Joette Langianese:
Alrighty, welcome everybody to the MOAB City Council meeting on June 24th, 2025
at 6.02 p.m. I call the meeting to order.
Joette Langianese:
We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance and Patrick Trim is going to lead us
in the pledge.
Speaker 16:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the
Republic for which it stands, one nation, and all, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Alright, we have our public comment section, it's limited to three minutes.
Joette Langianese:
If you'd like to speak, I need you to fill out a form.
Joette Langianese:
If you haven't filled out a form, you can do that on your way out.
Joette Langianese:
But who would like to speak?
Speaker 16:
Mary, come on up.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Mary McGann:
I'm Mary McGann.
Mary McGann:
I'm here as a citizen, although I am a member of the Grand County Commission.
Mary McGann:
And I came here to thank you and hopefully ask you to unanimously support the
letter for the financial help for the Pickleball Court.
Mary McGann:
I met, you know, it will help us out, but I'm also excited about it because I
like the idea anytime we are able to work together as a team.
Mary McGann:
And we've done it successfully in the past.
Mary McGann:
I mean, it was the team of the city and the county that got the money that's
moved the process of getting the tailments removed.
Mary McGann:
And it was the city and the county that worked on CIB loans for the aquatic
recreation center.
Mary McGann:
And we've had joint meetings where we've signed resolutions.
Mary McGann:
We've rolled out our support for the beautiful stuff, the landscaping for your
downtown.
Mary McGann:
And I just hope that this can continue.
Mary McGann:
And I appreciate your help very much.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you, Mary.
Joette Langianese:
And Mary didn't mention, but she does play pickleball.
Joette Langianese:
She's pretty avid.
Joette Langianese:
She's pretty big in pickleball, just so you know.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Next, we have two presentations.
Joette Langianese:
We're going to start with Rim to Rim restoration, and then Michael will do a
presentation on our crosswalk standards.
Joette Langianese:
So we'll start with Didar.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Didar Charles:
Hi, Mary.
Didar Charles:
I'm council members.
Didar Charles:
Thank you for having us this evening.
Didar Charles:
So today I have team members from Rim to Rim, Bryce Roger and Sophia Fisher
with me.
Didar Charles:
They prepared a presentation for you.
Didar Charles:
They're going to talk about community wildfire defense grant.
Didar Charles:
So this grant is they got awarded for 5.2 million to remove fire fuel corridor
of the Mill Creek, Pack Creek, as well as their wetland.
Didar Charles:
So we are partnership with Rim to Rim with other partnerships.
Didar Charles:
They're going to talk about the metrics they use, how they decide to prioritize
the sites, use the fund most efficient.
Didar Charles:
They're going to talk about a breakdown of the fund, how they've been spending,
what is the future plan for the five years.
Didar Charles:
This is the five-year grant.
Didar Charles:
And the works they have done so far, and what is the plan for the future.
Didar Charles:
Also, they're going to mention about the outreach for flood preparedness.
Didar Charles:
They do for the city.
Didar Charles:
That's another topic, so that will be so likely we're going to mention about
that.
Didar Charles:
Yeah, so I will ask Sophia and Bryce to come here and start a presentation.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Speaker 16:
Thanks, Didar.
Speaker 16:
Thanks, Didar.
Speaker 16:
Hi, Councillors.
Bryce Rogers:
Michael.
Bryce Rogers:
You're waiting.
Bryce Rogers:
Nice to see you guys.
Bryce Rogers:
You're welcome.
Bryce Rogers:
So Summer, can I share my screen?
Speaker 16:
You should jump in, yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Sophia Fisher:
Awesome, and as Bryce is getting that set up, I'll just introduce us.
Sophia Fisher:
I'm Sophia Fisher.
Sophia Fisher:
I'm the fire and flood outreach specialist for Rim to Rim restoration.
Sophia Fisher:
This is my co-worker, Bryce Rogers, who is the project coordinator and
restoration specialist for Rim to Rim restoration.
Sophia Fisher:
And we're here to present on the Community Wildfire Defense grant, so it should
be pretty quick.
Sophia Fisher:
Assuming it lets me share, give me just one second.
Sophia Fisher:
We also have packets that don't let me forget to distribute after we're done
with the presentation to some of the examples of outreach materials we've been
producing.
Sophia Fisher:
Well, as you do that, I can honestly start talking in a little bit of
integration.
Sophia Fisher:
I'll start off with just some of the nuts and bolts of the Community Wildfire
Defense grant.
Sophia Fisher:
So it is a $5.2 million award, as Didar mentioned, spread out over five years.
Sophia Fisher:
The grant period began last year, so it'll run through 2029.
Sophia Fisher:
And the next is really the purpose of the grant is to do fire fuels mitigation
along the Mill and Pack Creeks and the Matheson Wetlands in the Moab Valley.
Sophia Fisher:
The project is, oh great, here we go.
Sophia Fisher:
Let me move to the next slide.
Sophia Fisher:
Awesome, thank you.
Sophia Fisher:
And the project is being overall helmed by Rim to Rim restoration, as well as
Moab Valley Fire Department.
Sophia Fisher:
We have Clerk Monne here in the audience from Moab Valley Fire as well.
Sophia Fisher:
But there are also a lot of other local partners, City of Moab, Grand County,
Utah Division of Forestry Fire State Lands, Science Moab, Moab Solutions, Nature
Conservancy, the list kind of goes on.
Sophia Fisher:
So it's very much like a partnership oriented project.
Sophia Fisher:
It's a federal award from the U.S. Forest Service, but was sub awarded through
the states.
Sophia Fisher:
And there's also a strong outreach and education component to the grant that
we'll get into in a minute.
Sophia Fisher:
But we will hand it off to Bryce to talk a little bit about project
prioritization.
Bryce Rogers:
So the idea with the grant is essentially that we are able to assess both
public and private land for mitigation.
Bryce Rogers:
In order to do that in a transparent and hopefully fair way, we've set our
qualitative measures to have more quantitative output.
Bryce Rogers:
So that's essentially what I'm showing you here.
Bryce Rogers:
Notice the weird donut diagram.
Bryce Rogers:
That's actually indicating the weight with which we assess each property
dependent on what we see.
Bryce Rogers:
So that 50 percent, that includes hazards.
Bryce Rogers:
That's our fuel loading, what kind of fuels are present.
Bryce Rogers:
Fine fuels, latter fuels, as well as taking into account the fact that a lot of
these fuels contribute to our flood risks within the creek corridors and the
wetlands as well.
Bryce Rogers:
Additionally, we try to assess proximity.
Bryce Rogers:
That includes vital infrastructure, location on the creek, and whether or not
this is near or adjacent to firebreaks.
Bryce Rogers:
Obviously, prioritizing areas where we can ideally connect firebreaks, but even
more emphasizing areas where we can create new ones.
Bryce Rogers:
From there, we also look at our population demographics and how this affects
the floodplain overall.
Bryce Rogers:
So additionally, we recognize there are a lot of especially private parcels in
the county and the city that the owners of those parcels might not be able to
deal with the complexity of the removal problem.
Bryce Rogers:
So increased slopes, a density, basically having a thicket of something that
would be impossible for you to get through with just a chainsaw, and also
environmental concerns like springs or anything else that could impact all of
your hazards downstream as well.
Bryce Rogers:
The last metric we use is repetition.
Bryce Rogers:
As we all know, trees like to grow back, especially russian olive.
Bryce Rogers:
If you guys have ever been near russian olive, you know it fights back rather
quickly.
Bryce Rogers:
So we do try to prioritize areas that we know are going to need repeated
maintenance as we go through this since the life the grant is five years.
Bryce Rogers:
So there in the middle of the screen, you basically see a breakdown of the
output for that.
Bryce Rogers:
So anything that gives us a score of 50 to zero, we consider low priority.
Bryce Rogers:
Low priority is anything from giving landowners materials or plants to help
mitigate their problems themselves, especially if it's rather sparse, into maybe
trying to use one or two days of work with Mott Valley Fire or a youth core that
we contract with.
Bryce Rogers:
Medium and high priority properties tend to get bumped up as much as we can.
Bryce Rogers:
Those tend to include larger acreages and we rely heavily on Mott Valley Fire,
Forestry Fire, State Lands, and like I said for our youth core crews.
Bryce Rogers:
Anything that registers at 90 or above the priority matrix automatically tips
us into what we call a multi agency hitch.
Bryce Rogers:
So this is something like if you guys were looking at the pack creek corridor
right next to the 191 bridge during Jeep Safari.
Bryce Rogers:
If you were looking very closely, you would have seen about 15 chainsaw
wielders down there trying to get in and relieve the pressure that all of the
Russian olive and all of them putting on that particular stretch of creek.
Bryce Rogers:
And that was three different crews working together forestry fire state lands,
a UCC which is Utah Conservation Corps as well as Mott Valley Fire.
Bryce Rogers:
So if you notice the really boring looking spreadsheet to the side, the main
thing that I do want you to see is that's about the number of properties that we
have.
Bryce Rogers:
And there's a metric right there at the very bottom of the screen that shows
that between work we have done and work assessed, which the spreadsheet reflects
we are at about 365 acres of land.
Bryce Rogers:
So, and that's everything from completed to flagged as high priority to we
still need to go out and do a side assessment.
Sophia Fisher:
Awesome.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Sophia Fisher:
And I'll talk a little bit about the revegetation component of the grant.
Sophia Fisher:
It is primarily a fire fuels removal grant but there is some language and some
funding in there to revegetate these areas with native species, which has a
benefit both for mitigating wildfires for the long term, but also mitigating the
impacts of floods that come down the creek corridors.
Sophia Fisher:
The photos I won't go to into depth but they're kind of meant to show the
different ways that flash floods can impact the creek corridors if they do
versus don't have native species there to kind of fold the banks in place and
prevent the incision that you're seeing on the upper right.
Sophia Fisher:
We are also going to seek other funding sources to help bolster this work and
we expect the revegetation to really take off a couple years down the line to
once we get a lot of the fire fuels removal done.
Sophia Fisher:
And this also dovetails really well with the outreach and education component
of the grant, which I can also jump into next.
Sophia Fisher:
So talking a little bit about outreach and education that's a big part of my
role at Rim to Rim and it's a big part of the grant.
Sophia Fisher:
Really the purpose of the community outreach focus is to help make sure that
this mitigation work and this work to make mud safer from wildfires can continue
well after the actual grant ends.
Sophia Fisher:
So the way that we're focusing on doing that is increasing the wildfire fluency
and awareness in the community generally.
Sophia Fisher:
But then also making sure that landowners and residents kind of have the tools
and the expertise and the knowledge they need to feel comfortable either doing
their own mitigation or maintaining those properties after mitigation is done.
Sophia Fisher:
As Bryce mentioned invasive species really like to resprout with kind of a
vengeance after you remove them once.
Sophia Fisher:
So it's going to be really critical that there's a cyclical and kind of
repetitive aspect to all of this work.
Sophia Fisher:
The way we've been doing that is a couple different facets.
Sophia Fisher:
We've been creating physical handouts and mailers like the one on the bottom
left.
Sophia Fisher:
Developing a really strong web presence on social media, doing some tabling at
existing events outside of the grocery stores.
Sophia Fisher:
And then we're also kind of couching this public awareness campaign within the
moniker firebreak.
Sophia Fisher:
Break being an acronym you can see on the screen, mainly so we don't have to
say CWDG kind of over and over again to people.
Sophia Fisher:
And yeah, so we're really excited to continue doing that work.
Bryce Rogers:
So we're talking about the funding for this, as we said, it's $5.2 million over
five years.
Bryce Rogers:
Essentially, we would like to be a feel for where City of Moab fits into this.
Bryce Rogers:
So if you see on the left hand side of the screen, that is the overall
breakdown and notice that the vast majority of it goes to our contractual
partners.
Bryce Rogers:
In this case, that's working with Wetland Crews, Science Moab, which gets a
small sliver, Moab Solutions that's helping us deal with our unhoused population
in these creek corridors, as well as Moab Valley Fire, who's doing a lion's
share of most of our fuel removal work.
Bryce Rogers:
Grand County Weed Department that is helping to support us, and of course City
of Moab, either through any sort of outreach we've done with office staff or
relying heavily on parks and streets crews for everything from information to
maybe even pitching in on some of our properties.
Bryce Rogers:
So that's the actual monetary breakdown, just in case anybody was curious.
Bryce Rogers:
So at this point, over the five year grant, it's allocated over $650,000.
Bryce Rogers:
That's basically just to assist with the maintenance, like we said before.
Bryce Rogers:
And if you notice there on the right, oh you want to talk about the photo,
please.
Bryce Rogers:
Oh yeah, your photo.
Sophia Fisher:
We thought this photo really exemplified the importance of the City of Moab as
a partner in this really important work.
Sophia Fisher:
That is from that hitch that Bryce had talked about earlier, that is a DNR
employee felling, I think it's an elm tree, along Pack Creek downstream of 191,
that work, and you can see there's a flagger actually from the Kane Creek
Boulevard reconstruction project in the background.
Sophia Fisher:
That project happened kind of as the reconstruction project was RAPping up and
there were a lot of moving pieces, the multi-use path was being paved, so it
required a lot of really close coordination and collaboration with City staff to
make sure we could get the equipment in there that we needed without disrupting.
Sophia Fisher:
The reconstruction project in any way, and it was a great success, it was.
Bryce Rogers:
Oh, okay, so I got it now.
Bryce Rogers:
As Sophia mentioned before, we are basically focusing heavily on our outreach
into the community, but we are also using that to build stronger ties
professionally within all of our partnerships.
Bryce Rogers:
There has been a Creek Stewardship Working Group that has been in place for
just under two years now, and that is where we pull together a lot of our
partners to try to get either information on the Creek corridor and issues that
we are seeing with that, or trying to work collaboratively on trying to solve
any of those issues as well.
Bryce Rogers:
And that has a lot of the same partners as the CWDG or the firebreak campaign,
but with some other hangers on as well.
Bryce Rogers:
So we get a lot of people from City of Moab that show up to that and really
help us with just some information, if nothing else, and it helps us to keep
this sort of project working.
Bryce Rogers:
So additionally, a big part of this is actually using LIDAR to try to figure
out these areas where we might not see the connectivity on the ground.
Bryce Rogers:
LIDAR is also being used in this aspect to try to identify some of our more
erosional concerns, especially along private properties.
Bryce Rogers:
There was a new LIDAR data set that was flown in March of this year.
Bryce Rogers:
I don't know if anybody was aware of that, but it replicated the 2018 data set
exactly.
Bryce Rogers:
And the idea is that we can do a one-to-one comparison on that to see not only
how the vegetation has changed in the area, but also topographically.
Bryce Rogers:
We're also using that information to try to help to inform any sort of flood or
risk mitigations we have going forward.
Bryce Rogers:
That's with county and city at this point.
Bryce Rogers:
Additionally, we are trying to help, that is trying to help us to inform the
outreach we are currently doing with City of Moab.
Sophia Fisher:
Yeah, and on that outreach front, through the contract with the city, I've been
producing some mailers and handouts and social media in tandem with various city
departments to help people prepare for floods, you know, get ready for monsoon
season.
Sophia Fisher:
And we're also hoping to help inform the community event about the role that
the city plays in recovering from floods because city staff are, you know, on
the ground doing a ton of work.
Sophia Fisher:
It'd be great to, you know, help people understand the process better and how
hard city staff work on that front.
Bryce Rogers:
Okay, so this is just a before and after of the work that we've done so far
this spring.
Bryce Rogers:
So if you see on the top left, that is a view from the 191 bridge looking down
Pack Creek and you can see the Bighorn Lodge there on the right.
Bryce Rogers:
And then a month later, that is the view of it now.
Bryce Rogers:
So not only have they removed a significant amount of the invasive species and
a lot of the deadfall, frankly, there was a ton of dead trees in there.
Bryce Rogers:
And there's a cool surprising benefit to that.
Bryce Rogers:
I'm just going to switch that right now.
Bryce Rogers:
So this is basically turning around and looking at what we're just looking at,
looking back at the bridge.
Bryce Rogers:
So essentially getting in there, we were able to figure out that one half of
that box culvert is essentially sedimented in.
Bryce Rogers:
So if you look on the lower right there, you see a deer for scale standing on
top of, there's like three feet.
Michael Black:
And this is a UDOT bridge.
Bryce Rogers:
And we reached out to UDOT as soon as we found this and said, hey, not only did
we find this, but we also removed all the trees for you.
Bryce Rogers:
And so UDOT has bumped us up on our priority list and we'll be in touch.
Michael Black:
So we'll be talking to UDOT about that.
Michael Black:
I have not seen this perspective of that.
Sophia Fisher:
I don't think anybody was able to be there.
Michael Black:
This most likely has a concrete bottom.
Michael Black:
We should be able to do some work there, but the fact that you've got all that
vegetation that continues going downstream, that's the big challenge.
Michael Black:
Because those take the restoration permits and things like that.
Michael Black:
Clean out under that bridge, but it runs into a wall of vegetation, a dirt
right after the bridge.
Michael Black:
It's not going to do much good.
Bryce Rogers:
We're going to be continuing our clearing out of this particular area
downstream, even starting next week.
Bryce Rogers:
So if there's any sort of movement from any other place on Creek Mitigation,
let us know.
Bryce Rogers:
We'd love to coordinate.
Sophia Fisher:
And that's all we've got for you.
Sophia Fisher:
The QR codes are for the Firebreak social media accounts.
Sophia Fisher:
I don't know if you guys put your phones in these meetings, but I thought I'd
throw them off there.
Sophia Fisher:
And thank you so much for having us.
Sophia Fisher:
And we're here to take any questions.
Joette Langianese:
You guys might have questions, Council?
Colin Topper:
I have a question.
Colin Topper:
So, first, is that the new LiDAR data and the findings?
Colin Topper:
Is that in any way available to the public?
Bryce Rogers:
Yeah, it should be housed on the UGRC website.
Bryce Rogers:
It could be publicly available.
Bryce Rogers:
The last time that I checked on it with James Murphy, who's been sort of
shepherding that through from the county.
Bryce Rogers:
He said that the link was broken, but if you need it, but if you need to get
your hands on the data or want to know about any of the findings that have
happened so far, you can reach out to either me or James Murphy.
Bryce Rogers:
But yeah, it will be publicly available if it's not now.
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Colin Topper:
And then I just want to say that I live in a community that has shared
ownership of a woodlands that actually creates the connection between Mill Creek
and Pack Creek.
Colin Topper:
And predating this community, it was completely overgrown with Russian olive
and elms.
Colin Topper:
And, you know, the community has been working hard to try to put a dent in
this.
Colin Topper:
And it's just been completely ineffective.
Colin Topper:
Clark and his crew came out when in the fall and were able to, in a couple of
weeks, clear this woodlands out.
Colin Topper:
It's healthy, it's thriving, and more importantly, it's created a real distinct
separation, a firebreak between these two drainages that, as we know from the
Pack Creek fire, could absolutely devastate this town.
Colin Topper:
So huge thanks.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Any other questions?
Kaitlin Myers:
I have a couple.
Kaitlin Myers:
Oh, go ahead.
Joette Langianese:
You go, Kaitlin.
Joette Langianese:
You go first.
Joette Langianese:
I'll go last.
Kaitlin Myers:
Can you talk a little bit more about the mix of, well, even backing up, can you
talk about what fine fuels versus ladder fuel, like what are the types of fuels?
Kaitlin Myers:
Sure.
Kaitlin Myers:
So a little bit of education on what fire fuels are.
Bryce Rogers:
So ladder fuels tend to be more of your cameras for your brush and olive.
Bryce Rogers:
Think of something that really likes to grow and sort of leave dead branches
behind or become that thicket or brush, something that the fire can literally
climb up and get into the canopy.
Bryce Rogers:
Your fine fuels tend to be more of your cheatgrass, or anything else that can
essentially be mowed.
Bryce Rogers:
Thanks, Clark, if you want to jump in.
Clark ?:
I feel restricted by flashy fuels like grass, grass, tumble beads, things like
that.
Clark ?:
The ladder fuels create fuel that allows fire to meet from the ground up into
the trees.
Kaitlin Myers:
Okay, thanks.
Kaitlin Myers:
And then can you talk a little bit about the mix of projects that you're doing
on public versus private properties, how you're kind of prioritizing both of
those together?
Bryce Rogers:
So they are prioritized together, and a lot of it, like I said, had to do with
the amount of fuels, the density, and then the proximity.
Bryce Rogers:
So a lot of our public land tends to be a little more far-flung.
Bryce Rogers:
You're not getting nearly as much infrastructure risk with a lot of our public
land, especially if you think of something like Pack Creek, which is almost
entirely private land.
Bryce Rogers:
So that tends to rank a little bit higher just because number one, it's denser.
Bryce Rogers:
Number two, you have infrastructure concerns, and number three, you have
neighboring properties.
Bryce Rogers:
So I do use the same metric across both, mostly because they've both shaken out
to somewhere that everybody has felt like the risk is appropriate.
Bryce Rogers:
We've only really had one property that made us think that maybe the waiting
was off, and that property was one that honestly, it's definitely one that
everybody knows the risk is intense given its location, because it doesn't have
a primary residence on it.
Bryce Rogers:
And because it does not endanger violent infrastructure, it tends to rank a
little bit lower.
Joette Langianese:
Is that it?
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Any other council members?
Luke Wojciechowski:
I guess just kind of aside from the obvious funding and human power resources,
or limits on those, what are the biggest obstacles that you all face,
potentially institutionally, structurally, or anything like that?
Luke Wojciechowski:
From being able to more effectively implement?
Bryce Rogers:
Yeah, that's a really good question.
Bryce Rogers:
I think probably one of our biggest problems is trying to get momentum for a
lot of these properties.
Bryce Rogers:
And that just comes with its own roadblocks, talking to property owners, then
making sure that that timing actually works, finding crews to do that, and
making sure that everybody is able to actually participate at the same time.
Bryce Rogers:
That's probably been our biggest hurdle so far, is trying to get that aside
from potential funding pauses.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
A couple questions from me.
Joette Langianese:
How are you guys going to manage revegetation when we have these floods along
the creek?
Joette Langianese:
And what I've witnessed behind my house, which is city property, a lot of trees
were cut down.
Joette Langianese:
And then all the bad, lower fuels have grown up.
Joette Langianese:
Now some of them aren't six feet tall.
Joette Langianese:
I don't know how you guys are going to be able to plant and revege back there
when the trees have been removed and now we've got the other bad fuels.
Bryce Rogers:
You're not wrong, and it's one of the biggest problems that we're having with
balance and getting in and doing that.
Bryce Rogers:
And that's a lot of where Grand County weeds has come in.
Bryce Rogers:
The idea of coming in and mitigating those fine fuels and then being able to
revegetate sometime in the fall to let them really get a foothold over the
winter and try to take over by the following spring.
Bryce Rogers:
But just like the de-vegetation process, your revege is an iterative process.
Bryce Rogers:
So you can go in, you can plant, then you're still removing those fine fuels
and then you're planting more.
Bryce Rogers:
So iterative process, a key piece of education as well, and encouraging the
public, especially on their own properties, to try to figure out ways to really
encourage that native growth.
Speaker 18:
Right.
Joette Langianese:
And I think we did that back there.
Joette Langianese:
We planted like twice and then we had flash floods and so everything got, I
mean there was one little desert willow and it was like my little desert willow
and then it was gone last night.
Joette Langianese:
So I just think that's a big challenge, but I think it's a serious one because
now we've got a lot of dead fall from the floods, all the debris, and it's all
piling up back there.
Joette Langianese:
And so I don't know if that's part of your fire mitigation plan to get rid of
some of that stuff because this wind and hot weather that we have, I was like on
edge.
Joette Langianese:
It's like all it takes is somebody walking back there because it is a path,
smoking a cigarette, boom, it's on fire.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Bryce Rogers:
Debris and jackpots, trash, anything that can pile up, especially in the flood
debris, that tends to take properties very high on the priority matrix.
Joette Langianese:
So this is all city, I think there's one piece of private property where that's
an issue.
Joette Langianese:
Michael and I've talked about that.
Colin Topper:
And I think the city through this process has some some new equipment where
we'll be getting right.
Speaker 18:
Right.
Michael Black:
Yeah, we, in fact, the hundred and $30,000 a year is in the new budget.
Michael Black:
And what that does is it supports equipment and it also supports an FTE who can
focus on this work for the city.
Joette Langianese:
Excellent.
Kaitlin Myers:
Good.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, and just one request.
Joette Langianese:
Yes.
Joette Langianese:
Whenever they are cutting down the trees, I noticed they tend to do it in the
spring when the birds are migrating through and the babies are in their nests.
Joette Langianese:
So I just would request when we do do some of those tree removals, that we
don't do it right when the birds are having their babies, or the birds are
migrating.
Joette Langianese:
I think keep in mind, like, don't cut down that tree, there's birds in there
and they've been really nice and said not to, but that's just something that I
just have known.
Joette Langianese:
Sorry, I had to say that.
Michael Black:
Someone has to think of the birds.
Joette Langianese:
I love the birds.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
So anything else for these for Bryce or Sophia.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you guys so much.
Sophia Fisher:
I'm going to give out these little packets.
Sophia Fisher:
There's one with kind of some of the fire outreach and then some with some of
the flood outreach.
Bryce Rogers:
And if you guys have any further questions, you can contact us at any time.
Bryce Rogers:
And if you have any properties you want us to look at, please contact us.
Bryce Rogers:
Okay, we'll do.
