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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAGENDApacket__06-28-23_0354_499       AMENDED NOTICE OF MEETING REGULAR MEETING STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION      Chairman Patrick Garman  Vice Chairman Geoff Yazzetta Commissioner Kevin Beck Commissioner Bernie Hoenle Commissioner Jill Keefe Commissioner Cynthia Magazine Commissioner Phil Sveum      TIME:4:00 P.M. – REGULAR MEETING WHEN:WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 2023 WHERE:FOUNTAIN HILLS COUNCIL CHAMBERS 16705 E. AVENUE OF THE FOUNTAINS, FOUNTAIN HILLS, AZ Commissioners of the Town of Fountain Hills will attend either in person or by telephone conference call; a quorum of the Town’s Council,  various Commission, Committee or Board members may be in attendance at the Commission meeting. Notice is hereby given that pursuant to A.R.S. §1-602.A.9, subject to certain specified statutory exceptions, parents have a right to consent before the State or any of its political subdivisions make a video or audio recording of a minor child. Meetings of the Commission are audio and/or video recorded and, as a result, proceedings in which children are present may be subject to such recording. Parents, in order to exercise their rights may either file written consent with the Town Clerk to such recording, or take personal action to ensure that their child or children are not present when a recording may be made. If a child is present at the time a recording is made, the Town will assume that the rights afforded parents pursuant to A.R.S. §1-602.A.9 have been waived.  REQUEST TO COMMENT   The public is welcome to participate in Commission meetings. TO SPEAK TO AN AGENDA ITEM, please complete a Request to Comment card, located in the back of the Council Chambers, and hand it to the Executive Assistant prior to discussion of that item, if possible. Include the agenda item on which you wish to comment. Speakers will be allowed three contiguous minutes to address the Commission. Verbal comments should be directed through the Presiding Officer and not to individual Commissioners. TO COMMENT ON AN AGENDA ITEM IN WRITING ONLY, please complete a Request to Comment card, indicating it is a written comment, and check the box on whether you are FOR or AGAINST and agenda item, and hand it to the Executive Assistant prior to discussion, if possible.        Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting of June 28, 2023 1 of 3          1.CALL TO ORDER – Chairman Garman     2.ROLL CALL – Chairman Garman     3.CALL TO THE PUBLIC Pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.01(H), public comment is permitted (not required) on matters NOT listed on the agenda. Any such comment (i) must be within the jurisdiction of the Commission, and (ii) is subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. The Commission will not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during Call to the Public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action. At the conclusion of the Call to the Public, individual commissioners may (i) respond to criticism, (ii) ask staff to review a matter, or (iii) ask that the matter be placed on a future Commission agenda.     4.REPORTS BY COMMISSIONERS AND TOWN MANAGER     5.CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of the minutes of the Regular Meeting of April 26, 2023.     6.CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of the minutes of the Regular Meeting of May 24, 2023.     7.PRESENTATION: Yearly Review of the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission by Patrick Garman, Chair.     8.DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION:  Future Agenda Topics SPAC 2023-2024 Work Plan     9.COMMENTS FROM THE CHAIRMAN     10.NEXT MEETING DATE: Wednesday, August 23, 2023.    11.ADJOURNMENT     CERTIFICATE OF POSTING OF NOTICE The undersigned hereby certifies that a copy of the foregoing notice was duly posted in accordance with the statement filed by the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission with the Town Clerk. Dated this 27 day of June 2023. _____________________________________________  Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant      Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting of June 28, 2023 2 of 3 The Town of Fountain Hills endeavors to make all public meetings accessible to persons with disabilities. Please call 480-816-5199 (voice) or 1-800-367-8939 (TDD) 48 hours prior to the meeting to request a reasonable accommodation to participate in the meeting or to obtain agenda information in large print format. Supporting documentation and staff reports furnished the Commission with this agenda are available for review in the Town Manager's Office.    Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting of June 28, 2023 3 of 3 ITEM 4. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS STAFF REPORT    Meeting Date: 06/28/2023 Meeting Type: Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Agenda Type:                   Submitting Department: Administration Prepared by: Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant to Manager, Mayor/Council Staff Contact Information: Request to Strategic Planning Advisory Commission (Agenda Language):  REPORTS BY COMMISSIONERS AND TOWN MANAGER Staff Summary (Background) Form Review Form Started By: Angela Padgett-Espiritu Started On: 05/17/2023 10:26 AM Final Approval Date: 05/17/2023  ITEM 5. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS STAFF REPORT    Meeting Date: 06/28/2023 Meeting Type: Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Agenda Type:                   Submitting Department: Administration Prepared by: Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant to Manager, Mayor/Council Staff Contact Information: Request to Strategic Planning Advisory Commission (Agenda Language):  CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of the minutes of the Regular Meeting of April 26, 2023. Staff Summary (Background) The intent of approving meeting minutes is to ensure an accurate account of the discussion and action that took place at the meeting for archival purposes. Approved minutes are placed on the town's website and maintained as permanent records in compliance with state law.   Staff Recommendation(s) Staff recommends approving the minutes of the regular meeting on April 26, 2023. SUGGESTED MOTION MOVE to approve the minutes of the regular meeting on April 26, 2023.. Attachments SUMMARY MINUTES AND VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT  Form Review Form Started By: Angela Padgett-Espiritu Started On: 05/17/2023 10:26 AM Final Approval Date: 05/17/2023  TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING OF THE STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION April 26, 2023 1. CALL TO ORDER Vice Chairman Bernie Hoenle called to order the meeting of the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission at 4:00 p.m. 2. ROLL CALL Members Present: Vice Chairman Bernie Hoenle; Commissioner Kevin Beck; Commissioner Jill Keefe; Commissioner Cynthia Magazine; Commissioner Geoff Yazzetta Members Absent: Chairman Patrick Garman; Commissioner Mary Edman Staff Present: Deputy Town Manager David Trimble; Executive Assistant Angela Padgett-Espiritu 3. CALL TO THE PUBLIC Pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.01(H), public comment is permitted (not required) on matters NOT listed on the agenda. Any such comment (i) must be within the jurisdiction of the Council, and (ii) is subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. The Council will not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during Call to the Public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action. At the conclusion of the Call to the Public, individual councilmembers may (i) respond to criticism, (ii) ask staff to review a matter, or (iii) ask that the matter be placed on a future Council agenda. No one from the public spoke. 4. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of the minutes of the Regular Meeting of March 22, 2023 MOVED BY Commissioner Jill Keefe to approve the minutes of March 22, 2023, Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting, SECONDED BY Commissioner Kevin Beck Vote: 5 – 0 passed – Unanimously 5. REPORTS BY COMMISSIONERS AND TOWN MANAGER 6. PRESENTAION: Fountain Hills Fire Department by Chief Dave Ott 7. DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Future Agenda Topics 8. COMMENTS FROM THE CHAIRMAN 9. NEXT MEETING DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 2023 10. ADJOURNMENT MOVED BY Commissioner Cynthia Magazine to adjourn the meeting of the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting at 5:00 p.m., SECONDED BY Commissioner Jill Keefe. Vote: 5 – 0 passed – Unanimously TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS _________________________ Patrick Garman, Chairman ATTEST AND PREPARED BY: ___________________________________ Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant CERTIFICATION I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Regular Meeting held by the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission in the Town Hall Council Chambers on the 26th day of April 2023 that the meeting was duly called and that a quorum was present. DATED this 28 day of June 2023. _____________________________ Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 1 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 1 of 24 Post-Production File Town of Fountain Hills Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting April 26, 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. * * * * * TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 2 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 2 of 24 HOENLE: Okay. Calling the meeting to order in place of Chairman Garman, who has gone away on business. Angela, would you please conduct the rollcall? PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Thank you, Vice Chair. Chair Garman? Vice Chair Hoenle? HOENLE: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Beck? BECK: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Edman? Commissioner Keefe? KEEFE: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Magazine? MAGAZINE: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Yazzetta? YAZZETTA: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: We have a quorum. Thank you. HOENLE: Thank you. Okay. Call out to the public. Not seeing any other public than our guest speaker, we'll move onto approval of the minutes from the last meeting; did everybody get a chance to look at them? I think we're doing better, making more concise statements. BECK: We'll get better. HOENLE: Any comments? Any corrections? Any motions? KEEFE: Motion to accept? HOENLE: Second? BECK: Second. HOENLE: All in favor say aye. ALL: Aye. HOENLE: Motion carries. Okay. Everybody gets a turn. We'll start with Geoff. YAZZETTA: Thank you, Vice Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. Just a couple of updates from my end. This month has been a busy one for me. I joined the International Dark Sky Discovery Board, thanks to Commissioner