

And I will second that. Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the minutes from the November 17 special meeting. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Alright. We have the report of the county executive.

Yes. I have some appointments that I would ask for your approval. I Kurt Bankhead, Brady, Houston, and Val j Rigby have been serving on the planning commission. They have each indicated willingness to agree up and serve yet another term. I would ask for your consent and approval to their appointment.

Okay. Anybody? I will make a motion that we approve that. All three are awesome. I'll second. Okay.

It's been moved and seconded that we approve those three names for reappointment to the planning and zoning commission. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

I appreciate your unanimous vote. The people on the planning commission serve with great distinction. It's a difficult job. It requires a bunch of time, and it's pleasing that these citizens are willing to do that. I would also note that it is an annual appointment to the Ash Open Space Advisory Committee, COSAC, and that we have asked that's an annual appointment. We have asked those serving that they would be willing to serve another term, term. Again, they deserve great credit for their willingness to serve cash cow. I would ask for your consent that they'd be reappointed.

K. Do we need to do that by name or just Yeah. Do you have a list of their names? Can you read their names? Oh, they're They're in there. Yeah. I can.

I you want me to go ahead? Yeah. Go ahead. I'd go ahead and and move to approve for the COSAC committee. Another one year extension for Claire Ellis, Brent Thomas, Kendra Penry, Christopher Sands, Regan Wheeler, Eric Gailison, Keegan Garrity as a representative from the council, and Justin Clausen.

I'll I'll second that. K. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the the aforementioned names to the cash open space advisory committee. Is there any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay.

There

are the orders of appointment. Okay. Execute those and return them. Thank you, chair.

Okay. Alright. Items of special interest, we have our form of government study committee. We'll turn some time over to the esteemed Jack Draxler.

Establish. Yes, please. Thank you, madam chair and council members. We wanna begin by thanking you for the service you render to the citizens of our county. And as I begin this report, which will be brief, you all should have received a much more lengthy report that goes into a lot of detail on our proceedings and and deliberations. I will summarize those. But first, I would like to introduce the members of our committee. These people have just been amazing. They sacrificed a lot of time. We've been meeting since June. Jordan Mathis, who's the Bear River Health Department director. Jordan, why don't let go ahead and stand real quick. He's our has been the vice chair of our committee. Ed Buist, the mayor of Minden. Blake Wright, the mayor of River Heights. And Brian Cox, the mayor of Hyde Park. I just and Brian Cox, the mayor of Hyde Park. I just want to thank these people. They've been amazing. And, you know, they're a bank of common sense. And I really appreciate that. We also want to express thanks to Andrew Erickson, who has been our analyst, and to doctor Damon Khan from USU. Please stand. Has been an advisor and both of these gentlemen have been fantastic. We've met since June. We have held pretty much biweekly meetings. We have had three public meetings. One in Hiram, one in Logan, and one in Smithfield to to allow the public to give us input. We have studied the four forms of government that are approved by the Utah constitution. We've studied the county's organic act. We've received presentations on these forms of government. We have reviewed efforts in other counties to change their forms of government. We've spoken with government leaders here in this county and other counties with the assistance of of Andrew and and Damon. We've studied the costs of comparative county governments. And most importantly, I think we've received key input through the surveys we've taken of current and former county office holders, city leaders including mayors and city administrators, leaders in county serving organizations, employees of the county, and the citizens of the county. What we found, and you've probably heard this through media and other accounts and through our analyst, We found a high level of satisfaction with the work that is done by our county government. We found that these stakeholders have a strong preference for our current form of government. That is the council elected by districts and the executive elected. In our meetings and in our responses, there were a few who expressed other preferences, of course, but the overwhelming majority was in favor of our current form of government. We recommend then and and of course we're strictly an advisory committee. We have no policy or lawmaking authority, but we recommend that the council executive form of government continue to be the form of government for Cache County. And House Bill three fifty six, which generated this committee, also allowed for an advisory committee to make suggestions to county government regarding their function. And we have a few suggestions and they're they're pretty general and they're exactly that. One has to do with training. We we would suggest that the council consider whether additional training can be helpful for elected and appointed officials and whether that training should be optional or mandatory.

We

suggest that that the council continue to evaluate how duties and powers are spread across the various offices and officers in Cache County. And if the council sees needs for changes there, that they evaluate that. One thing we found in the County Organic Act is that it is not general general it is not gender neutral. This is not required by law, but we're saying you might consider adding some gender neutral language to the County Organic Act. We suggest that the council consider whether certain executive offices in the county might be appointed rather than elected. We discussed this at length and especially the treasurer and auditor positions could lend themselves to being appointed rather than elected. Again, that's a suggestion and it it, of course, is subject to state law because counties are political subdivisions of the state and therefore must comply with the state constitution. And finally, we suggest that the council maybe study whether a de facto veto is granted to the executive. And and if it's exist, study see study whether any policy should change in that regard. This would sometimes be called a pocket veto, where an executive would simply not follow through with a with a decision or or a or a policy of the council. Those are our suggestions and we really thank the county for supporting us, providing a place to meet, providing our staff people. And again, I want to thank those who have served with me on this committee. And I'd like to give them an opportunity if any one of them would like to to to have anything to add. Apparently not. Are there any questions from the council?

Anyone have questions? I just wanna say a big, big thank you to all of the members of the committee that that worked so hard on this. I think it we couldn't have asked for a better dream team to lead us through this process and really, really appreciate the time and effort because I know it was a lot and especially thanks to Doctor. Khan who was one of my favorite professors at Utah State. I have to put in that plug. I know that his insight was really valuable, and so thank you to all of you. And we have we actually have a little thank you for you if you'd all come up and let's take a take a picture of the all of you together, and we'd like to do that. And thank you. I think you deserve our applause. Andrew, you need to be in the picture. So So we move We need somebody to take the picture. That way. Bryson, will you take a picture, please? Thank you again.

Okay.

Yeah. Do you guys

I'll second that. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded that we accept the recommendations of the county government study committee. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We do really appreciate all of you. Okay. We have I'll find my place. Okay. The VOCA and VAWA grant updates. Sarah?

Obviously, I'm not Sarah, but I'll go first. We got we the way we had the presentation. I I think many of you are well aware, a part of the requirements for the grant that we have under VOCA and VAWA is to do semi annual or do to quarterly, regular reports to the governing bodies, so all of you for that. So this is, the first one of those stabs on that. The next one. If I've seen this before, I'm not gonna read everything. I'll be I'll be brief tonight, but this is the mission of the attorney's office. Essentially, we are to prosecute crimes in the area. We will vigorously do that and so uphold and defend the constitution here and all in an effort to protect the rights and immunity of victims and their families. As far as the VAWA overview, again, I think you've seen this before as well. What the VAWA grant helps cover are three special victim unit prosecutors. Essentially, we have one in each of the district court courtrooms. Their focus is on those felony misdemeanor crimes that involve domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and protective order violations. And additionally, as part of that grant, we have, our two investigators, special investigators in the office that help, do any case follow-up that is needed, for those types of crimes. As far as the what is updated, I think, since last we talked on the this year's grant cycle, for 2025, 2027, what the attorney's office was awarded was $341,000. In the previous cycle from 2023 to '25, '25, it was just over 400,000. So it did go down a little bit from what it was before. And that, honestly, was not much of a surprise, based on what information we were getting from UOVC and what is available, at those, at the higher levels. And some of the things that are required as part of the VAWA grant are to do, some annual reports to UOVC, and then we do a big annual report as well as part of the federal requirements. All the attorneys have to keep track of, what their hours are and what they spend on for for grant purposes. And UOPC, also does their, visits and reviews of everything as well. Next one. And just just some brief information on what was submitted. I mentioned we did the annual report, as part of that, annual report for last year. This is what's, some of the stats were submitted. Again, this is not all inclusive of what everything is done from, the investigators and the prosecutors on the case, but just to give you a flavor of what they do, those are it's just some information for you. So unless there are any other questions, I'll turn it over to Sarah who quite frankly has a lot more requirements to do on the VOCA side of things than I do on the VAWA side.

I have one question, Andrew. Do you anticipate that the that award amount will continue to go down? Or do you do you have any indication?

Who who who knows. Right? Because it's two years out, so I really can't say. But it would not surprise me at all if it does continue to go down. If we're able to get there's no guarantee to get anything after the next after the cycle up as well. K. Anybody else have questions for Andrew before we? Thank

you.

Thank you guys so much for letting us be here this evening. So as victim services side, so we have two grants. We've got the VOCA and the UVSP, so the VOCA's of Violence Against Crime Act. And then the UVSP is the Utah Victim Services Provider. So just so that you can have a funding source breakdown of victim services, we've got federal grants, and we've got state grants, and then the remaining of our budget is funded through the county. This is a personnel overview. Our staff consists of six full time victim coordinators. Together we cover District Court, Juvenile Court, and the Specialty Courts of the First District. So it's a bit breakdown of our District Court, me, Tanya, Jenny, and Caitlin. We are all under the VOCA grant, which is our federal grant. Juvenile Court is Candice, and she's under the UVSPR State Grant. District and Juvenile Court is covered by Linda, who's our, Spanish speaking advocate. Spanish speaking advocate. Specialty courts, Caitlin helps cover the specialty courts, and then all coordinators cover the our on scene response. We also have our executive assistant, who Jennifer, who helps with all of our statistical data, all of our and all of our day to day functions. This is a bit of just a breakdown of victim services. We support victims of crime from nine one one to post sentencing. So we've got two we've got two different categories that we kind of put that in. Our mobile advocacy, we cover five different law enforcement agencies in this valley. And then our court advocacy, we've got the three district courts, one juvenile court, and our specialty courts. So our mobile advocacy, we've got two people on call twenty four seven, three hundred sixty five days of the year, for any of the assistance that victims in our community need. We respond on scene to help these victims of crime. We do a lot of crisis intervention, safety planning, emergency shelter, and we need to have extensive knowledge of our community resources so so that we can make sure that we're referring victims to their needs. We also do CART callouts, which is the Child Abduction Response Team, Amber Alerts, and then also any mass casualty situations. We help with the Family Assistance Center. With our court advocacy, we help victims of crime navigate the complexities of the criminal justice system. We're able to help inform them. We're able to help walk them through this process. We go to court on their behalf. We go to court with them. We just try to help be their their person throughout this process. We do persons and property crimes, and so that is any sort of victim that might be of those two different categories. We make sure that we're following the victim's rights statute. Court notification. We work on a lot of victim impact statements and restitution requests. As I said previously, we need to have an extensive knowledge of our community resources. And so we have a lot of community partners that we attend a lot of coalition meetings. We go and tour other agencies so that we can make sure that we have needed knowledge about what are the community resources that are and how best we can refer our victims. We do a lot with the Utah Office of Victims of Crime. They help with our grant funding, but they also help with our reparations program. So we make sure victims know how they might qualify for that program and what that process might look like. Then we also do post sentencing. And so there are times that people are sentenced to jail or prison. So we do a lot with the Board of Pardons and Parole. They have victim coordinators that we make sure that we're communicating with. We make sure victims know who the next point of contact is. We help them write victim impact statements. We go to board hearings with them. And then also some cases get, appealed to the attorney general's office with the Court of Appeals and the Utah Supreme Court. And so we work to make sure that they know who's the contact of the Attorney General's Office. We go to court hearings with people. It's a very it's not just a cutoff, after these situations. When people also go, if they're sentenced to jail and they have probation, we still work with victims of making sure they know what's going on with those next processes. So that's why we call it 09:11 to even post sentencing. So as Andrew kind of talked about, we have certain statistical requirements that we're supposed to provide as an annual report for our grants. For ours, for VOCA and the UVSP, we have to do quarterly reports. And so this is just a snapshot of what our reporting was from July '24 to June '24. These are all the different, categories of crimes that we work with victims. And so you can see, I I don't need to go through every single one of them, but you can see the extensive number of victims that we have to work with and all the different areas. Like I said, that persons and properties. And so you've got your assaults, your your arson, your your burglary, even down to, you know, hoomid trafficking, a lot of order protective order violations, robbery. And so there's a lot of categories that we will work with victims on. So this is just a snapshot of one year's amount of victims that we work with. And then the next one is what our last quarterly reporting was. So from July '25 to September, '25. So this is again is combined with your VOCA and your UVSP reporting requirements. These are, like I said, all of our victimization types, that each one of these represents, a human, a victim in our community that has experienced every single one of these categories, that we're just trying to help them through this process. So that's what I've got for the book on UVPs. Is there any questions or anything?

