SHCC Dec. 2nd 2020 Meeting Minutes

SHCC Dec. 2nd 2020 Meeting Minutes

Sugar House Community Council 12/2 Meeting

7:00pm: Welcome – Chair

7:05pm: Approve Minutes

7:10pm: Chief Brown, Salt Lake Police Department

CIU District 7 Officer Detective James Bishop

  • CIUs 
  • Question: Mobile Cop Cam– Fairmount Park Skatepark– when?
    • Three right now, trying to acquire more through grant money
  • Several hundred peaceful protests across the city since May 30th has meant high amount of staffing from SLCPD
  • Will come to next meeting with command staff
  • Three divisions with a bike squad– at least one member will be at all SHCC meetings 
  • Question: Armed men at Sugarhouse Park intimidating people. Concerns about weapons in public parks. Concerned. What is SLCPD doing about this? How do we stay safe?
    • SLC does not have jurisdiction or say over weapons laws
    • If there are threats or intimidation, there can be charges filed. We have information about the incident mentioned and will reach back out to you.

7:25pm: Michael G’s Spotlight on Business (S.O.B.)

Native Flowers

1448 E 2700 S

Salt Lake City, Utah 84106

https://www.nativeflowercompany.com/ 

7:35pm: Tony Guiot – Urban Forestry Division Director

ReTree Utah

  • Our Urban Forestry division is 15 full time (myself included)
  • Runs the gamut from planting to pruning to tree removal
  • Keep developers and contractors honest and respectful while the urban forest grows
  • Sugarhouse has more trees on private property than any other community council area– this is partially because of size. It’s also because people in Sugar House- seem to appreciate trees
  • Species composition of Sugar House– Norway Maple, Green Ash, and Honey Locust are all overrepresented. Varying degrees of problems that need mitigation.
  • The storm required us to remove 150% of the typical removal rate of trees
  • We have our work cut out for us- removal will be done by end of 2020, but pruning will take a few months into the new year.
  • We have been cleared to begin removing stumps through our contractor as of today.
  • Tree planting– we met the challenge of planting 1,000 additional trees on the west side of SLC this year. Anyone who wants a tree, can get a tree through the urban forestry division! We have learned that planting is the easy part here. We need to make sure they get the care they need to thrive though. To a resident, that means providing enough water to the trees. A lot of residents don’t understand the history of the urban forest and that they need water to survive.
  • We are creating an urban forestry subcommittee in all the community councils across the city. We want to put the community back in our urban forest. This is here because residents were committed to planting and caring for trees. 
  • We are just starting to get contact information from folks interested in these subcommittees. We will start developing a strategy for these subcommittees to take more ownership and getting excited about having a tree. 
  • Sally will be the chair for the SHCC subcommittee 

7:50pm: Kristin Riker-Public Services Deputy Director; Public Lands

Parks Update

With Troy Baker, Lee Bulwinkle, Michelle Hoon (SLC Homeless Coordinator)

  • COVID has made some public lands work more challenging to do, limited capacity with limits to one person per car.
  • Don’t anticipate that snow removal will not be limited 
  • No weed abatement operations this year, reduced budget means not doing it this year
  • Cemetery remains closed to the public, uncertain for reopening date
  • Appreciate public observations and flagging areas that need addressing
  • First community engagement window for SLC master plan for public lands has closed
    • Ended Oct 14th 
    • 3,700 people took initial survey online
    • 600 interviews with users of the trails and public lands
  • Portapotties are locked– for salt truck drivers, not open to everyone
  • Happy to have a public restroom available, funding for restrooms with a fence and attendants, thinking about putting near the old DI building. Trying to put in a high trafficked area if not at the old DI location.
  • Regarding biowaste, if you see it on public property, report tot he SLC Mobile App and the city will come and remove. If it’s on private property, we also have new sources of funding (we have never been able to provide before) that will provide no cost bio waste clean up on private property. We encourage you not to remove this on your own because it’s hazardous if you haven’t been trained on this.
  • Community commitment program– launched on September 14th. Created a cleaning team and bio waste removal program. We have had this in the Rio Grande area for a while. These are homeless or formerly homeless folks who go and pick up trash. They are employed by a contractor and are paid for these services.
  • October 3rd launched a coordinated outreach effort. It brought together community resources and providers, beds and places to go. 
  • SLC Mobile App for camp monitoring and helping to deploy county resources to camps 
  • Coordinated placements for people who are staying in camp enclosure ahead of closing large camps
  • For the first effort on 700S, only about 20/90 accepted the placements offered. Did a three week engagement effort and closed the camp. This means we have people move from the area and then have enhanced monitoring to avoid recamping.
  • We are monitoring two other camps and have camp closure dates set for them. We are waiting on overflow resources, which we believe we will have next week.
  • Q: Who monitors Fairmont Park waste and water safety
  • A: The County Health Department monitors all environmental health concerns and work in tandem with us to work on camp abatements. They will plan the camp abatement if that person does not move and will do an assessment of the camp site.

