HomeMy WebLinkAbout2023.0620.TCWS.MinutesTOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
MINUTES OF THE WORK SESSION
OF THE FOUNTAIN HILLS TOWN COUNCIL
June 20, 2023
A Work Session of the Fountain Hills Town Council was convened at 16705 E.
Avenue of the Fountains in open and public session at 4:02 p.m.
Members Present: Mayor Ginny Dickey: Vice Mayor Peggy McMahon;
Councilmember Gerry Friedel; Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski;
Councilmember Brenda J. Kalivianakis; Councilmember Hannah Toth
Attended Telephonically: Councilmember Allen Skillicorn
Staff Present: Interim Town Manager Rachael Goodwin; Town Attorney Aaron D.
Arnson; Town Clerk Linda Mendenhall
Audience: Approximately nine members of the public were present.
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JUNE 20, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL WORK SESSION MINUTES
Post -Production File
Town of Fountain Hills
Town Council Work Session Minutes
June 20, 2023
Transcription Provided By:
eScribers, LLC
Transcription is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not
be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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MAYOR DICKEY: Hello everyone. Thanks so much for coming. We're having our work
session on streets. And could we do a roll call, please?
MENDENHALL: Yes, Mayor. Mayor Dickey.
MAYOR DICKEY: Here.
MENDENHALL: Vice Mayor McMahon.
MCMAHON: Here.
MENDENHALL: Councilmember Friedel.
FRIEDEL: Present.
MENDENHALL: Councilmember Grzybowski.
GRZYBOWSKI: Present.
MENDENHALL: Councilmember Toth.
TOTH: Present.
MENDENHALL: Councilmember Skillicorn.
SKILLICORN: Present.
MENDENHALL: Councilmember Kalivianakis.
KALIVIANAKIS: Here.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you all, so much. I guess, do you want us to kick it off, Justin, for
us? That would be wonderful. Thank you.
WELDY: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Madam Mayor, councilmembers, first, welcome to
this year's last work session. I know everybody's excited about that. There's going to be
two presentations tonight. The first one is going to primarily focus on the results of the
most recent pavement analysis. The second one is going to concentrate or provide
direction and information related to the all -volunteer Streets Committee that have
worked for the last 20 months to support their community.
It's important to note that what's going to be discussed tonight is arguably one of the
town's most valuable assets, also one of the most expensive to own and maintain, which
is our streets.
The first presenter tonight is Zac Thomason from Roadway Asset Services. I've had the
privilege of working with this young -- intelligent, young man for the last several years
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through two different companies. He does what he does incredibly well. And
oftentimes, and I'm only bringing this up because you may have to do so as well, have
him slow down a little bit. He's so well -versed, that he rolls and rolls and rolls and I have
challenges keeping up with him. With that, Zac.
THOMASON: Justin, thank you for the introduction. Madam Mayor, Town Council, it's a
absolute pleasure to be here today. I do love pavement management. This is what I do.
We take our work seriously. We don't take ourselves seriously. So what we're going to
talk about today is the state of the roadway network here in Fountain Hills.
So we're going to start with some basic terminology. I know that everybody is not
pavement experts, so we're just going to talk about what some of that terminology
you're going to hear me say today is.
The first thing is centerline miles. We talk about that a lot. Think about centerline miles
as if you were walking down the centerline of a road, smack in the middle, and you
walked for a mile. That is a centerline mile. Irregardless of number of lanes or width of
road, you're walking for a centerline mile.
The town maintain approximately 166 centerline miles of road here in the town. Now, if
we take into account area in those lanes and the width of road, the town maintains
approximately 3.5 million square yards of pavement. That's a lot of pavement. It's
enough pavement to pave a small two-lane road all the way from here to Las Vegas, if
you so desire.
5o it's no small feat to maintain and manage this network on a daily basis. When we
talk about network replacement value, what would it take to replace this asset on the
books if we had to today? If we're just looking at pavements, surface and subgrading,
not sidewalks, drainage, or anything else, just pavements, you're nearly a quarter -
billion -dollar asset just with the pavements alone. So this is a big deal that we're talking
about from a financial perspective.
PCI, so pavement condition index, that is simply a 0 to 100 score that ranks the health of
a roadway. 0 is absolutely horrible, turning back to gravel. 100 is a perfectly brand new
road that was paved this morning.
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Preservation. We talk about preservation techniques on road. These are light -weight,
cost-effective treatments that we can apply to roads in an effort to extend their design
life at the absolute lowest cost. So we'll talk more about that here in the next couple
slides, too.
You're not going to hear mention it often because it's very technical, but ASTM D6433,
these are the rules that we adopted to measure the pavement distresses in the field and
calculate the PCI score. It's the closest thing to a national standard that most folks
adopt when doing a pavement condition assessment.
So with that, let's kind of jump into some basic topics. What's the purpose of pavement
management? Let's break it down very, very simply. The purpose of pavement
management is to pick the right road at the right time with the right treatment. That's
the whole philosophy of pavement management and prioritizing and financially
optimizing what you've picked.
Now, roads are no different than any other asset we maintain, our houses and our
vehicles. We change the oil, flush the coolant, in an effort to maximize the life of our
vehicles. We consciously do not defer this routine maintenance because we know it's
going to cost us later in extensive maintenance on our vehicles. Roads are the same
way.
So we know if we can capture roads before they kind of fall of that cliff that you see
there on that first slide, if we can capture them early, we can spend roughly 54 a square
yard maintaining roads as opposed to $40 a square yard rebuilding them later.
This is the van that drove all of the town streets. My kids call this the ghostbuster's van.
It's got a lot of high-tech equipment that's on it. The meat and potatoes is that fan on
the backend. That is a laser -crack measuring system. It's a very high resolution camera
with laser -line illumination. It is responsible for measuring the width and depth of all
the cracks and all the distresses that fall beneath us.
So it's a very objective and repeatable assessment that we conducted. The big boon
that you see on top there, that is a panoramic camera. So we collection full right-of-way
imagery in addition to that downward pavement imagery. And the town is going to get
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access to all of this imagery. It is yours as the town.
