City Council Announcements
February 2, 2010
A. Information Needed by Council Staff
1. Recently, a resolution associated with Payday Lending has come into the Council Office through Arthur Sutherland of the Coalition of Religious Communities. The draft resolution is for the City to request the State Legislature "take action in connection with the next regular session of the Legislature of Utah to enact laws that will prevent further exploitative interest rates for payday loans, including but not limited to enactment of an annual interest rate cap of 100 percent or below for any payday loans made in the State of Utah.
Does the Council wish to include and consider the resolution of support on the agenda for February 9, 2010? All Council Members were in favor of including the resolution on the February 9, 2010 meeting.
2. The Council Chair and Vice Chair are interested in recognizing and congratulating several Utah hockey teams - players and coaches - for their success. These teams will be participating in National tournaments for their age divisions in the next couple of weeks. Factors that have contributed to the success of regional hockey teams include:
a. local interest and participation increased after Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Olympics,
b. the quality and accessibility of Salt Lake City Sports Complex facilities, which includes 2 state-of-the-art Olympic ice sheets, and, of course,
c. the hard work and commitment of players, coaches, and parents.
The teams could attend either the February 9th or February 16th meeting. However, Council Member Love will not be in attendance at the February 16th meeting. Lastly, this year’s winter Olympics are February 12-28, 2010.
Does the Council wish to recognize these hockey teams prior to their participation in the National tournament? If so, does the Council wish to include in the “Letter of Recognition” the factors or past investments (Olympics and SLC Sports Complex) the City has made to build quality facilities for their residents? Ms. Gust-Jenson said she would come back to the Council on this item.
3. The Council office has received the Quarterly Housing Report for the Second Quarter, FY 2009-2010.
Would the Council like to hold a briefing on the attached report? Councilmember Christensen said it was sobering to see how little new housing starts the City had. He said some of the was driven from the market and financing but it made him wonder when he saw the totals in the trust fund, were they using the money the best way they could and what were the future housing opportunities. He said he wanted to see a combination of stuff discussed at time that worked for the Council’s schedule. Ms. Gust-Jenson said they could make a request of the Administration for a briefing and go from there. All Council Members were in favor.
4. In past years at the beginning of each calendar year, Jim Lewis from Public Utilities identified available months for Council Members to include a double-sided Council District newsletter insert as part of the Public Utilities Department mailing (benefit: newsletter cost requires printing but no mailing cost). For 2010, the months of March and August are available. Public Utilities Department prefers to keep the number of District newsletters to a maximum of three for each month which equates to six available spots. Due to the timing of when Public Utilities Department would need Council Members’ newsletters finalized to meet their March mailing deadline, the liaisons would have until the third week of February to finalize Council Members’ newsletters and ready for printing. Ms. Gust-Jenson said Public Utilities sends out a newsletter to all of the billing addresses. She said they have had the opportunity for several years to put Council newsletters as inserts and there was no cost to the Council for the mailing because it was included within their postage range. She said there were only six slots and so the Council needed to determine who will not have a space. Councilmember Garrott said he would volunteer to forgo the newsletter.
Ms. Gust-Jenson said they would have to get the newsletters written in three weeks. She said they needed to decide who among the Council wanted to do a quick three week turnaround newsletter. Councilmember Christensen, Simonsen and Martin said they wanted March.
Ms. Gust-Jenson said there was the soccer complex field trip. She said the Council had been invited by some advocates to go on a tour. She said it was 10:00 a.m. on Saturday and would last 1 ½ hours. Ms. Gusts-Jenson said the trip was being organized by Bill Davis and he was a community council chair.
Ms. Gust-Jenson asked who was planning to go to the National League on March 13-17, 2010. Councilmember Christensen said he was tentatively planning on going. Ms. Gust-Jenson said this was not the Council’s last chance to attend. She said staff would follow-up with the Council or if anyone changed their mind to let staff know.
Ms. Gust-Jenson said the mid year League meetings would be held in St. George on April 7th thru 8th. Council Members Love, Christensen and Garrott were planning on going to St. George