Cache County Council Workshop Meeting – 05-26-2026

Shop. We have invited our good friend, Whitney Ward, who has come to Cache Valley on multiple times from VCBO. And the reason I I really wanted to have Whitney here is I am on the steering committee. Mark has been to a couple of the steering committee meetings as has George and Kurt, and there's there's been a lot of circular conversations. And, I don't know that I at at some point, the goal is that they might have a consensus that they think would work for the county, that they would bring to us to vote to put on the ballot. That would be the final that would be the final step, and I'm not even sure that will happen. But I wanted everyone else to be informed and to to be able to ask questions and to hear kind of what the conversations have been around the study that VCBO did and what where it's kind of morphed into because it's it's kind of got legs of its own. Right? So I'm gonna turn some time over to Whitney and let her kinda give us an overview, and then you guys can ask questions, and we'll just go from there. Today. They're out of town. Out of town. So is Keegan. Keegan's out of the country. And so I'm assuming Dave I know Dave will be here for council meeting. That he may show up at some point. He didn't tell me he wasn't coming. So

And I have a lot of information, and I can go as quickly or as slowly as you guys We have an hour. So Perfect. So I did want to, as Sandy mentioned, give you an overview of the process since we have a little bit more time than a typical council meeting and talk to you about where we're in the middle of a cycle. Right? We're sort of circling and where we're circling and what the conversations have been, and then go through some of our work to date. And ultimately, I think we're honing in on a recommendation, but we would love to hear the thoughts of the council as we work towards this. And so, you know, typically these processes start with information gathering, we do some visioning work, we develop a range of concepts, we work together to synthesize a preferred alternative, and then we finalize and and put a lot of meat behind that sort of alternative. And in this project, that is also kind of that gap between concept development and synthesis is the variation between phase one and phase two in our contract. And, as we've been going through this process, and I'll just jump right to the next one. There's been some circling. We think we come to a preferred alternative and we develop it and people get excited about it and then there are concerns and then we sort of circle back again and look at another preferred alternative and develop it. And so we're kind of cycling in this middle between phase one and phase two where we've done a lot of work in gathering information and we'll talk through that survey. We've developed numerous concepts, looked at a lot of different sites and site alternatives. We've dove into the financials on a number of those different concepts to better understand them. And ultimately, you know, this it's a little bit of a challenge and you'll see this come out, but there are a lot of reasons to like different options. Right? And so while there is a preferred alternative that really checks all of the boxes, the challenge with that alternative as we get into it is that it's the most expensive alternative, which makes it less viable for the community. And so we'll talk through the pros and cons and considerations of all of those options together. But we haven't quite, as Sandy said, come been able to come to consensus on an alternative in the committee, but we're working through those options together. So just as a reminder on the information gathering phase, we did do a very robust community survey, and we did it in two parts. We started with the South Valley survey. We then did the broader Cache County survey. We looked at those responses in tandem because the South Valley didn't respond in high numbers to the Cache County one because they'd already taken the survey, and we had told them that. So we did do a swathe through. We did get over 10,000 responses, which is an incredible survey response rate, for a community this size. And of that, we generally heard that people are very interested in, county supported indoor recreation. There's a consistent number of about 7% of people who don't want it. They it's too expensive. They don't feel like it's the role of the government. There's a range of reasons that they don't feel it's appropriate, but the vast recreation. Now that dips a little bit when we go into how many people are willing to support a tax increase to help pay for it, and that drops down to 84%, but still a pretty high number. Now, this was a self selected survey, so it's important to note people who are interested in it or against it usually come out and let their voices be heard. And those who are maybe in the middle or don't have the time aren't as interested may not take the time to respond to the survey. So that's important to keep in mind. Bryson, can you turn off the chandeliers in the middle? I don't can't remember which one that is.

