Moab City Council Meeting – July 8, 2025

Regular City Council Meeting – July 8, 2025: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Regular City Council Meeting – July 8, 2025: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
All right. Welcome, everybody. I'd like to call this Moab City Council meeting to order on July 8 at 06:02 p. M. And we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance and Dashiell Kulander will lead us in the pledge tonight. Pledge allegiance to be the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Do we have it looks like we have a public comment tonight, which is next on our agenda. If you would like to speak, please fill out one of these forms. Pete, are you going to?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Alright, Pete. Why don't we start with you?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
You want if you want Bill, because you are you guys talking about the same thing?

Pete Gross, public comment:
What's that?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Are you talking about the same thing?

Pete Gross, public comment:
Well, same general idea.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Okay. Well, you're up here, so go.

Pete Gross, public comment:
I'm just gonna share my name is Pete Gross. I'm gonna share a little anecdote with you. A friend of mine, Grand Canyon Protection Act was passed, I think, the late eighties, and one of the key issues was overflight noise to restore the natural quiet. A friend of mine, Colin probably knows Jerry Ledbetter, she attended one of these hearings. The FAA was tasked with implementing that, and one of the one of the more interesting speakers was a Hopi elder. He came up to the microphone, and he says, people in my culture are very comfortable with with quiet and silence. And he says, people of your culture get nervous when there's no sound to fill that void. He sat for the remainder of his time or stood, and then he was done. Thank you.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Thank you, Pete. Bill.

Bill Agee, public comment:
So good evening. My name is Bill Agee, and I live on 621 Mill Creek Drive. I'm here this evening to bring to the elected and city officials' attention that OHV, off highway vehicle related noise, significantly increased over the past few years. Now some residents are more impacted than others. This is kind of based on travel routes, but I believe that my prior statement will resonate with the majority of Moab residents. In my opinion, this has kind of created a public nuisance, and I believe it has also risen to the level of a public health crisis. I have lived on Mill Creek for ten years. I would argue that there was a time where residents of Moab coexisted with off road vehicles, but with the introduction of side by sides, also known as ATVs, OHVs. This has changed. OHVs are now the primary rental vehicle for off road use. There are now seven to eight licensed OHV rental agencies with a combined fleet of over 100 OHVs. These rental agencies operate multiple groups, group tours per day, in addition to individual residents or rentals, and private use has also increased as well. Moab is now flooded with hundreds of OHVs on a daily basis that lack proper noise suppression and emission equipment. The problem is that they all use residential roads to access public lands, and they subject residents and visitors to noise levels that make it impossible to enjoy time in your yard and time in your house. Now to put this into perspective, tour groups typically operate morning, midday, afternoon, and evening, essentially from 8AM to 10PM.

Bill Agee, public comment:
Each tour group consists of six OHVs. So when all eight tour groups depart, they'll stagger their routes by five to ten minutes, but ultimately, they will bunch up over a thirty to forty five minute interval going up and down. The quick math is roughly 50 OHVs will go up and 50 would go down depending on your road. And this is just per tour event. And a tour event is like morning, midday, afternoon, and evening. It's common for tour groups to have, you know, two to four of these these tours a day. So now when you think about the sheer math, it's 200 to 400 drive bys per day. This is a pummeling experience in your front yard. It's a physical reaction to noise when the vibration levels are this level at this level. So we tend to think of noise as a nuisance that'll go away with a loud car radio. The truth is, and this is the science of it, it's a multi frequency pressure wave that adversely affects health has adverse health effects on people. What Moab residents are experiencing with OHV traffic is a systematic exposure to loud noise and felt vibration. To my point, sampling noise indicates my sampling of noise indicates that 78% of Oh vehicles exceed Moab's noise ordinances. The average value of dBA weighted a is 78. Now to put this in perspective, 78 dBA is considered very loud using OSHA sound charts.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
So, Bill, can you wrap it up?

Bill Agee, public comment:
Yep. I'm working on it here. The measurement distance is 50 feet from the source of my door. So imagine this is the equivalent of having a large commercial truck drive past your front door. We just can't accept escape this noise. So in in in wrapping up, the city of Moab and Grand County passed speed ordinances in 2022, speed and noise ordinances. The OHB community frequently speeds. They disregard the effects of noise on local residents. They wear hearing protection when they drive. And so I'm asking the city officials to prioritize this matter, and an obvious and initial step in noise reduction is to enforce existing speed noise ordinances. Thank you.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Thanks, Ben. Anybody else? Alright. Moving on. We have two department updates. We first have Levi from Public Works and then Lex from the Police Department.

Levi Jones, public works:
Councilman, Mayor, Michael, thank you. I don't need to join the audio. Right? It won't let me turn it off.

Katie Jacobsen, water presentation:
Sure, yeah.

Levi Jones, public works:
There we go.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
But you want to mute your computer. Turn yourself off. Yeah. I do. Yeah.

Levi Jones, public works:
Public Works flood prep. So I'm hearing discuss what we Public Works has done over the last three weeks. First thing we did, we started off with 100 zone protection. So we rebuilt the berm and staged sandbags to cover a gap that come that's right there at the boardwalk. We increased our capacity with sandbag availability. We have four stations now Hemmel Boulevard, 100 East Public Works, and Red Rock property across from Rotary Park. The first big project we did was the Westwater Drive Detention Basin. We referred to it as the Frog Pond. We had two parks team members out there the entire the first week. They worked thirty six hours a piece equal for the equipment, the loader, the dump truck. Total of 72. And then they hauled off 40 tons of material. So there's some good fore and after pictures of that project. We took the material to the golf course and leveled out the roads that had washed away, did some work over there. We worked with the utility department. They storm drains, we don't in the storm drain department and storm drains, we don't have any equipment to flush the drains. So we worked with utilities to help us do that. This is the pictures prior to cleaning. This one in particular is is the drain going from Fifth West to Birds Ditch. We assigned them with 13 storm drains. They were able to get to six that first week, and then priority is hit, and they haven't been able to get to get back to it since. More before and after pictures of storm drain cleaning. Sweeper. We had the first week, we had two sweepers out, a combination of seventy two hours.

Levi Jones, public works:
Weeks two and three, we only had one out with a total of eighty four hours on the sweeper. With both out, we were able to get the entire Central Moab and Downtown Main Street done, and we started in the neighborhoods. The plan is to hit Main Street every Thursday morning, first thing in the morning. The biggest project we did was was the drainage ditch off 500 West. Mowed, weed eated, trimmed, removed some trees. We had some street had a couple of streets and a couple of facilities department workers down there, a total of a hundred and eighty three hours up through last week. That doesn't include this week. Five hours in the mower, twenty hours in the miniax. Mac was five. 35 I should say loads. 35 loads. No. Excuse me. Thirty five hours on the dump truck two dump trucks. Here's some that ditch again, removal of some trees. Up through last week, we hauled off 24 or five ton loads of trees. Here's after last week. We see a clean ditch mowed trend. The trees are cut back. Here's the culverts that are crossing the ditch coming off river sands. We have plans to remove these towards the end of the project. We'll make it a waterway instead of a through. This is so the picture on the left is two weeks ago. The picture on the right is today. Same area. That's just how quick that that vegetation comes back. So we don't mow it on a regular basis. What's next? More tree removal, stump grinding, and remove those culverts on that ditch. Working with utilities on storm drain, cleaning, sweep street sweeping, sandbag stations are gonna be ongoing.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Any questions? Questions for Levi?

Jason Taylor:
The street sweeper, how when you say Main Street, what's like, where on Main Street is

Levi Jones, public works:
It? From Maverick to the bridge. And the excuse me. From the South Maverick to the bridge. There are some areas where there's no sidewalks or curb and gutter, so we don't where there's no curb and gutter, we don't sweep those areas. It's it's broomed. But we street wherever there's curb, we'll we'll sweep.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Any other questions? I'm really glad you guys are doing this. Thank you, ma'am. We as we all know, there's a big major flood down in Texas, and even and I just feel like it's important for the community to know that you guys are doing all this work. But if we would ever have an event like what happened down there, there would be nothing that we no work that we've done is gonna be able to stop what happened down there. Hopefully, that won't happen here, but it just kinda shows you things are changing, and those kind of events could happen here. So I really appreciate you doing what you can. That way, we can at least say we did what we can we needed to do. But I just hope we don't even get any monsoons this year, but doesn't look like that's gonna be the case. Who knows? It's really hot. Anyway, any other questions on flood? I just wanna ask you what you're what are you doing at the yard down there with those big concrete blocks?

