Hyde Park City's Planning Commission Meeting 11.9.2025

He didn't like all of them. I submitted it, so I don't have her. Yeah. It'd be through. I think three to three to two. I wonder how he's doing these days.

Sure.

And microphone, you need to speak, like, directly into it. It's not gonna capture it if you're Oh, yes. Sites. Does it being recorded?

I mean, it was just fine. To

Okay. Have to email.

Welcome everyone to tonight's meeting. It is 11/19/2025. This is Hyde Park Planning Commission, and all of our commission is here. Welcome, especially, to our new member, Heather Heather Taylor. Thank you. We're grateful that you're with us, that you accepted this responsibility and also volunteered to help the community out. Appreciate that. Everyone's here. Alright. Well, we will start with either an opening prayer or thought, and then the pledge of allegiance and showing us offer to give that to us or do that for us.

A

prayer. Our father in heaven, we're grateful for this opportunity to be here together and serve our community. We're grateful for the beautiful city that we live in. We ask that thy spirit be with us, that we will be guided and inspired in our decisions. And as we read and ponder and think that we will be able to do what is best for our city and for the future of the city. We're and we're especially mindful of our constitution of our United States and pray that we will always keep that in mind in all of our decisions. And this we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thanks, Dan. I pledge allegiance to the flag

of The United States Of America and the Cedar Republic for which you say is one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Alright. Thank you very much. Let's go over the meetings from the la the minutes from the last meeting. Are there any questions or concerns with what was posted in in the

file? I I have two baby corrections. K. Emil was here in person, not via Zoom. I remember her being here. She was. And then up in a letter Oh, it was her Her brother, Craig. Yes. That was here via Zoom. Oh, he was with but but not Camille. Camille was here.

And then up in the letterhead, you still have David Nelson as a commissioner. He's been

yeah. We need to fix the

Oh, yeah.

The planning commission letterhead. Yeah. So where do we because these things are very important. I told you they were baby correct. Life altering.

Yeah.

Hey. Any any other corrections or or comments? None? Okay. I'd entertain a motion at that point.

I make a motion that minutes be approved subject to the two baby changes. Alright.

Second that. And we have a second. Okay. We have a motion and a second to accept the meeting minutes as they were posted with the two corrections brought up by commissioner Henson. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Alright. Thank you so much. Let me go back. And are let's have Mikael, would you present our planning staff report?

Sure. I don't have a lot to report other than please remember that we are not meeting on the December 3. Our next meeting will be December 17.

K. What's going on the third? No. I'm just kidding. Did you get an invite, Heather? I did. Okay. K. Good. I noticed that sometimes new new people might get missed inadvertently. We don't want that to happen. Alright. The next item is a public hearing to consider an ordinance to amend our code 12 dot one fifty dot zero one zero and zero two zero. This has to deal with water. K. Who would like to do the intro to this? Which

I'm happy to do that. Okay. Please. So as you well remember and have reviewed the minutes, the public hearing was held at our last meeting and closed, and so we are here to pick things up where we left off. The motion was to table this item, but the mayor has requested that this item come back before you and give you the opportunity to vote on it instead of having a default negative recommendation as city council moves forward with this. K. So we would like to afford you that opportunity to ask any questions, review any materials that I added a document in box and Marcus did as well, just to give more details. And we're happy to open this item for discussion and a vote. K. Now

because we had originally tabled voted to table this until January, and since we're discussing it now

We just need a motion

to untangle. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to I am gonna have a public hearing. We'll open it up just for opportunity sake because some people may or may not, have heard about it the first time. So I will open it up for just a few minutes.

Is it a public hearing? Like, was it noticed as a public hearing? It was noticed as a public hearing, but remember that the public hearing was closed at the last meeting. Right. So I'm going to reopen it Okay. Just for

transparency sake. Sure. Let me do that. And since we are not going to be discussing this in January as we originally stated. Okay. So just a reminder that and I never have that with me, but please come to the podium. State your name if you have questions or comments. And we don't answer questions. We just listen to your statements.

My stand in here then.

Make your sense.

You're I'm surprised you don't have your developers here this week. No.

What was your name again, sir? Dane Breager.

You know me.

Can you say your name again? I'm sorry. I didn't catch it. Dane. Dane Breager.

I live just across the street. That's usually why I walk over here. So you were gonna have a workshop. That's what your last minute said. You're gonna table till January and have a workshop. That never happened, evidently. Marcus is shaking his head. We're going on without it, I guess. I just wanna comment after what the developer said last week, complaining about your impact fees. I actually went back and read your general plan, which was dated in 2022. I don't know how often that gets updated.

Seven to ten years. When? Seven to ten years is the recommendation.

Oh, so a lot of things have changed since then. So I may be wrong with my figures and stuff. But they were complaining about the impact fees, and so I went back. And and if you look at what Sunrise Engineering proposed and in their charts, the developers were complaining about what they were getting charged for the impact fees for where there's no culinary water. But if you look at at Sunrise's chart, they're using exact or, well, a little more than double of the culinary water that the average citizen down here uses. And another question I have as the city voted last week on the Bringer's division, and I don't know the answer to this either. Correct me if I'm wrong, Marcus, but they had 20 water shares. So and and that I'm assuming that's off this the Center Canal or is that off the Hyde Park Canal? The Hyde Park Canal. So it's not pressurized yet. Mhmm. So my question is, these guys paid for the shares. The developers do. When the person that owns the property, if if they're buying it, and they end up pressurizing that plaque, which they are gonna do in the future, that canal, Those homeowners are gonna be paying what I'm paying or more because I'm on the one that's already piped. So these developers are complaining about what they gotta pay, but what's the homeowner pay? I mean, they're talking about the people on the hill. I I have a friend that lives just across the street from the canal, the Upper Canal over here in North Logan. His watering bill to water his lawn is almost $1,000 a month. Now if these developers are gonna build up there on the hill where there's no water, I'm sorry. Let them complain. But make them pay for the water. Now the homeowner's gonna have to. So I've said enough.

Thank you, Thane. Yeah. Appreciate it. Any other comments? Alright. We will close the public hearing and open it up for discussion amongst us, the commission.

So we do you need a motion?

To untable?

To untable. And then and then a motion to either approve, deny, table, whatever it is you're gonna do, and then we can open discussion about that motion.

K. So the motion could be something like I make a motion that we untable the discussion we had planned to do later and have that and and open it up now. Mhmm. I make that motion.

I'll second it. Okay. We have a motion in the second to untable the discussion on the the two codes that are to be amended, reference water. All those in favor of untabling the discussion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Alright. And now does anyone have a motion as far as what they'd like to recommend or the city council to do?

Do we now or after we discuss?

Well, according to Mikhail, we're to have a motion and a possibly a second, maybe not, but at least a motion and then discuss motion and whether or not that should continue and then have a vote on it.

Okay.

So I'll make a motion to recommend approval of the changes of those two ordinances, 12 dot one fifty dot zero one zero and twelve dot one fifty dot zero two zero, recommend approval to the city council. And if we'd like, we can begin discussion now, or we can have someone second it and then begin discussion or whatever.

Seems like we ought to discuss before we have a motion. Okay. A second. I mean A second. That's fine. Now the reason

let me just say why I believe this. The impact first of all, the impact fees are not really part of this discussion, or are they? You're shook shaking your head yes. That means they are or they're yes. You're correct. You are correct. Okay. Because we're talking about water shares, which is a separate and distinct

Yes.

Item from the impact fees itself of of hooking into our system. Impact fees are addressed in a different order. Right. This has to do with the developers or the landowners, whoever is going to build, providing water for their development.