8:05pm: Lynn Jacobs-SLC Transportation

Update on Highland Drive from Warnock to Millcreek boundary

  • We are going to resurface from Warnock to Millcreek
  • Gives us an opportunity to see how the road is laid out and see if we want to make any changes while the striping get redone anyways
  • Public process will start in January with a survey and other outreach efforts to get input on that 
  • We will start with a survey to ask about issues, go through those responses and technical work, measurements about how wide the roadway
  • Come back to the group and share preferred option and get feedback again; a few iterations until we have the finalized solution
  • Not a lot of construction impacts– we will notify folks that live there for a day or two about it, but that information will be given out when that happens
  • Pretty quick, in and out in a couple days 
  • We cannot change a lot of things (example, curbs, narrowing or widening)– we don’t have the ability to do that with a project like this. We have zero dollars to do this.
  • Why Warnock and not further north? North of Warnock, we will be doing a full depth reconstruction in 2023 where we will tear out all the roadway and some curb and gutter. South of this project, working with Millcreek
  • We do the survey because we might be able to change something — we can’t always, but sometimes we can!
  • We do a lot of surveys, nature of what we do. I know it can be a little overwhelming! 
  • Also please feel free to e-mail: lynn.jacobs@slcgov.com 

8:20pm: SHCC Committee Updates

  • Nick Haywood, new trustee for SHCC in the Beacon Heights neighborhood
  • Secretary Report – Devon Cantwell: transitioning from Erika, request for renewal for a trustee and new trustee petition
  • Treasurer Report – Mike Bagley: $10,900 in account. Had to renew with Sites by Sarah – $810. Had some ongoing expenses ($370) for open for business signs and facebook marketing ($106). Earned .09 in interest. $271 in PayPal account to move over. Just encouraging folks to use the PayPal linked from the website– we have an old account that we are trying to close and has created some confusion. We were able to get a charity rate. Paying a little less now in fees for donations. 

8:30pm: Amy Fowler – District 7 Councilwoman

  • Q: economic impacts due to COVID. Do we have SLC numbers yet? Sales tax, tax revenue?
  • A: We entered into this year with a surplus. General fund is looking good. We don’t know what the effects are yet. Mayor’s budget proposal will come to us on May 4th. Six month hiring freeze and very conservative spending for this year.
  • Q: What do you think about the closing of bars early, but keeping other things open?
  • A: I think it’s an interesting decision. I think there are a lot of things the state can and should do to bring COVID numbers down. There is a third bit of money coming in by end of the year and that will be put towards small business. 
  • Q: What percentage of body worn camera footage actually gets reviewed and audited?
  • A: Via a straw poll, we agreed that there should be random audits and an annual report from the review board of their findings of the audit.
  • Q: What about demolition ordinance change?
  • A: I need to look at the ordinance again.

8:50pm: Tim Cosgrove-Community Liaison SLC

Demolition changes will be helpful- removes some restrictions and will make things much clearer

9:00pm: Meeting Adjourned!

 

Landon Clark
minnesotaute76@gmail.com