Levi Jones, public works:
We're going to as we clean up so there's there's there's a storm drain pipe that we need to haul down to that ditch. And then as we clean the yard up, we're gonna use them as barriers to for other gravel piles or material to stockpile. It keeps stuff sorted there in the yard.

Michael Black:
Yeah. That bird ditch that you brought Eventually,

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Soon, it will be all enclosed, be all piped all the way to the sluice.

Levi Jones, public works:
Yeah. We have we have enough pipe on-site to get it halfway between the outlet where daylight's now and halfway to where those four culverts are at Sand Flats. The pipe we have in the yard will finish that gap, and we can get it to get it to River Sands.

Michael Black:
Yeah. Which and eventually, it goes down

Joette Langianese, mayor:
To the West. That's where it's supposed to go and spread out there. Right. Yep.

Bill Agee, public comment:
Yep. Good job.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yeah.

Jason Taylor:
Yeah. Thank you.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yep. I the Street Sweeper is in my neighborhood again last week. It's always exciting now when I see the Street Sweeper. It's great.

Levi Jones, public works:
We have

Joette Langianese, mayor:
To run and move our car.

Michael Black:
We should get the ice cream usually.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yeah. We do. That's that's that's

Levi Jones, public works:
Great. That's great.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Now we can

Michael Black:
Put nice screens on-site. Yeah.

Levi Jones, public works:
Thanks, Michael. Yeah. The the new street sweeper broke down today. Oh, boo. There's a a middle vacuum that it won't it won't release. We can't get to get in position for it to operate, so we'll have the old one out this week. Okay, good. Thank you.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
It's good we have it back. Yep. Agreed. Levi. Yep. Thank you. Lex?

Lex Bell, MPD :
Good evening, council mayor. I am sharing now. I tried to get this done ahead of time because it always seems like it takes long when we get up here. So I'm gonna do a police department update tonight. What do you guys wanna know?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Every I wish it was that easy. Right? Your comparisons. Did you ever do that yet with

Jason Taylor:
This one?

Lex Bell, MPD :
I'm actually going to do that right now. We'll do a year to the first six months of this year. But before that, yeah, I was gonna do a couple updates. So just police department overall staffing, we're full a 100% right now. We do have an officer that's still in the academy. We're hoping that she continues to do well and makes it out of that, and we get her on the road here soon. Training. We just finished our training year. It's July 1 to June 30, and post requires forty hours and just a couple specific trainings for de escalation, use of force, different types of trainings in that regard. But our average officer, including myself down to a brand new person, received ninety seven point five hours of training last year with some well over two hundred hours. So we we don't just train to that standard. We train much, much to a much higher standard, which is is what I want here. Our firearms range, I wanted to mention the the work that we've done out there. Levi, his crew helped us a lot. Last year, we started cleaning, doing lead mitigation on the land and rebuilding our firearms range. And with the help of of our city staff and then county staff, we built a new road. We were able to mitigate the lead and bring in a ton of dirt, not a ton, many, many, many, many tons of dirt, but a lot of dirt, and rebuild that range to be very functional and easy to clean in the future as well.

Lex Bell, MPD :
Redesigned it, working on completing that right now. We even found through a college in California some some what's the word? I just lost it. Astroturf that a college there had purchased, and they misspelled the college name on Astroturf. So we got it for basically paying for gas to get it delivered here. So we're gonna put that out there and see how that goes. And then wanted to mention the ICCR grant. This is the Institute for Coordinated Community Response. We received that. We were one of three counties in the nation to receive that grant. It has to do with domestic violence training and review of best practices. We're in the middle of that tomorrow and the next day. We actually have two trainings being hosted here. It's the same training two days in a row at the Utah State Extension here. A domestic violence expert that's coming in, I believe, from Texas. She's got thirty five years of experience, but she'll be training our entire staff and all the we've invited all the agencies surrounding here, even as far as Grand Junction to attend that. Mention the animal shelter real quick. We were just awarded a no kill shelter once again this year, and that would be twenty years in a row. And then we had talked before that our license plate readers that look for stolen vehicles, wanted parties, trafficking, those sorts of things. We're talking about numbers of plate reads, and so I thought it might it'd be interesting. In in the year that we've had them, we've had 4,853,000 plate reads, 2,800,000 in the last six months.

Lex Bell, MPD :
That's not an accurate number of the vehicles that are coming and going, or that's not how many have visited, but that's how many are on our road in the last six months. So millions of vehicles coming through here. It's pretty amazing. We'll jump forward to some stats. I won't stay on this. This is 2024 summary you've seen before. I'll jump to the next one so you can see a comparison, and in small parentheses are last year's numbers. So total incidents thus far this year, January 1 to June 20, we've had 6,120. Traffic related accounts for over a third of those twenty eight seventeen accidents are a little lower this year than than last year so far, 81. But you can see 2,094 traffic stops already this year. And if you look through these, I mean, all of them are pretty on par with with what they were years past. That doesn't include the DUIs. Citations, speed related, 663 so far this year. Red light stop sign related, a 192. Got 21 DUIs already this year. That's not a great stat that's going to definitely be higher than it was last year. Pedestrian crosswalk I didn't track that last year I could certainly go back and look but we we've issued 45 citations for pedestrian crosswalk. Issues. Those would be the vehicles going into the crosswalk when people are in the crosswalk area or crossing it while they're trying to cross. So these are vehicles receiving citations, not not pedestrians. And then total citations written this year, 1,560.

Lex Bell, MPD :
Our our person crimes are 93, which is slightly lower, trending a little bit lower, which is a good sign. Domestic violence is about on par with last year, 49 so far. Property crimes, again, about on par. And if we look over on on the right column, everything is tracking except illegal campers. Do you see that number? We've already warned or cited 384 where we had 99 last year. I don't think that that is necessarily 100, because there's a huge problem right now. I think we're being more proactive and trying to get out and and and talk to these folks that are parked in different places. We're also talking to the, semi trucks that park along 191. And we classify that as illegal camping because they're staying overnight or, you know, attempting to stay overnight in those areas. These are all the parks in different places. We have had a lot of campers here. I think we've all noticed with the events that have been in town. A lot of people are coming and camping rather than staying in the hotels, it seems. And we've had a lot of them trying to camp or they're not allowed to. So we've been dealing with those. And then total booking arrests, 130 that's about on par as well. A little higher. It doesn't necessarily say anything, but that's the amount of people we put in jail and. That's it for statistics. I know that doesn't answer a lot of questions, but do you have any specific I could address.

Kaitlin Myers:
Questions for the chief, I guess, more specifically for illegal campers, is that mostly parks? Are there, like, hot spot zones that you guys were finding?

Lex Bell, MPD :
It's a lot of them are near parks, but no, there are other hot spot zones, like, just south of of downtown. We'll get them that they park along the road there next to the hotels or kind of by city market before the road construction. We would find them there. There are some certain hotspots that we've been targeting a lot more. And I mean, it used to be we'd have a lot of issues right here where they're trying to get the free Wi Fi and that, you know, we've worked with the library. They shut that down in the evenings, and that helped more or less solve that issue. But it's usually near the parks. I mean, that's probably the biggest and then along 191 in different areas.

Kaitlin Myers:
Do you think those are, are those people that live here that are, like, vehicle living or illegally camping in that way? Are they, more visitors?

Lex Bell, MPD :
I think it's more visitors. Yeah, I think the folks that live here. Kind of know the rules and no better places that camp. We'll usually give them advice on where they, you know, where they can go find a place to camp. That's free.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yeah.

Levi Jones, public works:
Can I ask a question?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Sure. Microphone. Oh, okay.

Michael Black:
So the $3.84, I'm sorry if I missed it. That those weren't citations, were they?

Lex Bell, MPD :
No, no. Those those would be just contacts with illegal campers. We, to my knowledge, haven't written any citations. We we educate. We have cards that we give out that that explain our rules here, and then we offer advice somewhere to go. Awesome.

