Cache County Council Special Meeting – 11-04-2025

I'm gonna start by reading a statement. It says notice is hereby given that the Cache County will hold a public hearing 10/28/2025 at 199 North Main Street, Logan, Utah, and the Cache County Council Chambers at 04:30PM. Cache County is eligible to apply to the Utah Department of Workforce Services for funding under the Community Development Block Grant Small Cities Program, a federally funded program administered by the state of Utah Housing and Community development division and is eligible to apply for CDBG funding provided Cache County meets the applicable program requirements. The purpose of the public hearing is to provide citizens with pertinent information about the community development block grant program and to allow for discussion of possible applications. This public hearing will cover eligible activities, program requirements, and expected funding allocations in the region. The CDBG program can fund a broad range of activities including but not limited to construction of public works and facilities, such as water and sewer lines, fire stations, acquisition of real property, and provision of public services such as food banks or homeless shelters. In the event that Cash County chooses to apply for CDBG funding, a second public hearing will be held at a later time to discuss the project. Further information can be obtained by contacting Andrew Erickson at this number. In compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act, individuals needing special accommodations including auxiliary communicative aids and services during this hearing should notify us in advance. I don't think anyone did. So that's the that's the official notification that I needed to read to make sure. The CDBG program is, a wonderful opportunity, but they are very specific about every single detail. So we wanted to make sure that we are following every one of their restrictions be so that we don't find out later on that we have limited ourselves to what we can do. So, I think we'll go ahead and start. Elmo, can we turn some time over to you to talk about the CDBG or or Lucas, do you wanna talk about it in general before we open it up to the public?

I I I think just the Go ahead and and

Yeah. So the funding No. You have to stand there and identify yourself. Yeah.

Thank you. Lucas Lucas Martin, the Bear River Association of Governments, and we provide technical assistance on the community development block grant that, Cache County may may be applying for. So as was noted as specific to infrastructure projects. Cash County as a municipality can apply for that. So, residents of the county can express recommendations on those projects. They are towards, has to go towards low income individuals. There's some different ways that we determine that. So any any suggestions should be brought up during this this hearing. Nonprofits or other entities within Cache County can also ask the county to sponsor them. So ideas coming from auxiliaries or other non profit entities can be brought up as well for that consideration. So no decisions are being made. It is purely for the purpose of expressing ideas around what funds could be used for if the county chooses to move forward with an application.

K. Perfect. And do you wanna talk about the the deadline if we were going to do something?

Yeah. So the policies for the Bear River region designate December 1 as the deadline. We recognize that the government shutdown, we just met with the state today. So there may be an extension on that internally for us, and we'll get that approved through them, just because it's there are times we have questions for HUD, and they're not available to answer some of those right now. So, yes, currently, it's December 1 for the application from the county, and then we would review that. And the final application has actually been submitted in January, but it but we have to have a materially complete application to a complete application to be able to move forward to that January submission deadline. Perfect. Okay. Thank you so much, Lucas.

Okay. And I just wanna reiterate, the county can apply for funds. A nonprofit may not apply for funds, but they can apply to the county to apply on their behalf. So that's we want to hear from the public right now to hear if there are specific ideas that anyone would like us to consider. So with that, I'm going to turn this open this up to the public. If there's someone here from the public that would like to speak about a specific project or some ideas of how they think the county would be able to apply for those funds we'll invite you to come to the microphone. Is there anyone here that would like to speak to this? Please.

Brady George, Cache County Fire District. Thank you for the opportunity. Having reviewed the grant application process and what's available in there, there were a number of different needs that seemed applicable within the the fire district itself. The first would have been a station kind of located in that Providence, Nibley area based upon the restrictions of that with the moderate to low income. That's not a good process for us right now. The other capital needs are based upon the capital needs assessment from 2018. There are fire stations in Paradise. Sorry. Newton and Trenton that are all quite aged and underserving the populations in those areas. They all lack any type of seismic upgrades or devices to prevent collapse during a significant seismic event. And so from a capital needs, that would work very well and service areas that do fall within those areas of moderate to low income households. Another option that would be good for us would be to add or excuse me, to replace one of our frontline fire apparatus. The current age of our apparatus is right at the threshold for the national standard, which is twenty five years of total service. We have three apparatus in service right now that will crest that twenty five year mark in two months. We have about fire trucks? Fire trucks. Yes. We have one that is set to be ordered this year, but being able to get another one through grant funding would help to bring us back in alignment with that national standard and provide service across the county by reinforcing the system and making service delivery more reliable as a process.

K.

Does anyone have any questions for chief George? Yes? I do. So of the three cities you announced, Paradise, Newton, and Clarkston?

Trenton. Trenton.

Which of those is staffed or serves more citizens? Do you know how that breaks out?

If we're looking at unincorporated county citizens, it would be most likely either Paradise or Newton. There's only two residences in the Trenton zone that are unincorporated areas. So that would be the lowest. Of the age of the structures, it would be Paradise is the oldest. It's a converted middle school that we helped excuse me. The county helped to fund digging out part of the basement to make it deep enough that you could actually put fire apparatus engines in there. And then Newton's fire station is combined with the library and city hall, out there, and so it's very packed for space. Of the two, I'd have to look at the population numbers to see which one served a greater population. Got instinct based upon proximity to other things. My bet would be Newton. No? I don't believe so. I think it's solely occupied by just the fire department. Because they have public meetings there. So Yeah. I know they do some public meetings in the upstairs kinda training room, but it's primarily a a fire service space. Yeah. K.

