THE STATE OF UTAH
COUNTY OF SEVIER
CITY OF RICHFIELD
COUNTY OF SEVIER
CITY OF RICHFIELD
At the City Council
In and For Said City
April 9, 2019
In and For Said City
April 9, 2019
Minutes of the Richfield City Council meeting held on Tuesday, April 9, 2019
at 7:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers of the Richfield City office building located at 75 East Center, Richfield, Utah. Mayor Pro-tem Kevin Arrington presiding.
at 7:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers of the Richfield City office building located at 75 East Center, Richfield, Utah. Mayor Pro-tem Kevin Arrington presiding.
1. OPENING REMARKS
2. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
3. ROLL CALL
4. MINUTES APPROVED
5. EXPENDITURES APPROVED
6. OTHER BUSINESS
7. EXECUTIVE SESSION
8. MEETING ADJOURNED
2. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
3. ROLL CALL
4. MINUTES APPROVED
5. EXPENDITURES APPROVED
6. OTHER BUSINESS
7. EXECUTIVE SESSION
8. MEETING ADJOURNED
1. OPENING REMARKS were offered by Councilmember Arrington.
2. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE was led by Councilmember Barnett.
3. ROLL CALL. Present: Kevin Arrington, Bryan Burrows, Richard Barnett, Kathy Christensen, Connie Nielson, Mike Langston, and Michele Jolley. Excused: Mayor David Ogden, Matt Creamer.
4. MINUTES APPROVED. The Council reviewed the minutes of the meeting held March 26, 2019. Motion: Approve the minutes of the meeting held March 26, 2019, Action: Approved, Moved by Connie Nielson, Seconded by Kathy Christensen. Vote: Motion carried by unanimous roll call vote (summary: Yea = 5). Yea: Kevin Arrington, Bryan Burrows, Richard Barnett, Kathy Christensen, Connie Nielson.
5. EXPENDITURES. The Council reviewed the March 2019 Warrant Register and Cash Disbursement Journal. Motion: Approve the March 2019 Warrant Register and Cash Disbursement Journal, Action: Approved, Moved by Kathy Christensen, Seconded by Richard Barnett. Vote: Motion carried by unanimous roll call vote (summary: Yea = 5). Yea: Kevin Arrington, Bryan Burrows, Richard Barnett, Kathy Christensen, Connie Nielson.
6. SUICIDE PREVENTION WALK DISCUSSED. Tracy Balch has committed to chair the Suicide Prevention Walk for this year. She has been involved with the School District and a coalition for prevention and other things trying to get mental health awareness out. Not having done this before, she is not sure what she needed to ask the Council for at this point. She asked if the Council had helped with this event in the past. Mrs. Balch noted that a donation would not have to be monetary; it could be water or some other type. She indicated that she will come back once she has a committee in place. She has scheduled the Lion’s Park for September 7 at 9 a.m. Mrs. Balch stated that she may need some help from the police force because she is thinking that some of the routes may need to be blocked off. It is actually called the Central Utah Walk and it involves Wayne County, Paiute County and Sanpete County.
Councilmember Christensen stated that she is glad that Mrs. Balch is going to do this. She said that the Lion’s Club has helped before and Mrs. Balch said that they have helped by passing out water along the route and they would be willing to help again. Councilmember Nielson asked if the City has donated to this event before. Mr. Langston stated that the City has not been involved before. Councilmember Nielson asked Mrs. Balch if she would come back to the Council when she has a plan. Mrs. Balch said that she would.
7. MODIFIED INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN FOR NEW CITY PARK PROJECT. Ryan Savage presented a revised plan for the parking around the new park. He indicated that it added an additional 76 parking spaces. There will have to be some additional handicap parking which will reduce the number of space slightly. The total cost was increased by $50,000. Councilmember Christensen remembered that the Nielsons did not want the park to have ball fields. Bb felt that if things are installed for younger people, then it will get used.