So we captured all this information. You can see there in the upper left-hand side of
that picture there, it might be difficult, but we take all of these images from the van and
we process it using a piece of software called Road TRIP. And its job is simple. It takes
the imagery, it draws in all the cracks, it measures the cracks, it classifies the type of
distress that it is, and then it calculates that PCI score for every block or every segment
in the town.
One of the things that we also do on all of our assignments is we do an onsite field pilot.
So an onside field pilot is where we select a sample of ten miles of road and we come
onsite with the town and we walk these roads. We've already processed the data. And
the purpose is really twofold. It's to insure that everyone's interpretation of distresses
are the same. We're adhering to a set rule, that ASTM that I referenced earlier, but if I
ask you what a good road is versus what I think a good road is based on my rules, we
could be different in that perception.
So the pilot is really to bring that together and to address that perception there. And
we conducted that with town staff, as well as the Streets Committee, as you can see
there in some of the pictures.
We took a sampling of roads, poor roads, good roads, fair roads, arterial roads, local
roads, collector roads, a full sampling of roads as a part of that pilot effort. Then, of
course, we evaluated any changes to historical data that may have resulted from the
evolution of technology or processing of software as well.
So with that, let's kind of start digging into some of the data. So every bit of data that
we captured is linked to the city's GIS interline file. So every block, every segment has
data tied to it. As you can see here in these imageries, we captured the data in the
town, it had breadcrumbs across all town maintained roads.
The condition data itself, you can see here in several different formats. The map on the
left-hand side of the screen, that is simply a map that is plotting the PCI conditions and
color coded using the same descriptive terms that I believe were adopted by the town
back in 2018. So terms like excellent and fair and marginal and whatnot.
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Map in the middle, just a zoomed -in picture there where you can see a number in the
middle of each segment. That is the PCI score for each segment. But more importantly,
when we look at things from a 30,000-foot view, that table shows you the PCI or the
condition distributions for each category. So at the end of the table there, you see the
percent of network by centerline miles for that particular table. And it can start giving
you a good indication of what the condition -- or what the data tells us about the town's
network.
If I put that in graph form with what you're seeing here, this is a typical PCI distribution
graph. But now, instead of percentage of centerline miles on the y axis, we have
percent of area. We always want to look at things on a percent -by -area basis. This can
ell us a lot about an agency before we even run an analysis.
So a couple of metrics that I use to access the health of any given agency is the network
average PCI score. Your network average at the time of the survey was a 69. So
everything averaged together, weighted average 69.
Typically, the average we see across the country is between about a 60 to 65. Less than
one in ten agencies will score above a 75, just to put that into context. So it's not a bad
score. However, just looking at PCI alone can be a little deceiving. There's more to it
than just that and we'll get to that here in a minute as well.
Percent of good roads is important. So typically the average we see is about 15 percent
of an agency's network will fall in the excellent category. That tells us if an agency has
an active, ongoing pavement management program and if they've been reinvesting in
the network. We can clearly see the town has. Now, the big question is, is it enough?
Is it enough investment to maintain existing conditions in the town? And we'll answer
those questions here, too.
Backlog is the last metric that we address. Backlog is all the big ticket work. It's your
expensive four-way construction and partial reconstruction activities. So basically,
everything below a 40 there, the poor and very poor roads that you see in the graph,
that's backlog.
Now, we can take it at face value and look at the graph, the town's backlog at the time
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of the survey was 5.44 percent. It's a wonderful number. Anything less than 10 percent
is considered financially ideal from a pavement management perspective. But one thing
I want to caution you on that you'll see in the analysis results, too, is that the roads in
marginal, fair and good represent roads that are at the steepest part of their pavement
deterioration curve and are degrading at their most rapid rate. So they are quickly
degrading into backlogs.
So as you move forward and forecasting, every year something else falls into backlog,
even as you fund money do it. So our forecast and modeling are going to review what
that backlog looks like over time.
Very quickly, typical distresses that we found in Fountain Hills, this is no different than
most other agencies we work with in the southwest. The most common distress we see
is weathering and block cracking, which are all environmental distresses. The roads get
basically, a sunburn. They oxidize over time. They become rigid, that's a very common
distress distribution that we see throughout the state, so nothing really major to report
there.
Something that I do want to point out that will become evident in the analysis results as
well is the distribution by pavement type. So the town has basically, two different
asphalt roads that we've categorized in the analysis. You've got pre -incorporation
asphalt. And then you've got just asphalt roads, which are roads built after
incorporation according to town design standards. Okay? And the pre -incorporation
roads, by area, only represent 34 percent of the town's roads. So it's a large portion,
but it's not the largest portion. The majority is the asphalt roads. I make that point,
which you'll see here in the next couple slides as to why.
Let's look at condition. So here you're seeing another PCI distribution graph. This time
I've broken it out by pre -incorporation and post -incorporation. You can see a noticeable
difference. So pre -incorporation roads have an average PCI of 56, and the backlog is at
14 percent. Okay, 14 percent from a backlog perspective tends to become alarming.
That becomes a maximum ceiling point that we recommend as consultants because as
backlog exceeds and approaches -- as it exceeds 15 percent and approaches 20 percent,
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it can spiral on you faster than you can pump capital into the pavement management
program. You just can't fund fast enough to keep up. So for the pre -incorporation
roads, they're at 14 percent now. The biggest worry though is, look at those marginal
and fair roads. Those are a whole bunch of pre -incorporation roads that are coming due
at the fastest rate of degradation for the pre -incorporation roads. So 14 percent, that's
going to grow a lot larger than that very quickly in the not -too -distant future. So your
margin and fair roads for pre -incorporation make up 51 percent of that pavement type.
If you look at the asphalt roads, network average 75, backlog 1 percent, margin and fair
only represent 11 percent. That's a beautiful distribution of pavement conditions on
post -incorporation roads there.