Luke Wojciechowski:
I don't know that, like, you'd have answers for this now, but potentially for, like, future presentations, it'd be interesting to see, like, how these numbers pair with, like, staffing levels. So is it, like, are we actually seeing more incident, like, certain types of incidents, or is it do we have more, like, people on the streets to kind of, like,

Lex Bell, MPD :
Kinda quash certain things? Yeah. Staffing's been the same the last two years for the most part, more or less. Since, since I took over as chief September of twenty three, we've been at or full one short perhaps. I think it affects the number of citations and traffic stops greatly when we have more officers out there doing those things. Those go up. I think DUIs go up because more people are out there doing so. Proactive enforcement numbers would definitely go up and a lot of these are proactive. You know, the ones that concern me, domestic violence, the person crimes. We don't have a lot of just random assaults, but we have them. And I think the more that we're out and in. In neighborhoods, we can drive those numbers down domestic violence. That's a whole other. Struggle and we all know that we've got a unique issue here with housing and different things that we're dealing with there. But, yeah, I would I, if I could look back before we had. Full staffing, it was when we had fat pot, which is terrible for statistics. So it's hard to say.

Colin Topper:
Lex, are we making any movements towards bicycle for the or bicycles for the police department so we can Yeah.

Lex Bell, MPD :
I put some on his

Michael Black:
Yes. They are. And we we did include a little bit in the vehicle budget. Lex got me some information about a police specific bicycle. Looks pretty beefy. Yeah. And, we'll be talking about that soon, probably tomorrow. Great.

Colin Topper:
And then the only other thing, and this would also be directed at Levi, with all the good information that you're sharing with us, you know, I would love to see some of that go through, Lisa, to social media and to get out to the public because, you know, when we hear from the public that we're not pulling people over and find out

Joette Langianese, mayor:
That there are actually 4,000 people pulled over every year in Moab, you know, these are these

Colin Topper:
Are and all the great work they're not seeing in public works department because they're off in every direction.

Lex Bell, MPD :
I'm ahead of you on that because I've already worked with Lisa and have two posts ready to go up after this meeting. Yeah. Side by side stat comparison last year, this year. Yeah. So yeah.

Colin Topper:
I would just love to see a constant stream on our social media of just highlighting all the great work our department and our

Lex Bell, MPD :
Staff are doing. We absolutely could do better.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Great. Thanks, Lex.

Lex Bell, MPD :
Thank you.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
I have Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry.

Pete Gross, public comment:
That's okay.

Lex Bell, MPD :
I don't think don't

Kaitlin Myers:
Think I

Lex Bell, MPD :
See my stats. Be able

Joette Langianese, mayor:
No. Let's Jason can go first. Kaitlin, then you next.

Jason Taylor:
No. I was just gonna ask if we've been able to utilize the motorcycles this spring and stuff they're getting out.

Lex Bell, MPD :
Yeah, two of them are still in the shop for motor school. We, they, they got used real hard during training and, they're still getting fixed. The third was in the parade and we've been utilizing it. Our, our motor Certified officers come and grab it as often as they can. They're out on Main Street in different areas. Yeah, Pratt's been on it a ton. When we get the other two, we'll have three of them on them almost as much as possible during the summer, especially

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Cool. There

Jason Taylor:
We go. Nice. Cool.

Kaitlin Myers:
Kaitlin. Yeah. And then, especially since we have Pete and Bill here, I was wondering if you could directly talk about kind of noise unfortunate, how that ties, you know, how that ties it Up.

Lex Bell, MPD :
Yeah. I mean, I've I've been talking with Bill and working on some things. We're right now. We were we're doing some speed studies in those areas to see if that was a direct correlation. I think what we're finding is not necessarily speed related. But. We're, we're definitely talking about options and some ways that we can do that. There's it's going to take some creative thinking and we have some. Areas where we run into difficulties with statute, but if you single out and then once they become street legal, they're not an, they're a vehicle and so we're working on it is the best way I can say. And we've had some really constructive meetings, I believe. And and we're we got a plan, and and we've got ideas. So we're working towards those. But speed was the easiest way for us to try to start addressing it, and that's why I've got speed trailers, one on Mill Creek, one on First South. We're trying to go to hot zones to see if that was the effect. So far, what we're finding is the average speed on Mill Creek is 25. So, it doesn't necessarily help.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Thanks. Anybody else? All right. Thanks.

Jason Taylor:
Thank you.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Right. We have a presentation on the water utility resource management plan. You all remember this we haven't seen or heard about it for a while. But this is really just an informative study Yeah. That is going to lead to us developing a forty year water plan. And and so I guess we've got our engineers.

Michael Black:
Yeah. We do. So Mark will be up here in just a minute. I think our engineering firm is trying to get on Zoom. Zoom's great, but it seems like

Joette Langianese, mayor:
They're on, but screen's minimized. Okay. Yes. You don't know. You should be able to hear that.

Michael Black:
Hearing should be just fine. Do we have their presentation, though?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
No. I don't have it.

Mark Jolissaint:
I can send it to They can share their screen. They can share their screen. Okay. Okay.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
So this is, you know, brief hopefully, this is going to be a brief overview because it's a really complicated study that's really been developed for engineers, and none of us are engineers. So, you know, take it away.

Mark Jolissaint:
Okay. I'll just do a quick brief introduction and then a bit minor from Hazel, and Luce will deliver a short presentation. So to that effect, this study was done over the past several years. Really, the whole point of it was to provide a menu of sorts for projects that may be done either in the short term or more likely in the very, very long term. It's not meant to be a master plan or to obligate us in any way to anything. It also does not look at aquifer capacity. It actually just borrows an information from previous studies. And there's kind of a a population projection that's done just for the purposes of ballparking, you know, what our demands might be, not really meant to, you know, be definitive on it. It's it's a, you know, fairly straightforward growth projection. And and what came out

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Of it was a

Mark Jolissaint:
A list of potential supplementary sources for water that we will briefly look at as a part of this presentation. So Summer, if they're ready to go.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Hi. This is Ben Miner with Hansen on Luce. It's good to be with you again. First of all, can everyone see my presentation?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yes.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Good, and you can hear me, trust.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yes.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Okay, thank you. It's good to be with you again. We've talked about this a couple of times before. This will be kind of a brief overview. Certainly, there's a lot of details. As once mentioned earlier, we discussed those in the report, and I'd be glad to address them to the level you would like tonight. But details are on the report. So let me just play through a few slides here, and

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Then we can have some questions at the end if you'd like. Let's see, maybe, let's see if we get

Ben Miner, water presentation:
To Okay, there we go, introductions. So the study really had three member agencies involved with it. Of course, there was you guys, City of Moab. GUISA participated with us, and San Juan Spanish Valley Special Service District did as well. We shared some information and collected information with MIC. They gave us a little bit of information, but had minimal involvement. Consultant team, of course, hands on, Lucy, us. Ben Meiners, me, and Katie Jacobson also did a lot of the work on this. We thank Sunrise Engineering, who is Gwiss' engineer that helped provide data from their side. And then on the public involvement side was Logan Simpson. So that was the team. So as far as the backgrounds, I understand is the way we got started on this study is there was concern about the population growth you're seeing, increased levels of tourism. There was significant development, including a lot of hotels, nightly rentals and multi units. A lot of those hotels are now built, and I know there are a few more on the way. Everyone's worried about the increasing water demand and what this would do to your water supply. So that was kind of the motivation. Here are some of the goals. This is really intended to be a high level feasibility review of water resources, potential needs, and also looking at some solutions. One of the goals was for agency coordination and cooperation, with the idea that perhaps there were resources that could

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Be shared between the two, I say the several agencies.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
We looked at water demand over a 100 period. And I know that's a long way to look, but it was just to give some ideas really long term of what you might be looking at. Now, wanna clarify, this is not a master plan. It's not a capital facilities plan. We didn't develop a bunch of specific projects that were selected. What we came up with were some conceptual solutions that you could think about. You may adopt some, you may not adopt others. Just as you move forward with growth, we wanted to give you some ideas of where additional water may be coming from, or maybe the solution is conservation. We can get into those details a little bit later. We wanted to plan some alternatives for the water infrastructure in the future, and provide you with some information on the demands and possible coming needs. And then this information will be valuable as you step toward a forty year plan, which I understand you're thinking about doing. And a point of clarification, we weren't really looking at the groundwater and groundwater issues. There's been a bunch of work that you and others have done in the past. And so this was really not about delving into the aquifer issue right now. Public involvement. We had a public involvement team with Logan Simpson and with the city. Lisa helped a lot with this. Part of your website was dedicated to this plan. We interviewed some stakeholders. We received social media posts. We had some open houses and then received emails from various members of the public that desired to comment. In the full report, we summarized those comments and let you know what people were thinking. Sometimes they had some good ideas that we considered. Sometimes, you know, it wasn't really applicable, but we tried to include all of the ideas just so that you would have a full perspective of what came in. I'm not going get into all the details of the projections right now. We've talked about those earlier with you, and it's in the