Bryce Rogers:
Thanks.
Joette Langianese:
All right, next up presentation from Michael on crosswalk standards for the
city of Moab.
Michael Black:
Okay, so, recently, we became, well, we know that there's been conversation
with trail mix and with you dot about high visibility crosswalks on Main Street
we've had that discussion ourselves with the RSA, which is the road safety
assessment that we did with you dot.
Michael Black:
And so the conversation has been out there for a little while, but we're
launching into a discussion with you dot regarding that.
Michael Black:
In fact, we'll be setting up a meeting soon.
Michael Black:
It is happening with you dot and In the next few weeks.
Michael Black:
But while we were thinking about this and high visibility crosswalks are
thinking, well, what is the city standard and what are we doing.
Michael Black:
And if high visibility crosswalks are good.
Michael Black:
Are we doing them in the places or is our policy supportive of that.
Michael Black:
So we did a little bit of research and the team that I'm talking about here is
our engineering public works.
Michael Black:
Strategic initiatives with Alexi and community development.
Michael Black:
We got together and we talked And I talked to you dot as well and you dot
actually provided some information to us that is consistent with what we've been
hearing from citizen groups and from citizens in particular.
Michael Black:
So crosswalk safety does matter and high visibility crosswalks do have an
impact on safety within the community.
Michael Black:
Now, there's a lot of information in this one pager, but the bottom line here
is that when you couple several different things together like high visibility
crosswalks lighting and signing and signalization.
Michael Black:
You end up getting a safer intersection for everybody.
Michael Black:
So it's pretty it's pretty consistent with what we've been hearing.
Michael Black:
It's pretty consistent with what we think as well.
Michael Black:
But it's not consistent with what we've been applying on our road.
Michael Black:
So if you look at our roads.
Michael Black:
A lot of the crosswalks are the line pattern which you can see here, which is
the standard down on the bottom.
Michael Black:
These are the different kinds of crosswalks that you generally see, except you
never see the solid one.
Michael Black:
That's that's something I don't know where they do that, but I I don't I don't
think we see that very often.
Michael Black:
But these are the ones that we generally use and we use the standard quite a
bit, but we've been using the zebra.
Michael Black:
More and more often in places where we are looking for higher visibility.
Michael Black:
In fact, you got came out and did several of the zebra crosswalks at places
where they thought it fit with their policy, which is areas where a trail leads
across the highway.
Michael Black:
So they were able to do that in a couple of those locations.
Michael Black:
But as we're looking at this and talking to our staff about it.
Michael Black:
Our feeling is that Why not adopt for the city of Moab a standard where we only
use high visibility crosswalks and try to proliferate better within the
community where those crosswalks go.
Michael Black:
And so what we're what we're saying tonight is that we were looking for support
from the city council.
Michael Black:
This the standards that we have are engineering standards that we use within
the engineering department within community development.
Michael Black:
And what the plan is to change those so that we only use these three standards
for crosswalks.
Michael Black:
I'm not a huge fan of the zebra myself, but it's It's being used in several
places.
Michael Black:
There is thermal plastic down that has zebra already that would make sense
where those are that we continue to use those
Michael Black:
But we would most likely use the continental going forward with uncontrolled
intersections these streets around here where we don't have stop signs where
people travel through on the three ways I can first south and third south
Michael Black:
And some some of the blocks on Center Street and then the areas where we have
stop signs or controlled intersections within town or even streetlights.
Michael Black:
We would be using the ladder.
Michael Black:
Not the latter, but the latter one.
Michael Black:
So it'd be it would be these three ones that I have starred and we were looking
at just making this effective immediately.
Michael Black:
The other thing we're looking at doing immediately and trying to get this ball
rolling and set a good example here is to get a thermal plastic project out as
soon as possible.
Michael Black:
And it is something that's that is in our budget for the next year.
Michael Black:
We talked about this.
Michael Black:
We'd like to get out a project as soon as possible, working on the kind of old
town area first in the safe routes to schools, and then moving out from there.
Michael Black:
Now, most likely, every intersection in the entire city won't have a high
visibility crosswalk some of the interior subdivisions where there's no sidewalk
things like that.
Michael Black:
But what we're going to be focusing on our areas where we know people walk a
lot, where we have sidewalks and curb ramps that lead down to the street and
there's no, there's no crosswalk at all.
Michael Black:
And I think a lot of you are probably aware of a lot of those.
Michael Black:
And then also enhancing the crosswalks that we do already have to make them
more visible.
Michael Black:
And then moving on from there, having that conversation with UDOT, which I do
think UDOT is more than willing to come to the table and discuss this with us
and the possibility of doing these high visibility crosswalks on the highway.
Michael Black:
I can't speak for them, but I can speak for our conversations and saying that
they've been more than open and talking about things and are willing to sit down
with us and talk about the future of Main Street as well.
Michael Black:
And having a policy within the city of Moab that we use these will no doubt
help that conversation.
Michael Black:
So, so that's my presentation. If you have any questions, happy to answer any
concerns or ...
Colin Topper:
I just want to say how excited I am for this new direction and it's definitely
something that I've had a lot of conversations with both Michael and the Mayor
about and I'm so appreciative of the work you've done.
Colin Topper:
And, you know, just to really kind of make an example here I riding over here
to this meeting, I, you know, as an example of the era that we're leaving.
Colin Topper:
I was coming down 4th East by Milt's Stop and Eat, and the crosswalk between
Milt's and what is now the RISE training studio, two faded white parallel lines.
Colin Topper:
But what we've done is we've put two baskets on light poles on either side of
these faded parallel lines.
Colin Topper:
And then these baskets are these little orange flags.
Colin Topper:
And so, rather than painting this beautiful high visibility crosswalk and
bringing all this attention, you know, and recognition to this this pedestrian
infrastructure and this important place of crossing that that services a school
and the neighborhoods and eating establishments.
Colin Topper:
We put all the responsibility on those people, putting their lives in danger
and crossing the street and asking them to carry a flag across the street.
Colin Topper:
And so I'm so proud of the city of Moab for this new direction.
Colin Topper:
I mean, we really are.
Colin Topper:
This is going somewhere and this is such a cost effective and pretty simple
safety enhancement.
Colin Topper:
And, you know, it's really going to show people that, you know, we're really
serious about pedestrian safety and that this is a place where people do walk
and ride their bikes and, you know, our transportation environment is not auto
centric.
Colin Topper:
You know, it's about everybody here.
Colin Topper:
So, thank you.
Kaitlin Myers:
Michael, can you talk a little bit about how, so we have money in the budget to
do sidewalks.
Kaitlin Myers:
Can you talk about how this would play into sidewalks and striping plans and
it's those are going to be coordinated together.
Michael Black:
Yeah, they definitely will be coordinated together and I'm going to talk a
little bit more about sidewalks and the plans and bids and things like that.
Michael Black:
And my update, but the big things that I want to make sure are coordinated are
the improvements that we're making to intersections where we're looking at doing
bulb outs and things like that, because high visibility crosswalks are great.
Michael Black:
And then the shorter distances between that the pedestrians have to walk
through the street art is better and you start stacking those things on onto
each other and we end up getting a much better product as long as well as
lighting and signage and signalization.
Michael Black:
So, the way that this would work is that through the roads fund through the
road budget.
Michael Black:
This would be a project through there.
Michael Black:
We do striping every year we do a certain amount of striping.
Michael Black:
We do paint in some situations which we just did a bunch of paint all over town
which I'm, I'm glad it was paint because now we're moving to a different
standard, and we'll be able to go back in and not feel like we've, we've spent a
bunch of money painting crosswalks and then just replacing them with thermal
plastic.
Michael Black:
Now thermal plastic is much better because it lasts a lot longer.
Michael Black:
It's, it's much heartier, and it's reflective as well.
Michael Black:
It has a better reflectivity and there's just a lot of things that are better
about it in our climate where we don't have a ton of snow and snowplows going
down the road, and they can last a lot longer than in other places so.
Michael Black:
So that's, that's the way we approach it and we will definitely coordinate all
of these different projects that are going together to make sure we're not
redoing things or, or, you know, redoing things is probably it.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
So, Michael you touched on one of my questions how, what's the lifespan of this
kind of treatment versus versus just paint.
Michael Black:
I think it depends on the, the travel the, the number of trips per day on the
street so so highway 90 191 is going to be different than, than first out, but
what do you think.
Clark ?:
Yeah, if anything, probably you might be replacing the thermal plastics sooner,
just become so stuffed up and what's the word about what we're here.
Michael Black:
Yeah, the year.
Clark ?:
Yeah, they're fairly thick.
Clark ?:
We've got some help here, I think about five years now.
Clark ?:
That would still go strong just got clean.
Clark ?:
So, all relatively low traffic low speed though it's facing to where a whole
lot slower.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And just for like comparison sake if we're just looking at pain like how
frequently do we have to repent.
Clark ?:
Oh, yeah.
Clark ?:
Yeah, sort of depends on the spot that we, we get a real quick light treatment,
where we have missed the mid walk crossing and the first part of the project is
driving by and it's already starting to work.
Clark ?:
Yeah, it could be like a year or two years.
Michael Black:
If you look at the, we just did the bus stop down on main, and we had them just
use paint, because we added it on to the to the contract that you that was
doing.
Michael Black:
And it's already faded and needs to be replaced with thermal plastics so paint
is not a good alternative.
Michael Black:
That's why they use it to, to do the locates because it disappears after a
while.
Joette Langianese:
So anyways, any other questions.
Colin Topper:
I do also want to note that this is one of our priorities is an action item for
one of our priorities that Alex he's going to be presenting on in just a minute
and so this is, this is we're already taking things off.
Colin Topper:
Yeah, it's great.
Colin Topper:
It's great.
Joette Langianese:
Way to go.
Colin Topper:
Good team.
Michael Black:
Go.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Anything else on crosswalks sidewalks.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
We have no department head reports, we have two items on our consent agenda
approval of the minutes from June 10 regular meeting and approval the bills
against the city of the Moab, in the amount of 1,792,390.
Joette Langianese:
$9 and 83 cents if I could have a motion to approve.
Colin Topper:
I can make that motion.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Second second by 20 any discussion column.
Colin Topper:
I would just like to say that the bulk of those bills are going to I what I
believe is the final installment of the Kane Creek project.
Joette Langianese:
Yes.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny
Joette Langianese:
Anyone else.
Joette Langianese:
All in favor of approval the consent agenda say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Any opposed motion passes for to zero with Jason, not in attendance this
evening.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
We had an addendum to our agenda, which is regarding fireworks restrictions I
realized that next week is the Fourth of July, it's been windy and dry and hot.
Joette Langianese:
And so, we do have an ordinance in place.
Joette Langianese:
And I think Lex.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, Lex you're going to be talking about fireworks restrictions that will be
in place.
Joette Langianese:
Starting now.
Michael Black:
Yeah, Lex is on his way up, we've had some discussions and I've discussed this
with our city attorney as well, and talk to the fire chief, and Lex can give you
the details and all that.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
Basically, they're the same as they were in 2023 2022 2021 2024.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
The restrictions for Moab city, this is city limits.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
No burning within city limits.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
Open burning of yard waste or any other debris is always prohibited, but
specifically the fireworks they are restricted from parkways, public trails and
pedestrian paths in the city, city parks, except center street ball fields over
or within 200 feet of Pat Creek or Mill Creek,
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
within 20 feet of any residence building structure or combustible material and
violations are subject to a $1,000 fine up to a $1,000 fine and possible jail
time fireworks that are never allowed fireworks that fly explode or travel more
than six feet off the ground,
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
aerial and flash shells, Roman candles, comments and mortars, firecrackers,
bottle and aerial rockets, other similar explosives.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
And we'd ask that people report fireworks violations to our dispatch at
435-259-8115.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
And of course we'll be out, you know, responding on these calls.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
Typically you get one morning, and we don't like to write tickets for the sort
of thing and we hope that if you're respectful with us and we're respectful with
you, one time let's come in and say, knock it off works but don't make us come
back with a ticket.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
And be respectful.
Michael Black:
And use common sense.
Michael Black:
That would be, that'd be a good thing too.
Michael Black:
Just to follow up with that, we do have a press release that's ready to go, and
ready to get out there so that we can get this information out as far as wide as
we can we'll put that on Facebook as well.
Michael Black:
Wherever else Lisa typically does that, but we'll update our, our news stories
on our website too so it pops up to the top.
Michael Black:
Good luck.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Michael Black:
See you at the parade.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
I also believe that the fire department is putting out fire restrictions this
week as well.
Joette Langianese:
Yes, there's a broader range of fire restrictions than just fireworks.
Michael Black:
Yes, we're pretty much in red flag as it is and it's not getting any better.
Michael Black:
So, right.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
We next up 6.1 consideration and adoption of the Moab's 2526 strategic plan,
Alexi.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Alexi Lamm:
We've already gone through most of the things in the strategic plan.
Alexi Lamm:
So, my plan for today is to go directly to the biggest change which is the
addition of information under walnut lane is one of our top priorities.
Alexi Lamm:
And then if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.
Alexi Lamm:
Okay, so let's skip to walnut lane here, and we added some Michael and I put in
some text here, highlighting that walnut lane addresses the community's
workforce housing needs, and then putting in some action items to pay off the
property to do a thorough engagement process, work on a plan for things that we
can do to move towards whatever solution or outcome that we're looking for.
Alexi Lamm:
And then setting up benchmarks for accountability and then pursuing funding and
partnerships to pursue whatever plan we come up with.
Alexi Lamm:
So, that is the biggest change.
Alexi Lamm:
Other than that, the changes were relatively small and related to our previous
conversations.
Alexi Lamm:
Does anybody have discussion about the walnut lane section?
Kaitlin Myers:
I think it's as good of direction to set a number of directions as we get.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, good job on that.
Michael Black:
We did it then.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Alexi Lamm:
Are there any questions about any of the other changes that were in the plan?
Alexi Lamm:
I would say the only other significant addition other than adding a few words
here or there was adding an appendix B, a summary of where we are in last year's
strategic plan.
Alexi Lamm:
So, none of this is actually new, it's just a summary of what is our clear gov,
but that's the only other significant change.
Alexi Lamm:
Are there any questions about any of the other changes?
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Speaker 16:
Good job.
Joette Langianese:
Yes, nice job.
Joette Langianese:
Motion to approve our strategic plan.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I moved to adopt ordinance 2025-08, an ordinance amending the...
Luke Wojciechowski:
Oh, no, sorry.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I have the wrong thing open.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Oh, I moved to adopt resolution 09-2025, adopting a city of Moab fiscal year
2025-2026 strategic plan.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke, second.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Joette Langianese:
Second by Caitlin discussion, Luke.
Luke Wojciechowski:
No, I think great job.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Really appreciate your patience with us and all the changes that you've made.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And this isn't anything like directly in the strategic plan, but just as I was
reading through, like, with the public engagement, I just kind of remembered
that in the past we just wanted to make sure that there's some sort of like
extra focus on trying to get engagement from typically underrepresented groups.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So we get a broader swath of like our broader perspective from the community.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But other than that, great job.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I appreciate it.
Kaitlin Myers:
Caitlin.
Kaitlin Myers:
Ditto.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that the way you guys have walked us through and taken a fresh look at
our existing strategic plan.
Kaitlin Myers:
I really appreciate the appendix of all of the plans and, you know,
implementing plans in itself is a priority for us.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think just seeing the list of all the plans that we, the city has adopted and
or created in the last, you know, eight years is extensive.
Kaitlin Myers:
And so I just really appreciate this approach to kind of take a more
comprehensive look at strategic initiatives for the city.
Joette Langianese:
So thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Call for the vote.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor of approval of the MOAB City Strategic Plan 2526.
Joette Langianese:
Say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
Any opposed?
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes four to zero.
Speaker 16:
Thanks a little tea.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Next up, we have consideration of approval of a special event permit for the
2025 USARA Recovery Day event.
Joette Langianese:
Kelley's going to present this to you all.
Joette Langianese:
If you all are aware, USARA is a great organization that works with a lot of
other organizations to help our addicted community with addiction and they have
an event.
Joette Langianese:
It's their 10th year of USARA being in existence.
Joette Langianese:
And so this year is kind of a big deal for them.
Joette Langianese:
One of the things that they've requested that is not in your packet is a waiver
of the permit fees.
Joette Langianese:
So when you go to make your motion on this, if you can consider that as an
option, that would be great.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Kelley McInerney:
So this particular event is held in September each year.
Kelley McInerney:
This year it will be Thursday, September 4th.
Kelley McInerney:
They started out at the ball fields a couple of years ago and it's kind of
grown.
Kelley McInerney:
They've since moved to Swanny Park.
Kelley McInerney:
And this is a free, family-friendly event.
Kelley McInerney:
So there's no ticket sales.
Kelley McInerney:
It's held by USARA, which is Utah Support Advocates for Recovery Awareness.
Kelley McInerney:
And then they have a lot of community partners doing tabling and activities.
Kelley McInerney:
There's no alcohol at this event, so there's no beer garden or anything like
that.
Kelley McInerney:
And we're coming to you because this has been a renewal permit for them for a
level one event, but they've kind of grown.
Kelley McInerney:
It's gotten a little bit bigger, so they're going to hit that level two
threshold now.
Kelley McInerney:
Other than that, there are no significant changes.
Joette Langianese:
Questions?
Joette Langianese:
I will be reading a proclamation.
Joette Langianese:
I did that, yeah, last year.
Joette Langianese:
I'll be doing that again this year for that event.
Colin Topper:
And was this event a RAP recipient?
Colin Topper:
Something else.
Kelley McInerney:
I'm sorry.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Speaker 16:
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 16:
Yeah, that's right.
Joette Langianese:
Is there a motion?
Joette Langianese:
Well, how much is the fee, Kelley?
Kelley McInerney:
Level two permit is $820.
Joette Langianese:
$820.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So.
Joette Langianese:
The question is approving their permit.
Joette Langianese:
And if you would consider modifying or reducing the fee.
Joette Langianese:
Or waiving a fee.
Colin Topper:
I can make a motion to approve this permit.
Colin Topper:
And along with waving the, the use fee Swanny Park.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Collins.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I'll second.
Joette Langianese:
Second by Luke discussion.
Joette Langianese:
Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Luke.
Luke Wojciechowski:
No, I just really appreciative of these are and everything that you for this
community and just how well they partner with other organizations to kind of
provide those wraparound services for.
Luke Wojciechowski:
That vulnerable members of our community.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I'm not going to vote against this because I do think it's a good
Joette Langianese:
event.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I wish we have entertained reducing the fee.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
We haven't waived fees for a long time, but.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I'm not going to stand its way.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Kaitlin Myers:
Would you....
Kaitlin Myers:
make an amended motion?
Kaitlin Myers:
This is something that I was thinking about, especially with the master fee
schedule.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think looking at events like that, we have discounts for the mark.
Kaitlin Myers:
I'm wondering if we should have discounts for.
Kaitlin Myers:
You know, all of our parks and rec facilities following that same structure.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that's one of the intentions of the master piece schedule.
Kaitlin Myers:
So I guess I would make an amended motion, substitute a substitute motion to,
in accordance with the MARC's policies, provide a 50% discount to use our, for
the special event permit.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Kaitlyn to approve the special event permit with a 50% reduction in
the fee.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Kelley McInerney:
Can I ask for clarification?
Kelley McInerney:
Um, so there's the permit fees, the special event permit fees.
Kelley McInerney:
There's also like parks fees associated with special events as well.
Kelley McInerney:
So just clarification on whether that's.
Kelley McInerney:
Park use fees or permit fees.
Joette Langianese:
So is 820 the total cost?
Kelley McInerney:
That's the permit fee.
Kelley McInerney:
So there's still like.
Joette Langianese:
We're talking about the permit fees.
Kaitlin Myers:
Well, I think that's a good question.
Kaitlin Myers:
Colin's motion was to waive the fees for Sony parks.
Kaitlin Myers:
Such actually a good clarification.
Kaitlin Myers:
Which is different from the special.
Kaitlin Myers:
Special event.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And were they requesting to like either reduce or.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Eliminate all fees or adjust the permit fees.
Joette Langianese:
When I talked to the email that I got, it was just the.
Joette Langianese:
Permit fees.
Joette Langianese:
It wasn't the park fees.
Luke Wojciechowski:
How much would park fees be.
Kelley McInerney:
I'm sorry.
Kelley McInerney:
I don't have that in front of me.
Kelley McInerney:
I think it's.
Kelley McInerney:
I want to say on that one, we have, we have a locals rate, so they would get
that rate for it.
Kelley McInerney:
And it's based on the number of hours and whether they're using the whole park
or the full park.
Kelley McInerney:
So there's this.
Kelley McInerney:
I want to say.
Kelley McInerney:
A couple hundred on that.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, that's what I think it was.
Joette Langianese:
That's that sounds right.
Michael Black:
And that's going for maintenance and, and helping set up.
Michael Black:
If there's any needs, anything like that, that our park staff might have to
provide.
Colin Topper:
It looks like $150 per 100 to 300 people.
Colin Topper:
If I'm reading this correctly.
Kaitlin Myers:
Good.
Colin Topper:
Good deal.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
The motion was to reduce the permit fee by 50%?
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I would second that motion.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
So we vote on the substitute motion first.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So.
Joette Langianese:
Kaitlin's motion is to approve the special event.
Joette Langianese:
Permit for 2025.
Joette Langianese:
You saw our recovery day went with a 50% reduction in the permit fees that
second by Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
Any further discussion, Kaitlin?
Kaitlin Myers:
I do.
Kaitlin Myers:
I would love to support this.
Kaitlin Myers:
I appreciate everything you guys do.
Kaitlin Myers:
Just especially because we are talking about our master fee schedule.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that.
Kaitlin Myers:
You know, this is kind of a discussion.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that's a good question.
Kaitlin Myers:
Our fee schedule right now says the city may only waive.
Kaitlin Myers:
special event permit fees for a free speech event.
Joette Langianese:
I'm going to be making a free speech.
Kaitlin Myers:
So I guess if we want to call it that we can, but I guess this, this kind of
indication to me that like, you know, we should consider what discounts we're
doing across the board.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
So I agree, I like you said, it's a good event, but I think once we start
waiving entire fees, everybody's gonna, I mean, we had this discussion years
ago, years and years, because we just, we weren't collecting anything or very
nominal amount of fees.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And so I think past councils have kind of put their foot down and said, we can
discount things to a reasonable amount, but we're not going to waive entire fees
because there's still a cost to the city.
Joette Langianese:
All right, motion by Kaitlin, second by Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor, say aye.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Do we get to...
Joette Langianese:
Oh, do you guys wanna discuss?
Speaker 16:
Okay, Luke.
Speaker 16:
Nope, you can't talk.
Speaker 16:
It's not free.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I'm like a little conflicted, partially because I think a lot of the events
that are going to take up like an entire park or something like that are paid
events where people would pay.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And so the offset of, or sorry, the costs of the permit fees can be offsets by
some of the admission costs and everything like that.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And just having attended these events, this really is a collection of a lot of
local nonprofits and service providers that provide a lot of really valuable
education to the community and community members in ways that I think can
actually help reduce costs for the city by kind of reducing the number of
emergency calls that they need to respond to.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And yeah, I think the costs of renting parts of the mark are significantly
different than they are for a level two permit fee.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I don't know, just having worked alongside USARA, like there has been a lot
of money kind of like in terms of like opiate and like substance use disorder,
but like that's drying up like pretty quickly.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I know that they have scratched
Luke Wojciechowski:
like every penny that they could in the past
Luke Wojciechowski:
to be able to like put on these really well received,
Luke Wojciechowski:
like I think the fact that this is a growing thing
Luke Wojciechowski:
like really speaks to kind of the need
Luke Wojciechowski:
and the reception and the appreciation from the community
Luke Wojciechowski:
for kind of helping celebrate people who,
Luke Wojciechowski:
I don't know, I think everybody in one former
Luke Wojciechowski:
or another is impacted by addiction,
Luke Wojciechowski:
whether I directly or indirectly.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And yeah, I know I'm biased coming from like the nonprofit world and like
wanting to provide like free services wherever we can just knowing that that
goes a long way.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But yeah, I'm still ultimately in favor of just like waiving the entire fee.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Like there still will be the part to you which from my understanding in a lot
of ways is like kind of to help offset the impact that the event would have like
on the grounds.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So I think like to that degree, that is covered.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I don't know, I guess like what is the intent for the permitting fees?
Luke Wojciechowski:
Is that the other staff labor that went into like helping organize and arrange
the event?
Kelley McInerney:
That's my understanding of it.
Kelley McInerney:
So it goes through a full staff review.
Kelley McInerney:
Every event does whether it's renewal or a new event.
Michael Black:
And it goes all the way from Kelley's office to the police department, the fire
department through all of those different means.
Michael Black:
It definitely makes its rounds.
Michael Black:
There's definitely work on the back end as well.
Michael Black:
And then it kind of goes into the general fund.
Michael Black:
And the general fund of course supports the larger general fund departments
like the police department and so on.
Kaitlin Myers:
I'll ask you a question.
Kaitlin Myers:
Have we waived the special event permit for level one for this event in the
past?
Kelley McInerney:
No, no.
Kaitlin Myers:
I've never been to level one in the past.
Kelley McInerney:
They were in level one now though, or level two.
Kelley McInerney:
So the level one permit fee is 466.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, so I guess even with a 50% that'd be less than the permit fee they paid
right off.
Colin Topper:
Got a couple.