So we worked with the town. So we met several times to develop the maintenance and
rehab strategies that the town uses and that the town wants to use. And there was
extensive conversation over, what are those activities and what are they costing the
town? So there was a lot of thought and a lot of effort put into those costs, such that
we could model using those existing costs as defined. So we loaded all of that
information into the pavement management system.
I'm going to skip a couple of these slides for the sake of brevity, but just know the
pavement management program prioritizes and it optimizes selections. And everybody
always wants to know, well, why is that road picked and not mine. So the system uses
sound logic. And one of the biggest constraints that we learn on is called financial
optimization. We look at the cost of deferring every segment of road in the town. And
if the cost is too large, then it behooves us to capture that roadway now before it costs
more next year. So that's some of that financial logic that goes into that equation.
Of course, we use other constraints, too. So we don't only look at financial
optimization, we look at traffic volume on roads, arterial roads are going to have a
higher priority over collectors, over locals, based on traffic volume and sound pavement
management. Pavement type, asphalt is generally a higher priority than concrete
because of rate of degradation and whatnot as well.
So these are all the different priorities that we use to sequence selections that start
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answering the questions, well, why was that one picked and this one wasn't? So there's
a detailed matrix that gets involved there.
I'm going skip over this slide just for the sake of brevity. Apparently, I've been talking
too slow, Mr. Weldy.
Let's talk about today's needs of the pavement network. So right now, today, if we
calculate today's cost and if you were to write a blank check to fix all roads in like -new
condition, that magic number would be about $64 million, based on the unit rates that
we've programmed into the system. That means every road gets what it needs. Some
only need lightweight preservation, a slurry seal, a micro surface, something of the sort.
Others need a mill and overlay or a full -depth reconstruction. Okay, so that's just based
on that fix -all need as of today.
Couple things that are interesting within those numbers. I mentioned it earlier. Pre -
incorporation roads are only 34 percent of the network by area. However, 77 percent of
the fix -all cost that you see here are related to the pre -incorporation roads. And then,
also, 75 percent of the fix -all costs is related to full reconstruction of those pre -
incorporation roads.
So we can see, the pre -incorporation roads make up a large portion of the town's needs.
Not so by area, but based on condition and cost of remediating those particular roads.
So if we look at some of the budget analysis numbers, what you're seeing here, this is a
zoom -in snapshot of the town's budget. First thing you're going to notice, that the
town's budget is listed at 2.125 million. You know that is not the town's budget. The
town's budget is 2.5 million. However, we have removed 15 percent of that budget for
miscellaneous costs. So things like engineering and inspection and striping, other costs
that the town incurs that don't go to the pavement -- for pavement modeling purposes.
So that's why you see 2.125 there.
Another couple of things that are interesting. If you look at that graphic on the right.
That green line in the middle, second from the bottom, represents the town's existing
budget. You notice the first two years there's an increase in PCI. There's an upward
slope, upward momentum to it. That is a result of the CARES Act funding that has been
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programmed into these models. 5o this model already accounts for the $10 million
expenditure that is being programmed for FY'24 and FY '25 for the CARES Act funding.
So with the CARES Act funding and the town's $2 125 million budgeted, we could expect
current conditions to drop from a network average of a 69 to a 67 over the five-year
analysis horizon.
Another way to look at it, too, this is a typical budget graph. Looks at things from a
different perspective. On the x axis there, you've got an annual budget each year for
five years. On the y axis is the network average PCI score at the end of the five-year
analysis. The red line represent all of the different models that we ran to establish the
trend between funding and outcome of PCI. And we ran 12 different scenarios to
establish that trend.
The vertical lines are the ones that we wanted to display for you folks today. And I'll go
through those fairly quickly. The green line is your current budget. We know network
PCIs will drop to a 67 in five years. The more alarming fact is that backlog increased to
15.3 percent. That's a big jump in a five-year horizon, to go from 5 percent that it was
at, or the 4 percent that it was at to 15 percent. So we know there's a disparity if we're
just looking at PCI alone.
The gold line in the middle is to maintain existing network PCI. So the funding required
to maintain a 69 is on the order of 3.2 million, plus 15 percent for miscellaneous
expenses because that is not included in these models.
But here again, we're in a situation where backlog is still crept up largely to 12.5
percent. It's not controlling those fair and marginal roads that are at that steepest rate
of degradation.
So if you look at the purple line, this is what we'll a target backlog. I mentioned earlier
that anything less than 10 percent is considered financially ideal and healthy. So if we
were to control it at, say 8 percent, control the growth and backlog, that would require
$5 million a year, plus 15 percent to get that done. The net benefit is the network
average PCI jumps to a 72.
And the last one there on the right, someone always asks, well, what would it take to
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maintain our existing backlog? That number is $6.5 million per year is needed to
maintain the existing backlog at roughly 5 percent.
I think I already hit all these topics. We talked about 15 percent PCI and controlling for
PCI. I get ahead of myself sometimes.
I'm not going to go through this graph. This is a very similar graphic. We already
touched on all those profiles. The difference here, though, is on the y axis is the
network backlog percentage. So you see the line inverse. So you can see, as funding is
decreased, backlog begins to increase in the network. So the scenarios that are
highlighted here are the same scenarios that we just stepped through, but this graphic is
available for anybody to review such that you can see what happens to backlog over
time at different funding levels.
And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Yes, councilman.
FRIEDEL: Thank you, Mayor. Have we done any work at all, and maybe this is a Justin
question, on pre -incorporation roads at all in the history of the town?
WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, all of the roads within the town's network that
are not gated have received some type of treatment since incorporation. That includes
pre -incorporation roads.
Quick back history, so the town for many, many years inherited a zone approach from
the road district. That was a program that applied treatment every year over seven
zones. And so every single road in the town primarily received a little bit of asphalt
repair and some slurry. So yes, maintenance was done on the pre -incorporation roads
and some of it was extensive, where they cut and removed the intersection pavement
to repair it.