Any questions?

K. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Yeah.

I have a question. Oh, Sarah. Yes. Sarah. Alright. Thank you for all you do. Yeah. Because every seems like there isn't a thing that a time day or a week that goes by that we don't see something happening and going on. And especially with media and trying to get, you know, people to or, you know, coming up to try to have sex with teens or something like that. And I appreciate the fact that you guys aggressively pursue that and and you take them to court where they they need to be. So thank you. Yeah. Because you're pretty All that department for all that you do. Appreciate it. We we all appreciate that. Thank you. I'll take them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It is close to 05:30, so we're gonna go ahead and do our public hearings at this point and then we'll go back to the other two items on our agenda. So I need a motion for the 7A. Somebody give me a motion on that. I move that we

open a public hearing. No. We'll set a public hearing. Excuse me. For December 9 at 05:30 for the ordinance twenty twenty five dash 28 s b a u T24138DashB, Paradise Rezone.

Second. K. It's been moved and seconded that we set the public hearing for December 9 on ordinance twenty twenty five-twenty eight. Any discussion? Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Alright. So now we'll open our public hearings. We'll start with Amy. I don't need a motion to open.

You missed This is in regards to ordinance twenty twenty five dash 41 regarding the County Treasurer Compensation Correction. It was brought to my attention that when we held the public hearing a few months ago and passed the compensation, that we actually passed a decrease for our Treasurer, and that was due to a clerical mistake, a typo, if you will. And so, going back and looking at that, what you have before you, is the corrected amount that needs to have a public hearing and then also to be, the recommendation is to move that forward, as the Council to approve that. So any questions? I

don't think so. Thank you. Is there anyone here from the public that would like to speak to this to this event? Somebody move to close public hearing. Move to close the public hearing. Second. It's been moved and seconded that we close public hearing on ordinance twenty twenty five dash 41. Those in favor? Aye. K. The next one is seven b two, approving and adopting the 2026 county budget. Matt, are you gonna do you have any information for us? We're not gonna pass the budget tonight, but I know that there were some changes that were made, and I don't know if you're ready to present those to us, before we open to the public.

One second here.

Gonna state your name to you for the record.

I'm Matthew Funk. I'm the Cache County Auditor. With regard to the 2026 budget, which you have have in front of you, it's the same document, I think, that that was presented earlier in November. There are a couple of changes that I would like to mention that we are working on. There's a couple of, pieces that have moved. Briefly, they are these. The county executive has realigned a couple of departments internally, moving buildings and grounds to be monitored or to be managed by Public Works. We had a retirement there. The impact that that is gonna have on the twenty twenty six six budget is to reduce the the overall cost, in buildings and grounds by about a $125,000 So, I would mention that that as one, change that we would like your permission to prepare for next week before you, make a final decision. The sheriff, has decided to standardize his, firearms on nine millimeter. Right now, he uses a mixture of nine and forty cal. Miller County has, has expressed a willingness to buy our remaining 40 cal ammunition. That would be $6,000 So we would, propose that we increase revenues by $6,000 to reflect the sale of that 40 caliber ammunition. And we would also ask that we increase, the expense for the the Sheriff's Department, that exact $6,000 so he can buy some more replacement equipment. That's two items. Number three is, our insurance allocation. Of course, Cache County is insured by the Utah, trust. Every, twice a year we make an allocation as to we try to predict what those insurance, coverages are going to cost us. For 2026, we believe we're under by about $86,500 So we would ask your permission to, increase, the proposed 2026 budget by that amount 86,500. The executive has, let me know that he would like to suggest a modification with regards to the library, to provide, six months of operating, operating, budget for the county library. That would be an increase of $132,800 Three more and I'll be done. The, there's a proposed change. We've been made aware that we will run into a grant issue if we do have all the cuts that we were thinking of having in the Public Defender's Office. So we would ask to increase the Public Defender's professional and technical budget by $50,000 Second to the last item, the County Council recently voted to raise property taxes, dollars 3,721,500. In the budget, we had it at 3,700,000. We forgot the the 21,500. So we would, ask your permission to modify that to increase revenues from property taxes by $21,500 There's one other item, that I'll touch on briefly, that will affect the 2026 budget, and that is, what the county council ends up determining to do with its salaries. If they decide not to proceed with, a salary increase for the for for the county council, then that would, potentially increase, the savings that we have in the in the if all of those came together, our total savings from all of these items would be 39 excuse me, $35,900 So I realize that we don't have all of that information now. We won't know, on that last item until, you all have made a decision on that later this evening. But, so some very modest changes to the $115,000,000 total budget that was presented to you last month. Mhmm.

Does anyone have any questions for Matt? My question would be, how soon will we have these allocations,

like, lined out so that as we're studying and getting ready to pass the budget next week? Yes. We'll have them for you, next week. I think it would be fair to say by the end of this week that we will absolutely have those documents to you so that you can have a few days to study them. Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much.

Okay. This is a public this is a public meeting. If there's anyone here that would like to speak to our 2026 budget, this would be the time for you to speak.

Okay.

Oh,

do you wanna remind everyone the two minute The rules. Two perfect. Yeah. And if you if you come up to speak, please state your name, and, we we'll give everyone two minutes to speak. Andrew will be our timer, so he'll let you know.

Thank you. My name is Emily Watterson. I'm a citizen in Providence City. And I wanted to speak on the budget concerning, the library and the senior services. The county executive has recommended cuts to the budget specifically for these with an issue of double taxation. While it does appear that there's an element of double taxation, I don't think that's the true cause, and I think we need to be able to think about things to understand them. First, what is the role of county government? In my study, I've learned that that depends on the county size and the city and the resources that has available. When you look down at the breakdown of government, you have federal, state, county, city. The bigger ones tend to supersede when it comes to laws as the laws pertain to how it affects the citizens within their realm. Whatever isn't established in those ones are then dropped down to the lower ones. Now that's why it becomes interesting how cities and counties work. When cities when counties and states don't have laws, the cities then take over and make the decisions there. So secondly, are the services that the citizens are being tabled taxed for city concerns or county concerns? That in itself is another huge question. There are no guidelines for which are county services and city services. Those seem to be decided as things progress and move forward. However, the county fills in with needed services that are not provided by the cities specifically and especially for unincorporated areas. Some of those services will cause double taxation issues depending on where you live. We run county services for law enforcement. There are cities that have city services for law enforcement, which would cause double taxation for double taxation for those cities. I would venture to guess that most citizens would then say that's acceptable double coverage. Okay. Our final conundrum is where those things came from. In the history, Logan and Cache County worked together, but they eventually were separated. The county did not step forward at that time to create those services. Cities with budgets from business revenue were able to fund their own. The cities had those systems in place. Thank you. Levy. Your two minutes are up, but thank you very much. I don't think they're separated. I don't think there's a double taxation issue. I think the county should step forward and continue funding these services as is their duty. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Hannah Mortensen. I'm from Providence. I've been there for about four years. I've, lived in many other wonderful cities. We chose Providence because it was a place that we felt like our children could be safe and wander around and explore and have access to things like libraries. Cache Valley was specifically important to us because they had an educational atmosphere where education as a university I was hoping would help, you know, provide more services that were really essential for kids growing up and, their opportunities. I've been here for the other meetings. I have some questions that I just I'm gonna lay out my questions, just for your information. My questions are, why was the library targeted in the first place or picked out as recipient the recipient of budget cuts, including the services and grounds, senior services also, included in that. Why is 100% of the population not the goal, for educational and public services? Because the 20% would be a huge gap, the largest of any anywhere in Utah so far as we heard last time. Why has a library in Providence been neglected? Why was there not more funds budgeted along the way to increase its use and, viability as an actual service that people value? Why was the vast majority of the budget concerning public safety not thoroughly searched before making decisions about these less noticeable places? Why are public services not considered, why are public libraries not considered a public service or a part of public safety? The grounds and senior citizen services as well, why would we not consider the actual interface of public and what they interface and use as not a very important vital part of public safety? And is public access to education not important enough to save?

Thank you.

Hello. I apologize. I was a little late. Hopefully, I don't repeat anything. My name is Natalie DeFries. I'm with I'm in I live in Providence. Getting flustered already. Okay. So I completely understand the conundrum. I've been talking to a couple of individuals. I've been talking to my city representatives, other city representatives in the nearby surrounding area of the Cache County Library. And, I I completely understand the conundrum and why we are having this conversation. Where I want to come in is I would just like to say that I think it's very obvious we've had lots of people who are very supportive of keeping this library. I think it's, like, it's a it's kind of a no brainer. Like, of course, we wanna try to keep the library, but we have limited resources. And so, the biggest thing I want to say is that, my name as Natalie DeFries, I am a citizen who's absolutely willing to come in and put that load on my shoulders. I've talked to many of you, and so if if there's anything that I can do to help, I am here. I'm willing to take on that brunt. I'm willing to run the library. I'm willing to go out and get funding. Oh my gosh. It's so quick. I am in sales. I have done sales in the past and one thing I learned a lot from sales is I'm I'm very happy to go out and find donors and try to find people who would be willing to help with donating and funding the library. So that's if you give me time, I would love to get a team together and go out and find funding. As well as that with sales, we learn a lot from other sales representatives. Those who are successful, we learn and we ask them questions like, what are you doing that is working so well and how can I do that? So I have learned from sales, that we need to ask others. Mendon Library is amazing. It's this tiny little library and they can run on $50,000. Whether that's true or not, I'm not sure, but that's what they claim is that they can run on $50,000. I completely think that's possible for us. I don't know what the itemized statement looks like. I still need to talk to George Danes about it but, I just wanted to say that I'm fully supportive and here as a servant for you guys. So thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Lydia Williams. Oh, man. And I live in North Logan. I actually live walking distance from the North Logan Library and I use both the North Logan and Cash County Library every day through physical books and through Libby. I think you should be working with the cities and this county to create a robust, real county library system. I grew up in Salt Lake with a gray library system. I wish we had that here. It's honestly disappointing that we don't. The $4.81 double taxation is such a paltry amount of money. As someone said at the last public hearing, you can't buy a hamburger for that. You can't buy a book for that. That's for sure. With the rising cost of books and things, we should have a public county library available for that. Especially in the age and rise of AI and literacy, the ability to or in the rise of AI literacy and critical thinking only become more important. Communities with libraries are better and fortunately, there's quite a few authors that have explored, what happens to communities that don't have public libraries and books like Fahrenheit four five one, nineteen eighty four, and The Book Thief. And if it's been a while for some of you since you've picked up these books since high school lit, I would recommend going to your county library and checking them out and seeing what happens to communities that don't have libraries in education. As a second note, I know only 20% of our county would be impacted by this, but as a childless adult, whenever there's a a bond that comes up to increase public education, I vote yes for it. Not because I will benefit personally, but because I believe education is important and I believe caring about the people in my community and my society matters. That's what makes a community, that's what makes a society. Not getting rid of a library is, as others have said, that is a loss of a major public service, and I would be very disappointed in this council if that took place. Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. My name is Ryan, and I am actually a citizen of Logan. So I just wanna mention, just a few things as I've been kind of involved in this process or at least as I've seen it kind of happen, from the news, from coming into these meetings, and from even some of, like, the radio and different things that have been involved. I think something that is just important to note, as far as, like, trends, we often look at trends in all sorts of things. And as of last year, the facts show that 68% of our library card getters in this county did not come from Providence, which I think is a good representation of, like, the whole county because here, we have wonderful Providence people coming to save the library that's in Providence. And in an unfortunate way, I feel like after the last meeting, it almost felt like a foregone conclusion that we have to give it to Providence. I believe, Madam Chair, it wasn't necessarily a quote, but it was kind of talking about how we need to reach out to our people in in Providence, and Providence gets emphasized a lot. However, like I say, 68% of this year's new library cards came from all over the county, not from Providence. So I think that's something of note. As well as just the idea that I believe that very first point was very poignant about the services that we have as a county, as a city. Like, I'm one of those who's being double taxed. And it sounds like such a a mean and aggressive thing until you look at mean and aggressive thing until we look at things like our police services, probably some of like our road services as we think about state, county, city. Like I think there's a lot of times when we're often pull our weight and honestly pull our weight for others. And I think that's a beautiful thing in America and that's what kind of makes this county great as well. So I don't wanna mix like my opinion in different things, but I think that the facts and trends show that this library is important and that it's growing in the county and being used countywide and not just by Providence. So at the very least, if we are kind of foregone with our six month idea in the new budget, which I guess we're happy for is like like a band aid for now. Just to make sure that's enough time and that the resources are being allocated to make sure that that's good enough for a transition and things. So I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Is there anyone else is there anyone that would like to speak to something in the budget other than the library first before I close public hearing and thank you all for being here and for those who spoke the last time when we held a public hearing just for the library issue. We hear you. We appreciate what you're saying. We are actively working together to try and come up with solutions that are fair and that help with our budget, but that still meet the needs of the people in the county. So we just want to assure you that that we understand how important libraries are. And within the scope of all the things that we have to decide, we are taking that into account. So thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak before we close the public hearing?