Colin Topper:
I'm gonna, you know, I appreciate this discussion greatly, but I'm gonna stick
with my original position.
Colin Topper:
Though I did state it wrong, with the waiving of application fees is what I'm
gonna stick with.
Colin Topper:
This feels different to me.
Colin Topper:
This, you know, the city contributes to some other events at the Swanny Park,
the Arts Fest, the city contributes to, the city contributes RAP funds to
several other events that are at Swanny Park, different ways the city supports
these events.
Colin Topper:
This particular event, there is no monetary exchange whatsoever this event
between vendors, between participants, organizers, everything.
Colin Topper:
And so, you know, I think this is, you know, I appreciate Kaitlin's reference
to what is stated as, you know, grounds for waiving this.
Colin Topper:
I think that this, you know, should be a new approach or a new opportunity to
support events like this.
Colin Topper:
So, thank you.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, and I don't know if this is still happening, once again, kind of like
funding cuts, but I do know in the past, like there have been, there's been
distribution of like Narcan kits and like other supplies that go out into the
community to help like people better respond to like overdoses and things like
that.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And so, I'd much rather funds go towards things like that that can kind of
ripple out into the community and have a positive impact in that regard rather
than kind of like, yeah, $800 or $400 isn't an insignificant amount, but
relative to our budget, it's a very, very small rounding error.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Whereas I think equipping somebody with the knowledge and the equipment to
better respond to a situation at home, I think the value of that really
outweighs what the city would potentially benefit from the permit fee here.
Joette Langianese:
All right, we have a motion by Kaitlin, seconded by Tawny, prove the fee with a
50% reduction in the fee.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor, say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
All those opposed.
Joette Langianese:
I get to break the tie.
Joette Langianese:
I go with the opposition.
Joette Langianese:
Then we go back to Colin's motion.
Colin Topper:
You want me to restate that motion?
Joette Langianese:
Yes.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Joette Langianese:
Oh, actually, I need to call a roll call because we have in the negatives.
Kaitlin, how do you vote?
Joette Langianese:
For substitute?
Joette Langianese:
Yes.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Speaker 16:
Nay.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
Luke.
Joette Langianese:
Joette's nay.
Joette Langianese:
Motion fails.
Joette Langianese:
Two to three.
Joette Langianese:
With Colin, Luke, Joette in opposition.
Joette Langianese:
Our next motion that was made by Colin, seconded by Luke, was to approve this
special event permit for 2025.
Joette Langianese:
We saw a recovery event with a waiver of the permit fees entirely.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor, say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
All those opposed.
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes four-zero.
Joette Langianese:
There you go.
Kaitlin Myers:
Good discussion.
Speaker 16:
Thanks, you guys.
Colin Topper:
Yeah, thanks, Kelley.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Joette Langianese:
Marcy, I believe you're up.
Joette Langianese:
Our next item is a public hearing.
Joette Langianese:
For ordinance 25-08, an ordinance amending title three of the Moab Municipal
Code to update chapter 3.5, master fee schedule and modifying certain fees,
rates and charged by the city, charged by the city.
Joette Langianese:
This was reviewed by our planning commission and gave a favorable
recommendation to the city.
Joette Langianese:
And so I will open the public hearing at 7.04 p.m. Marcy is gonna give us a
brief description of what you guys are considering tonight and then we'll close
the public hearing and have discussion.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Hold on a second, I'm getting connected to Zoom.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And actually on this one, I don't have anything to actually share.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I'm not doing a presentation on this one.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I'll just do a quick summary.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we did a minimum of $85 rate for the building department.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Last year.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so what the majority of the changes that you're seeing on the masterpiece
scheduled this round was as correcting the rest of the fees to be in line with
the 85% or sorry, the $85 minimum rate that we did.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So for the particular masterpiece schedule, one of the things that Corey wanted
me to know is the state is actually putting a lot of pressure on building
departments in general and planning departments to have a lot more involvement
and they have to do a lot more things than we've ever had to do before, which is
a huge financial impact on the building and planning department.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So, excuse me, that's why you're seeing some of these major changes on that
program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And I'm so sorry, I need to open up my, I had the wrong one open.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Where are you?
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Oh, I did have to open.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Okay, and then you're also gonna see some changes or additions to the parks and
facilities.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Section Swanee Park was added as an administration portion.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We were already charging the fees, but it wasn't actually on the masterpiece
schedules and it's in line with all the other parks for the fees for that.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then we had a couple of corrections that were just errors like oversights
that just never got updated with other masterpiece schedules.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we did some minor corrections and then changing verbiage for planning like
director to coordinator.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then other than that, it should be relatively straightforward unless you
guys have questions.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Questions for Marcy on the masterpiece schedule.
Joette Langianese:
All right, no questions.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you, Marcy.
Joette Langianese:
I'll open it up to the public.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody from the public would like to comment?
Joette Langianese:
All right, seeing none.
Joette Langianese:
I'll close the public hearing at 7.06 p.m. and ask for a motion to approve the
adoption of ordinance 25-08 amending title three of the MOAB municipal code to
update the masterpiece schedule.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Since I got a little out of myself last time and started reading this one, I
will move to adopt ordinance 2025-08 and ordinance amending the Moab municipal
code title 3.50 masterpiece schedule as presented.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke, second by?
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I'll second.
Joette Langianese:
By Tawny, discussion Luke.
Joette Langianese:
No.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny, no.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Kaitlin Myers:
I think just reiterating based on our previous conversation, and I ultimately
agree with Tawny.
Kaitlin Myers:
It doesn't feel, I support you, Sarah.
Kaitlin Myers:
I support so many of the nonprofits that are there.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think for things like that, we've also had conversations about community
contributions.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think having more policies about how and why we waive fees is something I'd
love to see moving forward.
Kaitlin Myers:
Maybe not necessarily, you know, I'm not gonna, this is what it is.
Kaitlin Myers:
But I think just, you know, along the lines of us wanting to work on
formalizing those, I'd yeah, move that forward for future.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I appreciate that insight because I think it ultimately like prevents us
from making arbitrary decisions and ideally kind of can eliminate any sort of
like casting of doubt as to why somebody got something and somebody didn't.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke, seconded by Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
Any opposed?
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes for zero.
Joette Langianese:
Marcy, you don't need to leave because you're up pretty soon.
Joette Langianese:
So you might as well just stay there.
Joette Langianese:
I know you don't like being in the spotlight.
Joette Langianese:
But I was like, I thought Michael was next.
Speaker 16:
This should be fast.
Speaker 16:
I'll be looking at you.
Speaker 16:
Yeah, that's right.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Just hide them at the table.
Michael Black:
Focus on her.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
So next up item 6.5, consideration of adoption of resolution 08-2025, a
resolution amending the fiscal year budget.
Joette Langianese:
As you recall, we tabled this at our last meeting until this meeting because we
didn't have the right document in the paper.
Joette Langianese:
And since then, Michael has provided you all with the correct information.
Joette Langianese:
Nothing has changed.
Joette Langianese:
No.
Michael Black:
Slight change.
Michael Black:
To go down, of course.
Michael Black:
The updated document tells you what those changes are.
Joette Langianese:
Didn't we just get the information for the sales tax?
Michael Black:
We did, yeah.
Michael Black:
So just really quick, the changes in here, generally speaking, are changing to
actuals where we know we're not going to spend up to the amount that was
budgeted.
Michael Black:
And some of that will be carried forward to next year.
Michael Black:
Some of those projects just aren't being done.
Michael Black:
But the total net reduction in all of the line items is over a million dollars.
Michael Black:
But the budget does show us going up just a little bit because we are adding
two transfers out of the general fund to this budget.
Michael Black:
One of them is to the RAP tax fund.
Michael Black:
It shows $1.2 million.
Michael Black:
The actual transfer will be more in the line of $980,000 because the amount
needed, I needed to subtract the grants amount, which wasn't subtracted before,
but that's the actual amount of the RAP tax.
Michael Black:
No need to change anything.
Michael Black:
We'll just transfer the actual amount.
Michael Black:
The other change that led to the increase in the budget was just transferring
the money to pay off or to assist the housing fund in paying off the Walnut Lane
loan.
Michael Black:
Those are both from general fund any fund balance.
Joette Langianese:
And we discussed both of those at our last meeting.
Michael Black:
We did.
Joette Langianese:
So now the amended budget is the final budget, final actuals for 24-25.
Joette Langianese:
So that's what we'll be comparing throughout the year.
Joette Langianese:
Questions on that?
Joette Langianese:
Motion.
Joette Langianese:
Is there a motion?
Luke Wojciechowski:
I move to adopt resolution OA-2025 approving the fiscal year 2024-2025 year and
budget amendment as presented in the resolution.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Joette Langianese:
Second by Kaitlin discussion, Luke, Kaitlin?
Kaitlin Myers:
Thank you for making the changes.
Michael Black:
Getting the right attachment.
Joette Langianese:
He felt so bad about that.
Joette Langianese:
We're all calling out for days to agree.
Kaitlin Myers:
You know, at least, you know, I'm actually looking at it.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, exactly.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
This will be a roll call.
Joette Langianese:
Kaitlin.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Luke.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes for zero.
Joette Langianese:
Very good.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Next, Marcy.
Joette Langianese:
Consideration of adoption of ordinance 2025-12 and ordinance adopting the city
of Moab's residential utility assistant pilot program.
Joette Langianese:
As you all recall, this is something that we instituted in January because of
the property tax.
Joette Langianese:
We recognize that there's some folks out in the community that the property tax
is going to have some impact on and we wanted to make sure that we could help
offset some of that property tax cost through our utilities.
Joette Langianese:
Marcy's done a great job of pulling some information together to share with you
guys.
Joette Langianese:
I think the two things you need to be thinking about that are additions to this
program, because based on information that we got from you in January, we did it
for six months.
Joette Langianese:
Do you want to extend the pilot for another six months to make sure the changes
that Marcy's recommending are workable and feasible.
Joette Langianese:
We want to promote it a little bit more.
Joette Langianese:
But the two things that you need to be focusing on is the criteria to qualify
and then the renter component, which is what we added based on suggestions from
you all.
Joette Langianese:
Now, with that said, also we got a document from Kaitlin that has a lot of
cleanup language in it that I think we don't need to go into.
Joette Langianese:
I've talked to Kaitlin about it.
Joette Langianese:
Marcy and Michael have looked at it.
Joette Langianese:
It's not really anything substantial.
Joette Langianese:
It just makes the document stronger.
Joette Langianese:
And so whatever you guys decide, those changes could be made after the fact
administratively.
Joette Langianese:
But what we need to really be focusing on is the criteria and then the renter
program.
Joette Langianese:
So Marcy?
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Perfect.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Well, I hope everybody had an opportunity to review the data that I put in the
packet.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I put quite a bit in there to try to cover all the basis because it is a brand
new program that we've never done before and a program that I had to do a lot of
research to figure out how to do.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So thank you all for your patience as we worked through the first six months of
the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So just to give a quick summary, I know the mayor just kind of touched on this
a little bit but the program was originally approved in December under the
ordinance of 2024-06 for the six month period.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It's due to expire on June 30th.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
The program is in place for low income families with a up to $40 a month,
sorry, up to a $40 a month for utility account apply, payment applied to utility
account.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
That's like for water, sewer and storm water that you're gonna see these for.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
This is available for owners and renters.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So what we're gonna touch on is some of the changes that we're looking at,
mostly for renters, not owners, because of some, what is the word I'm looking
for?
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Some hiccups that we ran into where we couldn't, I was like, it was not
hiccups, but that would work.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Some hiccups that we ran into with not being able to approve everybody that did
apply for the program for various reasons because the program had some
limitations.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Okay, so the original pilot program, we had low participation.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Unfortunately, I can't really explain why we did, you know, we did have it in
the paper.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Doug actually put it in the paper for us.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Originally, and as people would call in, you know, we had offered the program
to them.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We only used about $3,000 with $75,000 that was budgeted for this for the 24-25
fiscal year.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I won't go into much detail on this original pilot overview because it
wasn't a packet.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
All of this information was provided, but I did wanna touch on a couple of like
the denials.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we had, I think it was seven.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Oh, no, sorry, five.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We had five apartment residents who called for this program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And because they're an apartment complex, the utility bill is not broke out.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It's like one utility bill that's for everybody.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
MAPS program or the MAPS building is one of these.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And four of those five came from MAPS that called for the utility assistance
program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
But unfortunately, the original program, it wasn't something we considered for
apartment complexes or things of that nature.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we kind of ran into a little bit of frustration on our side and also on the
citizen side because it is money that they could have absolutely used and
because of that hurdle of not having utility account, we had no way of adding
that into the, or allowing them to apply to the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I'm hoping that with tonight's review that that's something we can consider
for the next six month pilot program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And as the mayor said, we wanna do a six month pilot program because of the
substantial changes we are making on this.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So why we need these revisions, only 16 applications came in.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Seven of those applicants, we didn't have seven on there because they were out
of city limits.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we didn't do seven applications.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It was just an automatic denial because they weren't within city limits.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So they weren't impacted with the city property tax like the other applicants
were.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we only had 16 applications with the capacity of $75,000.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We could help 156 applicants with 12 months of subsidy with a flat $40 rate.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
That's saying that they apply and they're approved in July 1 through June 30th,
if that makes sense.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So having such a low approval rate or people applying made it a little bit
harder for us to review the program and be able to make sure that we were able
to assess the true needs of the community.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we're hoping with some of these revisions that we can jump over some of
these barriers that we had with the renters, like I explained with apartment
complexes and things of that nature.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We didn't have any in Grand Oasis, but Grand Oasis would also fall in this
trailer parks because they are not separate utility accounts.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It's one big account that covers the individual utility accounts.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
The other thing is we want stronger documentation from our applicants.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So it was brand new to us.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We didn't really know what we were going to need and as we started to dive into
this, it was a little bit hard to get certain documents from some of the
applicants that applied to the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And while we found ways to make it work, we did learn that a lot of people
don't have access to a computer and they couldn't print things for us or they
couldn't email things to us.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so what I was able to do is actually work with them by just waiting for
their documents to come in and then get them approved because they have to have
a mail to them or things like that.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So doing more documentation and having more consistency in the program, I think
will make it easier for the application process because now we know what we need
and what we can put out to the community that we're expecting.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
The last thing that I want to know is while we were working through the
applications for all of our applicants that we got, we had a lot of feedback
from the community, but then I also met with the Mayor and Michael and we did a
lot of review.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so because of the things that the hurdles, again, mostly the renter
portion, that really is the biggest part.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And the second part of that is the income level that we wanted to take a look
at.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So with those two things, the program needed almost like a half rewrite,
essentially, to accommodate some of these things.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And sorry, I start rambling, so bear with me.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Okay, so we've kind of touched quite a bit on a lot of the recommended key
program updates in general.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I won't go into too much detail on this portion of it, but I think that the
biggest thing that we're gonna see here is we are changing or we're recommending
that we change the income levels from federal poverty levels to area median.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
What is it, area median income?
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
AMI, I had notes on it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I just can't see them without it being in presentation mode.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Okay, so what that does is it actually raises the income levels, federal
poverty levels at 185%, still pretty low, even at the 185% level.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Low for MOAB, thank you, yes, that's correct.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It is very low for MOAB.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so Michael was actually like, wait, we should be using the AMI.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And I was like, that's actually a really good point.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I'm gonna jump to that.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So here's a compare.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
In your council, the council packet, you're gonna see that we as staff are
recommending a 70% of the AMI.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
After I put this in the slideshow, I realized that we have a little bit of a
disconnect.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So first of all, a family of four at 70% AMI is actually lower than 185%
poverty level.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So one of the recommendations that we wanna make is we actually do 80%.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And Caitlin actually recommended this to us that we either look at 50% or 80%.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
50% will put us below the federal poverty level of 185%, which is currently
approved in the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So the 80% would give us a little bit more inflation for the approval limits
for applicants and kind of open this up a little bit more.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
If you don't recall, or if you didn't get a chance to read the rejection
portions, we did have one person that did not meet the threshold criteria.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And they were literally off by $1,500, I think, is what I said.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So, I mean, it was really sad that, I mean, it was such a small amount, but it
was from the limitations we had.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We couldn't approve it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So in this case, if we use the AMI for Grand County, the 80% is gonna really
increase like our family sizes of one, two, and three.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then you're only gonna see a slight increase for families of four.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So a family of four on the AMI 80% is the 71,650.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
If we use the federal poverty level for a family of four, it's 59,477.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So that little bit of money will actually, I believe would make a huge
difference, but also ensure that we're keeping the program within the acceptable
range for low-income families.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
If we raise this too high, then we run the risk of giving the money to people
who do need it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I mean, you guys know Moab is very expensive to live in and inflation is real,
especially in a resort town.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So in this case, it still gives us some control in making sure that the people
who really need this program can receive these benefits.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
If we were to hit the 156, we have to cut the program and we have to put it at
a standstill until we either re-review it at the end of the six months or we
increase or whatever may happen.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I think that I would recommend that we increase to 80%, Michael, has agreed
to the 80% as well, just based on our quick finding that- I recommend it as
well.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Yes, thank you.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so that will be one revision that's in the ordinance that I state, 70%
instead of 80%.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so thank you, Caitlin, for mentioning that to us as well on there.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then this one is just another quick recap.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We only use $3,000 of the $75,000 budgeted last year for this program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We're recommending the 6,000- or sorry, we're recommending a six-month
extension at 75,000 again, which will still cover us for the whole year.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It doesn't mean that we have to re-approve or do a budget adjustment with the
75,000.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We just figure we would carry that forward just with the notation on how the
program went for the first six months.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then changing the federal poverty level isn't gonna impact us as much as I
think that- I mean, we want it to impact us a little bit more because we wanna
see more people utilizing the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I'm hoping that that change will be essential.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then other than that, everything in there is pretty kinda dry.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Any questions?
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So kind of aside from some of the advertising about the program and the paper,
and then when people call in and you offer it up, like what other approaches do
we take to outreach or educating people about the existence of this program?
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So one of the things that we are doing in my office is if somebody calls and
say like, they're late on their bills often, we know that they're struggling.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We actually recommend the program to them.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So that's one outreach that we're doing.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Or if somebody comes in and you're like, they're like, yeah, I'm just really
struggling.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And we work with everybody on their utility bills.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It is not our goals to shut people off.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We're like, you can't pay it, give us a call.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We have a program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We can set you up on a six month repayment plan or whatever it is.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So that's one outreach we do.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I believe that, I mean, I don't wanna speak for Lisa, but I believe that we'll
probably put it on the website.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It'll go in the paper.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We have it posted.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I'm sure that we could put it out to different...
Michael Black:
Our partners as well.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Our partners, yeah.
Michael Black:
We see that as well.
Michael Black:
So you can put them bulletin boards and places that will interact with people
who potentially could use it.
Michael Black:
We'll know about it and be able to refer people.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And we'll put it on the utility bills too.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Cause we have the ability to put messages on our bills.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so we utilize that to notify the public in a mass.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then I can also look at Express Bill Pay, putting a message, like a
temporary message on Express Bill Pay, where a lot of people pay their bills to
note that this program is available and how they can apply.
Luke Wojciechowski:
No, that's great.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I think potentially even giving the application out to like on MVMC and
Seekhaven, instead of they can fill it out alongside their advocates would
ideally help kind of address some of like the lack of technology or anything
like that.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But also not adding more burden to city staff to kind of take that on.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And then maybe not now, but seeing how kind of all these like additional things
increase participation in the program.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But even being proactive, where like if you see there are certain households
falling behind, like to proactively reach out to them and just be like, hey,
this program's available.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Here are the qualifications, like, so they can be a little bit more kind of
like self filtering.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Cause I think right now with the approach that Mike is being taken is people
have to be proactive to get informed about it.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I don't know when I was a young 20 year old and was like not easily paying
bills, there was times where I just didn't even wanna open up my bill, let alone
my call and like reach out to somebody.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So, but yeah, I'd like to see how kind of the changes in terms of like
collaborating with partners, kind of the more concerted advertising and like
making it more readily visible on the bills and like online will impact
participation rates, but potentially some feather to stick in a hat.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, just to elaborate on your comments too.
Joette Langianese:
I mean, a lot of older people that are on social security won't reach out
because they are embarrassed or it's just like, we don't take subsidies.
Joette Langianese:
So your point of being a little more proactive is not a bad idea.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Yeah, and we do over the phone, we just haven't done like the mass outreach as
far as like what you're referring to, but we do try to reach out and I do wanna
know, especially for the community, like their information is confidential.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Right now there is only one person in the city, which is myself that can review
your income levels that is looking at your highly confidential, very sensitive
information.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so I just, we do emphasize that like this information is not public, it
cannot be released.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It is not something somebody can grandma.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It is very restricted.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It's locked away in my office for anything that I do have to keep and other
things that I don't have to keep where I just can review it, it's not kept on
file.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And I don't discuss it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I mean, you can ask the man, I was like, I can't talk to you about specifics,
but here's a summary.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And I don't say like this person makes this much or this person makes this much
or who's on the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
That's completely confidential to everybody except myself.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And of course my two staff members because they are helping with the billing,
but we know how important it is and how people are embarrassed and don't wanna
come to us because of that simple fact.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And because they have to go face to face, it's not like, you know, workforce
services where you just make a phone call, they actually, you know, a lot of
them have to come in and we are willing to sit down and help them.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Like we have no problem going through and filling out.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Like usually I've had the three people set up meetings with me.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
They come in, come into my office, we shut the door.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I fill out their application for them and they literally just sign it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so we don't mind doing those extra steps, but also I kind of went off on a
agenda, but we wanna make sure that they understand that we keep their
information very confidential and we're not here to judge.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We understand, I myself have been in positions where these programs would have
been very beneficial for me, especially when I was younger.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So.
Luke Wojciechowski:
No, and I would really appreciate you highlighting that cause like particularly
in a small town, like when we see people like kind of avoiding going to a
therapist because it might get out that like they're trying to seek help.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But another thing that just popped up is, is there any sort of like database or
like a quick way for some of these partner organizations to be able to identify
if the individual or family that they're working with is actually residing in
the city so that you don't get like a flood of potentially ineligible people.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Yeah, I can actually provide a list of all addresses and city limits that would
be searchable.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I could just create an Excel spreadsheet that just has strictly addresses and
they could just do a quick search in there by address only, it wouldn't have
names or anything tied out to it so that it would make it a little bit easier if
that's what you're referring to.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, no.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, it was just like a almost everyday occurrence like when I was working at
Seekhaven where like people would get funneled to different organizations that
do have these supportive programs, but like they don't qualify.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And so it kind of puts an extra like burden on the staff there.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And it also sucks being that staff member that this person got sent over there,
took time out of their day by somebody who they trust only to be told like,
actually, no, you don't qualify.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And so just kind of in terms of helping maintain like those collaborative
working relationships with their clients for like the partner organizations and
then ultimately just like making things more efficient.
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Questions?
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, I think related to that, I probably also recommend sending this to like
property management companies as well.
Kaitlin Myers:
Potentially, especially because it is a passive benefit for them.
Kaitlin Myers:
If they have people falling behind on rent, this is another solution for them.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, I think partner organizations would be great.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, I guess I'm kind of especially thinking about this potentially being 150
households to manage.
Kaitlin Myers:
I'm wondering how you and your department are feeling about kind of flows and
the workloads and kind of barriers for how the program's going so far, how it
would feel to expand it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Yeah, Michael and I have talked extensively about this and the way that the
program is built, we've made it pretty streamlined that I don't believe we'll
have any issues managing that.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Michael Black:
If there were, we would talk about it and that would be something that I would
definitely be working with her on and if the council needed to be involved and
we needed to look at budget adjustments or more staff, we'd be talking about
that.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yep.
Kaitlin Myers:
Good.
Kaitlin Myers:
Well, just in general, yes, I sent some recommended language.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think a lot of that was administrative to kind of clarify.
Kaitlin Myers:
I just, I have had experience with unclear code and that when it comes to
social services and kind of housing related people things, it gets really
complicated.
Kaitlin Myers:
So just want to reiterate, you guys have done an amazing job.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that the way that the city has designed this to be really simple for
applicants and for administration is honestly not common for these types of
services.
Kaitlin Myers:
So thank you for your work and yeah, mostly providing those to provide
clarification because household situations are complicated, especially as we
open it up to renter situations.
Kaitlin Myers:
So that was my intent.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, I'm supportive of 80% AMI.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that that's a pretty standard metric, especially when we're starting to
dive a little bit more into the housing world.
Kaitlin Myers:
That's kind of a lot of housing support systems are following that kind of AMI.
Kaitlin Myers:
So that'd be my recommendation.
Kaitlin Myers:
That said, I think that like projects like maps, like the tax credit projects
go up to 55%, but yeah, 80 would be my excuse, why not?
Kaitlin Myers:
I'm sure I have other questions.
Kaitlin Myers:
I'm sure they're noted in the document I already put in.
Joette Langianese:
Okay, Linda, welcome to reach out to Marcy unless they're questions that are
gonna impact how you vote tonight.
Joette Langianese:
If they're just things that you need clarification for, I'd suggest you talk to
Michael and Marcy.
Joette Langianese:
Definitely cool with that.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, for sure.
Joette Langianese:
Any other questions from Marcy?
Joette Langianese:
All right, I'll ask for a motion to adopt ordinance 2025-12, an ordinance
adopting the city of Moab residential utility assistance pilot program.
Joette Langianese:
This will be a pilot considering you improve it through the end of this year
and then we'll revisit again in January.