Beck who recommended me. So I'm looking forward to working with that TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 3 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 3 of 24 group to bring that project through to completion. And I am also on the Fountain Hills cultural and civic association. I will be taking over the role of the civic affairs chair. So a couple of things from my end. That's all I've got at the moment. MAGAZINE: That was a lot. Alan and I just returned from ten days in Charleston, South Carolina -- beautiful, beautiful city. And visiting his son in New Orleans. So with that, the only thing I'm up on is that Alan actually did the Art on the Avenue today and he thoroughly enjoyed and he's going to start doing it next year. That's it. HOENLE: Jill? KEEFE: No updates. HOENLE: Go for it. BECK: So Geoff, welcome to Dark Sky Discovery Center board, it's wonderful to have you. As an update, I mentioned I would update as we go with the board. We did meet with Arizona State University and it was a very good meeting. Action item was to come up with five top ways we could collaborate with them, they also will do the same. But we met with the senior staff, James O'Brien who's the chief operating office, I think, under Michael Crow, who's the president. And we met with the different schools, and had tours, and it was wonderful. So there are some opportunities. I mean, now, we have to figure out what that means. It may mean that with the observatory that we build, either in steps or all together; right now, it's all together. Maybe ASU takes a dedicated part of that and uses it for research as they don't have a dedicated observatory, and that's a real benefit they see; everybody there was excited. So hopefully, we inspire them enough to do something about that. So we'll see how it goes. Secondly, this will be my last meeting in person for a while, I'm afraid. I'm heading to Europe Friday, to Barcelona and then I'm back and forth, but will be in Indianna for most of the summer, I believe. If not, if I can get out back here, I will. But I will be on Zoom on every meeting and will be remote, as I was last time. I apologize for that. It's just, the weather's a little bit nicer over there. So anyway, that's all from me. HOENLE: Any comments from the town? TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 4 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 4 of 24 TRIMBLE: Not really. I just wanted to say that I'm just sitting in, as you probably know. I don't know if we discussed it last time, but Grady Miller retired and Rachael Goodwin would normally be here, she's the interim town manager. But she is handling some issues she couldn't schedule around for this. So I'll just be pinch-hitting once again, for her. HOENLE: Well, thanks for attending. I just finished up, before this meeting, a streets summary of our citizen working group. And the two main things that came out of that is, we're still in a process of assessing the latest report that was given to the town by the contractor; a great deal of data. And so now we have to put some priorities to it and lay out some ideas and determination for different funding options, which is not going to be any small feat. The other thing that's going at the same time, that will impact some of the decisions, is the core sampling that the town has already started. The rut checks on the streets and check down through the base layer, some of the areas that have gone beyond what the contract calls for for the assessment. So plenty of work. And as Justin mentioned at the previous town council meeting, other things need to be taken into consideration also, such as utility considerations. If there's going to be work done in a certain area, you don't want to pave it and then dig it up. So there are multiple facets to come up with the scheduling and how we proceed. So it's been a very interesting and detailed project. More to come on that one. Okay. Next, we have our guest speaker for the day, Chief Dave Ott from the fire department and he'll tell us what's currently happening and what may be in the near future. Chief Ott? OTT: Vice Chair, Commissioners, Mr. Trimble, boss. I want to thank you for inviting me here today and letting me give you an update on where we're at with the things int eh world of fire. And I just want to make a couple of comments. We're excited about the Dark Sky project as well. We're really looking forward to that. Not only as the fire chief, but also as a town resident. And does Alan know that this was the last market of the season? You said he was at the Art of the Avenue today -- MAGAZINE: Yes. Yes, he knows it. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 5 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 5 of 24 OTT: Does he know it was the last one? MAGAZINE: He was trying it out to see if he wants to do it next year, and he does. OTT: Okay. So he did have a strategic plan involved -- MAGAZINE: Absolutely. OTT: Okay. All right. There's a couple of things going on with us and Dave Trimble is part of the -- we have a transition team put in place. For those of you that don't know, for probably 37 years - and this kind of predates the -- well, the fire district predates quite a few things, but Rural Metro was part of the original fire district as the fire provider in Fountain Hills. And we've had a relationship with Rural Metro for 30-plus years. They also had done some work for McCulloch, at a point where Rural was kind of a one-call. You could call Lou Weitzman and he would say, hey, if you need this we'll come out and take care of it for