[Speaker 1]
I don't know what's up with Troy, I sent him two invites, so. I didn't know that, I didn't know that you were already facing the camera. I've had enough cameras for a while.

As long as you don't talk, it shouldn't, it shouldn't, it shouldn't rotate to you, so. Okay, Ron, are you recording?

[Speaker 3]
Yeah, and so is Emma.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so we're on the recording now, and everything's official? Yes, yes, go. Okay, we want to welcome everybody to council meeting online.

We've got Sam Smith, Bluffdale City. Randall McCune, Cedar City, and Kayrn Walker. Now if we could just go around the table, and then we'll hit the perimeter. Brett Robinson, Salt Lake County. Chad Dodson, Iron County. Stu Young, AG. Steven Foote, Duchesne County. Jeff Gray, Utah County. Bob Church, UPC. Jerry Jaeger, Washington County.

Welcome. Jeff Buhman.

[Speaker 2]
Trent Dressen, UPC.

[Speaker 6]
Emma Johnson, UPC. Marilyn Lawson, UPC.

[Speaker 3]
Ron Weight, UPC.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so the first item on the agenda is just to review the minutes from the previous meeting. Hopefully, somebody's had a chance to look at them. If not, if you want to take a look at them, and if we entertain a motion to approve and a second, and we'll vote.

Actually, minutes from two meetings, yeah, the June 10th and then July 16th. I'll make a motion to approve. One or both?

I'll vote. All right, Chad. Do I have a second?

Second. Stu, all in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? Aye. Perfect.

Oh, there we go, Troy. Was that delay, or is that good? No, it was good.

Hey, welcome, Troy. Can you hear us? I can.

Can you hear me? We can hear you now, yeah. So we just had a motion and a vote to approve the minutes.

So you are right. You haven't really missed very much. OK, the next item is our FY 26 budget.

As I projected in June at your June council meeting, I thought our carryover was going to be about $80,000. It ended up being $88,380. And so that is reflected, then, in this budget that you have at tab B.

It also contains the approved salaries that you all approved. But then I had included those proposed salaries in that June budget just in case. So there's really not a lot that has changed on this budget.

It's just this is now the official proposed UPC budget for FY 26. So if we can get somebody to move to approve it, and we'll go for a vote.

[Speaker 4]
Can I just ask a question? Yes, please.

[Speaker 1]
With carryover, you don't lose it, right? No, no. That's awesome.

Yeah. Sorry, I guess I should say that. Before you vote on it, does anybody have any questions?

Thank you. Yeah, yeah, OK. We have typically come under budget.

I mean, you know, I guess you don't need to waste words. The budget is what it is. We talked about, like I said in June, there's not much change.

So do we have a motion to approve? Please. Motion to approve.

Second. Stu and Joe. All right.

All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Aye. Move it your way, Claude.

[Speaker 14]
Move it your way, Claude. I'm sorry, people.

[Speaker 6]
I saw Sam's lips move before we heard her.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, we're on that old Japanese movie issue. OK. Number three is the conference registration fee increase.

So I apologize that I did this with email. So I put it sort of in here and in the email that I sent. So let me just get out a recording and then tell you actually where we are at.

It's two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago, I met with the new finance person at the AG's office. And they just asked how our fees were set, our conference fees. And I explained that it was the council that set those fees.

And he said, if you're considering raising them, I need to know right away. And I said, well, I don't have council meeting for two more weeks. He said, well, send out an email.

Maybe get a preliminary approval. And so that's what that email was about discussing raising our fees as high as $200. They came from the AG's office, came back, and said, based on our numbers and different things that they recommend that we would only go as high as $180.

And I said, well, I can't. He wanted me to commit to that. I said, I can't commit to that because we haven't had council meeting yet.

And then you guys all sent an email saying that you would approve a tentative discussion up to $200. Part of the reason, actually, the biggest emphasis for raising that is, kind of getting into Ron's report, is the state is no longer supporting the, Ron, you better explain it, about the website migration.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah. So our website is on servers that the state is going to shut down and remove from the system. That we need to move to new servers that the state doesn't host.

So there were some options presented. Most of them were, one of them was completely ridiculous because we couldn't even continue. No automated stuff, no registration, no CLE tracking, none of it would be supported on what they recommended.

So we asked them to look again. So now they've recommended a different solution, using Amazon Web Services as the host. And doing that, we had no idea for sure what the cost would be, but the service would be really good.

And all of our functionality and the look and feel of the website would stay the same. And we'd keep our URL, the HTTPS, UPC.Utah.gov. If we went with a private host, that would go away. We'd have to use some other, like UtahProsecutionCouncil.org or something. We didn't want to do that. So we do have that now, and it looks like it's going to be not as expensive as we thought. But until it's actually implemented and billed, I'm a little bit leery of the prices they gave us because they're less than what we're paying now.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so what they were originally told us is that it could be upwards of $16,000 or more to migrate. And then the concern was, depending upon what kind of server we went to, with as much time as Ron spends just supporting the e-prosecutor, we thought, oh, and this is all going away in March. This all has to be done by March.