Colin Topper:
I moved to approve or adopt ordinance 2025-12 an ordinance amending the city of
Moab residential utility assistance pilot program policy.
Joette Langianese:
Do we need to amend it with the 80%?
Joette Langianese:
Yes, would you mind including to change the AMI to 80% and include Caitlin's
recommend for administration to review Caitlin's recommended changes.
Joette Langianese:
Sorry, I was waiting for this to come up.
Kaitlin Myers:
You jumped the gun.
Colin Topper:
So I really got myself into it.
Colin Topper:
With the 80% AMI and the administrative changes recommended by council.
Joette Langianese:
All right, motion by Colin, second by Luke.
Joette Langianese:
Any further discussion?
Colin Topper:
I would just like to say thank you and it's really neat to see this program
evolve and change really become a great community resource and safety net.
Colin Topper:
Thanks Marcy for your hard work.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, no, just kind of echoing that with the recommendations and kind of the
things that were identified has clearly been a lot of introspection about what's
working and what's not working and there's a clear desire to make this one to
work to benefit the community as much as it can.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So I really appreciate kind of sticking to it and proposing all these changes
that I think are gonna have like a material positive impact on this program.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Yeah, I just appreciate the humanity that you used in developing this and it's
very obviously a conscious effort.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
I'll call for the vote.
Joette Langianese:
Roll call, Kaitlin.
Joette Langianese:
Hi, Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Luke.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes 5-0.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you, Marcy.
Speaker 16:
Thank you guys.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
What did I say?
Joette Langianese:
Okay, yes, four.
Joette Langianese:
I counted myself.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
All right, our last item of general business is ratification of a letter of
intent regarding providing financial support for the Grand County Pickleball
Courts.
Joette Langianese:
Normally I would have put this on a consent agenda except for I didn't have a
chance to talk to everybody before we sent the letter.
Joette Langianese:
But essentially the county has some funding, a grant funding to do pickleball
courts out at OSTA.
Joette Langianese:
They're struggling right now with some budgetary issues and we just wanted to
let them know that we would be happy to help financially with the pickleball
portion of that grant.
Joette Langianese:
I learned that Monday they had a budget workshop and the cost of the pickleball
courts is around 440,000.
Joette Langianese:
We offered half, up to 50% of the match, which would be 220.
Joette Langianese:
And we would pay half of that, which would be 110.
Joette Langianese:
We weren't quite sure of the exact number when we sent the letter, but we were
pretty clear in our letter that there was a max and that we were gonna pay half
of the match.
Joette Langianese:
I'm not sure if they're gonna go forward with this.
Joette Langianese:
They might, if they don't, Dunn will be hearing from the pickleball people
though, I'm sure.
Joette Langianese:
If they do, I'm sure we'll still be hearing from the pickleball people because
they're gonna still want pickleball courts in town.
Joette Langianese:
So anyway, with that said, I'm just being honest.
Joette Langianese:
I know this group, they're very passionate about their sport.
Joette Langianese:
So anyway, I could have an emotion to prove the ratification of the letter
providing financial support for pickleball courts in Grand County.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I will move to ratify a letter of intent regarding providing financial support
for the Grand County's pickleball courts.
Colin Topper:
I can second that.
Joette Langianese:
All right, motion by Tawny, second by Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Any discussion?
Colin Topper:
I just recognize this is a great opportunity to reach out and partner with the
County on something.
Colin Topper:
And I think that this will benefit a lot of our city residents, usually,
including your partner.
Speaker 18:
I know.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, that's it.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Luke Wojciechowski:
I just think that it's a great, yeah, great opportunity to partner with the
County and to maximize kind of like local taxpayer funds by bringing in these
matching funds or the grant funds.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And yeah, this is clearly a thing that there's a significant portion of our
community that is very passionate about.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I still think in my almost four years on this council that is the most
engagement that we have received on a topic was the pickleball courts, so.
Joette Langianese:
Other than the property tax, it was the most intended meeting and the biggest
controversy that we had.
Joette Langianese:
So this will be great, I think.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else discussion?
Joette Langianese:
And I'll call for the vote.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor, say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Any opposed?
Joette Langianese:
The motion passes 4-0.
Joette Langianese:
And just so you know, too, I mean, if they move forward and if we allocate the
money, don't be more.
Joette Langianese:
You guys will have to approve that and we'll do an MOU kind of like we did.
Joette Langianese:
I don't know if some of you might not remember the stage.
Joette Langianese:
We bought a stage, we split it.
Joette Langianese:
We have an MOU with how that's gonna be managed.
Joette Langianese:
So that will come before you guys if we get to that point.
Joette Langianese:
Hopefully we will.
Joette Langianese:
All right, that's the end of our general business and we'll move to city
manager update.
Michael Black:
Okay, I've just got a couple of items for you.
Michael Black:
I'm gonna start with the sidewalk bids.
Michael Black:
We had a big sidewalk project that we put out for bid.
Michael Black:
We were hoping to have that on the agenda tonight for approval, but
unfortunately, we didn't have any contractors bid on that.
Michael Black:
I do wanna point out that four contractors showed up to the pre-bid meeting.
Michael Black:
So there were contractors interested.
Michael Black:
The information got out.
Michael Black:
There were people who were considering it.
Michael Black:
So the first thing we would do in a situation like this, which is what we did,
was we went back and asked them, why didn't you bid on it?
Michael Black:
And it turns out that there were just a couple of minor things just for your
information had to do with timing, how they approached the project, either
having to start and finish the entire project all in one go or do sections at a
time.
Michael Black:
And then the other thing was pedestrian control.
Michael Black:
That was something that kind of scared some people off because of the ability
to provide pedestrian control where we might be shutting down some parking
spaces and moving people out onto a new path that would then have to be set up
and meet all these different kind of standards and everything like that.
Michael Black:
So what we've decided is that we can bend on those things.
Michael Black:
We can actually assist with the pedestrian support and getting things set up
the way that needs to be and work with these contractors to make this project
that is more attractive for them to bid on.
Michael Black:
I know hopefully we'll get these four contractors back interested.
Michael Black:
And I talked to one other contractor today who said that he missed the bid, but
he does wanna take a look at it when it comes out and we're gonna make sure to
get him a copy of it directly this time.
Michael Black:
So yeah, it's not great news, but this happens and you just regroup and figure
out why it happened and see if we can fix it.
Michael Black:
And I think we'll be able to fix it.
Michael Black:
So we will have a sidewalk project.
Michael Black:
So we'll keep moving forward with that.
Michael Black:
I was excited to hear today that the funding request for the 300 South Bridge
is getting attention in DC.
Michael Black:
So that was really interesting.
Michael Black:
Not funded, just to make sure that's clear, but it is getting attention.
Michael Black:
And I think that's going really well.
Michael Black:
Really excited about that.
Joette Langianese:
Well, just on that note too, sorry to interrupt.
Joette Langianese:
We did send another letter today that was requested from Senator Curtis's
office.
Joette Langianese:
They wanted to know if we would share in where all the money was, if we would
participate.
Joette Langianese:
So we said, yes, I'll put that on our agenda next time for your ratification.
Michael Black:
And that, of course, was the intent the entire time.
Michael Black:
I've seen what we can get from these different sources to limit the burden on
the budget.
Michael Black:
So recent public works and utility issues have come up.
Michael Black:
There's a sinkhole on 400 East.
Michael Black:
You guys may have seen that.
Michael Black:
There's a big dirt patch on 400 East now.
Michael Black:
There was a sinkhole forming over there.
Michael Black:
There are crews, our utility crews think they've taken care of it.
Michael Black:
There was some exacerbated issues with water lines and capped lines and things
like that.
Michael Black:
So I believe they got that taken care of and getting that filled in and we'll
get that asphalt over as soon as possible.
Michael Black:
Wasn't up there today.
Michael Black:
I'm not sure it could have even been done today.
Michael Black:
One other thing I think is really interesting.
Michael Black:
We have a lot of sidewalk issues in town because we have a lot of trees.
Michael Black:
It's just a fact that you walk around town and you see sidewalks that are
poking up.
Michael Black:
And a lot of times it's because of the tree roots.
Michael Black:
And of course we don't want to go cut down all the trees and get rid of all the
trees but we're constantly out there chasing these sidewalks and trying to grind
them down or replace them and do different things to keep the sidewalks open.
Michael Black:
But there's another thing that also causes sidewalks to have issues and that's
heat.
Michael Black:
And we've had a few situations just this last week with the high temperatures,
which they get higher, I know.
Michael Black:
But we had some sidewalks that just buckled just not even close to any trees.
Michael Black:
Just buckled and came right up which I thought was really interesting.
Michael Black:
So, you know, we're chasing issues all over.
Michael Black:
Our team met recently.
Michael Black:
We're looking for options, ideas of how to address all these sidewalk issues
that we're facing.
Michael Black:
I don't think the buckling based on heat is gonna be a big issue but I just
thought it was kind of interesting.
Michael Black:
And I wanted to bring up that.
Michael Black:
We are definitely looking at strategies and opportunities within the community
with all of these beautiful little trees that we have where we can get sidewalks
in and not have to replace them every few years because they keep or grind them
down every few years.
Michael Black:
So that's going on.
Michael Black:
The other thing with public works and utilities and parks and it was all hands
on deck for this one.
Michael Black:
They've been working hard to do the annual upkeep for our storm water systems
and our flood infrastructure.
Michael Black:
So I want to just give you a couple of ideas of what they've been out doing
over the last week.
Michael Black:
And this is continuing.
Michael Black:
But we did take a lot of people from a lot of different divisions and
departments and put them all together to get some stuff done really quick last
week.
Michael Black:
There's detention basin cleanouts.
Michael Black:
We definitely hit several of those last year.
Michael Black:
We're hitting more after the floods.
Michael Black:
We hit some before the floods last year and in between the floods last year.
Michael Black:
And some of those we've gone back to and we're still taking a lot of silt out.
Michael Black:
And just for your information, up near the golf course we have a big detention
basin and our staff took 40 loads of silt in a five yard dump truck out of that
pond.
Michael Black:
And that pond or that detention basin was cleaned out twice last year.
Michael Black:
So just the amount of silt that comes down, we all know, you see it everywhere.
Michael Black:
But they're working hard to get those cleaned up.
Michael Black:
We're also working hard on the areas above us here to get agreements with some
property owners so that we can actually get into those.
Michael Black:
Some of those basins were Civilian Conservation Corps projects.
Michael Black:
And there were no easements put in place or property ownership to get to those.
Michael Black:
So we have had some challenges on one or two of those, but those are being
worked out and we're addressing those.
Michael Black:
They're also addressing maintenance on critical storm drain channels and
inlets.
Michael Black:
They've been out cleaning the streets with the street sweeper.
Michael Black:
And you're gonna see a lot more of that going on.
Michael Black:
Cleaning under the bridges is continuing to happen.
Michael Black:
We've got so much soil and vegetation under our bridges now that there were, it
kind of got lost that they all have cement bottoms.
Michael Black:
And they all can be cleaned out.
Michael Black:
And so we're working on that, getting those things done.
Michael Black:
The next one we're looking at is 300 South Bridge, getting that cleaned out.
Michael Black:
It does have a concrete bottom.
Michael Black:
We'll be talking to UDOT.
Michael Black:
You saw the picture today.
Michael Black:
That's a much bigger issue though.
Michael Black:
So getting those things done.
Michael Black:
And this is all being done in addition to the other work that we've been doing
with the RIPRAP and all the other projects that have been going on that we're
contracting out and other things that our staff is doing every week to keep the
city going.
Michael Black:
Last thing I wanna bring up is that I found out today that UDOT is ready to go
ahead with the Bulbout project.
Michael Black:
It's a pilot project.
Michael Black:
And we're gonna be looking at potentially, I just found out today, so we need
to go and talk to businesses and everything.
Michael Black:
But looking at the beginning of August of that project starting.
Michael Black:
Hopefully, hopefully.
Michael Black:
And then we'll catch the fall tour scene and hopefully see how it works with
all the people.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
That's it.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Joette Langianese:
Council reports, we'll start with you, Colin.
Colin Topper:
So on the 16th, I had a, in my little community, we had a meeting for the
Non-Mortized Travel Management Plan.
Colin Topper:
And I guess it was looking at our community as a stakeholder because we do live
along the Mill Creek Parkway and just talked about all the benefits and
challenges of being along our main pedestrian artery.
Colin Topper:
And so that really kicked off our stakeholder outreach for this Non-Mortized
Travel Management Plan.
Colin Topper:
On the 17th, I met with the mayor.
Colin Topper:
And then on the 18th, I had a solid waste meeting.
Colin Topper:
The really interesting thing to me that came out of that is they, and this has
become such a huge problem nationwide and for worldwide, but there was actually
a lithium battery fire in the tractor trailer full of trash that was left
overnight.
Colin Topper:
And fortunately, a highway patrolman was driving down 191, noticed a fire at
the transfer station, called it in, the fire department was there immediately
and put it out.
Colin Topper:
But this is just the new reality.
Colin Topper:
These lithium batteries are just the challenge of actually putting them out and
just the volatility of them has really created an entirely new problem and then
threatening our communities.
Joette Langianese:
Colin, when I went to the recycling coalition meeting, it was a group of Utah
recycling folks.
Joette Langianese:
We had a presentation and I'll get you that information.
Joette Langianese:
There's like one place in the whole United States that does lithium battery
recycling.
Joette Langianese:
And I'll get you that information.
Joette Langianese:
It was very interesting presentation that she made, but if that's something
that we could maybe start, you guys in solid waste could start putting words out
that there is a method to recycle those things.
Colin Topper:
Great, yeah, please share that with me and I'll spread the word.
Colin Topper:
So that was the 18th.
Colin Topper:
On the 19th, we had our second stakeholder meeting for the non-motorized travel
management plan, which was a really great one.
Colin Topper:
It was the vulnerable street users.
Colin Topper:
And so we had, I'm gonna miss some people, but we had representatives from the
council on aging, from the library, from the teen center, from the grand center,
all talking about their respective communities and the challenges they face
trying to move around this community.
Colin Topper:
It was a really fascinating discussion.
Colin Topper:
A lot of things came up, a lot of challenges came up, a lot of praise for some
things the city has done recently, like the Kane Creek Boulevard.
Colin Topper:
Something that really stood out to me that I had never heard before was, and
maybe some of you have heard this, but the 8080 framework, where when you're
doing anything for a city, you're to consider it for an eight year old and an 80
year old.
Colin Topper:
And so when you're putting in this pedestrian infrastructure, when you're doing
crosswalks, when you're doing whatever we're doing with these programming, if
it's something that can do well and benefit an eight year old and do well and
benefit an 80 year old, then you're doing pretty well at sort of reaching your
entire population spread.
Colin Topper:
So it's just a really neat way to think of things as we move forward.
Colin Topper:
In this case, we're gonna be applying it to this non-motorized travel
management plan.
Colin Topper:
I believe that that is it for me.
Colin Topper:
That's it for me.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Sorry.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
It's stuck.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
It's not coming any closer.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
On the 12th, they attended a Canyonlands Healthcare Special Service District.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Had our normal business meeting.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
We had a discussion regarding some funding issues moving forward and how we are
going to work through those.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
We also actually had guests at our meeting and most of them live in the MAPS
project and they came to discuss future development of the MAPS property.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And it was a good discussion and it was interesting to see their concerns and
we invited them back moving forward as we get further on in that process.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
On the 18th, I met with the mayor and Caitlin.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Our normal monthly meeting on the 14th.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I put on my protesting hat again and protested but it was all very peaceful and
quiet.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And in fact, I believe that we were sent a letter from some visitors that
attended also and they said it was the most polite protest they'd ever been to.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And then on the 13th, I met with the mayor and Cora Phillips and Senator Lee's
staff to discuss some of the things that he's proposing and they mostly asked us
what kind of things we could use help with and how they could support us.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
All in all, I think it was a productive meeting.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And later that weekend, I first want to express my condolences to
Representative Portman and her family and send good wishes to Senator Hoffman
for healing.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I think that incident made me feel a little vulnerable and I think if we're all
honest as elected officials, we sometimes feel vulnerable.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
But furthermore, what I realized is that our voices matter.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
People listen to us and we can use the words that we say for good or we can use
them to inflame and upset our communities.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And I don't think that that's our job as electeds is to frighten or terrorize
or get our communities more worked up than they need to be.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
So I would just encourage everybody when we speak to listen to your words and
think about how they may be perceived.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
That's it.
Kaitlin Myers:
Thanks, Tawny.
Kaitlin Myers:
Caitlin?
Kaitlin Myers:
Well, I just want to thank you, Toni, for saying that.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that it's an important reminder that we are all humans and we're doing
our best.
Kaitlin Myers:
And I appreciate your words on that.
Unknown:
I attended a meeting with Tawny and the mayor.
Kaitlin Myers:
I attended another EMS sustainability committee from the essence of that.
Kaitlin Myers:
It's kind of talking about financial sustainability for EMS, kind of
recognizing that the city and the county have their own limitations on funding
that they can provide and that some of the challenges that EMS is starting to
experience are problems related to billing that are much bigger than our
community.
Kaitlin Myers:
So there's additional advocacy that moving forward,
Kaitlin Myers:
I think the city can support at a state level
Kaitlin Myers:
on insurance and funding and regulations about EMS.
Kaitlin Myers:
But it seems like there's potential conversations
Kaitlin Myers:
about looking at the healthcare sales tax
Kaitlin Myers:
for the ballot next year,
Kaitlin Myers:
which is currently split by EMS
Kaitlin Myers:
and the Canada's healthcare slash service district
Kaitlin Myers:
and what that process would look like,
Kaitlin Myers:
what the parameters of what that would look like
Kaitlin Myers:
to put it on the ballot.
Kaitlin Myers:
So more to come, I think that committee will meet over the next few months to
kind of decide direction predominantly on that sales tax.
Kaitlin Myers:
So last week I met with someone very briefly, one of the case workers, General
Congressman Kennedy's team followed up with me about talking about housing.
Kaitlin Myers:
So just kind of explained what the history and current landscape looks like for
housing in the city and in the Moab community.
Kaitlin Myers:
You know, it was around the time that news was breaking about Senator Lee's
bill.
Kaitlin Myers:
I asked the Congressman's team, he doesn't have a strong stance on housing and
I think it's looking to communities like Moab to inform kind of what he wants to
support housing moving forward.
Kaitlin Myers:
So yeah, just another reminder that it's really nice to have that direct
relationship and actually be heard by representatives.
Kaitlin Myers:
And then just wanna give a plug, the mob area housing task force is doing the
second annual mob housing survey.
Kaitlin Myers:
You can find that at mobhousing.com.
Kaitlin Myers:
It takes only a couple of minutes.
Kaitlin Myers:
It's just a bunch of check boxes basically.
Kaitlin Myers:
Even if you've lived in your house for 50 years and it's paid off and you have
no housing issues or you are living in your vehicle, whatever your housing
situation looks like, we're trying to get a better local understanding of what
housing needs and desires are for this community.
Kaitlin Myers:
So that will be open until July 18th.
Joette Langianese:
I did mine.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Speaker 18:
Bye.
Kaitlin Myers:
We had a giveaway last year.
Kaitlin Myers:
Unfortunately, we don't have a giveaway this year, but please fill it out
anyway.
Joette Langianese:
All right, I challenged the council.
Joette Langianese:
Do the housing survey.
Kaitlin Myers:
mobhousing.com.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yep, there you go.
Joette Langianese:
Is that it, Kaitlin?
Kaitlin Myers:
That's it for me, yeah.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So I attended a meeting with the mayor and Jason Taylor.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Had a Gwissa meeting last week.
Luke Wojciechowski:
There weren't any like really major updates.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Gwissa is going to be selling some of its fleet trucks.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So if anybody's interested in some trucks, I think they're going to post the
fire.
Luke Wojciechowski:
We had some options.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I think the first one we're going with is literally just like sticking them out
in front of the Gwissa building with some poor sale signs.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So if they catch your eye, reach out.
Luke Wojciechowski:
They, I was about a minute.
Luke Wojciechowski:
They're relatively low mileage.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I believe they have like around 20,000 miles, yeah.
Luke Wojciechowski:
They're probably bored at 250.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yes, they're pretty substantial on trucks.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Frequent at all the corners of our community.
Joette Langianese:
We know the community well.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, so.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And then yeah, kind of the other big thing was there was some agreement come,
that Gwissa was able to come to with a new property owner up in the LaSalle
mountains regarding some water usage to kind of make things a bit more
equivalent with the Valley when restrictions need to be put in place.
Luke Wojciechowski:
The previous property owner was not very amenable to that.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So now things are kind of standardized across the board.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I attended the LHC meeting, wasn't a huge turnout.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I guess I don't draw quite as much people as Rihanna does, which is
understandable.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But kind of one of the big things is that the free health clinic is beginning
to offer some psychiatric services with the first clinic being scheduled for
July 18th.
Luke Wojciechowski:
The planning commission meeting got canceled due to a lack of quorum.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I met with Mayor Michael and council members to just like talk to our
lobbyists, which is like a very enlightening conversation.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And then I also met earlier today with some city staff and the mayor just to
discuss some budgetary things, but that's about it.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
I was at the Canada's healthcare special service district with Tawny, don't
need to go over that, she covered that well.
Joette Langianese:
We had a meeting with our lobbyist, Tim Stewart on Friday.
Joette Langianese:
He came to town to kind of get a lay of the land.
Joette Langianese:
He hasn't been here for a while.
Joette Langianese:
And so we wanted to show him the 300 South Bridge, which he's helping us with
the potential federal funding for.
Joette Langianese:
We showed him the UMTRA site.
Joette Langianese:
He feels the UMTRA site, the future of that site and the fact that we're
getting so close to closure is gonna be a really big deal for Congress, for our
congressmen.
Joette Langianese:
A lot of work, a lot of money has gone into that.
Joette Langianese:
And so, there'll probably be some event here in December.
Joette Langianese:
I'll keep you posted on that as we get closer because the last million tons of
canyons will be moved this year.
Joette Langianese:
We also had a meeting yesterday with some folks that could be our potential
medical cannabis pharmacy folks.
Joette Langianese:
They're looking at a location here in town, wanted to get some feedback from us
on what they could do, if that would work, if it fits into our zone.
Joette Langianese:
There is a waiver that you guys are gonna have to consider.
Joette Langianese:
Michael is gonna draw that letter of support for them to send to the Utah
Department of Agriculture and Food.
Joette Langianese:
And then there'll be a waiver on the amount of footage.
Michael Black:
Yeah, it's just a 25% reduction in the, it's not a big deal.
Joette Langianese:
It's complicated.
Joette Langianese:
It's complicated to explain, but there's a certain amount of feet they have to
be away from residential areas.
Michael Black:
And it's not how the crow flies.
Michael Black:
It's the direct access from walking, so.
Joette Langianese:
Right, but we have to provide that waiver.
Joette Langianese:
It's not much different, but it's enough that it would get them out of
compliance with the code and they need a letter from us.
Joette Langianese:
So, that'll be on your next agenda item.
Joette Langianese:
And then I had a meeting with Nicole Forge.
Joette Langianese:
She is over the Rocky Mountain year now called the Canyon Spirit.
Joette Langianese:
They've expanded their service to Salt Lake, which is great.
Joette Langianese:
They currently have about 7,500 passengers per year.
Joette Langianese:
They want to expand that to 25,000.
Joette Langianese:
It was a really good discussion.
Joette Langianese:
Michael was in on that and talked about the potential of having not a luxury
train service coming in from Salt Lake in Denver.
Joette Langianese:
And not that they would be a part of that, but they totally supported that.
Joette Langianese:
So anyway, conversations about rail service to Moab will be ongoing and the
Canyon Spirit will be offering, you know, it's a great tourist trade for us
because these folks are low impact.
Joette Langianese:
They come to town, they stay in town, they spend their money in town, they buy
our own souvenirs and then they get on the train or they get on the plane and go
back.
Joette Langianese:
So, it's a great group of people that we would like to encourage to come to our
community.
Joette Langianese:
And that's all I have, I think.
Joette Langianese:
Seems I can get a lot more than what I just said.
Joette Langianese:
Anyway, with that, we don't need to go into closed session.
Joette Langianese:
We always have this item just in case something came up, nothing came up.
Joette Langianese:
So, I'll ask for a motion to adjourn.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So moved.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Joette Langianese:
Colin, all in favor.
Speaker 16:
I adjourned.
Speaker 16:
Thank you guys.
Speaker 16:
Hey Colin.
Alrighty, welcome everybody to the MOAB City Council meeting on June 24th, 2025
at 6.02 p.m. I call the meeting to order.
Joette Langianese:
We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance and Patrick Trim is going to lead us
in the pledge.
Speaker 16:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the
Republic for which it stands, one nation, and all, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Alright, we have our public comment section, it's limited to three minutes.
Joette Langianese:
If you'd like to speak, I need you to fill out a form.
Joette Langianese:
If you haven't filled out a form, you can do that on your way out.
Joette Langianese:
But who would like to speak?
Speaker 16:
Mary, come on up.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Mary McGann:
I'm Mary McGann.
Mary McGann:
I'm here as a citizen, although I am a member of the Grand County Commission.
Mary McGann:
And I came here to thank you and hopefully ask you to unanimously support the
letter for the financial help for the Pickleball Court.
Mary McGann:
I met, you know, it will help us out, but I'm also excited about it because I
like the idea anytime we are able to work together as a team.
Mary McGann:
And we've done it successfully in the past.