We have to close the public hearing. We have one. Is someone I don't wanna yep, please.

Someone I don't wanna yep, please.

Sorry. Thank you. I'll I'll be quick. My name is Mitch Lancaster. I'm I live in Logan. I was gonna speak about the library, but I thank you for hearing everyone's concerns and giving them that opportunity. Just one last question with the the budget, and it doesn't have to be answered tonight. But I think as citizens, we'd just like to know kind of what are some of the highlights and priorities that you put in this budget. I know it takes a lot of work. It's really difficult. One fund that I was looking at was the debt service fund and seeing how we're paying against, you know, the bonds and things like that. And it would just be kinda nice to know what the priorities are and if we're if we have goals to, you know, eliminate debt and how we're working towards that and things like of that nature.

Very much.

Thank you. I'd like to address that for just a second. The priorities of the county are a little bit different than municipalities in that we are there's things we are required by the state to to do as functions. Like, there are requirements that we don't have any choice. We have to assess properties. We have to collect taxes. We have to run the jail. We have to prosecute crimes. There are things that we are statutorily required to do, and so those are our, priorities are the things that we have to do. The the other things that come to us, like the senior center or the library, are we are not required to do, but there are things that as a county we've chosen to do. And along with that comes a lot of decisions and a lot of money. And so when when you ask about priorities, it's it's kind of difficult to separate those because there's so many things that we have to do that we are required to do. So just to keep that in perspective that we don't have a lot of choice about a lot of the things that we do as a county. They are the state requires us to do those. So I just want to say that real quick. Is that I don't know if that answers your question at all, but Yeah. And thank you. Question about debt service? Oh, the question about debt service.

And We have a few bonds. We have bonds for Closed public hearing. Oh, closing public hearing.

We have a a bond for the event center, but the cost of that bond is paid for entirely out of transient room tax dollars. So that's not a cost. It's borne by local citizens. We have a bond for the Public Public Works Building in Hiram. And other than that bond, the only bond we have is is open space, which the voters approve. That's currently at $615.

That's it. Thanks. Thank you, Matt. K. I have a motion to close public hearing. Do I get a second? Fair enough. Oh, is there one more.

The line's really quick too. I didn't prepare anything, but I'm a resident of What's your name? Oh, Mary Bennett k. And from Hyde Park. And you probably know Hyde Park obviously doesn't have our own library, and I just barely started using the the county library. And we've already raised our children, so we've been here twenty seven plus years. And I was very surprised when we moved here that there was no county library and sad and disappointed. We lived in LA County before that and had a lovely you know, all the libraries were county. And, of course, I don't really understand how it all works in terms of city versus county. But it was disappointing, and I I know there's a lot of counties, obviously, that have a county library. So even as somebody without children, I just would I appreciate what you just said about understanding the importance of the library. It's as I thought about it, I was thinking about the foundation of our country, and library is a fundamental part of the foundations of our our country and how important it is for the children. I feel very, very strongly about it. So thank you for doing all you're doing, and I appreciated the gal talking about, you know, being willing to to help find monies and so forth. So thank you for all you do. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Logan Williams. I live in North Logan. I guess, Keegan, I'll address you directly on this because I remember the first meeting about this. You said, you know, you wanted to see what the whole library thing like, what people wanted. And so I guess, you know, I've been new to a few of these now, and everyone at least, you know, a 100% of people said they want the library to stay, but we're only funding 50% of the library. So can you, explain that math to me?

Is that the end of your public comment? Okay. Because it's not a back and forth,

so. Yep.

Thank you. I can address it. Yeah. Is that alright? So, yeah. At this point, we, the council, has received a budget proposal. Very recently, we received, an amended proposal that included 50% funding. So at at this stage, the council has not discussed it. We we haven't made a decision. That isn't my personal recommendation, nor can I speak for the rest of the council to say that it's theirs? This, the stage that we're at right now is I am considering all the comments that have been made, and I would agree that I think all of the comments we've heard in person have been in support of the library. I've probably received about 50 emails, and I think 48 of them were in favor of the library. So that is something I will take into consideration, and I think all 50 people that emailed me have received a response, from me. So, and we can continue to discuss it, and I I would welcome additional feedback, email, text message, phone call. I I absolutely wanna echo what you said that I I do wanna hear from citizens. And I will say that I really appreciate those that showed up. I think it it can be intimidating to come here and address people. We sit up higher for some reason, so we can intimidate you more, I guess. And, that's that's not the intent. I do realize you have hobbies and families, and probably the top thing on your list isn't to go to a council meeting and spend your time that way. So that does reflect the, importance, more so when you show up in person even than in email. So, that will be taken into consideration, and I hope you stay tuned for my further comments and, my opinion on this decision.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that want that wish to speak?

Move to close the public hearing. Second.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we close public hearing. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We have item number three for a public hearing is the budget opening for the 2025. Matt? Has it changed? No. I don't think anything has changed since we Appropriations? At our appropriations meeting. Correct?

Nothing has changed since, appropriations. I would just comment, briefly. So this is the fourth quarter, budget opening for the 2025 budget. I'll just touch a quick high point, this particular budget opening a little different than the previous three this year in that we're actually putting money back in, fund balance.

We have Did you repeat that, Matt? I I don't know if I heard you correctly. We're we're putting $289,165

back in in, fund balance, back in savings. That's a beautiful word. Yes. We have nearly $900,000 in in in revenues that were billed, either through jail patrons or through chip and seal. But, just in terms of a strategic 30,000 foot look, that's that's the that's the headline I think. Yes.

K. I know you've all had a copy of that. Does anyone have any questions for Matt?

What does it just go back to me the general fund? Yes. That's true. Over to the next year? Does it go to the rainy day fund? It it it goes back into the general fund. The general fund. It's not a rainy day fund. It's not rainy day fund. It's general fund. I've been corrected by my peers. What vernacular would you prefer that we call this fund? General fund. General fund balance.

Okay. Alright. I

would entertain a motion. What was just the you're opening Oh, no. The hearing. Sorry. That was it. This is a public hearing. Is there anyone in the public that would like to speak to our twenty twenty five fourth quarter budget opening amendment? Okay. Seeing none. Move to close the public hearing. I'll second that. K. It's been moved and seconded that we close public hearing. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We'll go back up to our six c, our county recreation center study. We'll turn some time over Whitney from DCBO, and thank you for being here. Of course.

We're happy to be here and help create this knowledge. And Nathan Lovell with BCBO is also joining me this evening.

Hi. Okay.

Excellent. So, we've been working on the Cache County indoor recreation center feasibility study since the 2025, and we've made some really great progress. We're excited to share with you. So today, we wanna share with you a a very high level summary of a countywide market analysis and the community survey. We wanna talk a little bit about how that has led us to some recommended facilities and then talk about some potential location and amenity distribution options for the county. There are a couple of different ways that this could be approached, and we would love to share those with you. And, again, if you have any immediate feedback, great. If you want to just take this information, also great, and we can we can circle back. So for the market analysis, we looked at the indoor recreation opportunities, both public and private across the county, and it was important to recognize here that, of course, Logan is kind of the county population center and as such has traditionally a lot of those, indoor recreation elements have been in or near to Logan City. But we wanted to make sure that we're addressing recreation broadly within the county and access and accessibility to recreation. And so we looked at what the current facilities are that exist, and you can see the vast majority of those amenities as I noted are in Logan or North Of Logan within the county. And there are a broad range of facilities. There are some public and nonprofit facilities. The county has a couple of those in the county event center and the senior center, the Eccles Ice Center. And then, of course, there's Elite Hall, the Hanson Family Sports Complex, which is a great public private partnership. Logan Community Recreation Center, Smithfield, civic and recreation centers are sort of rounding out those out those public facilities. And then a broad range of private facilities, most of which are either a traditional sort of aerobic fitness facility or a specialized program facility. So it hosts volleyball or pickleball or tennis, etcetera. And then there are some aquatic facilities within the county. The Logan Aquatic Center, Mountain Crest, and Skyview, it's important to know, are all within high schools. And so all of those are shared with, a school district and are used by students in addition to the general public. And so they do have limited hours of access and availability for public use and the same with USU hyper. Again, it is available for the public, but, perhaps more limited hours than a general open, community recreation center might have access to. And so as we looked at these, we also looked at what a typical community the size of Cache County would have for recreation facilities. And, typically, for a community that's about a 110,000 residents, there would be between two and three recreation centers to serve those those resident needs. Again, one senior center, one aquatic center over a little over one ice rink, and then a larger number of multi use courts, one competitive pool, a larger number two publicly available basketball courts, a leisure pool, and at least one indoor walking and jogging track. And, again, these numbers are taken from across the country. And so this isn't specific to Utah or to Cache County. And one thing that we did know and looked at with, our consultant, Ballard King, is that because Cache County has longer winters, the need for indoor recreation, especially in the winter, is heightened in comparison to other, communities across the country. And so some of these numbers are actually probably lower than what the community would utilize based off of your weather and winter conditions. And so, ultimately, through this market analysis, we found that there's a population size that's absolutely adequate to support multiple indoor recreation facilities, that there's a good age group and interest in indoor recreation activities and wellness through all ages and ranges of households, That median household income, does have some expendable income to help pay for recreation, but they're going to be prioritizing sort of where those funds go. And, again, a strong market potential for nearly all recreation and sports activities. There is a lack of indoor courts and I say that knowing that there are a lot of courts available in the schools, but sharing courts with schools poses some specific challenges in terms of hours of access accessibility and with some of the more recent legislation, security risks and concerns of bringing the public into school for school, especially during school hours. And, again, lack of indoor recreation and leisure aquatics more broadly within the county was noted. And then we did do a robust countywide survey, which could have been the entire time of this presentation. But at a high level, what we found in that survey is the folks who responded to the survey are absolutely interested in indoor recreation. There are, of course, some concerns about funding and how it gets paid for and what that that tax impact would be. But very broadly, swimming and aquatics was a strong number one priority for, respondents to the survey. And then interestingly, adult sports recreation and fitness programs eked out youth sports recreation and fitness just barely, but both were strong priorities. And one of the things that we often see with community recreation where it differentiates itself from private recreation is there's something for everybody in the household. There's an activity and a program for every generation to be able to partake in, and they can do it in one singular location. And that came out in this sort of broad desire of a variety of indoor recreation opportunities. The the dry recreation programs that were prioritized were indoor court space, open access cardio and strength training, weight lifting, dedicated indoor track, and, indoor field sports. And so while you guys have the Hansen Sports Complex, which is incredible, some folks felt like that wasn't enough to meet the demand and and they're running sort of peak to peak hours right now. So, again, a a consistent desire for recreation and aquatics across the respondents, a consistent desire for flexible spaces for event spaces for youth oriented programs, accessible spaces, and, again, spaces for the whole family. And then the other really big takeaway is people want it close to home. Recreation center that's within a ten to fifteen minute drive. There are some communities that are smaller and further out in the counties who recognize they might have to drive a little bit further. But for the most part, access accessibility and drive time was a big priority for folks. So as we looked at the market analysis and we looked at the responses to the survey, we're recommending sort of a couple of key components. One is the county does need a new aquatic center now, and ultimately, two aquatic centers will be needed to serve the the indoor recreation needs of the community. You have one ice sheet now. Again, it's very well utilized. Ultimately, that should also expand to provide two ice sheets. These are facilities that are hard to locate in every community within the county. And so it's important to know that the ice sheet next to the existing ice sheet to take advantage of efficiencies of operations. And the aquatic centers will talk about how those might be distributed within the county in our options. The other thing that is just a point of professional recommendation and alignment with what we heard in the survey and the market analysis is that all new any new community recreation center needs a baseline of services. So it would need a minimum of two to three courts, multi sport courts that could be used for basketball, pickleball, volleyball, whatever that need may be. If you wanna host tournaments, that number goes up to four courts. Every facility needs an indoor walking and jogging track, specifically for the long winter months. And every facility needs space for open fitness and it weight equipment and cardio equipment equipment as well as group fitness studios. Those are those those, amenities, one, that were desired and two, that hit somebody at every point in a in their generation or in their household. And then a party room or a community room and, of course, administration and locker rooms. So we're kind of looking at a a bare minimum of a 40,000 square foot facility wherever you put a recreation center, and then that might grow to 70,000 square feet as we add aquatics or specialty components to that. So that's sort of a basis of our conversation as we now dive into our geographic distribution options.