There we go. Now we can see it. Thank you. And then as we look at responses

to the survey, you can see we had good representation across communities in the county. And so that gave us a good sense of where people are, what they're looking for, and what they're hoping to see. As we looked at priority programs, swimming and aquatics was the number one priority across the county. It just eked ahead of interestingly adult sports recreation and fitness. So youth sports recreation and fitness came in third place by a narrow margin. Again, high interest across all three of those. As we asked people what they wanted to see for dry recreation, Indoor court sports was the number one priority followed by open fitness areas, weightlifting, indoor dedicated track and walking areas. So that falls in line. Indoor courts, of course, run the gamut of ages, but youth and young adults predominantly, and then the next three are more sort of adult oriented programs with we often find indoor track and walking areas a strong priority in older adults. When we looked at community swimming pool interest, lap swimming and learn to swim were, number one priorities and then a zero entry, like, a very shallow depth pool for young kids to play in was the third priority. And then the fun things, water slides and fitness classes, things like that came down the line there. But lap swimming and learn to swim followed by a space for young kids. And, folks very much want indoor year round pools when we ask what type of aquatics are important. And then we did look at community spaces and really they're just looking for sort of party rooms, small community event spaces. It sounds like you guys have a good assortment of community spaces available that folks are using. And, one of the key questions we asked is how far people would be willing to drive for recreation. And the vast, majority of respondents would like to have a recreation center on under fifteen minutes drive from their house. Now, some in the further community said we're willing to drive up to twenty minutes. We understand we're a little further away. And so there's a little bit of diversity in those numbers, but you can see the communities are pretty close in their responses. And, again, when we asked if folks would support a tax increase to fund a new recreation facility, the vast majority of respondents, 66% said, yes. They're likely to or very likely to. And then there's a little bit in the might or might not category of about 18%. And those ones, it's typically what's in it for me. Is there something I like? Is it close to home? Is it hitting my needs and criteria? Mean was $20 a month. The average was about $15 a month. And so that equates to approximately a 180 well, specifically, a $180 a year that folks were willing to pay as a tax increase. And we were pretty quite specific in the survey to note this tax increase would not mean you get to go use the facility for free. That's always a question that it's a tax increase plus a fee to use the facility. And so that was that median $15 a month is what we've been looking at as we've gone through this process from that point. Understand that the $15

a month is the to to build the facility.

Is there another question where you would find that there would be also a monthly fee for users? We did note that. Yes. In the survey, we did not ask them how much they'd be willing to pay per month. But in this question about would you support a tax increase, membership.

Okay. So that's the way it was described is would you Yeah. Be paying a membership of some amount and you would also have a have tax increase. Correct.

I was very adamant about that. Yes. Correct. Sandy was great in, like, we have to be very clear in what we're asking people so that they know that just by paying their property taxes doesn't mean that they automatically get to use the facilities for free. And so again, our key takeaways from the survey, swimming and aquatics are the number one priority followed by in close proximity youth and adult sports recreation fitness programs, indoor courts, indoor cardio and strength, weightlifting areas, dedicated indoor track, and in some communities, indoor fields, specifically the South Half of the valley, were were the priorities and what we saw there. Again, the majority of the respondents are looking for new recreation and wellness center within ten to fifteen minutes of their home. When we were here at the council last, there was also just a question about how often do these facilities get used and what how do we figure out how many memberships we're gonna sell when we look at the operations of the facility. And so, we pulled together some information from local annual budgets as well as a national database. So on the left is the natural date national average database that nationally 15% of residents have a pass, a membership to a community recreation center. In Provo, specifically 16% of the of the population has some level of a membership, plus they have 2% non resident members as well. South Davis Recreation is 14% plus 2% nonresident members. Lehigh City Recreation has 15%, so they're right in line with national averages. Now these are memberships, so they have a lot of other people who just come visit and use the facility for events, programs, activities, or day use passes. And that's that kind of total annual users at the bottom. So Provo, recreation has 2,200,000 annual users within their facility, and that's from their 2023 data. South Davis is lower at 600,000. Lehigh is 363. So that means Provo is programming that thing like crazy outside of typical membership use. And you do see that in their they have a very low or a very high return on investment. They're one of the only community rec centers that doesn't have a subsidy. They actually earn enough money to pay for their full operations, which is pretty rare. You say go back. Yeah. You say total annual users,

600,000.

Those are clicks of people walking through the door.

Oh, so in that in the you're gonna say somewhere around 2,000 users a day. Correct.

Yep. That's absolutely correct. And Smithfield Recreation actually has a much higher percentage. They have 23% of their residents that are members and 7% of additional members that are non residents. And again, that speaks to the desire for indoor community recreation within the community. We did also get some great numbers from North Logan. They're seeing a 184,000 they're serving a 184,000 people through their programs, and that's at the Hansen Sports Complex plus the parks and recreation programming. So they're already seeing a very high level of usership with the limited facility in the indoor fields. And again, just looking at national data,

about 25% of The US population is the member of a fitness center in some way, shape, or

fitness center in some way, shape, or form, and 30% of those have memberships to multiple facilities. So health, wellness, recreation is something that is generally invested in within our communities.

Yeah. So the Smithfield is part of the high school. Right? It is attached to the high school. How many others are

put together like that? It's very rare these days. Right now, there are a handful of others, but we're seeing a trend where the school districts don't want community to have access to their schools in a way that's not controlled by the school and by the school district. And so, that is not something that we're seeing in new construction at all right now, but it is something that does exist in communities that did exactly what Smithfield did and said, we have collectively a need for a pool, collectively a need for gymnasiums, why don't we share those needs? And so, you know, decades ago, that was more common practice. It's less common practice today. And there's also some ongoing legislation that we're hearing about, in the state legislature, in the state legislature that is sort of, cracking down on school safety and security. It's a big topic of conversation. And so they're really trying to control

who uses their facilities, who has access, and when, and how people have access to those facilities. That's too bad because the taxpayers are the ones who paid for the schools too. Like, it's a I I can understand their need for security too, but there's a lot of facilities that we paid for that sit empty.