FRIEDEL: All right. I have another question then, too. Do we have any concrete roads in
this town?
WELDY: No, sir, we do not.
FRIEDEL: Okay. I know it's always cheaper, generally speaking, to go with asphalt over
concrete. Is there ever a time where that might change do you see or --
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WELDY: The initial cost for concrete is extremely high. But in the long term, it's
probably the best bet because it has a life span of 75 years or more, depending on the
climate conditions of temperature fluctuations of freeze/thaw.
FRIEDEL: Thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor.
MCMAHON: Justin. He just mentioned that $5 million is the minimum to keep up the
backlog, whatever. Even if you have that money or more, would you be able to contract
out for that? And if so, what year would that be able to start?
WELDY: Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, we would certainly need to do some planning
using the Road Way Asset Services modeling and put together a multiyear, most likely a
three- to five-year horizon. Planning beyond that is very difficult because of price
fluctuations, inflation. It would probably take all of 18 to 24 months to put together a
comprehensive plan and put together modeling that would show an estimated number
of lane miles that could be completed in that timeframe.
The challenge that we face, primarily, and we're about to face that, the new year is
coming up, is $5 million is a lot of money. And because we have several very narrow
local roads, it requires the removal, completely, of those roads and digging down about
a foot or so, replacing the base and putting new asphalt. That is very disruptive to the
neighbors, the homeowners, trash, mail, you name it. So all of those activities have an
impact and all of those impacts take time.
Prior to, we reach out to every utility that may or may not have an interest or a utility in
that location. The ideal situation, while we're in there, allow them to replace their
facilities with updated facilities, increased time.
So there are challenges. And we're about to face one of the biggest ones next year. So
while we're certainly going to accomplish the goal that the Mayor and Council have set
forward, it's going to be a challenge.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any other questions or comments? Mr. Thomason, you mentioned
the cost of deferral and I'm really glad that you brought that up. Thank you, Justin,
because again, and I love that graphic that you had because people often see the roads
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that are kind of in bad shape and they're, like, well, why did we spend, you know, $1
million on Saguaro last year when it's like the best one, but this cost of deferral comes
into play in preserving roads that we had really just completed. And so I'm glad that you
mentioned that because it helps give a little rationalization for why you do those things.
So the 64 million, that is -- is that how you look at the 5 million a year? Or do you see a
scenario where we would be to a point of maintenance in five or six years, given,
maybe, some of the challenges of spending that much money per year.
THOMASON: Sure, so it all comes down to funding, So that fix -all scenario, just be very
clear about what it is, it's a snapshot in time as of now, using today's base rates as we
know them to be. So that's a $64 million fix everything, give something what it needs.
To get to a maintenance state, meaning maybe even elevating PCI, and controlling
backlog, is probably going to take a large influx of capital. Whether that's a bond
initiative or sale tax or something, there's going to have be where -- or if it comes from
the general fund, those are all things that I don't have purvey to. But funding is going to
have to be acquired in some manner to get to that maintenance point where we have a
higher PCI and a lower backlog.
Now, as you mentioned, and as Justin just mentioned, too, the challenge is getting that
work done, having the contractors on staff and available to do that. And also, not
disrupting the entire town all year long.
So those are challenges that go with it. Is it possible? Sure, anything is possible. But
the critical thing is that funding source. Without the funding source, nothing happens.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. We started with pavement management what, 2008 or
maybe, but like you said, when we had the road districts, we had the zones. So now I
think we have come to the conclusion through experts like you and a couple others that
we've had in the past, that got us to the point of where -- at least where we need to go.
The getting there has been a challenge for us. We've had, probably five elections to try
to get there. Right off the bat, 1989 was when the road districts went away. They had
two attempts at property taxes that did not pass. Then we had some bonds, we tried a
larger bond package several years ago. Then we did Saguaro, which was a wonderful
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thing that did pass. So the problem isn't new to us. And we still will have to figure out
how to get to that maintenance point because, again, it is something that we've known
about and have struggled with for many years. Again, though, I appreciate so much
your input.
One other question about percentages, and this is a discussion that we've had pretty
much every year also, when you have, like, Shoe Boulevard involved, or Saguaro now,
and they're in good condition, that can make the percentage look better than what
most people would think when they look through our town. So just so that they know
that. They're, like, well, this road I don't like, this road I don't like, but those are large
roads in good condition. So that -- our PCI, when you say, hey, it's 69, it's going to be 67,
but, you know, you look at it as a comparison, you know, it's not that bad. But were
living with the reality of what we're living with every day, which are these mostly
neighborhood roads, I would say, that people notice and that concern them.
So I really appreciate that you were able to point all that out. And I -- oh, and all the
pre -incorporation roads, they don't all need total reconstruction. I think you had, like, a
78 --
THOMASON: Correct, yeah --
MAYOR DICKEY: -- percent. Or something like that.
THOMASON: ---they do not all need total reconstruction. The vast majority of them
do, though.
MAYOR DICKEY: Yes. Okay.
THOMASON: So as you saw by that distribution that's in there specifically for the pre -
incorporation asphalt roads, there is a large majority of them that fall below a PCI of 60.
MAYOR DICKEY: Okay.
THOMASON: As soon as it falls a PCI of 60, there's just not a whole lot you can do to --
MAYOR DICKEY: The numbers don't work out --
THOMASON: -- operate at that time.
MAYOR DICKEY: -- as far as what the --
THOMASON: Right. You get both ends.
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MAYOR DICKEY: -- treatment is. But there are times that it does. And we recently had
someone that was talking about how we had repaired a road in a way that they felt was
inadequate, but there are times that you do do that because you're not ready to do the
reconstruction, but it does help. It helps to fill the cracks. It helps to do that over, you
know, the sealing and such. So we have been doing that a lot and trying to prolong it. I
think some people my age can relate to getting the shot in the hip instead of the hip
replacement right away. And that's what were trying to do here. And we've been
trying to do it for a couple decades. So really appreciate it.
THOMASON: Yeah. And that's very common. In the industry we call that a stopgap.
