Let's see, we are recording.
So, welcome everybody. If we could do a quick roll call, and Sam, if you'll tell us who you got your partner at, we'll get to you. Rob, oh, you've got him drinking.
Can you start with you?
Yeah, Rob Van Dyke, King County Attorney. Robin McCune, Cedar City Attorney.
Emma Johnson, UPC. Marilyn Lawson, UPC. Samantha Smith, Assistant City Attorney with Bluffdale City, and I'm the proxy for Stuart Williams with Clearfield City.
Bob Church, UPC. Ed Montgomery, South Jordan.
Ron Weight, UPC. Trent Dressen, UPC. Brett Robinson, Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office.
Jeff Gray, Utah County Attorney. Just so you all know, Tyson is training this morning. It looks like we've got Stu Young who is joining us.
Hi. Stu, welcome everybody. This is Stu Young.
Stu, this is most of the council.
Okay. So, I'm Stu Young. I know Brett. Yes. I don't know if I know anybody else here. I'm the new, what do they call me? Criminal Department? Yeah, Criminal Deputy. Deputy Attorney General for the Criminal Department. I have been a federal prosecutor for a number of years. In Utah, I've been here for about 13. I was in AUSA in San Diego before that. In between that, I was a law professor for a bit. And I'm learning the state stuff. So, that's something that I'm kind of trying to figure out so far. But I'm really happy to be here. I'm really excited. Bob's been doing a great job running UPC. And I'm just happy to be a part. You know, whatever we can do to help training and other things. Training's a really big deal to me. At the U.S. Attorney's Office, I was a senior with council. So, I did all the training for the U.S. Attorney's Office for about five years. Personally, I just love doing that. And so, I'd love to be involved when I can. And, you know, just to help out. And I will have a meeting. I have a division director meeting up at Hebrew Wells. So, if I can just stay for a few minutes, kind of get a flavor. But hopefully, I can come to UPC meetings more when they don't conflict with my schedule.
Yeah, Stu's going to be Derek's designee. Will Dan come once in a while?
Dan will come sometimes, yeah. Dan will come when he comes. Oh, thank you. Kind of the goal is I'll kind of be mostly the contact. But if you miss Dan, always feel free to call Dan and talk to Dan. You know, he and I are working really closely.
Yeah, so why don't we go around again, just to everybody introduced. So, Stu kind of gets an idea of who we all are.
Yeah, please. Stephen Foote, Duchenne County Attorney. Duchenne County, great.
Rob Van Dyke, Kane County Attorney.
Randall McKune, Cedar City Attorney.
Emma Johnson, UPC. Marilyn Lawson, UPC. Samantha Smith of Bluffdale City.
Yeah, so on the council, maybe, I think maybe explain a little bit of the transition. We've got four county attorneys and four city attorneys. Okay.
Edward Staff, Jordan.
I'm Ron, we met.
I'm Trent Dressen with the UPC, the Texas South Domestic Violence Resource Prosecutor. Brett Robbins, Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office. Jeff Gray, Utah County Attorney.
Yeah, so the only ones we're missing is Troy Rawlings and somebody from POST. Karen Walker. Oh, Karen, that's right.
She should be remote.
I didn't see anybody come in. Karen is the chair of the Prosecutorial Assistance Association. By statute, their chair is on the council as well. Cool. Minutes, previous minutes. Move to adopt. I know Sam read the minutes. Second. Okay, Ed and Ron. All in favor? Aye.
POST?
Budget. Okay. Yes, any questions on the budget? We're in a pretty good place. I mean, it's still early in the year. Anything we need to know? No, well, I'm going to talk about the DV Resource Prosecutor and how that might affect the budget, but I can wait until we get to that topic. I think we're at that topic. Okay. So, let me see. Oh, yeah, that's for our next one. Oh, actually, can we go back? No, we can come back to that on the... Oh. Let me flip the page. We need to come back to that one. After the budget. Okay. Yeah, so, as we've been talking for a really long time, wanting to separate Split Tyson, Split Trent, his responsibilities and make him the exclusive sexual assault resource prosecutor and then have a dedicated domestic violence resource prosecutor. As indicated here, where Trent is spending his time, and Tyson and I were talking last night, we just don't have the resources to dedicate for domestic violence training to assist prosecutors. I do the DV training at POST. This is an aside, it's not in here, because this happened after I created this. I was teaching at POST last week, and one of the cadets, she volunteers at... I can't remember where I told you, but she helps victims get protective orders here in Salt Lake County, and she raised the question, why is it so hard for Salt Lake County victims to get protective orders? And I said... And I didn't realize that it was. And she explained that she herself had been a strangulation victim and was denied a protective order. She was working with a victim, and maybe it was the friend that she was working with was strangled, and there was strangulation involved, there was beatings, multiple incidents, and both she and some of the women that she had been working with trying to get protective orders were being denied in Salt Lake County. And I said, you know, that was not my experience. When I was down in Utah County, I wasn't seeing that type of pushback, that type of response, and so on a break I texted Trent and called him that night, and he said that wasn't his experience in Salt Lake County, and so I don't know if she ever reached out to her, I gave her your... Okay, but it just underscored the thought that I had that if we had a resource prosecutor that was solely for domestic violence issues that maybe this perceived problem could go away, or if we are having problems, and then as I pointed out in the minutes is that I would envision that a DV prosecutor could get in and not only train prosecutors, cops, but do maybe some second chairing, help with some motion work, getting a pretrial evidence admitted so that prosecutors would be more willing to go to trial where we have a reluctant or a non-participating victim. And if we had that, I think that we could see an increase in successful DV prosecutions across the state. So last year I went to the legislature and in the Appropriations Subcommittee I got, they funded a full-time DV prosecutor, but then it went away by the end of the session. I met with Representative Burton in November, and he and others on the committee are supportive of having a full-time dedicated resource prosecutor, they just don't think that there's going to be any funds this year. But he says it can never hurt to ask, and we're going to continue to ask, meet with members of the Appropriations Committee and see if we can make something happen. At the same time, I met with UOVC. For those that have been around for a while, there's a handful left. When Donna Kelly was the resource prosecutor, she was funded primarily through grant funds from UOVC. And the only reason we lost the grant funds is the person that was with UOVC that year failed to submit a timely grant application. Which resulted in, that was one of the reasons that Donna left, but it also resulted in an HB 200 where we got the dedicated funding, so it was kind of a mixed blessing. But I met with UOVC to talk about getting funding for a sexual assault resource prosecutor, and they talked to me about the STOP grant. And I've got the details there in the minutes that they explained how the grant funding is divided out, that under Romanette 5, paragraph 6, it talks about how 20% of the total grant funds have to be addressed, assigned specifically to sexual assault resources. I'm not a math guy. I've got 100% up above that, and then to add another 20%, but I understand what they're saying. And they suggested that rather than apply for grant funding for a DV prosecutor, I apply for grant funding for a sexual assault prosecutor. And they obviously know who Trent is, and I asked, well, how would that work? Would that be considered supplanting? Because those of you that have worked with grants know that we're not supposed to supplant. And we talked about it, and they felt pretty confident that if I were to apply for a DV grant-funded position and use those grant funds to pay Trent's salary and then use the dedicated funds or use those grant funds to pay a salary and then pay the salary of a sexual assault resource prosecutor that we