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Council reviews American Fork proposal, seeks metrics and guardrails for public safety contract
Summary
City Manager Goodwin told the Cedar Hills City Council that negotiations with American Fork would link future public-safety payments to inflation measures; councilors urged clearer service metrics, reporting on complaints and limits that would protect Cedar Hills from steep spikes in costs.
City Manager Goodwin laid out a proposed framework for a renewed public-safety contract with American Fork, saying the current agreement (which runs through 2029) needs updating to avoid large, sudden cost increases.
Goodwin said the city’s proposal tied annual adjustments to the consumer price index plus 1.5 percentage points, while American Fork returned a counteroffer of CPI plus 2 percent and a one-time FY2026 adjustment. “I believe that you’re gonna pay for it one way or another,” Goodwin said, arguing the city can absorb predictable increases more easily than a large, retroactive jump when a contract is renegotiated.
Council members focused on how to measure the community-level service Cedar Hills would receive under any new arrangement. Goodwin and councilors discussed two groups of metrics: (1) comparative metrics — e.g., number of calls, traffic stops and patrol hours within Cedar Hills as a share of the regional totals — to show Cedar Hills’ share of service; and (2) local-response metrics — e.g., priority-1/2 response times, hours patrolled at parks and schools, and mutual-aid events. Goodwin urged that reports include clear, contextual denominators (for example, patrol hours per resident or percent of total call volume) so the city can interpret raw counts.
Several councilors asked for contractual guardrails to limit Cedar Hills’ exposure in periods of high inflation, or to tie increases so the city never pays more than American Fork’s public-safety increase. Goodwin also recommended restoring a clause requiring the contractor to report complaints and operational summaries to the city; he noted that clause had been removed in a prior draft and should be reinserted.
The council did not adopt a final position at the meeting but directed staff and the mayor to continue negotiations with the priorities discussed: predictable pricing tied to a clear index, explicit staffing and patrol presence commitments, operational reporting (including complaint reports), and remediation steps if reported service does not meet expectations.
Next steps: staff will take council feedback back to American Fork and return with a revised proposal and clearer cost projections before any binding vote.