And so we were concerned that we might have to hire a contract programmer to come in and help Ron reprogram everything. Thankfully, that has not come to fruition. And as Ron is saying, we met with DTS and with Amazon website.

What we're currently paying is $400 a month to host. And we kind of assumed that it would be more than that with Amazon Web Service. And it's actually coming in substantially cheaper than that.

Now, as Ron said, we won't know what the final price is until we migrate it. But what they're quoting us is for 100 gig of storage, 4 gig of memory, it's $45 a month.

[Speaker 3]
And so even if we- Well, it'd actually be double that because we have to have a production and a development.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I was going to say, to get up to 400, I mean, we'd have to go 10 times that amount, which I don't think we're going to do. So the necessity for raising our rates is really not there anymore.

[Speaker 3]
Well, there is one thing. They didn't give us a quote for them. They're going to still move it to the new servers.

And that won't be nearly as much as converting it to the other one. But it will still cost something. But it's probably in the range of a few thousand rather than a few tens of thousands.

[Speaker 1]
So here's the issue is we haven't raised conference rates since, I think I said, 2019. We charge substantially cheaper than anybody else. But that's not a reason to raise our rates because we're cheaper than anybody else.

If we don't raise rates this year, we'd have to wait really until next year because registration fees have to be approved by the legislature. It just goes on a fee chart that gets approved during the session. So this really is the time, if we want to consider raising fees.

I don't know, I'll speak for Maryland. Maryland doesn't think we really need to raise our fees that we're doing pretty good. Like I said, we have an 88,000 carryover.

And that's, other than the one year that we were abnormally high, it's been right around 80,000 that we've carried over every year just because we've been really good with conferences and coming in under budget. But things are more expensive. So I guess what I'm saying is I would favor a raise, you know, even more than up to 150.

And that would take into account anything that we're gonna have to pay DTS plus it gives us a little bit. Or we keep it the same for a year and see how we're doing. So right now it's at 125?

Correct. So your suggestion would be at like a 25? No, it's another $25.

Maryland, do you want to comment?

[Speaker 6]
My addition to that is the reason I'd like to keep it the way it is is because hotel rates to be able to send your people to conferences are going up. So I'm just trying to keep up with the race of, I know everything is going up, but if our registration fees are covering what we need for the time being, if we bump it up next year or see how this year goes, but right now hotel rates are, you know, we're priced out of places that we used to go vernal. I mean, we're priced out of vernal.

[Speaker 1]
It's up in the off season.

[Speaker 6]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
And I think what your point is is that if we raise our rates, does that mean is it gonna have an impact on where your office is to be able to send?

[Speaker 6]
Everything is going up. Do you need, you know, do you want to have to take on a registration fee too as well? So that was just my point.

[Speaker 4]
Do you have to have the same registration fee for each conference? Like the Utah County one, the two before, I don't know that many people are doing hotels for that one. That's right, right, right.

So I just, but it has to be the same registration fee for each course.

[Speaker 1]
We've, I don't know that we've ever talked about that.

[Speaker 6]
You know, we've, we've.

[Speaker 1]
Or have we?

[Speaker 6]
In the past.

[Speaker 1]
But that would be before my time.

[Speaker 6]
Yeah, prior to Bob, we did that. And for finance to keep track of everything, you know, okay, it's this much for that conference or it's this much for that conference, or we're gonna prorate it here or there. It was, it became, yeah, it was a little problematic.

So just to keep it one rate straight across the board, a conference is a conference, you know, either way.

[Speaker 1]
Now what we are doing, well, well, anyway, no, nevermind. That's a different discussion.

[Speaker 6]
So yeah, so I mean, it's up to you folks how you see it. You're the bosses, it's your agencies, you know your budgets.

[Speaker 4]
Like, I'll speak for the AG's office and stuff, because we're trying to push more people towards UPC now than in the past. But like what we do is we have for at least the criminal side of things, everybody's got 500 bucks. And, you know, and so the, like the UPC conference fees have been great for most of, you know, most of them, we are now seeing our, like consumer protection AG's and other kind of more specialized areas.

So you need to go to say Chicago or something for kind of specialized training. And so at least on the criminal side, we're happy with it, but we would be fine with an increase. 25, 50, 75, we'd be fine with that increase, but I don't, I don't wanna speak for the counties.

So one of my questions, I mean, what do we have planned?

[Speaker 1]
I mean, are we bringing in a speaker that we would like? I mean, that to me, that would be a consideration if we have a desire to bring somebody in. Right.

And that's a good point, is the training committee, and this is when we get the training committee, I can ask that question is who would you like to, you know, what kind of trainings do you wanna bring in? Do we wanna bring in anybody? Because right now, we don't have anybody planned, but if we have sufficient funds like we have in the past, we can bring in national speakers.

You know, not every speaker at every conference, but we can certainly bring in a keynote speaker. I mean, personally, I'd be okay with it. It gives you a little more flexibility right now.

So, I mean, another 25, I mean, I was calculating if every one of my attorneys went, which they won't.

