City Council and Planning Commission Joint Special Meeting

Mayor Hart stated that about a month ago Tim Anderson was involved in investigating different areas in the state for Rocky Vista University and Ivins City fit the bill. He stated that the presentation will be given by individuals who are all involved in bringing Rocky Vista University to Ivins. They are located in Parker, Colorado, about an hour from Denver and it is a beautiful campus. He stated they were given a tour and a presentation similar to what we are seeing now. They all have an extensive background in healthcare. Tom Told is the Dean of Rocky Vista University in Parker, Colorado. David Park, an educator and an osteopathic physician will be the Dean of this University campus and currently lives in Henderson, Nevada and practices there. He would move here ultimately. Eduardo Juanez is the principal architect on this project and works at OZ Architects. Their design is beautiful inside and out. When Eduardo came to the City he was struck by the astonishing beauty, and has given deep consideration to our ordinances and guidelines. He has put together an incredible vision of how the University will look. Chuck Flood is the project manager for the owner of Rocky Vista University. The design build schedule is aggressive. The intent is to have a first-class establishment open by August 2017. It is about a 150,000 sq ft facility. Tim Anderson stated that he is on the Board of Trustees at the University of Utah hospital. He is a lawyer with Jones, Waldo, Holbrook and McDonough. There were two streetlights in St. George when he started here. This is a great unique opportunity for Southwestern Utah and a prime opportunity for the entire state of Utah. There will be professors and/or physicians that will be our neighbors and be involved in our community. It will be a huge benefit. Chuck Flood and Tim Anderson will answer questions. Dr. David Park and Dr. Thomas Told provided a PowerPoint presentation. (A copy is available at City Hall) Thomas Told stated that so far Rocky Vista University has put 600 doctors into the workforce and 61% of our graduates settled in under-served and rural areas. We are an accredited university. We realized we needed to build an innovative independent school of our own. It was a great decision and we had some groundbreaking innovation. We became the first for-profit school in America in 100 years. We have state of the art facilities and do a lot of traditional things, such as dissecting a body, procedures labs, and a huge medical laboratory. We associate with a lot of community-based hospitals. One of the strengths is that people tend to be less inbred into one system. There are a lot of different ways to do things. David Park stated that there are two types of fully licensed physicians in the United States. MD means Medical Doctor and DO means Doctor of Osteopathic medicine. The osteopathic philosophy is that our body has the innate ability to heal. Structure and function are very closely tied. This is true American healthcare and medicine. It is really treating the patient as a whole, not just the sum of its parts. University of Utah is an MD school and they are an excellent institution at producing specialists. Osteopathic schools specialize in primary care medicine. We are here in the community, and focus more on rural medicine, frontier medicine. He is a doctor practicing family medicine and emergency medicine. He did a dual track program and is board certified by both DO and MD's. They try to take technology and advances and use that in their curriculum to teach their medical students. They have areas of focus on military medicine and humanitarian mission work, rural and wilderness medicine. The students are learning all sorts of procedures. Tom Told stated that they use cut-suits and cutting edge technology before they ever touch a live patient. They showed a You-Tube video of the cut-suit and simulation. David Park stated they did this in conjunction with the police and fire departments. Tim Told stated they have about 6000 applicants for 150 slots. No problem filling our classes. He showed the Rocky Vista University GPA and MCAT Scores for 2014. He stated we would be getting the upper 1-2% of higher education students here. David Park stated they have compared numbers to other schools and showed improving outcomes for 2015 are very comparable to the U of U. By legislative statute, out of 122 first-year seats at U of U, 100 are Utah residents. They always have to turn away hundreds of students who are Utah residents. They have to go out of state because there is no other medical school here. They can come to our school, stay in Utah and make this community better. COMLEX, the comprehensive osteopathic medical licensing exam, shows that Rocky Vista University ranked number one in the country. A student's first two years are spent in classrooms