You can't always do what you need to do. We know that the sound engineering
decision is to do x rehab on a particular road, but sometimes a stopgap does need to be
employed as a result of that. So those are decisions that have to be made, for sure.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you so much. Allen, did you have any questions on the phone
there?
Maybe not.
MENDENHALL: Mayor, he's having difficulties. 5o we're trying to work out something
we can do for him so he can hear.
MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, thank you, Linda. So I -- just before we go to the next, I want to
thank you, Zac Thomason, and the -- Bart Williams (ph.), Scott Gordan (ph.), Raphael
Rivera (ph.), Mark Kramer (ph.), who were all on the team and we appreciate all of your
input and help with this.
THOMASON: Thank you so very much --
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
THOMASON: -- for having us. Thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
WELDY: Thank you, Zac. Madam, Mayor, the next presentation is going to be from
Mark Graham. He's part of what I would describe as an incredible volunteer group of 12
men that have spent the last 20 months working with town staff, Roadway Asset
Services -- let me make sure I get the correct one here. That's it -- and pouring over an
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incredible amount of data to bring to you their recommendations and their findings
tonight.
It would be difficult for me to explain how grateful I am as the Public Works Director and
the Town Manager for the amount of time these individuals have contributed to their
community. And that's what it's about. These gentlemen are all volunteers that
answered an ad from the town manager to help town staff and the mayor and council,
with this challenge that we've been wrestling with for many, many years.
I could name all of them, and we have done that in the past. Several of them have
asked that we not do that because they're not looking for the recognition. For anybody
that is interested, just need to go back a few council packets. Each one of them are
listed individually. With that, I would like to introduce Mark Graham. He'll do the next
presentation.
MAYOR DICKEY: Welcome.
GRAHAM: Welcome.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
GRAHAM: Thank you for allowing us to be here, Mayor and Council, Interim Town
Manager, thank you very much. Zac has gone over some of the things that I want to
touch on. Justin has touched on some things. You have asked intelligent questions that
will surely come up.
And so what I want to do, excuse me, what I'd like to do is to just sort of run through the
presentation. I know that -- is this being recorded? I think residents will -- probably will
watch this. And so some of this information I may say, is more for the benefit of the
residents, to understand how they fit in to this equation as well. Because it's their
streets, right? And so we need to make sure that we take care of everybody.
So just a real quick introduction about us. And this isn't the agenda item, I'm just going
to blow by this.
So the citizens are who make up this committee. And I think -- I don't think I can stress
that enough. We're not politically motivated. We're not agenda motivated. We're
people that drive on the streets that everybody else drives on. And so if you wanted an
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impartial group of people to take a hard look at it, these are the folks that live here, they
pay their taxes, they expect the best out of everything that the town has to offer. And
the town does offer quite bit.
And what's really unique, and when I joined this committee, I though, poof, boy I came
to the wrong committee. Because we have some very talented, educated people here.
You can see, civil engineers, municipal engineers, transportation people, road
construction, they were talking about stuff I had no clue what they were talking about.
However, I figured I could hang in with these guys for a while and maybe give a two -
cents worth.
And so we met regularly as Justin had mentioned, for over a year and a half. And we did
it also in person. We did it through subgroups that we had because there's a lot of
information to dive into. A lot of information. And some of us had expertise in some
areas and others in others. And so again, I just really want to emphasize that we, we
work for the community and our interests are for the community.
And the assignment that was really given to us was, as Justin mentioned, to report back
to the council with recommendations and funding options. And there were times when
we wondered how we were ever going to get there because it's so complicated. It's so
complex. It's so frustrating to try to get through all of this. But yet, it was very
rewarding and we enjoyed -- most of us enjoyed every minute of it. But we think it's
really good work that we've done.
And so we look at the -- I wanted you guys to understand the process. So we studied
and learned the history of our streets. How we got here. We analyzed previous studies,
one being the one that Zac just talked about. We physically inspected streets. We
analyzed standards that we had. We -- and the mayor had mentioned some funding
options that were before the citizens and town past.
So we've looked at all of these things. And it was really a challenge to try to figure out
where we go. But what we learned and what the streets are telling everyone that lives
here is that they're full of crack sand bumps and potholes. And we know that they need
attention. And they need the attention, not only in the work, but the attention of
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money to get us there.
And so that's -- that was a simple thing to understand. But yet, we fell back on to those
reports that were previously done, going back to 2008, Stantec, IMS, and now RAS. And
they, in a nutshell, have told us one thing. And that is, we need more money. We don't
have the luxury of a lot of money. So we have to think creatively. We had to think
outside of the box.
And the challenge for all of us on the committee was to say, okay, what can we do that
we haven't done before. And we think that its really important that we take a creative
look at this. How did we get here with our streets? Well, it's been partly underfunding
for years. It's no fault of any councilmember or mayor or anything like that. It's just,
money only goes so far and you have to allocate it. And you can't take so much away
from one bucket to put it in another. And sometimes, those buckets don't intermix.
And that's important to understand. Certain monies are allocated for certain things. It
can only be spent for that. So why waste money on this when we could use it for our
streets? Well, we have to use it for that.
And so that's part of the learning process that we went through as a committee, to
understand those things. The early streets, as was mentioned, were not built great.
They were built to the standards at that time. Those standards have since changed, and
they've been upgraded. And as just -- Zac mentioned, the streets deteriorate. As soon
as they're completed, they start to degrading and they need attention on a regular
basis.
The citizens have not approved several past proposals that have been before us. That's
a -- delayed the process. And how the funds have been prioritized, I think it's really
interesting because Justin and his team have really done a great job. And I've got a map
that I want to show you here in a little bit. And I think it'll strike home, just how good of
a job that they've done in managing it.
Are some of our streets back? Yeah, absolutely. But they've done a really good job in
minimizing and working with what they had. Unfortunately, the bad news is that a lot of
the money has been allocated to some of our major streets, which raises our PCI, as was
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pointed out. But we realize that it's time for -- it's time for some action. It's time for a
different plan. And so part of the -- and this is where I want to refer to a map here. I'm
going to take you on sort of aerial view of the town. Zac had brought up, you saw this
map, but I'm going to -- woops. And we go here. All right.
