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2024 STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS Monday, February 26, 2024 Community Room, Millcreek City Hall Ladies and gentlemen, Millcreekers! It is a privilege to serve as your mayor and to work with such a dedicated and collaborative city council and city team that “plays to win” every day for Millcreek residents and to lead such a great community! Welcome to those of you in attendance this evening, our terrific city department heads and staff and to other elected officials and partners in this work. The Millcreek City Council and I are pleased to welcome you to the Community Forum in our new community building, also known as Millcreek City Hall. This has been an eventful year for our city and the coming year is full of promise- might I say Millcreek Promise! I am pleased to report that the state of our city is sound, in fact it’s awesome. We are healthy fiscally, socially and physically; and we are working hard for you, to make Millcreek even better. Millcreek will be better if there is no large gravel pit in Parleys Canyon. I am happy to say that with the help of our partners, the League of Cities and Towns, Salt Lake County and Draper Mayor Troy Walker this year’s gravel bills were defeated except to put the issue off to interim study, where hopefully we will be able to continue to advocate for a sane policy which protects our airshed and the Great Salt Lake. Last year, with a great deal of help from mother nature in the form of a slow melt, we weathered the largest accumulated snowfall and flood risk in memory, greater even than the catastrophic year of 1983 when in spite of many of us filling and lugging sandbags, Mill Creek still flooded causing great damage to our homes and property. This past year, Millcreek volunteers by the thousand helped us prepare in a spectacular demonstration of the resiliency of this community. We filled tens of thousands of sandbags. Our emergency management and public works team worked with residents to strategically place sandbags to control anticipated flooding. Our EM and public works folks monitored stream flows, culverts, and other high-risk areas daily, even hourly, to keep watch for problems and to address them where necessary. Our EM team provided thousands of our volunteer-filled sandbags and volunteer coordination to our neighbors in Salt Lake City when they experienced flooding along 1700 South, paying it forward in the event we needed help as the melt proceeded to the higher elevations of Neffs and Mill Creek Canyons. We fortunately never needed that, but I am still so very impressed with what our Millcreek city team and our community volunteers did to protect this community we love and avoid catastrophe. This past year also we completed and celebrated the opening of our new City Hall in the heart of Millcreek’s new civic center, anchored by Millcreek Common. I am so proud to ---PAGE BREAK--- 2 deliver the city hall Millcreek residents asked us for when we surveyed them a few years before our former thrift store lease expired. As I mentioned, Millcreek residents told us they wanted a community building, not just a government building. Our city employees are so grateful to have windows and heat in the work space where they serve our residents. Our Millcreek Precinct UPD officers are similarly pleased to move from sharing space in a dental office to having a fully functional headquarters with modern technology and room to be able to serve and protect us even better, with a presence in the very heart of our community. There were several other capital improvement projects we delivered to our city. A new roundabout to improve traffic flows getting onto I-215 by our soon to be newly rebuilt Skyline High School; new sidewalks on 3300 South and along Neffs Lane and in other areas; new multi-use path on western 3900 South, to make it easier for our Meadowbrook and Sunnyvale neighborhoods to walk to TRAX; storm water improvements and pavement preservation-particularly in the heart of the old Millcreek community area between 900 and 1100 East. We will see even more substantial capital projects constructed this year. The reconstruction of 900 East between 3900 and 4500 South is underway, and we will see new pavement, sidewalks, streetlights and bike lanes there. The same will be true for 20th East from Siggard to 3300 South. Don’t worry Canyon Rim--20th East north of 3300 South to the SLC border is coming next. We are building 10 new pickleball courts in Canyon Rim Park which should be completed this summer. New trailhead improvements on our Jordan River Trail project will be worked on. We are planning and have funding for a bike lane along Wasatch Blvd. throughout Millcreek and Holladay. We will build a new sidewalk and a signaled crossing across 1300 East to provide better pedestrian access to Big Cottonwood Park. We will continue storm water improvement projects like we did on Hale Dr. in the Mount Olympus neighborhood, including projects slated for Scott Avenue, Upland Dr. and Neffs Lane. Some of these are your storm water utility payments at work to improve Millcreek’s infrastructure. Due to the mild snow year in the valley this winter, we have saved compared to what we had to pay last year for salt and overtime for snow removal, so we should be able to more aggressively address pavement preservation on neighborhood streets with slurry and chip seals and overlays where appropriate. While our infrastructure is always a priority, we did not forget our social responsibilities and efforts to lift up all Millcreek residents and include them in our community. Our Promise Program continued its after-school efforts in partnership with Asian Association of Utah, relocating the program from Millcreek