Mary McGann:
I mean, it was the team of the city and the county that got the money that's
moved the process of getting the tailments removed.
Mary McGann:
And it was the city and the county that worked on CIB loans for the aquatic
recreation center.
Mary McGann:
And we've had joint meetings where we've signed resolutions.
Mary McGann:
We've rolled out our support for the beautiful stuff, the landscaping for your
downtown.
Mary McGann:
And I just hope that this can continue.
Mary McGann:
And I appreciate your help very much.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you, Mary.
Joette Langianese:
And Mary didn't mention, but she does play pickleball.
Joette Langianese:
She's pretty avid.
Joette Langianese:
She's pretty big in pickleball, just so you know.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Next, we have two presentations.
Joette Langianese:
We're going to start with Rim to Rim restoration, and then Michael will do a
presentation on our crosswalk standards.
Joette Langianese:
So we'll start with Didar.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Didar Charles:
Hi, Mary.
Didar Charles:
I'm council members.
Didar Charles:
Thank you for having us this evening.
Didar Charles:
So today I have team members from Rim to Rim, Bryce Roger and Sophia Fisher
with me.
Didar Charles:
They prepared a presentation for you.
Didar Charles:
They're going to talk about community wildfire defense grant.
Didar Charles:
So this grant is they got awarded for 5.2 million to remove fire fuel corridor
of the Mill Creek, Pack Creek, as well as their wetland.
Didar Charles:
So we are partnership with Rim to Rim with other partnerships.
Didar Charles:
They're going to talk about the metrics they use, how they decide to prioritize
the sites, use the fund most efficient.
Didar Charles:
They're going to talk about a breakdown of the fund, how they've been spending,
what is the future plan for the five years.
Didar Charles:
This is the five-year grant.
Didar Charles:
And the works they have done so far, and what is the plan for the future.
Didar Charles:
Also, they're going to mention about the outreach for flood preparedness.
Didar Charles:
They do for the city.
Didar Charles:
That's another topic, so that will be so likely we're going to mention about
that.
Didar Charles:
Yeah, so I will ask Sophia and Bryce to come here and start a presentation.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Speaker 16:
Thanks, Didar.
Speaker 16:
Thanks, Didar.
Speaker 16:
Hi, Councillors.
Bryce Rogers:
Michael.
Bryce Rogers:
You're waiting.
Bryce Rogers:
Nice to see you guys.
Bryce Rogers:
You're welcome.
Bryce Rogers:
So Summer, can I share my screen?
Speaker 16:
You should jump in, yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Sophia Fisher:
Awesome, and as Bryce is getting that set up, I'll just introduce us.
Sophia Fisher:
I'm Sophia Fisher.
Sophia Fisher:
I'm the fire and flood outreach specialist for Rim to Rim restoration.
Sophia Fisher:
This is my co-worker, Bryce Rogers, who is the project coordinator and
restoration specialist for Rim to Rim restoration.
Sophia Fisher:
And we're here to present on the Community Wildfire Defense grant, so it should
be pretty quick.
Sophia Fisher:
Assuming it lets me share, give me just one second.
Sophia Fisher:
We also have packets that don't let me forget to distribute after we're done
with the presentation to some of the examples of outreach materials we've been
producing.
Sophia Fisher:
Well, as you do that, I can honestly start talking in a little bit of
integration.
Sophia Fisher:
I'll start off with just some of the nuts and bolts of the Community Wildfire
Defense grant.
Sophia Fisher:
So it is a $5.2 million award, as Didar mentioned, spread out over five years.
Sophia Fisher:
The grant period began last year, so it'll run through 2029.
Sophia Fisher:
And the next is really the purpose of the grant is to do fire fuels mitigation
along the Mill and Pack Creeks and the Matheson Wetlands in the Moab Valley.
Sophia Fisher:
The project is, oh great, here we go.
Sophia Fisher:
Let me move to the next slide.
Sophia Fisher:
Awesome, thank you.
Sophia Fisher:
And the project is being overall helmed by Rim to Rim restoration, as well as
Moab Valley Fire Department.
Sophia Fisher:
We have Clerk Monne here in the audience from Moab Valley Fire as well.
Sophia Fisher:
But there are also a lot of other local partners, City of Moab, Grand County,
Utah Division of Forestry Fire State Lands, Science Moab, Moab Solutions, Nature
Conservancy, the list kind of goes on.
Sophia Fisher:
So it's very much like a partnership oriented project.
Sophia Fisher:
It's a federal award from the U.S. Forest Service, but was sub awarded through
the states.
Sophia Fisher:
And there's also a strong outreach and education component to the grant that
we'll get into in a minute.
Sophia Fisher:
But we will hand it off to Bryce to talk a little bit about project
prioritization.
Bryce Rogers:
So the idea with the grant is essentially that we are able to assess both
public and private land for mitigation.
Bryce Rogers:
In order to do that in a transparent and hopefully fair way, we've set our
qualitative measures to have more quantitative output.
Bryce Rogers:
So that's essentially what I'm showing you here.
Bryce Rogers:
Notice the weird donut diagram.
Bryce Rogers:
That's actually indicating the weight with which we assess each property
dependent on what we see.
Bryce Rogers:
So that 50 percent, that includes hazards.
Bryce Rogers:
That's our fuel loading, what kind of fuels are present.
Bryce Rogers:
Fine fuels, latter fuels, as well as taking into account the fact that a lot of
these fuels contribute to our flood risks within the creek corridors and the
wetlands as well.
Bryce Rogers:
Additionally, we try to assess proximity.
Bryce Rogers:
That includes vital infrastructure, location on the creek, and whether or not
this is near or adjacent to firebreaks.
Bryce Rogers:
Obviously, prioritizing areas where we can ideally connect firebreaks, but even
more emphasizing areas where we can create new ones.
Bryce Rogers:
From there, we also look at our population demographics and how this affects
the floodplain overall.
Bryce Rogers:
So additionally, we recognize there are a lot of especially private parcels in
the county and the city that the owners of those parcels might not be able to
deal with the complexity of the removal problem.
Bryce Rogers:
So increased slopes, a density, basically having a thicket of something that
would be impossible for you to get through with just a chainsaw, and also
environmental concerns like springs or anything else that could impact all of
your hazards downstream as well.
Bryce Rogers:
The last metric we use is repetition.
Bryce Rogers:
As we all know, trees like to grow back, especially russian olive.
Bryce Rogers:
If you guys have ever been near russian olive, you know it fights back rather
quickly.
Bryce Rogers:
So we do try to prioritize areas that we know are going to need repeated
maintenance as we go through this since the life the grant is five years.
Bryce Rogers:
So there in the middle of the screen, you basically see a breakdown of the
output for that.
Bryce Rogers:
So anything that gives us a score of 50 to zero, we consider low priority.
Bryce Rogers:
Low priority is anything from giving landowners materials or plants to help
mitigate their problems themselves, especially if it's rather sparse, into maybe
trying to use one or two days of work with Mott Valley Fire or a youth core that
we contract with.
Bryce Rogers:
Medium and high priority properties tend to get bumped up as much as we can.
Bryce Rogers:
Those tend to include larger acreages and we rely heavily on Mott Valley Fire,
Forestry Fire, State Lands, and like I said for our youth core crews.
Bryce Rogers:
Anything that registers at 90 or above the priority matrix automatically tips
us into what we call a multi agency hitch.
Bryce Rogers:
So this is something like if you guys were looking at the pack creek corridor
right next to the 191 bridge during Jeep Safari.
Bryce Rogers:
If you were looking very closely, you would have seen about 15 chainsaw
wielders down there trying to get in and relieve the pressure that all of the
Russian olive and all of them putting on that particular stretch of creek.
Bryce Rogers:
And that was three different crews working together forestry fire state lands,
a UCC which is Utah Conservation Corps as well as Mott Valley Fire.
Bryce Rogers:
So if you notice the really boring looking spreadsheet to the side, the main
thing that I do want you to see is that's about the number of properties that we
have.
Bryce Rogers:
And there's a metric right there at the very bottom of the screen that shows
that between work we have done and work assessed, which the spreadsheet reflects
we are at about 365 acres of land.
Bryce Rogers:
So, and that's everything from completed to flagged as high priority to we
still need to go out and do a side assessment.
Sophia Fisher:
Awesome.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Sophia Fisher:
And I'll talk a little bit about the revegetation component of the grant.
Sophia Fisher:
It is primarily a fire fuels removal grant but there is some language and some
funding in there to revegetate these areas with native species, which has a
benefit both for mitigating wildfires for the long term, but also mitigating the
impacts of floods that come down the creek corridors.
Sophia Fisher:
The photos I won't go to into depth but they're kind of meant to show the
different ways that flash floods can impact the creek corridors if they do
versus don't have native species there to kind of fold the banks in place and
prevent the incision that you're seeing on the upper right.
Sophia Fisher:
We are also going to seek other funding sources to help bolster this work and
we expect the revegetation to really take off a couple years down the line to
once we get a lot of the fire fuels removal done.
Sophia Fisher:
And this also dovetails really well with the outreach and education component
of the grant, which I can also jump into next.
Sophia Fisher:
So talking a little bit about outreach and education that's a big part of my
role at Rim to Rim and it's a big part of the grant.
Sophia Fisher:
Really the purpose of the community outreach focus is to help make sure that
this mitigation work and this work to make mud safer from wildfires can continue
well after the actual grant ends.
Sophia Fisher:
So the way that we're focusing on doing that is increasing the wildfire fluency
and awareness in the community generally.
Sophia Fisher:
But then also making sure that landowners and residents kind of have the tools
and the expertise and the knowledge they need to feel comfortable either doing
their own mitigation or maintaining those properties after mitigation is done.
Sophia Fisher:
As Bryce mentioned invasive species really like to resprout with kind of a
vengeance after you remove them once.
Sophia Fisher:
So it's going to be really critical that there's a cyclical and kind of
repetitive aspect to all of this work.
Sophia Fisher:
The way we've been doing that is a couple different facets.
Sophia Fisher:
We've been creating physical handouts and mailers like the one on the bottom
left.
Sophia Fisher:
Developing a really strong web presence on social media, doing some tabling at
existing events outside of the grocery stores.
Sophia Fisher:
And then we're also kind of couching this public awareness campaign within the
moniker firebreak.
Sophia Fisher:
Break being an acronym you can see on the screen, mainly so we don't have to
say CWDG kind of over and over again to people.
Sophia Fisher:
And yeah, so we're really excited to continue doing that work.
Bryce Rogers:
So we're talking about the funding for this, as we said, it's $5.2 million over
five years.
Bryce Rogers:
Essentially, we would like to be a feel for where City of Moab fits into this.
Bryce Rogers:
So if you see on the left hand side of the screen, that is the overall
breakdown and notice that the vast majority of it goes to our contractual
partners.
Bryce Rogers:
In this case, that's working with Wetland Crews, Science Moab, which gets a
small sliver, Moab Solutions that's helping us deal with our unhoused population
in these creek corridors, as well as Moab Valley Fire, who's doing a lion's
share of most of our fuel removal work.
Bryce Rogers:
Grand County Weed Department that is helping to support us, and of course City
of Moab, either through any sort of outreach we've done with office staff or
relying heavily on parks and streets crews for everything from information to
maybe even pitching in on some of our properties.
Bryce Rogers:
So that's the actual monetary breakdown, just in case anybody was curious.
Bryce Rogers:
So at this point, over the five year grant, it's allocated over $650,000.
Bryce Rogers:
That's basically just to assist with the maintenance, like we said before.
Bryce Rogers:
And if you notice there on the right, oh you want to talk about the photo,
please.
Bryce Rogers:
Oh yeah, your photo.
Sophia Fisher:
We thought this photo really exemplified the importance of the City of Moab as
a partner in this really important work.
Sophia Fisher:
That is from that hitch that Bryce had talked about earlier, that is a DNR
employee felling, I think it's an elm tree, along Pack Creek downstream of 191,
that work, and you can see there's a flagger actually from the Kane Creek
Boulevard reconstruction project in the background.
Sophia Fisher:
That project happened kind of as the reconstruction project was RAPping up and
there were a lot of moving pieces, the multi-use path was being paved, so it
required a lot of really close coordination and collaboration with City staff to
make sure we could get the equipment in there that we needed without disrupting.
Sophia Fisher:
The reconstruction project in any way, and it was a great success, it was.
Bryce Rogers:
Oh, okay, so I got it now.
Bryce Rogers:
As Sophia mentioned before, we are basically focusing heavily on our outreach
into the community, but we are also using that to build stronger ties
professionally within all of our partnerships.
Bryce Rogers:
There has been a Creek Stewardship Working Group that has been in place for
just under two years now, and that is where we pull together a lot of our
partners to try to get either information on the Creek corridor and issues that
we are seeing with that, or trying to work collaboratively on trying to solve
any of those issues as well.
Bryce Rogers:
And that has a lot of the same partners as the CWDG or the firebreak campaign,
but with some other hangers on as well.
Bryce Rogers:
So we get a lot of people from City of Moab that show up to that and really
help us with just some information, if nothing else, and it helps us to keep
this sort of project working.
Bryce Rogers:
So additionally, a big part of this is actually using LIDAR to try to figure
out these areas where we might not see the connectivity on the ground.
Bryce Rogers:
LIDAR is also being used in this aspect to try to identify some of our more
erosional concerns, especially along private properties.
Bryce Rogers:
There was a new LIDAR data set that was flown in March of this year.
Bryce Rogers:
I don't know if anybody was aware of that, but it replicated the 2018 data set
exactly.
Bryce Rogers:
And the idea is that we can do a one-to-one comparison on that to see not only
how the vegetation has changed in the area, but also topographically.
Bryce Rogers:
We're also using that information to try to help to inform any sort of flood or
risk mitigations we have going forward.
Bryce Rogers:
That's with county and city at this point.
Bryce Rogers:
Additionally, we are trying to help, that is trying to help us to inform the
outreach we are currently doing with City of Moab.
Sophia Fisher:
Yeah, and on that outreach front, through the contract with the city, I've been
producing some mailers and handouts and social media in tandem with various city
departments to help people prepare for floods, you know, get ready for monsoon
season.
Sophia Fisher:
And we're also hoping to help inform the community event about the role that
the city plays in recovering from floods because city staff are, you know, on
the ground doing a ton of work.
Sophia Fisher:
It'd be great to, you know, help people understand the process better and how
hard city staff work on that front.
Bryce Rogers:
Okay, so this is just a before and after of the work that we've done so far
this spring.
Bryce Rogers:
So if you see on the top left, that is a view from the 191 bridge looking down
Pack Creek and you can see the Bighorn Lodge there on the right.
Bryce Rogers:
And then a month later, that is the view of it now.
Bryce Rogers:
So not only have they removed a significant amount of the invasive species and
a lot of the deadfall, frankly, there was a ton of dead trees in there.
Bryce Rogers:
And there's a cool surprising benefit to that.
Bryce Rogers:
I'm just going to switch that right now.
Bryce Rogers:
So this is basically turning around and looking at what we're just looking at,
looking back at the bridge.
Bryce Rogers:
So essentially getting in there, we were able to figure out that one half of
that box culvert is essentially sedimented in.
Bryce Rogers:
So if you look on the lower right there, you see a deer for scale standing on
top of, there's like three feet.
Michael Black:
And this is a UDOT bridge.
Bryce Rogers:
And we reached out to UDOT as soon as we found this and said, hey, not only did
we find this, but we also removed all the trees for you.
Bryce Rogers:
And so UDOT has bumped us up on our priority list and we'll be in touch.
Michael Black:
So we'll be talking to UDOT about that.
Michael Black:
I have not seen this perspective of that.
Sophia Fisher:
I don't think anybody was able to be there.
Michael Black:
This most likely has a concrete bottom.
Michael Black:
We should be able to do some work there, but the fact that you've got all that
vegetation that continues going downstream, that's the big challenge.
Michael Black:
Because those take the restoration permits and things like that.
Michael Black:
Clean out under that bridge, but it runs into a wall of vegetation, a dirt
right after the bridge.
Michael Black:
It's not going to do much good.
Bryce Rogers:
We're going to be continuing our clearing out of this particular area
downstream, even starting next week.
Bryce Rogers:
So if there's any sort of movement from any other place on Creek Mitigation,
let us know.
Bryce Rogers:
We'd love to coordinate.
Sophia Fisher:
And that's all we've got for you.
Sophia Fisher:
The QR codes are for the Firebreak social media accounts.
Sophia Fisher:
I don't know if you guys put your phones in these meetings, but I thought I'd
throw them off there.
Sophia Fisher:
And thank you so much for having us.
Sophia Fisher:
And we're here to take any questions.
Joette Langianese:
You guys might have questions, Council?
Colin Topper:
I have a question.
Colin Topper:
So, first, is that the new LiDAR data and the findings?
Colin Topper:
Is that in any way available to the public?
Bryce Rogers:
Yeah, it should be housed on the UGRC website.
Bryce Rogers:
It could be publicly available.
Bryce Rogers:
The last time that I checked on it with James Murphy, who's been sort of
shepherding that through from the county.
Bryce Rogers:
He said that the link was broken, but if you need it, but if you need to get
your hands on the data or want to know about any of the findings that have
happened so far, you can reach out to either me or James Murphy.
Bryce Rogers:
But yeah, it will be publicly available if it's not now.
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Colin Topper:
And then I just want to say that I live in a community that has shared
ownership of a woodlands that actually creates the connection between Mill Creek
and Pack Creek.
Colin Topper:
And predating this community, it was completely overgrown with Russian olive
and elms.
Colin Topper:
And, you know, the community has been working hard to try to put a dent in
this.
Colin Topper:
And it's just been completely ineffective.
Colin Topper:
Clark and his crew came out when in the fall and were able to, in a couple of
weeks, clear this woodlands out.
Colin Topper:
It's healthy, it's thriving, and more importantly, it's created a real distinct
separation, a firebreak between these two drainages that, as we know from the
Pack Creek fire, could absolutely devastate this town.
Colin Topper:
So huge thanks.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Any other questions?
Kaitlin Myers:
I have a couple.
Kaitlin Myers:
Oh, go ahead.
Joette Langianese:
You go, Kaitlin.
Joette Langianese:
You go first.
Joette Langianese:
I'll go last.
Kaitlin Myers:
Can you talk a little bit more about the mix of, well, even backing up, can you
talk about what fine fuels versus ladder fuel, like what are the types of fuels?
Kaitlin Myers:
Sure.
Kaitlin Myers:
So a little bit of education on what fire fuels are.
Bryce Rogers:
So ladder fuels tend to be more of your cameras for your brush and olive.
Bryce Rogers:
Think of something that really likes to grow and sort of leave dead branches
behind or become that thicket or brush, something that the fire can literally
climb up and get into the canopy.
Bryce Rogers:
Your fine fuels tend to be more of your cheatgrass, or anything else that can
essentially be mowed.
Bryce Rogers:
Thanks, Clark, if you want to jump in.
Clark ?:
I feel restricted by flashy fuels like grass, grass, tumble beads, things like
that.
Clark ?:
The ladder fuels create fuel that allows fire to meet from the ground up into
the trees.
Kaitlin Myers:
Okay, thanks.
Kaitlin Myers:
And then can you talk a little bit about the mix of projects that you're doing
on public versus private properties, how you're kind of prioritizing both of
those together?
Bryce Rogers:
So they are prioritized together, and a lot of it, like I said, had to do with
the amount of fuels, the density, and then the proximity.
Bryce Rogers:
So a lot of our public land tends to be a little more far-flung.
Bryce Rogers:
You're not getting nearly as much infrastructure risk with a lot of our public
land, especially if you think of something like Pack Creek, which is almost
entirely private land.
Bryce Rogers:
So that tends to rank a little bit higher just because number one, it's denser.
Bryce Rogers:
Number two, you have infrastructure concerns, and number three, you have
neighboring properties.
Bryce Rogers:
So I do use the same metric across both, mostly because they've both shaken out
to somewhere that everybody has felt like the risk is appropriate.
Bryce Rogers:
We've only really had one property that made us think that maybe the waiting
was off, and that property was one that honestly, it's definitely one that
everybody knows the risk is intense given its location, because it doesn't have
a primary residence on it.
Bryce Rogers:
And because it does not endanger violent infrastructure, it tends to rank a
little bit lower.
Joette Langianese:
Is that it?
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Any other council members?
Luke Wojciechowski:
I guess just kind of aside from the obvious funding and human power resources,
or limits on those, what are the biggest obstacles that you all face,
potentially institutionally, structurally, or anything like that?
Luke Wojciechowski:
From being able to more effectively implement?
Bryce Rogers:
Yeah, that's a really good question.
Bryce Rogers:
I think probably one of our biggest problems is trying to get momentum for a
lot of these properties.
Bryce Rogers:
And that just comes with its own roadblocks, talking to property owners, then
making sure that that timing actually works, finding crews to do that, and
making sure that everybody is able to actually participate at the same time.
Bryce Rogers:
That's probably been our biggest hurdle so far, is trying to get that aside
from potential funding pauses.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
A couple questions from me.
Joette Langianese:
How are you guys going to manage revegetation when we have these floods along
the creek?
Joette Langianese:
And what I've witnessed behind my house, which is city property, a lot of trees
were cut down.
Joette Langianese:
And then all the bad, lower fuels have grown up.
Joette Langianese:
Now some of them aren't six feet tall.
Joette Langianese:
I don't know how you guys are going to be able to plant and revege back there
when the trees have been removed and now we've got the other bad fuels.
Bryce Rogers:
You're not wrong, and it's one of the biggest problems that we're having with
balance and getting in and doing that.
Bryce Rogers:
And that's a lot of where Grand County weeds has come in.
Bryce Rogers:
The idea of coming in and mitigating those fine fuels and then being able to
revegetate sometime in the fall to let them really get a foothold over the
winter and try to take over by the following spring.
Bryce Rogers:
But just like the de-vegetation process, your revege is an iterative process.
Bryce Rogers:
So you can go in, you can plant, then you're still removing those fine fuels
and then you're planting more.
Bryce Rogers:
So iterative process, a key piece of education as well, and encouraging the
public, especially on their own properties, to try to figure out ways to really
encourage that native growth.
Speaker 18:
Right.
Joette Langianese:
And I think we did that back there.
Joette Langianese:
We planted like twice and then we had flash floods and so everything got, I
mean there was one little desert willow and it was like my little desert willow
and then it was gone last night.
Joette Langianese:
So I just think that's a big challenge, but I think it's a serious one because
now we've got a lot of dead fall from the floods, all the debris, and it's all
piling up back there.
Joette Langianese:
And so I don't know if that's part of your fire mitigation plan to get rid of
some of that stuff because this wind and hot weather that we have, I was like on
edge.
Joette Langianese:
It's like all it takes is somebody walking back there because it is a path,
smoking a cigarette, boom, it's on fire.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Bryce Rogers:
Debris and jackpots, trash, anything that can pile up, especially in the flood
debris, that tends to take properties very high on the priority matrix.
Joette Langianese:
So this is all city, I think there's one piece of private property where that's
an issue.
Joette Langianese:
Michael and I've talked about that.
Colin Topper:
And I think the city through this process has some some new equipment where
we'll be getting right.
Speaker 18:
Right.
Michael Black:
Yeah, we, in fact, the hundred and $30,000 a year is in the new budget.
Michael Black:
And what that does is it supports equipment and it also supports an FTE who can
focus on this work for the city.
Joette Langianese:
Excellent.
Kaitlin Myers:
Good.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, and just one request.
Joette Langianese:
Yes.
Joette Langianese:
Whenever they are cutting down the trees, I noticed they tend to do it in the
spring when the birds are migrating through and the babies are in their nests.
Joette Langianese:
So I just would request when we do do some of those tree removals, that we
don't do it right when the birds are having their babies, or the birds are
migrating.
Joette Langianese:
I think keep in mind, like, don't cut down that tree, there's birds in there
and they've been really nice and said not to, but that's just something that I
just have known.
Joette Langianese:
Sorry, I had to say that.
Michael Black:
Someone has to think of the birds.
Joette Langianese:
I love the birds.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
So anything else for these for Bryce or Sophia.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you guys so much.
Sophia Fisher:
I'm going to give out these little packets.
Sophia Fisher:
There's one with kind of some of the fire outreach and then some with some of
the flood outreach.
Bryce Rogers:
And if you guys have any further questions, you can contact us at any time.
Bryce Rogers:
And if you have any properties you want us to look at, please contact us.
Bryce Rogers:
Okay, we'll do.
Bryce Rogers:
Thanks.
Joette Langianese:
All right, next up presentation from Michael on crosswalk standards for the
city of Moab.
Michael Black:
Okay, so, recently, we became, well, we know that there's been conversation
with trail mix and with you dot about high visibility crosswalks on Main Street
we've had that discussion ourselves with the RSA, which is the road safety
assessment that we did with you dot.
Michael Black:
And so the conversation has been out there for a little while, but we're
launching into a discussion with you dot regarding that.
Michael Black:
In fact, we'll be setting up a meeting soon.
Michael Black:
It is happening with you dot and In the next few weeks.
Michael Black:
But while we were thinking about this and high visibility crosswalks are
thinking, well, what is the city standard and what are we doing.
Michael Black:
And if high visibility crosswalks are good.
Michael Black:
Are we doing them in the places or is our policy supportive of that.
Michael Black:
So we did a little bit of research and the team that I'm talking about here is
our engineering public works.
Michael Black:
Strategic initiatives with Alexi and community development.