And there are very complimentary hours of use typically. Recreation centers are early morning and then late afternoon, evening, and weekends. Right? And so there's there's a lot of logic behind that approach, but also just a trend, unfortunately, a little bit away from it. Any other questions on the sort of information gathering before we jump into facility options? Yeah.

So you state that there's 10,397 respondents. Right? Yep. We have a population of around a 145, 150,000. So that's about a 7% draw.

You consider that good compared to others? I do consider that good. Responded? Yeah. So oftentimes, when we do surveys like this, we'll see somewhere between 35%. So we were excited about the 7% response rate.

And and the part of this phase two, didn't that have a statistically

there was a different kind of a It was. Yes. So That hasn't been done yet. Correct? Correct. So we had budgeted in phase two to have a company, y two analytics is their name. They have a list of registered voters that they reach out to specific demographics of different voters in different communities to do a very targeted voter based survey. And that was something that was anticipated with our phase two work in the conversations that we've been having with the steering committee. Folks worry that that's still not representative. And so the discussion has been, can we find something to put on the ballot if it's the right thing to put on the ballot to really see how communities feel. Now there's an equal concern that if we don't put the right thing on the ballot, it will skew potentially the perspective of what people are interested in within the community. And so there's been a lot of conversation back and forth, but that is still absolutely an option on the table if we wanted to do statistically or a vote a more statistically valid voter based survey. We have that option. So when we came to you last, we were looking at three different facility distribution options. The one larger centralized facility, the two options North South, and the three options North South and center. Now at that point, we were talking about potential

Your your mics. Sorry. Oh, you're okay. This is a recorded meeting. Oh, okay.

At this point, we were talking about these through the lens of potential recreation districts. We've since shifted our conversation to say, you know, a a best case scenario financially for the county would be a county based bond, that would have buy in from all of the residents in the county. So these diagrams in our last meeting, we've kind of gotten rid of the yellow lines moving forward, and we're looking at how we might distribute facilities within the county within the county and how those can best serve the needs of the county moving forward. And so, we did put together some preliminary concepts. We've put together capital construction cost for those concepts and we've put together operational cost estimates at a very high level. Now, these are, like I said, because we kind of keep cycling between phase one and phase two. We have not done a deep dive into any one of these options, but we have done an analysis for all three of them to help us with a comparison and a discussion. That's, you know, a good disclaimer and draft statement on there. We did note that right now from a sort of national perspective, you may not need more than one aquatic center within the community based off of your population. However, we've heard very clearly from the steering committee and from the survey that everybody wants aquatics. And there is a concern that if you build a pool in one location and you don't build a pool in another location, then that may not be a successful, attempt to meet the recreation needs within the community community. Echols ice sheet is very highly utilized and eventually it should be added on to. That need is not a driving need right now. So there is space on the site to be able to add on to that and that's what we would recommend is that instead of building another ice sheet somewhere else in the community, you take advantage of the resources that exist at the Eccles Ice Sheet and ultimately build a new ice sheet in that site and location. So you won't see ice on any of the options that we're talking about right now either. And then we did note that there are just some things that you need to have in every facility again to hit the needs of every generation. So those are the courts, the indoor walking, jogging track, open fitness and equipment space, group fitness spaces, a party or community room, and then, of course, you need administration and locker rooms. So you will see those consistently across all of the options. So option one is the option that puts one facility in the in the county. And originally, we thought, you know, let's put it up by where the ice in the Hansen Sports Complex are because then you have a colocation of amenities and programs and elements. But the challenge is we have heard that folks are tired of driving from the South end of the county up to that location. So then we started looking at a range of other potential locations that are more centralized to the county. With that option, we looked at, gosh, maybe six six different sites, which we'll talk about in just a minute. But this is kind of the concept that we put together for that central facility. If kind of the concept that we put together for that central facility. It would have a more robust gymnasium component on day one with the ability to add indoor turf as needed in the future. It would have, of course, all the fitness elements that we've talked about, an indoor pool for children, a that we've talked about, an indoor pool for children, a play feature for teens, as well as a competition sized lap pool. So 25 yard, 25 meter with associated seating in it. Now this one, again, if you go forward with the one facility within the county, we would say build the field house on day one. If we look at options with other facilities clustered in with this, maybe the field house becomes less of a square footage delta here. And then again, we did look at a range of different locations, and we did drive time analysis. So we have not picked any specific location, but we looked at drive times from a lot of them. The one that's up on the screen right now is from the fairgrounds. We said, what if we put this on the county fairgrounds? What would access and accessibility look like within the county? And you would hit 70 to 75% of the population within a fifteen minute drive depending on traffic and conditions. And we looked at a number of alternatives. We sort of said, you know, 10th West makes a lot of sense from an access and accessibility perspective. And the numbers just don't change dramatically as we start to look at other other sort of sites in that area. So this facility, and you'll see this in a little while, this is the most this is the most cost effective option. You build one building. One building is staffed. There's it's managed in in one location. You get the best return because people are all going to this one facility to serve the needs of the county. But ultimately, we don't feel like it's meeting the needs of the county because access and accessibility and local community driven conversations are driving this. And facility, one central facility is going to make some people feel perhaps disenfranchised or like their needs aren't going to be met. And so this while the most cost effective is not the one that we would lean towards as the most viable recommendation right now. In the discussion,