could probably make that work. They said that I probably wouldn't get the full... Last drafts were $233,000 for a resource prosecutor. Again, as I explained, that's the high end of a salary because we would like to hire somebody with quite a bit of experience, but also would cover all of the travel, all of the training. There's several national conferences that Trent could be going to if he had the time. We could use those funds to scholarship attorneys, our prosecutors, to go to some of this national training and get some additional training. But they said that we probably wouldn't get the high end of that, but to apply for as much as we can and then we would have to absorb, I mean, if the grant was awarded. And they felt fairly confident, and of course I can't guarantee, but they felt fairly confident that that would happen, but then we would have to absorb the balance of that with our budget. And so coming back full round with the budget is I think we would be able to do that. I'm projecting that we're going to have a really healthy carryover between $80,000 and $100,000. And so we could, if all goes as planned, we could absorb that. The way... So what my plan would be is still approach the legislature with the funding because the session starts, obviously, starting now. And this grant application wouldn't be due until the 1st of March. And so I'd have a pretty good idea by March or when the application is due whether or not the legislature would be able to fund some of this position. And so that's my plan. Hit the legislature up and then have the grant application in the wings ready to go. My counterpart in South North Carolina has given me a copy of her grant application to look at. I've got Donna's old applications that I can look at. So I've got a pretty good base on not having to start from scratch on that. And so my only concern with funding it through a grant, this position through a grant, is the grant is a two-year grant. And, you know, we have a history where the grant hasn't been renewed. And so who are we going to attract? When we hired Trent, we didn't have a ton of applications, as I know many of you experience. You know, it's just been hard to hire. And so when we opened up Trent's position, we had a couple of brand new, well, I take it back. I had probably about a dozen applications. Half of them were all brand new law school graduates. You know, we can't hire a brand new law school graduate. We did that. And so Trent and only one other person really had that qualifications. And so that's going to be my concern is if it's grant funded, are we going to attract the type of people that we want? And my feeling is, I hate to turn down grant money, but if we're not getting somebody that we trust and that we'll be able to train, adequately train and do what we want to do, I'm thinking that either we don't hire immediately or we turn down grant funds. I mean, I don't know what you all think.
It doesn't hurt your long term if you turn that down, right?
I don't think so.
If you don't get it and you don't receive it two years from now, we're in a position to try again, is that going to hurt your chances?
I would hope not. I would hope that UOVC would kind of, would be on the same page with us is that we want somebody qualified in this position to do the training. Because somebody just, even with just a year or two experience, this isn't going to have either the actual in court experience, isn't going to have the credibility with law enforcement to go in and train.
And that's what Trent has as well. He doesn't have 20 years experience or 25 or whatever Donna had when she came and worked for us. His law enforcement background, being an SVU detective in these types of crimes, immediately establishes credibility.
Plus the seven, eight years, nine years that he had prosecuting them. So he more than adequately made up for that
We see would agree with us that if we were to turn it down they would understand and not hold that against us.
Is there any way that we could ask the legislature for like fun part of it?
And I think and I may take that approach as well is those that have experience with the legislature is do you know if I were to go to the legislature and say can you just fund 50% give me a guarantee or are they going to say no we want you to apply for grant funding because you know in a lean year grant funding then freeze that money for us but that that would also be an approach I would take.
Yeah I mean we're gonna apply for this much yeah and you know we're not asking you for everything.
Yeah that's probably a good idea. Do you think then if a potential applicant knew that this is partially legislative funded that that might you know be an anchor to funding that might attract some I don't know I'm just kind of talking out loud. I think it would help.
Does this if you hired under the grant would it be that person's responsibility to do all the grant compliance?
To me that's the bigger issue. Yeah is in here I said it would probably have to be Trent if the funds are paying Trent's salary but I'm hoping that and I I'm cautious when I say creative accounting because I don't want to suggest that we're doing anything inappropriate but if if I can make it where grant where Trent doesn't have to do the grant reports then I don't want him to do it but if we end up having to pay for Trent's salary out of those grant funds then I'm probably gonna have to have Trent do that report since he knows what he's doing but using Emma maybe you know make Emma the workhorse for him because he can funnel that data to her and then she can actually do the actual reports. Jeff do you know of Stu Young?
Yeah. Okay. Jeff Buhman just joined us.
If it's a two-year grant does that give us time to secure permanent funding instead of truing the grants?
That would give during that two-year windows I would certainly look for dedicated funding in that time. I think that's the approach I would prefer.
Okay. Wouldn't that should give a two-year time period if we're even though they're not the grant reporter if they're keeping really good stats on what they're doing I was able to help on X amount of trials I would provide X amount of hours of training then we have a good pitch right hey this is going to go away unless you guys fund this and here's what they've provided. Right and here's the track record here's why we've got to keep this position.
And right now my understanding is the state is still a bit more focused on DBE specifically related issues you know lieutenant governor it's still an issue that she is dedicated to putting more funding towards. Right. I think it's to some extent it might be low-hanging fruit.
That's what I would think is I asked Representative Burton I said is there any way I mean do you know if I can get him to see the lieutenant governor I've asked Marlise. Jeff do you have anything with the governor, lieutenant governor, anybody? I mean because if we could get in and talk with her because I have last year I tried to get in with her I couldn't I never could get an appointment but I think if we could have a sit-down with her even if it's just ten minutes and explain what it is we're looking for and backing I think that would make a big difference.
So let me talk to you afterwards.
Because I mean at least for me obviously I've always just done misdemeanor prosecution. DBE has always been the hardest part of the job for that misdemeanor level. Yeah.
It is the one area that I think at least for me and from what I've seen we all feel we can't do enough. Right. There's never enough we can do and there's lots of reasons I can give you the more support the state can give us in the regard we just hired a newer attorney for our prosecution position and he's discovering it very quickly.
Right. He feels unprepared on those that more than anything else. Yeah.
So I'm absolutely in favor of however we can make it work. Yeah.
It's being fought more than ever as well because the new statutes on gun control and things of that nature is it become a new battleground from class misdemeanors all the way up through felonies.
We won't make the governor's budget. No. I'm getting it funded this year I think next session.
Well I mean I was hoping yeah I mean I know it's the AG and I'm on the AG's budget so when I submitted that back in the summer I included that so it's in it's in there but yeah I don't know that it made. Is it in the building blocks? Yeah.
Oh it's in there? Yeah it is. It's just getting whether or not we can get supported.