you. So initially, they provided some kind of onsite security, I believe, for McCulloch and then that just kind of transformed into a couple of guys and a fire truck. And then transformed into what we have today, which is two stations. We have ten personnel on duty every day with two chiefs, two fire engines, a ladder truck, two brush trucks, a couple of staff vehicles, a spare pickup truck. And we just recently acquired a Polaris UTV to help us with things like the art festival and trail rescues into the preserve. We just recently sent one of our captains out to a training -- safety training, train-the-trainer for UTV, so that we can do that safely And it was put on by a competitive insurance company that ensures quite a few fire departments, but we'll have that and we'll have all that documented for the risk management side of things. So they are a little bit different and we run quite a few UTV accidents up in Sycamore Creek in Four Peaks area. Mainly, because the ambulances that run out of here, that's their area. We don't necessarily send the fire department out there unless it's a big incident. And Fort McDowell runs quite a bit up there, so we'll back for Fort McDowell when they go out on calls. So council voted in October of 2022, to kind of move forward with consideration to cancel the contract with Rural Metro. November of 2022, they voted at the first meeting to terminate the contract with Rural Metro and move towards having a town-run fire department. So we'll transition from the private department to a municipal department TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 6 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 6 of 24 with a start date of January 1st, 20424; that corresponds with the end of the contract. And for us it's just another day. It might happen to be New Year's Day, but in our world it's just another day you come to work. And the plan right now is to switch shirts at midnight, from a Rural Metro Fire shirt to one that says Fountain Hills Fire Department on the back. And really, the only difference that will happen is -- well, there's a lot of things, but it would be a seamless transition. You'll call 911 -- it currently goes to the sheriff's department. They push a button now that transfers that call to a Rural Metro dispatch center. What will happen at midnight on January 1st, they'll transfer that call to Mesa Regional Dispatch Center and mesa will dispatch us as municipal fire department. In your strategic plan, we don't have specific priorities that identify the fire department as a whole but there are interim priorities. Public safety is a key in a number of them and I think that we kind of meet those requirements in moving to the municipal department. There's some questions on the direction that Rural Metro really wants to take. They've filed bankruptcy a number of times over the past, probably 15 years. I've been back with the department for almost ten years now, and in that time I've had four different chiefs as my boss. So that kind of shows you that there's not a lot of stability at that top level to who I respond to. On the flip side of that, I have not had that many people that's sitting in Angela's chair, who I look at as my boss for the town. I know Grady kind of thought he was my boss, but we really know who runs everything, right? So if you look at the flip side of that, in the time that I've been there, there's been two town managers, and one just recently retired. So I think, when you look as a whole, and from the private sector turnover at the top is not necessarily that good. If you look comparatively to fire departments around us, Scottsdale is on their third chief in 20 years. Rio Verde is on their third chief in 15 years. Fort McDowell is on their third chief in just about 15 years. Salt River is on their second chief in almost 20 years. So there's a little bit more stability on that. Hopefully, someone won't be standing up here saying, yeah, Fountain Hills has had four chiefs and we're only in our fifth year so. Hopefully, everything works smooth. Like, I'd mentioned Dave Trimble, David Pock, myself, Rachael, Rob Durham, who's the procurement officer, will probably be joining us soon on the transition team. And we had a study by McGrath and Associates about the same time that we did the TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 7 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 7 of 24 study for law enforcement. A little bit easier to bring us inhouse because, as I mentioned, we'd been part of -- the fire district had been a taxing authority for the town. The fire district owned all of the equipment. So at the time that the fire district was disbanded the town borrowed some money from the county, purchased all those assets. That's why we currently have the station and the equipment -- all the equipment on the fire trucks and that. So our transition is a little bit easier, although sometimes I have quite a few sleepless nights trying to make sure that I've got everything covered and that we're not spending an exorbitant amount of money to kind of equate the service that we've had before. So our budget was about $4.7 million, we're still right in that range, going on the municipal opposed to the rural side. Part of that is that my town budget has always included the Rural fire contract in there. So that just kind of equates to staffing, manpower, some training issues -- or training items, and we'll kind of broaches that gap in there. So the difference is really not that great. We will have some startup costs because we'll have things that we'll need to