Council Meeting (04-02-2026)

Town of Vernon

Town Council Regular Monthly Meeting

Thursday, April 2, 2026

Vernon Fire Station, 325 South Main Street, Vernon, Utah 84080

Regular Monthly Meeting

1. Call to Order- Mayor Olson Called to order.
2. Approve Meeting Minutes from March 5, 2025- Motion made by Jamison Richey Seconded by Scott Livingston. All in Favor non-Opposed. Motion carried.
3. Public Comments. No public comments.
4. Reports from Police, Clerk/Treasurer, Fire Chief- Sheriff report 2 calls- no arrests no citations. On the 5^th it was a fraud case one citizen had a couple of loans opened up in their name and a lot of denials in that case its being sent to investigations they are working on that. Second call was a VIN inspection. For the coming months we know its getting warmer and we know you get a lot of campers so if you notice or need anything let us know we have more personnel then we did last year so its easier for us to send someone out here and be more proactive so any events you have coming up let us know and we can come out here and get things under control. Mike Cheatham asked if you could put us down for the speed trailer? The sheriff stated there is a number on the bottom of the paper he gave out that if you want the speed trailer you can call that number and get it set up. John Olson stated that he has some town citizens that have come to him and its something that the town has dealt with ever since he was younger but some concerns about underage drivers on side by side and things like that. Some maybe town residents going to do chores back and forth but there’s others we are seeing like you said we are seeing a lot this time of year who are coming down from the reservoir and out of the hills. They are going 50-60 MPH down those roads some underage, but some are adults that are just taking a loop from Harker Road to different roads and then back up. The sheriff stated if it is happening consistently then we can get someone out here, even calling us and asking for a deputy to come out for a few hours on a weekend might help. John stated that Easter weekend and Memorial Day weekend are usually bad. The sheriff stated just to remind people of things any ATV, Side by side, and Dirt bikes all do require the OHV license and have to be registered and are not legal on public roadways.

Clerk Report- Nicole stated the only thing she has to report is that they stated the transition from the Gmail accounts to the .gov accounts. If you see a strange email or a text message come through that you need to authorize a number don’t freak out most of the time they will call me for that number but just be aware we are transitioning over. We are working on getting both my accounts completed first. We are working to get photos for the website We are asking any residents for any high-quality photos of Vernon that they may have. Nicole stated that she is in contact with Haliey Richins and she stated she would send over a galley of photos. Nicole was sent some photos that were taken by a cellphone, but they cannot be used due to the quality of the photos. John Mentioned that he received the message right before the meeting that someone was trying to access his account right before the meeting so that is the message you will get. If you have any questions, you can give Nicole a call. Scott asked, “do we need to do anything?” Nicole stated as of right now your account is just going to be archived. We are not going to transfer any data over because you do not have any files saved into your google drive. The mayor account, planning and zoning, town clerk and Vernon council 1 all had items saved in the google drive. Rosalie asked is there are plans to update the website soon then? Nicole stated we will have a completely new website. Nicole stated it will be all new from the ground up. Nicole stated that they decided to keep the history that was written on the old website it was moved to the new website. Nicole stated we would like to update it a little bit as well as we are opening that up as well to whoever would want to write something on that. We are going to once it is up and running have a little section for each town council member where we will take your photos and it will have your name and email contact number. Most of the contact numbers will be the fire station here.