Now I guess I haven't seen what ultimately went up from the AG but my understanding was when I talked with our chief financial guy back in November after I had this meeting he said that it should still have been in there. So that's that's where we're at in terms of the budget is if oh and so the grant would start July 1st but and we would certainly you know by then we would know whether we're going to get the legislature and the grant should be awarded the first part of June and so that would give us time to open up and and hire someone. Oh you know what Ron I never started the recording for this meeting.
Could you do that for me please? So I would imagine by you know midsummer if we get whether dedicated or grant funds that by midsummer we should have somebody in place. Oh and then oh and then just so I can say it on the record it's got in here is what we would do is if it's grant funded I would drop some kind of an MOU that I would have Jeff Ed sign, Trent sign of the new person that if grant funding goes away and we don't have the ability to continue the funding that that Trent is the one that that stays on and that's the that's the position that would be in jeopardy of losing if we lost our funding. So okay so that's all I have then on budget and a new person.
Yeah so let's go back to that so we welcome Stu we are great appreciate having him here look forward to working with him. What we don't have which as I was when I was looking at our org chart is we don't have a chair elect and as we have done in the past we have that has rotated between city council member and a county council member so Ed is our current chair through September of this year and which means then that we would need a chair elect who would then take over responsibilities thanks to in September it's a two-year position for both we should have been having a chair elect is the last two years but I don't know how we how we missed that oh no no it was Ryan Peters and Ryan yeah and we didn't replace him so I guess it doesn't have to be a county person but that's typically how we rotate it and Steve has done a lot and so I don't want to look at my only other county attorney that's in the room but I've opened it's it's up to you guys I mean we certainly do not have to rotate between the two that's just again we don't have to do just oh sorry Rob I'm totally missing you and we don't have to do we don't have to do something just because we have done in the past it's that brain thing you know I forget Randall's name and I blocked you out so but what about Steven he hasn't Jeff if you nominate somebody you know so let me let me just say this as well as is for whoever whoever assumes this position is there's not a lot is it onerous and yeah yeah it's you know does Ed want to go beyond September yeah I mean maybe I don't care I mean I really don't if we extend it in a year I don't care okay I think it's not really all right so it's just chairing the council meetings once in a while I have something for you to sign many many years ago when we had some internal conflict with us and the AG the chair stepped in but that's been almost ten years now so it really is not super curtains and I don't think if we extended for another year and then also put a chair elect a chair elect to be there for a year yeah who are we missing Troy Rawlings and Troy's kind of hit and miss no offense to Troy Steven how long were you on which time I think I've done it at least twice maybe three times yeah but I usually do your stuff yeah did you go more than two years I don't think I ever did well I don't think it was two years each time is it is it written in any kind of bylaw or statute?
Not necessarily I think that's just again historically what we've done which just because we've done it that way doesn't mean we have to do it
Well let me just pitch something at the UPA we'll give our full report in our bylaws that the chair and co-chair have been serving three years now we've bumped it up to four years just because of they felt they needed longer and it's not any more than a little more responsibility than the chair I'm just gonna throw it out there that is they felt that two years was just not long
enough so we could do that but we need to coincide that with the elections yeah of county attorneys yeah because you don't want to put somebody in for
four years we've only got two years left in there I mean if we had the same
discussion so what if someone left or whatever then then you leave or something happens and then the co-chair would step in or the council would vote someone out you know get someone else in there right and and Brit I don't mean
to you obviously from the county attorney's office but Sims position is an ex-officio yeah is an ex-officio and so we haven't made that as part of a consideration so no offense to you.
No, no, no, none taken. Totally okay with that.
I don't mind having done it a few times it's not an onerous thing I mean Bob does a great job running it I mean there was a few times where we had to terminate people things like that that those were the tougher parts then we had to hire Bob obviously and so but other than that it's really not a whole lot of extra work. Not like the UCDAA program.
Steven's here all the time Rob's here all the time. Jeff's pretty good. Yeah Jeff's usually here but I don't know what you know your availability is.
I mean I'm busy yeah I will say that yeah and I know that I'm elected I don't know the UAC. Oh yeah that's right. What's that?
I'm like next up after so there's Eric and then whoever's. It's Jamin. Jamin yeah.
Me. Oh yeah so Jamin when does Jamin take the assume.
Right now.
Oh he is now okay so he just took over yeah yeah so yeah and and I know actually Rob I know I didn't wasn't thinking about you is I know that you've applied for some judicial positions and in the next four years I know you would like to to take that I think that's why.
Well I'm the current president of SWOP. Yeah. You've got another year left there I think.
So let's stand at Eric for two more years.
And that would line us up with the four year with the elections as well don't forget that.
Sure. And then get a co-chair.
Because the elections will be next year. Well but do we do we need a co-chair now? I mean we probably need a co-chair now.
We've done fine with that one but it's whatever the council feels do they need a co-chair?
Do you need a co-chair? No. Okay.
I mean it really it's not that over upset.
A two-year extension? I don't care.
Okay.
I move that we extend Ed's term for two years. Is this on the agenda?
Well yes I'm sorry it's on not don't look at the short agenda it's in the the full agenda it's the second bullet point.
Oh it's the director's summary.
Yeah the director's summary thank you. Okay so we'll extend Ed out. So the motion is to extend Ed out for two years.
Second.
All right Steven.
In favor? Aye. Opposed?
So what I would suggest is that we let's see at least a year from now though we bring this up and or as we get going to the election cycle see who's going to run again and who's going to be here. Okay. Oh legislative session let me yeah oh yes sorry yes I had to do this like a week ahead of time and then
Oh, weird. Okay. I think we started it wrong.
Okay. I'm recording. You've got one there.
Okay, so we've got two recordings. So legislative session is, we've already talked about the DVRP. Just so you are aware, Representative Ivory is running House Bill 66.
The original sponsor was Representative Berkland. It's the ritual abuse. Jeff, was this the ritual abuse case from Utah County?
Okay.
Okay.
But what it is, as you can see, the language in there is essentially, if this passes, he is going to add to the, what we call, we still call the HB 200 bill, because that's really the first one where the legislature was mandating that we train. So we got the sexual assault training. A couple years later, we got the asset forfeiture training that was added to it.
Human trafficking was added to it. And now they want to add the training on the ritual sexual, ritual abuse, sexual abuse, sexual assault during a ritual. Trent doesn't have any expertise in this.
I don't have any expertise. I don't know that there's anybody in the state that has expertise. And so when I was asked to do the fiscal note, I was a little frustrated because I had no clue what it would cost.
Trent and I talked about it. We probably have to go out of state to find somebody who has any expertise on this that could do some training for us. We wouldn't have them create the training because we did that with the sexual assault course, post paid somebody $20,000 or however much it was, it was quite a bit of money.
