Neighborhood Districts

Neighborhood District 2 Meeting Minutes (Oak Hills, Wasatch, Foothills, Provost, Provost South, Spring Creek) Thursday, November 16, 2023; 6:30-8:00 PM City Hall Community Room 445 West Center Street, Provo Executive Board Members in attendance: Katherine Hall, Ruth Eldredge Thomas, Mary Millar, Hannah Petersen, Ashley Rayback, Ann Woodbury, Michael Barber, Ryan Nelson, Kristina Davis Attendance: Annette Newren, Vern Keeslar, Bart Bradshaw, Natalie & Andrew Tate Zoom Attendance: Teri Bishop, Jenny, Bill Elieson Welcome: Katherine Hall, Chair. 1. Department Topics (6:30-7:00 PM) A. Traffic discussion (Traffic Manager Vern Keeslar). a. Click here to view “Slate Canyon Drive Your Speed Sign Information” slides. b. Data was collected even though the machine wasn’t on, and then we turned it on a week later and collected a week’s worth of data. There were other weeks in October and November collected. c. 85th percentile gives a lot of data about who is driving on the road. d. There are other speed signs in the city that are nowhere near the speed limit, and are much higher. He was pleased and surprised and said he thinks this is successful and money well spent. e. It was put strategically at the top of the hill to remind drivers to slow down as they go down the street. f. Ruth Thomas: What are the outliers in the data, and what are good mechanisms for controlling traffic? i. Vern: They have seen a lot of improvement on this roadway because of several traffic signs, bike lanes, parking on the side of the roads. g. Katherine Hall: What do you do with the outliers? i. Vern: I don’t want the speeds to creep up. The good news is that the neighborhood has changed their behavior because of the sign. He will be checking monthly and if the speed starts creeping up they will have to do something about it. h. Trisha Hoffman: Concerned about 820 North going up the hill. Has lived on that corner for more than 45 years, has kids and grandkids that live close. She is concerned about children and the whole pattern. Is there a plan to put a streetlight? i. Vern: When going uphill toward Oakhill and Oakmont, where a new development is occurring on the side of 820, there will be better sidewalks and grant funding will be used to build more sidewalks to the school. They are working with Wasatch Elementary and Provo School District to establish safe routes to school. They have done a bulb out. There will be a streetlight put on 820 south. 1. Trisha: opposed to this, because what they’re doing instead of going all the way up to Apple, they avoid those lights and go all the way up to 1200 and avoiding stoplights and then taking a right at Apple so they don’t have to do three stop lights. Five stoplights is increasing the traffic on 820 and on 1200 and her goal is to keep the traffic where it  belongs on 900 E and not prevent it. This is a pattern when the two extra lights were added, not just construction trucks. ii. Vern: At an engineering level it is failing, because drivers are tired of waiting for 3-4 minutes and so then it causes accidents. 1. Trisha: You’re increasing traffic on 820, already building a monstrosity of a school, and now you’re taking a street that wasn’t meant to be a city street and putting all the traffic on it because of so many lights. iii. Vern: It warranted a signal and it has for a couple years, the studies show it’s time to put one there. It was at a poor level of service. 1. Ruth Eldredge: What are the grounds? iv. Vern: They can’t make left turns, it takes more than two minutes. B. Sandy Bussio - Parking problems in Neighborhood District 2: exemption for homeowners near 900 East, parking permit program at 820 N east of 1200 E, lower Oak Hills, etc. a. They do residential permit parking, they enforce overtime parking throughout the city, disability, curbside violations, violations on private property. b. 900 East Exemption: On the tree streets (Birch, Aspen, Cedar, Fir), they enforce two hour parking during the daytime hours. i. Rachel: The exemption was for residents to be exempt for the two hour parking limit. 1. This would need to go through the permit process through the City Council and the planning commission. She has all the information if the neighborhood is wanting to do that. c. Ryan: There is a concern about students taking all the parking on the streets, but it would be nice if there was a reasonable time for an exemption (like next week with family and friends coming for Thanksgiving). i. Sandy: So you’re talking about exemptions for holidays, evenings, etc., for special occasions. 1. Ryan: Concerns are that permits are given to BYU students who purchase them from homeowners but there are times during the day when a homeowner wants to park on the street for a few hours and it’s really inconvenient if you’re trying to work in your garage, etc., and your car is parked on the street for more than two hours. They just want information and possibilities for a happy medium on both sides of the equation. i. Sandy: A permit area is very specific, the homeowners and residents are allowed only so many permits, and the permit has to be proven that the person actually lives at the residence. Students or non-residents would not be able to purchase the permits. There is a maximum of two to four permits in some of the surrounding areas, neighborhoods could determine when those are not permitted (Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day, etc.). You’d have to purchase a permit and look into seeing how many permits, enforcement, signs, etc. There’s not an exemption. ii. Trisha: She doesn’t remember being given a choice on how many permits were given. 