Correct. I have a lot of information on this. If you would like me to share it. I wasn't here at the last meeting. Please share. Okay. So first of all, I apologize for not being here at the last meeting. I had to apologize to Mikael because I think I set her up to not be able to present the issue adequately, and I did not get the planning commission enough information before the meeting to make adequate decisions. So I apologize to everybody for that. The way that municipal water works, there's really three pieces to it when you're talking about development. You've got, first of all, the impact fees, which is a separate discussion we're not gonna have right now. Those mostly go towards the actual infrastructure, the pipes in the ground, the new water tanks. That's what impact fees pay for. The water rights is the city's legal ability to provide the water to the people who are hooked on to our system. So every year, the city has to fill out a report and send it to the state saying that we are not exceeding our legal ability to provide water to our users, which is what this is all about. And then the third piece of that puzzle is what, Thane brought up in his public comment, which is once all the developers are done and we have residents, how does this really affect them? The theory is that this particular piece of the puzzle will only really affect the residents in that the developer could roll this cost into the cost of selling the lot back to the property owner. That's just about the only time this should affect a resident of Hyde Park. So the water I For the water rights and and the impact and the impact fees. Right. And your the water fee that you pay every month as a resident of Hyde Park goes towards the long term maintenance of the system. So the impact fee is to offset the growth. If the if the new growth impacts the system, we use the impact fees to re reinforce or enhance the system. The water rights are all about the city's legal ability to provide water, and then the long term resident payments are to make sure that we can replace the pipes that break, stuff like that. So the reason why this is a priority for the city is we have a water master plan that got finished in 2023. It's already outdated because the plan showed that we were gonna be experiencing a very low growth rate over the years, approximately 3%, and our water rights were gonna last us a really long time. With the number of entitled units we have now, we haven't finished doing the math. I've asked our engineers to maybe do a little bit of math for us to figure out where we're actually at with our water rights. But based on our napkin math, we'll call it, we're eating up those water rights really, really fast. Right now in the ordinance that we're reviewing, we already require every developer to either bring water rights or shares or pay a fee in lieu of. Every single developer who has come through the city has either brought not enough water rights or shares or just flat out paid the fee in lieu of. And so the city, as we have entitled these 1,200 plus units over the past several years, we haven't had any new water rights coming in to offset that. Now staff, we've been successful in securing a handful of new water rights with the payments that have been made already. That was one of the questions brought up at a public hearing last time is what has the city done with this money that we've paid. We have gone out and found some water rights, but we haven't been very successful. And so the concern that we have that we brought to the attention of the mayor and and the city council was the staff. What we're observing is the city's eating up our water rights bank faster than we're replenishing it. And so this is a suggestion of how we can make sure that we don't get to the point where we have too much building and not enough water rights, and then we have to start telling people, sorry. You can't split your lot and build a house for your grandkids next door, or, you know, the developer can't come and build a 100 more houses. Or when Target wants to come and build a second location in Hyde Park, we tell them, whoops. Can't do it. Not that that will ever happen, but it's just an example. When the city runs out of water rights, we have to start telling people no. We have to start telling businesses no. We have to start telling commercial opportunities no because we don't have to Unless they bring their own Unless they bring their own. So what this ordinance does is it forces the applicants to have the do the due diligence, find the water rights, and bring it with them when they come to develop. That can be quite the onerous task. I acknowledge that's tough. That's something that Melinda used to help the city with occasionally. Been her previous life when she worked for the city. That's something that I've done a handful of times. Something that Melissa, who's helping us take the minutes tonight, helped it it just helped me with earlier this week. We reached out to somebody who posted an ad that the mayor had sent to us about a large amount of water rights for sale, and the price they were asking for was so outrageous that we just had to tell them no. Like, we we couldn't afford the price they were asking for. So it's a very real fight. It's a very big problem that we have. Sure. The city has some water rights saved away, but the city council would like to use those to maybe incentivize a new business to come in and say, you know what? We are so excited about this opportunity that we you don't need to bring water rights or something like that instead of just having it be gobbled up as all the growth comes into the city. So that's really the main concern, and that's why this is such a big priority for the mayor and the city council. Now does this concern

I know concerns culinary water. Does it concern

secondary water? A little bit. So our ordinance, the way it's worded today, is a developer could bring either or. It's it's at this point, the city is accepting secondary shares secondary irrigation water shares because we know that we could take those to the state and get them converted into water rights. At this point, the state is still allowing those conversions. So right now, the ordinance, you could bring either one. But did you take that out of the

with the changes? I don't think so. I thought you did.

The one of the big changes that we made is another onerous part of this process is converting the water rights. And so the green line of text that we added, which this has been workshopped by the city attorney, so it's a little different than the version that you saw at the last meeting, but the intent is very much the same.

So what does what does b say? Well, it says will not be accepted. Secondary water.

Oh, there's there's some text missing there. So that is not being changed, which is why it's in black. Okay. The other text that's missing talks about how shares that are only valid during a certain season or under certain conditions will not be accepted. K. There are shares out there that exist when there's a certain amount of rainfall that happens in a year, then you'll get your irrigation water. We're we're not gonna take those because those ones, you can't go and convert with the state. So those are conditional rights? Yeah. That's I think that's one of the names for it. But, yeah, section b is not being changed at all, which is why it has no colorful colors on it. And so section a, one of the things we are adding is if an applicant brings us water rights, we want them to go and take them to the state engineer's office and get those switched over and put under the city's name. It's not a terribly difficult process, but it can be

a little time consuming. It's it's much easier than finding the rights to begin with. Oh, yeah. For sure.

But that's just something that we're adding in here is that the city that's something that we our staff doesn't have a ton of time to do, process these applications right now. And we the last time we bought a big chunk of water rights, we had to hire we had to spend a little money and have Sunrise Engineering process the application for us because none of us could find the time to do it.

It seems like the the party that has the most to gain from the transaction should have the most incentive to go get the rights. And I think that would be the person that's gonna most likely the developer would think that they think more on it than the city would. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

There was a lot of concern at the meeting based on the minutes. Again, I wasn't here. The about what are other cities doing? Is this common practice in the state? Is this fair? Just for everybody's information, I did upload a document into Vox. The the state auditor published a report. I think it was today or the last couple of days. They just finished a statewide audit, and they surveyed about 200 cities across the state and asked them, do you exact water from people? Which is what we're doing here. It's called an exaction. So you force people to bring you water rights. And of the 200 cities that they surveyed, just under half, about 45% said absolutely we do. And of that group, the subgroup, more of the lion's share of them were communities just like Hyde Park that are growing really fast and saying, we're struggling to keep up. So we need the developers to start bringing the water rights. That was super helpful. And I noticed the delineating

point on that was that cities that have established populations are not exacting. Mhmm. And those that are growing are. And it was actually 65% of them. And it makes sense because if you're already built out, you can establish what your water needs are for the next forty years, which is what they were asking us to think about. Absolutely. We didn't even figure it out for a few years, obviously, because it's changed just since, what, '23? So we definitely fall into these cities with the highest growth rate, which would make us in the majority. 65% are already using exactions because you can't determine what the future is for forty years. Mhmm. We're growing too fast and unpredictably.

Hyde Park City does have a forty year plan. I don't know what all of it says exactly, but I do know that it's it's already outdated. It's just like we redid it with the water master plan with our certain projections of growth and how things are gonna happen, and Wolfpack Bay was built, and all of our expectations got exploded. So

Oh, go ahead. No. No. No. Sorry. Something that was said by developer last meeting didn't make sense to me until I read what you dropped in the box, and I was reading that today. I'm reading the other two municipalities requirements for water dedication. What was said, it sounded almost it was kind of like a, well, if you do this, then I'm gonna do this, and it was a little bit threatening not. Nick, how do I do how do I I wish we could rerecord or replay what he said. Something to the effect of if he's going to be required to do that, he's going to do like high density high high density because that's going to make more sense based on our code. When I read Mapleton's code and the other city's code that you guys put in here, they've got, provisions for condos, for duplexes, for higher density. Do we have that in our code? Have we figured out has the engineer figured that out for us? And if not, that may be something we wanna hurry and get in there. Because if you know, a condo development on an acre is gonna take a lot more water than a single family residence. Yeah. And it and the way he was saying it was saying he's gonna make more money and not have to bring as much water if he puts high density on that acre. It could. It depends.

The I don't have the numbers in front of me, but this the studies show that typically if you if you have a one acre lot with a single house on it and they're watering all their landscaping with drinking water, it's probably not gonna use as much water as a or it's probably gonna use a lot more water than a one acre lot with, like, a 24 plex on it that only has minimal landscaping because the biggest loss of the culinary water is when you just spray it out into nature. And so there's there's a yes and a no to that response from our developer friends. Yeah. If you're gonna build a a skyscraper, it's gonna use a lot more water. But, yeah, a one acre lot with single home on it watering their lawns lawns with drinking water versus the 24 plex, my money would probably be on the 24 plex

to have Is that lower water impact. Is Is that taken into consideration? Like because I noticed they were they had specific amounts they figured out based on units. I'm guessing that's like toilets, flushing, nuts, dishwashers, laundry times,

however many units. Mhmm. So that's another great distinction to make is our code, the way it's written, it's not being changed, which is why it's not presented here. But in 12/2020, so the second half of the ordinance where we're not changing a ton of language, There's a chart, a table that shows how you figure out how much water your particular thing is going to be using. And this is actually part of that audit report if you read it. A lot of cities do a different way of calculating it. Hyde Park, the way we used to do it, is some city staff sat down with some planning commissioners back in the day and put together a table based on actual usage numbers saying this is how much our people are using on their indoor use and on their outdoor use, and that's what we want them to account for. What we have changed it to be in the past few years is we changed it so that the table is based solely on the state required numbers. So the state has numbers in that report that I talked about earlier. They want all the cities to be only putting out so much water per unit per for indoor and outdoor usage, and so that's what we change our numbers to be is just match the state minimum requirements. And so the state doesn't really discriminate if you're a one bedroom apartment or a 10 bedroom mansion in the hills. They say, you have to provide this much water per unit in your residential. And so that's what our table's saying.