committee because

the steering committee is something that is a big part of the conversations with the steering committee because the steering committee is a group of folks who want this to be successful. They want it they want to see something happen. They've been hearing about it from their constituents. They've been trying independently to work through it, but they they would love to be in partnership with the county, but they wanna make sure that whatever's put on the ballot has the best chance possible of passing. And so you'll hear the rest of this conversation about why it may or may not pass in our conversations.

Did any of your studies on these options consider that it could be leased out on weekends or whatever to club sports or whatever so that there'd be some type of revenue? And how does that

Yes. Type things? And and we have some slides later on that talk about our operational analysis assumptions. That's a really big question in community recreation is what's the balance between leasing the space out to generate revenue versus having the space available to the community to meet the needs of the community. And admittedly, on our operational analysis, we run them on the conservative side of having some leased operations, but typically outside of peak hours so that the spaces are available for the community when they need them most. So, let's say a Sunday, for example, or later in the evening or a portion would be leased out to a club space, but not all of the gymnasiums leased out at one time, for example. And of all the options that go inside of this facility, is not aquatics and

is not aquatics and swimming the most expensive one? And It is.

Correct. Yes. It is. It is. And there may be partnerships for a competitive swimming pool, but the rest of the aquatics, the youth activities, the the space for the kids, the space for community lap swimming, those are ones that are hard to find community to help contribute to. And so school districts are the ones that we often see as a funding partner for competitive pools and then that becomes an agreement of how do the dollars come in and how do they go out. Our recommendation is actually to lease the pools to the school districts versus having an upfront agreement. And the the benefit of that is you get those lease dollars over time and those lease dollars can change. Well, tell the schools to make up their mind. Either partner with us or don't rent our schools. They don't want us in their space. But they want to use our they want us to build space for them. It doesn't make sense. So lease it to them when they do wanna use it. That's that's really the recommendation. Yeah. That makes sense. It it is. It's very hard. As we're looking at, the next option and sorry. I jumped over that very quickly. The next option is looking at two facilities. One on the North Side of the county, one on the South Side of the county. Now, again, the specific locations of these have has not been determined, but we have been looking at a couple of different potential locations flanking north and south. Both of these again want an aquatic center to some scale, but we're recommending a reduced footprint of an aquatic center. So as we look at the North side, again, because the Hansen Sports Complex is up in North Logan, we're recommending gymnasiums be a priority over indoor turf. And we have a modest but very functional pool that's being recommended. So a zero entry play component, a space that you can do a water aerobics or you can set up a ninja course or something fun, a basketball hoop for the teens, and then some lap lanes off to the side. Again, you see the square footage drop, so this one's running around, just shy of 70,000 square feet. But we've also planned as we've looked at different options and alternatives for growth. So knowing that additional gymnasiums would likely be needed in the future, making sure there's a footprint for those. If aquatics does continue to grow in popularity and there is a funding partner, making sure

And one

And one thing we need that is kind of a component that maybe will come in the meantime or later, but if this North Valley was near the current ice arena, there can be an exchange of heat to peep to heat the pool. Like, there could be some economies