I'm going to take you on sort of a fly over. So we talked about -- and Zac had mentioned
all the various levels of PCI ratings. And again, PCI is the quality of the streets, right?
But we found that, once you start digging in too deep, it gets really complicated. And
then it's just mind -numbing. Because we're simple people, at least I am, on the
committee we said, okay, let's simplify this. Let's look at the town -- I'm going to scroll
out here and move this way.
So we said, instead of looking at all these different PCI's, let's look at -- see if I can raise
this up so you can see it -- really three levels. The PCI of 70 and above, which happened
to be about the grade I would strive for in school, was okay. They were good. They
didn't need a lot of work. We can manage those. What we really need to pay attention
to are those fair to poor, and that's the fairest kind of in a category of 40 to 70 to keep it
simple. And I'm going to make it even simpler.
We said, everybody understands street lights. Green is great, we all love green. Yellow
is, I can beat that, maybe. And then there's the red, which we know are problematic.
So let's just kind of zoom over here to where we kind of all started building roads here in
Fountain Hills. And just for a reference point, we're at the corner here of Saguaro and
Shae. And you can see Shae is great. It's beautiful.
Over in this part of Fountain Hills, there's some really questionable streets that really
need attention. And the purpose of me going through this, is for you to try to get a
sense on a little more local level, little more area level, what streets we need to be
concerned about.
So down around Desert Canyon Golf Course, you can see a lot of old roads that are
starting to really come into question and as their viability and what can we do to save
them. You see a lot of -- quite a few numbers of red roads in here. All the way up to
around the town lake. And this is something that was pointed out, that I think is really
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interesting. And it goes to Councilmen's Friedel's point about saving streets.
This is kind of a northeast segment of Fountain Hills. And you can see a lot of green up
in this area. And many of those were pre -incorporated streets. And Justin, if I'm wrong
on any of this, throw something at me.
But a lot of these early streets were saved. And so the interesting thing about throwing
money into a sort of a borderline street, these yellow streets, is once you've done that,
a funny thing happens. The PCI rating goes up. 5o what -- these would probably be
yellow at some point or maybe even reds. With a little attention, a little work, they've
come up to a level that we don't really to worry about these street too much.
That make sense? Okay. And so you can kind of see as we fly over more towards the
school area, we still see quite a bit of yellow.
And so what I'm leading towards here is -- this is kind of the northwest area, which is a
fairly new area. But you can see areas like Golden Eagle -- this is Golden Eagle going up
here. Golden Eagle is getting in trouble and we need to pay some attention to it. It's a
big street, needs a lot of attention. But you can see some of the newer areas down
through SunRidge. You know, those streets are okay.
So again, If you look at a big map and you look at it all, it can be a little confusing. And
so what we tried to do is to break it down. And so our plan -- excuse me -- our plan was
to say, what can we do -- I don't know if I want this, Justin. Do we want this?
WELDY: No.
GRAHAM: All right. I see. I didn't do it anyway. I think I want up here. A little help
here, Justin. I'm a Mac guy, so I hate PCs. There we go. Okay.
So again, we tried to look at it and say, okay, what if we take a different approach here.
What if we look at not paying attention that much, we still need to service and maintain
the 70 plus roads, but let's really kind of look at these 40s or the -- everything below 70.
And that's purely kind of the strategy that we started looking at. Excuse me.
In 2020, he town had incorporated -- or had undergone some changes to how they
looked at roads and analyze it. And they basically put them into the bucket of arterials,
collectors, and locals. And these are the acceptable PCI ratings that we'll have for these.
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And while this was pretty good, it helped -- and as you saw from the map, there's a lot
of green on that map. And this strategy really helped bring some of those questionable
streets up to a PCI level that was helpful. But we're treading water and were not
treading water very well because were going under. We're taking big gulps of water in
here.
So what we really had to do was to say, okay, let's go back. Let's look at what the PCIs
really mean, A, B, C, D, and F, and well kind of go from there to come up with a plan of
action. And again, I think that one of the things that helped drive our PCI up on the total
networks is the attention that we gave to some of these long arterials and collector
streets that overall helped our PCI rating quite a bit.
So we said to ourselves, as Henry Ford said, if we always do what we've always done,
we're always going to get what we always got. We can't keep avoiding the fact that our
streets need work and we need the money to do that. And it's just going to get worse.
We can't keep doing that same plan.
And so what we did then, was to recognize that money is only part of the story. We
needed to have that plan. We can't continue to do the status quo. We have to come up
with something that's unique. Understand that the money for our streets come from
sales tax, general funds, et cetera, right?
We've had an influx, fortunately, this past year or year and a half, of federal funds.
Sometimes we get some state funds and grants. And county can throw some monies.
But these are not sustainable. We don't know how long they're going to last. We don't
know if we're ever going to get one again.
We can look to cut town services. That's always an option. It costs us in other ways by
cutting those. And it's a slower process. We just don't feel like, and we'll talk about it in
a minute, we just don't really feel like we can catch up by cutting, you know, a million or
a million and a half or two dollars, we're talking big, major bucks as Zac had referred to
here. It's like, we're out of time in talking about what we may be able to do on our
budget. We need to think outside he box. We need to get some more money. And
incidentally, as -- the importance of this backlog, I want to emphasize, and again, a
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backlog is one of those streets with a 40 or below. Well, that's great if you don't live on
that street. But if you live on that street, if you use those streets, backlog streets are
not acceptable, right?
So why should we tolerate, really, any kind of a backlog? Ah, it's probably going to
happen because streets are always declining, but our goal shouldn't be to have an
acceptable backlog level. Our goal should be to have great streets, the best that we can
provide to our citizens, whenever we can, and in an affordable way.