which will be right in front of the VA Center here in Ivins. Their third and fourth years are spent in a clinical setting with doctors and real patients. David Park stated that although they promote primary care, the DO degree does not limit what field a student can go into. Tom Told stated that US News ranked Rocky Vista University 10th in most affordable private medical schools. David Park stated it could be an 18 million dollar economic impact brought to Ivins and it costs the taxpayers nothing. They are paying for their education out of their own pockets and through government and federal loans. Tom Told stated that all graduates coming out of Rocky Vista University have a job. That is something that some prestigious schools cannot say that. Council Member Roberts inquired if they were working out of Northcentral and not Northwestern? Tom Told stated yes. They will be accredited out of Chicago. Council Member Roberts inquired about students qualifying for FAFSA Student loans. Will they do the GI Bill as well? Tom Told stated yes. Council Member Roberts inquired what the amount of staff employment will be? David Park stated that it will be about 80 staff members. Council Member Roberts about partnerships with DSU and SUU. Tom Told stated they have a pipeline program with 13 seats a year for Dixie and SUU students. Architect Eduardo Juanez stated that it is a small beautiful community blessed by nature. He is coming with plans, ideas and concepts for a facility we can all interact with. The site is zoned commercial (20 acres) and residential (10 acres). It will be a multi-use overlay so they can plan a campus that has different components and still operate as one. The University is also buying the building across the street that used to be a clinic. The project will be a phased development. The initial building will be approximately 85-100,000 sq ft on two levels. There is also the ability for us to introduce a student housing component. We are stepping up from commercial buildings, to parking, to townhomes or apartments, and then single family residents behind that, to keep in line with what is across the street. We need to facilitate and ease the traffic and deal with how the fire department handles an emergency. Parking will be located on the other side and there will be a lot of dialogue with the City about when that road gets built, but it is important to build it soon. He showed a concept of the first phase building. There is a main connection, two main entrances, faculty parking. The courtyard is protected by the building. They reviewed the rules and guidelines and followed the setbacks and does not interfere with the view corridor. We have looked at outside textures shown to keep the building cool and keep in line with the surroundings. The facility has to be secure, friendly and provide all the necessities that students need after hours. The floorplan shows the roofline breaking and it has interest. The windows and glass, it is always interesting as you navigate around it. The building is within the height limit throughout except for one architectural feature. The site plan slope drops about 20 feet to take advantage of drainage. We have two auditoriums, the cafeteria and the library will be on the 2nd floor, all taking advantage of the great views. The equipment is totally hidden from the view and has diffused lighting to save some energy. We have a service yard that will be screened from view, and it is accessible for delivery vehicles. It has a lot of study rooms, a seminar room, locker rooms, a student center, vending, and no cafeteria right now. There is the Deans office, labs, the service yard, trash, recycle and delivery. The rules presented were clear. We need a setback and a 15 degree angle to preserve the view. We are placing the building about 100 feet back and won't have any issues. It will be an incredible hub for education. Council Member Cheyne McDonald inquired if they will use solar? Eduardo Juanez stated not yet but we will fine tune it and get all the recommendations from our engineer. Chuck Flood stated they are allowing 12-14 months for construction. He will be located in the office across the street from the project for the next 2.5 years. Council Member Roberts welcomed them. Chairman Loris stated that the entrance is an exceptional design. Commissioner Scott stated they have clearly come in sensitive to the community. Commissioner Murphy stated we are very excited about this. Mayor Hart stated he is excited and it was quiet until they could make arrangements so this is now public record and it will be in our next newsletter. He feels on behalf of the entire community that we are thrilled that Rocky Vista University has found us, and they will instantly become one of us, and that it sounds like their mission as well. After no further questions, Mayor Hart declared the meeting in recess for a moment.

