RDA Board Meeting

RDA AUDIT REVIEW FOR FY 20-21: The city has a contract with Eide Bailey to run a financial audit of the RDA. The audit did not uncover any significant points of concern. The board officially accepted the results of the audit.

9 LINE PROJECT AREA SEED FUNDS: Originally there were around $2.2 million for 9-Line and State Street project ares seed funds. Today we reviewed a proposal for about $96k of those funds. This would fund a mid-block crosswalk at 745 West and 900 South as well as an environmental remediation study at 877 West and 400 South. These funds were already appropriated in a previous budget but we are now approving the uses of those funds. The mid-block crossing is near the new West End, LLC adaptive reuse projects and the environmental remediation is on an RDA owned property which was formerly a gas-station.

HOUSING DEVELOPMENT LOAN FUNDING ALLOCATIONS: This would be a new NOFA (Notice of Funding Availability) for $5.3 Million to affordable housing projects. On September 8, there was $8M released. $2.7M was for High-Opportunity Areas and this $5.3M is for city-wide projects. No high-opportunity area projects were submitted so those funds remain available. In total there were 8 applications and 4 projects are being recommended for approval. This discussion transitioned into a deeper discussion about how we fund affordable housing projects, how we structure our loan programs, how “High-Opportunity Areas” are determined, etc. We approved the $5.3M which will fully fund requests from 2 projects and partially fund 2 others.

RDA SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT POLICY: This is a discussion about new policies which would encourage, incentivize, or require greater levels of environmental sustainability for projects which are funded by the RDA. These include on and off-site renewable energy, zero-emissions, etc. This new policy was officially adopted by the board.

POTENTIAL REVISIONS TO THE GUIDING FRAMEWORK: Today’s presentation included revisions to the RDA guiding framework which is the general standards which direct RDA staff activities. This was a follow-up from a discussion we had as a board in October of this year. The three primary values by which we will operate are: Economic Opportunity, Equity and Inclusion, and Neighborhood Vibrancy. We adopted this new policy.

Council Work Session Meeting

ADMINISTRATIVE UPDATES:

• COVID: ICU utilization is down a bit for COVID related but overall usage is still essentially full. Just over ½ Million people have received a booster shot. Currently numbers are a bit lower than we’ve seen for months. Weekend vaccination clinics will be expanded by the county. 25% of 5-11 year-olds have received a first dose, 13% are fully vaccinated. The citywide average is around 67% vaccinated.
• HOMELESSNESS: The total usage of resource centers is still very high. In 2021 we held 10 resource fairs. 400 people attended and 145 adults were connected to services. 22 people were permanently housed. Kayak court happened 4 times this year with 47 cases heard. The SLC Mobile app received 4517 requests. 49 Camps were abated. And 4386 bio-waste or trash removals were completed.
• POLICING: Chief Brown reported that response times have improved. Priority 1 calls were at 12:58 in November. Our peak was 17:34 in August. This is great news but Chief Brown indicated that there is still improvement that can be made. In terms of staffing, we have 57 vacancies (514 of 571 positions are filled). A class of 30 will be starting in January. 66% of that class was identified as diverse by either ethnicity or gender.

UPDATES ON RACIAL EQUITY AND POLICING: No update was received today. They will be meeting on December 21.

COVID LOCAL EMERGENCY EXTENSION: We discussed extending this until Spring Break.

BUDGET AMENDMENT NO. 4 FOLLOW-UP: This is an item we have discussed several times. We also added a new item which would be to use $47k of Cares Act funding, which we otherwise would have to return that money to the federal government, for firefighter expenses. A lot of our discussion was related to the $1M that is on the table for needs related to the temporary overflow shelter at the Ramada Inn on North Temple. The council already agreed that $400k of that should be used for security. Our discussion was focused on the remaining $600k. We didn’t get to a clear resolution in our work session discussion.

BOARD APPOINTMENTS: Today we met Michael Mejia who will serve on the Art Design Advisory Board and Andy Robertson who will begin serving on the Business Advisory Board. Mr. Mejia is a creative writing professor at the U of U and Mr. Robertson works in medical devices and life sciences. If you are interested in serving your city there are many boards and commissions that do important work for our city. Learn more here: https://www.slc.gov/boards/

Formal Meeting

RECOGNITION OF OUTGOING COUNCILMEMBERS: We spent the first part of our meeting recognizing Council Members Faris and Rogers who have recently or will soon end their time serving on the City Council. We also recognized Councilmember Fowler who will remain on the council for another term but who is ending her term as the council chair. I want to add my thanks to others’ for their service to the city.

GENERAL COMMENTS: We had no official public hearings on our agenda today so we only heard general comments. There was a loud protest related to affordable housing in our hallway that forced us to stop our meeting for a moment. We did hear a few official general comments which were speaking on things such as: expressing gratitude for people leaving the city, affordable housing patterns, the Great Salt Lake, the Street Lighting Masterplan, and bike infrastructure and street design.

ACTION ITEMS:

• BUENO AVENUE REZONE: Adopted subject to a few conditions and with legislative actions related to affordable housing and housing loss mitigation.

• REDWOOD AND INDIANA AVENUE REZONE: Approved

• FB-SE ROOFTOP USES: Approved

• FY 21-22 BUDGET AMENDMENT NO. 4: Items on the motion sheet were approved unanimously, some items are still outstanding and will be addressed in meetings soon.

• 2020 STREET LIGHTING MASTER PLAN: Adopted with a couple qualifications related to dark skies and co-location of wireless cell infrastructure.

• COVID LOCAL EMERGENCY EXTENSION: Extended until March 25, 2022 (the Friday before Spring Break).