done with a North Valley location. And some cost savings associated with that. There's a lot of sort of energy based financing that by increasing the efficiency of the ice rink and tying it into the pool operations, there could be some dollars available if that loc colocation is a benefit. So this one hold on. I went the wrong direction. Sorry. Pardon me. North Valley. We did look at a couple of different locations on the North Side of the county. This one specifically is looking at sort of that North Logan colocation that would hit, just over about 56% of the county population within a fifteen minute drive. But you see that we're, like, by the time you get down to Providence, we're out into the twenty minute drive. And so it's really not hitting again that that South side of the county and some of the farther north communities are also in that twenty minute drive distance. As we look at the South Valley, again, here we've done limited indoor courts plus a small indoor turf component, so people have access to that indoor turf. The same pool that we're showing on the North Side. We did just put a note here that Skyview and Mountain Crest currently have lap pools for competitive swimming. And so you do have that use kind of covered as long as I mean, it's perfect for this high school kids. Right? The the place that it hits or misses the mark is on club competitive swimming. But again, you're not gonna get as many dollars from a club component outside of a pool lease. And so, we do wanna make sure there's space on both of these to grow into a future competitive pool. If let's say the pools go out in the high schools, the school district doesn't wanna pay for them there, they wanna partner up and put them in at the community rec center. We wanna make sure there's space for that moving forward. And again, looking at the South Side, we're throwing a dart somewhere kind of between Nibley and Hiram there, and we're looking at about 46 of the county population within a fifteen minute drive. As you put the two of these together, you hit 85% of the county within that fifteen minute drive time. And so, there's a couple of sort of east, west, north, south extremities that are outside of it, but generally good access and accessibility. And so here, we like this option for a couple of reasons. It has the potential to serve the entire county to an effective level. Right? There are equal amenities that are kind of distributed within the county, so everybody has access to gymnasiums, indoor turf, some level of aquatics, and it's it's that Goldilocks solution. Right? It's it's, of course, more expensive than the one facility, less expensive than the three facilities. But operationally, it's something that feels like it might be attainable, and we'll look at the finances here in a little bit. Again, we haven't finalized the site, so that's something that would be an ongoing conversation on these. And then, of course, facility option three. This one was for a minute, we were really excited about option one because it's so cost effective. And as we sort of fleshed out option one, it became apparent again that some folks might feel disenfranchised by that one facility. And so we went to the two facilities, but in that conversation about one, potential pressures from the district that over time they might not be able to continue to operate in the way they have been in the past. If we moved a new facility into Smithfield, we did another one kind of on the North End Of Logan and we did a third one on the South Side of the valley in that sort of Nibley Hiram zone. Could that meet the needs of the county? And from an accessibility perspective, the answer is absolutely yes. So you guys did see all of the floor plans. So the center one would be the one that's in the center kind of in that Logan North Logan, and then you can see the the north and south flanking it on either side. So this one would be that three facility option. And of course, it does hit everybody really effectively. And in fact, a large percentage of the residents of the county are within a ten minute drive time, which is awesome. But it does add the a third facility to cost of construction, to cost of operations, to running and managing the pool, all of those various components. And so ultimately, while this might be in fifty years what's right for Cache County or thirty years what's right for Cache County as you continue to grow, right now, we feel like it is and we heard this very clearly from the steering committee. So when I say we, I mean, sort of the collective we that it's too expensive, it's too big, it's too much of an ask for the community. As much as it hits everybody right where they need it, it's not quite hitting in the pocketbook which really matters today. So we did do a deep dive into costs, and we brought in specialists. We have a portfolio of projects that we use as a cost basis, but we asked a construction company, Westland Westland Construction, Blackridge is their predesign group. We asked them to put together some costs, and I don't expect you to read this. I have it blown up on the next slide. But we wanted a better idea of construction cost, and we also asked them to be conscientious of what the facility might be. And we've been talking about, can we use pre engineered buildings for a portion of it? Can we make it a little bit sort of of the community? I don't know the right term. I was gonna say sort of grittier, but maybe a little bit more appropriate for Cache County in a way that could be more cost effective. And so they looked at the three different facilities, the Central, the South Valley, and the North Valley facilities, and put together a proposed construction cost. And then we they their proposed construction costs are in $20.26 dollars. So after chatting with them, we then escalated that 4%. We're back into a nice 4% per year escalation cycle, which is exciting after the twenty twenties, early twenty twenties. And so we escalated that, and then we added soft cost. And soft costs are all of the things that are outside of the hard construction cost. So it's the design, if there's any site work permitting, utility sort of work outside of the site, furniture, fixtures, equipment, all that extra kind of cost that goes into a facility. We had been carrying 28% soft cost because we weren't sure when the things were gonna get built. So we had a couple of years of escalation built into it. We've pulled that back to a 28% escalation built into it. We've pulled that back to a twenty twenty seven cost plus 20% soft cost, which is totally buildable for next year. If these go out another year again, we would just add a 4% per escalation over the top of it. And so right now, with all three facilities, that's a $168,000,000 that we would be asking for for the construction cost of the three facilities, not including the operation cost. And so that's where everybody in the room kind of said, yeah. Too big. And so if we look at the option two with the north and south facility, that brings it down to just over a $100,000,000. So, again, it feels like it's a more attainable upfront cost, and we'll look at the bond impacts here in just a second. And then for operational cost, we have a partner that we work with that does recreation centers all over the country. And so Ballard and King has been helping us with the operational cost assumptions and impact. And so, again, we've been looking at that sort of market penetration of a max of 15%, but what would it look like if we're down as low as 10% in memberships? And we looked at revenues and expenditures after construction, so it's based off of sort of a $20.29 dollars for staffing and for expenses. Looking at again seven days a week, fifty open fifty weeks a year closed only on holidays. And you'll see that five or 6AM to nine or 10PM. Those those early mornings and later evenings are are pretty desired hours. This is the membership that basis. Now, again, if you think about if you remember, we're looking at this in $20.29 dollars. So these are average memberships today in facilities across Utah. So that is, again, a little bit conservative on the, cost for memberships and admissions. And so if we look at option one, option two, and option three revenues, we're at just under $3,000,000