And we couldn't use the training materials as Marley's had to completely redo it. So we would want simply to get trained and then we would develop the training ourselves. I reached out to my counterparts in my organization across the country and there's 37 or so active members.
I, the majority, I heard back from one yesterday, a sexual assault prosecutor from, I can't remember where she's from, anyway she said that she might have access to some training slides that one of their prosecutors did several years ago that she was going to check. But other than that there's nobody that has legislation on this or training on this. And so I submitted a, I just guess I said ten to fifteen thousand dollars to hire an expert and get trained and then to add to the sexual assault course.
Which is the other frustration because we don't know exactly how much training Representative Ivory is thinking about because nobody has reached out to us. If it's just like five minutes in the myth section or you know another part of the section on if somebody discloses this how do you respond, how do you investigate, then we could probably include that and absorb that into our current three-day course. But if it's more than that we, Trent doesn't have any any room to cut.
I mean you're pretty lame. And so we're looking at we probably have to add a fourth day of this training or do completely new training.
Yeah, I'm really hesitant to make that three day into a three and a half and we are really jam-packed already. Virtually every presentation could probably use another 15 to 30 minutes. Yeah.
So if it does need to be a two to four hour training and we get a DV, I'd prefer just making it a separate training. Right.
Bob, I don't know if you, I mean it was an LELC yesterday, but the chiefs and sheriffs are perturbed by the bill. Oh. Because they don't want to add more things to their required training.
So I think if you coordinate with the chiefs and sheriffs, with Representative Ivory, I would guess I'd be flexible on this. You were there longer than I was.
Yeah, I know that Chief Glynn and Representative Glynn agreed to talk to Ivory as well and see if they could step this back a little bit and not make it mandatory.
Do you all know, is the impetus of this that officers heard an account and were like that's too ridiculous to be true?
Or they completely, the impetus of this investigation is what? It's from the Utah County cases. There was some, this happened when I was in county training a long time ago.
We had some ritual abuse allegations. They were completely unprovable. Then it morphed into things that David Lytle was looking at.
Now it's morphed into Jeff Ray's doing some stuff.
Yeah. The county sheriff is... None of the judges will let me prosecute it.
They say I have a conflict. It's absolutely insane. So part of it was absolutely unprosecutable.
Then they developed some new stuff, I think. There's ongoing investigations. We have actually two that have been charged in connection with this, that whole thing.
I've been recused each time for whatever reason. Anyway, and so, and I know there's some in the pipeline, but we can't find, I mean, right now the AG's office, they took one of the cases, and we might have to take the other one, but they don't have the resources to take all these cases, and we're trying to get it in front of the Utah Supreme Court because I think there's no basis to conflict me out. I mean, half of it has to do with my predecessor's comments that I made no comments on.
To answer your question, in the legislative hearing last session, which there were a number of victims that testified, and I got them in. I'm a little jaded based on my experience, but they were pretty persuasive that it does occur, but the frequency of occurrence, as you look at that compared to just regular sexual abuse, I would argue there's not really need for this, but it does occur, and it is the concern that, despite the limited frequency, when it is reported, officers are like, this is stupid, like
they're just not accepting it as a possibility. Is that why we need the training?
I think that might be because when the initial things happened in Utah County, most of it was recovered memories from hypnosis, and that's why we, a lot of it, we said no, and that might have been why people initially said, well, you just didn't want to do it, or I don't know.
And all these potential cases, by the way, are 20 years old. Well, that's what I was going to ask. At least we don't, I'm not aware of any current allegations.
Well, and the fact that none of my counterparts, New York, California, I mean, my big Florida, my big states, they have nothing on it either.
Yeah, but I think that's probably the norm, is that you're not going to discover the cases until 20 years later.
Right.
They do exist, but they're just very rare. Yeah, they are rare.
And so is it?
I mean, I don't know. In some regards, as far as prosecution, you need to treat them like any other. I mean, part of the problem is, I mean, part of the problem is separating that stuff because it does sound like crazy and we want the juries focusing on exactly what happened.
Well, that's the point I made for Representative Ivory last, when he ran his book, prosecutors are not going to use your statute because it's hard enough to get the convictions for the underlying sex case. If we have to add more elements that are hard to prove, we're not even going to touch them. So we're really not adding a lot here.
But that's what we're persuading. They wanted to run something. And the victims feel that it means that that is part is the victims felt like they had an additional element in their abuse, which was going to be particularly damaging long term.
So they do want something. I mean, I prefer something related to sentencing as opposed to, I don't know, if we can defund the sentencing in those cases.
That's how the bill is grounded. As an aggravating factor. But it doesn't, as far as the training piece and the fiscal note, it doesn't give any timeline or no, it gives no guidance whatsoever.
No, is like it did with the sexual assault is the general training shall be offered, but it can be done virtually. And so POST is doing their own separate fiscal note on what it would cost to develop the online training and post it on their portal. With the, you know, the advanced training, the in-person stuff, I mean, we just don't know how much it's like we're saying is if it can, and I don't mean to be flippant, but if it can just be a passing comment, you know, Trent can squeeze that in.
Yeah, I mean, just thinking about it, there's a handful of sections that we can make sure we're, we're talking about it, referencing generally what it looks like and the likelihood of delayed disclosure under those circumstances. I'm sure we can work, I can easily work that.
And if they want some four hour training on rituals, sexual abuse, that's going to, yeah, I guess that was just frustrating is that, you know, this is now the third time that. UPC has been tasked to train on something, but nobody's reached out to us to ask us if we actually can. Well, yeah, I mean, they, they gave me money to develop an asset forfeiture course, but again, that wasn't anything that we had any expertise on.
I had to hire that out. I had to do the same thing. I had to figure out what's, what's next.
We're going to charge me to do this. So anyway, so that's, that's just be aware right now. That's the only thing I know that's affecting UPC in terms of current bills.
Now I'm going to go to training committee. Training committee.
The schedule's in your materials. If you have any questions.
I'll just make a comment on civil conference. Fall conference was great. I've given you a couple of the comments.
We haven't done that in the past, but I thought you're the training committee. You want to know the good and the bad. But with civil conference, the folks understand that UPC is no longer sponsoring that conference.
And so when we were down there, Neal Gettis is the new swap black person. He's taking over for Stacia Sidlow, and he'll be responsible for putting together a committee to organize that. Marilyn on her own was talking to Neal, telling him that we can, we can offer some counsel and some guidance, but we're really going to hold our ground that we don't get sucked back in and plan that conference for them.
So just, well, if we need to back into counsel, we'd appreciate that.
Advanced trial skills.
Did I not put that on there? No.
So I'll just give an update on that. Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay.
Okay, so we're finally going to do an advanced trial skills.
That's in place with civil. Don't give us time. It'll be held about the same time.
I'm negotiating a contract with Hilton Garden Inn for, I've bounced around so many dates, October 21st to the 24th in St. George. So that's to be finalized. But we are negotiating a contract with them.