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Full

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Report. Basically, we came up with some population projections, looking at master plans that had been done in the past. So we didn't invent these projections, we got those out of master plans, part of the transportation plan. And so that gave us a population projection, which we then looked at how many, you know, people there are per equivalent residential connection, you know, which is the value we use in predicting water a lot. And then we came up with a projection for equivalent residential connections. And then based on that, we prepared some very high level conceptual water demand projections, and we looked at that. One thing I will say on that, it's been a little while since those master plans were done. And so as you head into your forty year plan, it might be good to revisit those population projections. SARS need on an annual average basis. This is a rough graph just showing on an acre foot, annual acre foot basis, you know, what what you might need looking forward. Now I have isolated just the Moab City charts for this presentation. We also created them for Gwissa and others, but I wanted to just let you see your charts. Of course, we're just saying that you're gonna have growth over time. It's hard to know exactly what that'll be, but we made the best guess we could at the time. And then this also shows your water supply in terms of wet water, which is, you know, this, we're showing some surface flow and the wells. And then we're also showing the supply, which is the highest recent year.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Of course, you're not gonna pump water you don't need, so the highest recent production is usually gonna match, you know, what you're, obviously, your need is now. So the real message here is that it appears, you know, based on our projections, that you will see continued demand, increased demand for water over time. Now, we also look at peak day. You know, the one we just looked at was how much water on an acre foot basis you needed annually. This is how much you need on your hot days. And so right now, you know, you're a little above two, three thousand gallons per minute when you have your demand and even filling tanks. You have about 4,400 gallons per minute capacity, so you're you're doing okay. There's no emergency here that that we're you know, that we have detected. In the next maybe decade or so, you might need more. And one thing to keep in mind is you have different sources that do different things. Some do irrigation, some do your culinary water and others. So it's important for your city staff to continue to do what they've been doing, which is they keep track really on a daily basis with what your water supply needs to be. We have seen nothing to say that, you know, you have inadequate supply. The opposite is true. Here's just a summary table of the capacity. I said this already, about 4,400 gallons per minute is what the city can do. And you can see the other values there for

Joette Langianese, mayor:
The other agencies, were kept on this slide to give you a sense of scale.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Water rate summary. Now, I wanted to provide a water rate summary for the purpose of just giving you a sense of, you know, big sense of where your water rights are. You have enough water rights right now. I know that your law firm is taking a in-depth look at your water rights continuously and looking at the different factors that play into that. So I would defer to them as far as really fully what you need at any given time. Sometimes it looks like you have a lot of rights, but sometimes those rights can be cut. Sometimes, you you don't have the wet water out of one right you'd like, and you have to come out from another right. And so having a lot of water rights on paper does not always equate to having the wet water that you need. And so it's certainly a good sign that you have, more water rights than you do demand, but that can be a little deceiving. So your eternity will continue to give you advice on that. One of the things to consider is we have, over the course of the study, asked the question of whether you can get water out of the Colorado River in the future. Your current water rights don't provide for that. You would have to do an exchange or find other water rights. I just wanted to highlight that I realize there's a lot of questions in people's mind as to how feasible that is in terms of, you know, even as we speak, the upper and lower basin states are negotiating who gets how much water.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
The state engineer indicates that there's a lot of over appropriation of water rights. And of course, as you're aware, the level of wet water that has come down the river over recent years is quite a bit less than the water rights. So there are a lot of challenges with that. I just think it's a good idea to keep your options open, and don't totally dismiss it yet. So anyway, that's a little bit about the water rights. Okay, let's talk about solutions. These are some of the water source solutions we've come up with. Where are you going to get your water? We asked ourselves, if they grow and they need more water, where is it going to come from? And we made a list of everything we could think of. Of course, there's conservation, that helps, you know, a lot. It's not going to solve the problem, but it'll help. You could have watering restrictions that are maybe more severe than you're doing right now, and that could be a savings. You could drill some new wells. There's one, you know, behind the rocks well down south of the city in San Juan area is a possibility. There, we believe, are some farms that could currently produce water, but that they might be sold to developers, and then that water could come to you as a source, and possibly for those development. This is one idea that received a lot of pushback from the public.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
They weren't sure that it really existed, but I think there's some there, and so that still may happen. Gray water, we talked about that. Using gray water could save demand from your water system. Another idea is you have your wastewater treatment plant effluent. You could manage it differently, get a permit from the state to use that possibly for irrigation. And maybe that would be in exchange of drinking water that's currently being used for irrigation. Mill Creek might have some more water in. As we looked at statistically, we thought there could be maybe some water pulled out of Mill Creek. And then of course, we already talked about the Colorado River. So those are potential sources that we came up with. It's not saying you're gonna use all of them or any of them, but as you start to look for additional water, those are some ideas that we have come up with. Okay, now, a groundwater monitoring system. One of the things that has really come out from the public, and we agree with, is that you have some great aquifers, you have super good water out of some of your aquifers, and you know, there are different aquifers, some of the water's better out of some than others. But there is a lack of data. Now, there are a lot of studies that have been done. A lot of them project based on geology and some of the wells and water quality data that are available.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
That's good, but if you really wanna know if you can get much more water out of those aquifers, you might wanna start doing a study. Currently, you will monitor water levels and water quality in your wells, WSS's wells, in those public water supply wells. This says you will continue to do that, but additionally, you may drill additional wells in key spots and start monitoring them. You may drill some small wells to try to fine tune our understanding of the geology. You might go to some private wells that exist and start monitoring water level and water quality in those. And if you do that over time, you can probably refine the understanding of how much water is really available in those aquifers. So that's something you can think about doing. Likewise, you could continue monitoring spring quality and flows to see if those change. Sometimes when aquifers get stressed, obviously can decline in either the flow rate of a spring, or the level of water in the well. There can also be changes in the chemistry. So if you periodically measure the chemistry and then notice a significant change, that could be a sign of stress on the aquifer as well. So anyway, that's the plan with that. Possible future steps. We've talked about the forty year water rights plan. You can move forward with that, or once again, as I just talked about, the groundwater and surface water monitoring plan. Anyway, that's my presentation. Are there any questions I can address?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Any questions?

Levi Jones, public works:
There's a lot of information.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
I know. I know. Luke, do you have anything since you're our water guy?

Luke Wojciechowski:
I'm mostly just like the some of the other agencies who were wondering, like, when the final report might be.

Michael Black:
So this is we're pretty much at the final report saying that this isn't a master plan. This is an informal informative study that will lead to the forty year plan, which will will come up with projects and things like that, how we're gonna meet our water needs for forty years. What we're looking for is just acknowledgment of the plan that or sorry, of the study, that the study was finished and that it is available in its public document.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Did Gwissah get a copy of it yet, the plan?

Ben Miner, water presentation:
GWSSA has not received a copy yet. Obviously, they need to get one. Now, Luke, we did receive a lot of comments that Ben Musselman passed on to us. We have gone through those and addressed those in the current version of the plan. So that that has been that has been addressed.

Michael Black:
And the and this plan this version that you're seeing here has gone through our legal our water reviewers and staff, and everybody have gone through it as well. And there has been quite a few updates to it. And, yeah, we think we're presenting the final plan here. Right.

Jason Taylor:
Well, the question I have is, so is there, like, the related to this plan, is is there cross I don't know what the right term would be. Cross water use? You know, like, is Moab City's water Moab City's water? Or does this water kind of end up in like a pool and it's being metered? Some of it's going to GWSSA, some of it's coming to Moab City. You know, is it or is it all kind of separated?

Michael Black:
That's a that's a good technical question for Yeah.

Mark Jolissaint:
The way the way I understand your question is, does this evaluate, like, aquifer interactions? Yeah.

Jason Taylor:
Yeah.

Mark Jolissaint:
Does not touch the aquifer at all. This this looks at it from the point of view of what is the infrastructure that we put on the ground to extract the water from a particular location. One one of

Michael Black:
The things we are talking about, though, going forward is groundwater monitoring, which could include things that were that he's talking about. Right?

Mark Jolissaint:
Exactly. Yeah. We start putting in monitoring wells.

Jason Taylor:
We get to see better how all of

Mark Jolissaint:
That stuff interacts. You know?

Luke Wojciechowski:
Okay. Yeah. And, like, uses a lot of, like, mountain runoff and, like, a lot of valley fill aquifer water. Right. And so there is, like, overlap, but I think, like, there's also a lot of, like, use from different water sources amongst, like, the different agencies.

Jason Taylor:
Tell me if I'm right that you in this presentation, you said that we're doing pretty good with water right now.