Alright. And I will speak to that. Again, Nathan Levitt with VCPU Architecture. Glad to be with you all tonight. So how does geography play into where these facilities are, placed and how they're funded and the money that takes to construct them and, and potentially, how do we divide the county into, areas of of of of basically funding these facilities. And we've looked at several different options. Tonight, we're gonna present three options. I'm gonna start with, basically, what you have today. This is the current situation in Cache County. So when you spoke about the the facility in in Logan, North Logan in Smithfield, and if we leave it up if we leave it to the current trajectory, you're going to end up with facilities that are built by cities all up and down the Cache Valley. So those facilities, you have in any of these schemes, you should be thinking about this. The more facilities you have, the more overall construction cost that the citizens of Cache County will have to bring and and the more operational cost to run all these facilities. And when these cities build these smaller facilities, they're going to have to maybe not address all of the wants and desires of their citizens. They're not gonna be able to build a large enough facility to take all that all those amenities into account. So moving forward here, we've we're gonna present three different options tonight. Option one is a county wide option. This is an option where you build up a large facility central to the, the the county, which is probably near Logan. This would be a big facility, but yet one facility gains you that, construction and operational efficiency. You know, know, it's gonna cost the county less overall to build this. But to manage this this facility, we really see this as a county managed facility. This is a county solution. There you would provide it for the the citizens of the cities of the county. Option two would be moving into recreation districts. And in this option, you have two districts, a north and a south. Here you would build facilities you know, in the northern area, in the southern area of the county. The drive times that Whitney spoke about would be less. The distribution is better. You have more facilities, so you have more operational cost, more construction cost. And the negative here is that Logan, in this scenario, is split right down the middle. We have that funding problem. Option three solves that by adding a third district. This would be, having Logan itself be that third district. So you would end up with three different districts that built three different facilities. You would have better distribution to the the population centers of the county. And, of course, I've already spoken to about the construction cost and the operational cost. But, as we see it, these are the three most favorable solutions. A county wide run let me go to the next slide. County a county wide run facility, a central facility, or splitting the counties or splitting the county up into recreation districts that would operate these facilities. So I guess tonight is a part of the study, so we can wrap up the study or start wrapping it up. We'd like to know and maybe not it's not tonight, but eventually, we need to know how does the county stand on what your preference for these options would be? Is the county interested in running a a recreation program, or would you prefer it be something that the the cities and a and a district would district would run instead? For that, do y'all have any questions?

I don't have any questions.

Got a couple. You did the study for the Provo Rec District as well? We did. How would you respond to someone that says rec centers are just a money drain and a terrible waste of money,

looking at Provo as an example? So so Provo is an incredible example, and admittedly a little bit of an anomaly. Provo is one of the few community recreation centers that not only breaks even but makes a little bit of money. And the benefit that Provo has admittedly is they have BYU students that use the Provo Rec Center and that purchase passes for that recreation center and so that really boosts their membership. But they also program it like crazy. And I think based off of the steering committee that we've been working with here in Cache County, you have very active and engaged recreation staff across your communities. And whatever facilities are constructed in the county would be programmed like crazy and would be really well utilized, and those programs help it come in and break even. Aquatics is always the tricky wicket when it's the most expensive to operate and the hardest to get to pay for itself. And so that's where a next step of this study is to do an operational analysis. For the most desired. But the most desired also is to do an operational analysis and see where those dollars coming in and expenditures going out would be impacted based off of the preferred alternative.

Other question about administration. Are there examples where there's a county or an area larger than a county that's still managed by a district? Or is if it's county wide, does it automatically defer to the county being responsible for the management?

We've talked about this a little bit. I I think that you could have a district that is the size of the county that that covers the entirety of the county. I think there are communities that might be hesitant to join that district based off of what we've heard from the survey and the desire for closer access and, maybe more sense of control, if you will, over what amenities are provided and where the facility is located. I think you could do a county wide one. I think it would be hard to do that as a district with the current

what we've heard from our steering committee. I don't believe there is a district that covers an entire county in the state of Utah. That I'm aware of. That we're aware of. Yeah.

K. Yeah. I grew up in a state that had a parks and rec district larger than a county, and all the parks were managed that way. So I I was just curious about that. Say, I think you can do it. We just don't see it as often. And then what kind of staff would we be looking at to to man something like a county wide rec center?

So if you did the one big rec center, it would be a larger SAP because it would be quite a large facility. I don't know the exact count on that. Yeah. Just a rough estimate on Yeah. I mean, you would probably have at least five full time staff plus a a lot of part time staff. Did and did you put costs in here? We will. Yeah. Okay. It's not the next step. Okay. With the preferred alternative, we'll we'll put that in. But as you add more and more facilities, you have to start duplicating

staff types. Right. Because there's some redundancy in here.

K. Anybody else wanna speak up? Or we appreciate all the work that you've done. I know that we've spent RAPS Committee money to

authorize this study, and so we'll be anxious to see the next step of which map to I do. I yeah. I would like to know the next steps. Like Mhmm. So now we are presented with this. So now what comes next? So what we need to do now is we need to hone in on our preferred alternative. What we've heard from the steering committee to date is that option two or three is preferred over option one right now. We wanted to share this with the county council to see if you had any differing opinions the steering committee or any perspective that you'd like to add to that. With the preferred alternative and admittedly, option three is preferred over option two because it helps put Logan in one piece and Logan residents in one piece. But as Nathan was saying, it does spread the dollars across three facilities, which then increases maybe the household cost or impact for rec access to recreation. So our next steps are to do that, operational analysis and to talk create sort of an architectural concept of what each of those facilities might look like, how much site they would need, things like that to help, implementation moving forward. And then the final step once we have a preferred alternative architectural concepts and and operational analysis is we would do a statistically valid voter survey to see if the voters would be comfortable moving forward with something if it were.

And what is the time frame for that? So, like, if this were to go on the ballot,

I mean It would have to be be '28? So it gets complicated if you're looking at recreation districts versus account like, if the county were doing it Mhmm. As an entity that we're going out for a property tax increase through a bond Mhmm. Then that could happen as soon as '26 with the data. If it is recreation districts, then it takes time to form the districts Mhmm. To figure out who's involved with them. And so the district formation, at best, would be '26, and then the recreation center bond would be '27

election. You could do it in '27? Oh, I thought I had okay.

Yeah. I wanna offer a perspective on option three as well because I think without costs and understanding, particularly, the redundancy like, I would choose option three as well. For example, I play hockey and some of our games are at 10:30 at night. So I very much agree with what you're saying that a second sheet of ice would be nice. I don't have to stay up till 12:30 doing that. If you just ask me, would I like a ice sheet within a quarter mile of my house and I could play at eight, the answer would be a resounding yes. If that question was posed as it's gonna cost you twice as much to have to to be able to save that time? And or do you wanna drive the three and a half miles and play late at night? Just then that's that's a different question entirely. And the reason I bring that up is because I don't know if you've seen this in your outreach, but in mine, the distance to driving is almost always the top listed concern. Mhmm. And I feel like there needs to be some context to that question.

I think that's a really great point.

And so we'll work through getting high level cost for all three of these, and then we'll do a deep dive into the preferred Yeah. I think that would it doesn't have to be exact just Yeah. So people understand the trade off. Because any service we get, we're always making a trade off. We pay money, we get service. It's a spectrum. Where are we on the spectrum?

the mean was about $15 a month, which was surprising for us.

It to put that in perspective, our $20,000,000 bond for open spaces, I think, for a household that's worth half $1,000,000 is about 10 to $12 a year, I wanna say. So I think that gives you some room to

So that's that's it easily would fund option one. It it absolutely could fund two. Option three will be a stretch for that. And that's the challenge that we're going to get to is as we start, as Nathan was saying, to duplicate the areas and the services, we need to do that. And the other the other thing to take into consideration with this plan is that these also could be phased. So right now, based on our market analysis, the community can absolutely support two recreation centers. And a third one as you grow into 20 supported. And so that also this is kind of one of the challenging pieces with this. In an ideal world, you would start with option two and then work towards option three. Like, you start with two facilities and build out towards the third. But with a recreation district, that's really challenging because you need to set your districts in your tax base sooner rather than later. Well, that seems the complication of Mhmm. County ran facility, but yet you're in districts. So So I think in option two and three, they would be district run as well. They'd be district funded, district operated.

Which adds a lot of complexity getting there. Correct. Yep.

administer it and everything. So, Whitney, as as you guys move into the next phase and you're talking about actual costs, I don't know if this has been I I think we've talked about this in one of the steering committee meetings, option of starting with just a huge building with courts and indoor facilities and then get that going and then maybe move to a pool or the aquatics or the things that are more expensive. And maybe maybe in phases, the community would be more willing to fund that. There's there's a place we can go to do all of our indoor activities, but we don't have a pool yet or we don't have an ice sheet yet and and kind of give maybe those options as part of of what is presented when you do the costs. Sort of a growth analysis. Yeah. I don't know if that would be I don't know what a difference that would make or if that's even a wise way to look at it, but

that was just a thought that I had had had. Because isn't the pool that by far the largest expense? Yeah. An ongoing expense.

Could I ask for Please. A couple of Yes. For financial

elements. Yes, please.

I'd I'd like to know what the operating costs going forward are. We tend to bond for a facility, but my experience with facilities is the cost that you put into the initial facility doubles when you run it for twenty years. That's the big cost. And the lifespan of a facility is such that you have to literally replace both elements of the facility periodically. So I'd like to see what that cost looks like, And I guess I'd also like you to project the operational cost with appropriate escalators as to the cost. I mean, I'd really like to look at the twenty to twenty five year cost as to what we would expect budget wise going forward. The last thing I'd like to see, and I really haven't ever been able to get this data, and that is with respect to recreational centers that are successful, like the one in Bountiful and some of the programs in Provo. What percentage of the citizens actually use the facility to that extent. And that that what I'd like to see is an actual study, not a projection, but take an example where a city has built what you're recommending to us and and have and and honestly, I I distrust some of the data that comes out of the recreational center. I'd like an audit of the facility as to how many people are actually participating in the programs in the facility.

We will do our best. What we would Is there any data you can We have we do. So we have some national data. We don't have facility specific data without requesting it from those facilities. And so we have great relationships with recreation centers across the state, and we would be happy, to your point,

a great difference between people's perception of how much facilities are used, what the facilities report their use is, and the actual use.

Right. We can get we can get national data as from a utilization

perspective. Data is even worse than local. Yeah.

We all know that. Yeah.

Produced by people who are in favor of recreational centers. I'd like to see Sure. An audit of of what actual youth patterns are. What percentage of our citizens are going to use the recreational center? Center. Now I'm I'm sure that families with children that are gonna participate in in swimming and basketball, all those things, that's the kind of thing that we're we're willing to to go out for. But we'd like to know how much participation we're reading in. Yeah. Okay.

We'll do our best to find data.

You trust. Andrew has a question. Yes. So in the options where there are either two or three, I guess, even in the Keegan's potential idea of having a county wide recreation district, I would assume it would be given by the board. Correct? Right. Okay. So in that case, would the board members be independently elected by the electorate? Would they just be appointed by the county council? Would it be a mixed

composition? Is it flexibility with that? It's a great question, and that city. Yeah. Appointed by each city to serve in that position. And so I there are a lot of different ways you could do it, but that is a common way. And if if it were to be county wide and a recreation district, that's where the complexity comes in is how do you then determine the board. Yeah.

Thank you, sir. So the establishment, all all of these include an aspect of a district?

Option one, we would love we would recommend that it be a county facility versus a district.

A district gets complex at that scale. K. But the others It would be the district. When the district is formed Mhmm. Then you give them taxing authority.

The public does by forming the district. Right. But they'll have taxing authority.

Yes. We'll go through a truth and taxation, but they will have taxing authority.

