01/19/2016 - Work Session - Minutes (2) MINUTES OF THE SALT LAKE CITY COUNCIL ANNUAL RETREAT/WORKSHOP
TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 2016
The City Council met in an Annual Retreat/Workshop on Tuesday, January
19, 2016, at 10 : 15 a.m. at the Utah Opera Production Studios Learning
Room, 336 North 400 West, Salt Lake City.
In Attendance: Council Members James Rogers, Stan Penfold, Lisa Adams,
Andrew Johnston, Derek Kitchen, Charlie Luke, and Erin Mendenhall .
Also In Attendance: Cindy Gust-Jenson, Council Executive Director;
David Litvack, Mayor' s Deputy Chief of Staff; Jennifer Bruno, Council
Deputy Director; Russell Weeks, Council Senior Policy Analyst; Jan
Aramaki, Council Community Facilitator; Sean Murphy, Council Policy
Analyst; Dan Weist, Council Communication Director; Allison Rowland,
Council Policy Analyst; Lehua Weaver, Council Associate Deputy
Director; Amber McClellan, Council Constituent Liaison; Nick Tarbet,
Council Senior Public Policy Analyst; Becky Dangerfield, Council Staff
Assistant; Libby Stockstill, Council Constituent Liaison; Brian
Fullmer, Council Constituent Liaison; Ben Luedtke, Council Constituent
Liaison; Kira Luke, Council Staff Assistant; Priscilla Tuuao, Council
Staff Assistant; Lindsey Mayer, Council Staff Assistant; Holly Mullen,
Council Communications Deputy Director; Margaret Plane, City Attorney;
Gina Chamness, Finance Director; Nichol Bourdeaux, Finance Legislative
Analyst; Jeff Bedard, Police Officer; and Cindi Mansell, City
Recorder.
Others Present: Neil Lindberg, Council Legal Advisor; and Brian
Wilkinson, Outside Consultant.
The meeting was called to order at 10 : 15 a.m. View Agendas
1 . 10:15:32AM Welcome & Introductions.
Councilmember Rogers welcomed those present and outlined the
Council Retreat/Workshop agenda details .
2 . 10:17:40AM Selecting Projects .
Councilmember Rogers outlined Council Member Groupings to
discuss/identify individual priority projects for the upcoming year.
He said the purpose was to exchange information within the groups
about projects of interest and identify up to three projects per
Council Member. The Council then broke into the individual groups as
outlined and conducted discussions .
10:59:13AM The Council gathered back into the full group and project
presentation sharing took place . The results were as follows :
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Councilmember Johnston:
• Homelessness (means to effect housing and single women/men' s
shelters as a primary outcome) ; and
• Complete implementation of AGILE project software for Council
staff to assist in accelerating other projects .
Councilmember Mendenhall :
• Affordable housing elements (homeless; Accessory Dwelling
Units; Transit Oriented Development; zoning and impact fees;
preservation of existing affordable housing; demolition
ordinance) ; and
• Piloting Critical Communities Project (view handout) .
Councilmember Adams :
• Streets/curb/gutter (concept of how to develop sustainable and
long-term additional funding for needs beyond Capital
Improvements Plan) ; and
• Housing (deliberate strategy to switch from homelessness to
housing; including project affordability; how it relates to
homeless; variety of available tools) .
Councilmember Penfold:
• Affordable housing (new tools; consider risk population and not
just existing homeless population; collaborate with the State
and County; single and multi-family homes; consideration of
geography and demographics) ;
• Homelessness/fit into the affordable housing link; and
• Economic development or strategic opportunities to bring
business into the community (aggressive recruitment/leverage
Google fiber/selling factors) .
Councilmember Kitchen:
• Affordable housing (zoning/homeless considerations) ; and
• Economic development/small business development (consideration
should be given to incubator kitchen concepts or other small
business loans via just big business) .
Councilmember Rogers :
• Homelessness;
• Economic development (node development; continuing to develop
small/walk able neighborhoods; building on Enterprise SLC;
streamlining the building permit process and application) ; and
• Banning the use of plastic bags and following this up within
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the business recycling ordinance.
Councilmember Luke :
• Streets, sidewalks, gutters (ways to improve and extend the
life of neighborhood infrastructure such as permeable
concrete) ;
• Big picture economic development; and
• Maintaining focus on protecting mountain and other water with
emphasis on secondary water ways .