Is that based on what they want

people to conserve and use, or is that based on what actually usually gets end up end up being used? That, as far as I understand, is based on huge studies that the state has done over the years to try and map how much water people are actually using. But, again, they don't really discriminate based on the size of the unit. They just break it down, like, a per door or per unit basis. And so since that's the metrics that we get judged at from the state, so so that's the metrics we're gonna put back on our developers. It's the same ones that we get judged on. That's what we'll put back to the development community here. So that part is not being considered to be changed in this ordinance, but that's how

we calculate that when development comes through. It's helpful to analyze. Yeah. No. The questions are great. Do we have I liked Mapleton had one that had it kind of a catch all a backup that the city shall have authority to require the transfer of more than is required by the code if the city engineer determines that the development's going to consume more than is actually being required in the code? Do we have a backup that allows us to have an engineer look at larger developments just to make sure? Yeah. That one's tough because the way exactions work in the law is we can't actually take

more than what a development is going to need. Like, great example is roads. People always think when the development comes through, the city can force them to build a ginormous road. But the developer can come in and say, I'm only gonna be generating this much traffic, and so I only need to build a road that's this big for my people. And even if the city's master plan shows that's gonna be a 10 lane highway one day, if the developer's only building 10 houses, we can't say build half the 10 lane highway. We can we can only say, alright. We'll build the two lanes that you need for your development. And it's kinda the same with the water rights. So we have a bit of a catchall in our commercial and other development section where it's all based on the use. And so we can look at if you're gonna be a machine shop that uses water in your machining processes, and we know that's a ton of water that they move through, yeah, you're probably gonna be contributing more water than the warehouse that has a single bathroom that people may use once a once a day or something. And so we have that in our commercial and other section, but we don't really have that in the residential section mostly because it's not very defensible if we ever were to call a development to the mat and say, no. You have to do that. Our attorney felt like there would be some tough justifications in court if we ever got called to the mat on that one.

Is it to use the state boilerplate?

Mhmm. So we use the state numbers when we do the math for how much. The I should clarify. The only change we're right now, developers have to do that anyway, but we have the fee in lieu of option. So they can just pay money and get a get out of the requirement. The biggest change we're proposing here is just take out the fee in lieu of option Make them go get it. And say, we don't need any more money. We have lots of money that we've already collected from these developments. We're having trouble finding water rights, so we wanna put it back to the developers to do the homework and go find the water rights.

And sorry if my questions seem that they aren't relevant specifically to the vote we're taking, but my questions are have my brain thinking ahead that once we switch that to them bringing rights, do we need to alter anything out else to make sure they're bringing enough rights It's a great question. Future growth. So that that's that was that line of questioning.

Yeah. I mean, as far as we know, there's not any other particular ordinances that we would need to necessarily update. We have pretty good procedures in place for when these are required and when they need to be brought forward. I don't think we have anything maybe on the back end with our math that we need to do and our analyses when we update our water master plans. We'll have to take this into account. But

Good info. Thank you. I if we had a lot of that before, I don't think we would have been as confused.

I have a question. Yeah. Sorry. I've lost my voice. I'm very new. So I just with that fee that they've been paying, does it cover to buy water shares if we were able to find them? Is it a like, how much is a water share? So it depends.

The when we first put together what the fee would be, the fee was something like $2,000 per acre foot. Now just for reference, one acre foot will supply enough water for about the indoor use of two houses. That doesn't really cover the outdoor use of even one house. So one acre foot of water, we said it was $2,000. Very quickly, we looked at the market and consulted some water use attorneys across the state and realized that was very low. And so we upped it to 5,000 per acre foot, and we got a lot of flack from developers and from other cities because their rates were also really low. But the first time we found water rights to purchase, we were paying $4,000 plus per acre foot. And so our 5,000 was enough to cover that, plus the paperwork and the headache to go and get that all changed at the state level. Recently, as I mentioned, we tried to chase down a new set of water rights, and they wanted $20,000 per acre foot. And so we're like, woah.

That was the one for sale that you guys just

I I was emailing with the gentleman today telling him, I'm sorry, but the city cannot pay that price. Like, we're not gonna pay you $2,000,000 for water rights that we got last year for, you know, a few 100,000. And so it's the market is changing very quickly. It's really hard to say right now what a share is worth. We can we can narrow down what irrigation shares are going for pretty quickly by looking at how those have been transferred. But there's a difference between, like, a canal share and a drinking water right that comes from the aquifer or gets diverted from a natural spring. Those water rights are typically much more and that's what we were trying to chase down. And the the gentleman knew what he had. We his prices were pretty outrageous, but down in Southern Utah, I know there's projects down there that are going for about $20,000 per per acre foot, and it's not unheard of across the state. So this can get very expensive very fast. And so as a city, our options are yeah. We could increase our fee in lieu of based on the market, and then we're just charging the developers $2,030,000 dollars per acre foot over the years. Or we stop playing these pricing games, and we just say, you guys have to go find them because that's more work than we are able to put in at this point.

Thank you. And then one more question. Does this affect commercial? Because we talked about maybe having a bank of watershed shares to entice the business.

So if we change this, is it also commercial? Is it all building? This affects every type of development in the city. Yep. It's everybody. So right now Verify that. Yep. Right now, everybody in the city has to either bring the water or pay the fee. Okay. And we got a lot we have a lot of businesses that are trying to get permits right now. One of them recently, they came in, and when they did their math, they showed they were gonna use a really great drip system for their landscaping, have very minimal plant use. And so when we approved the landscaping plan, we also gave them a reduction in their total water requirement because they were being very water conscious with their overall plant. So we are trying to do things if we have developers or projects that come in and say, hey. We're trying to conserve water. We do try to give them breaks when we can. But the big concern, like I said in the beginning, is we're eating up those the bank of water rights that we have, we're eating them up really quick. And so the concern is we need to start making some shifts in how we do this so we don't suddenly run out.

Thank you. Mhmm.

Alright. Any other comments or questions?

I have a bunch. Alright. Sorry. Where right now, you said they're being eaten up because where are they going right now?

So right now, we have entitled 1,200 units of a mixture of single family, multifamily apartments. There's a whole mix of units that have been entitled because none of them brought water rights to the table, and we haven't been able to find any. We have to basically say those are already spoken for in our system. Because they paid in lieu of bringing because they paid the c in lieu of. And so they're vested. They're entitled to the city's use of that water. Okay. And so now we have to turn around and buy new water rights for the next people to come along with that money, but we are not having great luck finding those.

So is there a database somewhere that shows who owns water rights Mhmm. And what to?

The the division of water rights has a great website, if you can figure out how to use it, that catalogs every water right in the state, who owns it. It's much like the county parcel viewer, but instead of a map, it's a list. But you can go on there. Unfortunately, it doesn't have great contact information for everybody who owns those water rights. So it's a great like, if you know the people who it's saying own the rights, then, yeah, you can figure find them real quick, but it's been super unhelpful for us. We did the the person who we were trying to negotiate the last round with that we had to tell him no thanks, they sent us the numbers of the water rights, so we were able to get on the website and verify they were real water rights. But yeah. So there is a database, but it's not super helpful for trying to acquire new water rights.

Yeah. So what to develop? What does that look like? Because I I get all this in theory. I do. Mhmm. But I also get what it might look like in real life. So

what's what does it look like when a developer goes to obtain water rights? Probably really similar to what it's been looking like for us to try to obtain water rights. So, typically, when we go out and try to find water rights, we'll just Google it. We go to all the known websites. You go to Facebook Marketplace. You go to KSL. You go to eBay. You go to all the places you can buy stuff, and you just type in Utah water rights. And you'll find some every now and then. People will post, you know, 100 acre feet for sale as somebody has sold their farm or their, you know, well rights or whatever, trying to get money to pay off some debts or whatever it might be, you can run into them pretty regularly. The problem is they don't hang around for long. So unless you're ready to call them and make a deal today, those water water rights could be gone in a matter of hours. And so that's pretty in the it's really funny because the only consistent place we've been able to find them is, like, Facebook marketplace. For some reason, everybody loves to post them on Facebook marketplace. That sounds legit. But, yeah, that's I'm not kidding. That is where we have been able to find listings for water rights. Now we have not been super successful in chasing them down to the end and actually acquiring them. The other thing that will happen pretty rarely is people will approach the city and say they had a family member who passed away who owned these things called water rights, and would the city be interested in in them every once in Five years. Five years, somebody will walk in the door and be like, I got these water rights. Do you wanna buy them? Yeah. But, yeah, for a excuse me. For a developer, it would probably look really similar, probably sitting on their phone or on their computer just googling and trying to figure out where can I find some?