8. ORDINANCE 2019-2 REZONING THE PROPERTY LOCATED AT 1080 SOUTH HWY 118 APPROVED. The Council reviewed the request to rezone the property located at 1080 South Hwy 118 from commercial shopping (CS) to general commercial (CG). Mr. Ling was present and indicated that he felt that the project his company is proposing would be a great addition to the community. Councilmember Burrows stated that he had talked to several of the business owners in the area and they are not thrilled about this project. He has concerns about the mobile units and the intrusion that is going to put across that parking lot. He worries about what they are going to look like aesthetically and asked if they are going to be a permanent thing.
Mr. Ling stated that they call the units a portable; however, they will be making them a permanent structure. They are not laid on a foundation, but built with their own internal floors and they sit on the asphalt. They are connected together and once they are all placed, they sheet all of it in a continuous run. Once it is completed, it will look much like an existing building.
Councilmember Christensen stated that she was concerned about the storage units being in the area that would block the line of site of the other businesses. Councilmember Barnett stated that he put a ruler to the drawing Mr. Ling gave the Council and found that it would not affect the line of site.
Mr. Lings stated that they do not intend to impede into the traffic areas. He also noted that the height of the units would only be 71/2 to 8 feet high. Councilmember Burrows stated that we do not allow metal buildings in our industrial park and we are going to allow metal storage units in the very front of it? Has that been talked about at all? It has not been discussed yet because the project has not been submitted for approval yet. The discussion so far has just been about rezoning the property with a proposed plan. Councilmember Arrington understood that if the zone is changed then they can move forward with a plan that would go to the Planning Commission and then to the City Council for final approval. Mr. Ling is to listen to what the community’s needs are and what the desires are and take that back. He will be able to reach some and not others and then they will figure out where the happy medium is. Mr. Ling also stated that they could put some sort of a textured product on the end of the building and they can create a different style of appearance. Councilmember Burrows recalled that he just heard about this at the last meeting, so he was just trying to get his head around it. He asked Mr. Ling why they chose Richfield.
Mr. Ling stated that they could move forward without this location by having independent dealers and their goal is to have independent dealers even after they were to build this out. They always look years into the future and they know for sure that they have a difficult time managing the inventory and the demand of their inventory in this community and it has been an on-going challenge for as long as they can remember. Independent dealers just go along with whatever they are given, so they have limited ability to control rates sometimes, how they communicate with the customer, how they say yes, and the number of transactions they can do; so it is hard to manage the inventory. When they are employees, they have strict guidelines on how they manage the parking lots, display, advertising, how they answer the phone, how they sell; so this would be a fix to fix something they have not been able to fix with independent dealers for 20 years.
Councilmember Burrows talked with Chris Boyter who is an independent dealer for UHaul and he made about $18,000 last year. Mr. Ling said that they know the market is much bigger than that, buy they have not been able to capitalize on it. Their intention is not to see Mr. Boyter go away if he chooses to continue to be a dealer.
Councilmember Barnett stated that he does not see any reason not to rezone this property from commercial shopping to general commercial. He thought with all the other general commercial properties that are around there and whether these guys come in or not; he thought the property should be rezoned. He does not have a problem with the project that is being proposed, but as far as what is before the Council tonight, the request to rezone, he felt that it was a good idea.
Councilmember Nielson would like to see the building full. She has some concerns with the storage unit and she was going to try and talk Mr. Ling into pulling them back to the side to protect that open area. She agrees that there is not a problem with rezoning the property. One way or another, she felt that the Council would end up doing something similar.
Councilmember Arrington stated that over the last couple of weeks he has taken the opportunity to discuss the issue with a lot of people and the common thing he was hearing was that it would be great if another retail would pick up the old Kmart building, but given that it has been empty so long and no one has: it would be better for something else to be there than for the building to fall down around itself. There are some concerns about some of the issues, but he is comforted by the fact that we can change the zone and still move forward with the Planning Commission in terms of the actual details of what everything is going to look like.