That's all I had.

Anybody else? Thank you, George. Lucas, can I ask you another question? I know that there are moderate to low income restrictions. How does the average income in Cash County, are we there? Are we not there if you take Logan City out of it? Yeah. Go ahead, please. If you would, just Sorry.

Oh, again, Lucas Martin with the Bear River Association of Governments. They have the state has identified specific municipalities that based on their income are automatically eligible. To my knowledge, they've not done that with any of the counties in the Bear River region. Okay. So we would have to do an income survey based on the service area that the fire truck was intended for in the for example, in that in that situation. So basically, they would just identify this is the number of households that could potentially be served and then they calculate a statistically significant number of those households that would need to be surveyed. And then based on the outcome of that, at least 51% of those surveyed households would have to come out as as low to moderate income. Based on the results of that survey, it's good for a certain number of years. So if it turns out that 80% of those households are are low to moderate income, that the results of that survey could be good for many years

for future projects in that region. So So we shouldn't limit projects just because we don't know for sure what that moderate what that average income is for that area. Correct. Yeah. That's what I want to say. That's an income survey that they would do. They'll get that done as part our application. Okay. Thank you. Does anyone else have any other questions about that for Lucas? I didn't you mention fire hydrants or stuff like that? Because that's only gonna be municipalities and those municipalities wouldn't qualify on the modern income, would they? Well, some do. Here Logan City is big enough. It's the only city within our region that gets its own CDBG grant. So we just do the ones that are outside of that. And so if it was a municipality that wanted to apply for income or a grant to get fire hydrants, they would just have to do the income survey. Or some, like Lucas says, have already been identified by the state

as an average income that qualifies. So the only clarification on that, if it's helpful at all, is the the example the state gives is that CDBG is to put up a lamp post and not to put in a light bulb. So if it's considered a maintenance activity that was deferred, that should not be considered with CDBG. But putting in, like, a new fire hydrant as opposed to trying to do maintenance on older ones or something, That's kind of the the defining feature there. So consider new infrastructure projects.

K. Perfect. Thank you, Lucas. K. Giselle.

Hello. Giselle Madrid from the Cache County Senior Center. We are interested in ideas for this CDBG, grant as well. We applied back in 2017 for two Meals on Wheels trucks that serve both the North end of the county as well as the South end of the county. And we are now hitting close to 200,000 on the vehicles. We would like to be able to apply to CDBG again to replace these surplus these and be able to apply for two new vehicles for that. Another idea we have is to be able to have a generator for the senior center in case there is some power outages. We've had those happen so that we don't have our our food in our freezer and our refrigerators going to waste. And lastly, because we are in a building that is already 50 years old, our anniversary was here in September, we were looking for capital for possibly, ideas for CDBG to use funds towards the construction of a new senior center or land acquisition.

K. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions for Giselle about the senior center or some of their needs? So if you ask about land acquisition,

has this study been done with the value of where the building and the land is where we're sitting? We are in process with the feasibility study, and I believe that is the next process that they will be meeting with us to discuss.

K.

Alright. Thank you so much, Giselle. K. Is there anyone else? Yes. Lucas.

So Lucas Martin, not representing BRAC this time, but, speaking on behalf of the Cache Community Food Pantry, and they had expressed some, potential uses for CDBG funds. So for consideration, they wanted to, to cons wanted the council to consider swamp coolers in the storage facility that's located adjacent to the main food pantry. It doesn't have any kind of cooling at all and temperature sways can, of course, impact the quality of the food and how long it can stay good. So it's a very large warehouse that they would be looking at. And then similar to to the senior center, they're concerned about the main freezers inside the food pantry itself that if backup generators could be obtained to protect those in the case of of an outage and not having to lose fresh produce, frozen goods, and dairy goods.

Great. Thank you. Okay. Is there anyone else from the public? Alma, thank you.

So Alma Alma Burgess, grant administrator for Cache County. I've talked with the Clerk and he mentioned something about the Election Center that is out at the fairgrounds and or excuse me, at the airport, and looking at possibly accessibility for their bathrooms as well as a backup generator. There's a couple of other ideas that were mentioned there.

K.

Generators seem to be a theme tonight.

K. Has anyone Elma, has anyone else in the county approached you with any other ideas?

I talked with Scott Bodley from the CJC, and at this time, he didn't think that there was anything that he was wanting or desiring. He wouldn't he wasn't able to be here, but he didn't think of any ideas at this point in time.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Is there anyone else here that would like to speak to the subject to give the council ideas? Okay. Thank you all for your submissions. This meeting, it's very, very important that we do not talk about specific projects amongst ourselves yet. This is just for us to take information from the public. So we will I'm not sure exactly what the next step in that process is as far as actual applications that we would need to consider. I think those would have to go through Alma, wouldn't they? So anyone that reads the minutes from this meeting or if they're here, if you have a specific thing you want to apply for, maybe go through Alma and then those will be presented to us and we will then have a public during a public meeting we will have those discussions and decide, which projects we would like to apply for. So thank you all again. I think we'll if somebody wants to make a motion to adjourn this meeting, we'll be done. So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded that we adjourn. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. K. Thank you, everyone. Stephanie, do you wanna stand up real quick? We'll introduce you to everybody. This is Stephanie Giddens. She is new at Bragg, and she is gonna be over the CDBG program, but she just started, like Yesterday. Okay. So we'll be working with you as we move forward on that, too. Okay.