1. Sandy: The neighborhood proposes what they would like. It is changeable but it has to be  through a consensus with the entire neighborhood. iii. Citizen: So can there be more restrictive parking areas where no one can park? 1. Sandy: Yes, but they vary, some are not required at night or during the day there is no on-street parking, etc. iv. Citizen: How small does an area get defined for an area? Could they have their own permitting structure with their three-four houses? 1. Sandy: It is a minimum of a city block. This is for signs, enforcement, etc. They could look at it more closely and figure it out. v. Trisha: Part of our issue is that if BYU has been approached to being a good community member by having students register their vehicles and then penalize their students if they don’t follow the law? 1. Sandy: We have worked closely with them but we can’t make them enforce it. vi. Ruth: There are three signs that go way beyond the permit area, and those people in the four houses are putting together a petition to end the permit parking at 1260 E. What is the process? How would they go about applying to get out of the permit area and is there anything we can do about the signs not in the permit area. 1. Sandy: They can look at having those signs removed. If it is in the permit area and they would like to not be in there then it would go through the process and she has the information to do so. But it is the same process-it goes through the city council and planning. 2. Planning Item (7:00-7:15 PM) Project on 900 East between Cedar & Fir (Skyler Lawrence). A. He owns property on 900 E and there are other people here who own the other properties here at the meeting. They’re coming to the group for recommendations on what they might be able to do with the properties that are no longer conducive to single family properties. The group is wanting to get different zoning recommendations on what they might want to do. They’ve talked about Campus Mixed Use. They have not dived deep into what the campus mixed use means. a. Michael Barber: If zoning didn’t exist, what would you build there? b. Skyler: They want their students to live there. c. Citizen: They’re not unified on what “project” they want to be there. d. Trisha: You purchased a house intending to use it for college students. It wasn’t a family home that has been there for a generation, you specifically bought it knowing that you wanted to use it. i. Skyler: When they bought it 25 years ago the zoning was different and it has changed after the fact. It was not purchased with the intention of raising their family there. e. Ann: Would one option be to increase occupancy?  i. Skyler: That would resolve his problem immediately but he doesn’t know what other people want. f. Ruth: What are the other concerns from the neighbors? i. Citizen: When they moved in, 9th East was different, and everywhere on 9th East is zoned differently than that little block and with the changes proposed, but no family wants to live on 9th East so it’s hard to think of what they want to do in the future with their home because it’s no longer a family home. They would like the option to have students live there. g. Hannah: When you start changing single family homes to high density housing, it’s lucrative and it will change everything. There has to be some sort of significant enforcement otherwise it just spreads and spreads. h. Citizen: It is weird that the one 9th East block is different from everywhere around it. I know it serves as a buffer, but they are being held hostage by the people behind them because they are a buffer. She’s never had a trick or treater, it’s just a shopping area now. It isn’t a residential area, but they are held to the same standards of the area. i. Katherine Hall: Talk amongst yourselves with the resolutions you’d like. j. Citizen: He’s looking at Keith who has a home on 9th East and a daughter and a granddaughter who lives on Cedar. There are many people in this room who understand the history of the neighborhood and their intention is not a unified five story building, it is just a little more flexibility with the properties they hold. k. Rachel: Would you like an opinion poll so they have something to work off of? Townhomes? Apartments? Commercial? Houses? Do any of the residents here have a strong feeling for or against any type of housing. i. Suggestions by neighborhood members: 1. Homes or maybe used by BYU as a privately owned business (keep the aesthetic look of the home) 2. Increasing the occupancy limit 3. Treated like the people around them–buildings, etc. 4. Whatever the homeowner wants to do with their property. 5. Consistency with zoning, making it all the same. 6. Increased occupancy 7. Take away owner-occupied so owners can do as they please ii. Rachel: The city council is really in favor of owner-occupied right now rather than rental, so if you want something to slide in easily through city planning and commission, that seems to be okayed very quickly. Sometimes it’s a little bit harder with rentals but in this area it might be appropriate. iii. Katherine: You do your own survey of the surrounding neighborhood but on paper so that when you do something so that you have a list of what everyone wants so that you have it on paper to present. 3. Additional Topics (7:15-7:45 PM) A. Trail along State Street (UDOT project) – contact state representatives. 