11:31:52AM Round "1" of Voting & Narrowing Down.
Each Council Member then selected their top five projects (with
vote totals) and the top six projects identified were:
• Affordable housing (7)
• Economic development (7)
• Homelessness (6)
• Streets, sidewalks, gutters (5)
• Plastic bag ban (5)
• Critical communities (3)
• Agile Software Implementation (2)
• Water (1)
The Agile Software implementation and water items were eliminated
from further discussion at this time .
12:08:43 PM Ms . Weaver reviewed the priority projects and vote
numbers . Discussion followed regarding beginning a new sheet for each
project, tracking what it would be, tools, stakeholders, and
definition of what success could look like to assist in the detailed
scoping at the February 2, 2016 Work Session meeting.
12:10:07PM Ms . Bruno discussed affordable housing and homelessness
and a potential combination to address both; in terms of assisting
Staff to scope out and deliver which projects were in which
categories . Councilmember Penfold suggested some items would be multi-
year and not just annual issues or goals .
12:15:22 PM Councilmember Penfold addressed affordable housing,
relying on the State and County, ways to incentivize developers, and
creating housing opportunities . Council consensus was to agree to
remove the focus on homelessness at this time. Councilmember Penfold
suggested dissecting the homeless population at a level never done
before; he said much related to finding immediate housing for distinct
populations such as families, women, working men, or youth. He said
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the reality was they show up at the shelter because they lose their
housing and there was not a mechanism to allow them to enter
affordable housing prior to becoming homeless . He suggested taking
those same targeted populations and seeing what housing services are
provided for those City populations . Discussion followed regarding
what the City could do to ensure that an affordability component was
in future housing stock development and the umbrella to move forward
with homelessness . It was felt that other entities may identify what
the demographics look like, but it was up to Salt Lake City to move in
the direction to ensure housing stock was available and be able to
address emergency shelters .
12:19:07PM Councilmember Adams suggested the concept of opening up
Salt Lake City owned buildings to get people off the streets and
inquired about policy in this regard. Discussion followed regarding
potential legal ramifications involving lack of water, restroom
facilities, heating, fire suppression, etc. Councilmember Adams said
she would like an appropriate response as to methodology in this
regard. Councilmember Penfold said he felt solutions such as storage
for personal belongings or exploring those types of options as
temporary solutions to focus long-term energy and resources were
missing. Ms . Gust-Jenson said the Council had not yet received the
Homeless Task Force Report which may identify items that could be
Council remedied with ordinance change, funding, grant approvals, etc.
12:26:31 PM Councilmember Penfold suggested consideration of
legislative funding and having the State mandate allocation. He said
he felt this issue would involve a serious amount of zoning work.
Councilmember Johnston said zoning and services could mitigate the
immediate social impacts; however, the Council could be working on
other tangibles now. Councilmember Kitchen agreed and said items such
as camping ordinance, closing the Rio Grande Street, or ideas to
immediately mitigate the issue would be positive. Councilmember Luke
said if Salt Lake City focused on zoning and broke up shelters into
several mini-shelters, other cities would need the same focus . He said
he liked the County' s attempt for disbursement but preferred to narrow
the scope for what the current shelter did. Councilmember Penfold said
he preferred the idea of taking less-challenging populations first
that did not have require zoning modification to construct affordable
housing in neighborhoods (just funding) . He said he felt wrap-around
services were key and the City or County alone did not have resources .
12:40:36 PM A unanimous Straw Poll was conducted to narrow down the
priority to Affordable Housing and combine it with the subset of
Homelessness.
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12:43:04PM Councilmember Penfold addressed the concept of economic
development, alignment with the City' s strategic goals, identifying
current situations and where there might be gaps . He inquired if there
were areas that had already been established and how the City wanted
to attract similar business . Councilmember Rogers said that without an
Economic Development Master Plan it would be like throwing things
against a wall . Councilmember Luke said perhaps this document would
not be entitled "Economic Development Master Plan" but would be more
of a "strategic" type of document that could be binding with the
ability for change.
12:44:53PM Ms . Gust-Jenson questioned the concept of "binding", with
Councilmember Rogers' s suggesting use of current Master Plans .
Discussion followed regarding manufacturing zones, branding,
consistency, flexibility, yet not having to change to cater to every
scenario. The Council discussed specific recommendations and groups
and determined the need for vision and to see a big piece of branding
campaign and dialogue with new Administration as well .