And so that's the other area that we looked and said, we've got to do more than what
we've just been doing. So our committee's report, and it's in a packet of information
that you've gotten or you will receive -- god, there's my high school education coming
out.
The committee's recommendation is to fix all, now. So what does that mean? And Zac
sort of referred to it. But what it really means is that we're taking this a little different
approach. We're thinking differently. And we said, okay, we're not going to repair
anything above 70 as I talked about, and let's throw our money at getting everything up
to a 70. So everything from 0 to 69, let's throw money at that. And it's a much more
realistic proposition than fixing everything up, rebuilding every street that needs to be
rebuilt.
And so how are we going to do that? And you know, we can do this in -- over a five-year
period starting in 2015 -- or 2025. So I throw this up to you for your consideration.
What we're looking at on this chart are a couple things. The C, D, and F streets, which
are the 70 and below, this is what, based on the RAS information -- let me rephrase
something -- this is really important. We think that not only do the pre -incorporated
streets, not all of them need to be completely rebuilt. We think that we can save those.
That quadrant up in the northeast area of Fountain Hills, a lot of the C, D, and F type of
work was done on those. And suddenly they're now much better streets. And the
citizens will be a lot happier, for sure.
But this is a breakdown of what we estimate the cost would be to repair the C, D, and F
streets with the service that we would put on them, or the repair that we would put on
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them. Still a big price tag. And they factored in the $8 million of the federal funds as
well.
So we're looking at a price tag of $36 million. If we go in and we fix our streets, I would
say for understanding, it would be kind of the El Lago type treatment. It was really bad.
And now it's really good. And the PCI rating on that is probably much, much higher.
And we think it's going to last.
So the idea is, get them up to 70 and then, with the $2.125 million maintenance budget
that we have, we believe that on an annual basis, that would not need to change. We
think that we can maintain the streets once they're up to a good level.
We think that we've got the data to prove it. And Mr. Butler (ph.), a member of our
committee, has tons of data if anybody wants to see. And some of the data is included
in your packet here as well.
So the other thing I want to point out on this particular slide, and one of the
conversations that we started having towards the end of the committee's work was,
what about our intersections? And this isn't just paving the intersections. This is fixing
those intersections that ultimately, probably need to be addressed with street lights,
four-way stops, round abouts, twirly Q's, whatever they might need, let's try to figure
out how we can address some of these major intersections and stop using the money on
capital expenditures out of the town budget.
Maybe these are possibilities for funding sources and take care of that. We estimate
that there's $9 million worth of intersection work, redesigning, and all of that. We add
in inflation, we're looking at a $50 million package.
Now, you can keep all of these. We could take some out. The other thing I want to
point out is the graph or the chart below that breaks it all down by the types of streets.
And one of the conversations that -- and the reason for that is, some of these -- some of
the -- depending on the funding source or how we come about getting money, it might
be more palatable for people to vote on smaller packages than a big $50 million
package. The downside to that is, if you don't get the whole enchilada, you know,
you're going to be a taco short of a full meal, right?
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And so you know, you almost have to spend this kind of money. So the important thing
here, or the really variable in this particular slide is the 59 million for intersections. And
we feel strongly that that's something that Council ought to consider. And none of
these things, obviously, we not going to be making decisions on tonight, but we want
you to have all the information that you need.
I want to make sure I don't run over too far on time here. So what are the options for
funding this sort of thing? And these are really the only -- the three or four things that
we can come up with.
We can cut to the town budget. As Zac showed you on that one chart, you can throw $7
million a year for the next five years and you're still going to end up with a 12 or 15
percent backlog. And I don't think we can find $7 million in our annual budget for the
next five or six years.
We can look at sales tax increases. Well, nobody likes to have a sales tax increase. We
already have kind of a high rate. We estimate, as a committee, we estimated it would
have to go up to over 4 percent starting now, in order to allocate enough funds on an
annual basis to pay for, like, $9 million worth of repairs that we would need for the next
five or six years to get to that $45 million.
Property taxes is always something that the town has never -- or town residents are not
fond of. Nobody likes to pay any kind of taxing. You know, the upside to the property
tax is that there's no interest involved for the residents. It's a little cheaper on an
annual basis for them.
And the third funding, and the funding that we're recommending is that we look at
some bond funding. And we put it up, you know, we could go back and look at, you
know, what 36 million is, 50 million, 45 million, there's a couple different options here.
But you know, the advantage for bond funding is that it goes away after a certain period
of time. And RAS, I know, can work with us and work with the town on telling us what
some options are for annual cost, both for residential and commercial properties.
Let's see, and I think that's, you know, that's pretty much all that I wanted to say. I
know I'm running short on time. And I know you've got your regular meeting to attend.
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Let me go back. And then, I just wanted -- just retouch, Zac touched on it. You've seen
this slide before. The pavement life cycle. The important thing to keep in mind here is
that every six to seven years, you need maintenance on a street. And what this
particular slide sort of emphasizes is, you start with the PCI here, it goes down over a six
or seven year period of time, you do the maintenance and then, boom, it bounces back
up again.
So this is what reinforces our plan. To get our streets up to a certain level with this bond
issue. Get the streets done. Then maintain them at the level that we can afford.
Hopefully, as we go forward, the town will grow and even more funds will come in. But I
think it's a very good strategy. Something that we haven't done before or haven't
considered.
And that's pretty much it. We think it's -- we feel strongly. It's really the only realistic
way that were going to catch up on our streets. We can't keep doing what we're doing
because we know it's not working. And ultimately, well end up with a town with
excellent streets. And I've mentioned in previous presentations to council that I came
from a town that'll remain nameless, large town in southern Arizona, that has really
crappy streets. I mean, it's just awful. But they've done what most cities and most
towns do, and that's afraid to take action. And I just don't -- I didn't move to Fountain
Hills to sit here and watch it decline.