They also have developer connections. Remember, these folks all network, and they all know where to find the money to back their developments. And so they have lots of connections as well. So they're not

out in the cold. Do we have any way of when property is sold that the water rights have to stay with it? We probably don't have a way to, like, legislate that.

It's date already done. The law says you have to. People just ignore the law sometimes, you know, as Chuck like, is that what we mean? Us. Yeah. It's it's completely illegal for people to strip off water rights from property and resell them in a separate market, but it happens all the time. And, frankly, that's some of the times where we've been successful in acquiring water is coming across these water rights where people are like, yeah. We just have them hanging around, and we're like, do you? And they say, yeah. And A lot of market. And we buy them because we beggars can't be choosers. I mean yeah. And and you gotta be some of the terminology can be confusing because water rights and water shares can be very different depending on where you're getting them from. Like you said earlier, there's, you know, irrigation shares where maybe a a canal company or somebody actually owns the rights to the water, and they lease out a share to somebody and let them use a piece of that for to water their property. Whereas a a right of diversion from a primary water source like a spring or an aquifer can be much pricier and way harder to find on the open market.

Okay. So the commercial is also required to bring water rights. Mhmm. We just want the option

to waive that to lure them to our city instead of Smithfield or North Logan. Yeah. The state has severely handicapped us in our ability to incentivize commercial growth. One of the things they haven't done yet is tell us that we can't incentivize people with water rights, and so that's a a tool that we wanna keep in our tool belt. If we're ever in some kind of bidding war with our neighbors to get the next major retailer in the valley, that's a tool that we wanna keep open is to have a handful of water rights that are unencumbered that we can say, hey. We really like your business, and we want you to come to the city, and we'll even waive all of our water fees because we love you so much.

And you said something about secondary shares.

You are letting people donate secondary shares. Did you mean shares, or do you mean rights? I mean shares. That's an issue that I have with this ordinance, but it's a little bit too big of a political leap to take right right at this moment. That's it's a bit of a conundrum because, typically, when you go to the state with a bunch of canal water and say we wanna convert this to municipal drinking water, the state will say, great, but it's not a one to one. They'll do some kind of, you know, discount for the water shares from an irrigation source. So they're not as worth as much as a drinking water. Right? And so you'll get maybe, like, a two to one or a one and a half to one. We haven't done a an actual conversion from irrigation water to drinking water since I've been here. We're trying to get one started right now to see what that conversion rate looks like, and then we can adjust the ordinance accordingly. But right now, we're just telling people, yeah, you could you could bring irrigation water. The distinction that we've made administratively as they've come in is we've limited it to canals that run through Hyde Park City because then at least we know if we can't exchange them with the state, then the city could use them at our parks, or we could use them at a future park somewhere, or we could use them to water our outdoor, you know, other things that the city would want to do for our projects. And so the irrigation rights or shares would not necessarily

be in the same spirit of the rest of this change, just say go change your shares to rights with the state and stay out of that loop too.

Right. Which is and that was more of a political choice at this point as we weren't ready to tackle that water buffalo.

Might as well just take a big hit. You know? Pull the tape pull the band aid off real fast. Yeah. We I it's really more

my own trepidation because I don't have the answer of how that would impact our system that we have right now with the city, and so I don't think that the city is ready to prohibit all of that yet. Because right now, the only shares we are getting dedicated consistently are canal shares. So at least we're getting something. But if we were to suddenly say no more canal shares, I don't know. Yeah. I just don't know how that would affect us, so I'm not ready to take that jump yet. So someone could bring water rights from Paradise or Nibley? Today, in theory, yes. There's nothing in the ordinance that would prevent them from doing that. However, the change that we're making in section zero one zero is we want them to take those to the state and say, hey. These are assigned to Paradise, and I'm gonna get them switched over. Or here, Hyde Park, you can have them. We're gonna say thank you. You take them to state engineer and get them switched over. Here's all the information you need. When that's done, we'll absolutely take them.

So we only accept well, we accept shares and rights, but it has to be to Hyde Park Water

Mhmm. Or I mean, Midfield Canyon. That's the stance we're taking right now. We're having a battle with a couple developers who are trying to dedicate water from, like, a canal in Richmond and some other places, and I'm just like, I don't think this is worth it for the city to take this. And so we're struggling with a few of them right now, but the ordinance isn't super clear. Well, you're gonna get canal shares and boatloads now when you make this change instead of the in lieu of payment. That's all you're gonna get. Yeah. Which, again, we're trying to get a change application put through the state right now to understand how that's going to impact it. If they'll let us exchange it at a one to one because it's a local source, then great. We will take all the secondary shares we can get. But if they cut it in half and say it's a two to one, then we have to update this ordinance and say, you can dedicate secondary, but it's at a rate of two to one. K. So it's just it's a piece of the puzzle that I have not answered yet, and so I didn't feel comfortable including that in this update.

I'm still uncomfortable that there's no distinction between a single family home and a townhome and an apartment.

I understand that, and we are too. But the problem is where the state doesn't necessarily distinguish those, we said we're not going to either. You know that's ridiculous. I know it's ridiculous. And it it does not make me very happy either, but the report has to go in the same every year regardless. And so to avoid the city getting in trouble, we're just adopting the numbers that the state wants to see.

There's also only so much canal water too. Right. This So if we keep taking from the canal water I mean, there's not an unlimited share. I'm on a canal. Mhmm. And I already know they wanna maybe meter that. Oh, yeah. So how do we move forward if we change that? Are they taking property owners now, canal shares? Like, is that what you're talking about, the two to one? Yeah. No. In theory, no.

So, typically, what happens I'll use an example of our the development of Bringhurst Village. You might be familiar with that one. It's happening kind of up on the border with Smithfield down on Highway 91. A lot of townhomes, a lot of apartments, a lot of commercial space. They bought the property. The property came with about 20 irrigation water shares. They're not gonna need 20 shares to water their landscaping because it's gonna be mostly concrete and buildings. They're gonna have lots of open areas mixed in, but most of that's gonna be Xeriscape. They wanna do water wise stuff. And so they dedicated all 20 of those canal shares to the city because the we don't need them to water our stuff so you guys can have them. And we said, great. We'll take them. And since we know they won't be used for secondary water anymore, we're gonna take those to the state and say, these aren't being used for secondary water anymore. Can we trade them in for water rights that can be attached to our wells or the spring that we have up in the mountains that provides water for our people. And we're getting that process started, and that's when we're gonna see how the state comes down on us with that.

And and not distinguishing between homes and apartments, are we not then incentivizing a single home on a big lot? Because that would just require one unit versus if they put 24 apartments or eight townhomes, like, eight townhomes on an acre, they'd have to bring in eight times the water rights than they would for one home on that acre. If they have access to secondary water for the landscaping, then you're correct. If they're

watering with culinary water on the outside, then you would still be correct, but it would take a few more units for them to really offset that. I mean, you we we would wanna get four or five houses on an acre to offset that cost. No. But then you still wouldn't. If you had four or five, like, a a quad a a fourplex with a common space, then, yeah, that that would potentially be less money if you're watering with culinary water for your landscaping.

We do not want to incentivize large lots. I mean, we I mean, as far as the city budget is concerned.

Understand that. But the problem is the governor and the legislature is screaming from the rooftops they want more affordable housing and better housing options. On the background, the bureaucracies, which are the divisions the divisions of drinking water and water quality, they don't care. They still have the same requirements for water rights. They still have the same requirements for stormwater. They still have the same requirements for sewer. And so cities are being put in kind of a awful position because we're getting screamed at to make housing more affordable, incentivize it. But then we're saying, k. But we still need all this stuff to provide for the housing, and so you still gotta do you know, you still have to account for capacity in our pipes for the wastewater, and so our wastewater impact fees just went up because we're gonna have to upsize all of our pipes. And we have to make sure people have the right to the water, so everybody has to pay for water rights now. And so there's this disconnect really at the state level. This is, like, way more information than anybody needs. But there's a disconnect happening where I think the leadership of the state doesn't understand what you're pointing out, which is the more that we scream for housing and housing affordability, the bigger problem it's making for us as cities because the rules that are we have to play by are not conducive towards incentivizing housing, especially affordable housing. So the problem that we have as staff is we're trying to set the city up to be successful and to meet with all the state rules for compliance. We're not necessarily as concerned about housing affordability. That's more the city council, the planning commission's job. We just gotta make sure that we're not getting fined because we're missing some report or where our numbers are out of whack. So

If the chair meeting, really. You're we serve at your pleasure, so you're more than welcome to make a comment.