Mayor Hart called the meeting to order at 7:24 pm. He stated that we should focus primarily on a couple of things. Individual letters are fine but are not holding a lot of weight. If the City writes a letter stating our concerns then those concerns have to be answered. The second area is whether or not the process of the document the BLM drafted effectively involved our city. We are referred to as an agency that they named as being involved throughout the document. That did not take place. It is an 1100 page document, with a lot of information in there to digest. With only a 90 day response period it has been a bit of a panic response. We have come to understand that some of the provisions are there not because the local BLM staff wanted it there, but it came to them in a manual. The other thing we may want to look at is the cultural implications of some of these changes. For example, the ATV users are going to have an impact on them culturally. Because of the size of the document, the concerns of the County Attorney's office were outlined in the form of bullet points. He would urge that we look at this list and apply it to Ivins City. It does no good to simply photocopy the County's comments and send them in as our own. We need to reference our own concerns. He opened up comments to the Council to go through the list. Council Member Mendenhall stated that she appreciates it when someone has strong opinions and takes in information and disseminates it. She listens when they explain it and gets aggravated when someone misrepresents something to prove their point. That happened twice at the previous meeting when it was mentioned twice that a single person wrote the document. Chapter 5 has 23 people with names titles and areas of expertise that co-wrote the document. No one else was asked to come and chat with us. This is a draft and no decisions will be made. There is a long process this document will go through. They are doing what they are told by public law and sticking to what they have to follow. They're not taking away ground water rights. It is from willing sellers only. She can't speak competently on these issues to send in a letter. California Condors is all she has time to research a little bit. This started in 2010, and there were public meetings here in St. George at that time, and now we are running to turn something in, but she doesn't agree with what got slammed at us. She has a hard time signing anything without going back and studying it with all the facts. Mayor Hart stated that Keith shed light on some things and told him some of this was mandated by the Department of the Interior and they have a manual from the BLM that helps them draft this. If the language is in conflict, they were instructed to follow the manual rather than the omnibus bill. The points he is concerned with on behalf of our City for example is the grazing restrictions and the economic impact that will have on some of our residents. In reaction to your comment about not being able to provide thoughtful comment, unfortunately the BLM decided to only provide the minimum of 90 days for the comment period. The burden of this is imposed even though they could have extended that time. It is outlined in a number of federal documents, that "cooperating agencies" are specifically mentioned, and "other agencies," in which we are one. BLM was responsible for outreach to local governments to take place, and that did not happen, so some things we could have had explained better did not happen. Council Member Mendenhall inquired did we indeed receive a second planning newsletter back in January 2011? There was an Economic Strategies Workshop. This letter is so one-sided, and she doesn't know both sides. Mayor Hart stated that very well may have happened but it is also directly engaging the County and the Cities. The matter at this point is are any of these issues relevant to our City and we need to turn out discussion to what those issues are. Council Member Elwell stated that we have worked diligently and it is easy to field misinformation. We can look at what we have created and see if we are creating a problem with citizens. By us addressing things, it voices our concerns and they can look to see if they are valid. He would like to see us do something in response to this to show we have concerns. Council Member Roberts stated that he has family that has grazing rights but if it is 1 or 1000 people that wrote the document, the premise is still the same. It affects our water rights, there was not much collaboration, and it imposes recreation restrictions and difficulty of access to public lands for hunting and ATV. It affects his city. His block has 8-9 ATVs alone. People use this area. He personally hunts in that area. It worked before so why now restrict it so much? We grew up here. We have rights and he thinks we do need to make comments and they can respond. We need to address those things. Council Member McDonald stated that he is not an expert at all of this and he relies on experts to guide us. The County had their experts look at this, and this bullet point list is from the county and they say these are the things that are negatively going to affect us. He agrees we need to comment. Council Member Mendenhall stated that grazing for instance, she is willing to say that it may or may not harm area ranchers. Mayor Hart stated that ATV restrictions affect residents of our city. Is this something we should get more information about and render an opinion on? Unanimous yes. California condor what is the potential for the future? Should we get more information? Unanimous Yes. Unjustified restrictions on grazing do we need more information? Unanimous Yes. Water rights, what are the restrictions exactly? It states that they have to be willing sellers. The biggest concern is access to get to the wells. It could be a simple linguistic change in the document. Unanimous yes. This should be mentioned first in our letter. We needed local collaboration. Unanimous yes. Lack of corridor route needs to be done with great care and concern for designated habitat. This one he feels is contradictory to our own transportation master plan. Unanimous yes. Three new areas of critical environment concern and the preferred alternative. This is a County issue. Spanish Trail Corridor. Council Member Roberts stated it depends how impactful. This is a County issue. Restrictions to recreation through SERMA classifications. The rock climbing community is concerned. It needs to be clarified. Unanimous yes. NCA is a designation issue. This is a County issue. Economic consequences for grazing and recreation. Unanimous yes. Access to public lands by the elderly and people with disabilities. Council Member Elwell stated that this causes him great concern because of the tortoise reserve they call for accesses and that never happened. It eliminates one class of people. Unanimous yes. Mayor Hart inquired about interfering with hunting and fishing. Unanimous yes. So the issues that directly relate to our city should be addressed in a letter from the City. He directed Dale Coulam to prepare a draft and email it to him and the council members. Each of the Council who have a particular concern should focus on that section. Mayor Hart will handle the transportation issue. We will plan a special council meeting next Tuesday after the Planning Commission.

Council Member Elwell	AYE
Council Member McDonald	AYE
Council Member Mendenhall	AYE
Council Member Roberts	AYE
Council Member Densley	ABSENT