Michael Black:
We got together and we talked And I talked to you dot as well and you dot
actually provided some information to us that is consistent with what we've been
hearing from citizen groups and from citizens in particular.
Michael Black:
So crosswalk safety does matter and high visibility crosswalks do have an
impact on safety within the community.
Michael Black:
Now, there's a lot of information in this one pager, but the bottom line here
is that when you couple several different things together like high visibility
crosswalks lighting and signing and signalization.
Michael Black:
You end up getting a safer intersection for everybody.
Michael Black:
So it's pretty it's pretty consistent with what we've been hearing.
Michael Black:
It's pretty consistent with what we think as well.
Michael Black:
But it's not consistent with what we've been applying on our road.
Michael Black:
So if you look at our roads.
Michael Black:
A lot of the crosswalks are the line pattern which you can see here, which is
the standard down on the bottom.
Michael Black:
These are the different kinds of crosswalks that you generally see, except you
never see the solid one.
Michael Black:
That's that's something I don't know where they do that, but I I don't I don't
think we see that very often.
Michael Black:
But these are the ones that we generally use and we use the standard quite a
bit, but we've been using the zebra.
Michael Black:
More and more often in places where we are looking for higher visibility.
Michael Black:
In fact, you got came out and did several of the zebra crosswalks at places
where they thought it fit with their policy, which is areas where a trail leads
across the highway.
Michael Black:
So they were able to do that in a couple of those locations.
Michael Black:
But as we're looking at this and talking to our staff about it.
Michael Black:
Our feeling is that Why not adopt for the city of Moab a standard where we only
use high visibility crosswalks and try to proliferate better within the
community where those crosswalks go.
Michael Black:
And so what we're what we're saying tonight is that we were looking for support
from the city council.
Michael Black:
This the standards that we have are engineering standards that we use within
the engineering department within community development.
Michael Black:
And what the plan is to change those so that we only use these three standards
for crosswalks.
Michael Black:
I'm not a huge fan of the zebra myself, but it's It's being used in several
places.
Michael Black:
There is thermal plastic down that has zebra already that would make sense
where those are that we continue to use those
Michael Black:
But we would most likely use the continental going forward with uncontrolled
intersections these streets around here where we don't have stop signs where
people travel through on the three ways I can first south and third south
Michael Black:
And some some of the blocks on Center Street and then the areas where we have
stop signs or controlled intersections within town or even streetlights.
Michael Black:
We would be using the ladder.
Michael Black:
Not the latter, but the latter one.
Michael Black:
So it'd be it would be these three ones that I have starred and we were looking
at just making this effective immediately.
Michael Black:
The other thing we're looking at doing immediately and trying to get this ball
rolling and set a good example here is to get a thermal plastic project out as
soon as possible.
Michael Black:
And it is something that's that is in our budget for the next year.
Michael Black:
We talked about this.
Michael Black:
We'd like to get out a project as soon as possible, working on the kind of old
town area first in the safe routes to schools, and then moving out from there.
Michael Black:
Now, most likely, every intersection in the entire city won't have a high
visibility crosswalk some of the interior subdivisions where there's no sidewalk
things like that.
Michael Black:
But what we're going to be focusing on our areas where we know people walk a
lot, where we have sidewalks and curb ramps that lead down to the street and
there's no, there's no crosswalk at all.
Michael Black:
And I think a lot of you are probably aware of a lot of those.
Michael Black:
And then also enhancing the crosswalks that we do already have to make them
more visible.
Michael Black:
And then moving on from there, having that conversation with UDOT, which I do
think UDOT is more than willing to come to the table and discuss this with us
and the possibility of doing these high visibility crosswalks on the highway.
Michael Black:
I can't speak for them, but I can speak for our conversations and saying that
they've been more than open and talking about things and are willing to sit down
with us and talk about the future of Main Street as well.
Michael Black:
And having a policy within the city of Moab that we use these will no doubt
help that conversation.
Michael Black:
So, so that's my presentation. If you have any questions, happy to answer any
concerns or ...
Colin Topper:
I just want to say how excited I am for this new direction and it's definitely
something that I've had a lot of conversations with both Michael and the Mayor
about and I'm so appreciative of the work you've done.
Colin Topper:
And, you know, just to really kind of make an example here I riding over here
to this meeting, I, you know, as an example of the era that we're leaving.
Colin Topper:
I was coming down 4th East by Milt's Stop and Eat, and the crosswalk between
Milt's and what is now the RISE training studio, two faded white parallel lines.
Colin Topper:
But what we've done is we've put two baskets on light poles on either side of
these faded parallel lines.
Colin Topper:
And then these baskets are these little orange flags.
Colin Topper:
And so, rather than painting this beautiful high visibility crosswalk and
bringing all this attention, you know, and recognition to this this pedestrian
infrastructure and this important place of crossing that that services a school
and the neighborhoods and eating establishments.
Colin Topper:
We put all the responsibility on those people, putting their lives in danger
and crossing the street and asking them to carry a flag across the street.
Colin Topper:
And so I'm so proud of the city of Moab for this new direction.
Colin Topper:
I mean, we really are.
Colin Topper:
This is going somewhere and this is such a cost effective and pretty simple
safety enhancement.
Colin Topper:
And, you know, it's really going to show people that, you know, we're really
serious about pedestrian safety and that this is a place where people do walk
and ride their bikes and, you know, our transportation environment is not auto
centric.
Colin Topper:
You know, it's about everybody here.
Colin Topper:
So, thank you.
Kaitlin Myers:
Michael, can you talk a little bit about how, so we have money in the budget to
do sidewalks.
Kaitlin Myers:
Can you talk about how this would play into sidewalks and striping plans and
it's those are going to be coordinated together.
Michael Black:
Yeah, they definitely will be coordinated together and I'm going to talk a
little bit more about sidewalks and the plans and bids and things like that.
Michael Black:
And my update, but the big things that I want to make sure are coordinated are
the improvements that we're making to intersections where we're looking at doing
bulb outs and things like that, because high visibility crosswalks are great.
Michael Black:
And then the shorter distances between that the pedestrians have to walk
through the street art is better and you start stacking those things on onto
each other and we end up getting a much better product as long as well as
lighting and signage and signalization.
Michael Black:
So, the way that this would work is that through the roads fund through the
road budget.
Michael Black:
This would be a project through there.
Michael Black:
We do striping every year we do a certain amount of striping.
Michael Black:
We do paint in some situations which we just did a bunch of paint all over town
which I'm, I'm glad it was paint because now we're moving to a different
standard, and we'll be able to go back in and not feel like we've, we've spent a
bunch of money painting crosswalks and then just replacing them with thermal
plastic.
Michael Black:
Now thermal plastic is much better because it lasts a lot longer.
Michael Black:
It's, it's much heartier, and it's reflective as well.
Michael Black:
It has a better reflectivity and there's just a lot of things that are better
about it in our climate where we don't have a ton of snow and snowplows going
down the road, and they can last a lot longer than in other places so.
Michael Black:
So that's, that's the way we approach it and we will definitely coordinate all
of these different projects that are going together to make sure we're not
redoing things or, or, you know, redoing things is probably it.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
So, Michael you touched on one of my questions how, what's the lifespan of this
kind of treatment versus versus just paint.
Michael Black:
I think it depends on the, the travel the, the number of trips per day on the
street so so highway 90 191 is going to be different than, than first out, but
what do you think.
Clark ?:
Yeah, if anything, probably you might be replacing the thermal plastics sooner,
just become so stuffed up and what's the word about what we're here.
Michael Black:
Yeah, the year.
Clark ?:
Yeah, they're fairly thick.
Clark ?:
We've got some help here, I think about five years now.
Clark ?:
That would still go strong just got clean.
Clark ?:
So, all relatively low traffic low speed though it's facing to where a whole
lot slower.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And just for like comparison sake if we're just looking at pain like how
frequently do we have to repent.
Clark ?:
Oh, yeah.
Clark ?:
Yeah, sort of depends on the spot that we, we get a real quick light treatment,
where we have missed the mid walk crossing and the first part of the project is
driving by and it's already starting to work.
Clark ?:
Yeah, it could be like a year or two years.
Michael Black:
If you look at the, we just did the bus stop down on main, and we had them just
use paint, because we added it on to the to the contract that you that was
doing.
Michael Black:
And it's already faded and needs to be replaced with thermal plastics so paint
is not a good alternative.
Michael Black:
That's why they use it to, to do the locates because it disappears after a
while.
Joette Langianese:
So anyways, any other questions.
Colin Topper:
I do also want to note that this is one of our priorities is an action item for
one of our priorities that Alex he's going to be presenting on in just a minute
and so this is, this is we're already taking things off.
Colin Topper:
Yeah, it's great.
Colin Topper:
It's great.
Joette Langianese:
Way to go.
Colin Topper:
Good team.
Michael Black:
Go.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Anything else on crosswalks sidewalks.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
We have no department head reports, we have two items on our consent agenda
approval of the minutes from June 10 regular meeting and approval the bills
against the city of the Moab, in the amount of 1,792,390.
Joette Langianese:
$9 and 83 cents if I could have a motion to approve.
Colin Topper:
I can make that motion.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Second second by 20 any discussion column.
Colin Topper:
I would just like to say that the bulk of those bills are going to I what I
believe is the final installment of the Kane Creek project.
Joette Langianese:
Yes.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny
Joette Langianese:
Anyone else.
Joette Langianese:
All in favor of approval the consent agenda say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Any opposed motion passes for to zero with Jason, not in attendance this
evening.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
We had an addendum to our agenda, which is regarding fireworks restrictions I
realized that next week is the Fourth of July, it's been windy and dry and hot.
Joette Langianese:
And so, we do have an ordinance in place.
Joette Langianese:
And I think Lex.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, Lex you're going to be talking about fireworks restrictions that will be
in place.
Joette Langianese:
Starting now.
Michael Black:
Yeah, Lex is on his way up, we've had some discussions and I've discussed this
with our city attorney as well, and talk to the fire chief, and Lex can give you
the details and all that.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
Basically, they're the same as they were in 2023 2022 2021 2024.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
The restrictions for Moab city, this is city limits.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
No burning within city limits.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
Open burning of yard waste or any other debris is always prohibited, but
specifically the fireworks they are restricted from parkways, public trails and
pedestrian paths in the city, city parks, except center street ball fields over
or within 200 feet of Pat Creek or Mill Creek,
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
within 20 feet of any residence building structure or combustible material and
violations are subject to a $1,000 fine up to a $1,000 fine and possible jail
time fireworks that are never allowed fireworks that fly explode or travel more
than six feet off the ground,
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
aerial and flash shells, Roman candles, comments and mortars, firecrackers,
bottle and aerial rockets, other similar explosives.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
And we'd ask that people report fireworks violations to our dispatch at
435-259-8115.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
And of course we'll be out, you know, responding on these calls.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
Typically you get one morning, and we don't like to write tickets for the sort
of thing and we hope that if you're respectful with us and we're respectful with
you, one time let's come in and say, knock it off works but don't make us come
back with a ticket.
Lex Bell, Moab Police Department:
And be respectful.
Michael Black:
And use common sense.
Michael Black:
That would be, that'd be a good thing too.
Michael Black:
Just to follow up with that, we do have a press release that's ready to go, and
ready to get out there so that we can get this information out as far as wide as
we can we'll put that on Facebook as well.
Michael Black:
Wherever else Lisa typically does that, but we'll update our, our news stories
on our website too so it pops up to the top.
Michael Black:
Good luck.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Michael Black:
See you at the parade.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
I also believe that the fire department is putting out fire restrictions this
week as well.
Joette Langianese:
Yes, there's a broader range of fire restrictions than just fireworks.
Michael Black:
Yes, we're pretty much in red flag as it is and it's not getting any better.
Michael Black:
So, right.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
We next up 6.1 consideration and adoption of the Moab's 2526 strategic plan,
Alexi.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Alexi Lamm:
We've already gone through most of the things in the strategic plan.
Alexi Lamm:
So, my plan for today is to go directly to the biggest change which is the
addition of information under walnut lane is one of our top priorities.
Alexi Lamm:
And then if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.
Alexi Lamm:
Okay, so let's skip to walnut lane here, and we added some Michael and I put in
some text here, highlighting that walnut lane addresses the community's
workforce housing needs, and then putting in some action items to pay off the
property to do a thorough engagement process, work on a plan for things that we
can do to move towards whatever solution or outcome that we're looking for.
Alexi Lamm:
And then setting up benchmarks for accountability and then pursuing funding and
partnerships to pursue whatever plan we come up with.
Alexi Lamm:
So, that is the biggest change.
Alexi Lamm:
Other than that, the changes were relatively small and related to our previous
conversations.
Alexi Lamm:
Does anybody have discussion about the walnut lane section?
Kaitlin Myers:
I think it's as good of direction to set a number of directions as we get.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, good job on that.
Michael Black:
We did it then.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Alexi Lamm:
Are there any questions about any of the other changes that were in the plan?
Alexi Lamm:
I would say the only other significant addition other than adding a few words
here or there was adding an appendix B, a summary of where we are in last year's
strategic plan.
Alexi Lamm:
So, none of this is actually new, it's just a summary of what is our clear gov,
but that's the only other significant change.
Alexi Lamm:
Are there any questions about any of the other changes?
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Speaker 16:
Good job.
Joette Langianese:
Yes, nice job.
Joette Langianese:
Motion to approve our strategic plan.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I moved to adopt ordinance 2025-08, an ordinance amending the...
Luke Wojciechowski:
Oh, no, sorry.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I have the wrong thing open.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Oh, I moved to adopt resolution 09-2025, adopting a city of Moab fiscal year
2025-2026 strategic plan.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke, second.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Joette Langianese:
Second by Caitlin discussion, Luke.
Luke Wojciechowski:
No, I think great job.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Really appreciate your patience with us and all the changes that you've made.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And this isn't anything like directly in the strategic plan, but just as I was
reading through, like, with the public engagement, I just kind of remembered
that in the past we just wanted to make sure that there's some sort of like
extra focus on trying to get engagement from typically underrepresented groups.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So we get a broader swath of like our broader perspective from the community.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But other than that, great job.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I appreciate it.
Kaitlin Myers:
Caitlin.
Kaitlin Myers:
Ditto.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that the way you guys have walked us through and taken a fresh look at
our existing strategic plan.
Kaitlin Myers:
I really appreciate the appendix of all of the plans and, you know,
implementing plans in itself is a priority for us.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think just seeing the list of all the plans that we, the city has adopted and
or created in the last, you know, eight years is extensive.
Kaitlin Myers:
And so I just really appreciate this approach to kind of take a more
comprehensive look at strategic initiatives for the city.
Joette Langianese:
So thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Call for the vote.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor of approval of the MOAB City Strategic Plan 2526.
Joette Langianese:
Say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
Any opposed?
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes four to zero.
Speaker 16:
Thanks a little tea.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Next up, we have consideration of approval of a special event permit for the
2025 USARA Recovery Day event.
Joette Langianese:
Kelley's going to present this to you all.
Joette Langianese:
If you all are aware, USARA is a great organization that works with a lot of
other organizations to help our addicted community with addiction and they have
an event.
Joette Langianese:
It's their 10th year of USARA being in existence.
Joette Langianese:
And so this year is kind of a big deal for them.
Joette Langianese:
One of the things that they've requested that is not in your packet is a waiver
of the permit fees.
Joette Langianese:
So when you go to make your motion on this, if you can consider that as an
option, that would be great.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Kelley McInerney:
So this particular event is held in September each year.
Kelley McInerney:
This year it will be Thursday, September 4th.
Kelley McInerney:
They started out at the ball fields a couple of years ago and it's kind of
grown.
Kelley McInerney:
They've since moved to Swanny Park.
Kelley McInerney:
And this is a free, family-friendly event.
Kelley McInerney:
So there's no ticket sales.
Kelley McInerney:
It's held by USARA, which is Utah Support Advocates for Recovery Awareness.
Kelley McInerney:
And then they have a lot of community partners doing tabling and activities.
Kelley McInerney:
There's no alcohol at this event, so there's no beer garden or anything like
that.
Kelley McInerney:
And we're coming to you because this has been a renewal permit for them for a
level one event, but they've kind of grown.
Kelley McInerney:
It's gotten a little bit bigger, so they're going to hit that level two
threshold now.
Kelley McInerney:
Other than that, there are no significant changes.
Joette Langianese:
Questions?
Joette Langianese:
I will be reading a proclamation.
Joette Langianese:
I did that, yeah, last year.
Joette Langianese:
I'll be doing that again this year for that event.
Colin Topper:
And was this event a RAP recipient?
Colin Topper:
Something else.
Kelley McInerney:
I'm sorry.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Speaker 16:
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 16:
Yeah, that's right.
Joette Langianese:
Is there a motion?
Joette Langianese:
Well, how much is the fee, Kelley?
Kelley McInerney:
Level two permit is $820.
Joette Langianese:
$820.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So.
Joette Langianese:
The question is approving their permit.
Joette Langianese:
And if you would consider modifying or reducing the fee.
Joette Langianese:
Or waiving a fee.
Colin Topper:
I can make a motion to approve this permit.
Colin Topper:
And along with waving the, the use fee Swanny Park.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Collins.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I'll second.
Joette Langianese:
Second by Luke discussion.
Joette Langianese:
Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Luke.
Luke Wojciechowski:
No, I just really appreciative of these are and everything that you for this
community and just how well they partner with other organizations to kind of
provide those wraparound services for.
Luke Wojciechowski:
That vulnerable members of our community.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I'm not going to vote against this because I do think it's a good
Joette Langianese:
event.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I wish we have entertained reducing the fee.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
We haven't waived fees for a long time, but.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I'm not going to stand its way.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Kaitlin Myers:
Would you....
Kaitlin Myers:
make an amended motion?
Kaitlin Myers:
This is something that I was thinking about, especially with the master fee
schedule.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think looking at events like that, we have discounts for the mark.
Kaitlin Myers:
I'm wondering if we should have discounts for.
Kaitlin Myers:
You know, all of our parks and rec facilities following that same structure.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that's one of the intentions of the master piece schedule.
Kaitlin Myers:
So I guess I would make an amended motion, substitute a substitute motion to,
in accordance with the MARC's policies, provide a 50% discount to use our, for
the special event permit.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Kaitlyn to approve the special event permit with a 50% reduction in
the fee.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Kelley McInerney:
Can I ask for clarification?
Kelley McInerney:
Um, so there's the permit fees, the special event permit fees.
Kelley McInerney:
There's also like parks fees associated with special events as well.
Kelley McInerney:
So just clarification on whether that's.
Kelley McInerney:
Park use fees or permit fees.
Joette Langianese:
So is 820 the total cost?
Kelley McInerney:
That's the permit fee.
Kelley McInerney:
So there's still like.
Joette Langianese:
We're talking about the permit fees.
Kaitlin Myers:
Well, I think that's a good question.
Kaitlin Myers:
Colin's motion was to waive the fees for Sony parks.
Kaitlin Myers:
Such actually a good clarification.
Kaitlin Myers:
Which is different from the special.
Kaitlin Myers:
Special event.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And were they requesting to like either reduce or.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Eliminate all fees or adjust the permit fees.
Joette Langianese:
When I talked to the email that I got, it was just the.
Joette Langianese:
Permit fees.
Joette Langianese:
It wasn't the park fees.
Luke Wojciechowski:
How much would park fees be.
Kelley McInerney:
I'm sorry.
Kelley McInerney:
I don't have that in front of me.
Kelley McInerney:
I think it's.
Kelley McInerney:
I want to say on that one, we have, we have a locals rate, so they would get
that rate for it.
Kelley McInerney:
And it's based on the number of hours and whether they're using the whole park
or the full park.
Kelley McInerney:
So there's this.
Kelley McInerney:
I want to say.
Kelley McInerney:
A couple hundred on that.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, that's what I think it was.
Joette Langianese:
That's that sounds right.
Michael Black:
And that's going for maintenance and, and helping set up.
Michael Black:
If there's any needs, anything like that, that our park staff might have to
provide.
Colin Topper:
It looks like $150 per 100 to 300 people.
Colin Topper:
If I'm reading this correctly.
Kaitlin Myers:
Good.
Colin Topper:
Good deal.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
The motion was to reduce the permit fee by 50%?
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I would second that motion.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
So we vote on the substitute motion first.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So.
Joette Langianese:
Kaitlin's motion is to approve the special event.
Joette Langianese:
Permit for 2025.
Joette Langianese:
You saw our recovery day went with a 50% reduction in the permit fees that
second by Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
Any further discussion, Kaitlin?
Kaitlin Myers:
I do.
Kaitlin Myers:
I would love to support this.
Kaitlin Myers:
I appreciate everything you guys do.
Kaitlin Myers:
Just especially because we are talking about our master fee schedule.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that.
Kaitlin Myers:
You know, this is kind of a discussion.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that's a good question.
Kaitlin Myers:
Our fee schedule right now says the city may only waive.
Kaitlin Myers:
special event permit fees for a free speech event.
Joette Langianese:
I'm going to be making a free speech.
Kaitlin Myers:
So I guess if we want to call it that we can, but I guess this, this kind of
indication to me that like, you know, we should consider what discounts we're
doing across the board.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
So I agree, I like you said, it's a good event, but I think once we start
waiving entire fees, everybody's gonna, I mean, we had this discussion years
ago, years and years, because we just, we weren't collecting anything or very
nominal amount of fees.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And so I think past councils have kind of put their foot down and said, we can
discount things to a reasonable amount, but we're not going to waive entire fees
because there's still a cost to the city.
Joette Langianese:
All right, motion by Kaitlin, second by Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor, say aye.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Do we get to...
Joette Langianese:
Oh, do you guys wanna discuss?
Speaker 16:
Okay, Luke.
Speaker 16:
Nope, you can't talk.
Speaker 16:
It's not free.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I'm like a little conflicted, partially because I think a lot of the events
that are going to take up like an entire park or something like that are paid
events where people would pay.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And so the offset of, or sorry, the costs of the permit fees can be offsets by
some of the admission costs and everything like that.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And just having attended these events, this really is a collection of a lot of
local nonprofits and service providers that provide a lot of really valuable
education to the community and community members in ways that I think can
actually help reduce costs for the city by kind of reducing the number of
emergency calls that they need to respond to.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And yeah, I think the costs of renting parts of the mark are significantly
different than they are for a level two permit fee.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I don't know, just having worked alongside USARA, like there has been a lot
of money kind of like in terms of like opiate and like substance use disorder,
but like that's drying up like pretty quickly.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I know that they have scratched
Luke Wojciechowski:
like every penny that they could in the past
Luke Wojciechowski:
to be able to like put on these really well received,
Luke Wojciechowski:
like I think the fact that this is a growing thing
Luke Wojciechowski:
like really speaks to kind of the need
Luke Wojciechowski:
and the reception and the appreciation from the community
Luke Wojciechowski:
for kind of helping celebrate people who,
Luke Wojciechowski:
I don't know, I think everybody in one former
Luke Wojciechowski:
or another is impacted by addiction,
Luke Wojciechowski:
whether I directly or indirectly.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And yeah, I know I'm biased coming from like the nonprofit world and like
wanting to provide like free services wherever we can just knowing that that
goes a long way.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But yeah, I'm still ultimately in favor of just like waiving the entire fee.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Like there still will be the part to you which from my understanding in a lot
of ways is like kind of to help offset the impact that the event would have like
on the grounds.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So I think like to that degree, that is covered.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I don't know, I guess like what is the intent for the permitting fees?
Luke Wojciechowski:
Is that the other staff labor that went into like helping organize and arrange
the event?
Kelley McInerney:
That's my understanding of it.
Kelley McInerney:
So it goes through a full staff review.
Kelley McInerney:
Every event does whether it's renewal or a new event.
Michael Black:
And it goes all the way from Kelley's office to the police department, the fire
department through all of those different means.
Michael Black:
It definitely makes its rounds.
Michael Black:
There's definitely work on the back end as well.
Michael Black:
And then it kind of goes into the general fund.
Michael Black:
And the general fund of course supports the larger general fund departments
like the police department and so on.
Kaitlin Myers:
I'll ask you a question.
Kaitlin Myers:
Have we waived the special event permit for level one for this event in the
past?
Kelley McInerney:
No, no.
Kaitlin Myers:
I've never been to level one in the past.
Kelley McInerney:
They were in level one now though, or level two.
Kelley McInerney:
So the level one permit fee is 466.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, so I guess even with a 50% that'd be less than the permit fee they paid
right off.
Colin Topper:
Got a couple.
Colin Topper:
I'm gonna, you know, I appreciate this discussion greatly, but I'm gonna stick
with my original position.
Colin Topper:
Though I did state it wrong, with the waiving of application fees is what I'm
gonna stick with.
Colin Topper:
This feels different to me.
Colin Topper:
This, you know, the city contributes to some other events at the Swanny Park,
the Arts Fest, the city contributes to, the city contributes RAP funds to
several other events that are at Swanny Park, different ways the city supports
these events.
Colin Topper:
This particular event, there is no monetary exchange whatsoever this event
between vendors, between participants, organizers, everything.
Colin Topper:
And so, you know, I think this is, you know, I appreciate Kaitlin's reference
to what is stated as, you know, grounds for waiving this.
Colin Topper:
I think that this, you know, should be a new approach or a new opportunity to
support events like this.