So I think the time is now I think the appetite for our citizens who now recognize that
our streets are decaying, I don't think a counsel meeting has erupted without somebody
talking about our streets and when are we going to fix our streets. And again, the only
streets that people care about are the streets that they live on and use. However, we've
got to sort of change that because the streets are a vital part of the community. And
whether you use a particular street or not, that's the price you pay for living in a town
like Fountain Hills.
We got to have good streets. You've got to get your mail delivered. You got to get your
Amazon deliveries made. Those all require good streets that you all have to use. And so
with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions or defer them to somebody a lot
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smarter than me.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you so much. Questions or comments, council? Any questions?
THOMASON: No?
MAYOR DICKEY: Is Allen there? Allen, do you have any questions?
Clerk's Note: Due to technical difficulties Councilmember Skillicorn missed a few
minutes of the work session.
SKILLICORN: I'm going to hold back since I missed a few minutes of that. I don't want
him to go over something that has already been gone over. I had a couple questions,
but I can just run them by Justin. I'm fine.
MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, okay. Thank you so much. I know you don't want names
mentioned, but how about 45 years of business management, 40 years of
transportation planning, 36 years of design construction industry, 33 years of civil
engineering, 28 in road construction, 25 in project consulting, 20 years of home building
industry, 15 in project management, and 8 in design and roadway management. Those
are our citizens and I don't know how to thank you for all of this work. I'm sure we'll be
contacting you more, I mean, you're probably --
THOMASON: Sure. A few are in the audience, I could ask them --
MAYOR DICKEY: -- free for the summer, I see you all out there and these are
anonymous heroes. And but I think all of us would agree, and we're probably trying to
absorb it all -- a lot of this information right now -- that we are so grateful and to RAS
for getting all the information. And in a way that they could use and that they can
communicate to us. This is the first crack, the first bit of communication out to our
folks. And this is, I mean, timewise, we've got some time, you know, 5 million. And the
5 million really did us a huge favor this time. And I'm grateful to the previous council
that decided that we would put the huge bulk of that into streets. And grateful so much
to Justin for doing what he has been able to do up until this point. And also, Grady
Miller, Rachael Goodwin, Justin, of course, David Genover (ph.), Andy (ph.), Jeff Pearce
(ph.), and Angelo (ph.), and all who have helped so much over 20 months, whatever it's
been, because it's been a wonderful piece of work that you put in front of us. And
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more to come.
Any other comments or questions from anyone? No?
THOMASON: And I think --
MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, I'm sorry.
THOMASON: -- a number of the committee members have said, hey, if you guys need
more help, if we can do some other activities, you know, related to around the streets,
you know, we can, we can try to step forward and do some of those things. So it's a
good group of --
MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, we will. Yes, councilman.
FRIEDEL: Thank you again for all your effort and your work and your experience.
Mayor, I have a question for us. What's the next step here for us now?
MAYOR DICKEY: I'll defer to Rachael if you'd like, but in my opinion, we are -- we've got
months, we've got time, Rachael, do you want to kind of wrap it up?
GOODWIN: Sure. And it's a good question. I think the ball is in the court of council to
decide if there are questions that need their further -- is there further research? Is
there further need from the committee? If so, what is it? What does that look like?
And then, it's a matter of, if we want to move forward with a plan, which plan is it? And
which funding mechanism do you want to use? There probably needs to be further
discussion. If we go with the recommendation of the committee, which is to bond,
there is a timeline associated with that. We have already missed that timeline for this
Fall's election. So the soonest that could happen is next Fall. And that's again, and a big
assumption at this point, if we even wanted to do that.
So there would need to be a timeline put together. We would need to work with Linda
Mendenhall on some, again, those different benchmarks. How we would need to hit
those. And if that's not our funding mechanism, if we're going to explore other options,
we'll need to look at what that is. Is that deferring more from the general fund? Is it
looking at a combination of things? How do we want to do that? But I imagine this
items will probably need to come back in the Fall when the council resumes session for
discussion and further direction at that point.
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THOMASON: And I think I mentioned that RAS has mentioned that they can run a bunch
of different business models as well, or financing models as well. So do this, don't do
that, what happens here. And so you've got that -- I don't know if that's part of their
contract or an additional fund. But that's a resource that you may want to use. And
there's committee members who will be interested in helping promote whatever it is
that we want to the community, you know, in a nonpartial way. So that's available as
well. Thank you.
MCMAHON: All right. Thank you. To me, wouldn't we want to take a look at real
property tax because it would be constant influx of income and allocate it to the streets,
even though it might -- it would take a while to do that. At least that would be
continually funding our streets at the long term.
But I guess, before that, we may have to look at doing a small bond or something, you
know, to start off having more than -- you know, another $10 million or so to start out
while real property tax monies build up.
But as we know from past experience, our town complains about the town's incessantly,
however, they're not willing to pass what I think is a reasonable property tax in order to
fund that. So it's like a catch 22.
So the income that we get from in the budget, et cetera, we're never going to have
enough money. So I think it's something that, yes, we have to start a real hard
decision -- discussion right now and really look at the hard facts. And then, look at how
we're going to approach our community and how to realistically resolve it before it gets
worse and not better. That's my input.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah, those will be the topics of discussion
that will come up, for sure. Anything else for the -- for this part of our evening?
MCMAHON: Also, thank you to the committee. I really appreciate it. I know it's a lot of
hard work and a lot of time went into it. So thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: And their spouses. All right. Then, I think we'll -- you can adjourn.
We'II adjourn and we'll be back at 5:30, thank you -- 5:25.
[MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:03 P.M.]
Page 28 of 28
Having no further business, Mayor Ginny Dickey adjourned the Work Session of
the Fountain Hills Town Council held on June 20, 2023, at 5:03 p.m.
TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
Ginn Dickeyy Mayor
ATTEST AND PREPARED BY:
Li da G. Me i denha ,Town Clerk
CERTIFICATION
I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the
minutes of the Work Session held by the Town Council of Fountain Hills in the
Town Hall Council Chambers on the 20`h day of June 2023. I further certify that
the meeting was duly called and that a quorum was present
DATED this 22nd Day of August 2023.