1. Katherine: These are trails that connect city ways along State Street. These are the wider sidewalks along State Street. Governor Cox has appointed a commissioner over trails and in the first part of 2024 they’re going to start considering which trails to do first. Please contact your local representatives, especially those in the Southeast neighborhood, and encourage them to support this particular trail. We don’t know at this point what it takes to make it a priority, but we’re hoping to move it up sooner than 5-10 yrs out. They would be improving it from 7th East down to where it ends. 2. Citizen: Is it going to be a concrete sidewalk with divider lanes?  a. Katherine: It is just basically a super wide sidewalk. Joggers use it, bikers use it. At 2000 S right now it turns back into a smaller sidewalk. They improved the whole look of the section when they changed it. 3. Citizen: This is a potential state project, funded by the state? This is the one option that the state is considering for Provo right now? a. Katherine: We don’t know if it’s the only one for Provo, but this project is in the second phase and right now it’s 5-10 years but now because of how Governor Cox has set it out they will be ranking and we’re not sure of what the criteria is yet, but we’re hoping that this will be put on a higher priority. 4. People to contact: Tyler Clancy, Norm Thurston, Curt Bramble 5. Mary Millar: This is the Southeast Gateway to the city, so it matters and it would be important. B. Wasatch Elementary safe walking routes: Mike Barber 1. Mike Barber: This is to bring the city and the school together to make changes with the new school. a. Click here to view “Wasatch Elementary safe walking routes” slides. b. Most of the kids for the new school are coming from the Tree Streets and close to the school. However, the problem is that there wasn’t a lot of foresight into where we should put sidewalks in and there aren’t appropriate sidewalks (it is extremely piecemeal) for kids to walk. The other thing to consider is this is a really steep and hilly neighborhood so they’re having to build barriers to stop cars from sailing off and running into the school. There is no way to get to the school via the sidewalks right now in the Oak Hills Neighborhood. c. What we’re hoping is that the school and the city can come to an agreement about these things, because right now we are in a bad situation where we’re 80% there, but there are some finalizing things that would significantly help the situation (some more sidewalks, two crosswalks, etc.). THey want to bridge some gaps that would make an enormous difference to getting lots of children to the school safely. d. Rachel: Gordon wants to know what the residents want–what is their first choice as to what will happen. He wants to know what we want to be addressed at the next meeting. i. Mike: The Oak Hills Neighborhood would like the 100 yards of sidewalk that went around the corner and down Oak Cliff they would consider it a success. This connects the entire neighborhood to the school on a sidewalk. As it stands, if they can’t get to school on a sidewalk they have to provide bussing. It seems so silly to provide bussing to kids who live so close to the school. e. Rachel: What do you think of the bulbouts? i. Mike: He would defer to the people who live in that area as to which of those intersections what they would like. ii. Katherine: They were discussing additional bulbouts on 800 N, because they wanted to reduce the time when pedestrians are in the actual street. iii. Ruth: One of those intersections has a very bad bulbout that is severely ineffective and so they would like big beautiful bulbouts that actually worked. They want it to cut into the street and not into people’s property. iv. Ann: Cars parking on both sides of the streets really slows cars down.  v. Katherine: Bulbouts also reduce the number of cars that can be on a street. Talk to the people on 820 North and petition to Vern to have them be more substantial. vi. Trisha: Downtown Provo with the raised brick definitely controls traffic. 1. Katherine: The city does not like to do speed bumps. 2. Rachel: Gordon is calling them “raised sidewalks” and trying to get them done. 3. Katherine: Part of it is the plows have to get over it. vii. Trisha: Right now the Southwest corner of the school, the boulder field and the giant wall, there is enough room to put a roundabout, and even though there is a new neighborhood being put in there, but there should be a roundabout by Locust and the area moving south and would help mitigate the speed of people coming and allow all the kids coming from South. viii. Ruth: There is a signed document from everyone that lives there that want the roundabout. ix. Citizen: What is the controversy about connecting the road for Seven Peaks? 1. Mike: The extension is good and makes perfect sense, especially because there is a school now. The people that lived there 30 years ago heard about the Eastside Belt Loop and still don’t like it. It can’t happen that way anymore because of all the neighborhoods. Doing it now would completely go around all the traffic problems that would happen with it the way it is now. 2. Click here to view “Seven Peaks Blvd” slide. C. Changes to the Neighborhood District Program in 2024: Rachel Breen 1. Click here to view “Changes to the Neighborhood District Program in 2024” slides. 4. Adjournment (8:10 PM) All-District meeting with Mayor Michelle Kaufusi and Provo City Department Heads: Wednesday, January 3, 2024, 6:00 PM, City Hall Council Chambers. Next Neighborhood District 2 Meeting: Wednesday, February 7, 2024, 6:00 PM, City Hall Community Room.