Consideration of Reviewing Budget FY 26 in preparation for FY 27.- John asked the council to be thinking about their budget. Next month this will be the main item on the agenda. We will have to have a public hearing in the first week of June and we must pass it in our June meeting, and it goes into effect on July 1^st. We went over the Budget the budget line by line. Jamison was asked about planning and zoning. Nicole stated she asked Russ to also be thinking about this and that she explained to him that their software budget will have to be adjusted since they will be under the google workspace now and that their incidentals cover all their ink and paper goods. Nicole also stated that she asked Russ to be at the may meeting if he could discuss this portion of the budget. Mike was asked about his portion of the budget for community relations. Mike stated that they want to try and continue the other town actives after this America 250. We want to do them quarterly, so we are thinking to raise that to about $3,000. Mike stated that they want to start replacing the old tables that they rent out with new tables that you can pick up and are nicer. Mike stated that he will have an idea before the next meeting how much it would be to replace those. John stated that we started buying some of those. John stated that once we get a stock of those, we should surplus the old ones. They are in good shape. Mike stated that some of them are in rough shape. John stated that he got a message from Chris Abbot that there is more money from the America 250 committee available and our town is eligible for an additional $1200.00 John applied for it and sent that application. Nicole stated that she knew there was talk about adding to the 4^th of July but where it falls under the new fiscal year. That will be on the new budget. John stated if we get this $1200.00, we will be fine because that will give us $2700.00 for this year. Nicole stated that if we can simplify the budget this year it will be better. John stated that we should list these events as town events with a budget of $5,000 instead of breaking it down into sperate events. Scott asked how we were on office supplies? Nicole stated that she will do that side of the budget, but we are good at that.  Mike asked when the money isn’t used what happens to it? Nicole stated when the money isn’t used the money doesn’t automatically roll over. We must state in the new budget that we have rolled over from last year that we will be bringing over. Mike asked about the Veterans memorial budget if it has been used in the past few years? Nicole stated that she has been here for 4 years and it has never been used since she has been here. Nicole stated that they have only ever bought flags since she has been here. Nicole stated that Shar will send over a new budget when for this when she sends over the fire budget. Scott Mentioned with the roads, we stopped doing the hot patches. We need to keep that in case we have issues. This stuff we have out back has been very beneficial. Mike stated that we are going to have to do quite a bit of maintenance to the truck, it needs tires, wipers, and batteries. Mike stated that he didn’t realize we had that much of a budget for maintenance. Nicole stated that is for the year and that is for fuel and everything. John stated that if we had a winter like last year you used it once, but it was nice having it. John asked, “do we have one more year on Marlin’s roads contract? Nicole said yes, I believe we have one more year on his contract. Nicole stated that the budget that we have for the snow removal is what we budgeted is what we used to pay for Scott Pherson. John stated that he doesn’t think that we will ever need that much for hot patches either. We will try and fill in as many potholes as we can with the filler, we have out back. John asked Scott to take a good long hard look at that and come prepared for that. John stated that we need to keep the speed bumps painted until we get the road replaced and then we will probably take the speed bumps out is what I am hearing from everyone now that the school parking lot is done. We will have to see how the school feels about that and see what the standard code is for speed bumps. We painted them 5 or 6 months ago and they need it again. Scott stated it has almost been a year. John mentioned we may want to get them painted again before the 4^th of July. Mike stated the paint we got last time was $257. Scott asked Mike if he ordered that last time. Nicole stated that she ordered it from amazon. – John stated that the CBDG application was accepted they didn’t find anything to turn our application away this year but this is the first year they had more money asked for then they were able to give and we are waiting on the final results so I cannot tell you if we got the grant or not but it looks good. I think that where ours is a two-year grant. The first year we were supposed to get $500,000 and the second year we were supposed to get $200,000. There is a possibility we may only get maybe $400,000 and then 300,000 next year. It was still the same amount just split different. But nothing official so I can say one way or another. If that is case that is for Main Street from Castagno to North main as far as we can go

