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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2023.0314.TCWSCIPTOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING OF THE FOUNTAIN HILLS TOWN COUNCIL March 14, 2023 A Special Work Session — Capital Improvement Projects of the Fountain Hills Town Council was convened at 16705 E. Avenue of the Fountains in open and public session at 5:30 p.m. Members Present: Mayor Ginny Dickey: Vice Mayor Peggy McMahon; Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski; Councilmember Brenda J. Kalivianakis; Councilmember Hannah Toth; Councilmember Allen Skillicorn Attended Telephonically: Councilmember Gerry Friedel Staff Present: Town Manager Grady E. Miller; Town Attorney Aaron D. Arnson; Town Clerk Linda Mendenhall Audience: Approximately two members of the public were present. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 1 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION Post -Production File Town of Fountain Hills Special Work Session Capital Improvement Projects March l4, 2023 Transcription Provided By eScribcrs, LLC + s • r Transcription is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. Page 1 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 2 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MAYOR DICKEY: Good evening, everyone. We are having our discussion on our capital improvement projects, and we just heard them a couple of weeks ago -- most of them. So I think this is great, because were really familiar with what's coming down the line. And Grady, you're going to kind of kick it off, right? KALIVIANAKIS: Just very quickly. Gerry just texted, "I can't get through the phone number they gave me. Darn it." MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, okay. KALIVIANAKIS: So whatever number he's got, could somebody contact him and give him the right phone number? Thank you. MILLER: We will definitely try to do that. Would one of you mind just going up to Angela? Or Mike, do you want to let us know what that number is? Sorry, Councilmember. We'll get you that number and well either email it back to you or text it back to you. KALIVIANAKIS: Good. Thank you. (PAUSE) MILLER: Mayor, if you'd like, I can start off with, at least, the introductory remarks so we can dispense with the process and how it will work tonight. So we appreciate you all being here tonight. As the Mayor was indicating, a couple of week ago at the council retreat, you had, for the first time, a preview of the proposed capital improvement program for next year. What we're going to do tonight is give you a presentation by our town engineer. And the town engineer will go through all the projects. And we ask -- to try to keep this moving pretty well, at a good clip -- is if you have no issues or any concerns with the individual projccts, we'll go onto the next one. If you have concerns then at any time during the presentation, after the end of that presentation on that project, ask your questions and the staff will come up and respond to your questions. We'll work on a consensus basis. So what I mean by that is if there's a consensus of council that they either want to postpone a project to an outer year or later year, rather than next year or if they wish to not have it be part of the capital improvement program, Paget of90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 3 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION then well look for that tonight so that we can just go ahead and not have that project have any further consideration through the budget process. So we've done that before. We've had actually, at the workshops, were not going to ask you to vote but well be able to, based on the discussion and how it's going, well be able to count nods and kind of figure out who the number of people that are supporting it or not supporting a project. So we can kind of figure out from there. Both department directors are here, Rachael Goodwin and also Justin, who can answer technical questions or any other questions have you about the specific projects. So that's pretty much in a nutshell how well handle it tonight. So any questions before we move on? MCMAHON: Yes. MILLER: Yes. MCMAHON: With that in mind, I would appreciate it if the presenters let us know the situation if it's absolutely -- not absolutely, but if it really needs to be done. I mean the whole nine yards of the consequences if it wasn't, so to speak. Okay? Thank you. MILLER: Yeah. And there will be a few of those where we have -- as an example, we have flagged control district projects that are grant funded, where we need our— we actually need to have our match in order for these flagged control projects to go through. And I think we also have some -- there might be some transportation ones where we actually have MAG dollars that we have to keep in the capital in order to make this stuff happen. So do we know -- is Councilmembcr Friedel on the line? MENDENHALL: Working on it. MILLER: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: I have a question, Grady. MILLER: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: So we talked earlier about what our expected carryovers might be, what are we looking at as a total. So as we go through these and we see this much in community services, this much in public works, to kind of get a feel for what we expect to be in the CIP -- MILLER: Good question. Page 3 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 4 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MAYOR DICKEY: -- and I know it's early but maybe we can do that. MILLER: The chief financial officer, Mr. Pock, was able to provide me a number and he said that he believed the ending balance for the fiscal year will be $4.2 million. Then we also have, as part of transfers and such that happened after the audit, right? And usually, that's the construction sales tax that will be put in there and then also the yearend surplus. So I'm sorry, he's already anticipated the construction sales tax, but the yearend surplus that traditionally goes into that is not really transferred until it's verified what that might be as a result of the audit. And usually -- or historically, we've been tracking, is about $2 million or so that has gone into the capital fund. So realistically, you could be looking at probably about $6 million or so that would be available for capital projects in the capital improvement program for next year. MAYOR DICKEY: And just to be clear, that's not the only source of programing funding for our funding for these? MILLER: That's right. So -- MAYOR DICKEY: There's different projects. MILLER: Absolutely. So you'll see the projects have a lot of different sources of funding. You have development fees, which in the case of -- and I'm just throwing this out. With like a new park development, development fees would be covering that. We also have grants that would also be covering some of these. And you might also have some town general fund contribution as well. So -- MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. MILLER: Thank you. With that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Janover, who will go ahead and kick off and will be doing the lion's share of the presentations tonight. Mr. Janover? JANOVER: Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. Good evening. Okay, now we have all of you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. CLERKS NOTE: Due to technical difficulties Councilmember Gerry Friedel joined the meeting at 5:39 p.m. Page 4 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 5 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION FRIEDEL: Gerry's here. MAYOR DICKEY: Great. Thanks, Gerry. JANOVER: Perfect. And as Grady mentioned, we do have Directors Rachael Goodwin and Justin Weldy here tonight to answer any questions -- detailed questions. They have a 1m of historical perspective that 1 might not. So we're a great team and excited to be here to present this to you tonight. And first 1 also want to, firstly, take this opportunity to wish you a happy pi day. Today is March 14th: 3.1415926. So it's an engineering thing. Yeah, you know more than I do, I'm sure. So tonight we're going to present the FY24, community services capital projects, the '24 public works capital projects, and the outer year capital projects. So first, I'll start with the community services projects for next year. So our first one is the Sunridge Preserve and walking paths. So this is for the design and construction of passive walking paths in Sunridge Canyon. You might recall, originally there was a public park that was identified in the general plan and we did have a public charette held earlier this year. However, at the council retreat several weeks ago, we did get direction to provide a reduced scope here to passive walking paths, with the possibility of developing future amenities at some point. So with that, we are asking for $100,000, and this cost would come from the park development fees. We also have a partnership with Conservancy Trailblazers. So they're a volunteer trail building folks that would help us with the construction of the trails. The operation of this facility would be from sunrise to sunset only. It would be designated as a preserve to allow all the town ordinances to be enforced at the location. And again, we removed the parking lot and the vehicular access area and the shade ramadas that were originally shown on that plan. So now it's really just going to be the walking paths. So we would have pedestrian access from the Desert Canyon Drive only. And that would be via a pedestrian bridge and possibly a drainage culvert to get across the lot. And again, we would have signage with the rules of that location there. So it's pretty much a scaled -down version of what -- a much scaled -down version of what we had earlier. So again, that's $100,000 we're requesting for next fiscal year. Page 5 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 6 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MAYOR DICKEY: You have something? SKILLICORN: Yeah, Madam Mayor. On this one, 1 thought that maybe -- 1 explore the idea of selling, giving, whatever to the HOA. I don't if that is germane to this evening. But maybe this is one we scratch and go. We'll talk about it later, but for this project, I think of it as next year if we don't do something like that. Is there consensus? MILLER: So 1 think that what I would recommend is keep it in as a placeholder, and if that's what the council wants to ultimate do, I think that's great. One of the things that we need to do is we need to make sure -- a lot of the properties that the Town has, that developers gave the Town, a lot of times they have deed restrictions and we have not gone yet -- deep dive into this. So what I would suggest is, keep it as a proposed project. If the council wishes to do that, ultimately, then it can still be done. We just want to keep this in here as a possibility. It could very well turn out that we cannot use -- we cannot sell it because it was intended for public use. Meaning, it was intended for the Town to keep it as an asset of the Town. So were going to verify that. We should have that confirmed for you probably about the time of the adoption of the budget. So you'll know at that time. SKILLICORN: Madam Mayor, that is excellent news and an excellent idea, and it's good to know about. I still think that 1 don't -- if there's consensus, that I'm not a big fan of the placeholder idea. I think that if there's something were going to do, I think 2025 might be the year instead of 2024, because it appears that there isn't community support for it. That's all. That's all. TOTH: I would agree with that only because, I don't know -- we wanted to bring up the lower scope with just the trails, and I don't know about everyone else, but personally, I heard very loud and clear that that was still not what the people in that area wanted. So I would recommend not having it in the budget. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? MCMAHON: I think that we should keep it here as a placeholder -- MAYOR DICKEY: Sony. MCMAHON: Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. MAYOR DICKEY: No, it's okay. Go ahead. MCMAHON: Because I really think that there's a lot -- we're known for our trails. This Page 6 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 7 of 90 MARCH 10, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION is kind of — could be a connectivity to the trails up in Ad- -- MAYOR DICKEY: Up there. MCMAHON: Um -hum. Yeah. Up there. And 1 think that keeping it in here, just in case, to see if the park or not is going to go through. But ultimately, that property needs to be used for something. And if we can hold this here to improve our trails and have better walking paths like that for our citizens, I think that it would behoove us to not hold it here. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? GRZYBOWSKI: I like the old plan. I love the new plan. I think it's fantastic. One of my concerns of checking in to see the if the developer gave it to us versus however it happened, is we can't sell a piece of property, if 1 understand this correctly, without a vote from the entire Town. It's not just a vote from the HOA. Doesn't have the Town have to vote to sell a piece of property? MILLER: No. That's just the school district. GRZYBOWSKI: That's just the school district? MILLER: Right. GRZYBOWSKI: Okay. MILLER: They're limited under state law, purposely, that way. GRZYBOWSKI: Okay. Then my caveat would be, I'm not game for just giving it away. We're in a position where were in danger of losing revenue. So the HOA's going to have to pay something fairly reasonable, in my opinion. Otherwise, 1 like the natural park idea. MILLER: If I may just jump in on that too? So again, under state law were required, before we could dispose of an asset like a building or real estate, we actually have to obtain an appraisal before we can actually put it to an RFP, or request for proposal, which is typically how you would dispose of a piece of property. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. The $100,000, is that just for the bridge and the drainage culvert? Is that primarily where Page 7 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 8 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION those funds are going to? JANOVER: Yes. Mayor and Councilmember Kalivianakis, that's correct. It's just for the pedestrian bridge, the culvert, and just any ancillary cost for the trails. Of course, that's going to be offset by the -- KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. JANOVER: -- by those folks, but that's going to be mainly focused on signage. MILLER: And if I may? It's two different things. So it would have to be fleshing out and finalizing the design on this. And it would also be the construction of what is going to have to be done, the topography and such, will require. And obviously, we'll have the trailblazers actually put in the trails. But that is unusual to have something like this. Now, keep in mind, the funding source is coming out of the development fees. So it's not general fund. It has to be expended or it has to be returned back to developers. KALIVIANAKIS: So I guess, my thoughts were, like, if we can consult with the trail builders, get a different access/egress point, so we didn't have to build a bridge and a culvert, more just a natural walk-on? I mean, I've been in that area, but I didn't do the study to see access/egress. Would there be a way to avoid the drainage culvert and the expense? MILLER: I'm going to have Ms. Goodwin -- KALIVIANAKIS: Because the community seems to like the trails. MILLER: Right. I'll have -- KALIVIANAKIS: But the council doesn't seem to like the price. So maybe we could get the trials without the price? MILLER: Yeah. I'll have Ms. Goodwin answer you. Those are good questions. I'll have Ms. Goodwin answer your questions. Rachael'? GOODWIN: Thank you. Very good questions, absolutely. And these arc questions that we've been vetting sort of behind the scenes. We were able to meet with the head trailblazer, who also is part of our McDowell Mountain Preservation Commission. We had a chance to sit down and talk about the types of trails we'd like to see, the types of trails that were proposed: both those that are a little more accessible for different abilities, as well as maybe a route that's a little more challenging for some of our more Page 8 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 9 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION seasoned hikers or whatnot. This number is a, for lack of a better word, it's a maximum. It's a threshold. It's the idea of if for some reason we needed to rent equipment for them to help with the trail building. Generally, they do it all by hand; they're very good about that. But it's more to give them the opportunity, so if they don't have enough help or we need to supplement in some way. Our feeling is that we won't reach this number. 100,000 seems pretty high in my opinion; however, we've gone out there in multiple situations where we've said, oh, we've got to have a survey done or we need to have this, you know, something formal completed and then we need to contract with someone to do that, that we haven't budgeted for. This, again, is kind of a maximum threshold. The 100,000 also, in terms of the culvert and the drainage, we wanted to make sure that when we do -- if we do move forward with this project -- it's a big if If we move forward with it, we have the ability to put the trail access point where it makes the most sense. And so if there's an opportunity to do that, where it doesn't affect drainage, by all means. However, I can't guarantee that until we get out on site and start working with the blazers, sort of on property. KALIVIANAKIS: And could you have that done by April? GOODWIN: The trails or the budgetary -- KALIVIANAKIS: Well, just the estimate of access/egress and whether we can avoid the bridge and the drainage culvert? GOODWIN: Sure. I think we could do that. I mean, to be frank, they're very excited about the idea of doing this project. So I think that they would be more than welcome to meet us out there and maybe develop a sketched version and kind of get a better price idea together. KALIVIANAKIS: That would be perfect. GRZYBOWSKI: I actually thought you meant can the trail be done by April. So I'm over here going no. GOODWIN: That would be a little -- yeah. JANOVER: The good news is we're still going to be working on it. Anything's possible. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Thank you. Gerry, did you have anything? FRIEDEL- No I'm good with the conversation. Page 9 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 10 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. JANOVER: Okay. Our next project is our CIP park sidewalk replacement. So this is a four-year program that was approved by council for $100,000 per year for four years. And FY23, our current year, was Year 1 and next year, which is FY24, that's Year 2 of 4. The program is intended to replace sidewalks within our parks that are creating potential safety issues or trip hazards due to root lifting or other issues. So it's meant to reduce the risk of slip -and -falls within the town park system. We are requesting $100,000 for FY24, to continue the second year of the four-year program. MCMAHON: What section of the budget is the money going to come out of? JANOVER: It actually says it's CIP. MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you. JANOVER: Yes. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Just to have a quick sidebar conversation. This is something that actually, me and the Mayor had had today, is specifically relating to the Fountainside Park area where we're thinking about doing improvements to the splash pad area. There is a sidewalk there that is in complete disrepair. This is might be something we have to get legal in on because, although we don't own the sidewalk, there's a controversy about who planted the trees. The trees are doing the damage. The developer, the landlord might need to be contacted because, since that is his liability, it's his property. But maybe we could send out a zoning enforcement and apprise them of the risk. It just is, if we're responsible to fix it because of our trees, then we can take this $100,000. But if we're not or if we have to talk to the gentleman that owns the property or gentlewoman that owns the property, I think that's a conversation that we need to have. MILLER: Councilmember, very good discussion. The Mayor and I talked about this earlier, and the staff and 1 have been talking about this for probably about 18 months to two years. What we would like to do -- 1 think this is completely separate from what is before the council tonight. However, it's still a very high priority to deal with, the buckling sidewalks over there at Plaza Fountainside. And so I think the thing to do is for Page 10 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 11 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION us to have a conversation with the owner of that Plaza Fountainside to see if there's a way that they'd be willing to get those up to our standard and dedicate them to the Town and then well take over the maintenance from there, that point forward. I think that's the kind of discussion we need to have. This money here is not necessarily intended, I think, like you typically do when you have developers that want to either dedicate streets to the city or town; or if they want to dedicate, in this case, the sidewalks, you go ahead and you require them to put them up to our standard and then we'll accept them. And then we agree, in an agreement, that we take over the maintenance thereafter. So I think it's good to bring it up right now, but it's really, we would be handling that in a different way. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you. MILLER: Sure. KALIVIANAKIS: And I would be for safe sidewalks. And so Ijust wanted to address that because that's a very unsafe sidewalk. WELDY: Madam Mayor and Councilmember, if 1 may? The town staff currently has an open dialogue with the largest property owner in Plaza Fountainside. There are a total of three. The largest property owner is the one most affected. Just, as a little bit of history. When Plaza Fountainside was built, they installed the sidewalk, the lighting, and the trees; and all of them are their responsibility for the maintenance, and that is spelled out in the development agreement. With guidance from the town manager, town staff has been working with our registered land surveyor and we now have all of the necessary information to begin an actual dialogue with the property owners. One of them is already on board and the other two were going to have to work with depending on the limit and the amount of sidewalk that is affected on their piece of property. The intent in regards to what the town manager was saying is to bring the sidewalk up to standards and then grant the Town a sidewalk easement and the maintenance of that walking area would then be on the Town's responsibility and, of course, adjacent to Fountain Park. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you very much. And I'd just like to add that, if these conversations aren't fruitful with the two additional owners, then again, I think we need to get either compliance or we need to get our town attorney to address these issues with Page 11 0190 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 12 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION the owners that arc not cooperating. JANOVER: Moving along. This is our Centennial Pavilion and pavilion improvements project. So the Centennial Circle, as you know, here on our town campus is a very large but, essentially, underutilized space. This project is designed to make the new pavilion area become a programable space that can be utilized by multiple departments for outdoor events as well as become a revenue generator for the Town. So this project would be moving some of the existing art pieces within that area, adding lighting, adding a large shade structure to make it more welcoming during the kind of brutal December months. And existing monument signs that recognize the Arizona Centennial, the five Cs, as well as art dedications will be renovated as well as part of this project. So staff is requesting $200,000 for the shade structure and $50,000 for pavilion improvements, for a total of 250,000. So these photos here show some of the existing problematic conditions that exist that will be addressed with the project. Some trip hazards, areas by the trees, this would all be removed and addressed properly. And staff really developed -- this is really cool -- a very unique program to raise funds from donors to offset the cost of the Centennial improvements. An eight -foot -by -eight - foot art display of a 100-piece puzzle of the State of Arizona could be created enseripting the names of 99 private donors of $1,000 each with the 100th piece in the center -- you can see that it has the fountain on it -- and would represent the Town's contribution. So this can raise, theoretically, $99,000 towards the project minus the $8,000 cost to create this piece of art. So that would net a $91,000 offset to the cost of the Centennial Pavilion and improvements project. So really, really unique way of raising some funds for this project. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I've seen the trees. To me, they look just like the trees in my yard. And 1 still see shade structure here which 1 think has been contentious in this council, and from what I've heard, it seems like there's some pushback to it. Five Cs and the puzzle, great ideas. You know, those five Cs have been deteriorating for too long. The puzzle's a great idea. I love it. I think we should pare it down and then do other upgrades next year, not the upcoming Page 12 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 13 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION year. That's my standpoint. I'm not sure what consensus is, though. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? Vice Mayor? MCMAHON: Thank you. Well, I don't think piecemcaling this is a good idea, because those pieces have to be moved anyway, correct? So this is not something that -- it's going to be done and were just going to utilize all of it at one time to improve the use of the Centennial Circle, because I think that some of them are really. like, falling apart, for a lack of a better word. And you're removing them anyway, correct? GOODWIN: Correct. To your comment, the five Cs, the monument pieces -- sort of that picture there in the lower right -- are really severely faded. Most of them are illegible. You can't even tell kind of what you're looking at. So we definitely want to do honor to what the Centennial Circle was intended for. In addition to that, if were going to do anything else with this space, the trees really, probably, should be part of this in that most of the trees in the photo that you sec here arc rotting from the inside out; they're hollow. We lost three in last year's monsoon. These are kind of waiting to happen. To the councilmember's point, we all have a lot of -- we all have palo verdes in our yard, and our trees and things like that. Unfortunately, most of these have been trimmed so heavily that they are sunburned and susceptible -- they will cause damage. If we aren't proactive about it, the likelihood is that they -- if, and when, they fall -- it's more of an if, not a if-- or it is a when, not an if There's lighting in the area, there's cameras in the area. The potential for damage increases if we don't proactively address them. Shade structure aside, the trees and the trip hazards and the impact of that are quite high. MCMAHON: So with the removal of all those things it's just going to be a blank space, then it wont be utilized that much. So to complete the package and have the canopy, et cetera, it can be utilized more by the community. You know, spring bands can sit out there, et cetera. Plus, with the Discovery Center, et cetera. So it's an improvement that's going to be utilized by our community quite a lot, I believe. GOODWIN: We also had a chance to onsite with the Center of the Dark Sky board members. We had a chance to review the proposal, to chime in. They had seen it when it Page 13 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 14 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION was first proposed last year. They are still in support of the concept. In fact, some of the conversation we had was that, in terms of timing, there was a conversation of, well, do we wait until potentially the Dark Sky Discovery Center is in place before we make an investment like this. And in that conversation it kind of became about the timeline for this actually works better so that they can help support what they're doing. Just like they're doing renovations of the garden right now to help prepare the space, this would also be seen as a preparation. And the Mayor's in full support of the project in any capacity, including the shade structure. MCMAHON: Thank you. I think it's a really good project. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. TOTH: I would have to agree with Councilmember Skillicorn in the maintenance aspect and addressing the hazards, I think that's really important. I said this before to Rachael. Obviously, I'm an event planner. I love the idea of more event space in town. Just looking at our whole list of capital improvement projects with -- and I understand there's other ways to get money for them as well. But looking at this list, when we're expecting six million for sure and we have a list that would total to 9,173,652, we need to save money where we can. So I think in this particular fiscal year, let's do the maintenance and the upgrades and address those hazards, because I agree with you on that, but maybe not the shade structure for now. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Hold on for -- I just want to ask -- JANOVER: Sure. MAYOR DICKEY: -- a clarifying question. So are all the projects adding up to 6.8 million? Not the out year ones. JANOVER: Are we talking about the -- MAYOR DICKEY: Everything. Everything that's in front of us right now, except for the out year stuff. JANOVER: Everything that's in front of you right now -- MAYOR DICKEY: I thought it was 4.8 plus 2. JANOVER: So for-- I'm going to skip ahead for a moment. So it's 2 million for community services and 4.8 million -- MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Page 14 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 15 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION JANOVER: -- almost 4.93. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. So it's about almost seven million total. TOTH: So my list just included some for next year too? Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, I think it's the outer year ones. TOTH: Got it. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. MILLER: Five years if you're counting the additional years. MAYOR DICKEY: It wasn't on there. TOTH: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Again, 1 have just a clarifying question. Maybe I missed it. But the Five Cs monuments, are they being restored? Because I think they're really neat and I'd like to keep them. GOODWIN: I think the conversation that we've been having is about consolidating them. So -- KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. GOODWIN: -- so it's opposed to having them spread throughout the circle. Which I fully understand the intent behind it was to help draw folks around the circle. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. GOODWIN: Ideally, I think, we'd like to consolidate them so that we can maintain better and they won't be quite as exposed to some of the elements. So the integrity of the Five Cs would still be kept. I don't think we would do individual monuments unless there was a strong feeling to keep those. KALIVIANAKIS: Just so 1 can clarify my question. GOODW IN: Yeah. KALIVIANAKIS: It wasn't about the placement. It was, right now, they just look faded and in disrepair. Are we going to restore and refurbish them so they look nice again, like new? Or are just going to replace these shoddy -looking monuments elsewhere? GOODWIN: I think what we'd like to do, ideally, is redo them altogether and put them -- consolidate it so that it's not one C around. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. Page 15 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 16 o/ 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION GOODWIN: We would do all five together in one -- MILLER: One structure. GOODWIN: -- one structure, one monument. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. GOODWIN: So that they are all restored to their glory, so to speak. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. GOODWIN: It won't look like it looks today. MILLER: We're planning on having a new placards that are up there so that they'll withstand the elements versus the fading that you've seen. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. MILLER: A lot of these, if they're done right and you've got the right metal and the foundry does it, they'll hold up much longer than what you see — KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MILLER: -- out there today. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. Because I would be for refurbishing them, restoring them to their previous glory. And I think they are neat. And also, just as far as the Centennial Circle, when you go out and you look at it and you walk in it, it just looks in disrepair and it just doesn't represent Fountain Hills. So I'd be for this improvement because I think it's so close to our town hall, it's so close to our resources here, and that should look great. And so I would be for this. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? GRZYBOWSKI: I wholeheartedly support the project. And yes, the trees need to come down. We all have those things in our backyard, but unfortunately, this is the front yard of the town. So it's really more of a liability issue than it would be in my backyard. I appreciate the other comments that support it. I think it's a brilliant concept to help tie our main campus together, and 1 think it's a great attraction for those that want to come out and invest in the Darky Sky's facility, because people don't have vision beyond what they sec. So having this stuff moved and the shade structure in, I feel like it's going to be a much better sale for any investors out there. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Grady? Page 16 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 17 o190 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MILLER: I just have one point. I believe we have applied for one or two grants for the shade structure. There was one grant cycle coming up that we were not able to get in on before because of the timing. And I believe that's the tourism and sports authority. There might be a -- the Heritage Fund might be another one as well. I would like to see, if you don't mind, that we can keep it in there. We're not going to spend the money, we have to come back to the council for award of contracts. But if you don't mind, I'd like for us to be able to show the creativity of generating $91,000 that could be a match for grant that we could fund the shade structure. And then if we don't, we don't and we don't do it. So I mean, it's just a -- I just think that this would help really finish off the area. To council, 1 understand that you don't want to spend the money; I get it. But there might be an opportunity for us with the individual fundraising effort of the $91,000 that we net, plus a grant, we might be able to make this whole thing happen. So I just want you to just kind of be open-minded about that. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah, I turned my light on just when you did and what you said is exactly what I wanted to let people know. Because in speaking with you, Rachael, the grant funding is still possibly available and that would alleviate some of the cost for this. And so again, just for the people out there and the audience know, we're still going for grant funding and we've still got this creative way to raise funds for this project. And 1 think there's been a lot of thought put into this and it's a go from me. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Appreciate it. GOODWIN: Thank you. JANOVER: Okay. Our next project here is the Golden Eagle Park field lights. So as part of the FY23 budget last year, the ball field light -upgrade project for this park was approved and was to be paid over a two-year period, with $700,000 allotted for each year. So FY24 is Year 2. So this is, again, going to fund the installation of the LED lights at the four ball fields. And the transition to the LED lighting is recommended to be consistent with the other park amenities, as well as to increase the longevity of the fixtures. It will reduce the glare and light spill and improve the impact on nearby residents. And it's also going to reduce the operational costs for power use as they are much more efficient than the metal halo lights that are there now. Page 17 of90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 18 of 90 MARCH 10, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION The resulting cost savings from the LED fixtures are going to offset the investment within the warrantee window and the new lighting is going to be warrantied for parts and labor for 25 years through Musco. So we do highly recommend approving the second year of the $700,000 funding for the light upgrade. And by signing the contract last year, that actually allowed the parts to be manufactured for the complete installation this July of'23. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman? SKILLICORN: Madam Mayor, one question. I thought the total for this was $1 million, not two $700,000 payments? JANOVER: It was 1.4 million. So it was split over two years: 700,000 in '23 and 700,000 in '24. KALIVIANAKIS: I think it was originally two million, wasn't it, that was knocked down to 1.4? MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. MILLER: It was because it included another park. Was it Desert Vista or Four Peaks? SNIPES: Four Peaks. MILLER: Four Peaks. JANOVER: Okay. Thanks. It takes a village, anyway. This is Desert Vista Park. So this is the second year of a $400,000 multi -year improvement plan for Desert Vista Park. So staff began this multi -year improvement to the park this year by installing a Ramada near the playground and adding a sidewalk connector from the mini pitch to the skate park. So this year, staff will be lighting the new section of the walking loop on the east side and also adding a cross training fitness area to the eastern portion of the park. So this is going to be the Town's first outdoor fitness park and it's going to provide residents with the ability to cross -train in the park, for free, while enjoying the beauty of the surrounding area. The project is being supported by the American Legion as well as the Rotary Club, with the donation of a shade structure and equipment for the fitness arca. This is also going to activate an area of the park that has been underutilized for years. Page 18 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 19 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION And this project aligns with our strategic initiative of improving public health, well- being, and safety of our community. So here, you can see some of the views of the proposed fitness area. And here are some renderings of the fitness area from several other angles. So very, very excited about this. So we are requesting the second half of the $400,000 funding for this two-year project. So we are requesting the second instalment of $200,000 for FY24. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. This may be a park or manager question, but could we use development fees to pay for these improvement? Would that be permissible? MILLER: Really, you won't be able to do that because you have to actually have to pay for growth. That's what the concept is under state law, with development fees. So as an example, when we were -- it was a stretch, but we were able to get a legal opinion that we could have done it with the splash pad, which we did. We were able to use the development fees for the expansion of the splash pad because we had population growth from the original splash pad had been put in. These are additional amenities being added in. They're not really capitalized as individual costs, so it doesn't fit the definition. Plus the park has been existing. So it's something we really can't do. And we are scrutinized. We have to do a report every so often, and we have an audit as part of that report. And they will look and see if we've used the funds correctly. And if we haven't, you know, we can get into trouble as an organization here. So it's a good question, but it's something we really can't do for this particular one. JANOVER: I'm assuming you're referring to the IIP, the infrastructure improvement plan, which is what any project that is going to be considered for development fees has to be part of that plan and this was not identified there. KALIVIANAKIS: So if we didn't spend this $200,000, could that be applied to the roads? I mean, would that be the same fund where the roads' funds would come from? MILLER: So the capital fund is a different fund that has different sources of funding coming into it. So there had been some questions right after the retreat that Councilmember Friedel had brought up and he had a concept that 1 suggested that, when the council gets into the actual council operating budget workshop in April, that would be some really good discussion on streets and where funding for streets might come from. Page 19 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 20 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION Because there are some council policies that pretty much spell out what each of the funds are supposed to be used and how they're funded. So those are all things that the council has an opportunity too. But for tonight, our purposes here is just the capital fund. But I'm not saying you couldn't reallocate and figure out how that could be done, but that could be done as part of that discussion in April; does that make sense? KALIVIANAKIS: It does. But 1 guess that would, since were trying to get consensus here; if these funds could be redirected to the roads, I would be in favor of that. If they can't, if they're from a different fund, then I would be more amenable to the better health of -- MILLER: So what I'm saying is I believe you can do that, but those are policy questions that you want to address, really, in April. Tonight, what we really want to find out from the council is either yea or nay on these projects going forward or not. And then I think, going in April, we start getting into more the policy as part of the development of the budget for the next year. So when I say budget, that's operating budget and then financial policies. And that's typically that that would be the appropriate time to handle that. So you're formulating right now a thought or an idea but that's when it would be further refined during those discussions if that makes sense. KALIVIANAKIS: It does make sense, but just like in your regular life, whether you spend the money or not is whether you've got the money, and you know, if this money could be reallocated towards the roads, I think that should -- again, that would sway me to whether I'd -- MILLER: Sure. KALIVIANAKIS: -- be for this or not, and I think that's a relevant question. MILLER: Yeah. KALIVIANAKIS: Because 1 don't want to say, yeah, let's vote on this yea tonight and then come April say, oh sorry, that can't happen. Well, then, I'm a yes vote. MILLER: So all I'm really telling you is that some of the things that were talking about right now would take some change in financial policies that are previously adopted. In talking to the chief financial officer about this previously, we got to make sure, for instance, the funding that is the capital fund that might be paying for some of these projects. Now, this one is not a development fee project. So you wouldn't be touching Page 20 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 21 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION development fees, if you know as an example. You'll see that there is some drainage projects that are being partially offset by grants. So you really -- you have to have the money in there to pay for the matching part, and you couldn't touch the grant funding for anything but what it was intended for. So the simple answer to your question is, yes. You, the council, could make a decision to, 1 guess, use some of the capital funding that's there and have it go into the streets. Okay? But for tonight, if you're not approving some of these projects or the consensus is not to go forward with these projects, then that's freeing up money that ultimately you can make a decision at a later date that goes into streets or whatever you want it to go into. Does that make sense? KALIVIANAKIS: It makes perfect sense. And improving parks is a great idea. But if we did it two or three years or four years, then we'll still get the improvements. It's just when are they going to be done. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? GRZYBOWSKI: It's Rachael may be coming up to say exactly what I'm getting ready to say. So I'm going to steal some thunder here. I'm under the impression that the American Legion is donating the shade structure, and if we don't take advantage of it now, it's going to go away. It will not be available later because we won't have a place to store it. I don't know about the Rotary donation. I don't think that would be affected if it we turned it away now. But one of the other things I wanted to point out was security, that having something like this that people would use on the opposite end of the park would have people at this park almost all day long between the skateboard and the dog park and then on this side of the park, the fitness area, which is really kind of security help. Where there was an incident there. Was that this weekend, the weekend before? 1 have no track of time. That we may have been able to prevent that kind of thing because we're inviting a whole different group of people into the park, at a different time of day than it would normally be used. GOODWIN: Councilmember Grzybowski and Kalivianakis, you both make great points and you both hit on two different things I wanted to sort of point out. Yes, we do have a sort of an agreement with the American Legion for their donated shade Page 21 0190 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 22 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION structure. That is what this is earmarked for, to create shade over the fitness space. And we agree, if there is an option for us to look into some alternate funding, perhaps leaving it in to allow us to do a little more work on that might be the best way forward if you're comfortable with that. We, as staff -- FRIEDEL: Mayor? MAYOR DICKEY: Hold on, Gerry. One sec. FRIEDEL: Okay. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. GOODWIN: If you noted, this is a two-part project. This is Year 2. So Year I has already sort of set us up for this. To stop mid -year or stop mid -project sort of puts us in an awkward holding pattem, if you will; i.e., I know Kevin and his staff have done some prep work, they've done some legwork to try to finish out this year's funding and roll into, what I'll call, next year's funding, seamlessly. So that does sort of leave this in a bit of a holding pattern. With that said, we'd be happy to look into alternate funding options if this project is supported. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman? FRIEDEL: Yes, Mayor. I'd been involved with that project with the Legion, and you know, we could -- it's not a "use or lose it" type of a situation. So we could always just put it up and then get our equipment whenever we have the resources to do that as well. Is that right, Rachael? GOODWIN: We could certainly work to do that. Again, ideally, we would do it in one installation so that we're not mobilizing twice and doing the -- you can kind of see in the pictures here that tan area is put in place so that it has that fall safety. So there's some other components that work, usually, in conjunction. No, I don't think it's a complete "use it or lose it." I think, however, ideally, we would do it as one complete project process. MAYOR DICKEY: Ijust want to -- to Brenda's point and Gerry's suggestions that will probably be talked about. 1 think that some of these CIP projects, right now, we're kind of looking at the projects aspect of it instead of trying to juggle the amount. Because I Page 22 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 23 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION think when we do go forward, we will have the opportunity to dedicate more funding to streets. I don't know for sure that we're going to have to make a full-scale policy change of, you know, every bit of the -- I want to say overflow, but the money that we have left at the end of the year, we've traditionally been putting that all in the CIP. I think we have an opportunity to say, yes, we like a project. But it won't -- and there'll be some that we probably don't want to go ahead with. But it doesn't stop us from doing exactly what you're saying, which would be dedicating other capital improvement money to streets when we -- you know, from the overflow or even from what a balance might be. So I don't think you have to look at it necessarily as an either/or. But I think the theme of what you're saying is something that we all share. Which is what can we do in that way. But if you think this is a good project and since it has other aspects to it, that may be like, okay, let's keep it in there and knowing, by doing that, you're not saying I am not going to put capital funds towards streets. Because I think were pretty open to that. At least I am. So -- KALIVIANAKIS: Good. Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: -- that's the way I feel about it. Because I like this. I like the fact that there's a lot of cooperation with others. It's part two of something we started last year. And I know I -- you know, I like the shade structure, everything. You know, I like all of these improvements. I don't necessarily see them as restricting our ability to do what you're talking about. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks. JANOVER: Okay. So we have several improvements that staff is requesting for our namesake park. The first is erosion control on the panoramic drive hillside. And so this is a very steep hill. It hasn't had irrigation since the sidewalk was installed. There are medium to large rocks that have been placed on the hill, kind of in an intermediate fashion, to prevent mud from covering the sidewalk when it rains. But it's not really a permanent solution. So we do recommend $100,000 or were requesting $100,000 for regrading and fortifying the slope and to possibly redesign the alignment of the walkway. MILLER: And David, I just want to make sure. I think when you presented this at the retreat, you were talking about a retaining wall, which would help with some of the Page 23 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 24 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION erosion control. That's why the cost is really like $100,000. JANOVER: Now, Grady -- MILLER: At the very bottom of where the rock is and where it comes together with the sidewalk, I thought. GOODWIN: Right. That's actually a different -- so yes and no. Originally when the park was -- this portion of the park was designed, it was supposed to have a retaining wall. As you can see, that didn't happen. So as opposed to putting a retaining wall in here that is very costly, we would like two potential options. One is rerouting the sidewalk, which is the picture on the far right and working on some grading to minimize the runoff and the erosion. Or hopefully, the ideal solution would actually involve the sanitary district where we can actually cut down one of their access -- I call it a manhole, but I don't think that's what it is. They have something in the park, just out of the picture here. If they approve us to actually lower that, we can lower the -- again, lower the pitch there, reduce the runoff, and actually keep the sidewalk right where it is. You'll note that it says maximum of 100,000 because we don't know which route we can go yet. The most it will be is that 100. We are hopeful that we can work with the sanitary district to do a much lower cost solution. MAYOR DICKEY: Would you say this is a stormwater-related issue? GOODWIN: Every time it rains, everything runs down the hill there. It's an erosion. You get rocks and mud and debris across the sidewalk out into the street. At worst, it's a slip hazard and it's kind of a pain in the butt to clean up each time. At most, though, again, it puts us open to liability. It's not the way it should be. We did half measures to kind of get through. As we've been doing slow upgrades to the park over there, we've had a couple of trees removed that weren't in great shape. We've upgraded our disc golf. The more use we have out there, the more we need to make sure that our space is safe and usable for everybody. So this is one of those projects that meets that need. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. So 1 know that, Grady, we've been working with Maricopa County flood district and we just have just so many related issues. Is this one of the -- what is the status of that whole assessment that were getting done? And does something Page 24 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 15 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION as small as this become part of that? MILLER: I would say no to this. This is really not rising to that level. We're actually having them look at our washes and dams and drain systems throughout the town, below the streets and everything where water is conveyed. So this really would not rise to that level. And Justin, at some point, is going to be providing you guys an update. I don't think he'll do it tonight, because that's a pretty loaded question, but were going to be -- he had a really good meeting with the Flood control district, both he and the town engineer; and they seem to be really on board with what were trying to do with our drainage master plan. And so I think we're going to be ready to give you a presentation probably maybe next month on that and the status. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. And as Sharron often brings up, that we were able to -- for a couple of years we had a storm water fee and so -- and we were still waiting and we still haven't heard from the AG's office about that. And so that's something else that's in the mix here. It brought in $500,000 or so a year. I'm just saying that it's still an open question and has been for a couple of years. But it's something that I think we would be able to use for projects like that that maybe weren't on such a big scale like that. JANOVER: Okay. And that brings us to the Fountain Park splash pad picnic area. So as you know, we have this turf area which is the dirt patch between the splash pad and the businesses at Plaza Fountainside. And that has really been an eyesore for probably the last 20 years, ever since the lake was drained and that sludge from the lake was stored there. Because of the amount of sodium that leached into the soil over there from the sludge, that made the area unable to sustain any kind of turf growth. So with the addition of the newly renovated splash pad and the playground areas, Fountain Park is really in need of far greater picnic areas. So staff is recommending or requesting $550,000 to design and construct a shaded picnic area with 20 picnic tables and two ramadas near the splash pad with six picnic tables. So that will increase the available picnic tables by 26. And that will be available for use by the area businesses as well as available for reservation. So you can see here a shaded picnic canopy structure on the righthand side here, similar to the one that's proposed shown over here. And the canopy is going to be very carefully Page 25 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 16 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL. WORK SESSION and strategically sited, so as not to obstruct the view of the fountain from the Plaza Fountainside businesses. The depiction on the left, that photo on the left, shows the lines of sight that will still be maintained, keeping the fountain in view for the patrons that are there at the businesses. So the photo here on the left shows a two -panel ramada, but we're actually proposing a three -panel ramada on the north side of the splash pad. And if you take a look here, I'll just point that out. It's right -- that's the three -panel ramada on the north side. And then we also have on the west side, we have another ramada, which is shown on -- a similar one that's shown here on the right side of this photo. So this would be a cantilevered design and that would open up to an unobstructed view of the fountain with no columns to block the view. So a lot of thought has been put into the design and the siting of these ramadas here at Fountain Park. That's actually the last of the community service projects. So -- MAYOR DICKEY: I do have a question about this one. Just picking a phrase that I want to. Fountain Hills is in need of far greater picnic areas. Is that development fee worthy? MILLER: I would say no, because it's not growth related. So what I mean by that is, if you look at what we're collecting, we have a infrastructure improvement plan that went through a lot of scrutiny by -- was it Willdan that did our plan? JANOVER: It was Tischler. MILLER: It was Tischler. And so they're the experts on development fees, and you know, we had to make modifications and the ultimate plan that got approved by council is what we're basing our development fees on. I don't believe that this -- as much as I would like to say yes, I just don't believe that this would be one that would be subject to us being able to do that. I know we were able to do it for the splash pad, but the splash pad was actually in that infrastructure improvement plan that was approved and we were able to justify it from when the splash pad was originally built. So that's, you know, the age and the number of people had moved into the town since that time. So it's unfortunate. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. Because the idea of growth is not like generally -- know you, think about population growth, but this is growth of use of this area based on -- I don't Page 26 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MARCH 10, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION Page 27 of 90 know, you can't say visitors but there's certainly a lot of residents that use it. MILLER: 1 don't disagree with you. But when it comes down to development fees, it's all very well specified under state law as to what we can and cannot do. And we're charging developers these fees that are being passed onto to the cost of homes and so that's -- and you have an infrastructure improvement plan, which is basically all the different capital projects that those fees tie right back to. So all I'm trying to say is yes, I agree with you that there's -- the park is very popular and there's a lot of demand for facilities in the park. But it's not necessarily tied to the population growth of the town. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? TOTH: Just real quick. Rachael did Four Peaks Rotary offer to be a part of this project as well, or was it -- okay. There's more to the story, I can see. GOODWIN: This project has gone through multiple iterations before what you see today. I'm talking years, four years, five years. And there's been lots of different versions. And at one time, yes, two of our Rotaries as well as Encore were willing to come together. We're talking about coming together on this project. Each contributing sort of equal parts of the funding. It was not what you see here today. It was actually proposed, at one point, as a set of bocce courts. So it was, again, different in scope and capacity. Through multiple conversations and for different reasons that funding didn't come together. And frankly, when staff me with them our recommendation was not to do bocce there. I think bocce's a great game; I think it's really fun. It's a very all -age game; however, that location wasn't probably the best location for it. Knowing that the splash pad is a high -use amenity, all we could kind of picture was little kids going up there to dig in the sand and the shells and all of the spaces and just being not compatible with the space there. But that being said, that group and their funding did not come through for that project for several different reasons. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. This kind of ties back to what I was talking about before that darn sidewalk. We're Page 27 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 28 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION bringing a lot more traffic if we build this with that unsafe sidewalk; I just want to throw that in. The development fees, Grady already addressed that and that was going to be my ask too. That would be perfect if we could do that. The other thing is just like your other Centennial Square, what about naming rights for these tables? If we, like he said $2,500 a table, we could raise $65,000, defer some of the costs, and I think there's a lot of people in the community that would like to dedicate that to a loved one lost or a pet or something like that. It would be very visible. There'd be a lot of people. And maybe we can explore something like that. GOODWIN: Absolutely. And I mean, I think that there's other opportunities there whether it's potential naming rights for some of the ramadas, if a civic group or something like that. For instance, the ramada that's there now is the Kiwani's ramada. So there is availability for that type of partnership if that should come available too. So there's definitely room to explore there. KALIVIANAKIS: Perfect MAYOR DICKEY: Council? GRZYBOWSKI: You know how I feel about naming rights. I think it's a brilliant use of funds. 1 know people would love to do something like that. My problem is they need to have expectations on the frontend that, when this thing needs to be replaced, either they make it the agreement that they replace it for us and they can continue the name on the table or the name on the ramada, or it gets torn down and it's now ours because we've replaced it. So I feel like we need to go into these from now on, setting expectations that this is not forever and ever and ever, this is however long this sucker lasts. Thank you. I'm sure Aaron can come up with better verbiage. GOODWIN: All right. Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. Thank you. JANOVER: Okay. Thank you. So that brings us to our summary of the community services CIP projects. So the projects that we just went through total $2 million for FY24. And in the outer years were looking at the Years 3 and 4 of the sidewalk replacement of S 100,000 in '25 and FY26. Thank you. Page 28 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 19 of 90 MARCH 10, 2023 SPECIAL. WORK SESSION That moves us right into the public works projects. So strap in, this is going to be fun. Okay. So the first thing 1 want to discuss is carry-over projects. So these arc projects that have already been underway. There's already been money expended and we are looking for budget authorization to complete these projects in FY24. So they weren't budgeted for '24; they were budgeted for '23 or earlier years. But because we have carry- overs into '24, we need to ask for authorization to spend that money. So the first one is our Shea Boulevard widening project. And this is a partially grant - funded project that will design and construct an expansion of Shea Boulevard. The segment is going to complete the westbound portion of Shea between Palisades Boulevard and Fountain Hills Boulevard. The Town had entered into an IGA committing to our share of the project. So this is something that we must complete. The total project cost is 2.6 million, for which the federal share was 1.8 million and the Town's share is $780,000. Construction is commencing this fiscal year, in '23, and it's anticipated to carry over into next fiscal year, '24. So funds -- also our town's share of the remaining construction in FY24 is anticipated to be 169,500. So that's actually what we're asking for for next fiscal year. So this is one of those things where we really don't have much of a choice. The next project is our sidewalk gap infill on Palisades and Saguaro Boulevards. So several years ago the Town had applied for and received grant funds for the sidewalk gap infill project on Saguaro between Fountain Hills Boulevard and Colony Drive and Palisades Boulevard between Fountain Hills Boulevard and Saguaro Boulevard, so those arc the areas in red that you see here. So these are the sidewalk gap areas. Design is currently at 60 percent completion, and after July of 2023, construction is going to begin. In 2022, the Town had applied for and received additional MAG closeout funds to be used towards construction. So the total project cost is 3,867,934, of which the federal share is 3,645,752. And our share is just 222,182. So after deducting the design cost that we expended this year in '23, the remaining town share for construction in FY24 is $200,1 17. So that's quite a lot that we're getting for that funding. Yeah. That's an amazing project. Page 29 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 30 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION Golden Eagle impoundment area improvements. So design is complete. It has just been completed for this drainage improvement project that is going to go, pretty much, throughout all the Golden Eagle park. So this Golden Eagle impoundment area, receive stormwater runoff from three different washes: from Ashbrook Wash, Bristol Wash, and Cloudburst Wash. And over time, the stormwater runoff volumes have increased due to increased development upstream. So because of this additional flow through the park, this requires major modifications to the drainage channels that run throughout the park. And this had really created quite an issue. I believe it was in 2017 or 2018, you could see the lower righthand corner that photo shows the ball fields that were inundated with storm drainage runoffIt was quite a mess. It was before my time but still major in everybody's mind. So work is going to include channel improvements, construction of floodwalls, drop basins, grouted riprap, as well as irrigation and electrical utility relocation. So construction is starting following the use in the park and we're coordinating that with community services. And the anticipated remaining construction carryover into FY24 will be $500,000. Our next project is Grade and Rosita drainage channel. So last year, you might recall, that staff was granted authorization from this council to apply for grant funding from the flood control district for two drainage projects. The Town applied successfully and we did receive -- we were approved grants for both projects. The first project is this one and it's for an unlined ditch between Grade Boulevard and Rosita Drive, and what we would be doing is constructing a redesigned concrete -lined U-shaped drainage channel in its place. So these improvements will address past and future flooding concerns by more efficiently conveying drainage runoff from Grande to Rosita. The channel's curb openings are also going to be resized and regraded as part of the project. So the total cost for design and construction is 227,500. And the flood control district of Maricopa County, through their SPAC program or their small project assistance program, will provide a 75 percent share of the total cost of the project for design and construction. And the Town will just have to come up with its 25 percent share. So the flood control district share is 217,000 and the Town's share is 72,500. Page 30 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 31 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION So design is near completion at this point and construction is commencing before the end of this fiscal year and it might carry over into FY24. So we are anticipating some construction in '24 for this project. So our Town's share of that remaining construction will be 15,625. MAYOR DICKEY: Yes, Councilman. SKILLICORN: Madam Mayor, I like the idea of doing this. My only question is that, come monsoon season, if it's not finished -- I'm not so worried about the construction. I'm worried about the residents. What's going to happen there? JANOVER: Madam Mayor and Councilmember, so pretty much everything that's been happening up to this point would continue to happen. So we'd still have the same services, same response to services. But so we have our street superintendent and street crew on call when we do have storm season. We are going to do our best to complete all of this before that season starts. So this is just in case we do go into '24 with it. SKILLICORN: Do you think it's likely it will be finished? JANOVER: I am anticipating that we will be done. We might have a little bit left, possibly on closeout, but we arc going to do our best to get it completed before the end of the fiscal year. But just in case, that's why we're here. SKILLICORN: Before the monsoon season? JANOVER: Before the monsoon -- true. Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Just for the benefit for the people that are watching this online or on Cox Channel 1 1, they might look at these numbers -- 500,000 100,000, 12,000 -- and are like a little shocked by the numeric values. And just to assuage their fears -- this infrastructure is very old, very outdated, and if it doesn't get done, the costs to the Town are going to be much greater than to mitigate it. And so just so the people know, this has all been carefully thought over and 1 think the council is in favor of this 100 percent. JANOVER: Thank you. Okay. The next project is a similar project. This is Deuce Court. So this is the second drainage project that we were awarded the grant from the flood control district for. So Page 31 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 32 of 90 MARCH 10, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION many years ago --just a very small background. Many years ago, when this subdivision was built and constructed, the stormwater infrastructure was not built per the approved plan. And we don't know exactly why or how that happened, but it was pre - incorporation, so we didn't have any oversight of it. So it resulted in a catch basin that had inadequate depth and undersized storm drain. So we're going to address all that with this project. Total cost for design and construction was 95,000, and you could see the flood control district, 75 percent share and our share. So the remaining construction that were anticipating is just a small amount, in '24, of $5,000. So again, it's a small amount but we just want to make sure we cover our bases. This project is the completion of the design for a traffic signal at Palisades Boulevard and Eagle Ridge Drive and Palomino Boulevard. So design is currently at 90 percent completion for this traffic signal. And the traffic signal is warranted, no doubt about it, based on the expansion of the Adero at Scottsdale Resort as well as the Adero Canyon residential development. So it is warranted at this time. So it's not a matter of if; it's a matter of when. So during design there were an unanticipated complication with emergency vehicle preemption due to line -of -sight issues approaching the intersection. So with that we are requesting authorization to spend $34,910 in FY24 to complete the design. And once the design is completed, then we will apply for grant funding for future construction. So we do not have a construction year set at this point, but that will give us time and that will complete the plans that we can apply for grant funding. And then this would be brought back to council at that time for approval at a later date. So this intersection was previously identified in the 11P, the infrastructure improvement plan, and can be funded partially through development impact fees. Now, it should be noted that part of this intersection lies within the City of Scottsdale. So when the time comes, we'll have to have an IGA with them that will establish the maintenance of the signal by Fountain Hills when the time comes. So again, the amount that has been expended on design so far is $104,000 out of our $150,000 budget. So were just asking to reauthorize the final 34,910 to complete the design in FY24 and so well still be under the original budget. Page 32 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 33 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION KALIVIANAKIS: Ms. Mayor. You said that this is needed. Is there a traffic setting that indicates that? JANOVER: Mayor and Councilmember Kalivianakis, yes, there was a signal warrant study that was done and a traffic report that I believe was done that covered the expansion of the Adero Resort as well as the Adero home development. And based on all that growth, this was a signal that is warranted. MILLER: It's a good question. Because we've had -- since this has been a proposed project, we've had councilmembers questioning whether this was a needed intersection improvement or not. The Town -- just a little bit of history going back probably 20 or more years -- accepted money from MCO properties for the improvement of a traffic signal at this location. We also have a development agreement with the Adero Resort that if they go in and build the next phase that they're on the hook for a portion of this cost as well. And then, as the town engineer mentioned, we also have this identified in the infrastructure improvement plan, so development fees will help pay for this as well when the time comes. We also plan on going before Maricopa Association of Governments and seeking some of the costs through some of the federal funding that comes through as well. But there are -- it's met all the warrants for this intersection for the traffic that we have today, and it's only going to get worse when Adero is completely built out. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. Yeah, I know this one was coming up, and I actually went out there one day and just sat there in my truck, and there wasn't a lot of traffic. There really wasn't. And so I was thinking why are we putting up a streetlight here? I'm glad that Adero is going to have some skin in the game here, because if they're causing the traffic, why do our taxpayers have to pay for their traffic to go to their expensive resort? That doesn't make sense to me. MILLER: And something else that I think most people aren't aware. So if you look at this location here that's facing our west and Eagle Ridge Road, all the way up to the entry point of Adero, is all Scottsdale road. So Scottsdale maintains that road on both directions up to the intersection of Palisades. So but we are not able to really get participation from the City of Scottsdale on this intersection improvement because they're already maintaining the road. And we want them to continue doing that. That's a pretty Page 33 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 34 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION good thing that they're doing. So -- KALIVIANAKIS: I think the estimated cost is going to be like $1.2 million, and that's a lot of money for an intersection that's barely used, that is accommodating traffic for out of town visitors. I'm sorry, I'm just -- I'm not on board with this. MAYOR DICKEY: Just so you know the -- even before Adero expanded and before the Adero Canyon homes were going in, this was something that I -- and Grady will know, I've resisted for many years. Just like, huh, let's not. We put it off, but it's been warranted for quite a while. So it's not just because of the hotel. So I think this last time I finally was convinced, and you know, I'm not a big fan of lights in general. But you really can't -- maybe they can show you some of that information that ended up ultimately getting us on board with this. And I do think, though, you said we're going to be going for grants for that big chunk of money. MILLER: Right. So what I also just want to just make sure it's very clear. We can't go for grants if we don't have 100 percent design on this. We're down to the very last -- get this design and then we can start going after the grants. So that's the important part. We've had $34,000, $35,000; let's get that finished and then we can start going after grants. KALIVIANAKIS: No, 1 appreciate that, Grady, and I know unless we get the project done we can't apply for grant funding. But I just wish we could have done a town council fieldtrip, rented a bus, and then we could all sit there and watch no traffic going through this intersection. MILLER: You know what? I've seen what you're saying. But I've also seen, if you look at the commuter hours, there's a lot of cars that go through there. And the other problem I see, because when you're going up and you're going north, people are driving sometimes -- it's pretty fast. And there's cars that don't stop. And so I think having a traffic signal which is way above -- it's 18, 20 feet high -- I think people will see it as they're approaching the intersection from a distance, versus stop signs that are probably about eight feet tall or so. So I totally understand, because I have seen that. I used to have a membership over at Adero, and during certain times, you're absolutely right, you will see no cars at that intersection. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. Page 34 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 35 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MILLER: And then during other times, you'll sec just a lot of cars coming through. So it's a good observation. KALIVIANAKIS: Do we have the blinking lights on that, or that's too far out of town? MILLER: No. We actually, at this location we have the stop signs are all flashing. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor. MCMAHON: Thank you for the explanation. 1 remember talking about this and there was somc debate on it. And we agreed to have the warrants done. And the warrants came back, because you are required to have warrants before you can even move forward with a design, et cetera. And this is for future. It's not for tomorrow. It's for the future. And having been up there on the weekend a few times with all the traffic and people turning left and the hikers, et cetera, and the hundreds of new homes that are still going in there right now, that is going to significantly change the traffic pattern in the next couple of years. And plus, if something is built down on Shea Boulevard between -- on Palisades between this road and Shea, there's even going to be more traffic there. So I think it is important that we continue with the design and be able to be in place to ask MAG for money et cetera; it's very prudent and I think it's a good safety measure as well. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: And just to comment on that. I'm not saying that we don't have to prepare for the future, but we do have things that need to be addressed right now and that's -- I'm living in today. MCMAHON: $34,000 to complete a design so that if and when, it's decided to do this we can apply for grants. Otherwise, it's just going to be a waste. Today, yes, is the traffic sporadic up there? There's still a lot of traffic. But however, this is for future, so that we are prepared and ready when that really becomes a bigger traffic nuisance area. KALIVIANAKIS: I just think the people out there when they hear us on town council say it's just $34,000, I think they find that offensive, because $34,000 is a lot of money to a lot of people. And I don't think, as town council people, we can raise that kind of money and just say it's just $34,000. MCMAHON: Excuse me. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor. Page 35 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 36 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MCMAHON: It's not -- 1 didn't mean it in that way and for you to misinterpret that. KALIVIANAKIS: Nobody misinterpreted -- MCMAHON: You did misinterpret it. I didn't mean just $34,000. I mean we're talking about millions of dollars here. KALIVIANAKIS: We'll let the people decide that one. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. And again, the design is 90 percent complete. This would finish it up and then the next step though would be the big amount and that would be what we would try to get some help on. MILLER: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: But to the other point, which is did we want it at all, and 1 understand that aspect of it too. But 1 think this has been put off for a long time, and again, it kind of goes along with the whole thing with MAG and modeling and it, really, is indicated as a need. So I'm in favor of continuing with this. JANOVER: And again, we have expended $101,000 so far on the design. So were right there. We're about 90 percent there. So this 34,000 would get us to where we need to be that we can start. And that will give us some time, certainly, to look into HSIP grants and other grants, federal grants that are available that would help us, hopefully, with a nice share towards the cost when we have to get there. Okay. Now well just talk about the next year's new and program capital projects for public works. So the first one here is miscellaneous drainage improvements. And this is a annual allotment request for $50,000 annually. It's a placeholder that's included annually in our CIP and has been to address any drainage issues that may arise. And obviously being a hillside community with lots of drainage issues, this is a very widely used fund that we really do need. This fund provides for the construction of new drainage facilities and major repairs and it will also continue to address erosion issues as well as improve drainage as needed townwide. One of the projects that we actually completed this year was a pipe extension at Fountain Hills Boulevard at the crossing of Balboa Wash. And that's the photo that's on the Page 36 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 37 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION righthand side there. We actually extended the pipes and increased the shoulder width. So we're just requesting to continue this program for S50,000 annual. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I'll use this as an example. But there are other examples that I'm a little uncomfortable with. When it says that we need to use this total of 50,000 as requested each year, that sounds like it's in perpetuity to me. And in real estate we all know there's a law against in perpetuity, which means you can't control real estate forever. I don't like that. I think if you look at that project, if you look at the D66E, the stormwater infrastructure project calls for $150,000 that's going to continue to renew. The bridge repair, they ask for $75,000 automatic renew. Low -flow drainage, $200,000 automatic renewal. Guardrails, $50,000 automatic renewal. Streetlight program, $125,000 automatic renewal. MCMAHON: I don't know what you're referring to. KALIVIANAKIS: I know. 1 have it, though. Sidewalk infill -- I'm not sure if that's -- I'm not sure exactly if that one is a year as well, but that's 300,000 if it is. 1 couldn't really determine from reading the packet. But according to my math, that would be -- the town council's authorizing $950,000 spending a year that we don't have any input. That we've giving away all of our rights to spend that money in perpetuity. And I think that with these projects and if were talking that kind of money, that they have to come back to us and get the money and explain why the money is needed. I'm very uncomfortable with it. It's almost like the administrative state is taking over and the people elected the town council. I think the town council should be reviewing this projects and either approving or denying them. And I think this is taking that discretion away from council and it's putting it to — well, it's just handicapping us, that well become irrelevant. So I have a real problem with that. And I would appreciate if you don't laugh at me. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I think -- so a couple of things going on and maybe this behooves us. I don't know if this is the time to necessarily have to do this, but we have contract going on, which 1 think some of which you're talking about has to do with those authorizations. And then we have something like this. One of the questions might be what's an advantage to having these authorizations? And these don't -- this does not say you can spend it just any time. Page 37 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 38 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION And just like with the contracts, it's an authorization but each project comes up. So kind of what is the benefit of having these kind of arrangements for capital projects and then also maybe touch a little bit on a contract and how we still have safeguards or what are our safeguards and what is our advantage to having this kind. I look at this one in particular, almost like a facilities or a vehicle replacement. Kind of something to be ready for what you know will happen, because a lot of this does happen in perpetuity: roads, vehicles, that kind of thing. So how does this planning help us and ultimately maybe saves us money and also keeps us in the loop? WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, if 1 may? For a little bit of clarification. Prior to staff successfully arguing for this multi -year, we're just going to concentrate on this first. This funding, in the event that we need it to take action for any catastrophic failures or issues, came out of the street fund and was used for this type of thing and other types of things that could not have been anticipated. Second, and this is very important, while these have multiple years in them, behind us and in front of us, each and every year, each one of these multi -year projects will be right here for reauthorization and part of next year's budget. So this year, this will be included in the budget if it's approved. And then, when that money is spent or if it is spent -- and there are years that it's not -- it remains in the budget. We'll come back next year and ask again. So tonight, and or for the budget that's going to be approved later on this calendar year, it does not cover the outlying years; just this one. And what we're attempting to do here is plan for the long range. And again, there are some years that we have not spent the money. There arc other years that we simply didn't have the funding and we had to come back to the Mayor and council for authorization. I'm going to cover another one that's related to drainage. We had a catastrophic on Panorama a couple of short years ago that cost us a couple of million dollars. The intent for the S 150,000 for that is to prevent that multi -million -dollar catastrophic failure. We've been working on that for the last couple of years. We have identified what we believe to be all the pre -incorporation drainage structures. We are now putting together a plan to either slip line or rehabilitate them. And this is where it gets a little bit complicated just for that one. The lion's share, in fact, I'll just be straight up. None of the specialty contractors have returned our calls in two years to come out and look at those Page 38 of90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 39 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION projects. So that money hasn't been spent, because we don't have a professional organization to help us through that. We are now going to move engaging an engineering firm for a minimal amount of that money to make recommendations on different types of treatments. So that when we reach out to these specialty companies, we now have a plan in place. But it gets a little bit frustrating for what we consider a big job, million dollars, $500,000; it's a lot of money. Sometimes we don't get retums on calls, and in fact, we've had projects where no one even bid on them simply because they weren't a big enough threshold. And for those of you that can hear me, Fountain Hills isn't that far from anything in this valley. KALIVIANAKIS: Right. And the 6047 project might not be the best example, but this was the first example of this kind of a multi -year in perpetuity improvements. Thai's why I wanted to bring it up. Even though I think on this one, I understand. I agree with your point. And the streetlight one, that one goes on. It might have been a better example. But again, just because you started here, I just wanted to have that conversation here. And again, I'll just reiterate that I am a little uncomfortable delegating that kind of spending authority without oversight. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? GRZYBOWSKI: What 1 would like to do going forward is, first of all, I trust our staff judgement. If this is the kind of thing that we need to put out there so that you've got it on some sort of a money hold, that's fantastic. 1 trust your judgement. But what I would like to do, going forward, is maybe at the end of each fiscal year, you come and say, okay, for D6047, the miscellaneous drainage, we held $50,000. For this, we held whatever, so that the list that Brenda read a little bit ago. So maybe at the end of all this you say, okay, we only used $11,000, we only used whatever. So that we know what was actually used and where the money went back. That it went back into the same coffers that it would have come out of. 1 mean, it doesn't like really go back, but we want to hear, we should be updated what actually got spent so that we know. Next year, when we go to do the $50,000 dollars again, we'll remember that you only spent I I this year. WELDY: Madam Mayor and Councilmember, we agree with that. In fact, after a speaker to that came for one of the council meetings, on a call to the public, she Page 39 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 40 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION referenced that Capt. Kratzer gave a report and pointed back there towards me and asked why I didn't -- it was suggested that we do a monthly report. We had decided it would probably be best if we do a quarterly or maybe two for each fiscal year, that not only includes the payment management but the CIP and some of the other items under the public works umbrella. So we agree. We would like to come back and tell you what the status is, what we've spent and how much is remaining in the budget and what we anticipate moving forward. You're welcome. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. MILLER: Not to belabor this, but I think the Mayor stated it best. So we have facilities replacement fund, and you saw an email I sent earlier today about the bathrooms over at the park, at Fountain Park. And it's going to be a $90- to $100,000 sewer replacement and parking lot repair to be able to get that fixed. Well, this is very similar. We don't have a drainage replacement fund. This is kind of a -- it's not a in perpetuity thing. But to your point, it's requested every year and we use it if we need it. If we don't, it's there. It's kind of like the facilities reserve. We've identified several different facilities, buildings that we have needs for and so we budget for those. But sometimes things go out of order. We might have anticipated it 20 years out, or it might be 15 years out or 5 years out; and sometimes things are like -- things happen today that we anticipated was going to be 10 years out. So to your point, this doesn't go into a fund and it just sits there and then -- or we just spend it just because ifs there. And so each year, we will have you consider it and authorize it as part of the budget process. And then the contracts will always come back to you. So you always have the oversight that you're requesting. So it's a good observation, but I don't think that this is something that I would agree with is in perpetuity. But I would agree that the Town's commitment to try and maintain its infrastructure is for in perpetuity. Sony, I can't really say that too well. But I get your point. It's just a different way of looking at it, but it's the same thing. JANOVER: I second that. The next project is wayfinding signs. So this is a project that would fabricate and install Page 40 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 41 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION wayfinding signs at strategic locations throughout the town that would help direct visitors to public amenities, parks, lodging, business areas, et cetera. Plans were completed several years ago but they were not signed or sealed. And during this current fiscal year, an engineering firm was contracted to perform needed structural calculations for the signs. The design plans are also being value engineered by a contractor to make sure that they align with industry standards, so that it would reduce the cost of materials and fabrication when we actually get to that point. So fabrication and construction is -- we're requesting $250,000 for wayfinding signs for next year. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilmember? SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor. I'm just curious, who is going to give us direction of the messaging that's on them? You know, 1 think there's some stakeholders in town that we want involved in that. Because I'm supportive of it, but my only interest is who's going to be working on the messaging and what -- there's certain things that we don't need to point out but there's certain things that will be very beneficial to point out. JANOV ER: Mayor and Councilmember, I believe that we have that on a plan already, and I'm not sure -- I wasn't here during the development of those plans, so I don't know who had oversight into -- MILLER: Right. It was development services. The planning staff actually helped the consultant that worked on this. So it's going to have all the key attributes, like the town facilities or the places that visitors want to see, like maybe Fountain Park or the fountain or the visitor center, the chamber, the library, those types of things. It's going to be everything like that. Now, we had -- at the time we had a Councilmember who was wondering if we could have maybe businesses actually have slide -in signs. And the council at the time opted not to really do that because of the administration trying to do that. Because a lot of times you might have a company do it and then they opt not to up it or reup it or renew. And so we thought it was best, based on our peers who have done this around the valley, to keep it limited to the places that people want to try to get to, rather than specific to the businesses themselves. Page 41 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 42 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION SKILLICORN: Madam Mayor, so obviously there's specific businesses that are hard to please. There are so many. But I'm thinking of is like business districts or retail plaza. It would be nice that we pay for them with additional business. And sometimes when visitors come here, there's certain amenities that they're not looking for. Residents care about where the library is. But someone that is here visiting from another state, yeah, maybe they do. But realistically I want them to go to our retail district. So that's the -- 1 want to make sure that it's driving people where we want them to go. MILLER: So you're bringing up a really good point and I think what we'll need to do is, Justin and Dave, I think what we'll want to do is get the council the actual plan. Because it actually -- you're absolutely right. There's no reason people that are visiting want to go to the library or visit the town hall. SKILLICORN: They don't spend money there. MILLER: Right. So we do have the signs, and 1 remember looking at the plan and it really is driving people to where we have, what 1 call, activity hubs in town, so obviously Fountain Park, the downtown area where we have events, that kind of thing. So we absolutely have that in this plan. But we'll get you the plan documents so you can actually see it. It's very well thought out. And then what I like, what the staff has done here is they came up with really high -cost estimates to do this. I mean it was really crazy expensive. So by working with an engineering company on the design, that they needed to do anyways, they were actually able to value engineer based on lower cost, highly durable materials that will hold up better in our climate. So I feel very good about this. This was going to be a lot more than $250,000. In fact, I believe, Justin, it was about $800,000 originally? And that wasn't even the monuments. 1 mean, the monument signs themselves were a lot more money on top of that. So just for these signs alone, I think it was around a half million to $800,000. So good input. JANOVER: Okay. This is another multi -year program. Sidewalk infill and design and construction for $300,000 annually. So prior to incorporation, sidewalks were not required with adjacent development. So having a sidewalk network, obviously, is very important to council and to our residents. And installing sidewalks where gaps currently exist allow pedestrians to use those Page42 of90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 43 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION sidewalks instead of walking in the adjacent street. So it reduces risk and it creates a safer, more walkable community. So this programs provides $100,000 annually for design and $200,000 annually for construction for ADA-compliant concrete sidewalks and curb ramps where gaps currently exist. So the new sidewalks will provide connectivity to improve the walkability throughout our town and supports the Town's active transportation plan as well as the 2021 strategic plan for creating walkable community. Last fiscal year, in FY23, the project constructed and filled sidewalks and ramps at the locations that are noted on the table here. So the Fountain Park connector sidewalk La Montana Drive at the driveway near the Parkview Boulevard. We did quite a number of projects with this program. So again, this is just an ongoing; were requesting the same $300,000 that we have previously. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. This is another one of those programs I just have trouble with. As 1 speak to the people around town, as 1 ran for office, I spoke to thousands of people and 1 did not hear one person say we need more sidewalks in Fountain Hills. Maybe I'm just talking to the wrong people, okay. But all of them told me that we need better roads. So we're going to be putting new sidewalks next to dilapidated roads. That doesn't make sense to me. 1 mean, I just think that we could put a moratorium on sidewalks for three or four years and we could take that $300,000 over four years, it will be $1.2 million, that's real money. It seems like there is a lot of connectivity right now on the sidewalks as I go around town. I know later were going to talk about the Shea sidewalk that's going to go from Scottsdale all the way to Fry's. And again, how many people are going to use that? Not too many, I don't think. So although sidewalks are nice, to me as a cost cutter and somebody that wants to fix roads, I think these are the kind of projects we can put on hold for a few years. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? TOTH: I just have a quick question. What is the relationship between the different sidewalk infill projects? So we have three, 1 think it is? My number might be wrong. But the different connectivity projects, are any of them can't do one without the other? Page 43 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION Page44 of90 Or what am I not seeing, I guess, is my question? JANOVER: Councilmember, I'm not sure I understand the question. Sony. TOTH: Sorry. I'm just trying to check that if for whatever reason we say no to this one, does that in any way affect the other connectivity projects? JANOVER: No. Actually, Councilmember and Mayor, no. That does not affect the other projects. Typically, this sidewalk infill and design construction program are for kind of pretty much smaller infill projects such as the one that's shown here on the graphic, the one that we did on Saguaro Boulevard. When we have other, bigger projects; those become their own CIP projects. These are meant for the more smaller, hey we have a small amount. We have like 50 feet of sidewalk we need to fill over here or whatever the case might be. That's really where this comes in. This comes in pretty much townwide. But when we have a project such as one that's coming up, the Fountain Hills Boulevard by the Church of the Ascension, that's a much bigger project. That has retaining walls and there's a lot going on with that project. It's much, much bigger. 1 think it's 290,000. So that is -- that would pretty much eat up this entire program. So that becomes its own project and its own CIP that could vote on separately. But this is mainly for the smaller pieces and moderate pieces that we can direct a job order contractor or a contractor to take care of for us. MAYOR DICKEY: Do you want to say anything? MILLER: Yeah. 1 just wanted to jump in real quick. So I think it's a really good observation that the councilmembers have on the sidewalks. So this particular project, we have a number of sidewalks that we've been criticized we have sidewalks to nowhere. And so what this is really intending to do is try to make those connections so that the sidewalks actually -- we get these requests from citizens all the time that will contact us. And we had one recently that contacted us. She just moved up on Palisades across the street from the Safeway and she was like wondering where's the sidewalk and when was the sidewalk ever going to be built. Well, the good news was that's a grant -funded one that will actually provide her connectivity. But we also have people that live over off La Montana or Gunsight and they've asked for connectivity to where they live and also to Saguaro. So what we've been trying to do Page44 of90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 45 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION over a multi -year -- we have a plan, and actually, the council a few years back actually approved sidewalk priority listing. And it kind of starts off, if you think about it, from the town center and kind of expands out because that's where a lot of people want to walk to. They want to walk to Fountain Park. They want to go downtown. And so we're fortunate because, when you go up to Avenue of the Fountains, all the way up to Palisades, you've got sidewalk on either side. But then along the other arterials, we didn't have it. And so we actually were able to get Maricopa Association of Governments to fund what's called a active transportation plan. And that active transportation plan is what was able to help us get the $3 million grant that you saw earlier. And then this is just a smaller component to do some of these smaller infill projects along the way. So yes, are we going to do this forever? Unfortunately, at the time we developed MCO, we were a company town and MCO did not want to pay for these themselves. And then we incorporated, and unfortunately, most of the damage was done. So I feel bad because most of the cities around us, they're not having to do anything like a infill program like this. We're doing it to catch up. And one of the things that a community is rated on is it's walkability and people that want to be able to walk from their homes to parks and shopping and other things like that. And unfortunately, if you go into a lot of our interior of our neighborhoods, we just don't even have sidewalks. You know, homes that were built from like about 1997 on typically have at least sidewalks on one side of the street. So I'll turn it back. I think Justin had some other points. WELDY: Thank you for the opportunity. Having spent a decade and a half plus here, the one thing that has been consistent is the number of people as they would tour and they want to be able to reach one of the amenities, whether it's in the town center or somewhere on Shea, they've asked why is there no sidewalk down there. You just heard the explanation. The corporate town that built the town had no intentions of building sidewalks. I would like to say that, prior to me, two public works directors came to the Mayor and council multiple times because there was a minimal amount of money that was put into it and then it was stopped and then it started and stopped. Fortunately, we have successfully argued on behalf of the multi -modal folks that walk here too, for the last five Page 45 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 46 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION years, to actually construct north of 20,000 linear feet of sidewalk. And I want to give you just a couple of snapshots in time to explain that. With this minimal amount of funding, in regards to overall construction costs, we've created connectivity on the south side of Palisades, from Mountainside to Fountain Park, including a crucial section across from the high school. We've also -- and this little green spot that you're seeing here, and it's going to be a little bit confusing, but this is on the north side of Saguaro near Desert Vista Park. This connects Shea to the town center and more importantly, it right now connects to the Desert Vista crosswalk. We have a small gap in between Tower and Colony that is a crucial gap because that gap, when it's filled, will then tic -in to part of the S3 million grant sidewalk. And then, in turn, that will connect us or give us connectivity on one side of Saguaro from Shea, to Fountain Hills Boulevard. In regards to a multi -modal walkable town that's identified in the active transportation plan and on the five-year priority horizon, that's a pretty critical portion or a part of that puzzle. I'm passionate about this, having spent time with a large number of the residents here and heard their concerns and actually went out and had a look. In fact, with that said, later this year were going to be coming back and asking for an amendment to the five-year plan because the priorities have changed based on what we're hearing from the residents and, also, someone else's money is paying for larger chunks that were shown in the plan. So we need to take advantage of that and move a little bit closer to the town core. We refer to it as the town center because that is what's identified in the active transportation plan. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilmember? SKILLICORN: Mayor, thank you. So when I look at this, I see that we have had quite a few additional sidewalks over the years, but our community was not planned around sidewalks. I find the walkability argument not to be all that great, because part of that is about distances. If you live some place where you have a short distance to the store or activities and things like that, that would be considered walkable. But we have sometimes miles of walking to do. And the idea of, let's say, down Saguaro there, I don't see it's realistic that you have people living Page 46 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 47 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION all the way at one end, walking all the way to the other. It's just too far of a walk; half the year we're at 110 degrees. I just don't see that being realistic. And it just really stuck on me when fellow Councilmember Kalivianakis mentioned having a new sidewalk next to a dilapidated road; and that is unacceptable. And 1 think people are crying to fix those roads before adding sidewalks where they knew they didn't exist when they already invested. So thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? GRZYBOWSKI: Sidewalks are crucial for pedestrian safety. We have had spotty sidewalks ever since I've been here and I've always been a walker, even before I lived right here. You're walking on a sidewalk and, bam, it ends because there's some tall grass, so you have to jump in the middle of the street. That's confusing to cars driving by. And to me, safe pedestrians are as important, if not more important, than putting $300,000 towards a third of a mile of a road. I m sorry, but I can't say that walkability here isn't that great because it really is. Safety is way more important to me. I'm sorry. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. You know as I've engaged in my walking and generally when there is a gap between the sidewalks, l just go into the bike lane and walk and then I go back. Because we do have a lot of bike lanes here in this town, and 1 think they're pretty safe for pedestrians. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor. MCMAHON: Bike lanes are for bikes and 1 think that's pretty dangerous, especially since there's a lot of older people that do walk. There's a lot of hikers. We are known as a town, it's one of our attractions for hiking and walking. In addition, the pedestrian safety and pedestrian committee has talked about this at length, in concert with the town plan, and they support this. And when Brenda — I think you're going to be on that committee. I think when you sit down and are brought up to date on some of the things that we look at in the town for safety purposes, 1 think you'll have a better understanding. I'm not insulting you. I'm just saying 1 think that Page 47 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 48 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION there will be a better, broader scope and understanding of the sidewalk plan and how we're working on it, reasonably working on it to have these filled and keep the maintenance. Because if you think about it, cars drive on streets, people walk on sidewalks. That's their mode of transportation as well, and 1 think we need to respect it in this town. Especially with all the hills and the gaps and when it was built, you know, there was a lot of places without sidewalks that we really do need. I mean, our town is growing. There's a lot more people here, a lot more walking. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. 1 -- FRIEDEL: Mayor? MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, yes. Go ahead, Gerry. Sorry about that. FRIEDEL: As a hiker and a walker in this town, I see hundreds of people using the bike lanes to walk in. Never had a problem. Very safe. And in fact, 1 believe, in our transportation plan, it called for bike lanes in some areas to be used in lieu of sidewalks, if 1 remember some of our initial conversations about that. So I think we probably have good accessibility and walkability and the bike lanes are very safe in this town. They're well marked and I've never seen or heard of any problems in the bike lanes, at least up in this area. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Problem with the bike lanes is you got to be going in the right direction so you need to make sure that you're walking on that side of the street. You should not walk in a bike lane going with traffic. Then if you have to cross the street to do that, that's just another hazard and another something to add 1 really disagree with walkability not being important. We walk everywhere and we walked pretty far to go to stores and things like that. I don't think that this particular area is meant for someone who's living on Shea who wants to go all the way to Palisades or to town hall, whichever it is. It's just a connectivity along the way for whoever might go on at the park or go on at the stores, so they can walk. And I'm all for it. 1 was one of the ones, when we were doing 100 grand a year, 1 said can we do 200 grand and we did. And I'm happy with the 300 grand. I think, again, I understand the philosophy of the roads needing attention, but 1 think this is very important and 1 really think it's important to continue with this -- GRZYBOWSKI: Mayor, if I may? MAYOR DICKEY: You may. Page 48 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 49 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION GRZYBOWSKI: There is a difference between a multi -use path and a bike path. And one, our bike paths are not signed very well, and Justin already knows how I feel about that. He and I had a conversation a few years ago as my Leadership Academy project. A multi -use path is generally wider because of the fact that you've got the bikes going and the pedestrians, hopefully, going the opposite directions of the bikes. But again, those kind of things are confusing to drivers. Its very easy for us to sit up here and say oh, no, it's not, I don't have a problem with it. But think about the average age of our resident and the average age of our driver. We're already not signing our bike paths very well. There are areas that have multi -use paths that are walk, ride, and park. So you've got somebody parked in the multi -use path and a bike wants to get around them. Then on the other side of the car is a pedestrian walking this way. I have a problem with the bike path limitation in this area anyway, and to suggest that were going to tell our friends and neighbors to tell your kid just hop on the bike path and walk on the bike path that extra block or whatever, 1 have a problem with it. I think it's a huge safety concern and I'm going to get a lot of emails tomorrow that we picked roads over safety. And I will also tell them to email you when that happens, just so you also know that it happens. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? TOTH: I just had a question. I'm sorry, also, if you've already said this. How much of that 300,000 was spent in this year? JANOVER: The entire thing was spent this year. TOTH: Okay. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. JANOVER: I'd just like to make one quick comment responding to Councilmember Skillicom. I did mention about us putting a sidewalk near a road, maybe, that's in really bad shape. We would make sure that once we have our work plans for our roads, for our reconstruction of roads and such, we'd make sure that we coordinate all of our efforts for sidewalk with that in mind, so that were not putting sidewalk near a road that has to be completely reconstructed, because then that sidewalk would have to come up and wed have to redo that. So we would make sure that we coordinate those efforts to do things efficiently and where it's needed. Page 49 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 50 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Janover. And just one comment before the letters to the editor and how Brenda's for unsafe conditions on our roadways. And I'm actually for sidewalks. I'm for this kind of connectivity that Justin pointed out. I think it's good public policy; it's good govemance. I guess my point -- if it had been missed, I'd like to repeat it -- is just a matter at this point of a little prioritization and maybe postponing certain projects for a couple of years while other projects, maybe ones that arc more on the minds of the Fountain Hills residents, again, with the roads would be. But I am all for having a vigorous sidewalk plan, having safe streets, having safe sidewalks. But we just have a limited amount of money and we just have to be wise stewards of that money. And like I said, in some of these projects tonight, I'm not asking for them to be scrapped, just maybe reprioritized. Okay? Just so you guys know. MILLER: Thank you, Mayor and council. 1 think well move on. 1 think we did get direction from the council. So thank you. JANOVER: Okay. Our next project is the community center moisture intrusion measures. So as you all know, during the initial phase of renovations to the community center, in 2021, drainage issues were discovered at the exterior walls and the doors of the building. And subsequently during last summer, the building experienced interior odors, carpets staining, ceiling leaks, increased humidity. An evaluation of the community center structure was performed and moisture and air testing was completed throughout the building to determine the extent of the moisture intrusion damage. The evaluation provided short-term, medium -term, and long-term recommendations. An architect has been retained and this project is going to fund this $200,000 would fund near -term recommendations as identified by the design professional to address moisture issues. Okay, we don't know exactly what this is but this is really more of a placeholder for now. Once we know what those near -term measures are going to be, we can come back to council and refine that number. But this is just something we need -- this is certainly a priority for us to make sure that the community center moisture intrusion measures, the near -term measures are addressed. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. And just to clarify, this is just to study what needs to be done; Page 50 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 51 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION is that correct? And then later you'll come back to council and say, okay, now this is the price tag? Is that kind of what I'm seeing here? MILLER: That's actually -- that's pretty close to what this is. We do have some near - term recommendations that -- was it Buick was the water intrusion expert that actually looked at this initially before the architects. And they identified some drainage changes to the front of the building that would help keep water from Flowing towards the doors. But what the town engineer mentioned is that we have secured a architectural firm that handles these types of issues to help us identify what new windows and new doors would cost. We believe that the wet ceiling that was just done, and it's been confirmed by our other expert on this area that that should hold for about 15 years. But were still going to have to -- at some point, were going to have to put a new seal on the roof, and this architectural firm will help us identify what the storefront windows and the doors will be for that building. And I think that's important because we want to know what that is this ycar, so we can start budgeting for those into the future. If it's another 15 years, that's great. But we need to actually program that into our facilities replacement fund. MAYOR DICKEY: 1 guess 1 thought this project will fund the near -term recommendations identified by the design professional to address moisture issues. MILLER: It's both. MAYOR DICKEY: It's not just study? MILLER: No, it's not a study. But they're going to be looking at replacement costs for windows and doors and also look at the near term which is the drainage for the building. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you for clearing that up. JANOVER: Okay. This is the town -wide guardrail replacement. So we own and maintain about 10,000 feet of guardrail throughout the town. There was a change in the federal regulations requirements in about 2014, and as a result several segments of our pre- and post -incorporation guardrail are no longer in compliance with federal highway standards. So in 2022 the Town had an assessment done of our guardrails throughout the entire town and this project would follow those recommendations of that assessment. So we intend to apply for HSIP grants which are federal grants to fund the offset of the cost of replacing these guardrails, and the $50,000 per year really just represents our share of Page 51 or 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 52 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION that cost. Again, we would have to find out -- go out to contract, go out to bid, to see what the actual cost of that would be and we would be able to have a better idea and come back to council to let them know. MAYOR DICKEY: Yes, Councilwoman. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. It pains me to say this, but we just had the town retreat and this issue came up. Whether we're using these funds to update because of the 2014 standards, which they said we weren't. And what was said at that time is we're just replacing damaged guardrails. And so again, tonight you're saying that were going to do upgrades to conform with current standards, which all the studies that I've read said we don't have to. JANOVER: Yes, Mayor and Councilmember Kalivianakis, so what was approved the other night at council was just for that. Just for -- has nothing to do with the CIP project. This CIP project is just to replace guardrail that is in place now to just upgrade it to meet federal standards. And so that's all that this is for. This is not handling the operational side of addressing damaged guardrail, which is just pretty much put back to current standards. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you for clarifying that. Because 1 was confused. JANOVER: It is confusing. MAYOR DICKEY: (Indiscernible) guardrails again. KALIVIANAK IS: But that being said, 1 would be against this because I don't think it's necessary. If we can get HSIP grants to fund it, whatever taxpayer money, not so much. Okay. MILLER: Just for my clarification, is the HSIP, is that 100 percent grant or is that a match? JANOVER: Yeah. That's a match grant. MILLER: Okay. What is the typical match on that? Is that the six percent or is it the ten? JANOVER: It's between 75 and 90 percent. MILLER: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? JANOVER: The lion's share would be covered by the grant. Page 52 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 53 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MCMAHON: Isn't this another one of those contractor, however you want to call it, that you have to have in order to have the grants? I thought that's what we talked about to you. JANOVER: Mayor and vice mayor, this is actually separate from the contract that was approved. I know it's a little confusing. We already have that contract in place. We're fine with -- if we do have damaged guardrails somewhere, that could be changed out without an issue. We have a contract in place. This is a complete separate thing, above and beyond that. MCMAHON: Okay. JANOVER: That is just to replace existing guardrail with updated guardrail. That means current federal highway standards. MCMAHON: So some of this is all taken care of? Right? Am I understanding that right? By a grant or no? JANOVER: Well, what we would do is utilize these funds if it's approved to apply for federal grants -- MCMAHON: Okay. JANOVER: -- to -- and this would be our matching -- MCMAHON: Okay. JANOVER: -- our matching funds. MCMAHON: All right. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilmember? SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think you just answered my question. But the $50,000 is the Town's share after the grant? JANOVER: Yes. SKILLICORN: Yes. Okay. So this is a nice want, but we don't need it. JANOVER: Just to let Mayor and council know, it's not warranted. We don't have to upgrade it. It's not something that we need to do; however, if there is an issue, if someone does crash into one of these guardrails and does go over the guardrail because of a height differential between what we've had and what the current federal regulation says, we might be open to liability. So just something that I wanted everyone to be aware of. Something in the back of our minds, at some point it would make sense for us to -- Page 53 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 54 of 90 MARCH 10, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION there was a reason why these guardrails were increased in height due to newer testing and the height of vehicles and so forth. So we just want to make sure that we're staying current, at some point. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? GRZYBOWSKI: I think I'm expanding on what Allen just said. If we don't say yes to this $50,000, then we can't use the grant money that's out there. Is that what I understand? JANOVER: Mayor and Councilmember Grzybowski, we wouldn't have any kind of funds to match -- if we were to get a grant, we wouldn't have any funds available to match that grant unless we came back separately to ask for that. MCMAHON: Okay. TOTH: While I completely understand that 50,000 is a fraction of what the full project would cost and that this grant would cover a significant amount, that grant money isn't our money. Right? We can't decide to use it on something else all of a sudden; it's for this project? JANOVER: Yes. TOTH: And this project is something that isn't a need. So 1 still -- with or without a grant, 1 still see it as $50,000 that we're spending, which is almost twice what 1 make in a year. So I would have to agree with Brenda and Allen on this one. MAYOR DICKEY: So if we don't do this, we're not saving anything, because were not spending this money unless we get a grant. So it's not like by not doing this we have 50 grand to give to something else. JANOVER: That's correct. We -- MAYOR DICKEY: It's all like just on a line. So this is all paper money. But basically, this isn't like saying, okay, now we'll take this and put it somewhere else because we won't spend this unless we get the grant. JANOVER: That's correct. MAYOR DICKEY: And we don't know what the amount will be? And what is the downside to not putting this in the budget right now? If we got a grant, wouldn't we probably come up with this? JANOVER: Typically, Mayor and council, many times some of these grants -- I'm not Page 59 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 55 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION sure about the HSIP grants, but many times ask to see where the matching fund will be coming from. It just might be a letter from the town manager that says this will be budgeted in fiscal year blank or what have you. We were just looking to see if we can get a jump on it and have this money, at !cast, available in the CIP so that we can start applying for the grants, but it can be done later on. We can apply -- we can still apply if council wishes us to and then, if this is not available, we would just come back -- MAYOR DICKEY: That would be something I want to ask. If we didn't put this particular thing in right now but we applied for the grant, would that help if something did happen and we ended up getting challenged because of the height of it, to say, well, they're going after it or does this help? It look like were more intentioned of fixing them? Just asking a lot of questions, I don't know. JANOVER: Yeah. Only the optics are such that it would be in our best interests at some point to at !east apply for the grant, at least to show that effort. I would think that -- I can certainly look into the HSIP grant requirements to see if we need to actually have the money budgeted. If we don't need to have it already budgeted but just need a letter of commitment from either the Mayor or the town manager, then that might be another way of still being able to apply for the grant and just coming back and saying, hey, Mayor and council, we just got a grant, we'd like to -- we need 25,000 or 30,000 or whatever to match it. So we could do it that way. We just thought we would kind of jump the gun and have it kind of ready to start so that we can start applying. MAYOR DICKEY: Would it be good to just leave this in until we get some more details about what is involved with that grant and then we could decide maybe in a month or so to say, okay, we don't feel like we need to do this now or we do feel like we need to do this now? WELDY: Mayor, councilmembers, and we're just going to go back a little bit here. We recently had a council meeting in which there was discussion about the contract for repair. The following day 1 sent out the assessment. Has anybody had an opportunity to read that? I sent it in the form of an email to every one of the councilmembers. Well, I will resend it again. So as a town govemment we follow state and federal guidelines. The federal guidelines through their testing and accident investigation process have determined that the Page 55 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 56 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION guardrail system that was approved 50 or 60 years ago, based on newer vehicles and the height of some of those vehicles, that the guardrails are not warranted. For the last decade they've been working on this. They have now adopted a standard several years ago without putting a mandate on any municipal or state government to make that replacement. What they have done is make a strong recommendation based on safety and liability. A few years ago, when we brought this, it was based on those federal and state recommendations. It's also noted, while there isn't a requirement for us to do this, there is one for us to have a plan. This is that plan. Where the requirement does come into place is that, if we do any substantial work on any one of our roadways where we are not in compliance with the federal government, it then becomes a mandate and not an option. So the plan is a planning document. The ask for funding is, should a grant come up, we want to have the ability to match that. This money is not earmarked for anything else and simply remains in the CIP budget if we do not get a grant. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, for that explanation, Ms. Mayor. So I guess what you're saying is that the money would be held in limbo. If we were to get a grant, they would come back before council and then we would vole on the actual expense? Is that the long and the short of it? WELDY: We would come back when a grant became available? KALIVIANAKIS: Yes. WELDY: Unless it was due tomorrow and t'd admit -- KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. WELDY: -- we would come before you and ask you for permission to apply for it -- KALIVIANAKIS: Right. WELDY: -- and explain that this is what that funding was for. KALIVIANAKIS: I just wanted to clarify that, just so that everyone at home knew that, yeah, this -- we would get another bite at the apple, so to speak. And so we would get a chance to actually approve the actual funding. Just to -- I happen to be a lawyer, Ms. Mayor, and the application for the funding wouldn't mitigate the damages in an accident. They would go after us for the full funding, and just because we made the application for the upgraded guardrails, that's my legal opinion, it wouldn't shield us from liability. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I appreciate that. Page 56 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 57 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION Would you like to take a break till 8? MILLER: Sure. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. Thanks. CLERKS NOTE: Council recessed at 7:50 p.m. and reconvened at 8:00 p.m. JANOVER: Director Weldy spoke about earlier. So this maintains and repairs town - wide stormwatcr infrastructure and includes pipe cleaning, inspecting, maintenance, and treatments, installation of pipe lining and so forth. So we're responsible for the maintenance and repair of a large number of draining structures and that includes pipe culverts, catch basins, drop inlets, curb openings at the drainage parcels that we have all over the town. And these arc all essential components of our storm drain network. So these convey large amounts of runoff to our washes, mitigating the flooding concerns. And many of these large pipe culverts were installed by the county pre -incorporation. So some of these are approaching 40-plus years of age. And so maintenance is essential; it's critical to minimize the risk of failure during and after flooding events. So we are requesting to continue funding the program at $150,000 annually. And again, we come back every year to request this funding. Thank you. Our next project here is bridge repair. That's another multi -year, $75,000 annual request. And this program is allocated for ongoing maintenance and to repair deficiencies to the existing town -maintained bridges. So ADOT, or the Arizona Department of Transportation, their bridge group conducts bridge inspections every four years in the town on our 23 bridges. And in 2022, which is when they did their last inspection, three of our bridges were noted to require maintenance. One was the Sunridge Drive bridge, it's apart awash. And we have to repair and stabilize the culvert approach. One is the Sunridge Drive at Cholula Wash. We have to repair some erosion behind the southeast corner wing wall. And the other is the Golden Eagle Boulevard at Bristol Wash. We have to patch a spall with exposed rebar at the inlet side of the south barrel. And that's the photo that's on the lefthand side. So by performing regular maintenance on the bridges, that addresses issues before they become really serious and save the Town money over time. So again, we are requesting $75,000 annually to maintain and repair our bridges as needed. And again, we may or may not use the entire allotment, depending upon our needs every year. Page 57 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 58 of 90 MARCH 10, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION KALIVIANAKIS: And I was just curious. And if you don't know this answer, it's okay. But did we use the whole allotment last year? JANOVER: This is actually the first year that were asking for this. Yeah. So we've never had this program before. We would come back, I guess, as needed we would; if we had any issues in the past -- before my time. I guess, we would come as a one-off and ask for that, but this would, at least, help us to maintain our bridges all year long between the four-year cycle. So any issues that we do see, we can take care of that ongoing so that we don't have, hopefully, any issues when ADOT comes out with their bridge group. Thank you. Okay. This project is a sidewalk on Fountain Hills Boulevard at the Church of the Ascension. This is the one that I mentioned earlier. So this project would construct an ADA-compliant concrete sidewalk and retaining wall on the east side of Fountain Hills Boulevard between Crystal Ridge Drive and Segundo Drive in front of the Church of the Ascension. So you can see it on the lefthand side in that yellow outlined area. Design was actually completed for this project in FY22, under the project 6061, which is the sidewalk infill and design. So that program actually took care of the design, but because of the size of this project and the scope of the project, it would need its own CIP. It's a critical section in our short-term sidewalk gap -elimination program and it does support the Town's active transportation plan and our 2021 strategic plan for creating a walkable community. The Town did receive a quote for construction of the improvements, and based on that construction estimate, staff is requesting the $290,000 to complete this project in FY24. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Yeah, I'm very familiar with this section because it's literally blocks from my house. I drive by this every single day. And I don't see any pedestrians there, and I really think this is money we could save. I'm really strongly against building this particular stretch at $300,000. I know there's going to be a lot of engineering and excavation because of it being on a hill. And this is something maybe ten years from now, but not today. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? Page 58 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 59 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION GRZYBOWSKI: I used to live right there as well, and 1 saw people walking that street fairly regularly. As a matter of fact, when we drove by on Sunday, right before church my husband pointed it out to me. Again, this is one of those areas where there is a gap where you're walking on the sidewalk and you have to walk in the middle of the street, and then you have to walk back on the sidewalk again. You can't ask the people that live on the south side of the street to go to the one church and the people that live on the north side of the street to go to the other church. That just doesn't seem reasonable to me. Again, safety to me is the utmost importance and that should be one of our key things as your elected official. This, to me, is a very important project. Again, this particular area is a bike path, not a multi-usc path, so it is the narrower. And like the Mayor said however many sidewalk conversations ago, if you're walking north and you're coming home, now you have to walk south. Well, technically you're supposed to cross the street if you're walking on the street. Where a sidewalk you can walk north or south without being against the walking rules. So 1 am, again, safety over anything else here. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? TOTH: This is a relatively very short amount of sidewalk for a lot of money, especially compared to our other connectivity projects and how well the staff did at finding grants for those. 1 understand the reasons for that and know we've been over that before. But yes, safety is important; yes, I'm for connectivity; however, 1 really don't see a lot of pedestrians using this area. About, I think, over half of that area is covered by that driveway that I also never see people in. if someone's really, really concerned, they can walk up that. But 1 mean, I've lived in this town my whole life. I was trick or treating with no streetlights. I was walking with the no sidewalks. I came out okay. Everybody else is coming out okay. I haven't heard of any crashes in that area. Have there been any? JANOVER: I was just checking to see with Director Weldy if we had any crash data. We don't have any crash data. TOTH: Any involving pedestrians? JANOVER: No crash data that we have available that -- TOTH: Understood. 1 don't see this as a priority, even with the safety perspective. Page 59 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 60 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MAYOR DICKEY: Councilmember'? SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. It is a very steep, it's hard to even engineer; that's why it's so expensive. I just don't see this to be in town center. I don't think this is a walkability issue because it's not a town center. It's not a dense area. This is a major vehicle thorough through. So I'll pass on this one. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. And again, just to beat a dead horse, there's a bike lane right there. You can see it in the picture. And 1 think bike lanes would he safe if you did want to take a walk. I think that the bike lane would be safe to go there and it would save us a heck of a lot of money. MAYOR DICKEY: Gerry, are you still there? FRIEDEL: Yes, I am. MAYOR DICKEY: Just want to make sure, in case you had anything to add to this or any of these items. FRIEDEL: Well, that is my church. And 1 would have to agree. I just don't think that's something we need to do right now. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Grady? MILLER: Yeah. 1 would say we have our direction. Thank you. JANOVER: The next project is a low -flow roadway -drainage crossing improvement program. So this is a newly proposed annual program which would allocate $200,000 annually for the design and construction of improvements at low -flow roadway crossings at washes throughout the town. We have approximately 30 of these crossings throughout the town and this program would include design and construction of pipes, culverts, or other appropriate measures to eliminate nuisance flow across the roads. It will reduce roadway maintenance costs and sediment cleanup after storms and reduce the risk of freezing water or slick water on the roadway surfaces, increasing safety for pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicles. And the program is intended to address and improve each of our crossings over a 20-year period. It's anticipated, though, that the majority of these locations would meet the criteria for potential grant funding through the flood district of Maricopa County through their SPAP Page 60 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 61 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION as we've mentioned numerous times tonight and it is a fabulous, fabulous grant program. So this grant funding is planned to offset the town's cost of design and construction of the improvements. So this is again, it's a new request for a program. MAYOR DICKEY: What if wejust did the design? Would that help? Would we still be able to apply for grants if we got that part of it done? JANOVER: Mayor, if wejust had the design and we applied for grants, we could possibly get a -- we can apply for a grant for -- and this would cover our portion of the design, certainly, for the grant. Then once we know what the construction cost would be, then we could come back at a later date to ask for, 1 guess, project by project. We would be able to come back and ask for design funds or match funds for the construction. MAYOR DICKEY: Brenda? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Just to reiterate my objection from earlier, the bridge repair request for $75,000 per year to maintain, this is another project that is, again, a newly proposed project which allocates $200,000 each ycar. It just seems like there's so many of these that I'm just not used to, that I just wish we could just address it each year without giving the authorization. I just want to restate that objection for the record again, because were at the same point as we were before. MILLER: You're bringing up some really good points. Maybe what we need to do is really put together a program, a plan, that ultimately shows in the capital improvement program what were trying to do over a period of time and prioritize which locations. As you can see this location -- is this the Leo one or is the -- JANOVER: It is the Leo Drive, yes. MILLER: So Leo Drive is, if you go down Saguaro, south of Shea, we received -- I think it was probably about eight calls in January or maybe it was right after Christmas. January, people were -- they thought EPCOR had a waterline break. There's basically a wash there and EPCOR does have waterlines in that general vicinity. They also have, like, a flush line that they actually have water that comes up and it pumps it out into the wash. And as you could see with the pictures here, the concern we have is that we're trying to maintain our roads, and yet were getting water on the roads and you're getting the intrusion of the water into the roads. And over time, you're going to start just really Page 61 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 62 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION seeing some bad damage to the road. So if we're going to be investing in the roads, we really need to also have this be a part of a overall plan. This was the first year that we've proposed this, correct? JANOVER: Correct. MILLER: So because of all what were trying to do with drainage we have -- which we haven't gotten to the other projects yet, but we've got a couple of other projects that you'll see here today -- where we're trying to propose culverts, where we can have the water going under the road, rather than across it. So that's what were trying to do here. So 1 understand what Councilmember Kalivianakis is saying. So maybe next year, when we do come forth, we'll have a plan that shows in a multi -year fashion how we're trying to get at this. I think, I really appreciate what the staff is doing on this, because we haven't started addressing these and we've had these issues for many years and certainly they're causing problems for our residents that have these low-water crossing and things like that throughout town. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: I like that -- oh, I'm sorry. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. And I was just going to thank you for your thoughtful answer and for your concern over my issue with this. I really appreciate that. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. I think that's a great idea. Because one of the first questions is the ongoing part of it. How bad is it? Are they all really horrible or are some of them just a little bit marginal? I think something like this, where you see you had quite a few reactions, would probably be Number I project or something like that. 1 like that. But I also appreciate the idea that you're forward thinking and you know that this is something like a good way to proceed. But as were doing this balancing act, 1 think that that's a great suggestion. Thank you. JANOVER: So we have our direction. We'll come back with prioritized projects, and we can pick it up next year, for sure. SKILLICORN: And Madam Mayor, I don't think anyone here opposes the long term, if there's 30 of these. Obviously we can't fix 30 in one year. Right? It's going to take years to do that. I just think how it's structured, how it's communicated, maybe ifs realistic that, hey, were going to do three this year and then next year we're planning on doing Page 62 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 63 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION these two. And the year after that, maybe we'll do these other two, right? That's kind of what we're talking about. The specifics -- and I would go, oh, we want to fix this and protect the investment and protect the residents, just with something more specific. And I think that, also, it lets people know where the priorities are. I think that when you said there's 30 out there, wow, and you need details here. This is 20, it's talking about over a 20-year period. I think we want to help our residents with something specific too, because then if they know there's something that's going to be three years down the road or in that ballpark, they're not calling us today and complaining about it. JANOVER: We can certainly dial that in. SKILLICORN: Yeah. JANOVER: Thank you. Great direction. Okay. This is our downtown streetscape improvements project. And this is a project that would design and construct pedestrian path light poles and fixtures along Verde River Drive and Park View Avenue. Each of the poles would have electrical receptacles for use by community services and the poles would also be fitted to accommodate hanging of banners, promoting the town and special events and holidays and things like that, things that we do right now with our pedestrian poles. The project is very, very much supported by our economic development department and it would facilitate the expansion of downtown interest and development. And the proposed improvements would make the adjacent lots more attractive for development for sure, resulting in increased economic activity. So staff is requesting $635,000 for design and construction of these pedestrian lighting improvements. TOTH: Part of the reason I have been so picky on every other project is because I know that this one's a big one. But it is so important for our downtown area when we have that signagc that's just on the Avenue, people who aren't from town are not going to realize that whole area is our downtown. And those business owners tend to feel a little left out when we have events and we do a lot to beautify the Avenue, and I'm not saying we need a linear park view. But I'm just making the point that 1 think this would be a really wonderful step and a show of good faith to our business owners and the residents that we really care to invest in a thriving Fountain Hills downtown. Page 63 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 64 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: 1 thought Allen hit the button, I'm sorry. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. This project and also the unsignalized intersection streetlight program that will be coming up later for $125,000, this was pretty much what my Leadership Academy project was, was illumination at the intersections and the downtown area. At that time, I spoke with Justin extensively, and you gave me a primer on the Dark Sky compliant lighting. My concern here is that I thought we were talking about the poles and solar lighting being approximately $8- to $12,000 each. And maybe you can address that. When it comes up, the unsignalized intersection street program, we're talking about trenching and electrical sources and SRP, when, in my Leadership Academy project, we were going solar. And this downtown for $638,000 to just illuminate that X, and again, the pricing is excessive to me. And 1 think we already have a place to hang banners, don't we? Downtown? So -- TOTH: Not on Park View. KALIVIANAKIS: That's kind of a side park. It's Fountain Hills -- Avenue of the Fountains that's the big deal here in Fountain Hills. So I don't think Park View would be -- anyway, 1 would be against this. And as far as the unsignalized intersection streetlighting, I think we could do it for a lot less money. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? GRZYBOWSKI: I agree with Hannah. This is part of our downtown. The fact that it's been treated like some back alley road and not been as brightly cared for as our Avenue is a misstep on our part and all of the previous councils' part throughout the history of time. These roads, both Verde River and Park View -- and I just drew it on the table so you knew what I was talking about. These roads are as important as the Avenue is and as important as the business on Palisades is. For us to have overlooked it for as long as we have, I'm almost embarrassed. So I wholeheartedly support this project. It would be great if we could do solar, but yeah and yes, we need the banners because, again, we need to tie it into the Avenue. We don't need to do the big fancy sidewalk like the Avenue has and we don't need to do everything the Avenue has, but we need to do Avenue -like. We Page 64 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 65 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION need to treat those two streets like they are downtown, because we do consider them downtown. MAYOR DICKEY: Comments? FRIEDEL: Mayor? MAYOR DICKEY: Yes, sir. FRIEDEL: Mayor. A quick question. Is there any grant funding or development fees that we could use to help pay for this? MILLER: We wouldn't be able to use development fees for this because it's not necessarily -- it's not tied to our residents and growth and amenities that you typically collect the fees for. But our ED director just stepped up and she's going to talk probably about other possible grant opportunities. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. JACOBS: I wish, Town Manager. Madam Mayor, Councilmember Friedel. The short answer, doing this so long, is no. There are main street grant funding, but typically, that is for distressed communities. So this area does need help but it's not area specific. It's the entire community. So putting forth in a grant our median household income of over 80,000, the prices of homes, over 400- to 500,000, it would be a hard no. We wouldn't even qualify. So I wish, but no. MAYOR DICKEY: Amanda, how about the economic development fund, the downtown fund or the one percent or whatever that is? That amount of that sales tax? JACOBS: Madam Mayor, yes. We could use the downtown fund. MILLER: In fact, David, do you remember what our balances are? JANO V ER: Currently around 500. MILLER: So good. About 500,000, he's saying, that's in the fund. MAYOR DICKEY: So 500,000 but we're not suggesting using any of that? Or what are we talking about? Excuse me. JACOBS: It could be. MILLER: It could be. The only reason why we hadn't, at the time this was put together, there was another project that was going to be partially funded. It was the roundabout and all that was going to be touching the downtown fund. MAYOR DICKEY: Right. And so that's another point. I understand the desire for this. Page 65 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 66 of 90 MARCH 14. 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION It seems like a lot of money. We denied $380,000 to do some intersection improvements, which not only were safety related, but big time other end, finishing off the downtown loop or whatever you want to call it. We also had some infrastructure help with Park Place that helped us and did all the beautification of that area. So I think this is too much for what it's going to do. It's a lot. And I'd like to see something else suggested in this area. Park View is wide. The things are -- a lot of the stores are set back. You know, bank. I'm not saying that it's not an important area and I'm not saying it's not part of downtown, because it is. It's defined that way. But it's not anything close to what we're trying to or what we have on the Avenue with the walkability, with the type of businesses that are there, and the restaurants and such. It's a lot of money for some lights and some banners. JACOBS: Madam Mayor, if I may? MAYOR DICKEY: Excuse me. JACOBS: So Councilmember Toth and Councilmember Grzybowski spoke to some of it. So starting here, just as your economic development director but also resident, I started driving around, like, to see, ask questions of staff, the past. So this is part of-- I know we've been talking about the Avenue Merchant Association and downtown. And so unless you've bccn a resident for 20-plus years or you like looking at our documents, this area that's being proposed is actually part of our town center and downtown. The Town has done an amazing job along the Avenue, and so when 1 submitted this in December, because I think Mr. Pock shared with you, you know staff rolled up their sleeves, put this in. Obviously, there was other things that were going to come before you that have since been removed; we respect that. But in doing some of our business retention site visits, the businesses are wanting some love; and also for economic development and community and to be vibrant, we need to invest some money for our economic vitality. And not just for the businesses who are there. You guys have all seen, you guys have bccn residents, there's lots of vacant space. And so again, sometimes we have to invest money to get some of those folks interested. Again, as a resident -- and we talk about it being dark or open for business -- 1 appreciate the dark skies, but there's times that it just looks like by 5 o'clock we're closed for business. And so let's sort of light up and show we're open for business, get people into some of the restaurants that are Page 66 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 67 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION on Park View, and then help me. As I said in the economic development summit, I'm just one person, but help me create that sense of place to attract some more businesses. And then I've heard from several of you changing our demographics and really appealing to some of our young professionals. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Again, just I agree with the Mayor's concerns about this particular stretch of road, and I'm really familiar with Park View. And when you say were open after 5, no, were not. Nothing on Park View except for the Tap House and Phil's and the restaurant stretch is pretty much -- they now close around 5 o'clock, and there's really very few stores. There's vacant lots. There's really not much there right now. As far as Phil's and the Tap House, you know, they've got external lighting. They've got window lighting, and so it's really visible. And not only that, those are actually two of the businesses that are prospering extremely greatly. They're making a ton of money. And so I don't know if they're the ones that need the help if were going to spend this kind of money. Maybe there's other, wiser ways we can help our business community than illuminating a street that really has few businesses that are open after dark. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Vice Mayor? FRIEDEL: Mayor? MAYOR DICKEY: Oh. Hold on one sec, Gerry. Vice Mayor? FRIEDEL: Okay. MCMAHON: This is a difficult one. It's a lot of money. I do support our businesses and our business area, but not to ask an ignorant question, but it stems like there are a lot of vacant lots here. Are they all sidewalks here? I'm trying to recall, because it seems like when you walk around like in front of the Nature Store and stuff, there's not a sidewalk. It goes right to the curb. So I don't understand how the lighting would work there. Maybe instead of doing this all at once for 635, take a look at maybe doing a stretch at a time or something that is really used. I just think it's -- you know, given everybody's concerns and they keep voicing their eoncems about streets, streets, streets, streets, et Page 67 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 68 o/ 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION cetera, and I understand that. Last year we put $10 million in street funds, et cetera. I would like to see these streets improve, but 1 just don't know how much that this would really contribute to that. So maybe halving it or something like that, I don't know. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Gerry? FRIEDEL• I was just going to ask if there was an alternative plan that Amanda could look at and bring back something else'? I'm not against doing something down there, but maybe as Councilmember McMahon said, there's a way we can phase that in. We've got some money in the downtown fund. Maybe we could use a portion of it to do a section at a time. But maybe there's an alternative plan Amanda can take a look at and bring something back to us. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? GRZYBOWSKI: Oh, you want to go first'? TOTH: You got this. GRZYBOWSKI: Okay. 1 would be okay with looking at part of it. But I'm also going to say that just like looking at the Centennial Circle and talking about moving the Five Cs and putting in the shade structure, just as I feel that that is going to help make that area sparkle when people come to look to invest in the Dark Sky Discovery Center, I feel like if we make it obvious that this is a part of our downtown area, that our landlords might be able to rent the facilities easier. Our people that have been trying to sell their property might be able to have more interest, because it does look dark. And as for businesses that close at 5 or 6 or whatever, maybe they'd stay open longer if it looked more inviting to be on that street. But it doesn't look inviting. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? TOTH: I second everything that Councilmember Grzybowski just said. But on top of that, we had just spoken about that being used from the one percent downtown fund, and that's a balance of about $500,000. So were looking at -- okay, I'll be generous, right? Maybe not use all 500,000 -- 235,000 for the rest of this project that's coming from money that could have been used on roads and that's money that I think we're cutting out Page 68 or 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 69 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION in other areas. I want to reiterate that, yes, roads are number one. This is something that's a huge issue that we have this backlog for roads maintenance. However, we do still have a town to run, and on top of that, the reason that we feel so strongly about the roads is because it's our infrastructure. Our downtown is what allows us to be able to continue improving upon our infrastructure. And this road, Verde River and Park View have gone neglected as part of our downtown for so long and this is such a great first step to connect it with the rest of the Avenue. You're absolutely right, Madam Mayor, it's right now, Park View and Verde River are nothing like the Avenue. And that's exactly why we need to do something. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor? MCMAHON: There's what? 500,000 in the downtown fund? I mean, what else do you use that money for? MILLER: Well, you'll see that there's another project -- MCMAHON: Okay. MILLER: -- a request from the business community for restrooms as well. And that's -- MCMAHON: Okay. So why don't we take a look at that too? MILLER: Okay. MCMAHON: And then -- 1 mean, let's just take a look at that. JACOBS: Madam Mayor, I feel like I've received good direction. 1 appreciate all the feedback. And so we'll come back the next round with a potential modified version. I can be creative. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. JACOBS: Thanks. JANOVER: Okay. This project is a Shea Boulevard multi -modal path and sidewalk. And it's a multi -jurisdictional grant application project that the Town of Fountain Hills applied for through the federal RAISE grant program that used to be known as the Tiger Grant. This project would design and construct a multi -use path along the south side of Shea Boulevard, and you can see that in red on the south side of Shea. From I42nd Street in Scottsdale to Eagle Mountain Parkway in Fountain Hills. And then on the north side of Shea Boulevard, you can see all that red in the north side, that would be six-foot sidewalk between 136th Street in Scottsdale to Palisade's Boulevard. And the project Page 69 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION Page 70 of 90 would require future inter-govemmental agreements to establish the federal cost share and Scottsdale's cost share, if the project is awarded the RAISE grant. And that's a very, very big if. This is kind of a long shot, but we made our application. And I want to actually thank our assistant town engineer, Andy Whistler, for preparing and working really hard on that RAISE grant. So thank you, Andy. So the MOP and the sidewalk will fill in existing gaps on the north and south sides of Shea and the RAISE grant would fund up to 80 percent of the total project, which is estimated at just under 7.2 million. Of the remaining 20 percent, the local funding split would be between Fountain Hills and Scottsdale, and that would be based upon the length of the project within each of those municipalities, so approximately 55 percent in Fountain Hills and 45 percent in Scottsdale. So the anticipated project cost share for Fountain Hills is 789,000 and for Scottsdale it's 645,000. So the estimated Town share for design, next year, in FY24, is 100,000 and then the balance for eonstmction in FY25 would be 689,238. And resident feedback supports the project. But again, I have to reiterate that this would only happen if we get the grant. And that's, again, a very, very big if. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, I'm sorry. Wrong one. Sorry. GRZYBOWSKI: 1 used to live in one of those houses just on the other side of Eagle Mountain, that you have to access through 142nd. And I'm going to tell you, 1 backed onto Shea. I'm going to tell you the number of people shadows that I saw walk by on a daily basis on the way to Fry's kind of creepcd me out. It took a little while for me to get used to what was going back there. So I can assure you that if you look carefully there is a beaten path of people that have walked back and forth along that way. And there's also a slew of bicyclists that scare the bejeezies off of me because they insist on riding on their bike from Fountain Hills to Scottsdale. And I am a big road biker, and I would never do it. So I love this, and if we could make this happen, I think it would be brilliant. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Just to be clear, would we have to spend the design S100,000 first to qualify for the matching funds? JANOVER: Mayor and Councilmember Kalivianakis, the way this works is if we get the Page 7012190 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 71 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION grant and we do move forward with the project, then we would, in the first year, spend the design money. So we already would know that we have the grant. So once the grant is awarded, the local match for the design would come in and we'd pay for our portion of the design. Scottsdale would pay for their portion of the design. And then the following year, there'd be the federal grant for construction. We would pay our share of the construction and Scottsdale would pay their share. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Because I was under the impression that we had to do the design in order to qualify for the grant. JANOVER: Councilmember, in this case we -- no, we don't actually need to have the design done. This grant would actually pay for design and construction. So even before we do a design. So if we are unsuccessful in getting the grant, we don't expend anything. We don't expend the S100,000 for design and we don't pay for anything. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thanks for your clarification. JANOVER: Just a lot of staff time. MAYOR DICKEY: Grady? MILLER: Yes. This is before you because 1 actually went to a -- I attend the MAG management committee every month, and both City of Scottsdale and the City of Tempe had other heavily pedestrian types of projects very similar to this. Not at this location. Like, Scottsdale's wasn't here. It was actually in their old town area and Tempe was in, kind of, near the Mill Avenue and kind of a linkage over by the town lake. And Ijust thought, you know, this has been uncompleted for such a long time and it is heavily utilized. When you look at that multi -modal path, I see people every time I drive by there using it. And my thing is, if we don't get the RAISE grant, there's other funding opportunities. In fact, 1 think we could probably get some federal closeout money, which we have been able to use. And there might be some other federal grants. So my take on this is I think this is a win -win because there's nothing that we're going to put out any money on. And to the Councilmember's question about the design and having to pay the design, yes, we have to do that frequently with other projects, but for this particular one, we would not have to do it. And the good news is we might be able to -- because we actually have this identified in the active transportation plan as a walkable section of that plan, that we Page 71 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 72 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION may be able to get some other grants. It opens the door to grants. And so I think this is just a wonderful thing and I think we have a good shot, if not at the RAISE grant, other funding opportunities. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor? MCMAHON: I think this is a great idea, because 1 live at Eagle Mountain and I sec a lot of people walk and they stop at the light there because some of them don't want to walk down that path. But often in the spring and stuff, there's a lot of people. When I was training for half -marathons, I'd be walking down that hill and it would be scary. So I think this would really be a great opportunity to get these funds and open up from -- coming into Fountain Hills and having the appropriate safe sidewalks. So thank you. JANOVER: The next project is the Panorama Drive spring pump electrical upgrade. So this project will design and construct electrical upgrades to the existing pump that's out there at Panorama Drive and that will just allow that existing pump to operate at a higher pumping capacity. So were looking to do is change this from single phase to three-phase electric, coordinate with SRP on the electrical upgrade. And that will ensure that the pump is able to divert all that subterranean water, spring water, back into Fountain Lake and minimize the waterflow onto the tribal land. So that's what that's for. And were asking for $100,000 to coordinate with SRP on the electrical upgrade design. This is a video surveillance cameras. Again, this one of those things, again, we would come back every year asking for this. But it is listed as a multi -year, $75,000-per-annum request. So under this program the Town would purchase and install video surveillance cameras at the various Town -owned facilities and buildings. We've seen an increase in vandalism over time at our facilities, and having these additional surveillance cameras could deter vandalism and, in fact, provide video evidence should vandalism occur. And it has actually provided a valuable tool to staff and to law enforcement in identifying some of these vandals at our facilities. So we are requesting to continue the annual allocation of $75,000 for video surveillance cameras. Okay. This is Fountain Hills Boulevard and Palisades Boulevard. So in fiscal year'21, an evaluation of the intersection geometry here and a level of service was performed. And based on the findings of that assessment, this project would consist of the optimization of the single timing for the existing traffic signal that's there and will replace Page 72 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 73 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION the curb ramps. Now, to reduce the intersection delay that we see there, this project will also implement a left -turn permissive phase change. Right now, we just have protected lefts on all of the movements. This would actually allow for protected and permissive phase -to -the -left turns. So left turns from all approaches would be allowed during the green phase whenever there were appropriate gaps in oncoming traffic. So what that will do for us is that will reduce the buildup of left -turn queues and allow more vehicles to make their left turns during the cycle. Now, to support the permissive left -turn phase, we need to make physical median improvements to the intersection. And that's in order to improve the sight distance for the left -coming vehicles. Right now, we have what's called a negative offset. So when you're in your left turn lane, and there's another opposing vehicle coming in the other direction, in their left turn lane, the alignment is such that you cannot see past that vehicle to safely make your left turn. And the same thing goes for that vehicle. So what we need to do is, we need to align those and make what's called, either, a neutral offset or a positive offset, so that you can easily see past that opposing vehicle so you can make your left turn and they can make their left turn, safely. So the project will increase the overall intersection level of service and the design is slated for fiscal year '24 at a cost of 90,000. And then, we would follow with construction in the following year, FY25, at a cost of 200,000. And we do intend to apply to HSIP funding to offset our construction costs. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself with my crazy here. MILLER: I just want to let the Mayor and council know there was councilmembers who were actually on the pedestrian and traffic safety committee. This has been addressed before. We initially gave it -- I believe was it a year, or was it two years? I think it was two years. We adjusted the timing on the light as a lower cost alternative and we tried that. And it did help improve the stacking and such that occurs with that light, but this is really -- after having done that, this is really the safest and best option here. And trust me, we tried adjusting the timing which was basically a no -cost option or a low-cost option. And this is one we believe we have to do because it's just really improving the safety at this intersection. JANOVER: Thank you. Page 73 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 74 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION Okay, so this is Saguaro and Kingstree intersection drainage improvements. For this project we would be looking to design and construct improvements to address an existing drainage condition that we have just south of the intersection. And improvements would consist of some newly constructed sidewalk scuppers on both sides of Saguaro Boulevard that would allow the stonnwater to run off and flow more efficiently from Saguaro Boulevard into the scuppers, onto the sidewalks, leading to the Jacklin Wash below. Historically, the water has taken up to several hours to drain from this area and it's been unpassable after numerous high -intensity storms. So this project would substantially reduce the flooding and the required time to drain that stonnwater from the roadway. And would improve the safety of vehicles that are trying to pass through that intersection and reduce the risk of vehicular damage from those floodwaters. So we are requesting S 165,000 for design and construction next year. Okay. Okay. Palisades Boulevard and La Montana Drive. So this intersection has experienced mmnerous crashes over the years and that sort of concerned staff. It's currently stop controlled on all four approaches. The project would include the design and construction of intersection improvements that would be determined based on a recommendation from an intersection analysis that's currently underway. So we don't know what those recommendations are yet. The improvements, whatever they might be, are intended to enhance safety for vehicles and for pedestrians and bicyclists. The analysis is going to determine the nature of the improvements which might include either a traffic signal or a roundabout or something else that, again, we'll take a look at and evaluate. Whatever the recommended solution might be, it's going to be brought to the pedestrian and traffic safety committee for their input and approval prior to bringing it back to the full council for your approval. It's anticipatcd that the project will qualify for federal grant funding, whatever that might be, because it is a safety issue. So design is proposed for FY24, for next year, for 150,000 and construction for the following year, in FY25, for 1.5 million. And again, these numbers are high-level estimate kind of placeholders for now. They will be finalized during the procurement and the design process. Again, this is a safety issue that we want to really address. Page 74 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 75 of 90 MARCH 10, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Justin, what do you anticipate the federal grant funding would be out of that 1.5 million? JANOVER: That would be once we get into the design, do the design, that's when we would actually take that and get the cost of whatever that engineering construction cost would be, the estimate for the actual construction. And then with that information, we would actually apply for the grant. So the grant might be one extra year in the cycle, depending upon the timing of when we can get the design done. ICALIVIANAKIS: Would the grant pay for the lion's share of this project? MILLER: Yes. JANOVER: Yes. MILLER: And I also want to get back to as well, Council, and that is whatever comes up with the design, usually there's a menu of design options. And those will come back to you to make a decision. So it's not like staff will just go ahead and input in whatever the design is in the following year's CIP. Council will get to weigh in on the design options as well. JANOVER: Okay. This is a landscape beautification for Calico Drive. This is in response to resident feedback and would replace the existing natural landscape and flora on the south side of Calico Drive between El Pueblo Boulevard and Del Cambre Avenue with new landscaping, groundcover, irrigation, trees, vegetation, et cetera. Beautification is proposed adjacent to the Ashbrook Wash on the northern shelf of the wash. And it would improve the overall esthetic of the streetscape of Calico Drive. And the design would also consider biophilic plantings. So with that, the design would be 75,000 and construction in the following year for 750,000. TOTH: No. GRZYBOWSKI: I'm also no on this particular thing. I even discussed it with our MMPC chair and his first thing is you're going to water plants? No. JANOVER: Okay, I'm a little sketchy on the direction. Okay, thank you. Okay. So this is the unsignalized intersection streetlighting program. So this project was actually suggested by Councilmember Kalivianakis. Consisting of overhead Page 75 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 76 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION streetlighting at unsignalized intersections and typically here in Fountain Hills, the only streetlights that we have on our streets are at signalized intersections, while the remaining unsignalized intersections don't have any streetlighting. The streets become very dark at night. The project would install Dark Sky compliant LED streetlights at unsignalized intersections over time. And these, again, would have to be looked at and locations would have to prioritized. Streetlights would need to be powered by an electric source, and that's why were seeing such a high cost. And those electrical sources, that all has to be coordinated with SRP. Each intersection would require trenching and installation of conduit, tying into the nearest electrical source, and could cost in the range from 100,000 to 125,000 per intersection, if we go with, obviously, the electric lights. Depending upon the location and the amount of trenching that's required, that's really going to drive that cost. So we are requesting $125,000 per year. That would focus on the design and installation of streetlights. That might cover one intersection per year. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor? MCMAHON: Okay. 1 have difficulty with this because we have so many unsignalized intersections. I don't even know how you would begin to select them. 1 don't even -- I mean, talk about perpetuity; this would seem like it would be something that would have to be done in perpetuity to keep it up, to involve SRP, et cetera. We also are recognizing Dark Sky town and most of the people or a lot of the people, excuse me. Not most, but a lot of the people live here because of the fact that there's not a heck of a lot of lighting everywhere, et cetera. I mean, 1 live in Eagle Mountain and it is dark. But at the same time, ljust don't sec how this can be put practicality, even at a 125,000 a year, it might be more than that having to dig up and SRP et cetera. So I don't -- I'm not part of this one. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Justin, when I was putting this program together, me and you had discussions about possible solar lighting. Like, I think it was 8- or 12-foot poles. Could you discuss if there are other options to this program that is on our agenda tonight? WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, the discussion that we had certainly included what would be solar lighting. There has been internal discussion and it has been Page 76 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 77 of 90 MARCH 10, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION determined that solar lighting may not be as reliable as the standard AC -powered solar lighting. I've not had a chance to check on that. So to be on the safe side, we simply put it as showing as being connected to AC. MILLER: Now I'll be honest with you, a lot of that was coming from me, and the reason for that is a lot of these pedestrian and crossing points that we've had that have been solar, we've had those go down. And it takes many weeks to get those back up again. And so if these are being relied upon for people to cross safely in an intersection, it's different -- you know, solar, you can use solar in a lot of different ways. You can have like floodlights on, the signs and such, monument signs as you come into town. But these are really important. The reasons why were doing this is to improve safety. I sincerely believe that the electric cost cost more on the frontend of these, but over the life of the poles, they're going to be less than solar. Solar -- and I'm a big fan of solar. Trust me, I am. But I believe on these, I think there's a lot of issues that were still having. Also, the solar, with the battery packs that are charged here, the battery packs just don't hold up in the heat of Arizona. And so while this is a shocking cost versus what it would have been, I think over the life of the poles, I think you would have seen that they would have been very similar versus just going initially at cheaper cost with the solar. So we have these hot lights over here off of Avenue of the Fountains, over by the Havenly. How many weeks was that out when that went out? WELDY: Not including right now? MILLER: Oh, is it out right now? Okay. Sorry, 1 wasn't trying to put you in an embarrassing spot. WELDY: We have faced challenges with that particular one, which is actually under the warranty of the Havenly. So ever since it has been turned over to the Town, it has not been functioning and there's been a lot of issues primarily with the software which is proprietary and not from this country. We're working -- when I say we, the manufacturer's representative is working to resolve that issue; however, it is a lot more complicated than we would have the time or 1 would be able to explain tonight, tomorrow, or next week. But were working to resolve it. MILLER: I also just wanted to address one other point. And that is these would not be something we would be putting randomly at different places. I think what we would try Page 77 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 78 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION to do is put together a plan where we would likely try to put these in the town center where we have these crossing areas. So it's going to be maybe, Verde River as an example, where people don't have adequate lighting to cross or it might be on Park View. The point is, it's going to be where you have more foot traffic than typical. It wouldn't be in typical neighborhoods, I think. It would be maybe only if the neighborhoods were at a very busy footpath area. Like maybe -- and I don't know. I'm just thinking maybe like Kingstree and Saguaro or something like that. But anyways, this is why we went for the electrical option. If the council wanted to go and direct the staff to go with the solar option, you can certainly do that. But I was thinking based on cost estimates, what they came up with, if you look at the life of the poles, you're going to be at equal cost over the life of the poles. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Yeah, just looking at this picture, that does not look like a Dark Sky compliant light. That looks like a unshielded globe. Certainly, very disappointing from what I had envisioned. I thought that solar technology had evolved beyond being deemed as an unreliable source of power. The way I had envisioned this was, this could like be turned off maybe at midnight. We don't need them on all night long. Again, downtown area, feeding to downtown area, 8-foot poles, maybe 12-foot poles with solar toppers. The estimated cost at that point was around 8,000 per pole. It included the light and you'd probably need two at each intersection. So the cost would have been more like $16,000. And I thought that would be economically feasible. To suspected risk intersections, again, for safety. But if this is the direction that we need to go for safety, then 1 would be a no against my own project. MAYOR DICKEY: Sorry. Go ahead. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. One thing that we could possibly think about is do more research. Shelve it. We can amend it to $16,000 an intersection, and if we can't do that, we can't do that. But if all of a sudden we find something that works for us that could do it, that would give us the freedom to try or -- you know, whatever that number is, right? Maybe we should do a little more homework on it. Maybe we could have a little less shock and awe price tag, right, and still leave something in there and have some possibility. And knowing that Page 78 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 79 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION maybe the technology is not there or we might be shopping the wrong country. But maybe there's something here that can do it, you know, built here, that could do it too. So possibly. MAYOR DICKEY: I was going to suggest that. Possibly it has something to do with where we got them from or not country -wise but what the company is and more reliable source for solar and also -- Sharron, you're ready to speak. 1 just wanted to say that the idea of it being a yearly kind of thing is not something 1 am in favor of. Not because of the expense or whatever, but I don't think, and I wouldn't want that many that we would have to be doing it every year. I mean, 1 would really want to know specifically which intersection we were going for. 1 mean, you just -- when you said Kingstree, you know, I'm like, there's a lot of apartments and condos around there, and I think once we started this, we'd have some public input that we would need to get too. So again, I would think that there would be reliable solar somehow and it wouldn't cost this much, and limit where they are, like to the downtown and such. Sharron? GRZYBOWSKI: I don't like a traditional streetlight. I'm kind of into the eight -foot height kind of thing, just for the eyes and for the Dark Sky community. And Grady's right. Solar really has come a long way, but the battery is the problem. It's sitting out in the elements. We had a battery in my garage in the house that we just sold, and in the garage it was safer than it was outside, and we still had an issue and had to have it replaced. So they're still working really hard on the technology. It might last the five hours that we need to get to midnight. But then how do you tell the public the lights turn off at midnight? When you're relying on exterior lights, I think it just needs to be on all the time. I don't know that you can have a timeline for it. Anyway, I think it's brilliant idea and I would love it if we could pull it off in solar. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Vice Mayor. MCMAHON: I have a question, please. You guys are talking about the curb ones and it sounds like it's difficult even to maintain them, much less -- and staff having to work with them, et cetera. I mean, I just don't -- I'm questioning the practicality of this and how intersections would be selected. And given what you guys -- I observed you say about Page 79 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 80 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION the solar, et cetera, it just seems like may not be worth it and this money may be better spent elsewhere. I don't know. I'm asking. JANOVER: We can certainly do a bit more research on that. I think we have some direction. And full disclosure, that photo on the left was not intended to be -- that was just -- it was literally a Google search of a streetlight without a traffic signal. Intersection, streetlight, without a traffic signal. It was kind of hard to find one and this orb showed up. Thank you. Okay. I think we're going to start seeing things go a little bit faster now. So we're getting into our facility projects. So these are kind of no-braincrs. Town hall fire alarm panel and device upgrade, community center interior lighting upgrade at 200,000. I'll go into a little bit more detail on that one. So that project would upgrade the interior lighting at the community center and it will be determined if the existing electrical control panel could be upgraded or if it needs to be replaced. The original interior lighting at the community center shows its age. It's got cracks and discolored lenses. It's out of date and the control system is also original and future failures are going to be very difficult to repair based on equipment obsolescence. So its imperative that we get that lighting upgraded at the community center. MILLER: And Dave, SRP also has some sort of rebate programs on the interior lighting as well. JANOVER: We'll make sure that we go for that. Thank you. Council chambers patio shade structure. So that would design and install a new patio shade structure right out here by the exterior entrance to the council chambers. The proposed shade structure would promote the use of exterior public space on the town hall campus for use by the public and by town employees. MAYOR DICKEY: As long as it's by council chambers. Self-serving and (indiscernible). MILLER: West patio. WELDY: Without going into a lot of detail, it's actually a level of security that we currently do not enjoy for this chamber. Can you see out there? They can see in here. We had a recent -- not very long ago there were some unhappy residents that chanted Page 80 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 81 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION from outside of that door and we were unable to see them, and in fact, the sheriffs office had to go out there and ask them to move. So the intent is that we are simply -- and this has been multiple years we've discussed it -- providing an element of safety. I sent to the town manager a photo of myself standing from out there, to someone standing right here and you could not see me in that door when I did it. So this is a level of safety that we're recommending in regards to the shade structure. TOTH: I do remember a couple of years ago, what you're referring to, Justin. But I haven't seen anyone out there since. And I'm also going to throw out there that 1 don't see that being a space that's used for events. This is the town hall campus. This isn't the community center or an event space. $175,000 shade structure, I don't know how long we'd have to wait before we showed our face to the residents again. I mean, it is right outside the council chambers and I really do think wed get laughed out of the room. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Yeah. I'd be a no on this one too. I do recall that event when people were chanting outside and that just seemed like a peaceful protest to me. And as a -- MAYOR DICKEY: It does to me . KALIVIANAKIS: Well, there were people chanting outside and there was no violence. And so that's living in America. MAYOR DICKEY: You weren't sitting in here. KALIVIANAKIS: No, I was actually out there. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, that's okay. But go ahead. KALIVIANAKIS: And I was the one that talked to the sheriffs deputy and said we have a right to be here and they walked away, and they let us continue our protest. So anyway, I just think this is a waste of money and I'd like to be a hard no on this one. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. So I — looking at it, I wasn't thinking of it in terms, but now that you've reminded me that it did have to do with the glass and that kind of stuff, it's not just for the shade. But again, it's a council chambers but it's not an area that council uses. But I assume staff uses it; is that correct or not? JANOVER: Mayor, it's not really utilized at the moment is my understanding. But it would hopefully invite employees to use that. 1 think it's a -- when it's proper weather for Page 81 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 81 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION such. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Well, you know, calling it a patio shade structure, maybe it's more than that, but I'm all for the security part. In fact, you know, we've had people ask us to do more here for security during council meetings. So if that has kind of double or triple duty, then I'm okay with it. Vicc Mayor? MCMAHON: Yeah, I'm for it too. Having sat through that -- that was pretty scary. And it was -- I mean, yes, people were loud. I'm not going into the protest aspect of it. I'm not going to waste my time on that. But I do think for safety reasons and also this is the town staffs campus, for lack of a better word, and if they can utilize that more, that space more outside and really use it and have lunch, et cetera, out there, I mean, when weather permits, I think that it would be a good idea. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilmember? SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. FRIEDEL: Mayor? MAYOR DICKEY: Oh. Just one sec, Gerry. SKILLICORN: I don't mind letting him go. 1 look at the price tag. It's pretty -- it's a lot. 1 wonder if there's a less expensive option or waiting till next year. 1 think we should bend over backwards for staff. You know, we appreciate them. But it's a big price tag. It's not full sun all day, and maybe it's not a hill sun at all. But it's a big price tag. I wonder if there's a less expensive option. It's a very small square footage also. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Gerry? FRIEDEL: I was just going to say that I think maybe there's an alternative. Because I'm a pass on 175 grand. But if there's an alternative we can look at, I'd be all for that. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? TOTH: Just out of curiosity, I am still a no on this, but going off of Justin's safety argument, do you have a mockup of what that would look like? Because I'm -- it's a little hard for me to imagine how that's preventing people from holding a peaceful protest Page 81 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 83 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION outside of the building'? WELDY: It would be nearly identical to the structures that appear on the north side of town hall. So we have some iron structures there. The difference is this structure would be slightly lower, and again, the intent is to block the direct view from off of this campus from La Montana or anywhere along the adjacent arca to the post office. I don't want to be misleading here. I'm one of the very few staff members that use that area and it's for a personal reason. I go out there to use my Juul. This was just intended for safety because we cannot block those doors. They're exits. So our only other option is to put solid doors there. So it's no longer an option in the event that anyone wishes to do harm to this elected body. That's the only reason for this. We didn't want to go into that level of detail. I'm not one that likes to plant ideas. This is just based on an assessment after that occurred and from social media and other threats that came in after that. My preference would be, wall it off with block. Very, very few, if any, council chambers, period, have a huge glass wall along one side. We're just trying to provide an element of safety. Another option is to change the doors and keep the curtains closed. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Grady? MILLER: Yeah. We actually had MCSO do a safety assessment of the entire building. And one of the things they looked at was this room here. And, I think it was Sgt. Debonc actually came up with that this could be LEXAN glass. Well, I can't even imagine what LEXAN glass would bc, that whole wall. So it would probably be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars versus what's being recommended here. So what's nice is this architecturally would match the rest of the building. If the desire of the council is for us to go back and look at some other alternatives, we could do that. I think this is something that is a really good, easy fix and I think we can always be working on the doors and things like that as well, as we look into this, maybe next year. MAYOR DICKEY: So now you're going to put it off till next year? MILLER: No. I was just suggesting, if the council is okay and it looked like maybe we had consensus on this now, we could also look at the doors at a future time as well. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, got you. Okay. Thank you. Page 83 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 84 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION JANOVER: Thank you for the direction. The next one is the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office locker room renovation. So that project will renovate their locker rooms. The locker rooms are original to the town hall 2005 construction. And the finishes and the surfaces are worn and deteriorated to the point of needing to be replaced. The substation operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's subject to a great deal of wear and tear. And the tiles are coming lose to the point of needing replacement. So we're asking for $125,000 for that locker room renovation for the sheriffs office. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilmember? SKILLICORN: Madam Mayor, just good flooring or anything? I just want to make sure that our deputies are taken care of and were not -- no health issues with that or anything. MAYOR DICKEY: The final project on this particular slide is the replacement of chiller number 3 compressors in town hall. So there are two compressors as part of chiller number 3. They're original equipment that was installed in 2000. Chiller number 2 is also original but they had both their compressors replaced recently. Chiller number 1 was added several years later. And the chillers are responsible, for those of you who don't know, for providing chilled water to campus buildings, providing cooling in hotter months. And we need three operational chillers and it's critical for providing redundancy to avoid unnecessary HVAC failures. So these are very large, complex, and expensive machines and they often require long lead times on replacement. So we want these to remain in operation. The replacement of the chiller number 3 compressors is critical for the environmental control of the town campus. That's 110,000. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. JANOVER: Okay. This is the town hall campus exterior lighting and electrical upgrade. So this is a two- year project that would replace the outdated exterior lights that we have on the town hall with new LED lighting where brightness and colors could be modified to commemorate holidays, special events, et cetera. We'd also install some new landscaping and granite mulch and address the landscape repair and replacements campuswide. So the new lighting will conserve energy and provide us with better lighting across the entire campus Page 84 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 85 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION and the landscaping will create a welcoming environment. Design would be 20,000 and construction would be a split of $275,000 over two years, so 137,500 each year. KALIVIANAKIS: Ms. Mayor, I'm sorry. I don't understand. I've got town hall campus exterior lighting and then electrical upgrade $295,500? JANOVER: Yeah, there was a mistake on that slide. It was -- KALIVIANAKIS: Oh, it would be 157,500 per year? JANOVER: No. It's 157,500 for the first year, which includes 20,000 for design, and 137,500 for construction for the first year. And then second year would be just 137,500. MAYOR DICKEY: A two-year project? JANOVER: A two-year project, correct. KALIVIANAKIS: And you said those are outdated lights. Were they originally installed in here? They're the original lights? Or when were they installed? JANOVER: These are the original lights that were installed when the facility was built. So these would be addressing all those lights and upgrading them. The next project is the town hall campus entrance column repairs. So both the northside and the southside entrance of town hall have these flagstone -lined columns that we see every day when we walk in. So many of these stones are now coming loose and they actually represent a potential hazard, public hazard. Potential options to address the issue. Okay. Potential options to address the issue include repair of the existing stones or removal and replacement with new stones, removal and replacement with a completely different material or remove and stucco. So we're going to be looking at those different options. But this project nonetheless will eliminate the potential public hazard, and that would be $150,000. That would take care of both the north and the south entrances. This project is a public restroom facility on the Avenue of the Fountains. So there have been requests from both business owners and visitors for public restroom facility on the Avenue. There exists Town -owned land on the south side of the Avenue, immediately west of Georgie's, and that might serve as a possible site for a future restroom. So this project would involve the planning, the siting, and the design for a public restroom facility next year, in '24, and then for construction in the following year, in '25. Page 85 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 86 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION These are high-level planning numbers. So 35,000 for design and 150,000 for construction -- high-level planning numbers, and if it's approved, staff would refine these costs and provide potential design options to council with input from design professionals. But what were showing here on the lefthand side is what's called the Portland Loo. These are being used in San Francisco. They've installed a bunch of these and they're single standalone restrooms. So we could put one or two of those on the site. The site is actually shown on the righthand photo. But that is one possibility. Or we could also do an actual building, a facility like you see at the parks and things of that nature. So we'll have a number of options that we can discuss. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. It seems a little pricey. I was just thinking, would it be possible to pay for this program from like development fees from Park Place phase 2 and 3? JANOVER: Yes. I'm sorry. I failed to mention that this would be coming from the downtown fund. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. JANOVER: That would be the source of the funding. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. That's great. Thank you. MILLER: And something that is a possibility is, instead of constructing, because I think constructing restrooms might actually cost more than buying prefabricated modular buildings that could be dropped into place. We've had some very good luck with our parks with going that route. MAYOR DICKEY: The less I talk about restrooms, I was joking earlier about, I've been kind of talking about pet relief stations along the Avenue for a long time. So now that were talking about this, I also want to bring that up and that's something that I think we could do too, just another amenity. We have our music in the median and we have kids with blankets and people that want to sit there, and I just think that this might be something we could also do while we're kind of fixing things up down there. KALIVIANAKIS: Could you just elaborate on that. I'm not too sure about that. MAYOR DICKEY: Pet relief stations? Page 86 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 87 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: It's like a place to bring so that the entire grass median is not a pet relief station. KALIVIANAKIS: Would they have an area that they could take the dogs? MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. You see them in other parks too. But I don't know what this would actually look like. But well just keep working on that part too. KALIVIANAKIS: I think it's a great idea. MAYOR DICKEY: Sharron? GRZYBOWSKI: There's actually plenty of space in this exact site if you wanted to do that mobile unit and the pet area beside it. Okay. So that aside, my original comments were I'm a little worried about Georgie's and how they're going to feel about that. It was originally brought up in conversation because of the Wednesday art and the farmer's market. And I know that they've been concerned. That being said, I kind of feel like they wish the bathroom would be closer because they're on the other end of the Avenue. My answer to them has always been, well, town hall is open during the arts on the Avenue and during the farmer's market. And it's indoors. so that being said, I love the concept. I've seen them out on the street. I think it's brilliant. But I don't know that at that location is the right spot. It's literally, what, 25 steps more to get to town hall. So maybe can we do a pulldown gate like they do at the bottom of the steps and leave that portion of town hall open? 1 mean, I just -- first of all, I think that would be better for the Georgie's people. And it would give more than one bathroom. Anyway, it's also probably a little less expensive than the pod or whatever that's called. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilmember? SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I will echo Councilwoman Grzybowski s thoughts about, you know, location, maybe not the best. It's a fabulous idea of using town hall. Maybe there's a wayfinding sign. KALIVIANAKIS: It's exactly what 1 was going to say. Wayfinding signs for restrooms. SKILLICORN: But I actually am supportive of some sort of facility. I don't know if this is the right location. 1 really have a vision of Avenue of Fountains not being used a couple of days a week, but continually. I think that the more people are coming and Page 87 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 88 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION using that it builds more — you know, this vivacious center of town. It brings people to the businesses. I think it's really special. More community events there. And I think some sort of restroom might be a great idea. The location, I don't think, is the best and the pods and stuff. I mean, just keep an open mind. JANOVER: Absolutely. And I just want to mention that siting would be part of the design. This was a site that was looked at primarily because the Town owns it. But there is another site, a possible site across the street, that we don't own. We'd have to probably enter into some kind of an agreement. But there are other -- there might be one or two other locations on the Avenue that might work as well. But this was just the one that was kind of chosen because it's -- we already own that property. It's under our control and we can put both pet and human relief stations there if we wish. Anyway. I seem to have some direction on that. So I'll move forward. And now we're really going to get -- now we're going to finish up. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Because 1 was going to say, if this cannot have to happen tonight, I'm up for that. So -- JANOVER: We arc literally -- now I'm at the -- I'm literally at like the last, I think, four projects. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. thank you. MILLER: And we should really -- these will be really quick. These are already projects that council's authorized, at least the BRIC grants, right? JANOVER: Yes, correct. Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. JANOVER: So were looking at the outer year projects. The first one is McDowell Mountain Road culvert crossing and Escalante Wash. You might remember that the Town applied for federal grants through the building resilient infrastructure and communities program. We did that several months ago. And we were looking to address three low -flow crossings by converting them to culvert crossings. Now, the first one here is McDowell Mountain Road culvert crossing, and if the grant is awarded, it will provide a 75 percent share of the total cost of the project. And while the Town would provide its 25 percent share. So the preliminary high-level total -project cost is 2.5 million with a federal grant share of 1.875 million and the Town contribution is 625,000. So if we're Page 88 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 89 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION awarded the grant and only if were awarded the grant and the project moves forward, the Town would then apply to the Maricopa County, the flood control district to further get another grant to help us with our share and get 75 percent of that taken care of. So there was a lot of love for that idca when 1 first presented this several months ago. So we're still doing our report on that one. So with that were looking for design, our share of design of 50,000 in '25. Again, this is not next year but the following year, and then in '26 construction would be 575,0000. And again, we'd be looking to get that number down even further with the SPAP grant from the flood district. This is a similar -- this is the second project, Del Cambre Avenue culvert crossing at Ashbrook Wash. Pretty much the same thing. Our share of design in FY25 would be 25,000 and our share of construction would be 237,500 in FY26. And then this is the third one which is El Pueblo Boulevard culvert crossing at the Ashbrook Wash. And this one, again, 25,000 in '25 and 303,000 and change in FY26. And this is the final project. This is the Fountain Hills Boulevard Legend Wash crossing and this is essentially the same kind of thing. We're looking to -- we anticipate applying -- we haven't applied yet. We looked to apply to the flood control, again, for another SPAP grant. And that would design and construct the drainage improvements here, again, to elevate the roadway and have a culvert crossing or some pipes or something underneath to bring the stormwater under Fountain Hills Boulevard, eliminate that drainage issue. So with that very preliminary high-level project cost estimate is 1.3 million with Town expenditures of 50,000 for design in '25 and 275,000 in FY26. So with that, that takes us to our summary of our projects. Anything that has an asterisk next to it denotes the Town's share of the grant of the larger grant. So this goes through all the stuff that 1 just went through, three slides' worth of projects. And I'm getting very tired. So that brings us to a total ask for FY24 of 4.867 million. And of course, we will take into account all the changes that we're asked for and all the direction that was given, and 1 appreciate that very much. Looking at the outer years, same thing. And this includes the programs that, again, we would come back every year to get authorization for from this council. So when you see the things going out one year after the other, we would have -- that's not Page 89 of 90 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 90 of 90 MARCH 14, 2023 SPECIAL WORK SESSION just automatic. It's something we would ask for each year. And so with that, the way it's programed right now, based on this presentation, 4.6 million in '25, 2.36 million in '26, 975,000 in '27 and 900,000 in FY28. Subject to change every year, as we come back. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you so much for all your work, and I know we're going to leave. But I just want to say every time you said the word grant it represents a whole bunch of work by our staff and from all of us who go out and find out about these things and kind of send those, so we really appreciate that so much. We got so much value. Grady? MILLER: I think that's it. I really appreciate the direction we got from you. We weren't anticipating that it would take this long. 1 thought it would really go through much quicker, but I think it was a good session. So thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Definitely. All right. Thank you, everyone. We're adjourned. Page 90 of 90 Having no further business, Mayor Ginny Dickey adjourned the Special Work Session — Capital Improvement Projects of the Fountain Hills Town Council held on March 14, 2023, at 9:28 p.m. ATTEST AND PREPARED BY: TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Gin Lin G. Mendenhall, Town Clerk CERTIFICATION Dickey,4Nayor I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Regular Meeting held by the Town Council of Fountain Hills in the Town Hall Council Chambers on the 14th day of March 2023. I further certify that the meeting was duly called and that a quorum was present. DATED is 2nd Day gf May 2023. Linda G. Mendenhall, Town Clerk