Colin Topper:
So, thank you.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, and I don't know if this is still happening, once again, kind of like
funding cuts, but I do know in the past, like there have been, there's been
distribution of like Narcan kits and like other supplies that go out into the
community to help like people better respond to like overdoses and things like
that.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And so, I'd much rather funds go towards things like that that can kind of
ripple out into the community and have a positive impact in that regard rather
than kind of like, yeah, $800 or $400 isn't an insignificant amount, but
relative to our budget, it's a very, very small rounding error.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Whereas I think equipping somebody with the knowledge and the equipment to
better respond to a situation at home, I think the value of that really
outweighs what the city would potentially benefit from the permit fee here.
Joette Langianese:
All right, we have a motion by Kaitlin, seconded by Tawny, prove the fee with a
50% reduction in the fee.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor, say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
All those opposed.
Joette Langianese:
I get to break the tie.
Joette Langianese:
I go with the opposition.
Joette Langianese:
Then we go back to Colin's motion.
Colin Topper:
You want me to restate that motion?
Joette Langianese:
Yes.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Joette Langianese:
Oh, actually, I need to call a roll call because we have in the negatives.
Kaitlin, how do you vote?
Joette Langianese:
For substitute?
Joette Langianese:
Yes.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Speaker 16:
Nay.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
Luke.
Joette Langianese:
Joette's nay.
Joette Langianese:
Motion fails.
Joette Langianese:
Two to three.
Joette Langianese:
With Colin, Luke, Joette in opposition.
Joette Langianese:
Our next motion that was made by Colin, seconded by Luke, was to approve this
special event permit for 2025.
Joette Langianese:
We saw a recovery event with a waiver of the permit fees entirely.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor, say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
All those opposed.
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes four-zero.
Joette Langianese:
There you go.
Kaitlin Myers:
Good discussion.
Speaker 16:
Thanks, you guys.
Colin Topper:
Yeah, thanks, Kelley.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Joette Langianese:
Marcy, I believe you're up.
Joette Langianese:
Our next item is a public hearing.
Joette Langianese:
For ordinance 25-08, an ordinance amending title three of the Moab Municipal
Code to update chapter 3.5, master fee schedule and modifying certain fees,
rates and charged by the city, charged by the city.
Joette Langianese:
This was reviewed by our planning commission and gave a favorable
recommendation to the city.
Joette Langianese:
And so I will open the public hearing at 7.04 p.m. Marcy is gonna give us a
brief description of what you guys are considering tonight and then we'll close
the public hearing and have discussion.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Hold on a second, I'm getting connected to Zoom.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And actually on this one, I don't have anything to actually share.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I'm not doing a presentation on this one.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I'll just do a quick summary.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we did a minimum of $85 rate for the building department.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Last year.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so what the majority of the changes that you're seeing on the masterpiece
scheduled this round was as correcting the rest of the fees to be in line with
the 85% or sorry, the $85 minimum rate that we did.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So for the particular masterpiece schedule, one of the things that Corey wanted
me to know is the state is actually putting a lot of pressure on building
departments in general and planning departments to have a lot more involvement
and they have to do a lot more things than we've ever had to do before, which is
a huge financial impact on the building and planning department.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So, excuse me, that's why you're seeing some of these major changes on that
program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And I'm so sorry, I need to open up my, I had the wrong one open.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Where are you?
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Oh, I did have to open.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Okay, and then you're also gonna see some changes or additions to the parks and
facilities.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Section Swanee Park was added as an administration portion.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We were already charging the fees, but it wasn't actually on the masterpiece
schedules and it's in line with all the other parks for the fees for that.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then we had a couple of corrections that were just errors like oversights
that just never got updated with other masterpiece schedules.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we did some minor corrections and then changing verbiage for planning like
director to coordinator.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then other than that, it should be relatively straightforward unless you
guys have questions.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Questions for Marcy on the masterpiece schedule.
Joette Langianese:
All right, no questions.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you, Marcy.
Joette Langianese:
I'll open it up to the public.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody from the public would like to comment?
Joette Langianese:
All right, seeing none.
Joette Langianese:
I'll close the public hearing at 7.06 p.m. and ask for a motion to approve the
adoption of ordinance 25-08 amending title three of the MOAB municipal code to
update the masterpiece schedule.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Since I got a little out of myself last time and started reading this one, I
will move to adopt ordinance 2025-08 and ordinance amending the Moab municipal
code title 3.50 masterpiece schedule as presented.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke, second by?
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I'll second.
Joette Langianese:
By Tawny, discussion Luke.
Joette Langianese:
No.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny, no.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Kaitlin Myers:
I think just reiterating based on our previous conversation, and I ultimately
agree with Tawny.
Kaitlin Myers:
It doesn't feel, I support you, Sarah.
Kaitlin Myers:
I support so many of the nonprofits that are there.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think for things like that, we've also had conversations about community
contributions.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think having more policies about how and why we waive fees is something I'd
love to see moving forward.
Kaitlin Myers:
Maybe not necessarily, you know, I'm not gonna, this is what it is.
Kaitlin Myers:
But I think just, you know, along the lines of us wanting to work on
formalizing those, I'd yeah, move that forward for future.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I appreciate that insight because I think it ultimately like prevents us
from making arbitrary decisions and ideally kind of can eliminate any sort of
like casting of doubt as to why somebody got something and somebody didn't.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke, seconded by Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Aye.
Joette Langianese:
Any opposed?
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes for zero.
Joette Langianese:
Marcy, you don't need to leave because you're up pretty soon.
Joette Langianese:
So you might as well just stay there.
Joette Langianese:
I know you don't like being in the spotlight.
Joette Langianese:
But I was like, I thought Michael was next.
Speaker 16:
This should be fast.
Speaker 16:
I'll be looking at you.
Speaker 16:
Yeah, that's right.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Just hide them at the table.
Michael Black:
Focus on her.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
So next up item 6.5, consideration of adoption of resolution 08-2025, a
resolution amending the fiscal year budget.
Joette Langianese:
As you recall, we tabled this at our last meeting until this meeting because we
didn't have the right document in the paper.
Joette Langianese:
And since then, Michael has provided you all with the correct information.
Joette Langianese:
Nothing has changed.
Joette Langianese:
No.
Michael Black:
Slight change.
Michael Black:
To go down, of course.
Michael Black:
The updated document tells you what those changes are.
Joette Langianese:
Didn't we just get the information for the sales tax?
Michael Black:
We did, yeah.
Michael Black:
So just really quick, the changes in here, generally speaking, are changing to
actuals where we know we're not going to spend up to the amount that was
budgeted.
Michael Black:
And some of that will be carried forward to next year.
Michael Black:
Some of those projects just aren't being done.
Michael Black:
But the total net reduction in all of the line items is over a million dollars.
Michael Black:
But the budget does show us going up just a little bit because we are adding
two transfers out of the general fund to this budget.
Michael Black:
One of them is to the RAP tax fund.
Michael Black:
It shows $1.2 million.
Michael Black:
The actual transfer will be more in the line of $980,000 because the amount
needed, I needed to subtract the grants amount, which wasn't subtracted before,
but that's the actual amount of the RAP tax.
Michael Black:
No need to change anything.
Michael Black:
We'll just transfer the actual amount.
Michael Black:
The other change that led to the increase in the budget was just transferring
the money to pay off or to assist the housing fund in paying off the Walnut Lane
loan.
Michael Black:
Those are both from general fund any fund balance.
Joette Langianese:
And we discussed both of those at our last meeting.
Michael Black:
We did.
Joette Langianese:
So now the amended budget is the final budget, final actuals for 24-25.
Joette Langianese:
So that's what we'll be comparing throughout the year.
Joette Langianese:
Questions on that?
Joette Langianese:
Motion.
Joette Langianese:
Is there a motion?
Luke Wojciechowski:
I move to adopt resolution OA-2025 approving the fiscal year 2024-2025 year and
budget amendment as presented in the resolution.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Joette Langianese:
Second by Kaitlin discussion, Luke, Kaitlin?
Kaitlin Myers:
Thank you for making the changes.
Michael Black:
Getting the right attachment.
Joette Langianese:
He felt so bad about that.
Joette Langianese:
We're all calling out for days to agree.
Kaitlin Myers:
You know, at least, you know, I'm actually looking at it.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, exactly.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
This will be a roll call.
Joette Langianese:
Kaitlin.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Luke.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes for zero.
Joette Langianese:
Very good.
Joette Langianese:
All right.
Joette Langianese:
Next, Marcy.
Joette Langianese:
Consideration of adoption of ordinance 2025-12 and ordinance adopting the city
of Moab's residential utility assistant pilot program.
Joette Langianese:
As you all recall, this is something that we instituted in January because of
the property tax.
Joette Langianese:
We recognize that there's some folks out in the community that the property tax
is going to have some impact on and we wanted to make sure that we could help
offset some of that property tax cost through our utilities.
Joette Langianese:
Marcy's done a great job of pulling some information together to share with you
guys.
Joette Langianese:
I think the two things you need to be thinking about that are additions to this
program, because based on information that we got from you in January, we did it
for six months.
Joette Langianese:
Do you want to extend the pilot for another six months to make sure the changes
that Marcy's recommending are workable and feasible.
Joette Langianese:
We want to promote it a little bit more.
Joette Langianese:
But the two things that you need to be focusing on is the criteria to qualify
and then the renter component, which is what we added based on suggestions from
you all.
Joette Langianese:
Now, with that said, also we got a document from Kaitlin that has a lot of
cleanup language in it that I think we don't need to go into.
Joette Langianese:
I've talked to Kaitlin about it.
Joette Langianese:
Marcy and Michael have looked at it.
Joette Langianese:
It's not really anything substantial.
Joette Langianese:
It just makes the document stronger.
Joette Langianese:
And so whatever you guys decide, those changes could be made after the fact
administratively.
Joette Langianese:
But what we need to really be focusing on is the criteria and then the renter
program.
Joette Langianese:
So Marcy?
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Perfect.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Well, I hope everybody had an opportunity to review the data that I put in the
packet.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I put quite a bit in there to try to cover all the basis because it is a brand
new program that we've never done before and a program that I had to do a lot of
research to figure out how to do.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So thank you all for your patience as we worked through the first six months of
the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So just to give a quick summary, I know the mayor just kind of touched on this
a little bit but the program was originally approved in December under the
ordinance of 2024-06 for the six month period.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It's due to expire on June 30th.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
The program is in place for low income families with a up to $40 a month,
sorry, up to a $40 a month for utility account apply, payment applied to utility
account.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
That's like for water, sewer and storm water that you're gonna see these for.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
This is available for owners and renters.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So what we're gonna touch on is some of the changes that we're looking at,
mostly for renters, not owners, because of some, what is the word I'm looking
for?
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Some hiccups that we ran into where we couldn't, I was like, it was not
hiccups, but that would work.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Some hiccups that we ran into with not being able to approve everybody that did
apply for the program for various reasons because the program had some
limitations.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Okay, so the original pilot program, we had low participation.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Unfortunately, I can't really explain why we did, you know, we did have it in
the paper.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Doug actually put it in the paper for us.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Originally, and as people would call in, you know, we had offered the program
to them.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We only used about $3,000 with $75,000 that was budgeted for this for the 24-25
fiscal year.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I won't go into much detail on this original pilot overview because it
wasn't a packet.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
All of this information was provided, but I did wanna touch on a couple of like
the denials.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we had, I think it was seven.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Oh, no, sorry, five.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We had five apartment residents who called for this program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And because they're an apartment complex, the utility bill is not broke out.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It's like one utility bill that's for everybody.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
MAPS program or the MAPS building is one of these.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And four of those five came from MAPS that called for the utility assistance
program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
But unfortunately, the original program, it wasn't something we considered for
apartment complexes or things of that nature.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we kind of ran into a little bit of frustration on our side and also on the
citizen side because it is money that they could have absolutely used and
because of that hurdle of not having utility account, we had no way of adding
that into the, or allowing them to apply to the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I'm hoping that with tonight's review that that's something we can consider
for the next six month pilot program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And as the mayor said, we wanna do a six month pilot program because of the
substantial changes we are making on this.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So why we need these revisions, only 16 applications came in.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Seven of those applicants, we didn't have seven on there because they were out
of city limits.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we didn't do seven applications.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It was just an automatic denial because they weren't within city limits.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So they weren't impacted with the city property tax like the other applicants
were.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we only had 16 applications with the capacity of $75,000.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We could help 156 applicants with 12 months of subsidy with a flat $40 rate.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
That's saying that they apply and they're approved in July 1 through June 30th,
if that makes sense.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So having such a low approval rate or people applying made it a little bit
harder for us to review the program and be able to make sure that we were able
to assess the true needs of the community.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So we're hoping with some of these revisions that we can jump over some of
these barriers that we had with the renters, like I explained with apartment
complexes and things of that nature.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We didn't have any in Grand Oasis, but Grand Oasis would also fall in this
trailer parks because they are not separate utility accounts.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It's one big account that covers the individual utility accounts.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
The other thing is we want stronger documentation from our applicants.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So it was brand new to us.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We didn't really know what we were going to need and as we started to dive into
this, it was a little bit hard to get certain documents from some of the
applicants that applied to the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And while we found ways to make it work, we did learn that a lot of people
don't have access to a computer and they couldn't print things for us or they
couldn't email things to us.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so what I was able to do is actually work with them by just waiting for
their documents to come in and then get them approved because they have to have
a mail to them or things like that.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So doing more documentation and having more consistency in the program, I think
will make it easier for the application process because now we know what we need
and what we can put out to the community that we're expecting.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
The last thing that I want to know is while we were working through the
applications for all of our applicants that we got, we had a lot of feedback
from the community, but then I also met with the Mayor and Michael and we did a
lot of review.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so because of the things that the hurdles, again, mostly the renter
portion, that really is the biggest part.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And the second part of that is the income level that we wanted to take a look
at.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So with those two things, the program needed almost like a half rewrite,
essentially, to accommodate some of these things.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And sorry, I start rambling, so bear with me.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Okay, so we've kind of touched quite a bit on a lot of the recommended key
program updates in general.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I won't go into too much detail on this portion of it, but I think that the
biggest thing that we're gonna see here is we are changing or we're recommending
that we change the income levels from federal poverty levels to area median.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
What is it, area median income?
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
AMI, I had notes on it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I just can't see them without it being in presentation mode.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Okay, so what that does is it actually raises the income levels, federal
poverty levels at 185%, still pretty low, even at the 185% level.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Low for MOAB, thank you, yes, that's correct.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It is very low for MOAB.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so Michael was actually like, wait, we should be using the AMI.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And I was like, that's actually a really good point.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I'm gonna jump to that.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So here's a compare.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
In your council, the council packet, you're gonna see that we as staff are
recommending a 70% of the AMI.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
After I put this in the slideshow, I realized that we have a little bit of a
disconnect.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So first of all, a family of four at 70% AMI is actually lower than 185%
poverty level.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So one of the recommendations that we wanna make is we actually do 80%.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And Caitlin actually recommended this to us that we either look at 50% or 80%.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
50% will put us below the federal poverty level of 185%, which is currently
approved in the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So the 80% would give us a little bit more inflation for the approval limits
for applicants and kind of open this up a little bit more.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
If you don't recall, or if you didn't get a chance to read the rejection
portions, we did have one person that did not meet the threshold criteria.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And they were literally off by $1,500, I think, is what I said.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So, I mean, it was really sad that, I mean, it was such a small amount, but it
was from the limitations we had.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We couldn't approve it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So in this case, if we use the AMI for Grand County, the 80% is gonna really
increase like our family sizes of one, two, and three.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then you're only gonna see a slight increase for families of four.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So a family of four on the AMI 80% is the 71,650.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
If we use the federal poverty level for a family of four, it's 59,477.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So that little bit of money will actually, I believe would make a huge
difference, but also ensure that we're keeping the program within the acceptable
range for low-income families.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
If we raise this too high, then we run the risk of giving the money to people
who do need it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I mean, you guys know Moab is very expensive to live in and inflation is real,
especially in a resort town.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So in this case, it still gives us some control in making sure that the people
who really need this program can receive these benefits.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
If we were to hit the 156, we have to cut the program and we have to put it at
a standstill until we either re-review it at the end of the six months or we
increase or whatever may happen.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I think that I would recommend that we increase to 80%, Michael, has agreed
to the 80% as well, just based on our quick finding that- I recommend it as
well.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Yes, thank you.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so that will be one revision that's in the ordinance that I state, 70%
instead of 80%.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so thank you, Caitlin, for mentioning that to us as well on there.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then this one is just another quick recap.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We only use $3,000 of the $75,000 budgeted last year for this program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We're recommending the 6,000- or sorry, we're recommending a six-month
extension at 75,000 again, which will still cover us for the whole year.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It doesn't mean that we have to re-approve or do a budget adjustment with the
75,000.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We just figure we would carry that forward just with the notation on how the
program went for the first six months.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then changing the federal poverty level isn't gonna impact us as much as I
think that- I mean, we want it to impact us a little bit more because we wanna
see more people utilizing the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So I'm hoping that that change will be essential.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then other than that, everything in there is pretty kinda dry.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Any questions?
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So kind of aside from some of the advertising about the program and the paper,
and then when people call in and you offer it up, like what other approaches do
we take to outreach or educating people about the existence of this program?
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So one of the things that we are doing in my office is if somebody calls and
say like, they're late on their bills often, we know that they're struggling.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We actually recommend the program to them.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So that's one outreach that we're doing.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Or if somebody comes in and you're like, they're like, yeah, I'm just really
struggling.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And we work with everybody on their utility bills.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It is not our goals to shut people off.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We're like, you can't pay it, give us a call.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We have a program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We can set you up on a six month repayment plan or whatever it is.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So that's one outreach we do.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I believe that, I mean, I don't wanna speak for Lisa, but I believe that we'll
probably put it on the website.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It'll go in the paper.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We have it posted.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I'm sure that we could put it out to different...
Michael Black:
Our partners as well.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Our partners, yeah.
Michael Black:
We see that as well.
Michael Black:
So you can put them bulletin boards and places that will interact with people
who potentially could use it.
Michael Black:
We'll know about it and be able to refer people.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And we'll put it on the utility bills too.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Cause we have the ability to put messages on our bills.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so we utilize that to notify the public in a mass.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And then I can also look at Express Bill Pay, putting a message, like a
temporary message on Express Bill Pay, where a lot of people pay their bills to
note that this program is available and how they can apply.
Luke Wojciechowski:
No, that's great.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I think potentially even giving the application out to like on MVMC and
Seekhaven, instead of they can fill it out alongside their advocates would
ideally help kind of address some of like the lack of technology or anything
like that.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But also not adding more burden to city staff to kind of take that on.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And then maybe not now, but seeing how kind of all these like additional things
increase participation in the program.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But even being proactive, where like if you see there are certain households
falling behind, like to proactively reach out to them and just be like, hey,
this program's available.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Here are the qualifications, like, so they can be a little bit more kind of
like self filtering.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Cause I think right now with the approach that Mike is being taken is people
have to be proactive to get informed about it.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And I don't know when I was a young 20 year old and was like not easily paying
bills, there was times where I just didn't even wanna open up my bill, let alone
my call and like reach out to somebody.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So, but yeah, I'd like to see how kind of the changes in terms of like
collaborating with partners, kind of the more concerted advertising and like
making it more readily visible on the bills and like online will impact
participation rates, but potentially some feather to stick in a hat.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, just to elaborate on your comments too.
Joette Langianese:
I mean, a lot of older people that are on social security won't reach out
because they are embarrassed or it's just like, we don't take subsidies.
Joette Langianese:
So your point of being a little more proactive is not a bad idea.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Yeah, and we do over the phone, we just haven't done like the mass outreach as
far as like what you're referring to, but we do try to reach out and I do wanna
know, especially for the community, like their information is confidential.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Right now there is only one person in the city, which is myself that can review
your income levels that is looking at your highly confidential, very sensitive
information.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so I just, we do emphasize that like this information is not public, it
cannot be released.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It is not something somebody can grandma.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It is very restricted.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
It's locked away in my office for anything that I do have to keep and other
things that I don't have to keep where I just can review it, it's not kept on
file.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And I don't discuss it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I mean, you can ask the man, I was like, I can't talk to you about specifics,
but here's a summary.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And I don't say like this person makes this much or this person makes this much
or who's on the program.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
That's completely confidential to everybody except myself.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And of course my two staff members because they are helping with the billing,
but we know how important it is and how people are embarrassed and don't wanna
come to us because of that simple fact.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And because they have to go face to face, it's not like, you know, workforce
services where you just make a phone call, they actually, you know, a lot of
them have to come in and we are willing to sit down and help them.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Like we have no problem going through and filling out.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Like usually I've had the three people set up meetings with me.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
They come in, come into my office, we shut the door.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I fill out their application for them and they literally just sign it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
And so we don't mind doing those extra steps, but also I kind of went off on a
agenda, but we wanna make sure that they understand that we keep their
information very confidential and we're not here to judge.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
We understand, I myself have been in positions where these programs would have
been very beneficial for me, especially when I was younger.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
So.
Luke Wojciechowski:
No, and I would really appreciate you highlighting that cause like particularly
in a small town, like when we see people like kind of avoiding going to a
therapist because it might get out that like they're trying to seek help.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But another thing that just popped up is, is there any sort of like database or
like a quick way for some of these partner organizations to be able to identify
if the individual or family that they're working with is actually residing in
the city so that you don't get like a flood of potentially ineligible people.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Yeah, I can actually provide a list of all addresses and city limits that would
be searchable.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
I could just create an Excel spreadsheet that just has strictly addresses and
they could just do a quick search in there by address only, it wouldn't have
names or anything tied out to it so that it would make it a little bit easier if
that's what you're referring to.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, no.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, it was just like a almost everyday occurrence like when I was working at
Seekhaven where like people would get funneled to different organizations that
do have these supportive programs, but like they don't qualify.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And so it kind of puts an extra like burden on the staff there.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And it also sucks being that staff member that this person got sent over there,
took time out of their day by somebody who they trust only to be told like,
actually, no, you don't qualify.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And so just kind of in terms of helping maintain like those collaborative
working relationships with their clients for like the partner organizations and
then ultimately just like making things more efficient.
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah.
Joette Langianese:
Questions?
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, I think related to that, I probably also recommend sending this to like
property management companies as well.
Kaitlin Myers:
Potentially, especially because it is a passive benefit for them.
Kaitlin Myers:
If they have people falling behind on rent, this is another solution for them.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, I think partner organizations would be great.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, I guess I'm kind of especially thinking about this potentially being 150
households to manage.
Kaitlin Myers:
I'm wondering how you and your department are feeling about kind of flows and
the workloads and kind of barriers for how the program's going so far, how it
would feel to expand it.
Marcy Mason, treasurer:
Yeah, Michael and I have talked extensively about this and the way that the
program is built, we've made it pretty streamlined that I don't believe we'll
have any issues managing that.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Michael Black:
If there were, we would talk about it and that would be something that I would
definitely be working with her on and if the council needed to be involved and
we needed to look at budget adjustments or more staff, we'd be talking about
that.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yep.
Kaitlin Myers:
Good.
Kaitlin Myers:
Well, just in general, yes, I sent some recommended language.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think a lot of that was administrative to kind of clarify.
Kaitlin Myers:
I just, I have had experience with unclear code and that when it comes to
social services and kind of housing related people things, it gets really
complicated.
Kaitlin Myers:
So just want to reiterate, you guys have done an amazing job.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that the way that the city has designed this to be really simple for
applicants and for administration is honestly not common for these types of
services.
Kaitlin Myers:
So thank you for your work and yeah, mostly providing those to provide
clarification because household situations are complicated, especially as we
open it up to renter situations.
Kaitlin Myers:
So that was my intent.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yeah, I'm supportive of 80% AMI.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that that's a pretty standard metric, especially when we're starting to
dive a little bit more into the housing world.
Kaitlin Myers:
That's kind of a lot of housing support systems are following that kind of AMI.
Kaitlin Myers:
So that'd be my recommendation.
Kaitlin Myers:
That said, I think that like projects like maps, like the tax credit projects
go up to 55%, but yeah, 80 would be my excuse, why not?
Kaitlin Myers:
I'm sure I have other questions.
Kaitlin Myers:
I'm sure they're noted in the document I already put in.
Joette Langianese:
Okay, Linda, welcome to reach out to Marcy unless they're questions that are
gonna impact how you vote tonight.
Joette Langianese:
If they're just things that you need clarification for, I'd suggest you talk to
Michael and Marcy.
Joette Langianese:
Definitely cool with that.
Joette Langianese:
Yeah, for sure.
Joette Langianese:
Any other questions from Marcy?
Joette Langianese:
All right, I'll ask for a motion to adopt ordinance 2025-12, an ordinance
adopting the city of Moab residential utility assistance pilot program.
Joette Langianese:
This will be a pilot considering you improve it through the end of this year
and then we'll revisit again in January.
Colin Topper:
I moved to approve or adopt ordinance 2025-12 an ordinance amending the city of
Moab residential utility assistance pilot program policy.
Joette Langianese:
Do we need to amend it with the 80%?
Joette Langianese:
Yes, would you mind including to change the AMI to 80% and include Caitlin's
recommend for administration to review Caitlin's recommended changes.
Joette Langianese:
Sorry, I was waiting for this to come up.
Kaitlin Myers:
You jumped the gun.
Colin Topper:
So I really got myself into it.
Colin Topper:
With the 80% AMI and the administrative changes recommended by council.
Joette Langianese:
All right, motion by Colin, second by Luke.
Joette Langianese:
Any further discussion?
Colin Topper:
I would just like to say thank you and it's really neat to see this program
evolve and change really become a great community resource and safety net.