So Marcus has said that there's a state mandated number for, you know, whether it's a townhome or a house. Yeah. We also have a different number for external use. Mhmm. So if you got 18 units on an acre versus a one acre house, that external number then is they have to come up with a a cost available for that. And is it 1.9 or something like that? 1.87

acre feet for your single family lot yard.

So that therefore, that that incentivizes you to put more units along to disperse that cost over enough of units. Okay. So we have separate ERUs for indoor and outdoor use.

Is that I'm pulling up the table right now. I think this will be easier to explain with the visual. And and WaterShare

Water Rights, last ones we bought, how many I get? Seventeen, nineteen, something like that?

Yeah. The last major one that we got was about 40. So

they were assigned somewhere else, but we made them assign them to the city. All of our water sources are wells, springs, any each or all so we could move them around.

They're not mended anymore. They're here. They're assigned to us. Got some. Mhmm. And then okay. Yeah. I mean, it's better if they're separate indoor and outdoor. Sorry. I went over these notes when you first sent out the thing last week, so I didn't go over everything that was put into the box since then. So here's the categories that we have. This is what's in the ordinance today, and this table is not being changed.

So with the different categories that we have is residential single family residential, which is what SFR means, and residential multifamily residential, residential apartment, mixed use, commercial, industrial, institutional. And these were pulled you can see our little reference here is pulled directly from the DEQs table that they make for demands based on zones. So this is very specific to our area, and this is the number. So your single family residential, they don't care if it's your single family, you know, if it's a ginormous house or a tiny house. It's the same. You do point four five acre feet of water for your indoor use, and your outdoor use. They don't care how big your yard is. It's 1.87 per unit. So having a single family home of one acre lots versus quarter acre lots, the water dedication would be the same. I know. I but but these are the metrics that we are being judged on.

And so we have to be compliant with the state regardless. K. But that doesn't look like the apartment has any different dedication.

Exactly. And so a one acre. A one bedroom apartment is this for indoor use is

the same Oh, because it's the first one bedroom house. Unit, and the others are per acre. That's that's where your multifamily

escape area. Right. That's where your multifamily developments will be different because in your single family developments, the water rates the water rights add up really quickly if you have a lot of individual yards. Whereas your mixed use or your large apartment buildings, we only do based on the acre of landscape area. Okay. So if you've got, you know, 50 units in your complex Alright. And, you know, a little quarter acre of grass that stretches around the whole thing for the kids and the dogs to play on, that goes way down. Okay. I see that last column now. I apologize. But my I'm I've got the same issue as you. The indoor use, it's the same regardless. They don't care if you're

You have 10 bath or one bath. It's point four five. Well and, I mean, we've seen we've seen, like, houses get bigger and bigger over the years and families get smaller and smaller. So, I mean, I don't I don't know that a 10 bedroom uses more in general unless they Airbnb it. You know? It may not use any more water than a than at my home or something.

Yeah. They they have that Olympic swimming pool in the back. True. Thanks, Ned. I understand your

Sure. Even if you wanna use all the bathrooms, you can't. So you might have four bathrooms because you can only use one at a time.

I understand the ethical concern and the dilemma that you have because we have the same one. But when the state shows up every year and says, how much water are you giving out to people? They they don't care if it's for the houses on the bench or the ADUs that are here in in the middle of town. They'd say everybody's the same. So it won't be I mean,

but in effect, it'll be like a more not a a moratorium almost. I mean, building may stop, or you just think these guys are gonna pull it out of their back pocket, all their networking and their friends, and all of a sudden You would be surprised. Hey. Okay. I actually have water rights. So we I think that's what it's gonna look like.

It's probably gonna slow down significantly, but the thing is we have I have brought this up at League of Cities and Towns conferences and city managers conferences, and I'm always shocked at the number of cities who will get up and say stuff like, we've got a thousand new homes that just got approved, and and we don't know what to do with all the growth. And then it's like, and now the developers brought all the water rights because we require it by ordinance. And it's like, this town, this massive city does that, and their developers are coming up with it, and they're still growing. And so what happens, it makes it more difficult, but, like, we you see in the audit report, more than half the cities in the state require it, and every city in the state is growing right now. So they find them somehow.

So in mind, me, Nibley and Providence both require this. As far as moratorium, we were able to secure some water rights. The group that secured more than us, we was heritage land development. So they have Yeah. That's true. They would much further spend hours than theirs.

Yeah. I just remembered that the last time we bought a huge bundle of Water Right from a gentleman, he was telling us that there was another interested party, and he told us the name. And we said, we know that name. And it was a developer who was trying to secure some water rights for a project in the city, and we ended up losing.

Yeah. So

They might be reps in yours and ours. For sure. OPA. They're only gonna go up in price. They're not gonna go down. OPW, other people's P. W. Water. It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be tedious. Time. It's easier to Yeah. And other people's Delicate it. So I where I think this will be a detriment

is the mom and pop who wanna split the lot in half for the grandkids or for the kids coming back from law school or whatever who wanna live next door to them. I think that's where it's gonna hurt. But the other problem that we have is we have to treat everybody the same.

But they only have to come up with one as opposed to Right.

Yep. A 100. But they only have to come up with one, which is much easier than coming up with a 100.

Ned, up in your neighborhood, do most of your neighbors do you know? Do they have water rights or water shares or some of each?

Well, I I I don't know that I have any water rights or shares. They were done given to the city a long time ago. People below the canal have water shares. Oh, that's right. You're People above the canal have water shares. Like, if you have if you live in there's some in Hyde Park. If you're, like, live in the county and you have a well that supplies your water, you have to own some kind of water. Right? Most people in Hyde Park that we know of own some kind of canal share, which means that the canal company owns all the rights, and they lease out the share to the individual users to use those water rights in a limited portion on your property.

Are canal companies trying to obtain more rights?

I don't I honestly don't know. My gut feeling would say probably, but, also, I know there's other cities in the valley who are turning in water secondary water shares for drinking water rights to attach to their wells and their water sources because the same thing's happening to them. Historic farm grounds being developed. The if the canal company can't prove to the state that they're still that their water rights are still being used, the state will just flat out take them away. It's this thing called beneficial use. You have to prove beneficial use. And so the there's comes a point where the canal companies, as far as I know, this is just from hearing from other cities, will actually say, well, if we don't work with the city to get this turned over and maybe the city gives us some money for it, well, the the state will take them away anyway. So let's work with the city and get these converted over to drinking water, and then city can pay us a little bit of that money. And that's how those deals are typically made from what I've heard. I'd heard that threat. I didn't know if they had actually done that, like, actually taken any back. It's a ridiculous amount of time, in my opinion. It's, like, seven years. You have to show you have, like, seven years to prove beneficial use. And so

I think give you a warning, and then you have seven years to prove it?

Something like that. But I I think it's more like every seven years, they check-in and be like, I've been using your water rights. But they're just But, yeah, I I don't know. I don't fully know. All I know is that the canal companies are constantly telling us Yeah. We have to show beneficial use. So, you know, if the city owns a bunch of canal shares, they'll reach out to us and be like, hey. You guys using the shares? K. Yeah. A city can hang on to a a water right, like, for residential use almost indefinitely. We can hang on to those for a long time. It's your other users who maybe have the rights for irrigation water where the state will call those into question on a regular basis and say, do you need that water? Because we know other people who need it if you're not using it.

Alright. Chair, I'm done.

I I have one more thought. I'm I mean, just be based on the the developer comments we had last time and that they're not here right now. I I mean, this has been very educational for me. You might wanna put together, like, a one page fact sheet so that when they come in and say, hey. You guys didn't wait and do your workshop because we were gonna come yell at you some more just to explain what the process is. Because a lot of them were were, I think, wound up on the impact fee part of this equation, which is different than than the water. Right? Is that what you're trying to say to you? Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, just just a a cheat sheet for one page to explain what rights and shares and how this how this all fits together and impact fees, and they're different. And Yeah. That's not a bad idea because we have that conversation with, I think, almost every developer regardless. If they're gonna be bugging you now that they have to go out and get the water rights, they're gonna be like Mhmm.