It becomes a special district or a special service district depending on the approach. Ouch.

Mhmm.

Which I hear you all have been having great conversations around. Yeah.

Yeah. K. Any other questions? I I know this is just where we are in this phase and that there's more information to come. We really appreciate you coming and Well, you you had a request from us. Right? Yes. We have we have financial

details. Timeline on them. We're gonna get that to them. Yeah. I think mine came with a contingency of the pricing. But I'd say probably between one and three, if I'm just speaking for myself. And I I would anticipate three will be considerably more expensive than one. So probably one, but I would like to make that decision based on data.

Yeah. And, you know, one thing we've talked about in the steering committees is there are very robust recreation programs already existing in this valley with cities that have put it in their budget and they have staff. So I think you could build on that. They have some really good programs that could just be built out and other people you know, help to, contribute to without starting from scratch completely with all of it. So I I I would look forward to seeing, you know, that as part of the analysis too. Absolutely. Okay. I have a comment.

You talk about Logan being the center in one in these options. Mhmm. Well, Logan City ran a rec center for a number of years, and now they're out of the rec center business. Why do you think that that will be supported, you know, people

So as I understand it, and you guys probably know more than I do about about the history there, but one of the big challenges of Logan City's recreation center was that it was in the high school facility, and there was a conflict of time of use and need of the space that was beginning to limit Logan City Recreation's ability to offer programs in that space. And there's also security concerns and space concerns coming from the school district. And so they decided to, no longer have the recreation center ultimately in that facility. And so I think the question then becomes is how do they now make up for the recreation that they've now lost in that facility that they've lost? So they had a great partnership. That partnership has dwindled, and now they're looking at what do they do next to serve that need. So the

to and correct me if I'm wrong. The next step would be to find property or whatever to house a new facility. And so now we're looking at extra expense for property and different things like that. So that's something we need to look at too. That is one of the key cost considerations

is, what properties and we've started an analysis of, you know, what properties are available publicly that could be used to support this versus if property would have to be purchased. You're absolutely right.

Thank you. There I noticed you have three options, but there should be fourth option too, shouldn't there? Tell me. Shouldn't there be like a fourth? Have you just thrown that one completely out? Have you even thought about saying no? No recreation? Okay. I'm just saying now hang on. Okay. I'm saying no and let economics let the private world just take care of things. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. You know, an option that I mean, you're giving us the council to say this is what we're gonna what what what if I'm not in favor of any of those? So You're not giving me an option. One of the things that we heard from our community survey

is that the folks who responded and, again, it wasn't a a statistically valid. It was a self selected survey. But the, you know, 10,000 plus communities members that responded wanted some form of public indoor recreation. And so I think with the exception of between 36% of of the respondents, the what we heard resoundingly from that survey is that there is a desire and a need for something that is missing in the community today. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to implement any of these.

As a county, you can say It's still a low percentage of people that have responded compared to the, you know, the number of people here in the county. And, you know, the number of people here in the county. And, you get that the low numbers that responded. I just I think when you start putting the dollars down there, and you start really getting down to the brass tacks of this, I think that people are gonna say, are you willing to have put out the money to build the facility and and then maintain it and, you know, constant costs. I mean, I'm I'm being the devil's advocate on this, but there ought to be a fourth option. Well, I think that's the whole point of the serve of this Always a good point. Paying for this is to collect that information to give them, to empower them. Well, I don't wanna just take three options to the voter.

The we will absolutely ask them in that survey if they're not in support of any of any county funded or or broadly supported public recreation.

Yeah. To speak to that too, I think we I mean, in a way, we are letting the market decide because the voters voted for a RAPS tax, and we've voted by being their representatives to do this study. Yeah. We received a study from a professional organization that's done this before, and we can We do have the prerogative to ignore the What the RAPS tax is for, and ignore the recommendations of experts to study this issue. Like, that's always an option. I don't know if it's a wise one, but I think we should really give this some consideration. And I think at the end of the day, the voters will still have the opportunity to determine if they wanna bond to this. And and again, that's letting the market decide. But I think in order to get there, we need to narrow it down and say, this is the type of facility you get. This is how much it costs. This is the ongoing maintenance cost. This is what the estimated twenty to twenty five year things. This is how much it is per person when you go and visit. And then I think, you know, they can make a decision eyes wide open, but I think to not even give that give them the option to make that decision would be shortsighted.

Catherine? Yeah. How is this how are you working in conjunction with, like, the South End Of The Valley has been doing their own study, and I know you mentioned in the beginning that some communities are working towards that and we don't want to

So the work that's been done on this Perfect. The South Side Of The Valley was ahead of the county study and then paused to see what the county study would Mhmm. Recommend to make sure that they weren't working in conflict Mhmm. With the outcome of the study. And so right now, the as I understand it, there is a discussion around interest in forming a recreation district on the South Side Of The Valley. If the the county study comes out and says, you know, the recommendation is one facility, those communities that are considering a recreation district will have to decide if they want to continue in that direction or work in conjunction with the county. So ultimately, if there were one, they could They could decide that,

So ultimately, if there were one, they could They could decide that decide to form their own and then not be part of the taxing entity of the recreation district.

Yes. Yeah. If I understand districts correctly, I think that is how it goes. Probably, but yes. Like, Nibley could opt in, but Millville could opt out. Is that what you're saying? If it were a district. If it were a district. Right. If it were a district, absolutely. If it's a county bond, then everyone's in. Yeah. And I just wanna like, I've been in several of the meetings with Whitney and the group doing this and you guys are doing a thorough job that we took our RAPS money and hired you to do that. I want to clarify as you say the county option, talking about Cache County as a geographical area, not county government. Like, we've made that really clear that that might that it's not gonna be an option. Like, there is one of the options, but that's not the only option is that the county government fund all of this in some way. It's we are talking about the whole residents of Cache County. And and I just wanna make that because I that's been very clear in all the studies that it recreation districts, if they if we formed recreation districts, they would they would function independently of the county government. And that's it's not the it's not like that's the only option is that the

like that's the only option is that the county Option one looks like it Well, option one would be yes. Option one would be yes. Yep. The other two options. Which is which is my preference if you wanna I'm telling you right now,

would be districts. It's it's gonna be it's gonna be, like, a runoff here. Uh-huh. Well, we're just I'm just anxious to see the numbers that come in to support all these, and then we can take that to the voters. And it'll be really up to the voters to decide.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate all of your work. Hey. All right. Matt, are you gonna where's Matt? Were you gonna talk about the Alma said you would present the results of our CDBG study, item 60 that we added to our agenda.

Is it in here?

Yes. It is. It's under six it's under seven b two.

Are are you referring to the the

The CDBG ranking that we did? It's gonna be really simple. We just need to present that. Or, like, the fire apparatus and Yeah. Whatever. I can't see it. Where is it on here? They're already doing it. Seven b two is is budget. He, he did not discuss that with me. I'm sorry. It was there. Okay. Then,

I he So you said negative survey two ARPA? Do you see the Had discussed Well, I say it's 60. Yep. Sorry. That's in some of the the ARPA money that hadn't been spent and didn't appear Sorry. Some of the the ARPA money that hadn't been spent and didn't appear like it was headed in that direction. He you had asked him to prepare a memo. This this is for the CDBG.

Community block grant. Yes. The community the community development block grants. We were we were brought several ideas. We as a council ranked those and just and the results of that are that our front line fire apparatus was our number one ranking and right closely behind that was the two meals on wheels trucks for the senior center. The election center, the airport needs 88 bathrooms. That was third place. And then the fourth one, the senior split unit, Alma just told me that that does not qualify for the CDBG grant application, so that one won't even be considered. So, those will be the three priorities that we as a county, those those applications will go to the state and the state will decide. We don't really have to decide. But those how that's how we ranked our support and our priority. And so that we just wanted to make sure everybody knew that. Does the election center have restrooms or just not ADA compliant? Yeah.

From the eighties, not the current ones. Yeah. He attached to his spatula.

Yeah.

They need work. K. Gotcha. So you're working to get that application in through Bragg. Maybe you should attach pictures to the application. Yeah. I asked how much I assumed. It always goes well. Okay. Alright. Does anybody have any questions about those rankings? I'm sure you all help fill those out. Okay. Alright. Initial proposals for consideration of action. We have the ordinance twenty twenty five dash 41, the county treasurer compensation correction. I think that one's easy. We had already discussed that. I would entertain a motion. Move to suspend the rules

and pass ordinance twenty twenty five dash 41, county treasurer's compensation correction.

Second. It's been moved and seconded that we approve that we is is it approved? That we pass? The rules. So we suspend the rules. Incorrect. We pass ordinance twenty twenty five dash 41. Is there any further discussion? Yes. Those in favor say aye. Well, you have further discussion. Any further discuss? I looked right at you and walked right past you. Sorry.

Just wanna know if that was budgeted. Yes. It was. Yes. It was. Yeah. I think the numbers were like one twenty one to one thirty two. Yeah. It's what we had already passed. It was just a correct Just that was the only thing. K.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Eight b, ordinance 2025 dash '42, county council leadership election and succession plan amendments. Andrew, you're gonna present that to us? This has been through OMP. Correct? Correct.

Good evening, council. The ordinance before you came as a request to clarify and add some, I guess, procedural redundancy when it comes to leadership election for this body. So in this proposal, it would just be amending Cash County code. So first off, I should start with the county optional plan clarifies that what is called the parliamentary authority or basically what rules you run by is the most recent version of Robert's Rules of Order generally. And as I have been also reading Robert's Rules of Order, trying to get some understanding on this subject, it actually provides in section 56, paragraph 23, it says, every deliberative body should specify in its bylaws the officers it requires, including honorary ones, and how they should be elected or appointed. And currently in county code, it just says the Cache County Council shall elect a chairperson and a vice chairperson. Doesn't provide for the method or procedure of election. So this proposal would essentially require that it would go through the following process. Let me pull it up. The proposal says, at the first regular meeting of the county council, the outgoing chairperson or chair pro tem shall open the floor for nominations for the position of the council chairperson county council, with the consent of the nominated council member and then closed nominations once a reasonable amount of time for nominations has been made available. Basically, first off, there has to be a nomination period. A person is nominated. They have to accept. Once that has concluded, there can be discussion or debate afterwards if anyone requests it. After that, voting shall occur by roll call vote, unless otherwise by a vote of acclamation. If, for example, there's only one nominee for chair and no one opposes it, you would have a vote of acclamation. If there were two, you decide between the two. If there were two or more, however, you would go between successive rounds until one receives a majority. And then after the election of the chair, the same procedure would be used for the election vice chair. That was the spelling out of the procedure of election. There was also something that was missing that can be found in some other county codes In this proposal, it provides for the in the event of an unexpected vacancy in the position of the council chairperson, the vice chair chairperson shall assume the title of acting chairperson until the next election of a council chairperson. The first item of business at the next county council meeting shall be the election of a new chairperson, in accordance with the provisions here in. And it provides also that should there be a simultaneous vacancy in both the chair and vice chair positions, the county council should is required to call a special meeting to elect a chair and vice chair. Do you guys have any questions? Did I I I know that was a lot of procedural stuff, but

I have a question. Maybe this is just we could do in our ordinance or when we pass this. There's some inconsistencies with gender. Sometimes they're referred to as they and sometimes referred to as he. Maybe we could just clean that up in talking about

in sections a, b, and c. Mhmm. Yeah. That is from the original version of county code, but if you guys would motion to have general gender neutral language,

that's Yeah. That would yeah. It's just inconsistent. So I would like to include that prop is what makes motion. Couple

questions on my side too. So it sounded like when I read over the ordinance that the chair would be elected and then immediately after that successful election, the chair would make the motion for the nomination. The new chair would make the nomination for the vice chair. Is that accurate?

No. It would be just that the chairperson then assumes presiding over the meeting. Then after that, anyone can nominate.

Okay. And then the other question is I think last time we made a motion to nominate the chair and the vice chair as a As as a single motion? Yes. So under this, we wouldn't do it that way. Yeah. So in my research, it is actually more common to have separate nominations and separate elections for the vice for the chairperson and vice chairperson.

But, again, that's ultimately up for you guys to decide if that does. Less confusing. Yeah. I agree. And you have to

Sandy. Yes.

The nomination does not require a second. Is that correct?

It requires the Shit.

My my Roberts was ordered, shit. You didn't require you didn't require But the consent of the nominated council member

Just a nomination? Yeah. You have to have a nomination to council member and then that council member has to accept. But no no. But no second? No second? That's usually the nomination from the floor. In a way, they're seconding by accepting a nomination. Right?