Mark Jolissaint:
In terms of Having water. Our the the infrastructure. Yeah. This kind of takes for granted all of the aquifer information. You know, were previous studies done on that, so it it it kinda just takes a number as just input and says, we're we're, yeah, we're doing okay on on infrastructure right now.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
We're doing

Michael Black:
Some things. We're meeting daily needs, but we still have some a need to get in the the tank that we're talking about putting in Yeah. Having that extra water storage, especially for fire flows and things like that. And there there definitely are things that we need to do. But as far as creating enough water for the daily need based on

Mark Jolissaint:
The graphs, we are meeting that need. We're we're we're we're definitely on track. Yeah.

Michael Black:
So we

Colin Topper:
But this helps us identify the twenty years in the future where

Joette Langianese, mayor:
We have to start paying attention across.

Michael Black:
Exactly. We know with

Colin Topper:
All of these projects, could take ten

Mark Jolissaint:
Or fifteen years to get things going.

Colin Topper:
That's why this is such a timely, even though we are in a good place now.

Luke Wojciechowski:
You're right. But it doesn't specifically address the yield. Right.

Jason Taylor:
Well, one thing as we were looking at this, was kind of curious about is it showed from 2020 on, you know, and that graph kind of started getting steeper and steeper. However, what I was kind of curious is like, what did the graph look like twenty years prior? You know, because population growth hasn't really we haven't grown a whole lot, you know, in the last twenty years. It's like 1% or something like that, I think. Yeah.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
1%. You

Jason Taylor:
Know? And so, like, has that graph remained flat, and then we're we're projecting that it's gonna start growing more or stuff? Or I I was just kinda curious what what how things look twenty years prior.

Mark Jolissaint:
I, you know, I I think that those, and maybe, you know, Ben might chime in on this too. I I think that those lines are really upper limits. Those are conservative estimates. Yeah. Because like you said, I think it's been fairly flat. We we sort of put into there that, well, what if it does shoot off at a at a, you know, more constant growth rate?

Michael Black:
I'll throw in there also based on current projections, which we've been told by Ben that that's something we do need to look at, see if our projections might be different from population growth going forward.

Michael Black:
I think Katie was gonna chime in.

Katie Jacobsen, water presentation:
Yeah, we used 1%. So that graph that you saw was based on 1% growth. We used 1.1%, up till 2035 and then 1.02 after that. So a little bit faster than slightly slower. The graph increases because percents build over time, but that was the rate that we used.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Wow. Yeah.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Yeah, like Michael said, I think it's worth revisiting. Those values really came out of master plans, the work that they had done before. But, you know, I have a turn of phrase about population projections, and they're wrong a certain percent of the time, and that percent is 100. And so what you really do is you take your best guess with all the information you have, and then every few years, you'll do it over. And I would say based on kind of the publication dates on the plans, it's probably good to look at it again. The thing that's funny about growth is, you know, you have, obviously you have water limitations, and you have some space limitations. So that would push your growth down. But statewide, there's a lot of pressure for more growth as well, right? And that comes in a lot into your planning process. If you have a council and developer interest in more denser, taller buildings, which seems crazy today, but maybe we get there with pressure from growth, or maybe there's a reduction in the state economy, and it slows down for a while. So it's hard to predict the exact growth rate, but I would say that what we have in here is consistent with a lot of what we have seen other places. Now, specific to your question about, you know, what has gone on in years past,I can't, you know, I'm afraid they don't have that in front of me.

Jason Taylor:
I do like how the study is like wet water and not I don't know, is the other term paper water or something? Because I think for so many years, people, you know, calculate things on paper water, you know? And doing wet water is pretty critical.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Right. So what we actually have.

Jason Taylor:
That's what we have, yeah.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Any other questions?

Colin Topper:
One more. So and then those population growth estimates, they also they probably don't account for do they account for Spanish Valley and some of the other well areas that do draw from our same water sources?

Michael Black:
I don't well, go ahead and answer that, Ben. I don't I'm

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Not sure. Yeah, we did look at Spanish Valley. So we got projections from them and from Gwissa.

Michael Black:
But these projections that you showed tonight, thought you said were specific for Moab.

Jason Taylor:
So that is a combination.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Yeah. Right. Let me clarify. What we showed you tonight was specifically for Moab. If you look at the larger report, it does cover the other areas.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
And I do know that countywide, the increase in population is still 1%.

Levi Jones, public works:
Is it?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
So that 1% is countywide. It's not just the city

Colin Topper:
In growth. It must be more in Spanish Valley or in San Juan County, do you think?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Don't know what their theirs is probably less. In fact, I think they well, I don't know about Spanish Valley. San Juan County itself, I think, lost population last year. Yeah.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
And part of the thing with Spanish Valley is that Sitla land has there have been development interests in that Sitla land and some ideas that it would move forward quite aggressively at higher densities. And so I don't know how real that is, you know, so it could stay the same fairly low. If some of that Sitla land were to break loose, who knows? Can

Kaitlin Myers:
You remind us how visitation comes into account on this? Just in terms, you know, we talked briefly about hotels and motels. That was a really big thing a couple of years ago. Have you looked at adjusting your modeling based on actual build out and how some of that has slowed? You know, that's another huge part of demand beyond just our kind of stagnant 1% population growth.

Ben Miner, water presentation:
Yeah. So what we see, and Katie, maybe I'll have you comment in a second. But I mean, what we see is whatever that population growth is, that's the rate at which it grows, but where does it end, right? And so then you get into these assumed densities. Does it go to build out? Does something get rezoned so that build out is more than it used to be? And so as far as the rate, it'll usually follow these kinds of trends. As far as your total population, whether that's in the short term or the long term, but the build out population then really gets back to the density question.

Katie Jacobsen, water presentation:
Yeah, and I'll comment on the visitations. So we assumed that all tourism, hotel visits, restaurant visits, people passing through and filling up water, that that is already captured in your existing water systems usage. And so we grew that at the same rate, the 1%, the same rate that we grew the population. And as you referenced, maybe it's growing a little bit faster right now and maybe it will slow down. But we just included it in the existing saying that whatever proportion of hotels that you have in the city right now, that proportion will remain similar in the future. If the city doubles in size, maybe the hotels double and so on. And we also, as you referenced build out, we looked at our projections and we looked at the amount of buildable land in the city boundaries just to do kind of a gut check and see could these projections fit in your city, whether that's residences or hotels and in broad high level view it can.

Kaitlin Myers:
Right, thanks. Yeah, I think this is the first time this study is connected in my brain that this is about water infrastructure only, basically. And so I think my question is when and how, and is this what the forty year water plan is? Or like, how do we start getting to the conversations about what we're actually gonna do, how growth ties into that? Seems like every time we talk about this study, it's like with all these disclaimers that it's limited, it's a study, and how do we get to that next point of the conversation?

Michael Black:
So I do believe that's the forty year water plan that we start talking about that. But we're also talking about growth restrictions. And in Utah, we're we're limited on what kind of growth restrictions we can put in place. So having looking at our general plan, our zoning ordinances, our annexation boundary, what the things that we have control of, can look at seeing what our, come up with our strategy or our goals for growth and make sure that our general plan and zoning support that. And that could be could be lots of different things based on the policymakers at the time. But obviously, we need to be thinking about the ability to provide water through infrastructure and and the actual water itself and lining that up with our growth policies and goals for the future.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Anything else? No. All right. I think we're good. Thanks you guys. Nice to see you and hear from you again. Thanks Mark. Thanks.

Jason Taylor:
Thank you.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
And then I guess we'll get that study out to GWSSA at some point. Have you guys presented to them yet? Are you planning to present to GWSSA or just give them the study?

Ben Miner, water presentation:
We have not presented to them. Yeah, I'll coordinate with them and see what they want.

Luke Wojciechowski:
We have a meeting next Thursday.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Okay. Well, Luke, maybe you can check-in with them, see if they want one. Okay. Thank you.

Mark Jolissaint:
Thank you, Council.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Thank you. All right. First item of business is the consent agenda approval of the minutes from 06/24/2025. We do not have bills because we did not have Colin here to review the bills, but we will have them in our next agenda and our next meeting, and it will be a lot. Just so you know, you'll have a lot of

Colin Topper:
Work to do looking forward to it.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yeah. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes for 06/24/2025? I'll move to approve the minutes of 06/24/2025 motion by Tawny second.