You know, we don't wanna do this. What do we you know, why are we doing this? And I'm just It's gonna be tough. But, hey, that's that's kind of the direction the state has been going. The state has made our lives really tough with developments and setting up a lot of rules about how once somebody is in the process, we can't say no unless they directly violate the ordinance. Right. But what we're doing is just all the code changes that we've been moving through the past couple years and with changes that Mikel has made is we're trying to make sure developers but when they submit their application to the city, they're ready to build. We don't want people submitting an application and then maybe kinda going through with it, and five years later, they're like, never mind. I'm not gonna actually do anything and tie up this property when it could be doing something. And so that's part of our little crusade, I guess, you could call it. The state's really forcing it on us, but we think it's beneficial too. Because then the properties that are ready to develop, they are very thorough in their applications. They are very educated. They've done all the homework. They know what they're getting into, and you kind of avoid the people who submit an application and then don't really do anything and get the community all hyped up because there's 20 more houses coming on this corner, but then it never gets built. So, overall, I think the system is improving, but problem is we're eating up our water rights. And so that's what this ordinance change is all about, is putting the responsibility back on the developer to follow through with their application and provide us with the water rights for their new houses.

Did the developers know we were talking about this again tonight?

I don't know. I mean, we we publish our agendas the same way every time it's posted on the state website. Anybody can sign up for that. We try to post it on our website. We tape it up in the door. We get developers coming in all day long. We didn't invitations and phone calls saying, hey. We're talking about this again, but we post it the same way we always do.

Seems like we've got that audit report is something that is in the defense of the change that wasn't present at the last meeting. Correct? Because we I we hadn't seen this, had it not come out at that point. I'm pretty sure I got the email about this one, like, this morning. I'm pretty sure I got the email from the League of Cities and Towns this morning saying, hey. This has just been published. Because a lot of the accusations made it sound like we're the only ones doing this. But according to this, 65%

of growing cities are doing this. Well and just a reminder, and I've harped on this quite a bit since the last meeting. When we have a public hearing and folks come up to give their testimony, that's exactly what it is. You're presenting evidence in this case. Right? We should remind folks that the testimony that they're giving should be accurate. It should be true, and it should be factual. We're not here to collect thoughts and feelings and wild accusations. When you come up to speak at a public hearing, you should be bringing facts to our attention. Here is why I feel this way, and here is the evidence to show that. A public hearing is not for these guys to get up and speak half truths because what they say, you do take into consideration. And we need to know that the things that you're taking into consideration are true and factual and accurate and not just emotion.

So our friend, the developer, maybe he's never worked in any cities that have done that. But as we've seen from that audit report, there are plenty of cities across the state have the same requirements.

So his perception is his reality, but it's not the full picture of reality. And this might be a good thing to attach or provide anyone that comes in angry about this particular issue and say, hey. Guess what? Go to go to this website. Read this document. Great. Here's the link. Check it out. Print it out for me. And that's for it's like Do your research. It's like 40 pages. I'm not printing out 44 pages. No. Wait. Hold on. Never mind. I'll shoot the shot.

That's a big one. Okay. I'm I'm ready to second Mike's motion now. Okay. We've heard all this. Off just a second. Yeah. Give her just a minute. We have a time out. Oh, we have a time out. We'll do the time out. I was gonna I was gonna complain

not complain, but maybe I would Stay factual. Stay factual down there. Sorry. I got out my facts. K. I was pulling out. I just wondered because they were here last night and and they're not here tonight. I wondered if last time our agenda said something about, like, water rights or water dedication,

and this time it doesn't. It just says, like, ordinance thirteen ten. Change the agenda in any way. It's word for word. Right. And, again, I'll remind you that the public hearing was closed at the last meeting. Right. So they all came. They they read the same documents that you read, and they had the opportunity to speak. We haven't we

haven't No. That's what I just checked. I just wondered if, like anybody need Last time it said water dedication, and this time it just said numbers, you know, which I know developers know better. Residents don't always understand what the numbers mean. I know developers do, but now I can see that it was no different last time this time. I copied and pasted.

So tell me, it really was a public hearing published for tonight? It the public hearing was held at the last meeting. Right. So why does tonight's agenda say public hearing? Because we're finishing the process. The public hearing portion was closed, and the vote was to table. We've brought it back to you to vote on again. We're untabling it. So instead of waiting till January, we're doing it tonight. It's the same process we would have done had we heard it in January.

It would have been a vote to untable the motion and then to hear it. Yeah. Okay. I get that. Vote on it. So Yeah. And then I reopened the public hearing just so that for transparency's sake, if there was something, but and we appreciate.

So yeah. Sorry. She was can we just update her a little bit on that on this whole process then? Sure. Last time, we had a bunch of people here complaining and but either way, like, the same way that they knew about last time's meeting, they would know about tonight's meeting. Okay. It's published the same way. So if they somehow saw it last time and word got around, the same thing could have

could have, should have happened tonight. Okay. And a little bit of additional education for our newer members. According to state law, there's a difference between public input and public clamor. And when planning commissioner or city council is making a decision, you can receive and consider public input, but you should not include public clamor in your consideration. Public clamor would be something like, this is awful. I hate it. Children will die. Or children will die. You know? But if somebody comes in and says children will die because this you know, then they have some Traffic study. A traffic study. They've got police reports and numbers proving it. That's public input at that point. Whereas unsubstantiated claims or complaints could be classified as public clamor. So there's a bit of a distinction that needs to be made. I would argue again, I wasn't here, but reading reading the minutes, a lot of what our developer friends brought to the table, I would classify as public clamor. A lot of complaints, a lot of things they weren't happy with, but they don't necessarily have any impact on

the decision to move this ordinance forward. And that's my opinion. And in fact, many of them talk more about impact fees, which is not even part of this They asked a lot of questions which you don't do when you're collecting

public hearing information.

Are there developers waiting right now to be approved for anything?

No. What happens right? The the way we used to do it is we were pretty nice to people, and we would let them kinda pay the fee as they were able to. We'd attach it to the building permits. So with it, you know, the fee would get paid, but it would be done over time. We don't we haven't done that in a while. Right now, the ordinance says that they have to pay all the fees or dedicate all the water upfront before we finish their approvals. We haven't really had any new major applications since that update to the ordinance, so we haven't had to face that

beast yet. So if this passes from here on out, that would be code.

Right. And that would be the same regardless. That portion of the ordinance isn't changing. We just haven't had any major applications come in since we changed that policy and how we were handling that in as city staff.

And we're not actually approving or Yeah. That we're just making a recommendation to city council. City council. Yeah. Yep.

Nope. This may or may not deal with what we're talking about. But you did mention that the really the ones that would impact are the like, the families that are dividing a lot. And maybe, you know Miners. There's Camille Mhmm. Jepsen who's who's getting getting ready to do that. Yeah. Now what were the water rights that she or that whoever subdivide that lot to begin with gave to the city and does that, then go toward the new lot. Say she had three water shares or her water rights, and now she wants to divide it into three buildings. She didn't use all three, but how does that work? I mean, because someone may have 10 acres of land and then wanna build on two acres.

I get what you're saying. Historically, I don't think that's ever happened in Hyde Park's history. At least we don't have any sort of agreements on our files saying that people ever gave more water than they were supposed to, at least that I've encountered at this point. But in a case like the Jepsen's where there's already existing home, we would kind of exclude that one because the city has already been accounting for the water right of that home. And so she would only need to provide water rights for any new units that's being added to the cities. If she decides to build. If she decide decides to build. Like, there's two or three minor subdivisions that the city approved a while ago, just adding a second home, splitting a lot, and adding another home. They only have to provide for the the new the one For the new.

Okay. Correct.

And now the other distinction to make is with ADUs, accessory dwelling units. Those are a completely different category, and we can't exact any sort of impact fees or water rights for an ADU.

That that's

state code, isn't it? Code. Yeah. Both detached and attached? Or Correct. Okay. But, I mean, there's

Because there's size limitations too. So it's not

limited in size, and they're supposed to use the same infrastructure, so it's not supposed to be a real big impact to the system, which is arguable. But that's why they're not taken into account with this. Got it.

Alright. We have a motion to recommend approval to the city council, recommend the changes to City council. Zero dot one or zero one zero and zero two zero to the city council. We have a second by Ned. Was that yes. Yes. Any further discussion? Okay. Let's take a vote. All those in favor of recommending approval of these changes to the city council, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Alright. K.