Colin Topper:
Thanks Marcy for your hard work.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, no, just kind of echoing that with the recommendations and kind of the
things that were identified has clearly been a lot of introspection about what's
working and what's not working and there's a clear desire to make this one to
work to benefit the community as much as it can.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So I really appreciate kind of sticking to it and proposing all these changes
that I think are gonna have like a material positive impact on this program.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Yeah, I just appreciate the humanity that you used in developing this and it's
very obviously a conscious effort.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Joette Langianese:
I'll call for the vote.
Joette Langianese:
Roll call, Kaitlin.
Joette Langianese:
Hi, Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Tawny.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Luke.
Joette Langianese:
Hi.
Joette Langianese:
Motion passes 5-0.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you, Marcy.
Speaker 16:
Thank you guys.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
What did I say?
Joette Langianese:
Okay, yes, four.
Joette Langianese:
I counted myself.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
All right, our last item of general business is ratification of a letter of
intent regarding providing financial support for the Grand County Pickleball
Courts.
Joette Langianese:
Normally I would have put this on a consent agenda except for I didn't have a
chance to talk to everybody before we sent the letter.
Joette Langianese:
But essentially the county has some funding, a grant funding to do pickleball
courts out at OSTA.
Joette Langianese:
They're struggling right now with some budgetary issues and we just wanted to
let them know that we would be happy to help financially with the pickleball
portion of that grant.
Joette Langianese:
I learned that Monday they had a budget workshop and the cost of the pickleball
courts is around 440,000.
Joette Langianese:
We offered half, up to 50% of the match, which would be 220.
Joette Langianese:
And we would pay half of that, which would be 110.
Joette Langianese:
We weren't quite sure of the exact number when we sent the letter, but we were
pretty clear in our letter that there was a max and that we were gonna pay half
of the match.
Joette Langianese:
I'm not sure if they're gonna go forward with this.
Joette Langianese:
They might, if they don't, Dunn will be hearing from the pickleball people
though, I'm sure.
Joette Langianese:
If they do, I'm sure we'll still be hearing from the pickleball people because
they're gonna still want pickleball courts in town.
Joette Langianese:
So anyway, with that said, I'm just being honest.
Joette Langianese:
I know this group, they're very passionate about their sport.
Joette Langianese:
So anyway, I could have an emotion to prove the ratification of the letter
providing financial support for pickleball courts in Grand County.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I will move to ratify a letter of intent regarding providing financial support
for the Grand County's pickleball courts.
Colin Topper:
I can second that.
Joette Langianese:
All right, motion by Tawny, second by Colin.
Joette Langianese:
Any discussion?
Colin Topper:
I just recognize this is a great opportunity to reach out and partner with the
County on something.
Colin Topper:
And I think that this will benefit a lot of our city residents, usually,
including your partner.
Speaker 18:
I know.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, that's it.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else?
Luke Wojciechowski:
I just think that it's a great, yeah, great opportunity to partner with the
County and to maximize kind of like local taxpayer funds by bringing in these
matching funds or the grant funds.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And yeah, this is clearly a thing that there's a significant portion of our
community that is very passionate about.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I still think in my almost four years on this council that is the most
engagement that we have received on a topic was the pickleball courts, so.
Joette Langianese:
Other than the property tax, it was the most intended meeting and the biggest
controversy that we had.
Joette Langianese:
So this will be great, I think.
Joette Langianese:
Anybody else discussion?
Joette Langianese:
And I'll call for the vote.
Joette Langianese:
All those in favor, say aye.
Joette Langianese:
Any opposed?
Joette Langianese:
The motion passes 4-0.
Joette Langianese:
And just so you know, too, I mean, if they move forward and if we allocate the
money, don't be more.
Joette Langianese:
You guys will have to approve that and we'll do an MOU kind of like we did.
Joette Langianese:
I don't know if some of you might not remember the stage.
Joette Langianese:
We bought a stage, we split it.
Joette Langianese:
We have an MOU with how that's gonna be managed.
Joette Langianese:
So that will come before you guys if we get to that point.
Joette Langianese:
Hopefully we will.
Joette Langianese:
All right, that's the end of our general business and we'll move to city
manager update.
Michael Black:
Okay, I've just got a couple of items for you.
Michael Black:
I'm gonna start with the sidewalk bids.
Michael Black:
We had a big sidewalk project that we put out for bid.
Michael Black:
We were hoping to have that on the agenda tonight for approval, but
unfortunately, we didn't have any contractors bid on that.
Michael Black:
I do wanna point out that four contractors showed up to the pre-bid meeting.
Michael Black:
So there were contractors interested.
Michael Black:
The information got out.
Michael Black:
There were people who were considering it.
Michael Black:
So the first thing we would do in a situation like this, which is what we did,
was we went back and asked them, why didn't you bid on it?
Michael Black:
And it turns out that there were just a couple of minor things just for your
information had to do with timing, how they approached the project, either
having to start and finish the entire project all in one go or do sections at a
time.
Michael Black:
And then the other thing was pedestrian control.
Michael Black:
That was something that kind of scared some people off because of the ability
to provide pedestrian control where we might be shutting down some parking
spaces and moving people out onto a new path that would then have to be set up
and meet all these different kind of standards and everything like that.
Michael Black:
So what we've decided is that we can bend on those things.
Michael Black:
We can actually assist with the pedestrian support and getting things set up
the way that needs to be and work with these contractors to make this project
that is more attractive for them to bid on.
Michael Black:
I know hopefully we'll get these four contractors back interested.
Michael Black:
And I talked to one other contractor today who said that he missed the bid, but
he does wanna take a look at it when it comes out and we're gonna make sure to
get him a copy of it directly this time.
Michael Black:
So yeah, it's not great news, but this happens and you just regroup and figure
out why it happened and see if we can fix it.
Michael Black:
And I think we'll be able to fix it.
Michael Black:
So we will have a sidewalk project.
Michael Black:
So we'll keep moving forward with that.
Michael Black:
I was excited to hear today that the funding request for the 300 South Bridge
is getting attention in DC.
Michael Black:
So that was really interesting.
Michael Black:
Not funded, just to make sure that's clear, but it is getting attention.
Michael Black:
And I think that's going really well.
Michael Black:
Really excited about that.
Joette Langianese:
Well, just on that note too, sorry to interrupt.
Joette Langianese:
We did send another letter today that was requested from Senator Curtis's
office.
Joette Langianese:
They wanted to know if we would share in where all the money was, if we would
participate.
Joette Langianese:
So we said, yes, I'll put that on our agenda next time for your ratification.
Michael Black:
And that, of course, was the intent the entire time.
Michael Black:
I've seen what we can get from these different sources to limit the burden on
the budget.
Michael Black:
So recent public works and utility issues have come up.
Michael Black:
There's a sinkhole on 400 East.
Michael Black:
You guys may have seen that.
Michael Black:
There's a big dirt patch on 400 East now.
Michael Black:
There was a sinkhole forming over there.
Michael Black:
There are crews, our utility crews think they've taken care of it.
Michael Black:
There was some exacerbated issues with water lines and capped lines and things
like that.
Michael Black:
So I believe they got that taken care of and getting that filled in and we'll
get that asphalt over as soon as possible.
Michael Black:
Wasn't up there today.
Michael Black:
I'm not sure it could have even been done today.
Michael Black:
One other thing I think is really interesting.
Michael Black:
We have a lot of sidewalk issues in town because we have a lot of trees.
Michael Black:
It's just a fact that you walk around town and you see sidewalks that are
poking up.
Michael Black:
And a lot of times it's because of the tree roots.
Michael Black:
And of course we don't want to go cut down all the trees and get rid of all the
trees but we're constantly out there chasing these sidewalks and trying to grind
them down or replace them and do different things to keep the sidewalks open.
Michael Black:
But there's another thing that also causes sidewalks to have issues and that's
heat.
Michael Black:
And we've had a few situations just this last week with the high temperatures,
which they get higher, I know.
Michael Black:
But we had some sidewalks that just buckled just not even close to any trees.
Michael Black:
Just buckled and came right up which I thought was really interesting.
Michael Black:
So, you know, we're chasing issues all over.
Michael Black:
Our team met recently.
Michael Black:
We're looking for options, ideas of how to address all these sidewalk issues
that we're facing.
Michael Black:
I don't think the buckling based on heat is gonna be a big issue but I just
thought it was kind of interesting.
Michael Black:
And I wanted to bring up that.
Michael Black:
We are definitely looking at strategies and opportunities within the community
with all of these beautiful little trees that we have where we can get sidewalks
in and not have to replace them every few years because they keep or grind them
down every few years.
Michael Black:
So that's going on.
Michael Black:
The other thing with public works and utilities and parks and it was all hands
on deck for this one.
Michael Black:
They've been working hard to do the annual upkeep for our storm water systems
and our flood infrastructure.
Michael Black:
So I want to just give you a couple of ideas of what they've been out doing
over the last week.
Michael Black:
And this is continuing.
Michael Black:
But we did take a lot of people from a lot of different divisions and
departments and put them all together to get some stuff done really quick last
week.
Michael Black:
There's detention basin cleanouts.
Michael Black:
We definitely hit several of those last year.
Michael Black:
We're hitting more after the floods.
Michael Black:
We hit some before the floods last year and in between the floods last year.
Michael Black:
And some of those we've gone back to and we're still taking a lot of silt out.
Michael Black:
And just for your information, up near the golf course we have a big detention
basin and our staff took 40 loads of silt in a five yard dump truck out of that
pond.
Michael Black:
And that pond or that detention basin was cleaned out twice last year.
Michael Black:
So just the amount of silt that comes down, we all know, you see it everywhere.
Michael Black:
But they're working hard to get those cleaned up.
Michael Black:
We're also working hard on the areas above us here to get agreements with some
property owners so that we can actually get into those.
Michael Black:
Some of those basins were Civilian Conservation Corps projects.
Michael Black:
And there were no easements put in place or property ownership to get to those.
Michael Black:
So we have had some challenges on one or two of those, but those are being
worked out and we're addressing those.
Michael Black:
They're also addressing maintenance on critical storm drain channels and
inlets.
Michael Black:
They've been out cleaning the streets with the street sweeper.
Michael Black:
And you're gonna see a lot more of that going on.
Michael Black:
Cleaning under the bridges is continuing to happen.
Michael Black:
We've got so much soil and vegetation under our bridges now that there were, it
kind of got lost that they all have cement bottoms.
Michael Black:
And they all can be cleaned out.
Michael Black:
And so we're working on that, getting those things done.
Michael Black:
The next one we're looking at is 300 South Bridge, getting that cleaned out.
Michael Black:
It does have a concrete bottom.
Michael Black:
We'll be talking to UDOT.
Michael Black:
You saw the picture today.
Michael Black:
That's a much bigger issue though.
Michael Black:
So getting those things done.
Michael Black:
And this is all being done in addition to the other work that we've been doing
with the RIPRAP and all the other projects that have been going on that we're
contracting out and other things that our staff is doing every week to keep the
city going.
Michael Black:
Last thing I wanna bring up is that I found out today that UDOT is ready to go
ahead with the Bulbout project.
Michael Black:
It's a pilot project.
Michael Black:
And we're gonna be looking at potentially, I just found out today, so we need
to go and talk to businesses and everything.
Michael Black:
But looking at the beginning of August of that project starting.
Michael Black:
Hopefully, hopefully.
Michael Black:
And then we'll catch the fall tour scene and hopefully see how it works with
all the people.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
That's it.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
Great.
Joette Langianese:
Council reports, we'll start with you, Colin.
Colin Topper:
So on the 16th, I had a, in my little community, we had a meeting for the
Non-Mortized Travel Management Plan.
Colin Topper:
And I guess it was looking at our community as a stakeholder because we do live
along the Mill Creek Parkway and just talked about all the benefits and
challenges of being along our main pedestrian artery.
Colin Topper:
And so that really kicked off our stakeholder outreach for this Non-Mortized
Travel Management Plan.
Colin Topper:
On the 17th, I met with the mayor.
Colin Topper:
And then on the 18th, I had a solid waste meeting.
Colin Topper:
The really interesting thing to me that came out of that is they, and this has
become such a huge problem nationwide and for worldwide, but there was actually
a lithium battery fire in the tractor trailer full of trash that was left
overnight.
Colin Topper:
And fortunately, a highway patrolman was driving down 191, noticed a fire at
the transfer station, called it in, the fire department was there immediately
and put it out.
Colin Topper:
But this is just the new reality.
Colin Topper:
These lithium batteries are just the challenge of actually putting them out and
just the volatility of them has really created an entirely new problem and then
threatening our communities.
Joette Langianese:
Colin, when I went to the recycling coalition meeting, it was a group of Utah
recycling folks.
Joette Langianese:
We had a presentation and I'll get you that information.
Joette Langianese:
There's like one place in the whole United States that does lithium battery
recycling.
Joette Langianese:
And I'll get you that information.
Joette Langianese:
It was very interesting presentation that she made, but if that's something
that we could maybe start, you guys in solid waste could start putting words out
that there is a method to recycle those things.
Colin Topper:
Great, yeah, please share that with me and I'll spread the word.
Colin Topper:
So that was the 18th.
Colin Topper:
On the 19th, we had our second stakeholder meeting for the non-motorized travel
management plan, which was a really great one.
Colin Topper:
It was the vulnerable street users.
Colin Topper:
And so we had, I'm gonna miss some people, but we had representatives from the
council on aging, from the library, from the teen center, from the grand center,
all talking about their respective communities and the challenges they face
trying to move around this community.
Colin Topper:
It was a really fascinating discussion.
Colin Topper:
A lot of things came up, a lot of challenges came up, a lot of praise for some
things the city has done recently, like the Kane Creek Boulevard.
Colin Topper:
Something that really stood out to me that I had never heard before was, and
maybe some of you have heard this, but the 8080 framework, where when you're
doing anything for a city, you're to consider it for an eight year old and an 80
year old.
Colin Topper:
And so when you're putting in this pedestrian infrastructure, when you're doing
crosswalks, when you're doing whatever we're doing with these programming, if
it's something that can do well and benefit an eight year old and do well and
benefit an 80 year old, then you're doing pretty well at sort of reaching your
entire population spread.
Colin Topper:
So it's just a really neat way to think of things as we move forward.
Colin Topper:
In this case, we're gonna be applying it to this non-motorized travel
management plan.
Colin Topper:
I believe that that is it for me.
Colin Topper:
That's it for me.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Sorry.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Okay.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
It's stuck.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
It's not coming any closer.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
On the 12th, they attended a Canyonlands Healthcare Special Service District.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Had our normal business meeting.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
We had a discussion regarding some funding issues moving forward and how we are
going to work through those.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
We also actually had guests at our meeting and most of them live in the MAPS
project and they came to discuss future development of the MAPS property.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And it was a good discussion and it was interesting to see their concerns and
we invited them back moving forward as we get further on in that process.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
On the 18th, I met with the mayor and Caitlin.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
Our normal monthly meeting on the 14th.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I put on my protesting hat again and protested but it was all very peaceful and
quiet.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And in fact, I believe that we were sent a letter from some visitors that
attended also and they said it was the most polite protest they'd ever been to.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And then on the 13th, I met with the mayor and Cora Phillips and Senator Lee's
staff to discuss some of the things that he's proposing and they mostly asked us
what kind of things we could use help with and how they could support us.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
All in all, I think it was a productive meeting.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And later that weekend, I first want to express my condolences to
Representative Portman and her family and send good wishes to Senator Hoffman
for healing.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
I think that incident made me feel a little vulnerable and I think if we're all
honest as elected officials, we sometimes feel vulnerable.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
But furthermore, what I realized is that our voices matter.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
People listen to us and we can use the words that we say for good or we can use
them to inflame and upset our communities.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
And I don't think that that's our job as electeds is to frighten or terrorize
or get our communities more worked up than they need to be.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
So I would just encourage everybody when we speak to listen to your words and
think about how they may be perceived.
Tawny Knuteson-Boyd:
That's it.
Kaitlin Myers:
Thanks, Tawny.
Kaitlin Myers:
Caitlin?
Kaitlin Myers:
Well, I just want to thank you, Toni, for saying that.
Kaitlin Myers:
I think that it's an important reminder that we are all humans and we're doing
our best.
Kaitlin Myers:
And I appreciate your words on that.
Unknown:
I attended a meeting with Tawny and the mayor.
Kaitlin Myers:
I attended another EMS sustainability committee from the essence of that.
Kaitlin Myers:
It's kind of talking about financial sustainability for EMS, kind of
recognizing that the city and the county have their own limitations on funding
that they can provide and that some of the challenges that EMS is starting to
experience are problems related to billing that are much bigger than our
community.
Kaitlin Myers:
So there's additional advocacy that moving forward,
Kaitlin Myers:
I think the city can support at a state level
Kaitlin Myers:
on insurance and funding and regulations about EMS.
Kaitlin Myers:
But it seems like there's potential conversations
Kaitlin Myers:
about looking at the healthcare sales tax
Kaitlin Myers:
for the ballot next year,
Kaitlin Myers:
which is currently split by EMS
Kaitlin Myers:
and the Canada's healthcare slash service district
Kaitlin Myers:
and what that process would look like,
Kaitlin Myers:
what the parameters of what that would look like
Kaitlin Myers:
to put it on the ballot.
Kaitlin Myers:
So more to come, I think that committee will meet over the next few months to
kind of decide direction predominantly on that sales tax.
Kaitlin Myers:
So last week I met with someone very briefly, one of the case workers, General
Congressman Kennedy's team followed up with me about talking about housing.
Kaitlin Myers:
So just kind of explained what the history and current landscape looks like for
housing in the city and in the Moab community.
Kaitlin Myers:
You know, it was around the time that news was breaking about Senator Lee's
bill.
Kaitlin Myers:
I asked the Congressman's team, he doesn't have a strong stance on housing and
I think it's looking to communities like Moab to inform kind of what he wants to
support housing moving forward.
Kaitlin Myers:
So yeah, just another reminder that it's really nice to have that direct
relationship and actually be heard by representatives.
Kaitlin Myers:
And then just wanna give a plug, the mob area housing task force is doing the
second annual mob housing survey.
Kaitlin Myers:
You can find that at mobhousing.com.
Kaitlin Myers:
It takes only a couple of minutes.
Kaitlin Myers:
It's just a bunch of check boxes basically.
Kaitlin Myers:
Even if you've lived in your house for 50 years and it's paid off and you have
no housing issues or you are living in your vehicle, whatever your housing
situation looks like, we're trying to get a better local understanding of what
housing needs and desires are for this community.
Kaitlin Myers:
So that will be open until July 18th.
Joette Langianese:
I did mine.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Speaker 18:
Bye.
Kaitlin Myers:
We had a giveaway last year.
Kaitlin Myers:
Unfortunately, we don't have a giveaway this year, but please fill it out
anyway.
Joette Langianese:
All right, I challenged the council.
Joette Langianese:
Do the housing survey.
Kaitlin Myers:
mobhousing.com.
Kaitlin Myers:
Yep, there you go.
Joette Langianese:
Is that it, Kaitlin?
Kaitlin Myers:
That's it for me, yeah.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So I attended a meeting with the mayor and Jason Taylor.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Had a Gwissa meeting last week.
Luke Wojciechowski:
There weren't any like really major updates.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Gwissa is going to be selling some of its fleet trucks.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So if anybody's interested in some trucks, I think they're going to post the
fire.
Luke Wojciechowski:
We had some options.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I think the first one we're going with is literally just like sticking them out
in front of the Gwissa building with some poor sale signs.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So if they catch your eye, reach out.
Luke Wojciechowski:
They, I was about a minute.
Luke Wojciechowski:
They're relatively low mileage.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I believe they have like around 20,000 miles, yeah.
Luke Wojciechowski:
They're probably bored at 250.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yes, they're pretty substantial on trucks.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Frequent at all the corners of our community.
Joette Langianese:
We know the community well.
Luke Wojciechowski:
Yeah, so.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And then yeah, kind of the other big thing was there was some agreement come,
that Gwissa was able to come to with a new property owner up in the LaSalle
mountains regarding some water usage to kind of make things a bit more
equivalent with the Valley when restrictions need to be put in place.
Luke Wojciechowski:
The previous property owner was not very amenable to that.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So now things are kind of standardized across the board.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I attended the LHC meeting, wasn't a huge turnout.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I guess I don't draw quite as much people as Rihanna does, which is
understandable.
Luke Wojciechowski:
But kind of one of the big things is that the free health clinic is beginning
to offer some psychiatric services with the first clinic being scheduled for
July 18th.
Luke Wojciechowski:
The planning commission meeting got canceled due to a lack of quorum.
Luke Wojciechowski:
I met with Mayor Michael and council members to just like talk to our
lobbyists, which is like a very enlightening conversation.
Luke Wojciechowski:
And then I also met earlier today with some city staff and the mayor just to
discuss some budgetary things, but that's about it.
Joette Langianese:
Thank you.
Joette Langianese:
I was at the Canada's healthcare special service district with Tawny, don't
need to go over that, she covered that well.
Joette Langianese:
We had a meeting with our lobbyist, Tim Stewart on Friday.
Joette Langianese:
He came to town to kind of get a lay of the land.
Joette Langianese:
He hasn't been here for a while.
Joette Langianese:
And so we wanted to show him the 300 South Bridge, which he's helping us with
the potential federal funding for.
Joette Langianese:
We showed him the UMTRA site.
Joette Langianese:
He feels the UMTRA site, the future of that site and the fact that we're
getting so close to closure is gonna be a really big deal for Congress, for our
congressmen.
Joette Langianese:
A lot of work, a lot of money has gone into that.
Joette Langianese:
And so, there'll probably be some event here in December.
Joette Langianese:
I'll keep you posted on that as we get closer because the last million tons of
canyons will be moved this year.
Joette Langianese:
We also had a meeting yesterday with some folks that could be our potential
medical cannabis pharmacy folks.
Joette Langianese:
They're looking at a location here in town, wanted to get some feedback from us
on what they could do, if that would work, if it fits into our zone.
Joette Langianese:
There is a waiver that you guys are gonna have to consider.
Joette Langianese:
Michael is gonna draw that letter of support for them to send to the Utah
Department of Agriculture and Food.
Joette Langianese:
And then there'll be a waiver on the amount of footage.
Michael Black:
Yeah, it's just a 25% reduction in the, it's not a big deal.
Joette Langianese:
It's complicated.
Joette Langianese:
It's complicated to explain, but there's a certain amount of feet they have to
be away from residential areas.
Michael Black:
And it's not how the crow flies.
Michael Black:
It's the direct access from walking, so.
Joette Langianese:
Right, but we have to provide that waiver.
Joette Langianese:
It's not much different, but it's enough that it would get them out of
compliance with the code and they need a letter from us.
Joette Langianese:
So, that'll be on your next agenda item.
Joette Langianese:
And then I had a meeting with Nicole Forge.
Joette Langianese:
She is over the Rocky Mountain year now called the Canyon Spirit.
Joette Langianese:
They've expanded their service to Salt Lake, which is great.
Joette Langianese:
They currently have about 7,500 passengers per year.
Joette Langianese:
They want to expand that to 25,000.
Joette Langianese:
It was a really good discussion.
Joette Langianese:
Michael was in on that and talked about the potential of having not a luxury
train service coming in from Salt Lake in Denver.
Joette Langianese:
And not that they would be a part of that, but they totally supported that.
Joette Langianese:
So anyway, conversations about rail service to Moab will be ongoing and the
Canyon Spirit will be offering, you know, it's a great tourist trade for us
because these folks are low impact.
Joette Langianese:
They come to town, they stay in town, they spend their money in town, they buy
our own souvenirs and then they get on the train or they get on the plane and go
back.
Joette Langianese:
So, it's a great group of people that we would like to encourage to come to our
community.
Joette Langianese:
And that's all I have, I think.
Joette Langianese:
Seems I can get a lot more than what I just said.
Joette Langianese:
Anyway, with that, we don't need to go into closed session.
Joette Langianese:
We always have this item just in case something came up, nothing came up.
Joette Langianese:
So, I'll ask for a motion to adjourn.
Luke Wojciechowski:
So moved.
Joette Langianese:
Motion by Luke.
Speaker 16:
Second.
Joette Langianese:
Colin, all in favor.
Speaker 16:
I adjourned.
Speaker 16:
Thank you guys.
Speaker 16:
Hey Colin.
Moab City Council Meeting Agenda
Public Comments
Presentations
- Rim to Rim Restoration
- Crosswalk Standards in Moab
Consent Agenda
- Approval of minutes from the June 10, 2025 meeting
- Approval of bills totaling $1,792,339.83
General Business
- 6.1 Strategic Plan: Consideration and possible adoption of the City’s FY 2025–2026 Strategic Plan
- 6.2 Special Event Permit: Approval for the 2025 USARA Recovery Day event
- 6.3 & 6.4 Public Hearing and Adoption: Ordinance 2025-08 – updates to the Master Fee Schedule (Title 3.50)
- 6.5 Budget Amendment: Adoption of Resolution 08-2025 amending the FY 2024–2025 budget
- 6.6 Utility Assistance: Adoption of Ordinance 2025-12 – establishing a Residential Utility Assistance Pilot Program (RUAP)
- 6.7 Pickleball Support: Ratification of a letter of intent to financially support Grand County’s pickleball courts
7. City Manager Updates
8. Mayor and Council Reports
Appreciate the coverage? Help keep local news alive.
Chip in to support the Moab Sun News.