in revenue for option one. Yeah. Would you go back a slide? Of course. So on the monthly membership, just in my mind, if I'm a household of four, so two adults, that's $50. Two youth, that's 40. So plus my tax

dollars that I'm being charged? So you would have that household of 50 plus your tax dollars. So you would No matter how big the household is? Yeah. It usually caps up to, like, up to four children or something and beyond that it's a nominal

amount per month. When you said in your survey, you talked about $20 that people are willing to pay. Where does that push that if you're talking to facilities?

So that dollar doesn't change. That does change. The households are only willing to pay, and we're using the $15 a month number. And so the question is how many households are contributing to that and what is the sort of tax impact of that contribution? And that was the big question and the concern with option three is the cost was so high and we only have so many dollars. There's no way financially we think we can get that

to be within the realm. And if you bought a membership, you could use either facility? Correct.

So how long would the tax increase go? Would it ever drop off? So typically, bond amounts are or bonds are for 20 to 30 years. This one has been calculated looking at a twenty year bond period. And then it would be up to the county to determine at that point if you do a a truth in taxation and continue that investment or if you let it drop off. And so, again, the revenues are about 3,000,000 for option one, three point eight for options for option two, and four point six for option three. So we do get some increased revenue. They're closer home. They're more attainable. They're a little bit less crowded in each one. People want to use them, but there's not a big leap that you see between the three options. You do see a big staff increase between between the three options. And with that, leap. And so it's really option three is adding option one and option two together because you have all three of those facilities the staffing for all three the utility bills for all three etcetera. And you do have a capital improvement replacement fund that would need to be applied to all three buildings. So there is an increased cost of operations that comes from growing from one to two and again from two to three. Lifeguards are a big staffing challenge for facilities. And so again, looking at option one, you can probably break even if not make money with option one if it were really well programmed. But again, we feel like it's not hitting the community members where they are. Option two, it does require a subsidy, but not nearly the subsidy the option three requires because of the staffing impact, and the revenue increase isn't quite as impactful across those three. There was also a conversation amongst the steering committee to see if there would be an opportunity to allocate some of the RAPS tax to cover the operational expenses and if that's something that could be viable to help reduce the capital or the upfront bond cost as well. And so looking at bond impacts, and this is where I have to apologize, the holiday weekend got in the way. We do not have final numbers from Science Day. So we have a sort of rough order of magnitude from the information that they have shared with us to date. But if we look at option two as the potential recommended option, we would wanna make sure that they're built for the immediate needs with space to expand. And while they're still working on bond impacts, we anticipate it would be between 155 and 165 a household for a county wide bond impact. So how much is that a month? I'm I'm trying to do that. So that is a 180 is $15 a month. Okay. So it's less than So it's less than $15 a month. Okay. Yep. And again, that's just for the construction cost. We've sort of excluded that operational cost. That operational cost added, like, a dollar or $2 a month, something like that. Included it. Yeah. Or a year. Excuse me. It was a it was a pretty minimal amount. That's the end of the presentation. A whirlwind of information.

What questions do you have? What is

So you mentioned hands on facility. Yeah. So now we're talking government competing against a private entity or what. Have you considered that? I'm just wondering I mean, we use them as a question Yeah. And yet they're private.

And Can we ask Queen? Yeah. I think Lord Logan Lord Logan too? Okay. Yep.

And admittedly, what we typically see is when community recreation centers are built in communities, engagement in health and fitness activities across facilities rises. What people often do is they go and they join their community rec center and they discover they like something, but the rec center isn't quite maybe robust enough for their CrossFit needs or their spinning class. And then they go and perhaps join the local one down the street that meets that need. Or they, like we saw, go to the recreation center for their kids to engage in whatever those programs are, and then they go to this other one over here, where the kids become super excited about volleyball and, again, outgrow the community rec options and go and engage in a competitive volleyball program down the street. So we don't typically see community rec as detrimental. In fact, it's typically beneficial to the community and private sports and recreation programs.

What else?

So is there enough space around the Hansen Complex

We did do a test fit and yes, there is enough space. It would require some shared parking agreements with the school district, again, which we think would be a good complimentary hours of use component, but there's physically enough space for a facility there. Yeah. And and I believe the county owns some of that. Correct.

Yeah. The the steering committee meetings are robust and circular in many times, depending on who's at the meeting and what opinions they have. And so it's been a little frustrating, but I think I think that we've been able to get a lot of good information to you guys. And Whitney's done a great job of guiding.