Colin Topper:
I can second that.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Second by Colin. Any discussion, Tawny? Nope. Colin?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Anybody else? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes five-zero. All right. Next up, we have two items of business tonight. 6.1 is consideration of approval of an appointment to the Planning Commission. You know, this vacancy has been open since the first of the year. We had two applicants. I interviewed both of them. We worked. I talked to Kaya, the Chair of the Planning Commission, as well as Corey to get some feedback from them. Shelly was our choice for the Planning Commission. I think she'll be great. If you guys have any questions for her, she came, sat through this meeting, learned all about water really made a green. That's what I thought. That's what I was hoping that you'd stay for that. But if you have any questions, otherwise I would like to recommend Shalee as our new planning commissioner for the next three years till December 27.

Colin Topper:
Thanks for your willingness. It's a very important role.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
You don't have to come up here. You can come up. Yeah. Last time I was in the seat, it wasn't very fun.

Jason Taylor:
I'll make a motion. I move to approve the appointment of Shalee Bryant to the Moab City Planning Commission for a three year term ending 12/31/2027.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Motion by Jason. I'll second. Second by Kaitlin. Discussion, Jason.

Jason Taylor:
No, thank you.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Kaitlin. I think you'll be great. Thanks for stepping up. Yeah, I think your background and your downtown business is just a great addition to the planning commission team. I don't think we really have anybody from the business community. Really, really great that you applied. Anything else from anybody else? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thanks, Shaylee. Looking forward to having you

Katie Jacobsen, water presentation:
As part of our team.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
We're almost done. Next we're talking about an approval letter of support for medical cannabis pharmacy and Dashnel Koolander is here. It's his organization that's asking for this letter to work with the state. And I don't know, Michael, do Yeah.

Michael Black:
I did wanna say oh, sorry. I wanna say a couple of things really quick. So this the letter that is in your packet is basically a copy of a letter that the city had written previously. I think it was about three or four years ago that that letter was written for the same applicants. I just wanna be clear on this. This is a state process. The state is going through a process of determining which areas are they're going to grant the ability to expand medical cannabis pharmacies, and this is one of the areas that they're looking at. This is not approving for licensing through the city or anything like that. It is basically saying that we we've met with this group. We support the idea of you looking at this area, and we think this group would do a good job, and they've picked a location that we think would work as well. There is a requirement at the state level that there is a a distance that this pharmacy needs to be away from residentially zoned properties. And it's not as the bird flies. It's at as you walk from the door of the pharmacy to the boundary of the nearest residential zone. We do I recommended that we do tell the state that we're okay with a 25% reduction in that, which is four hundred and fifth down to 450 feet from 600. If you agree with that, that'd be great. I I think it's it's totally this kind of use, I think, is a good use for that area. I know someone who lives right next door to this, and I I I can't think of personally that person is me. But, personally, I I I think I think it's a pretty good use for this area. So I recommend that we approve the letter, but I'll let Dashel talk about who they are and what they're doing, their ties to the community,

Dashiel Kulander:
And things like that. Yeah. Thank you very much, Michael, and good evening to the mayor and and then all the council members. You've made my job a lot easier going through all of that, but I'll get a little back to the background about who we are. My name is Dashil Kulander. I'm the CEO and co founder of Bujamed. We are a medical cannabis processor and product manufacturer currently in the state of Utah. We've been participating in the program since its inception in 2020. We are locally owned and operated business. My company was founded by myself, my wife, Brittany King, and my sister, Olivia Koolander, who some of you might know, we grew up in Moab. We both graduated in the early two thousands. Yeah, quite a while ago now. But I just wanna say we've been really overwhelmed with the amount of support that we've received for this project so far, not only from the city, but from the county and from, the community at large as well. You know, I do wanna stress that, kind of what Michael was saying, these are the preliminary stages of this RFP process. They will only be releasing one license 2026, and then another one will be promulgated in 2027.

Dashiel Kulander:
We're going after the one in 2026. We expect that we should hear on the approval by October 9. That's the date that we're looking at potentially moving in. But, yeah, we just wanted to really say thank you for all the consideration. And if we are selected, we really look forward to collaborating more with the city and providing a critical access point for medical canvas card holders in the area. There's about 181 in Grand County and then some in the surrounding counties as well, Emory and Wayne, Wayne Counties. So, with that, I mean, I'm happy to answer any questions. We understand it's a sensitive industry. It's a It's a very complicated industry. Our program here is very unique. You get this with medical cannabis programs. It's a patchwork of different jurisdictions, and every state's trying to figure it out. I will say that Utah has done a fantastic job of protecting the market and looking out for patient interests and consumer protection. So we're very happy to be a part of this program, and we're really hopeful that we get this license and can bring it back to our hometown and offer the care that patients need down here. Questions?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
I

Kaitlin Myers:
Guess one question. I think we all kind of looked at the map, and I know you guys walked the property. What are your thoughts on this kind of distance thing? Do you you think that that's gonna apply with the state or kind of

Dashiel Kulander:
Yeah. So I have already talked with Utah Department of Agriculture and Food. Typically, with these kinds of restrictions, they were put in place earlier on in the program. That's why they amended the statute to allow this waiver of 20%. What they're really concerned about is that we have the consent and the approval of the city and the county. We have also gotten approval from the county for this location as well, just trying to do all of our due diligence. And they had mentioned that, look, if you get this consent letter from the city, we won't have any issue with the distance, which when we measure it, and it kind of depends how you're measuring it, whether you're measuring it on Google Maps or you're walking it and measuring it, but we're about 20 feet under the requirements. So if we request that waiver, as Michael said, it'd put us well within the requirements of statute, and UDAF is prepared to accept that as well.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Great. Awesome. Thanks.

Jason Taylor:
I guess my question was with that walking thing is that, we as a city don't have an issue with it, but, has anyone reached out to those people who live in those houses adjacent to it and ask them if they have issues with it?

Michael Black:
Well, again, we're not at the licensing point. I don't don't think that that would be the way zoning works is we have to we have to allow a legal use in the zone that it fits best in. And this is a c two zone. It's most likely that this would be the zone that we would we would put a use like that in. So and and if a use like that is in that zone, which we have to legally put it in a zone, it's an as of right use. And, technically, no, you don't have to go and ask the neighbors, but I know I you guys are locals. I think we had talked about reaching out to some neighbors and talking to some people, and I I don't think you would be opposed to that, would you?

Dashiel Kulander:
No. Not at all. The one the one building right on right next to so just to be clear, the the the location we're talking about is the old Wabi Sabi location on 160 East On 100 South. So the unit directly adjacent to that front unit, which we would not be in, we are looking at that back unit. There that's a nightly rental. That's actually owned by the same landlord that we will be leasing the property from that we've already executed an LOI on. So that one, we don't have to worry about. In terms of, you know, the other potential neighbors, like, we're we're more than happy. I think maybe you mentioned some names. I think I do know. Yeah. I think I know them quite well and don't think they would have much of an issue, but certainly would go and and have those conversations. So I I'd like

Michael Black:
To also we're talking about the Wabi Sabi location, but I just wanna people listening might think that's a big place for a medical marijuana pharmacy. That building is being split up into, I think, five different units. How big is the unit that you're you're looking at?

Dashiel Kulander:
3,000 square feet. Okay. Mhmm. And the the total building, give or take, I think, is about 6,500, 6,600.

Michael Black:
So it's it's a little bit bigger than I thought, but it's not the entire building.

Jason Taylor:
Right. Okay. Mhmm.

Dashiel Kulander:
Yep. It's the very back back unit where I don't know if you guys remember going in, but the ceilings are a bit taller, a little bit more vaulted in the back there. That's that's the area we're looking at.

Jason Taylor:
Okay. So if the state does approve them, will we need to do a variance or write it into the zoning for C-2?

Michael Black:
The way yes, we should. But if it's they don't have to wait for us to write it in. They can actually come to us and say, we're a legal use. You know, we where are gonna put us? And we would put them in C-2.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
And we would probably have to update the code.

Michael Black:
We would then update the code retroactive.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
For that use because we've never had this used before.

Jason Taylor:
Right. Right.

Michael Black:
So And and we can look into state requirements for what you can put in, attached to this use and things like that. I'm just not familiar with those things, but but it it c two, I feel comfortable. That would be the place to put it.

Dashiel Kulander:
If anybody's curious, that would be Utah statute four forty one a 11 o five that talks about the proximity requirements.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Okay.