Motion: Adopt Ordinance 2019-2 rezoning the property located at 1080 South Hwy 118 from commercial shopping (CS) to general commercial (CG), Action: Approved, Moved by Richard Barnett, Seconded by Kathy Christensen. Vote: Motion passed (summary: Yea = 4, Nay = 1, Abstain = 0). Yea: Kevin Arrington, Richard Barnett, Kathy Christensen, Connie Nielson. Nay: Bryan Burrows.
9. PLANNING COMMISSION REPORT. Greg Bean is the chairman pro-tem for the Planning Commission. They had a proposal to allow short term rentals in the Rm-11 zone. The Planning Commission felt that it would not be a bad idea to allow short term rentals in the Rm-11 zone. They felt that maybe it would be better to handle this slowly because they do not feel that this would be something that would be done a lot like it is in some of the other resort communities. The Planning Commission was recommending that the Council consider this change to the ordinance.
The Planning Commission approved a home occupation permit for a preschool, which was approved. They also approved a conditional use permit a towing business, Bar M Towing and Road Service that would utilize the Hare property on the north end of town. They also approved a fence for Matt Harmon because his property slopes away from the road. The ordinance only permits a 9-foot fence, so they reached a compromise where Mr. Harmon will build up the ground in his back yard so that the fence will only be 6 feet high.
Howard Hatch wanted to use the old Topsfield Lodge as a short term rental property and he only wanted to use 4 units of it. The Planning Commission informed him that this was not allowed in the existing zone and so it was determined that it would be used as a motel. However, he was told that he needed to have an inspection done and verify that the building is habitable before the project was approved.
10. 2019 STREET IMPROVEMENT PROJECT AWARDED. Lyndon Friant, of Jones and Demille Engineering, reported that the bid opening was held last week for this project. He noted that this is an interesting project because it is half preservation and half reconstruction, so different contractors could bid it as a prime, but a lot of the preservation companies that are doing the micro surfacing are kind of in and out so Hales was the only bidder as a prime contractor, but they had a lot of subcontractors submit bids.
Mr. Friant felt that we got a pretty good array of bids and it was slightly higher than our original estimate because we are getting further into the construction season. Contractors are getting busier. This is probably one of the last jobs Hales could put on their plate for this year, so we did see a little inflated numbers just because of the business of the season. Everything checks out fairly well. The asphalt is a little high on this project and the reason is because we are doing a block or two here and moving and doing another block or two, so it is kind of a spot paving project.
Mr. Friant reported that we went back to the CIB last Thursday because we had additional funds, about $400,000 in contingency. We did get approval to consider a few more streets in town to utilize the contingency funds. The project will start with the small projects in the middle of May through June and then they will come back in July and start the major portion with completion in late fall. Motion: Award project to the low bidder, Staker Parson Co., for a total contract amount of $3,194,830.63, Action: Approved, Moved by Bryan Burrows, Seconded by Kathy Christensen. Vote: Motion carried by unanimous roll call vote (summary: Yea = 5). Yea: Kevin Arrington, Bryan Burrows, Richard Barnett, Kathy Christensen, Connie Nielson.
11. RESOLUTION 2019-1 TABLED. Motion: Table, Action: Approved, Moved by Richard Barnett, Seconded by Connie Nielson. Vote: Motion carried by unanimous roll call vote (summary: Yea = 5). Yea: Kevin Arrington, Bryan Burrows, Richard Barnett, Kathy Christensen, Connie Nielson.