And it's been hard. Right? Because and we we hear that our steering committee is made up of the cities that represent the residents within this county and within the community, and they wanna do what's right for their citizens. And so the closer to home, the more accessible that is for each and every one of those constituents that they represent, the better. And so it has been a challenge in trying to, like, find that balance between what's the right close to home and what's the right accessible attainable amount to hit everybody in a way that it feels like it's both community rec, but it it's both community rec, but also county wide rec at the same time.

So if I can ask you as part of the steering committee, how do we inform or educate our public about all the things that are coming to a head as far as Texas and coming down? When I look at what was proposed from the fire district, the unincorporated part of the county is gonna be seeing an increase. Quite a bit. Quite a bit just for fire. And the unincorporated county is still gonna be taxed if we did a recreation center, but yet they're the ones who are farther away from it. Exactly.

So we we talked about those things, and that that's a difficult part of the conversation, Nolan. And, typically, one one of the things that was brought up by and I can't remember who it was that brought this up. But, typically, when we're gonna put something on a on a bond election, you wanna give yourselves at least six months to educate the public and to make sure everyone understands and ask questions and kind of build up that PR piece. And if we'd if we voted if if something was brought to the council, if the steering committee comes up with a proposal that they want us to bring to the council and say, would the seven of you vote to put it on the the ballot, we would have none we'd have, like, just a few months, very little time. So there's there's that component that might make it less successful. My fear, and has been all along, is that you put it to a county wide vote and it's 49 to 51, but yet we're still gonna force those other 49% of the people to pay the same taxes. So there's a lot of things to consider as we as we look at what's fair, what's best for the whole county. There it it's just multifaceted. There's there's just a lot of different parts for that conversation. But, the ultimate decision about what goes on the ballot will come to the council. That's that's our decision, at at the end. So hopefully and I don't know, you know, Lindsay's here. She's been involved from the beginning. There's we don't wanna put if you put something on the ballot and then it fails, does that affect the ability for other communities to do something for their community? Because there's this overriding thought that we don't want recreation in our county.

And I think that was Mark's point.

Yeah. And About library.

Right. Yeah. The Yep. We hear over and over again that The county voted down. The citizens voted down the county wide library, but that was, you know, fifteen years ago. Yeah. Exactly. A lot. But it's still a lot of repercussions. But we always point to that as a reason not to do anything. Yep. So that'd be a very big concern, I think, with with a any other new county wide effort.

When does the steering committee meet next? It

would be nice if there was a way to conduct the vote and read the results, because I think we may well have a situation where a community, like North Logan said, we we really do want this, and we're at 55%, and we want it. That may lend itself to setting up something different than countywide, but same thing with Logan. And trying to to lure the entire county into participating with it may make it unattractive to a community. That's that's the Consider it. Back and forth between Logan's desire to have it in Logan and and whether it gets voted one way or the other with with the location. It it's interesting to me that I think the city leaderships are far more interested in that issue than the citizens are. The citizen travel across city boundaries all the time to get what they want.

Yeah. That's that's hard too.

Well, the travel time is puzzling to me because I live in Mount Sterling, and I drive to the South End Of Logan to work every day. It takes me more than twenty minutes. So, yeah, in the study, it says twenty minutes or less. And so

I'm thinking So our traffic models aren't up to date?

Yeah. Well, it could be different in different times of day too. Yeah. It's it's like an average or whatever. I'm coming in at 06:30 in the morning. It should be okay. Okay. Our traffic models are not up to date.

So June 12 is our next steering committee meeting. K.

Maybe to Nolan's point, would you put up the drive time chart? At least the well, I I think any one of them will work just for the question. But, yeah, we could probably go to option two, these numbers. So, you know, we're looking at we're saying anything in red is twenty minutes Or more. Or more. How much more? I mean, if we added another thing at twenty five I could do that for you. You know, is that a pink for 95% of the population?

Probably.

So it I mean, it's, you know, we're saying in that scenario, thirty minutes, everyone that lives in the county minus somewhere up Logan Canyon is within thirty minutes or less of the of one of the two facilities.

And and some of the comments that I have heard, people that live in mostly in the Nibley or Hiram South area, they're they love the North North Logan has such a robust, great programs. But it's like, if you've got four kids involved in soccer and you're driving to North Logan to get all your kids to practices multiple times a week, they're just so tired of that drive time. But but also, they have really good programs, and they've and they do come. Like, and and Mayor Peterson has the data to show how many people from the Valley come and take advantage of her program. So that that's hard to that's hard to quantify that sometimes. K. Does everyone feel like you have enough information about the kind of where the conversations have been, where they're going, so that you can think about that and maybe talk to your constituents when you have opportunities to be around them and get a better idea of when something is brought to us to decide whether we agree to put it on the ballot.