Yeah, I apologize for not including that. Training committee, Ed and Steve are on, and then UPC staff. We've got an agenda put together.
We think it's going to be a really good agenda. So we're looking forward to that. Okay.
The prosecutor. Oh, can we get a report on DUI boot camp? Yeah.
I mean, DUI boot camp. Tyson's not here. I was only there for the one day.
Trent, do you want to talk about first day, kind of, and Emma was the event coordinator for that. Do you guys want to just give a quick report?
I think we had, what was it?
We had 18 people, I think.
Eighteen people, pretty good variety mixed between city and county, young and experienced. I thought we had a pretty good lineup, each section, but well upon each other. We had a couple of the troopers that are over DUI investigation come and train as well.
Blair Wardle came, myself, Bob, and Tyson handled the prosecutorial side. And I thought, especially it being the first time running it, and I thought it went pretty well. Good participation.
I think, I'm curious to see the feedback, which I haven't seen yet.
The only thing I noted is that we probably should have sent out an email like a couple days before, just saying like what the parking validation is, like stuff like that. And then I also thought that we needed the clock, because some presenters kept asking how much time they had. Those were the only two things that I noticed.
Okay. That's good to know. If you recall, we were able to get an $8,000 grant from my organization.
And so, this conference was free to the offices. We paid for the hotel, the per diem, the mileage, all of that. So, depending on how often we do this, these little mini-grants from my organization come up every year.
And we can continue to apply for them. And we can apply for these same types of grants that have turned over to do DV boot camps. That, in fact, we're doing a DV boot camp in January.
Oh, no. Sorry. That's, oh, I call it a DV boot camp in the notes.
I apologize. It's actually a DUI boot camp. If we do a DV boot camp in 2025, we might be able to apply for similar grant funding and help defer the costs to you all.
Let me pause. New county attorney, Jeff, you're one of the new county attorneys.
01-14-25-CouncilMeeting4
A dozen of you that over the last probably four years have taken office that we've never done any formal training. Do you see a need?
I mean I watched the training that you made available. Yeah. Personally, not really.
Okay.
I've just been busy doing the job. Right, right. And so I, as I mentioned in there, is if we were to do it, it wouldn't be a repeat of that.
It would be, is there anything else you want to know and maybe it's just a one-day seminar, but I've heard back Casey Jukes said he's, no, who was it I heard back, Cache County, I can't think of his name. He said something might be helpful, but, oh it was Perry Davis from GWAP. Perry said he probably doesn't really need any additional training.
And so my feeling is it would probably don't need to do anything. That's kind of where I would.
Do you want to incorporate some of the training that you would do with the, our next fall UCVA?
Oh that might, that's, that might be a good idea. Because, because I was gonna lead into is, is, is we could do that, but is, what do y'all think is, if we're getting historically, I've only done two, I guess in ten years, I've done two official new county attorney. Marilyn, prior to that, were we, did we have new electeds every four years and so UPC was doing it every four years like clockwork?
If there were, if there was enough, if there was enough, if it was, but it kind of seemed like we were, that there was a turnover enough that we had at least five or six people. Yeah. It's very small and.
It was like the vast majority, you know, Jeff was elected and Stephen Stocks was elected. The other four were all appointed midterm. And, and do we need to continue, well I guess we just, actually I don't want to waste our time, so I'll just wait till our next election cycle and see how many we get.
So I'm just wondering is if we.
I mean I'm sure I could benefit by training, but I don't know what I don't know.
And I think that's the key for many of us when we step in the positions we were in. We don't. Right.
And you find out six months later you weren't doing something you were supposed to be doing and everybody assumed you knew.
The collaboration can be nice to see what other people are doing to solve the problems that you have. Okay. We'll pick that up next time.
Yeah, and so, well, but like Rob was saying, is it fall UCDA, maybe as we help them with their agenda, we can talk to them, you know, and poll you guys that are still, you know, in your first, first term.
I mean you may or may not know resources and the collaboration and all is basically what it is, is who does what. Right. Here's, here's the resources and here's connections and things like that.
So you probably could still benefit from it.
Oh, I know I can benefit.
Yeah. Right.
Yeah.
Right. One last point is when we talked about this at our national meeting in December, some of our organizations are actually, you know, if the elections in November, they actually do this training the first part of December before you all take office. Whereas historically on UPC's calendar we've always done it in January after you've taken office.
But I'm wondering if it, I know either way it's taking out from your time, but Jeff, would that have, if we had had a formal class, you know, formal conference, would that have been better before or after you took office?
I think before taking office is beneficial. Okay. Because once you take office there's all kinds of demands on your time.
There are fewer, I mean you are in transition stage, but there's fewer demands and it would be helpful to, you know, kind of know what you're getting into.
Okay. So if the council's okay with that and, you know, we can take it to the training committee, that would be my proposal is that in the future that we move it from January to December or I guess even early November after the election, just sometime before. December's a hard time though, maybe, so maybe it would be like November the 2nd right after the election or something.
But just move it out for a bit. Okay, yeah, okay. All right.
We are buzzing right through this. Jeff, do you prosecute?
Do you prosecute? Okay, yeah. Everything's going pretty well, except there's a new thing now.
We've got the D.V. filing working. Washington City has been testing it and doing it and it's working. We've had a few glitches.
The court keeps throwing things at us. The latest thing was just that they said when you file a D.V. charge you're supposed to include the relationship of the victim to the defendant and we haven't been tracking that. We can, and so we've worked out a way to track that and make it possible to, so you can select from when you find, when you have a party, a victim or whatever that's associated with, has a relationship to a defendant in a D.V. case, you'll be able to select the relationship of that person to the defendant. And so that would be case specific, so maybe the same victim will have a, will be a victim again in a different case with a different defendant, so they can, you'll be able to select a different relationship if they have a different one to that person. So we've gone through and tried to fix several things. We've had trouble getting the judges back properly, so we fixed that issue.
And now it's going pretty good, so I think we're ready to move forward. So JTI, the vendor just says we'd like to just do it one agency at a time to get started going. Once we get moving and everything works smoothly, then we'll go, we can maybe move forward with two or three at a time.
So the plan is to get a county next, probably Wasatch County, because they were the earliest on e-prosecutor and they're willing to spend a little extra time with what it, you know, to learn it and to test it if there's issues. So we'll do that. Once they're going smooth, then I'll move it forward, just county, city, county, city, whatever, city, city, whatever pattern seems to be good.
So if your city or county wants to get on it sooner rather than later, just send me an email and say they put this on the schedule where we'd like to get going. Essentially the way it works is there's a tab in e-prosecutor where you go to, it's an e-file interface. You click the down arrow on that, it has a menu for e-file and e-file motions and orders and a couple of other things, but those are the most important things.
E-file just takes you to a form where you can say, is this an original e-filing? You know, the first one, you know, that creates a case. You select that and then it lets you select the document, usually an information, and then send it to the courts.