12. OTHER BUSINESS. Sherri Christensen discussed the Rotary Park playground equipment. She explained that playground equipment has a life span of 15 to 20 years and this playground was installed in 1998. The Company who had installed the company then, confirmed that the equipment was 21 years old. She met with a gentleman from Big T Recreation, which was the company that put the new equipment in at the City Park, and they went to the Rotary Park. He looked at what we have there and how the new playground equipment would fit there. He also discussed some of the things we need to do to bring it into compliance safety wise. She noted that the Council had approved the purchase of new equipment and that has already been ordered and could be here within two weeks. Since then, a citizen felt that the City was spending too much on the equipment because what is there now is in good condition and just needs to have some of the parts replaced. That citizen contacted Great Western and asked for some information about replacing a few of the parts that are there now.
The quote given by Great Western was $2,198.64 which would replace one small section of the tub a tic, tac toe game and a little curve slide. That is only for the pieces without installation. Mrs. Christensen talked with Great Western today with the same lady that talked to the citizen and she is going to prepare a complete quote for the replacement of all of the plastic components on the park. The quote given to the citizen did not include all of the things that need to be fixed.
Mrs. Christensen was unable to get a recommendation concerning the safety standards of the current playground for Big T because the company did not represent the manufacture of the equipment.
One thing that he did tell her was that we should always keep in mind the age of the playground. Typically, commercial playgrounds are in good working conditions for 15 to 20 years. They would recommend, depending on the use of the playground that it get replaced every 15 to 20 years. Mrs. Christensen stated that because the equipment has reached its limits, she really believed that it is still the best thing to do to replace the structure completely.
Councilmember Christensen hates to see us take down the equipment that is there because a lot of it is in really good condition. She would like to see us keep and repair the old equipment and use the new equipment for the new park. She does not think that we should get rid of it just because it is 20 years old when there is nothing wrong with it. Mrs. Christensen stated that the equipment has to stay within the standards of playground safety. She talked with the Trust and asked if there was anything specific in our policy that said anything about playgrounds. She was told that within that liability, we would be expected to take care of our equipment and the things our citizens are using. If it came down to we were not taking care of our equipment and someone got hurt, we would be more liable than our insurance company would be because we had not done our maintenance.
Councilmember Arrington stated that even if we are taking really good care of it and it is 20 years old and the industry standard is 15 to 20 years old. Mrs. Christensen stated that the price we are paying for the new equipment also includes installation. The installation has to be done by the company so that the liability and warranty is where we need it to be.
Mrs. Christensen wondered if there was something that she could do to keep the citizens happy. Councilmember Barnett thought that it is a matter of presentation. He felt that if the community understands that there are safety standards that have to be met for commercial playground equipment and that the equipment, no matter if it looks brand new, it has been there 20 years and it is outside of its life expectancy and we really have no choice but to replace it. Councilmember Burrows stated that if we are beyond the manufactures recommendation, we are in trouble.
Mrs. Christensen told the Council that we need to do something about the skate park and if they get a chance, they should go look at it. In her opinion, it needs to be hauled away. The only use that she has seen it get is with kids on bikes and scooters. Some of the side pieces are gone and the one big ramp has a piece sticking out. It is in bad shape and we need to do something about it. We just need to make sure what we have is safe for a citizens and the people who use it.
13. EXECUTIVE SESSION. At 8:24 p.m., Motion: Adjourn regular session and convene an executive session to discuss the purchase of real property, Action: Approved, Moved by Kathy Christensen, Seconded by Connie Nielson. Vote: Motion carried by unanimous roll call vote (summary: Yea = 5). Yea: Kevin Arrington, Bryan Burrows, Richard Barnett, Kathy Christensen, Connie Nielson. Purchase of real property.
14. RECONVENE & ADJOURN. At 8:57 p.m., Motion: Reconvene and adjourn, Action: Approved, Moved by Kathy Christensen, Seconded by Connie Nielson. Vote: Motion carried by unanimous roll call vote (summary: Yea = 5). Yea: Kevin Arrington, Bryan Burrows, Richard Barnett, Kathy Christensen, Connie Nielson.
PASSED and APPROVED this 23 day of April, 2019.