We could all use a big drink. Yeah.

Let's have a party. K. Moving to number six on our on our agenda discussion items. We have a minor city ordinance.

You wanna let us know what I'm sorry. Gonna talk about that just for a little minute. We don't have to deep dive just yet because it is past everyone's bedtime maybe. Firstly, I do wanna say thank you for letting us bring this item back before January. I appreciate you guys keeping an open mind and helping us get our job done. It's super helpful that you're willing to listen and ask the questions that you asked, so thank you. Minor subdivision ordinance. Right now in Hyde Park City, a minor subdivision is only different from a major subdivision in the fact that it gets to jump right to final plat instead of going through preliminary plat and then final plat. It doesn't matter if it has a lot of improvements required or very little improvements required. It the only determining factor of it being a minor subdivision is that it is fewer lots and it gets to go straight to final plat. Most everywhere else, a minor subdivision is minor because it's small and it doesn't come with any improvements. That's why it's easier to deal with because we don't have to do the review of civil plans. They're not building road. They're not building sidewalk. They're not bringing in infrastructure. And that's how I would like to change our code to be, that a minor subdivision is a one or two piece split like we've seen with Pearson Nye. Happened recently in the core and doesn't require building any roads or putting in any any other infrastructure in. Subdivisions that require infrastructure should go through preliminary plat so that we have time to evaluate their civils and how much road they're building, and they need to get the same consideration the regular subdivision would get because it's the same it's the same stuff. It's just on a larger scale. We well, I can't predict how many minor subdivisions we would have. Mostly those happen in the residential core where we are outside of subdivisions and we have bigger lots. We have the opportunity for people to split pieces off for their kids or their parents. A lot of Hyde Park is already in a subdivision. So if they wanted to split, they would have a different process, a plot amendment process. But that would be the change that a minor subdivision is only relevant if no improvements are required, And they would get to skip that preliminary process and go. What what do you mean by no infrastructure?

Because every minor subdivision will at least have to tap into the existing lines, whether water or sewer.

Right. Which lines are usually next door at the house that already exists or in the street? They're not having to bring water lines off-site and onto the property. And mostly, this is about roads and sidewalks. Here in the core, all the sidewalks and roads are built. There's very few places where we need to fill in sidewalk. We've got as we've talked about before, we've got small stretches of sidewalk where they don't belong. And so to keep the process simple for people who aren't required to build any road, they would be the ones who were a minor subdivision. Anybody who had to pour concrete and do other public infrastructure K. Would have to go through the whole process. They wouldn't get a skip to final just because it was four pieces instead of 10. So that's what I'm proposing. So right now, they have to go through major everything? Well, right now, if if you're a minor subdivision, if you buy a big piece and you wanna split it into four and you still need to pour all the roads and the sidewalks, you can still go straight to final plat. And we still gotta do the same amount of work. Mhmm. But we don't get the same amount of time to check all of that work. So Because they get excused from the minor it? Minor.

So minor is the definition is what we're changing. The definition of minor subdivision. It's right. Just about the size. Four plots or lots or less. Okay. Five lots, then it becomes a major.

Right. So, typically, in a subdivision process in Hyde Park, if you wanna build a subdivision, you come in, you present, like, a concept plan to the city and say, this is what I wanna do. And there's a couple rounds of review where the city staff gets it and says, okay. Well, here's where the existing infrastructure is, and here's where you have to extend your utilities and everything else. And then they get their first round of approvals, and then they resubmit a new set of drawings that's very detailed with elevations and with very specific stuff for the city staff to really pick apart. And And so you have a few rounds that these things get to go through for us to really dive into the details and make sure that everything's correct before they're tearing up the roads and redoing them. The problem that we have with the minor subdivisions is you get projects that just jump straight into that last round without all the in-depth reviews, and it ends up being kind of a disaster and taking a lot longer than it should because then we're trying to pick apart kind of that entry level concept plan when it should be the very refined and ready to go set. And so what Mikael's recommending, as she already explained, is we just change the definition so that we only want the minor subdivisions to be the ones that don't have to do all that drama, and they can literally just put in a new water meter and plug into the water line and put a sewer sis a sewer service in, and they're done.

So it would be if no new public infrastructure was required to be added, specifically public? Yep. I mean okay.

Let me That's how we wanna change the definition.

Yep. If that got changed, would that also maybe leave way in the future for making some more lenient situation for a person that's just dividing a lot, doing a lot split for a child to move in. It would be easier. Yeah. There would be so few that are minor subdivisions that would be easier to say, hey. If you're splitting the lot, you're remaining an owner on the one, and then you maybe don't have to bring a water share. You maybe feel in lieu for a one one lot split type thing because there are gonna be so few of them. Right.

Yeah. Like, think about where all of you live. You're probably in a subdivision or, you know, neighborhood where you've got neighbors close by. This This essentially could make it easier for you if you had family wanted to come and buy half of your lot and split your lot in half. You wouldn't have to go through a whole process of, you know, expanding a road or building a new water line or anything. So you could just use the minor process, which is much shorter, and then you're only having to do a couple rounds of review instead of the typical giant process. And so it's much more convenient for this is a process that would help the mom and pop a lot more than it would help a large scale developer. Large scale developer is not really gonna be benefiting anything from this.

I I agree with that. I mean, I agree with the whole process your thought. Yeah. The one thing about sidewalks, though, I think there's more houses that don't have sidewalks. Like, all none of nobody has sidewalks up by me.

And I think in the core, there's play there's places that don't have sidewalks. So In the core in the core is where most of our minor subdivisions are gonna happen. Okay. And the places that need them

will need them, and they won't be able to be a minor subdivision. Well, just I mean, do you wanna make sidewalks be the one thing that well, maybe you wanna just say, if it didn't have sidewalks, you don't have to put them in again, or do you wanna force them to put them in if they didn't have them before? And a lot of that. Switch it to a major subdivision? I mean, that's that's the only one when you said I'm like,

that one thing Public infrastructure's public infrastructure.

I know. But if they didn't have it, they didn't have sidewalks on that. A lot of that is gonna go back to the city's general plan and construction standards because there as we've identified in the past few city council meetings, the city council's okay with the core zone kinda staying the small town feel that it's been for a long time. They're okay with not having sidewalks on both sides of the road. Right. And so what we're doing is we're gonna develop a different set of construction standards just for the core zone. So we're gonna say if you're on this side of the street and you don't have a sidewalk, that's okay. You don't need to put one in, so you can be minor subdivision. If you're on the southern side of the street, yes, we do want a sidewalk there. And so if that home doesn't have one, then they would have to put it in. And maybe that's something we need to look at at all the unique neighborhoods because we know, like, upper Yeah. There's no sidewalks by me. No sidewalks there. And so if that's something that your whole neighborhood wants to come to the city and say, we do want sidewalks, then we can force everyone to have it. But just like that face that you made, we hear from a lot of your neighbors that you're okay with it being the way it is. So that might be another place where Right. That diminished cross section is adopted and included as, you know, the city's okay with not having the full curb gutter sidewalk like we have in the other parts of town. So it goes back to kind of the long term range envision that the city has Right. To figure out where we do and don't need the same level of infrastructure.

Right. Okay. I guess so what I'm saying is more work involved. Well, as I'm saying, as you define it as a as a minor subdivision, you may want to throw wording that make it match the the zone standard or whatever it is as opposed to Okay. Putting you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I will definitely consider that something about following the construction standard for the zone and Right. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Okay. Alright. Other than that, totally agree with the concept. K. I'll move forward with that. That was a good point good point on that. So it would be

no new public infrastructure required, but based on the zoning of that specific area. Because then the core is gonna be exempted from that in Sutterbox, which makes sense because if you go down the hill and you start going to North Logan where it turns into 1600, someone developed in a big large lot there. And, obviously, they complied and checked the box to add, you know, a walkway in the front of the frontage road, and they're the only ones. And so it very much matches what the families that came at the last two city council meetings, I think, ago was it Mhmm. Ago? And they explained it. It messes up your drainage. And I can see that's gonna mess a whole bunch of stuff up there. They're the only ones, and it goes, whoop, bunch of dirt, and everyone else comes straight to the road. I'm like, that looks ridiculous. No offense to them. And I'm sure they had to do it for the city, and they didn't come in as the city council. Like, those people did to that exception, which it would have been better if they'd left it. Well, we've I know we've got someone here on

Hyde Park Lane who built the sidewalk because they built the house recently,

and no one else around them has a sidewalk. Yeah. That's it. That was an example that was used at these public meetings that we just said, you know what? It's will be nice someday when the whole thing looks like that, but I don't know if the city council has plans to make the whole thing look like that. So it might just be the only one, and that's kind of a problem for my not actual OCD.