5. Reports from Council Members
6. John Olson

Council of Government- We spent most of our time talking about the WUI Code. House bill 48 as I look at the state house map most of Vernon is not in a high-risk fire area. Mike mentions that is good because Lake Point is and there have been reports of insurance companies dropping them because of that. John mentioned there are some places that are. The Guy explained it’s not what is around your house it’s the type of embers you get that are blown in the wind and how far those can carry and how they can land on a roof and start a fire also the type of fuel. Salt Grass Hollow is a high-risk area, but the BLM has a grant to help mitigate that and I am working with them to help burn out Salt Grass Hollow. Every year they get a new map so if we can mitigate that it would get them off the high-risk map. Everything up along Highway 36 is high risk. Everything along main Fredrickson Lane, Harker Rd, Olson Lane, nothing of that is high risk. They stated we must adopt the WUI code within 2 years. John asked to have we adopted a WUI Code? Mike stated yes, we have. There will be no fee collections in 2026 and in 2027 fees will be collected. Fees are only on taxable structures. Beginning in 2028 fees will be based on the square feet of the structure. Each community will make their own WUI map. The Tooele council of government is going to host a growth summit on June 18^th at 4pm with will last 2-3 hours. Dinner will be provided. All town council members are invited to attend. John Asked all members to attend. Most of this will be talking about growth problems in Tooele Valley. Even that stuff affects us. Last thing to discuss is the Third quarter funding and timeline. We had our 3^rd quarter funding meeting before the COGG meeting and we as a committee determined that Stockton Rush Valley and Vernon each year will get $150,000 that they can split amongst the 3 communities. We have got to spend money that we have already got from COGG in the past. Stockton really needed the $150,000 this year so Rush Valley and I told them we would not apply for COGG this year. We still have $75,000 from last year and $50,000 from the year before and $375,000 on Larson Road and it just adds up. Adding another $50,000 to it just didn’t make sense. What it means is Stockton will have to sit out on it the next two years Rush Valley and us could spilt $75,000 the next two years or one of take it one year and the other one take it the next.

Cemetery- John asked Nicole if Hyrum or Darell contacted her about buying a lawn mower? Nicole stated that Hyrum called her and he was supposed to send her the information to purchase it so they could go and pick it up and they never did. John stated that they were going to buy them from tractor supply. Nicole said she called him after not hearing from him. They were supposed to meet with her the night of planning and zoning and never did. Mike stated that he thought they were going to get a nice commercial one. John mentioned that he did too. John mentioned that they thought they could do better by spending less on a mower and then getting other tools to help as well. Mike stated that the mower is where you want to spend the money because the nicer the mower the longer it’s going to last. John mentioned that he would let them know while its on the budget they may want to get a heavier duty lawn mower.

1. Scott Livingston

Treasurer-  Things are going well.

Roads- May 16^th is coming fast we are trying to get as many people out to help with that. we want to divide it up into different groups and have members of the council lead those groups. Scott mentioned that he noticed they did the core samples but he has not heard back on anything yet.

1. Jamison Richey

Planning and Zoning – Planning and zoning training is Scheduled for June 23rd at 7PM (Land Use Training). The Sandoval’s filed for another building permit to extend the shed that they had built. The full schedule for the years meetings have been scheduled for the 4^th Tuesday of the month.

Grants- Jamison stated that he will be seeing Erika this weekend and will be discussing the CIB grant. We are a couple months out from the next deadline on that one.

1. Tai Lauti

Animal Control- Nicole stated that she has already touched base with Tai on this budget. Since she did the dog clinic this year the tags were expensive and the amount that it took to print and send out the announcements it was a lot so his budget will have to be adjusted.

Water – Jamison reported on this since Tai was not present. Sunrise engineering came out and they had some questions on where things were at on the water meeting project. They needed to get those clarified so they could get their final engineering report sent in so we can get our funding that should be coming up this summer. John asked to meet your grant deadline don’t you have to have that done by the first of June. Terri spoke to the state on that and they said as long as there is progress being made they understand about the engineering and how things like that go. As far as the state go they are happy we just have to get all of the boxes checked.

1. Micheal Cheatham

Ambulance/Emergency Management- Nothing to report.

Fire Report – We had the wildland refresher everyone is up to date and getting ready for a pretty busy season with how dry everything is.

Community Relations- Our next event is May 2^nd for the Cinco de mayo celebration that the Sandoval’s are taking the lead on from 3PM-7PM.Nicole asked are you going to need the Credit Card for that? I will leave it with one of you when I am here for the planning and zoning meeting the night of the 28^th. John mentioned they may need it before then. A lot of the stuff they are hoping to get off of amazon. Mike is going to get with them and will get with you and work that out. Scott asked about dumpsters? Mike stated it’s April 16-23^rd.

6. Other Business- Nicole stated that she now full moved over to her .gov email address and to please no longer use her Town clerk Gmail email address. All council emails that we are not mitigating will have access to their new email address.
7. Review and Pay Town Bills- Motion was made by Mike Cheatham Seconded by Scott Livingston. All in favor non-opposed. Motion carried.
8. Adjourn- Motion made by Mike Cheatham Seconded by Scott Livingston. All in favor non-opposed. Motion Carried