It sends it, we get a response back that, yeah, they got it, and then usually within a few minutes or even seconds sometimes it says, yep, accepted, succeeded, you're filed, and they give you back your court case number and your judge. And so it's pretty, it's pretty simple, but still there's a few things, for example, the court requires an address on every charge of the charge. We have, most people haven't been adding those.
Washington City already was, so it didn't affect them, but so we'll have to work out that. That would be part of the training though, you just, we can maybe default something, and they don't even care what's in there. It doesn't have to be a real address.
It could just be Cedar City or King County or whatever, rather than an actual address, as long as there's some text in there to accept it, which I always thought was kind of dumb.
Does that override the one that comes in from the officer's citation? Well, they put an actual street address in there. We're lazy and just put Cedar City, Utah.
Will it override that?
No.
What we see on exchange?
No, no, it just, it's just an extra field that they require when you file something or they reject it. It's kind of odd. The other thing we run into is there's some local offenses, which I've been asked to put in e-prosecutor, but the court didn't have it, so they reject it.
So when you ask me to add a local offense, make sure the court already has that, and then they'll match up and it'll be fine. We can file local offenses without any trouble, as long as it's in the court system too, and they have a whole lot of city and county charge offenses that are local to them, that are in course already. So the plan is I'll go with Wasatch County first and probably take a couple of weeks, and once they're done, you know, it's comfortable with it, it's moving smoothly, then I'll reach out to others and we'll get them going.
So it's pretty nice to finally have that actually working. The courts, oh yeah, the courts have thrown a few little things at us, like the charge, you know, address thing that we didn't know about, and then they added you have to have a relationship when you file a DV charge. So yeah, we've been working through those, and I think we've, as far as I know, that's that's all we've got, and that's, we've got that pretty much ready to go, so it should be good to move it forward.
I hope, I would, I'd hope to get everybody by the end of this year on the e-filing. Depends on how smoothly it goes in each jurisdiction, how fast I can move it forward. But that's the plan, is to get everybody started before the end of the year, so that you can just click a button and it's filed.
Also, you can file additional documents. That works great, and you don't, and it doesn't have to be one at a time. It could be two or three different ones, depending on what they are.
But in documents, we're going to have to make sure that if you have a motion, it's not a motion and an order on the same document. You have to file them separately. Some of our documents in the prosecutor were motion and orders combined.
You'd print it out and then send each one separately to the courts when you filed it through their system. We'll have to just separate those docs into separate ones. We'll work through that as we go forward with it.
So, that's pretty much all I have.
UPAA? Last week, the board spent two days down in Springdale, kind of a retreat, and so our report, we worked really hard down there in Kent State. How did Kaylee like it?
I haven't had a chance to talk to her.
Okay. I want to thank the attorneys for putting your, allowing your assistance to be on the board. They bring so much to it.
Kaylee's been on it, and it's, they're just invaluable. We, for membership, we updated our terms of new members. We have two new members.
Now that I'm on the spot. Maren Gossoway from Lehigh City is new, and Kimberly Payne from Morgan County are our newest members, and we're really going to do well with them. Kaylee and Kathy Locker were voted to extend their time, and we updated our bylaws, just as I mentioned, from, on the officers.
So, we have chair, co-chair, and then there's Joelle, who does the CUPA. So, to be an officer, I guess, is that what we call We've extended it to four years in the bylaws. We planned the conference for 2025, which will be in Kanab, at the Kanab Conference Center on June 11th through the 13th.
We've asked some of our star presenters, high dollar.
Mediocre, I think, is the word we're looking at.
Trent will be coming down and doing the ledge update and his stocking one that he's done. So, that was planned. As far as the CUPA test, we've updated that, and then there was a discussion about some awareness with the attorneys and what the CUPA test is all about.
There's not been much awareness of what that is, unless you have an assistant in your office that takes the test, and then you get a letter saying that they passed it, and also an assessment form, which I'll talk about in a minute. So, we want to do kind of an awareness and also an assistant of the year, like we do the prosecutors, and make announcement at the spring conference for nominations from your attorneys and staff members to send in your nominations. And then we also thought we would like to try what we did with the county attorneys at a UAC meeting and have everybody at spring conference that's there to take a sampling of what the CUPA test looks like.
So, we did this a few years ago. It's over 200 questions, definitions, yes or no, fill in the blank, things like that. And whatever attorneys were there at the time, Bob took it.
He was able to take it before we went there, so we were able to talk about it. And there was 10, 11 attorneys down there that took it, and they all failed. So, we'd kind of like to do that again.
I passed, by the way. I had time.
Different, obviously, and your obligations and liability is totally different than what your assistants and your assistants are there to help you be a better prosecutor to be, you know, to to be able to make your cases better and everything like that. So this is kind of the whole premise of it is for you to get an idea of how they're looking at things and so that they can understand why you're coming from where you're coming from and that you can understand where they're coming from and how they can best meet your needs on a case. So that's kind of the idea of doing that and then also announce after probably in 2026 who the assistant of the year is based on your nominations.
So if that sounds okay to the council, they wanted to get your feedback and...
So when are you anticipating announcing assistant of the year at UPAA or spring? Spring conference. Oh okay, well...
Well, well, both. So in 2026 there could be...
So you're not wanting to make an award to somebody this year?
That wasn't my direction.
Because I was going to say, I mean if the council, you know, proves proves that because we're going to get to prosecutor of the year in just a second. I mean there's no reason that we couldn't open up the applications now, you know, close it the first part of February, or excuse me, first part of March and make an award at spring conference. That would be good.
But, you know, I just didn't know if they were choosing to wait until 26 for a specific award.
There wasn't any reason. Other than that they wanted buy-in from the council and that they thought that would be a great idea. So if that's okay, we could just do it along the same lines as prosecutor of the year.
Does that sound okay?
So is it UCDA that you're proposing that they take the sample test? Either I misheard or was confused because you're talking to spring at one point, but is it the county attorneys that you're wanting to do the sampling of the test?
No, just everybody who is at spring conference.
When are you planning on doing that because we are packed?
So it would be like a handout and they could just have it on the table, a hard copy. Just take the test while you're sitting there, maybe during a break. So there would be nothing really set aside other than maybe announcing it.
As part of the announcements, we'd like you to become more aware of this. Here's a sampling of the CUPA test.
Are you wanting them to turn in the results?
Yeah, just bring it back to the registration desk when you're done and we can announce passing rate or you can get your test back at the end of the conference.
And I'm not saying that's not a bad idea. If you pass it out on the table, people are going to do that while people are speaking and that's kind of rude to presenters. We'd almost need to give them a dedicated time.
At lunchtime?
We, that's when we do our awards. We may need to rethink this.
Okay.
I, like I said, I don't want to speak to the council. I'm just saying logistically. We either need to adjust because I want them to give it.