How do we educate I mean, I know there's the fire district. I don't know about any other things, but our budget, are we gonna be able to maintain without a tax increase this year when we sit and look at our budget. I'm just saying all of the things that are lining up, I want the citizens to have ample knowledge of saying, yeah, we voted this in and then holy cow, three months later when they start seeing their taxes go up, they're gonna be I wasn't aware of this. That's what I'm trying to understand is how we let every citizen know, consider fire district, consider library, consider this because I've sat through two tech truth and taxation meetings, and they get rallied just over $12.

One thing that I mean, this is something that we need to consider, and Keegan has really been pushing this. We have a public relations committee. I think Mark's the chairman of it. I think we need to be very robust. We've never met. I think we need to think about those things. How can we get out budget of $0?

Yeah.

But how can we get out ahead of that with our website, with our messaging, you know, that I I think that whatever happens, whatever we do with the fire district, how we end up with that, or if this comes to a ballot, I think that public education is is huge, and and it's hard. I know that, you know, people are busy taking care of their families and earning a living, and they to to be an informed citizen takes a lot of effort, and a lot of people don't know where to look for they'd like to know more, but they don't know where. I get I get that all the time. How can I find out more about what's going on or who's running? And so I think if we can have those discussions I don't know what the answer is, but I think we can do we're not doing anything right now, and I think we can do something

towards that. So help me understand this also. If we're doing two facilities, which you say would meet everything, does the county take the role of administration on that, or where is the role of administration gonna be for those two?

Yeah. There there

imagine that. Yeah.

There there are very good people in this valley that run very good recreation programs that could staff those facilities. What we're really talking is mostly having the cities

operated, but but primarily use the county to raise the the money to build the facilities.

Am I correct with that, Lindsay? That's correct. And I think the idea is it's not just about using the county's money. It's it's providing a service to the county residents. So it's not we're not just saying give us your money because we want to have a fantastic facility and we're clogged. We're saying let's extend the extremely efficient operation of our recreation programs into this arena that would benefit the entire valley.

There was also talk of phasing. Fair adult. You're not suggesting that the county or my recreation department have operate these facilities. What we're talking about is the county bonding for the money and then basically turning it over to the cities to operate the facilities. They have some kind of a contract. With the idea that the cities that our our tax base would be used to build it, and and hopefully, we'd have some wrapped money to maintain the facility, operational expenses would rest upon the cities. And that's whether that's practical or not and how much rest on which cities, I don't I don't think that's been fleshed out entirely as to which cities suggest that we're going to operate the facilities.

That is the operational shortfall of the facility.

Without wraps?

Correct. Was it it was 1,100,000?

The cost of the bond. The cost the bond and the servicing of the bond would come out

of property taxes levied by the county. Correct. But then we would be asking well, right right there, option two, one point one million from wraps. Right? Yeah. So that is the amount of dollars that would be required to maintain full operations of the two facilities. The question is how could some of it, if any, come out of wraps? And if so, great. If not, you can wrap that full amount into the bond

to cover that delta. And she said it would only be a dollar or 2 a year? Couple of dollars a year. Yeah.

So has it been explored totally that it can be privately funded? Because was the Hansen privately funded at one time or how did that work?

Sorry. Privately funded recreation centers. Uh-huh. Well, the the Hansen,

specifically. The Hansen complex.

That one was privately built,

But you didn't ever pay for it. Just the operation part of it.

Right. That's right. And there may be opportunities for private partnerships once we get it to if if we said, here's what we are comfortable with. Here's what it's gonna cost. Let's start looking for some private funding or even some state funding possibly. Like, there could be other options. We just haven't The wraps was just one suggestion. Just one suggestion that there it's recreation, art, parks and parks and zoo. So it's kind of what the. And people are already paying that without it coming out extra out of their pockets. That that amount, they're already paying it by going out to eat and by the different things that fund the RAPS tax. Well, that's still taxpayer money. It is taxpayer money, but they're already paying it. It's about it would be an extra yes. It wouldn't be an increase.

Back to your example of 49 and 51. Mhmm. I could see if we did pull RAPS in that that would upset

outlying communities who are relying on that RAPS to help their Yeah. Recreation. Yeah. I don't know that it's a viable it it was just a thought that that might be something if if it was a big portion of the county that really wanted recreation and that they could have some of the operations paid for without any tax increase, they may say, yes. We want recreation overall, and that's you know, that'd be something that would just have to be it's just one thought, one option. K. That was a very informative hour. Thank you, Whitney, so much for you've come to Cache Valley so many times. We appreciate you. It's a good thing I like it up here.

I've heard that there's some really phenomenal bread that comes out of Hiram on Friday mornings, so we're gonna have to, at some point, redo our entire schedule so I can be here at 7AM on a Friday morning. Perfect. Yeah. K. Does anyone have any last questions for Whitney before we

finish up this meeting? K. K. Thank you all. Alright. Thank you. K. That ends our workshop meeting. We will begin our council meeting at 05:00. I don't know if you're there is and there are sandwiches. Right, Andrew?

Yes.