Jason Taylor:
Yeah, don't have any questions. I think it's a great use, and I think it would be great to have this in our community.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Anybody else? Questions for Dashiell? All right. I'll ask for a motion to approve the letter of support for medical cannabis pharmacy. Do we want to include anything about the waiver in that? The

Michael Black:
Waiver is included in the letter. So if you approve the letter, you're saying you're okay with me saying city's good with the waiver if the state grants it.

Kaitlin Myers:
I move to approve the proposed letter of support for a medical cannabis pharmacy in Moab.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Second. Alright, we have a motion by Kaitlin, second by Luke. Discussion, Kaitlin. I just want to

Kaitlin Myers:
Say thank you. I can imagine this has been complicated and really challenging to navigate through. I think this is a huge need in our community, in our region, so thanks for pushing through. I'm really excited to support this.

Dashiel Kulander:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. As Michael mentioned, we've been trying for some years now. In 2021, that new fifteenth pharmacy ended up going to Price, which is the closest one for current patients, but the Southeastern Region Of Utah is definitely underserved. So we're doing our best to get it down here.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Anybody else? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Five zero. All right. Good luck. Keep us posted.

Dashiel Kulander:
Okay. Thank you so much.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Okay. That's the end of our general business, and now we move on to our updates and reports, and we'll start with Michael with the city manager update.

Michael Black:
Real quick report for you. I just wanted to update you on conversations that I've been having with the county administrator regarding dispatch and our victims' advocates. We, just for refresher, the county provides dispatch services for the county and all of the different agencies within the county, and the city provides victim advocate for the county, Grand County Attorney's Office, Children's Justice Center, and our police department. And so we've been talking about kinda where the split should be, things like that. As you are aware, we've been talking about dispatch and payments and things like that for a couple of years. I think we're getting close to thought we were really close, and I think we are close to getting to a a decision on that, and I'll be bringing that, hopefully, a recommendation to you soon. Fingers crossed.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Is that it?

Michael Black:
That's not it. On that, that's it. Okay. Two other things just really quick. The bulb outs on Main Street on 100 North and Center Street will be going in, the August. They're we're waiting until then because there's there's actually gonna be a movie shot on on Main Street between 100 North and 100 South coming up here in a few weeks. It's not a secret as far as I know.

Michael Black:
The street's gonna be closed just so you know. UDOT's been working with us on that. They've been great. And the film crew has been the site crew, all that stuff been working with us. Police department's gonna provide services for that, which the the production is paying for, which is great. And, so it's been it's been a pretty good process so far. Think all I think that we all agree. So back to the bulb outs, those will be installed.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yeah. Yeah. Is there an issue with the per with our permitting fee? Didn't they?

Michael Black:
Yeah. So interestingly, the production company, Indiga, came to me last week and said, your fees are too low for permitting, and we wanna give you more money than what is required in addition to what they're not counting, what they're paying for police department services.

Colin Topper:
So

Michael Black:
I don't know how much they're gonna give. I asked if it was close to a million dollars. They said no. But

Joette Langianese, mayor:
But they said They could afford it.

Michael Black:
Yeah. But they they did say they wanted to give us more, and Viga suggested that she provides a recommendation on what our what our fees should be for filming in the city. So right now, it's a $150. No.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
It's like it should be. No.

Michael Black:
And I think what they're they're paying a lot more than that for the services of the police department.

Jason Taylor:
A lot more.

Michael Black:
Okay. So they were they've they've been really good to work with, and, they are gonna give us a little extra money too. So that so that's that. So the bulb outs will be on First North And Center Street on the four corners, and we're looking forward to seeing how that affects that physical change to the street, affects pedestrian moving down there and hopefully speeds, things like that, and just traffic movements altogether. If it if it, is positive and we're all thinking it's a great idea, UDOT we'll be talking to UDOT about making that permanent and, getting those physical changes to the street, done in the future at some point. Now and related to that, the last thing related that, I'm going to send you a recent study that was done on speeds in Moab in December in the downtown, just the downtown area that counted traffic plus speeds over a multiple day periods in December at several locations. And then again in May at several locations, the same locations, so that you can see what those are. Not too surprising unless you actually, I'll just say, mainly, speeds are right around the speed limit. And so at sometimes they're well below in different places, like in front of the Moab Information Center and on the next block north between center and first, speeds are actually lower than the speed limit in May, over the average speed over a three day period.

Michael Black:
In, in December, they're a little bit higher, but not not quite above the speed limit until you get farther south. And and when you get to the area where the intersection density is greater, is the distance between intersections becomes greater and the distance between traffic control signals becomes greater, that's where we see speeds, pick up, which I think is a really good argument for continuing to look into a traffic control light at Uranium. And that was one of the areas that they measured, and you'll be able to see that. I'll send that to you. And and if you have questions, I'll be happy to answer those. And then we are meeting with UDOT next week to talk about just crosswalks and pedestrians and Main Street in general. So if you have questions after I send this to you, get them back to me, we'll see if we can get them answered. That was it.

Jason Taylor:
Great. I got a question for you. There's been a few, streetlights on Main Streets that have been hit by semis or other vehicles. Is there a plan or is it

Michael Black:
On anyone's list to to replace those? Yes. It definitely is. And so there's a process that we go through with that depending on who owns this the streetlight, the lamp, whatever, and we get on a replacement schedule. I I couldn't tell you, like, specifically what the schedule is for each of those, but I can look into that. But definitely, we do have staff who report those things, then we get those reported to the agency that owns them, and they get on a schedule for replacement.

Colin Topper:
And then, Michael, you were gonna share with us sales latest sales tax. Are you prepared to do that, or do you wanna send

Michael Black:
I I don't have the exact numbers with me right now, but sales tax for the month of April was a little bit lower than what we had expected, but still within that acceptable range that we talked about, which is, like, one to two points up or down. And it was down just a little bit from the the year previous, but the year previous was up quite a bit from the year before that. So it's it's just it's really interesting the way that it goes. And then we also had one strange anomaly where we had resort community taxes were somehow higher that month, but TRT and sales tax and everything was just a little bit lower. We, based on what we're seeing, we're still going to meet what our projections were for all of our taxes as far as revenue goes. We're not gonna be in a deficit by any means. We'll we'll exceed what we have in the budget for our for all of those taxes. But, we were kinda hoping for another 16% increase month over month, but but we didn't quite see that in April. So we look forward to May and June and see how those go, but but we're we're we're looking really good Great. As far as being level. I don't think we're gonna see any 25% growth years anytime soon like we did right after COVID. But but, again, like I've been saying, we've we've been after that big growth, those two years, we're staying steady. We're not dropping back off. We're still staying nice and steady on that plateau.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Anything else? Nope. Great. Thank you. All right. Council reports, who wants to start? You, Colin. I didn't say anything.

Colin Topper:
I'll be quick, I don't have much because I survived Disneyland last week.

Colin Topper:
Quite an accomplishment.

Colin Topper:
And yeah. So I got back late last night and got to attend a trail mix meeting. The the interesting points, I know this is outside of the city limits, but the Utahraptor State Park got absolutely hammered by that last storm. Really? Back north of town.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
When was that? Was that?

Colin Topper:
Was Midweek last week. It sounds like a lot of the trail systems north of town got Yeah, hammered they were hammered. And even that wash, is that Mary Jane Wash that comes past the Sand That thing, I mean, driving in last night, was obvious in their huge lake below the Sand Hill. Wow. But they realized, unfortunately, that almost all of their storm water infrastructure is grossly underestimated, and so they had water going places they did not want it going. Wow. A lot of damage to campgrounds and other things. So, they're working on that. And then another comment came up. And so hopefully, I'll be able to stop bringing these comments up in my reports because Tromex has found a active transportation representative. And so, Mike, I'll be looking for some direction for you who to hook them up with staff wise so they can bring some information to. But I did comment, did come up again about Mill Creek Parkway, especially by the bowling alley where it's wonderful that the street sweeper has been out there sweeping the auto lanes, but just pushing it all into bike lanes. Okay. So, yeah, do you want me to follow-up with anything like that?

Michael Black:
No, I'll take care of that. Okay. Yeah.

Colin Topper:
Okay. Thank you. Yeah. And that's it for me.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Thank you. Luke.

Luke Wojciechowski:
I don't have much participation, just in the parade, which is a great time. It's kind of sad that it took my last year in council to actually be able to attend and participate, but I'm glad that I had the opportunity. It's always great seeing the community come out and just really appreciate everybody involved, all the different agencies, in terms of setting it up and kind of having it run as smoothly as it did. That's it? Yeah, all my stuff is coming up over the next-

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Oh, ok

ay.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Great. Thanks, Luke.