No.

I'm okay with can be a rule that we impose. But I I don't I'm not I'm okay with not having a second because I think that your vote will be like, that kind of assumes that your what your vote is at the very beginning rather than just voting as a group. Yeah.

I don't know. So then if there's multiple then it would be roll call and Yeah. Yeah.

That's how it would be determined. Put your head down and make sure

K.

Well, yes. So basically, what this kinda spells out what we've been doing, but we've just been doing a little bit of cake and Yes. This way, it would be a little bit more structured and ordered. I should've taken the fun out of all this.

I was gonna say it's a little painful to watch from back here having it all play out in front of me, and I can do nothing about it. So I guess this is maybe me trying to impose some order on you guys. We're still gonna try to go rogue. I don't know.

Okay.

I like it. Alright. Does anyone want to suspend the rules and make a motion on this, or do we wanna give it another We need to clean up the language. Yeah. I wanna suspend the rules. There are otherwise

the chair and the vice chair have to be a male. That's true. We gotta really clean that up. From that, you said. Catherine. They need to change that. Yeah. If you would like In the in my motion, I would like to We could pass it with those general Yeah. With gender neutral.

Yep. He or she's Yeah. Pronounced. They. Or they. They.

They. Yeah. K. So, yeah, I'm I'm I moved to suspend the rules and pass the resolution ordinance 2025 dash 42 with, the amendments making all of the pronouns gender neutral.

I'll second that.

K. It's been moved and seconded that we suspend the rules and pass ordinance twenty twenty five dash 42 with the aforementioned amendment. Is there any further conversation?

As long as Andrew is in charge of the pronouns, not Dave. Yeah.

Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you, Andrew. Alright. Item eight c, the approving and adopting the Cache County budget. I think we're pretty certain that we're not ready to do that. Should we That's the next week. Continue that. Do we wanna discuss it at all or kinda like

We sure can. Yeah. I think what let's see who made that comment. This the gentleman that just left. Mitch, I think, Mitch Lancaster was his name. He just he mentioned on a high level kind of what our guiding philosophies are on the budget. And if anyone's willing to share that, I would be interested. That would help me kinda know where other people are on things. And I I'm willing to share my philosophy.

I'll share what I think about the senior center because I know that's been a peripheral debate on all this. I just I I have spent a lot of time there, and I spent time out delivering meals on wheels to people who are home bound and in pretty dire circumstances and I think as a county I am I personally am really glad that we support the senior center and I think we should continue to do that. That is one of my priorities. I feel like there are lives that are saved by those meals and by those visits where people nobody is aware of how bad things are until someone comes to visit them and some of those people don't have any other visitors except the Meals on Wheels. And so that's one of my priorities and my philosophies.

I think also in further, if I may add on to what you're saying, in further investigation on that, the money has been maximized by matching it with lots of federal grants and opportunities by staff. And and this is one of the vehicles through the county, to be able to to use those funds. And and I feel like they've the staff has done, a really commendable job of researching and finding those those funds, and and we are the the proper vehicle to be able to use those funds.

I'm very much in favor of maintaining the Meals on Wheels. The other aspects, we should not I think that we do have some double double taxation issues there because there are other cities that are providing senior citizen programs for their cities. And I think that our this one here in Logan, because of that that that distance from so many other places. I I think maybe if we're gonna fund it, we ought to be sending money to the other places too. So but I'm very much in favor of the what Mills on Wheels is a huge, huge yeah. It it does have a huge impact on a lot of people.

Anybody else wanna respond to Keegan?

My response would be is I'd like to take a time and sit back and say, what is coming at the county in the future? Mhmm. So that we understand I mean, it's been said what's statutory and what are we gonna have to do. Well, we're looking at a fire district. What is that gonna bring to us and all of these other things? So I don't know how we begin to do that, but I think that's an important part of aligning what's down the road and how we meet that given what we know now and plan for.

And understand those things before we start assessing some of those that are wants versus needs. That's why. Yeah. And understand those things before we start assessing some of those that are wants versus needs. Yeah. That's why. And versus needs.

That's where I'm hoping to get a value from. Because we know we've proposed a tax increase, but, I wanna be careful and watch that going down the road because the the wants are gonna add to that, possibly. The needs are definitely gonna add to that. And so I hope we have an understanding of what we're looking at down the road. Call that long term understanding, whatever else you say. But to me, I think there needs to be an understanding of what's coming at us, and are we ready for it? That's my outlook.

I know you mentioned I'm

I'm very much interested in continuing to move forward with the effort to, provide top level service for the things the county must do and the things the county chooses to do. And also, kinda teased at this at the COSAC meeting last week. I'd also really like to find a way to help strengthen the relationship with the municipalities and foster that partnership of local government working together so that, you know, the cities aren't county do with all that money? Give it to them.

Sometimes they ask for it. Sure.

I've been asked by a lot of people, why don't why don't we make some cuts? And so I I think I just wanna put on the record that anyone in the public has access to this information. Executive budget's been cut. You know, a position was eliminated. You look at the clerk, that budget has been reduced. Positions were eliminated there. A recorder budget has been cut. There was another one on here that I saw. Attorneys. Attorneys. Yeah. Well, it went from 3.64 to 3.48. That positions were eliminated there too. So, like, I think there might be a narrative going around that, like, why don't we just cut stuff? Like cuts are and have happened Mhmm. To the depth of personnel. So it's not that that's not being looked at. That is being looked at. I think we wanna as Mark alluded to, I think we wanna find the balance, and what I alluded to, and I appreciate the gentleman that reminded me of my own words, of we want to, you know, see what people value. And if people are willing to pay for it and want to pay for it and have told us that they are okay being taxed with it, for example, with the Open Spaces Bond, then I think we find ourselves in an arrogant position if we say, no. We need to protect you from yourself, and deprive you of a service that you're willing to pay for. So in the context of a library, I don't think I've heard anyone address that specifically, but I've had several people say that they wanna keep it. They've come in person to a meeting. They've Several have said that they're even okay being double taxed, so I'm very hesitant to cut anything on the library. I would be more open to reallocating the library budget to, push closer to a county wide program. So, I'll just maybe show my hand a little bit, and say that that's something I'm gonna be very reluctant to cut and averse to when it comes time to discuss that component of the budget.

Thanks, Keaton. Barbara, did you wanna say something? No. Okay. Okay. We have a lot this next week. I hope that everybody's digging into the the budget that we have, and we'll get some more information from that by the end of this week so that about some changes and then come prepared next Tuesday. We need to make a final vote on the on the county budget, so we need to make that happen. Okay. We'll continue that one. So number D, the budget opening amendment resolution twenty twenty five-forty four. To have any questions about that, wanna discuss that more, or ready to make a motion on that?

I

felt like it was pretty straightforward. So I'd make a motion that we suspend the rules and pass resolution 20, adopt resolution twenty twenty five dash 44 for the budget amendment for 2025.

Second.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we suspend the rules and pass resolution 2025. Is it adopt or pass? A resolution? You said adopt. I said adopt. Okay. We adopt resolution twenty twenty five-forty four, the budget opening amendment for the 2025 county budget. Is there any further discussion? K. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Chief George. Sorry. It's been a while. Thank you for being patient with us.

Welcome. Brady George, fire chief, Cache County. So the the first of these is an interlocal agreement between the district board and the Cache County to start that transition towards more of that elected board and to move authority for making some of the decisions towards the district in that process. These were common practice for the county up until 1995 when the last one expired, but we've continued to operate as if this was in place all of that time. The language for this interlocal agreement is very, very close to the one from 1991 to 1995 with a few exceptions in kind of the timeline elements that are outlined in there for what the district will do, which is attempt to transition to an elected board, begin to evaluate the taxation piece within that process. The other pieces that are different in this from that last one is some of the things that the county will do, which is if those other things fall into place and the district is able to establish that electric board, begin the taxation process, and actually have a consistent revenue stream that the county would then begin to transition its personnel and assets towards the district to continue to fulfill that mission. Those are the the big highlights in this one. If if there are questions, I'm happy to answer that. There's also two fire district board members here that could help facilitate that conversation as well.

Does anybody have questions for chief George? I actually would like to see a redlined version of this that that outlines the exact changes you're talking about. It's hard for me to say to to identify and quantify. So I think I would be my vote would be to maybe continue this till next week and see if we can and just give us a chance to look at a red line version of it.

Compared to the the 1991?

The '95 yeah. The '91, '95. You're talking about there's some just some specific changes. I'd like to see those.

Yeah. Well, that one had been kind of void for so long, but we just continue to operate that way. When the board looked at this, we didn't compare it as a red line, but I can work with Eric to to generate that. Well, that's true. It's not even in effect anymore. Yeah. We kind of just started Started from scratch. Since it was 35

years old or something. Okay.

I'm I'm gonna defer to the two members of our body who are on that board and helped to craft this then. Yeah. I I think that we've had

as a the board, we reviewed it. All the members of the board reviewed it, and we had, both our legal counsel that we've contracted with as a board as well as the county, legal department. So k. I feel like it covers both the county and and the board sufficiently.

And it talks to four years in here, you on the fire board. Are you comfortable with that? Is it too long, too short? What's your thoughts there?

I mean, on the fire board, I feel like we're moving so slowly because we wanna be very methodical about this. I mean, we don't wanna rush anything because we wanna make sure we respect all of the the different fire departments, and and we don't want anybody to so I feel fine with it. Again, I think we can

we can renew things. We can Yeah. I I I don't I don't feel like I have a problem with the four years. The four year term that was set with the interlocal was based around kind of the timelines that that Bryson actually helped us to look at for that possible transition to an elected board. That would take about four years to actually be able to get to the taxation point on that if that was their choice at that time. And so this aligned with that, and it also gave enough leeway to say, if we don't achieve that, we now have the opportunity as the county to either re up on this same thing and and create a new four year or to renegotiate the pieces of this that

we didn't meet the requirements during the time frame. Is that How many are you looking at being elected on the board? Do you have an idea on that? That's in the next ordinance. Five. That's in the next ordinance. Okay. I was wondering too because

The second one. Yep.

So my point would be, I guess, did we choose five because that's how the district works as far as separating Logan out because they have their own fire? Exactly. So that was So we're looking at the municipalities, and that's why we dropped to the five

versus the seven districts. Two in the North, two in the South, and one at large. Yep. K. Yeah.

There's four districts, and then you have three districts in Logan, so you separate those three out, then the four plus one at large. K.

K. Any other questions or comments? Excuse me. I would entertain a motion then.

Well, I I would move to suspend the rules and pass resolution twenty twenty five dash 45 at the Cache County Fire Protection District interlocal agreement.

Second. K. It's been moved and seconded that we suspend the rules and pass resolution twenty twenty five dash 45, Cache County Fire Protection District interlocal agreement. Is there any further discussion?

Just the comment that I'm super grateful for this the effort of the committee to move this forward and for the county's effort in addressing an inequitability that the district resolves. This is a great thing for the county.

My opinion. Thank you. We're getting there.

Yeah. It's not over. We're getting there. K. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye. Any opposed? K. Move on to the next one.

The next one we discussed just a little bit. So it transitions the board from a seven person board with three that are point well, two appointed from the county council, the county executive, and then four mayors, two from the North End, two from the South End, which are all appointed through the county executive as well, to a five person elected board with the four being from the county council districts that are not within Logan's boundaries. We double checked with Bryson as well as Carrie with GIS to confirm that those boundaries do align with the borders of Logan, and they do. And then the at large would be from anyone, within the district, which would still exclude Logan residents from that process. They would be a offset cycle. First time through, they would all come through, but two of the five would only serve a two year term and then they would go back to serve that four year term as before. The other piece that's in the bylaw changes in this process is that the chair that would be elected from the board itself would then be able to sign contracts on behalf of the board after, majority consent from the board members within the process. That's later down in there.

K. I think those are all really good.

One other final piece to this is once we if we receive consent from the council, this would then go back to the fire board to ratify. That meeting is tentatively scheduled for the sixteenth. Mhmm. And so it would require one additional vote to complete. It did come forward with a favorable vote from the fire board with unanimous during that meeting.

So I'm happy to answer any other questions there may be. And then maybe you could talk to the timeline why we're moving. It seems like we're moving quite quickly on this, but if you could speak to the timeline as to why we're moving so quickly. Yeah. So the special district elections fall within the even year cycle. So twenty six, twenty eight, thirty. Mhmm.

