Kaysville City Council members spent the bulk of a budget work session reviewing plans and cost estimates for a proposed standalone gymnasium designed by the Davis School District and sited with the district’s junior high campus.

The gymnasium concept — described by city staff as roughly 26,000 square feet — is presented as shared space for school physical education during school hours and city programming for evenings, weekends and summers. City staff told the council the architect’s preliminary construction estimate is $10.5 million, plus or minus roughly 10 percent.

City parks staff said the facility would include a walking track, basketball courts, a 2,800-square-foot fitness/yoga room on a second level, and flexible open space. Under the current schematic the district would fully fund items shown in yellow on the design matrix, Kaysville would fund items in green and some building systems and common areas would be shared on a 50/50 basis. “When we were told 10.5 by the architects, they were clear that that's an estimate. It’s 10.5 plus or minus 10%,” Cole (staff member) said during the presentation. “Hopefully, we'll only go down from there, but I think they're trying to be conservative.”

Why it matters: councilors framed the gym as an investment in community recreation that could reduce pressure on rented gym space, shorten program wait lists and provide programming for adults and older residents (walking track, yoga, low-cost group fitness) as well as youth sports. Several councilors said the facility could also bring foot traffic near downtown and be treated as a community amenity rather than solely a school building.

Funding options and constraints

City staff outlined funding options the council could consider, including partial use of the city’s RAMP sales-tax fund (the presentation used a $500,000 placeholder in scenario modeling), issuing debt (general obligation bond) and spreading payments over 15–25 year terms. Staff noted RAMP has historically funded parks, trails and recreation projects; how much RAMP would contribute in any given year can vary depending on other RAMP commitments. Staff also explained the district is seeking an early signal of whether Kaysville is “in or out” of a partnership so the district will not spend engineering resources and carry re-design costs as it did in a prior (2010) project in Centennial when a last-minute withdrawal forced redesign.

Councilors discussed a range of operating questions: access during school hours (public access would be restricted when school is in session because the building sits on school grounds), maintenance responsibility (the district would oversee building operations and bill the city for its share of ongoing maintenance items; resurfacing was cited as roughly $4,000 per year), staffing of site supervisors for open hours, membership or access controls, locker-room access (staff said locker rooms would be locked and public restrooms provided) and program-fee models to cover part-time staffing costs.

Next steps and council direction

Counselors did not approve a funding commitment at the meeting. They directed staff to set up a tour of three prototype facilities (Shoreline, Horizon/West Point legacy projects) and to include descriptive material about the project in the tentative budget/public hearing notices so residents can review the concept before the June budget hearing. “We have to know: are we in or are we out? Because as they go, there's a lot that goes into engineering and designing a building,” Cole (staff member) said. The council scheduled the facility tour for next Friday and asked staff to bring the item back for the public budget hearing and a deliberative council decision later in the budget process.

Provenance: city staff introduced the gym topic at the start of the session and the council closed discussion after a presentation and Q&A; the first and last transcript excerpts used to draft this report are cited in the provenance section.

Ending note: councilors emphasized the project’s trade-offs — community benefit versus multi-million-dollar cost — and asked staff to continue outreach and to provide clearer funding scenarios (bond terms, RAMP contribution floor, and operating-cost estimates) before making any formal commitment.