Elementary when it closed, to William Penn Elementary where many kids who were in the program transferred. We also continue to partner with the Asian Association and the International Rescue Committee to support efforts at the Sunnyvale Neighborhood Center. In partnership with the Millcreek Business Council, Millcreek Promise collected 3500 warm coats and other clothing items to distribute to 10 agencies to help those with less stay warm. We continued to support food pantries and instituted a creative food share program for residents’ excess home-grown ---PAGE BREAK--- 3 produce. Significantly, Promise assisted 60 families who were required to move from affordable housing at Holladay Hills to find new affordable housing options, and with a grant program, assisted families with new deposit requirements for new housing. Millcreek also led out among Salt Lake County communities in hosting a temporary winter overflow for our unsheltered community. Working with other partners, Salt Lake County, Switchpoint, the state and UPD, we were able to host 1200 shelter nights during cold winter months. The immediate neighborhood saw a reduction in crime and calls for service outside of the facility during its operation and many of the residents returned night after night because the facility was so well managed and they felt safe there. I am proud that our city has been willing to participate in solutions to homelessness, both because it’s the right thing to do, but also because working to solve this intractable problem will pay so many benefits to us as taxpayers, to reduce petty property crime and improve the quality of life for everyone, unsheltered or not. Our Community Life Department keeps hitting it out of the park with our new Millcreek Common facilities. I have to admit being scared when I saw the size of the crowd for our Independence Day festivities and drone show on the Common, but the thousands in attendance loved the drone show and other entertainment. It has been great to see this space unite our community and celebrate Millcreek’s rich diversity: Pacific Islander skate night, Juneteenth celebrations, Hispanic/Latinx skate night skate night, our Menorah Lighting celebrating Channukah. We’ve had a “Utah’s Own” Market, an “old school” pinball arcade, the Art Market with live music and dancing in the Public Marker and New Years Eve partying on the 6th floor Grandview Room, community forums discussing civil engagement- all manner of things which build and unite our community and enable us to learn about all of the richness our community members offer each other when we gather. These things actually barely scratch the surface of what we have done the past year and what we will be up to in the coming year. But I am proud to say that we are doing all of these things, acting boldly and much faster than what we see other places doing, on a sound fiscal footing. Our tax revenues in Millcreek have remained steady or even increased in the case of sales taxes and permit fees. Of course, as from the beginning of our city, all of the property tax the city collects goes to pay for public safety in our UPD contract. Due to prudent financial planning, we did not need or enact a tax increase last year. With the changes to UPD mandated by the state, we are probably going to need an increase this year. However, our city fund balance (or rainy day fund) remains strong and near the state-limited maximum of 35%. Our budget is balanced and actually relatively lean. Our terrific city employees multi-task and work hard to do more with fewer employees than other cities our size. Our debt load also compares favorably to our peer cities and we are not highly leveraged. In short, due to a disciplined council and an extremely capable finance staff, our finances are sound. ---PAGE BREAK--- 4 We will have some challenges in the coming year. I have been working hard with the other members of the Unified Police Department to ensure our police department remains robust and one of the best departments in the state, following the mandate for the exit of the County Sheriff and Salt Lake County coming July 1. We selected a new Precinct Chief in Christine Petty-Brown, following Steve DeBry’s retirement, and she is doing a terrific job. She is a great resource as we navigate the coming transition. The City Council and I remain committed to UPD and the UPD shared services model to provide us a robust police force with capabilities we would not be able to afford on our own. I am confident we will navigate this challenge without a diminishment in the service Millcreek residents want and expect from their police force. In other news, our creative police had the idea to use Millcreek’s beer tax funds to purchase and outfit an ice cream van. You can see it parked across the Common. They use it to travel to Millcreek schools and apartment complexes, to educate kids about the importance of avoiding underage drinking and drug use and to be good citizens. Our police force is doing much to advance community-oriented policing, getting to know members of our community and being effective cops on the beat. You can join them some morning at City Hall for “coffee with a cop.” Now that they are here on Millcreek Common, you will see more of them. Say hi to them. As I conclude, I reflect upon the reasons our city is making such strides and is a great place to live and raise a family. I think it’s because in Millcreek, we are intentional about building community and caring about and including everyone. We have a wonderful staff and energetic volunteers, people who care and who love this place. Because of them, we have a great future ahead. And I am pleased that we are going to be honoring some of these contributors in a few minutes. Go Millcreek! Play to Win!