Jason Taylor:
Jason. I was able to participate in the parade as well. Apologize for meeting last meeting.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
We Had a rough time.

Jason Taylor:
My son, which was good. I had a pretty slow week. I'm participating in the parade, which was a blast. Had a really lot of fun with that. It was good seeing the community turn out for that. There's a lot of people and it was cool. I like, I actually like how it's on the back road and it worked out really well. And Grant County, kudos to Grant County, the Moab Police Department for, you know, doing the traffic control for that. That's a huge in Moab City, you know, all their employees that helping out with it. I think the fair was great. It's awesome to see what Angela Book and OSTA did with that. Her staff should be really commended for putting on a great Grand County Fair.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yeah. Remember, we haven't had a fair. This is like the second, third year of Before a that, we hadn't had a fair for fifteen years. So to get that up and

Jason Taylor:
Running It a like that, it's really good job. I attended an airport board meeting yesterday, and, you know, I had to step out for a little bit on that meeting to deal with some work things, but they're still working on some great stuff out there. I'm pretty excited about the new airport director. And Steve Gleason, I think he's going to do a great job, which I kind of brought up before they hired him from he kind of got in Provo Airport off the ground. We did add two kind of non voting members to represent San Juan and Emery Counties, which is Lori Vaughn and Ted Curtis, you know, will be representing. And it would be good to have people who, you know, getting some input from the, you know, the area around here, you know, to see how we can better support them with our report as well. So, And then today I attended EMS, Grand Canyon EMS Special Service District Board meeting. Had kind of an emergency or a special meeting to discuss. The board discussed going to the voters or exploring, working with Grand County the Grand County Healthcare Special Services report, as well as Moab Valley Fire to implement another half percent tax, which would bring it to a 1% tax, which would be split between not split, but in different percentages between those three agencies. And the board voted unanimously to start working towards that and to see what needed to be done and to see if it was a viable option with Grand County Commission and those other boards to put that on the ballot in November. So more to come. That's going to be a fast moving thing if it does happen. And we'll see where it goes. But at Grand County, or about EMS, you know, is really trying to figure out how to become solvent and, and how to meet their financial needs. So, and that's, all I have. Donnie?

Tawny Knutson-Boyd:
Mine's short, too. The only meeting I attended was an interim museum board meeting. We elected a new president of our board, Jeanette Copel, and I think it took us a whole thirty minutes. That's it. Great, Kaitlin.

Kaitlin Myers:
I had a few things. I was also in the fourth of July parade. I love parades.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
That wasn't obvious at all.

Kaitlin Myers:
But yeah, I mean, it's just really fun. Think, yeah, agree the county does a great job hosting the fair. I think it's always a reason for me to stay in town instead of leave, to be able to go to the fair and watch the fireworks and go to the rodeo and do all those things. So loved that. Great weekend. Couple weeks ago, I was pleased to attend the the annual banquet for the police department. I think they are doing an amazing job as demonstrated by the report. I think all of the training and emphasis on excellence really shows in the way they interact with the community. So just really appreciate everything you guys do. After that, I also attended the first free concert at Swanny Park, which is also always a fabulous time. Meeting wise, yesterday I attended Utah Community Renewable Energy Agency board meeting. They're still moving forward with the Public Utility Commission, kind of going back and forth. The commission has issued a scheduling order hearing for December 16. So they're kind of going back and forth still between this board and Rocky Mountain Power presenting testimony or some negotiating, you know, Rocky Mountain Power putting out their testimony. One of the bigger things that I took away with that is Rocky Mountain Power is trying to push that this program needs to pre raise up to $5,000,000, aka five years of administrative costs, before they can roll out this program.

Kaitlin Myers:
So it seems like there's still some negotiation and discovery requests, and they're still very much embroiled in that. And then I also attended a couple weeks ago, League of Cities and Towns LPC state strategic housing plan meeting, talking through kind of the next phase of the plan is to talk about metrics, how we're gonna be tracking the things that we're supposed to be doing in this plan, talking about how statewide we can do that reporting, what the kind of approaches would be, what's missing in order to provide accurate reporting. We talked about some considerations for detached ADUs, and talked a lot, little bit about some potential next steps for HB 37, which right now authorizes municipalities to create a density bonus program. So if they choose, it sounds like looking to next year, they're potentially considering amending that so that it's either mandated that municipalities create density bonuses and what that looks like, or if the state is creating their own statewide density bonus program. More to come, but definitely a big push on increased density and growth as we talk about for water. That is it for me. Thank you. Thanks.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
For me, a lot of the same things was in the fourth of July parade. It was a blast. I just love it. A lot of candy was thrown out. A lot of candy was left on the road. Apparently. Is it still there? It might be. Okay. I'll take a little walk. It's probably all melted, but I know, went to the police department banquet. That was always a lot of fun and thanks for including us in that. It's great to see you guys all decked out in your finest. It's, you know, you always look so good. And then I also had a meeting, not with the EMS board, but with Andy Smith and their chair and with Mel and myself to talk about this potential tax initiative on the ballot this year is, and I did that on behalf of the Canyonlands Healthcare Special Service District. We just heard about it last week. As Jason mentioned, it is kind of moving very quickly. I know that the district has some real concerns because, we really don't know what's going to happen with Medicaid in terms of our care center and our hospital. And so we feel, a little bit rushed in all this without being able to think through it very thoughtfully. But we certainly don't want to stand in the way and we want to help support EMS, but a lot of work needs to be done. We're having a special meeting on the seventeenth to talk about it.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
And then the last thing that I did, which was really, it was kind of an impromptu thing. I had a meeting with, Bailey Hedgley, the mayor of Monticello at USU. And while I was there, I met with I can't remember exactly what his position is, but he's like the assistant assistant president, I think, something along those lines to talk about what's happening up at USU. While I was there, they were happy. They happened to have a ESL, English as a second language graduation going on. And there's about 30 to 40 graduates. And so that's run by Lytisha Bentley. And they asked me to come in if I'd be willing to congratulate them and make a little talk. I can't tell you it was very special to me because we have such a diverse community. I mean, I was so impressed with how many folks up there that want to get learn English as their second language. They were very, very pleased that the city came to help, you know, embrace them and congratulate them for their hard work to learn how to speak English. They read, you know, they all had a piece that they read in English, which was great. Then I was, got my picture taken by every person there, which was really cool. It was a very special moment for me and I think it was very special to them. One of the things I learned, Tawny is our representative on the USU advisory board and they had a really strange system on how to get on that board.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
It's like I had to appoint and then it had to go to the president and then the president had to appoint. Well, changed all that And so now it's just, we make the recommendation and they accept that recommendation. So, Tani is going be participating as our representative. It's a quarterly meeting and looking forward to getting some reports. I also asked them to come and give a presentation to us in the next meeting, couple of meetings or so, because there's a lot going up at USU and I think it's important for us to stay involved with what they're doing. And the last question I have for you guys is, we've got a meeting coming up July 22 and a meeting coming up on August 12. We were planning to cancel the August 12 meeting. I think I talked to you guys about that. I'm going to be out of town that week and then on the twenty second. Michael's going to be out of town. So I just kind of wanted to throw it out there. Would your preference be because we can't cancel two meetings. They're probably going be light agendas. So, initially we were thinking August 12, but there's also the option to do it next meeting. Do you guys have any preference of meetings that you would prefer to not have?

Michael Black:
No. No Pioneer Day plans?

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Pioneer Day? Two days later. I'm making a pie.

Michael Black:
Yeah, you are.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Well, I'll bring the beer too. Okay. Well, we'll figure that out. Right now we're planning August 12. Probably we'll stick to that and just have our meeting on the twenty second and Michael won't be there and, you know, we'll run the show without him, I guess. We've done it before. What's that? We've done it before. No, we have done it before.

Colin Topper:
Yeah.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
So, all right. So what's that? Yeah, no, I don't. So I think to be honest, somewhere that would be hard

Michael Black:
To I mean, beer.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
Yeah. Right. Anyway, so we'll have our meeting next time and then we'll cancel the meeting on the twelfth, unless there's some sort of emergency we have to do. So we'll just meet. We'll meet next next in two weeks and that's it for me. And we don't have a closed session. Nope. So I'll ask to adjourn. Motion to adjourn.

Colin Topper:
Second.

Joette Langianese, mayor:
All

Dashiel Kulander:
Right. Thank

Joette Langianese, mayor:
You.

Levi Jones, public works:
What's that?

Michael Black:
What number are you doing? Gates. Yeah. Gates.