[Speaker 7]
I mean, that's $1,200 for us, and it's gonna be a lot more for you guys, but. We would be okay with the $2,000.

[Speaker 1]
You guys get a lot more money than we do, so.

[Speaker 4]
This is the majority of our training, this fall and spring, a couple outliers, but. Right, right. I would, you know, just give it a turn.

[Speaker 6]
I mean, a small increase would help, because there's some, you know, for basic, we're paying for students lodging, for DV, or.

[Speaker 1]
DV and TUI boot camps.

[Speaker 6]
Yeah, they're.

[Speaker 1]
We pay for all of that.

[Speaker 6]
We're paying for all of that, so, I mean.

[Speaker 10]
So, for me, like, basic. Basic, for me, seeing somebody there, I'm happy to spend more money on that, because I think that what they get out of that is a lot more than, than we're gonna get out of our office. So, that's not a big deal for me on that.

$25. $25 is, you know, not even our, that's our lunch per diem, so that's. Yeah.

That's not, the registration fee for spring and fall converts is not the cost that we're worried about. Right. On those things.

It's the hotel and per diem. We've done travel everywhere.

[Speaker 8]
So, from a city perspective, I know that Provo, I mean, we're kind of in a really tight budget year here. They've started all of us off in the negative for our fiscal year. But, so, I was a little concerned about hearing a budget increase, but I feel like $25 isn't really a lot, and that should be manageable.

And it would help kind of give us a little cushion for the extras that might come up in the future.

[Speaker 1]
Well, and also, this is more of a training committee, our training committee report, but Maryland has asked that we increase the UPA budget, which I'm not opposed to, because our support staff do amazing things when it comes to quality training. Sam, you're from a city. Any feedback from your city?

[Speaker 9]
So, I think that $25 every couple of years is probably more palatable than going up $75 every five years.

[Speaker 1]
Sure, okay. Randall, you're another city. Troy, any comments?

[Speaker 11]
Yeah, so I would say probably similar to that. $25 for us, and I think our current budget has been frozen for five years, but I've never come close to reaching it. So, $25 a few times most of the year is great.

I wouldn't know one thing that's part of what your original justification was. I think state statute requires you to keep the dot-gov. So, regardless of what you guys do, I don't think you can go to a dollar, or I think all of us have had to switch in the last couple of years.

You better know, Michael, we've had to do it.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, that's it. Thank you, that's good to know. Troy, anything?

No concerns about the increase. Okay. So, anybody want to make a motion to raise it?

$25. $25, okay. Jeff, $25.

Second? Chad, all in favor? Aye.

Aye.

[Speaker 14]
Aye.

[Speaker 1]
I waited to start. Any opposed? Okay.

Okay, oh, that covers a whole bunch right there. Okay.

[Speaker 3]
Just a question, Bob. Yes. Do we raise the one for defense attorneys?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, thank you, Ron. I was looking at that. Absolutely.

[Speaker 3]
Do we want it? I'd say so. I'd say so.

[Speaker 1]
I'm a racist. For those of you that are not in the room, Ron reminded me that I asked, do we want to raise it for defense attorneys, and Chad said, absolutely, in a very resolute tone. So, do we want to raise it at all for defense attorneys?

[Speaker 6]
$500.

[Speaker 1]
What is it right now? $350.

[Speaker 6]
$500, that's a nice one.

[Speaker 1]
Do we get a lot of them? No. No.

No, the question was, you know, what do we raise it to? Marilyn said $500. Chad asked if we get a lot.

Who do we get? You know, we used to get several former Utah County attorneys.

[Speaker 6]
John Aston, John.

[Speaker 1]
Jason Schatz used to come.

[Speaker 6]
Yeah, a few come for spring conference.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I mean, and that's really the conferences that they come to.

[Speaker 6]
Lindsay Jarvis comes out every year.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, and defense counsel, now that we offer it, it's a live remote. They don't show their faces at our conference. They just pay.

[Speaker 6]
I think we got three or four at spring conferences.

[Speaker 1]
That actually came?

[Speaker 6]
No, I think there was one that I remember. Yeah, he was like trying to run away from us. That's right.

There was one, we do remember one for sure. But I think there was the rest were all remote. They didn't want to really.

[Speaker 1]
But you know, the question is, now we've gone down from maybe a dozen in our peak to just less than a handful.

[Speaker 14]
Well, and it kind of aged out to them.

[Speaker 1]
And are we required to provide that? No, no. I mean, that's almost...

If we're only getting a handful, I'm not even sure why we're doing it. Yeah, well, with spring, no, we're not required. If we have an attorney, or excuse me, a judge speak, they have rules that it has to have a mixed audience.

But like for basic, we wouldn't allow them to come to basic. We don't allow them to come to fall or...

[Speaker 6]
We'd have them... It's been a while, but we've either had them at spring or fall.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I don't know that I'd let them. I think with spring, it's kind of general enough. It's not super pro-prosecution, but if we want to...

Jeff?

[Speaker 2]
I think you remember our discussion was that the bar was requiring us to have them. Yeah, I think it does.

[Speaker 1]