I'll just be bugged by it further. Still never. I guess you'll never move to Hyde Park then, Leasing out to that neighborhood.

Maybe not.

Alright. Anything else on your end for future items? Not from me. Okay. I would like to bring up that we we did receive a letter from a concerned citizen about the animal ordinance, and we understand there might be some work being done on that, and nuisance with animals. And I think we need to really look at what defines a nuisance and make sure we codify that so that when there are law enforcement people called, they can actually do do something about the nuisance that the the citizens are suffering through. So you've been assigned some homework by your chair

to find definitions of nuisance Really?

Makes sense. And I wanna put it in those places. You know it when you hear it. Right? Or know it when you see it? Pornography, you know it when you see it? Actually, not talking about that. Pornography is nuisance.

So I wanna put in a little I guess this is more informational. We were given the assignment a while ago to look at the animal ordinance and identify some places where it needs some updates. And I'll tell you what, we sat through and picked apart the entire animal ordinance, and the whole thing needs a lot of work. A lot of it right now is the city trying to govern things that the shit the city has no business getting our noses into. A lot of it is stuff that should stay between neighbors and between people sharing fences, and so we are not sure where to tackle the beast. There are so many ordinances in there that we feel are very problematic with modern day state code and just code enforcement practices that our ordinances conflicts with pretty majorly. So that's another thing if we could get some input from the planning commission on if there's a section you specifically wanna start with. Because as far as we're concerned, we could take the whole thing, wad it up, and throw it out, and probably just have the city attorney write us a brand new one. It it it was that bad for us.

I agree with some of with your characterization of being involved in things citizen. I think there's a in some of when if we try to govern too tightly, I think we've overreached our purpose. Yeah. Then you get into if you want that level of governance, you need to go somewhere where there's an HOA because that's the purpose of an HOA. That was I think that was Mikael's words pretty much exactly. It's this sounds like stuff an HOA should be regulating.

And what we felt like was if we had our code enforcement officer chasing down every single one of these, he'd be at almost everyone's door because it's stuff about I mean, it's stuff about forcing people to buy extra fencing for each other if you don't agree with it, and it's stuff that, like, this this I have no interest in knocking on people's doors and saying, you gotta buy an extra fence for your neighbor because your horses are too close. Like, that's not I don't feel like that's my place as a city employee to be making those kind of judgments. But our our code our animal code specifically seems like it was written in a time when Hyde Park was a much, much smaller city with a much, much more tight knit and close community, and the city could get away with stuff like mediating a civil suit through our code, and we just felt like we need to update it and get the city out of business that HOA should be doing. So, yeah, if anybody wants to take a look at that, and maybe you can look at the letter then if there's specific sections you wanna start with based on that, great. Yeah. I just bring up that we received it. We I I forwarded it to everyone. I did send a note back to the

the person who sent it to me, letting them know that we had received it and that we will Right. Use that for future information, future input.

We read it too, but, of of course, as always, we we as city staff don't like to spend our time drafting ordinance updates and changes without direction from the elected and appointed officials. We wanna make sure we're prioritizing our time to take care of the issues that are important to you. So let us know what you want us to work on, and we'll we'll start working on it for you. Good point. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. We understand that, yeah, code doesn't isn't there for

the individual. It's there for the community. Once a that applies to everybody. Right. Otherwise, we have too broad of a net that catches everybody, and then everybody's going up hitting a timer on their neighbors or, I mean, you know, everybody's against neighbors. Right.

The previous a previous chair to the planning commission had a phrase that I really, really liked. She always said, who are we helping with this ordinance, and who are we hurting? And that was the metric that she would always put forward for the planning commission to consider anytime you're looking at a new ordinance. So I'll just bring that back to the planning commission today. Whenever we're writing a new code or looking at a code, who are we gonna help with this change and who are we gonna hurt?

Alright. Anything else that, anyone feels that we may need to look at in the near future within the next four four weeks four to eight weeks? Anyone?

The mayor's thinking about

that. Yes. There are options.

Yes. We can work on our definitions as well. Yep.

Back to the animal code. Might make more sense to just only do top level section headings first to see which things you're gonna think about and maybe which one sections we're throwing out before you dig into Well, and in phases, what I'm saying here is look at top level and then work your way down. And and, honestly,

the the subject that was broached in the in the email to me may not deal at all with the the animal code. It may deal only with what a nuisance is Right. Which is a different section. It's a different section. That is a completely different section of So maybe we need to look at that first Excellent. Before we go looking at the animal code, which has already been looked at and realized that it may be We just closed really They both need something is what you're saying. So So again the nuisance part of what this person is dealing with is maybe what we want to look at for definition of what is considered a nuisance. What would you consider a nuisance? And then what would others consider a nuisance?

Yeah. So let us know which sections you want us to start picking apart and doing research on, and we're happy to do that

for you. I think that may be where we wanna start is what do we consider what is the definition of a nuisance?

That which is something that's probably been litigated at every level in the state. And so we could definitely find case studies for all of that. And I'm sure that we can find plenty of example

ordinances from other cities that have a nuisance ordinance, and we can figure out.

So And we should probably look at cities that are a little more apple to apple. You know, we wouldn't wanna look at one that's fully built out versus one that has rural areas like we have. Exactly.

Right. Good point. And, again, we do have to realize that we've got several different types of areas within our city. We've got the the the center the city center. We've got some more neighborhoods in the outside, and then we've got some more agricultural open areas, and this definition

kinda needs to fit all of them. Yeah. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it right now. Cow smell or noise is not gonna be considered a nuisance. There's too much of that still in Hyde Park. I'm just gonna say that right now. I'm I'm not gonna be supportive of that changing. Don't ban roosters. Don't ban pigs.

That's what we heard last time. Yeah. Well, a lot of times and I can say that I'm one of those people. We we live here because it was more rural. That was and most people that live here choose that lifestyle. If you don't if you didn't like it, you wouldn't choose to live here. You would choose to live in a more restricted area with much more high density subdivisions for HOAs.

So we'll add to our list to we're looking at the minor subdivision definition. We'll also start picking apart the nuisance definition.

Sounds like we do. Yes. Got it. And and we will look also for definitions and see how they meet some sort of test that we're gonna have to come up with on how it helps or doesn't help and grade it and say, yes. We like it, or nope. We can't do it. No. My name And we may end up not doing anything, but at least we've we've done due diligence in finding out

if there's something that can change. Would that be a good workshop topic?

It could be, but I think we need to do a lot of homework before we even get to the workshop to come with that information.

So At some point, we have to do something with that animal ordinance because the the city just has changed, and so it is hard to keep just tweaking it a little bit. At some point, we're different. We're not rural anymore. And so I do get the idea of just starting over. But you still have rural people here, and they will fill the room. And we'll you'll hear all that clamor that you can't consider.

Right. A great example is our right now, you can only have animals on your lot if you're a certain zone or a certain size of lot. And down where I live, we the whole neighborhood's quarter acre lots. All of our neighbors not all of them. A lot of our neighbors have chickens. A couple of them have goats. But in Hyde Park right now, you can't do that because you can only have animals if you're a certain

zone or lot size. So that's that's just one of the problems. We don't need to dive into it. I'm just saying. It's it's okay. So that was probably drafted when they were all one acre lots. If you said you have to have at least an acre to have Arizona just did the overlay of everybody can have chickens, and it doesn't matter what your choice is. Because it's they want the self sustaining well, everybody gets them Yeah. Mhmm. No matter what.

When the price of eggs went to $7 a dozen,

what was the best today. Less than $2 a dozen today.

This chicken will be for sale. Yeah.

Don't don't get chickens. Remember a new cycle. Yeah? No.

Supply and demand, whatever they when they need them. Alright.

Our next meeting, again, is not the December 3 Four weeks from now. But it is the December 17. Correct. There is a an event on the third, and please RSVP to Colette. Colette. Yes. Thank you. If you want to attend. And if you'd like to participate, there is another activity that's all in the email.

Oh, it's not. It's mandatory participation.

Oh, it is? Okay. I got mine today. I'm very excited.

We've got some ideas we're looking at. There you go. Okay.

But remember, it's supposed to be fun. K. Mandatory fun.

Or it's the best act. Well, I was in the army. I know what mandatory funds all about, but I'm not a fan of mandatory fun. You will go. You will have a good time.

So alright. I make a motion. We adjourn.

I second it. Alright.

All those in favor of the motion to adjourn, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Too late. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you for coming. We appreciate your attendance.