When you send out the nominations, we could send out the questionnaire.
I don't know if people would actually do it ahead of time. You guys, would you do a non-required CUPA test if we sent out ahead of time? I don't know that I would.
So I'm not saying that that's not a good idea because I think our attorneys need to be aware of what they're doing. I just think that out of respect for the presenters, we don't want our people doing a test while they're presenting because then you're going to have divided attention and you've got a lot of people that are with their nose in a page and you're trying to present that. That's just not fair to them.
So maybe we just need to look at it and get a dedicated 15 or 20 minutes and just say, okay, everybody's doing a test now and explain why.
So I believe I saw that there's going to be a civility CLE coming up on prosecutors making sure to treat support staff with respect. Perhaps that person would want to incorporate, you know, a small element of the CUPA test in that CLE. I didn't even know this was a thing until you mentioned it.
I was just about to bring that up. So I was looking, that's in fall. So that's what we have.
We could do that in fall.
See, yeah, because if you're...
We wanted to reach the broadest audience. So that's why we thought of spring.
Realize also in spring though, you've got what, over a hundred that are going to be watching online that are not going to have the ability to do that exam. Whereas if we were to dedicate some time at fall where when you combine our numbers, wouldn't that be a broader...
Yeah, we could do it that way.
I was going to say that might be a better way because those schedules are still fairly flexible that we could build that in. How would your board feel about that?
I think they would be fine with that. They just want some awareness of the test. You know, county attorneys or attorneys see that they do it.
What is this? And why do you have to study so hard for it? You know, there's a study manual and then there's a test.
It takes about an hour and a half to do. There's a 50, 65% pass rate. Not everybody passes, but you can take it as many times as you want to.
It's lower than the bar. Yeah, yeah. And kudos to Joelle Rowley in Wasatch County, who really has spearheaded this.
We have agreed to compensate her for her time and working on this over the years because she really spends a lot of time putting this together.
She's revamped the study guide and made it into a manual and then we did the test. And then every two to three years, the board gets together with Joelle under her direction and we retire questions, refresh the manual, you know, bring it up to speed with legislation and things like that. So it's an ongoing thing.
I just had a question occur to me. If it takes them an hour and a half to take it, how do you expect prosecutors to do it in 15 minutes? Because it'll only be 12 questions.
Oh, only a section of it. Okay, I didn't understand. That makes more sense.
She takes like four questions from, she'll make four, four, four in each category. Okay, that makes more sense. So it'll be very...
We're really smart around it.
That's right.
I'm a good test taker, but I'm not sure I could do that.
And then, so is that, we can go with that.
Council, how do you feel? I like the idea a lot, actually. Okay.
But I agree with, yeah, having it, I think Sam had, if we could have incorporated it into something that we already have, where you have dedicated time to sit down, 10 minutes to answer 12 questions during the course of another presentation. That makes a lot of sense to me.
Okay, that's great.
I have a question on that, if I could. It's a little, maybe unrelated to this group. Talking to our office assistant, we have one, which makes it difficult for promotion purposes, because there's nowhere to promote her.
Right.
This is one of the things we did, potentially justifying to the council that if she passes it, maybe she gets some addition. Anybody have something like that in their offices that I can cheat from?
Davis County does. Davis Council and I do too. Yeah, there's offices around that will compensate or step increase or...
We do a 5% after they pass the group.
You know, people can put this on a resume. So the test was originally when UPC was, you know, first established. A couple of years later, UPAA was established out of that.
Laura Miller, I don't know if you know some, all of these names, Mel Wilson, there was a few attorneys that got together, and they were the brain children of the manual and all of that kind of stuff. So Joelle has just taken it and expanded it and made it what it is today. So there was, so after someone passes, and by the way, no one sees the scores, except for Joelle and myself.
No one gets to see them, even you, the boss. You don't get to see, you just know that they passed. Or if they failed, you don't even know that.
So there's a green, we call it the green sheet, and that has always been with it, was sent out. And it's kind of a question and answer assessment. And you could almost, it was brought to our attention, you could almost look at it as an HR thing.
It was, the intent was, if I remember correctly, 27 years ago, that it was just as kind of a validation of my employee accomplished this, they're good at this, they're good at that, we really value them. But it was, it scored one to five on each of the questions, and then even given a score on that. And then the supervisor signs it, and it comes back, and then I give them the certificate.
I won't mention what office, but it became a problem of a certain employee in that office. And they wanted to take it to HR. That attorney supervisor called me with their concerns that could be grammar.
And so at this meeting, we decided we're doing away with that. There really isn't a purpose for it. Other than I give them, when they pass it, they get a number, you know, like a sort of like a bar number.
They get a certificate, certified number that goes on their certificate. And then a letter of congratulation. And the letter goes to them, and the letter goes to their supervisor saying, congratulations, they passed, bravo.
But we're going to do away with the Grin Sheet. So, Stephen, you've filled out some. Yes.
Yeah. I just need to get with Bob and probably our grammar guy. I haven't destroyed any of them.
I don't know what to do with them now. If they're, if they be scheduled, if they're grammable. No one looks at them.
They've been in a drawer. I just put them, you know, they're just filed in a drawer. There's no electronic copies.
They are all hard copy. But I would like to not have them. And so I need to go through that process of not having them.
So.
There's not a retention schedule for that kind of thing.
There's not?
Well, that's what I didn't know. So it sounds like you can go ahead and just.
So if there's no retention schedule, then I will have them shredded. And yeah, and probably Emma is going to help me clean out all the dead wood out of my UPA files. Also, there, we have a Facebook page.
They want to go a little more into Facebook and Instagram. So just don't go on Facebook because some of the board posted all of our pictures of our networking session. And other business that we talked about, that's really all.
That's it. But it was a full day and a half of us, you know, pounding through all of this stuff. So thank you for allowing your assistants to come down and spend time.
It was well worth it. That's my report.
Very good. Thank you. Source prosecutors.
Trent, you take care of yourself and Tyson. So Tyson did his thing.
As for me, really, really busy training quarter. I ended up having over 100 hours, class hours of training. And over 1,000 participants.
So on a year, over 400 hours, over 4,000 participants. I know that Bob doesn't care about it, but I did do a DV boot camp in October. No, he did.
I know. For Salt Lake County and Utah County had reached out to me requesting to put one on for their newer prosecutors. So we had what was more of a county attorney geared course with about 22 students in it.
I don't know if they've given feedback to y'all, but the feedback I got via surveys was very, very positive. Thought we had a really good lineup of presenters. And it helped me learn a lot for what I want to do in the future.
It was easy to do it in this circumstance because it required no funding. We conducted it here. They all commuted here.
And I am looking forward to doing one in the near future. I'm going to wait and see how the grant funds play out. If we're going to get a DV resource prosecutor, I will help them put one on soon after they come on.