To get this through the process now, it would make this eligible to go onto the ballot in '26. We would have to make that notification by February. They'd announce their candidacy. Notice. So

we're all set. Okay. Declaration at the June.

Okay. So that's why we're moving. It seems quickly, but it it we've been very methodical as we've done

all of the bylaws. And I I would mention that this part might seem to be to be moving quickly, but, you know, this newly elected board, they will have to be able to levy a tax that would take place through the taxation 2027. First tax would be 2028. Yeah. The next revenue I should receive would be in January 2029.

Yeah.

And the bylaws have been, the work of of year plus. Right? So, I mean, it has been something that's been, worked on for some time.

K. If we're gonna since we are a district, we need to function like a true district.

Mhmm. That that's been one of the most challenging pieces of it. The taxation element was never addressed when the district was formed in '65. And so it's just been this this shared financial load by both municipalities and the county to cover that. And, obviously, that creates inequities within the system that this would begin to help remedy.

So Okay.

The the history of that, though, you still gotta go back to years ago, you had the county as it was passed, and why why there wasn't a lot of finances and and and money. It's because you had volunteerism peaking, and there were a lot of people involved in your participating. And so it kept costs way down. And so basically, the county just became almost the mechanism to oversee some things and to get some capital. You know, a new truck here and just try to look at it there. Yeah. And so, you are having to hire people. Yeah. And depleting fast,

and so you are having to hire people. Well, the nature Our clerk who runs elections doesn't know anything about that. Right. And the nature of people's employment has changed. Very much so. Because it used to be people work close to home, whether they were farming, and they were able to respond quickly, and and just as that's changed, we don't have that availability. So I mean, it's it's it's a multi

along to Mhmm. Effective And the amount of training and the amount of training that's required. Cost to that training is It is is just the changing of building materials. Right? I mean, All the things. Right? Everything. Since this is an item of consideration, I'm just gonna throw out something to consider that I'm either advocating for or against. But I know in Salt Lake County for the at large elections, their term is longer because they realize the cost to campaign county wide is more expensive. And the the time to understand the entire county's needs could take longer. So there's some built in, tenure with that For the at large individual? Term instead of a four, but throwing that out there.

Oh. What do you guys think that are on the fire board? I'll leave that up to the new fire district board. They can change the bylaws. They could change their own bylaws. I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good response. Interesting idea, but we'll yeah. I'd leave that Prizes me sometime. To new leadership.

K. Agreed.

Alright. Does anyone want to make a motion about this resolution? I move to

approve resolution twenty twenty five dash forty six approving the chart the change to an elected Cache County Fire Protection District Board of Suspend the rules. Suspend the rules. But and suspend the rules. And so do we.

I'll second.

K. It's been moved and seconded that we suspend the rules and pass resolution twenty twenty five dash 46. Is there any further discussion? Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Okay. I wanted to express appreciation to, Chief York. You guys worked on this and been a really good resource as as, you know, we've discussed things as it well, I don't know. What do you see? And he's been very helpful in helping us with it as a as a board. So really appreciate your help. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Hey, gee. Taylor.

Good evening, council. This is, the the exact carbon copy minus the dates and the names of the resolution we did last year and the year before, this premium pay for our special victims unit prosecutors. Now just to remind you, our special unit special victims unit prosecutors, they see and deal with the most heinous crimes that occur in our community. And, you know, I was thinking about it recently that it's a little bit different, you know, after a conversation with one of our medical examiners, you know, when they show up to something like this where you have a a dead body of, you know, young person, infants at times, the medical examiner says, well, I just show up and it's compartmentalized. I do my job. I gather evidence and then I stop thinking about it. The difference is prosecutors have to review that over and over and over internalize it think about it develop arguments for it talk about it at length with opposing counsel convince a jury often of what occurred. So that is a unique burden that is it's unique to prosecutors. Law enforcement doesn't necessarily see it the same way. They try and move on to the next one and it absolutely has a cost. And so, as you know, we are we try to rotate our attorneys through here and you can see that there has been a rotation. One of our attorneys left and one of our attorneys who was handling a general felony calendar has been rotated into that program. And so, we have that policy where we rotate our folks in and out to try and minimize that burden, But for the duration of that time that they are shouldering that burden, dealing with those heinous cases, we do want to make sure we retain these attorneys. It's a skilled job. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of specializing to know about how victims react, to deal with rapes, molestations, all these different counterintuitive victim behaviors. There's additional training that we send our attorneys to, crimes against women conference, crimes against children conference. So there is a specialized training and, so this premium pay, it's not nearly enough to, alleviate the the things that these people that these attorneys have to take home, but it is a tool that we can use to try and retain our attorneys, make it worthwhile, for these positions that are less than desirable but absolutely needed in our community.

So thanks, Taylor.

How many how many what's the case load typically like?

Each of our county each of our deputy attorneys, on average have between 60 and a 100 cases at any given time in a special of SBU? SBU cases each, and we have three attorneys on this. Oh. So they happen. It's very frequent.

Just Yeah.

Cache County is not the Happy Valley. It had it does have a seedy underbelly and there are absolutely vulnerable members of our community who go through some of the most horrific things you can imagine, even here in Cache County.

Translates to about $400 a month.

K. Anybody have any other questions for Taylor or comments?

Anybody want to make a motion on this? Yeah. I'll move to approve ordinance twenty twenty five dash three. Resilution.

I'll second. K. It's been moved and seconded that we suspend the rules and approve resolution twenty twenty five.

If I may Yes. I was gonna ask for a second. Do we change this? Like, do we evaluate and say, maybe the case load is increasing and we need to we need to make commissurate and with the amount that's paid.

I'm this is a relatively new program, started in 2023, something that we wanted to do to incentivize our folks. We have not evaluated the amount Mhmm. Recently adjusted it for inflation. As it becomes apparent that it's needs to be adjusted, we will bring that to you. Like, if the caseload becomes

heavier

with the SBA? Caseloads caseloads are increasing. They're overall nationwide, there's been a decrease in the general level of crime. But what we see is an increase in this type of crime. So the crimes may be less common, but when they do occur, it seems to me that they're becoming more heinous.

Okay. Thank you. Is there any further discussion?

So basically, this here is because it's already in your budget. Correct. And it's just approved because it is above the standard pay. Correct. And that's why we have to do that. The county council has to approve any pay beyond what I was gonna say, I I I I know it was in the budget.

Yeah. Yeah. It is in the budget, but this is just an extra check for the council to have For us allowing that budget to Correct. Like To have your finger on that pulse. Absolutely.

Anybody else? Okay. Moved and seconded that we approve resolution twenty twenty five-forty seven suspending the rules. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Pending action. Ordinance twenty twenty five-thirty six compensation of the Cache County Council Members. We have had many discussions about this. I don't know if anyone wants to make a motion. The the amount that was recommended by the compensation committee was to raise the pay to $45,000 a year, which would put us just under the median for the state. I think we've all discussed that that's not going to happen, but we need to settle an amount and we need to do it tonight so that we can put it into the budget for next week.

Sandy, I know we've we've discussed this ad nauseam. I would make a motion to set the Cache County salary at Cache County Council member's salary at 30,000 with the chair at a 20% increase, which would be 36,000 or 2025. Ordinance twenty twenty five dash 36.

K. We've got a motion. Does anyone wanna second that so that we can have further discussion?

K. I'd second the motion for purposes of discussion.

K. And we can second it. Let's have some discussion on that.

I'll I'll start. K. I think that, you know, the the initial recommendation of '45 was what we've all agreed was way was was beyond what we should do in a year like this and, you know, maybe even high for for what we should consider for for our function. But I appreciate the motion that was made being, yeah, even lower than what was presented in the documentation. Also, just because I think that helps us with navigating the a tough budget cycle. Also addressing something that, you know, where we are in a position with a lot of responsibilities and a lot of accountabilities and also a lot of obligation and time. I feel like it it's important for us to keep pace with some increase, but and so, anyway, I'm grateful that we've come down to where we are, and feel like that's that's the wise direction to be moving this conversation.

Thanks, Mark. Anybody else want to make, any discussion on that? Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we amend ordinance twenty twenty five-thirty six to read $30,000 salary for the council with 36 for the chair. If there's no further discussion, those in favor, say aye. Aye. Please.

I think that the chair deserves higher. Sandy has really put in a lot of work. She's on top of things. She advises us. And I think the chair deserves higher. And I think as a council member, we deserve higher too than 30 because, I don't know. I and I know I've said it a lot of times before, we're giving up a lot. Every time a special meeting is called or something is called, I have to rearrange everything clients, and I will say that they have been very understanding. But I I think that we really need to take a good hard look at this and realize that, you know, we we are worth something. Yes, we're public servants. Yes, we provide a lot of service. Yes, that, you know, we don't we will be under under market. That's okay too. But I really do think we need to take a good hard look and look at this a little bit higher than what it is right now. So I'm going to vote against the motion.

You could make a friendly amendment too if you wanted to do that. Something different. How do I make a friendly amendment?

And and I'll if I may explain why I I made the motion I made. In consideration for the budget the fiscal year that we're in and the the considerations of the budget, I think we have some steps to make in I mean, you and I are on the compensation committee. Amy did exhaustive work on it, and I feel like she presented us with some good facts. I think it's gonna be incremental. I think that we might have to do some small steps and looking at the increases that we've done and also the steps we've had to take with this budget, I think this is a step. And that's why I I I made the motion that I made. And

so that's that's why I'm justifying the motion that I made.

Can I can I balance Barb and say, I'll be the opposite? Say I I don't feel good about doing any increase in a year where we've increased taxes so much, and we're considering cutting budget for a senior center or library. I just can't, in good conscience, move forward on that.

Anybody else wanted to speak before we take a vote?

K. I I know what kind of hours you put in. You do. And, you seem like especially, it seems like the last few years, we've kind of been on call every second as as meetings have popped up, and you've we've had to run, and and legislatively down in the legislature. Spent a lot of time down there, working with the needs of the county. I, there is a lot of time. I think that the compensation that is I don't know. It it is so hard. It is so hard to say to value what you voting for. And that's that's a tough thing to, you know, to to swallow and still say, you know, but I yeah. You look down the road and I go, I hope the next the next member of the council that they they can look at it and maybe vote for the next people that's gonna be in the office and look down the road or something because it is a it is very time consuming.

And I I would just like to say too that I know that we have to balance what's available and and what is happening in the county this year. And I think that the things that we do have a lot of value. Like, I know that we make some pretty heavy decisions about things that affect everyone in the county. And along with that comes a lot of research, a lot of meetings, a lot of emails and studying, and there's just a lot to it. And so I I just feel like it's it is difficult to be in a position where you have to vote yourself a raise. I mean, that's almost untenable. It's it's really hard. With public funds. With public funds. Yeah. But I also know that that there there was a lot of discussion about the things that we needed to do to to appreciate our employees and to make sure that they knew that we appreciated their time and the effort that they put in. And so I just think that that needs to be a part of of what we discuss. And I think I think that, in talking to our com our colleagues around the state, we are vastly underpaid compared to any of them, which doesn't doesn't make it that's a part of the conversation, but it's not the only consideration. But I also think I'm comfortable with the amount that Catherine has proposed for this year, and then we can look at how things are going

as we move forward. I'd like to say also that when we are elected, we are telling our constituents that we will attend and do our very best to be at every meeting that's called and that we need to make time in our schedules to do that. And yes, there will be times when we'll be gone, we'll be on vacation or something like that. But we've also made it that we can call in and attend over the phone on promising our constituents to attend the meetings. Just just because maybe we have something else that we would rather do, you know, doesn't mean that we can just put it off. The other thing is next year, we're we're going to be doing some very serious training for BOE. And we need to be very cognizant of that and know what we are doing and be responsible for what we are promising to do when we were elected. And so I think I'm, you know, I can, I, I appreciate what you're saying, Katherine? I really do. And, I still will oppose it. But I agree with what you're saying. But I think we need to remember that as elected officials, we are saying we will do our very best to attend the meetings we're called to do and to be will

And I I just want to say one other thing too that that we we want to avoid having only one type of a voice if we make it so that it so that it's not worthwhile for someone with a young family to leave their family and leave a job and maybe take all their personal time off from their job in order to do this job. There has to be adequate compensation or we will end up with only people of a certain age or a certain income that are willing You pointed.

I don't know if you're confused.

No. You didn't point at me.