12:50:15 PM The suggestion was offered to consider resources for
every available partnership that could possibly happen (public/private
model SLC specific to work with educational/economic entities and
advocate and recruit for SLC) . Discussion followed regarding
identification of gaps within current code, policy, branding
assistance, business node component, pooling of community resources,
micro-loans or other sorts of business funding options . Councilmember
Mendenhall said she wanted to preserve small business local
opportunities in nodes to encourage popularity and trending to be
located with the same small feeling in those character areas .
Councilmember Luke discussed nodes that had fallen apart; he suggested
revitalization of areas that were stuck or to have the City own the
building and offer leasing.
1:16:10PM The Council reviewed the priority of streets and how to
fund projects . Mr. Lindburg discussed a concept used in a number of
jurisdictions throughout the country. He explained it involved a
transportation utility fee (not a tax) that provided a dedicated
amount of money that could go to streets . He said every parcel of
property in the City would be given a land use code; based on the
number of trips generated from a particular number of properties each
were given a classification and rate. He said Provo City adopted and
were generating a fairly large amount of money for this relatively
modest fee. He said they conducted public outreach prior to adoption
and utilized this straightforward and transparent dedicated revenue
source (maintenance-based fee versus capital improvement) that was
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billed along with their utility billing. The Council discussed this
type of program which already had a model, process, and success .
1:34:30 PM Councilmember Mendenhall discussed the Critical
Communities Project in that the City was aware of indicators that
created negative downtown in quality of life for a neighborhood and
need to determine how to monitor. She discussed the ComStat Crime
Database and said crime was one of the indicators and there was need
to holistically measure indicators that create pressure on a
community; these could even be defined by stakeholders . She said both
former Community & Economic Development Director Love and Housing and
Neighborhood Development Manager Mike Akerlow had expressed interest
in this position. Inquiry was raised as to why not through
Redevelopment Area, with Councilmember Mendenhall stating she would
hate to have to wait for a community to address these types of
indicators or other taxing entities to have to approve this type of
special area and would prefer to be more reactive or dynamic than an
RDA area would allow.
Councilmember Kitchen said he would like to see the City do more
relative to data compilation, measurement, and determining responses .
He said each critical community may have differing sets of data and he
would love to support this innovative pilot project. Councilmember
Mendenhall explained this would not be new data and not inventing the
wheel, but appointing a position to create a holistic vision of how
the data exists and may be helpful .
Councilmember Penfold said if this information was already
created and gathered, were there benchmarks of existing levels at this
point or how would the Council develop priorities from when they start
monitoring. Officer Bedard explained how the Police Department
collected and categorized data to identify those biggest areas for
that period of time and authenticate resources accordingly. He said
he did not believe rent available or housing vouchers were being
tracked or measured the same, but they were collecting that data. Ms .
Gust-Jenson suggested contacting the University of Utah to use as a
tool for data gathering.
Additional discussion followed regarding a realistic conversation
relative to quality of life, needing to bring all entities to the
table, not necessarily being geared toward addressing hot spots versus
quality of life, and the request to convene stakeholders or division
heads within the Police Department. Discussion followed regarding who
decided what was a critical community and did the Council have a say.
Councilmember Johnston suggested a method to be able to show a
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reaction to a need.
Councilmember Rogers addressed the concept of banning plastic
bags . He said work in this regard had already been conducted, and the
concept could possibly be utilized as filler and did not need to be
labeled as priority for this year.
2:00:00 PM Round "2" of Voting.
The projects determined as the 2016 Council' s Priority Projects
were :
• Affordable Housing/Homelessness (6)
• Streets (6)
• Economic Development (5)
• Critical Communities (4)
2:07:29 PM Ms . Weaver said Staff would return with a follow-up
briefing; including either detailed work plans or a balancing list of
questions for Council direction or implementation options . She said
there was also the need to conduct a briefing relative to 2015
Carryover and other projects .
The meeting adjourned at 2 : 24 p.m.
COUNCIL CHAIR
CITY RECORDER
This document is not intended to serve as a full transcript as
additional discussion may have been held; please refer to the audio
for the entire content .
This document along with the digital recording constitute the
official minutes of the City Council Retreat Workshop meeting held
January 19, 2016 .
clm
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