If it looks like we're not going to get that, I'll try and put one on soon. One thing I did want to let y'all know about. We have spring conference in April.
On the Wednesday before it, there is an attorney from the Office on Violence Against Women and then two attorneys from Equitas that are going to come and do a full day of DV and SV training in Provo. So if you have someone you want to participate in that training, it'll be the day just prior to our spring conference so we can tack that on. I sent out a message asking if that would be convenient for people and got a lot of feedback that it was.
We're still securing the location, but I actually think that's going to be pretty good. It's going to focus on trying to prosecute a case with no witness, material witness warrants, ethics of DV prosecution.
That's good to know because the proposed, next proposed council meeting would be on that same day but I would like to attend that training. I don't know if there's anybody on the council that would like, so maybe we want to consider bumping council meeting to a different day.
Sorry, yeah, yeah I would just say that because of the travel that is the really best day for UPC. Yeah I guess that's true. Okay, so I'll strike that.
I mean, I sympathize. Yeah, it's hard to get people together. Yeah, that's true.
Having physical meetings is the best. That's true.
What kind of students are you getting in these boot camps? Are they almost exclusively new folks?
I've been surprised because that's what I thought the crowd would be and it's very much been a mix. At DB boot camp I think we had attorneys who had less than a year of experience all the way up to 15. I was also surprised regardless of their level of experience they were participating and open-minded.
So I thought we got good participation, good feedback. I think the only challenge it presents is from an instructor's perspective. I want to give that 15-year attorney something but I also need to give that one-year attorney something.
So it kind of creates an interesting dynamic that way but we've definitely got a mix. I wanted to say too, Randall you brought up having a brand new attorney that struggles with DV. If any of you all want me to come down for a day and sit down with them and talk about DV dynamics or you got a new SB prosecutor, I'm more than willing to do that.
I feel like it's really effective to do that type of one-on-one training and I'm sure you all have a really tough time scheduling that. I'm not saying I could do it like tomorrow but if you give me a heads up I'm really happy to come down, sit down with them, answer any concerns and provide DV dynamics training, plea negotiation training, things to keep in mind as you do that. Because I recognize doing a DV boot camp once a year is not enough for what we need.
So more than happy to provide one-on-one if you guys have one specific person you feel like is struggling or new.
To follow up on your question Ed, if DUI boot camp just last week, it was the same thing if we had some brand new prosecutors plus those that have 15 plus years experience. So we're reaching you know a broad crowd.
Yeah my concern was you know the 5 to 15 year person. I think anybody can benefit from what you guys offer. Sounds like we're good.
I'd say yeah thank you. Job fair.
Yeah so as we talked about last council meeting in the fall we're not going to host it here. So what here's the plan just briefly because we're getting close on time is I'm going to send out an email in the next week or two to all the counties and to the city offices letting you know that I'm going over to Colorado to participate in this job fair. And so I will gather any information that you all would like me to take and I will set up a table.
Like I said with this I'll take swag if you guys have got any handouts anything and I'll explain in the letter. Well we're also sending a notice to the law schools BYU and U letting them know that this job fair is going. I realize that you know a lot of students a lot don't have the funds to travel to a job fair but those that I'm working with with Arizona they say that they do get you know people that will come from out of state that they know that there is a job fair where you know a ton of offices are are there being represented.
So I'm hoping that we will get you know some significant interest or at the very least you get folks from Colorado and Arizona that go to those that want to come to Utah. So just be looking out for that. It's going to be the day after spring conference or the Saturday after spring conference.
So I'll leave spring conference. I'm going to have to leave a little bit early catch a flight to Denver and then do it on Saturday and then come home that night. So I'm hoping that we'll see something productive come from that.
Yeah so as I mentioned earlier I'm going to open up those the nominations here I'm hoping to get it done by the week's end not first part of next week and have it open for two to three weeks. So last year the review committee was UPC staff it was Ed as chair of the council was Karen as chair of UVAA and then I think Jeff was on it at revenue council. So I if Ed and Karen are willing to do it again we just need if there's somebody on the council that would be willing to to sit on that review those applications and make that decision make a determination.
I mean we can do it with you and Karen and us I just didn't know if anybody else in the council wanted to be part of that. Okay all right so we will go with that. The transition team interview just so as I put in here and if maybe you read the paper I was very impressed with what Derek Brown did is he had probably 30 to 40 people that volunteered their time to be on transition teams and the teams were composed of four or five individuals they were assigned a section of the AG's office to interview.
As you can see my team was Nathan Evershed who was the chair of that committee with Stu Young who I didn't know was coming to work for us at the time and Marlies and then Greg Scores. Greg actually couldn't join in on the interview but they just sent out a questionnaire ahead of time asked for it to be you know really honest. Nathan sent out an email letting us know that our answers would be confidential that any notes that were taken any information that was supplied to them you know they're not wouldn't be grammable and so they destroyed it afterwards and so that that made it so it could be a fairly open and honest dialogue.
There's about there was about eight pages of questions governing everything from who you are what you do you know what your budget like what your needs are your staffing needs as well as any challenges that you're facing and was with Nathan's assurance I was probably a little more honest than I would have if I had known that my answers would be made public and they appreciated the honesty and now that Stu's here I sometimes fear I'd probably say this in front of him but you know I wonder would I have been quite as honest and forthright but it was just a really positive experience and then with the transition we've been feeling nothing but support from Stu. Derek was in the offices on Friday unfortunately the only one in the office was Ron because the rest of us were at DUI boot camp and at UPAA so Ron's the only one that has met Derek now that he's been elected so I just really appreciate and I think we're going to have I think a much healthier relationship with the AG's office moving forward. Good to hear.
Next meeting. So on here Jeff are you okay if we go first again on April 16 so that would be Wednesday spring conference is going to be in Provo but I think it I think here is easier to get don't you don't you get do SWAT people is this easier to get to them try to find someplace in Provo? I think it'd be 6 because I'm sure Jeff would accommodate us but either way he's probably fine.
Yeah it just realized we would be in the other training room on the other end of the build up that would be the only difference unless there's someplace in Provo because we're at the Provo Marriott we're not at the at the conference center so I don't know if you've got some place that you want to host in Provo. I haven't thought about it. Yeah no no I realize I'm just kind of hitting you up on it yeah so we maybe work with Haley to see if there's a place down there yeah okay yeah so is it okay if we go first because we're going for the full 90 minutes today we don't always go 90 minutes but I know SWAT may usually goes a little bit longer.
It probably won't. So if we just do the same thing you see from 9 to 1030 and then SWAT at 1030? Yes.
Okay so we'll do it on Wednesday April 16th location to be determined but at those times. Will you guys get with Haley? One of you work with Haley to see if there's a place in Utah County.
Or I'll try maybe with Hotel and see if we can get it over on. Oh okay. So to be determined.
Okay. Anything else? Jared.
Oh yeah thank you all have a good day thanks for coming.