Catherine Young. I think your husband No. But I we just we wanna have that diversity amongst the council, and you need to make that available to someone who is gonna make a pretty big sacrifice of their family and their personal time at at their work. So that's part of it too. Andrew, yes?

I would like for you guys to consider, perhaps reframing the issue a little bit. I understand that you're in an impossible position of who wants to vote yourself in the race. I understand that in any situation, it's going to be hard. And so I think what you did with a lot of the other with the compensation committee specifically did with other elected officials or just elected officials on large is you depersonalize it. So I think a way to reframe this particular issue is is ask yourself, if there were a seven member county council in another county and another part of the state doing the exact same amount of work, having the same amount of duties, pulling the same amount of hours, what would you how would you view their decision to either give themselves a raise or to forego a raise? Ask yourself, basically, to take yourselves out of the equation and just look at, does a person doing x y z deserve a raise or to forego one, for another year?

And And again, I know we've said this before, too. And just to emphasize what you're saying, Sandy, about, you know, inviting people to come in to run for a position. We, you know, as people with younger families or whatever need to know that if they're going to be called away from their job or use vacation time, that they're going to receive some type of compensation for serving where they're serving. And this is no secret. I'll announce it again. I am not running for reelection because it's by the time I'm done with this, it'll be twelve years and it's been a lot of time invested in it. And I will do my best with the three years I have left to serve my constituents and my community the best I can with what I have available. And I'm not finished learning. I have a lot of things to learn and I will serve the best I can that way.

Okay. Anybody else want to speak? Okay. I would take a vote on the motion that was made that we increase the compensation to $30,000 a year with the chair being 36. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. Okay. We're gonna have to take a roll call on that. How do we do that? Barbara?

I was a nay. You were a nay.

Kaitlyn was a nay. No one was a nay. You're aye. I was a

nay.

Aye. Okay. So the motion does not pass.

Pardon? The amendment fails, but not the proposal. The amendment fails. Okay.

All right. So We could make another motion. No. So that leaves it the same for next year. And it has to still be set by ordinance. Right? Yeah. We have to do something that sets it by ordinance.

Well, I will make a motion that we look at not, you know, not 36,000, but 33, up three from what Catherine suggested and still be well below, you know, what is done, and then for the chair up to 45,000.

What we've typically done is 20% per

share. That would be an extra 6,066. 6,600.

Alright. I mean, you can make the motion however you want, but we've typically done.

So you're saying 20%?

Is what we've typically done in the past. You can make it for me. K. So what's 20% of the It'd be 6,600.

So it'd be $39.06. Okay. So is that your motion?

I don't know if that's why I wanna go that high. $39.06.

That's just for the chair. Oh, that's for the chair. That's for the chair. $30.33 for the three, but then 20% of that

onto that would be done. Agreeable to that. That's for the chair.

Does anyone want to second that motion?

I'll second that for further discussion.

Okay. Nolan, what's your thoughts?

You voted no on the other. I absolutely agree with what Barbara's saying. I've watched the chairs since I've been on this. I watched the chairs since I've been on this, and I think you guys put in an immense amount of time. I know the council members do as well. I am just sitting here that I cannot bring myself to vote for a raise when I've seen some people dismissed from and I know that everybody deserves that raise and everything there, but just my

say. K. Alright. It's been moved and seconded that we consider Barbara's motion to raise the salary to 33,000 with the chair at $39.06. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those who opposed? Nay. Nay. Okay. Motion fails. K. So we're done.

It has to be set by ordinance still.

Okay. So what do we do? I I move that the

salaries stay the same. 24,000 for council members and 30,000 for council chair.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we approve ordinance twenty twenty five dash 36 setting the council salary at 24,000 and the chair at 30,000, which is exactly what it is right now. Is there any further discussion on that? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Nay. Nay. Okay. The motion passes. Alright. The other business, the employee Christmas dinner. Before you Amy, have you gotten good feedback on that?

Yeah. So we have sent out RSVPs. We are, shy this year of what our attendance has been in the past. Today was the last call. Generally, the next day after we say it's last call, I do get a few phone calls. So we'll see what we get tomorrow morning. But we should have a great feast and a wonderful time together celebrating the holidays and enjoying each other's company. And that will be on December 10 at 6PM

at the Event Center. At the event Center. Okay. I'll call you. I think I I think I RSVP'd, but I'm not always very good on the computer. So I need I should probably check to see if my RSVP'd be Maybe you should reply all. Those seem to work really well. No. I don't. Oh, no.

We've been getting a few of those. Can we do an ordinance to publicly shame people that reply? Yeah.

K. Council member reports. Mark, do you wanna start?

Sure. Before we get to that, did we approve the minutes for the truth and taxation

meeting? Yes. That was the last the council meeting on the eighteenth. Okay.

We did. Okay. That that because they were listed separately as meeting than the truth in taxation. So I just wanna make sure we're square

November 18. Eighteenth

two thousand. And you did for And it was for the special, the water meeting. I did not specify. But I don't think we did one for the truth in taxation meeting. I think I did it for the regular meeting, but not the truth in taxation. And I'm especially cognizant that we follow every single itty bitty rule on that. K. Let's do that really quick. If you wanna make that motion. Yeah. I'll make a motion that we approve the minutes from the truth and taxation meeting. I'll second. K. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the minutes of our special truth and taxation meeting on November 18. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Okay. Council member reports. Mark? Okay.

Briefly, just by way of update, the the audit committee met a couple weeks ago and the, after discussion and and review of the, response to the RFPs for, accounting firms to be considered for our external audit. The, audit committee selected, is recommending Joan Simpkins, and that presentation will next meeting. Also, just I very much appreciated the context and the detail of the information that was shared at COSAC last week. Is that last week? Two weeks ago now, I guess. Man, time flies. USAC or COSAC? COSAC. For the for the USAC or USAC? Excuse me. USAC. Yeah. USAC. USAC. Sorry. I was I was afraid I'd said, UAC. And so yeah. Yeah. Sorry. And, yeah, I'm just grateful for that insight and the additional depth of discussion we got on the, extreme risk WUI that we had in the earlier discussion that was also a carryover from that. But, you all should I just wanna make sure you all have received the email, from Matt, the director of the indigent defense, the state Mhmm. With his opinion or perspective on the budget cuts proposed for the public defender's office. And we'll have discussion in that in our our consideration of the budget next week. But, and then I would like to turn some time over to Bryson for the exciting news.

Exciting news. We'd need that.

Great.

Even more efficiency and and for finding a great deal for us. And and on behalf of the clerk's office, thank you counsel for supporting that effort.

Does somebody come outside?

That's nice. A rep a rep will be here.

Yeah.

Nice. Lots of lots of way.

I'm accelerating too. So they're training you how to use it in December for us to use it next November?

Yeah.

Or I guess in June for primary. Yeah. That's awesome. Okay.

Okay. Cool. Yeah. That's it for me.

Thanks. Catherine?

I think I'll the fire board meeting we had was really we have some openings. So just to explain a little more process, I realized I didn't say, well, chief George was here, is that we had some turnover when the last election with the mayors that are currently serving on the board. So we will have an opening in the new year for the mayors that will go for the term for two mayor. Well, all the mayors. Right? They're gonna all apply again or just the two mayors. It's just so there'll be one from the North, one from the South, all of them are not currently serving in the middle. K. So all that are current currently serving. So if you have discussions, I'm looking at Nolan and and Mark and and Dave, with the mayors in your areas. They we will I guess I'm accepting the applications which we'll make as a body. We'll make the decision as a body. But they to send me just a letter of intent or something, and I will take those letters to the the fire board to make the decision of who will be the new two. So we will take one from the North and one from the South. So any of the new mayors been a prize of this opportunity? What We had a really we had an informational session, and we really encouraged them to come so they could have background and to know the steps moving forward. We I think we tried really hard to get them invited to all of it. I know they're all of their emails were listed on the invites. Not all of them came, unfortunately. So we did have the Latham, the new mayor elect in is it Latham? Lathamley. Lathamley. I knew it was I knew it was a Wellsville name. We did have mayor elect Lathamley from from Wellsville that was there from the South, and I think that was it from the South. No. Steve didn't make it. I have talked to him a little bit about it, and I'd like to reach out to him some more. And then in the North, did we have we had Richmond mayor and and a representative from Smithfield Lewiston. And Lewiston. Lewiston. So, yeah, we have we have more vocal from but yes. So if you would send me a letter of intent, we are we have published it online too. They can look at the the fire boards. Yeah. And and it's really just a formality of just saying, hey. I'm interested in serving on the board. There there really is a they don't need to say much more than that. But yeah. So we will have another meeting in two weeks. Sixteenth. June. So, yeah, two weeks from today where we will ratify the well, the decisions that were made this evening by by this council. So that's as far as the fire board goes. We really love the fire board. And then we have no sarcasm there. And and then It's not easy either. It is tough. That fire board not. And that's why I say

thank you to you guys because it's so many personalities.

Like, you you get so many personalities in one room, and then they're fireman, which I think makes it even bigger personalities. I I don't know. I'm looking at Maybe they changed my logo by Friday. It was that one is Who has the best mustache? It looks like it's who has the final decision. No. It's really hard because they have such good departments and they've worked so hard to create their own cultures, and here we are telling them that we have to change it. And and it's been that way since 1965, even though we haven't practiced it, and we haven't put it in we haven't put it in, into practice. So it's it we're making some really big changes on on people that have been doing things that are right, but we're enforcing change on them. So it is it's it's really hard choices and decisions that we're making with them. So that's the fireboard. And then as far as as USAC, I really enjoyed talking to our our fellow council and commissioners across the state. And I think one of the things that I I I gleaned from them is I think that we're missing out as a council by not participating more in NACO and and WIR. In speaking to a few different members, they they have really gleaned a lot of information they've been able to bring back to their counties and participated by expressing their voice and Utah's voice and their county's voice. And I think that that is something that that we need to have a broader conversation about, is being able to represent Cache County in those in in those forums, but also bringing back that information to us. And I'm not saying we all go, but finding a way that we can stagger or some way participate in in in those forums and and getting that information and those networking opportunities because they all had such glowing reviews and and such positive information. So if we could have some type of staggering of of attendance there, I think that that's worth a conversation. So that's that's my report. Madam chair. Thank you. Nolan?

I don't wanna slight any committee or any people that serve publicly, but I do wanna see that we recognize our P and Z commissioners. We've usually done that by some Christmas gift or whatever. Body's hard. If you sit here and listen to what the P and Z goes through and the public, they have challenges. Yeah. Yeah. And those guys serve And I actually believe that it has cost some of them some of their personal business time and expense because of the way they have to vote. And I personally experienced that when I was on the P and Z. So I I vote for a round of applause for those guys and some recognition in some way. And I don't know how we do that because we're limited. I have some ideas. Okay. That would be appreciated. Yeah. We've tried to do it in the past. We've taken them some gifts, some things to them, but I just think we need to recognize them. They've been very engaged in some of the subdivision things and that that were going on. We meet again this Thursday. We'll take a minute to say thanks to all of you on the council. Please don't hate me for my vote tonight. Feeling I if we were better next year, I'll vote for all of you to have a raise and all of that. But I feel bad about that, but at the same time, I feel strongly about taking a stand when we're having so many issues financially and with staff too. So so thank you for everybody who serves because I agree with everybody who's talked about the time they put into it as I look at the month of September, how much time I put in with BOE and everything else. It was staggering.

can council meetings or like all of our general meetings? Just council meetings specifically, but

yeah. Barbara. Thank you to everyone who serves. I appreciate all your service. Taylor, Bryson, Amy, thank you to everyone. The fire chief, I appreciate all that you do all in the attorney's office, Matt, and thank you for all that you do. And the new executive, thank you, George. This has been a really good experience, and I have appreciated you. So thanks to everyone, and I hope you have a happy new year.

thank you. So good. It's clear. Yeah. Short notice too. Imagine if they have eight months to put it together. Yeah. So thank you. Hey. Does somebody wanna make a motion to go into executive session? So moved.

Second. Move and seconded that we move to executive session for a strategy session to discuss the purchase, exchange, or lease of

Second. Move to executive session for a strategy session to discuss the purchase, exchange, or lease of real property, or to discuss a proposed development agreement, proposed project proposal, or financing proposal. Those in favor, say aye. Aye.

Hey. Hey. You're going, Annie. You're welcome.

Hey. Bryson, do I give these to you or give them back to George? Yeah. Sign them. No. Those are the appointments.