purchase, like firefighter turnouts, wild and personal protective equipment, some of that items associated with dispatch. We're anticipating around a $500,000 price on the startup, that would be a one-time cost. I think that the benefit that we'll see from that over the next ten years will greatly outweigh what that cost is. So our goal is to not diminish any levels of service to the community. Grady was -- I want to say, wise enough to realize that the fire department is not Rural Metro. The fire department is the men and women that have served the community and the goal is to bring as many of those people forward that want to be part of Fountain Hills fire department. So it makes my job a little bit easier. I kind of laughed that Grady said, well, this is the time if you want to clean house you can do it. Hire somebody new and -- I know where all my challenges are. So hiring someone new, you don't know what that person's going to be. Everybody that we have up here is proud to serve Fountain Hills. We all have our little quirks, but when we all get together, we're one good group of quirky people. I'm kind of looking forward to moving forward with the crews that are up here at this point. So like I said a number of your strategic priorities focused on public safety, not TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 8 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 8 of 24 specifically on the fire department. But as you look out -- as your goals -- and you had a ten-year plan in 2022, I think that our values and goals and how we're moving forward really fit in with a number of your strategic priorities as well. If there's any specific questions, something I didn't cover, something you want to know, something you don't want to know, I'll be happy to highlight that. HOENLE: (Indiscernible). Oh, she is?KEEFE: You brought up the staff. Are you expecting any attrition risk from your current team or do you believe you'll retain everybody? OTT: We've got a possibility of -- all of my captains have 20 years and we kind of joke about this on the cop side and when Councilmember Spelich was up here. Apparently, if you're over 50 and a cop, you don't do that much at work. If you're over 50 and a fireman, you still work every day. You get on the truck every day. You pull hose every day. You go through those things in your career. If you're on a fire truck, doesn't change because of your age. So we have a -- of the six captains we have, all of them have at least 20 years and they probably range in age from, not that age is a issue, but 42 to almost 65. I think that we'll see one of our oldest captains probably retire before the point that he comes over. Everybody else, and I kind of -- I have that line up here with a lot of experienced captains, then it goes down a little bit to that 15 to really, probably, 12 to 15 to 17 year range, my line goes down a little bit more. And now we've got the rest of the staff is like five years and under. So excited about the younger crew that we've got that with that attrition moving forward, that allows us to bring some of the younger people. We have people that have interest that are -- currently, we have a captain's position, a engineer's position, and firefighter positions and we have people that are firefighters that are aspiring to be engineers. Engineers that are aspiring to be captains. So as we move forward as the Fountain Hills Fire Department, I think we have enough people that we'll be able to move up -- forward, and then backfill those spots with younger, fresher firefighters, I guess. But I think, as a whole, I would say that at this point, we're looking at almost 100 percent coming over. KEEFE: That's great. YAZZETTA: So I have two questions. One, what is your thought, and/or have we, or TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 9 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 9 of 24 will we ever have volunteer help for the fire department, either from the paramedic or from the actual firefighting in certain area? As I honestly don't know if we've had that in the past in Fountain Hills. What's your thought about that? Is that something that you want to entertain or not? OTT: Well, Commissioner, there's days that I feel that I volunteer but that's just a personal thing. It's kind of a unique world and in the fire service, there's still 80 -- I think the numbers are 82 to 85 percent of the departments across the country are still volunteer and people seem amazed by that sometimes when you throw that number out. But if you travel across the country, and if you look at the incorporated areas opposed to the unincorporated areas, we still have a small amount of our country that has big metropolitan type areas. You almost always have paid departments in those areas. The volunteer side of it is still strong. There's some challenges for volunteer fire departments now, is trying to get people to participate and be part of that volunteer department. It's a little bit different than what it was 20 years ago or 30 years ago. We're having similar challenges on the paid side of things, but in smaller rural areas where it was your grandfather was on the volunteer fire department and your dad was on the volunteer fire department, your mom was on the volunteer fire department; it was kind of natural family progression to move up through there. There's still quite a number of fire chiefs that are 75, 80 years old in volunteer departments. I think that demographics and the makeup of the Valley where we're at and some of the changing, maybe attitudes, business-wise, make the volunteer -- going from paid to volunteer, make it pretty difficult. And if we look at the businesses in Fountain Hills, and a lot of them are -- I don't want to say short-staffed, but staffed to the core, are a lot of those businesses at a point where, if the alarm went off in the middle of the day that they could allow their employees to go out and participate in that. When you come from a rural area and a lot of those are farming or smaller, maybe, family run businesses, that it's acceptable to come in and see the sign on the door or you heard the siren and you know you can't go to the feedstore because nobody's going to be there because they're all responding to the fire, I think that's a way of life that would be difficult for us to get to. Moving more into the municipal side of things, I think, will open up more towards the possibility of having volunteers that could help as supplemental staff, but having trained TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 10 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 10 of 24 volunteers on the truck is a little bit tougher. We do have almost 30 volunteers on the crisis response team that do respond to a variety of incidents, whether it's a sudden death for a family member, they'll come and kind of bridge the gap. The help the sheriffs out, as well as us. That allows the personnel that might be required to stay on scene with a family member until maybe a medical examiner gets there to really take possession of the body in a sudden death. Our crisis team is there to kind of help bridge that gap. They help the family at that point, contact other family members, contact the funeral home, give them options on what their next moves could be. Because even though we have a aging demographic here, a lot of people haven't really thought out, hey, what happens if I die? Then, if you're a little younger and that happens, you might be less apartment to have plans for that and a crisis team will help with that. They're also helping in situations where if you fall and you need help getting up, you can call us; night or day, any time. We'll come help you get back up. But that's not a great quality of life if you're calling three or four times a day or six/seven times a week. So we'll get the crisis team involved with that so that they can kind of bring out some options that people might not be aware of and get people the help that they might be paying for anyways or get them lined up with something that can help them so they have a little bit better quality of life than calling us every time they fall down. Not that we mind doing it, but again, it's not really the best thing for you as a person to have to have us come all the time. So that's really where we take that core volunteer group and put them to what we think is the best use. It's a little bit tougher in that transition and as the requirements are to be paramedic, it takes a little bit of continuing education. It's a little bit easier in this setting if you are in a paid department or you're being paid to do that or your employer's paying to do that. So the volunteer spirit is alive and well, and as you may or may not know, in Fountain Hills we boast -- I think we're still up around 800 volunteers. Which is huge for a community of 23,000 people. So anybody that wants to come out and pull hose and put some stuff on and do that, we're more than willing to have you come and -- KEEFE: Geoff said he does. YAZZETTA: Thank you. You know, that's great. A second one, very quick. This one will probably be easier. We had the superbloom, of TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 11 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 11 of 24 course. My backyard going out to Red Mountain. I've never seen it so yellow in my life. And at first you hear how wonderful it is. Second, then you read about the stinknet and a plant that's invasive and the concerns about things dying and for fire, wild fires coming. Is that truly a concern? Is that -- I know we're always concerned but are you -- do you have highlighted -- or what's the word I'm looking for? More critical watch now because of that? Could that be a real issue for us in Fountain Hills? OTT: I think that any time you think that it's not a critical issue there's problems. I was here in '95 when we had the Rio Fire. And for those of you that might not know or are too young to know what that might have been, it was the biggest fire we had in the state at the time. Consumed 23,000 acres, I think. No structures were lost. But it took the desert out from -- it basically, started about 137th Street and Rio Verde Road and moved south for five days. It was the closest the town's come to having to evacuate due to a wildfire. The desert conditions at that point, I think -- that was a while -- well, I know I was a wildland guy then, but I think from probably '93 to '96, I was on some sort of a wildland fire. Probably once a week from April to October through that three or four year period. I think the desert conditions are about the same as they were then. Cave Creek experienced a large fire two years ago. We had a pretty good sized fire in McDowell Mountain Park. I can't remember now if that was two years ago, or -- but that was an interesting thing because it burned east to west and not north to south. If you saw some of the assets that were in the state and were available, the 747 dropping slurry out there; it's something you don't see very often. But because of previous fires we had and kind of the move to centrally locate some assets, they were available. The park is actually owned by the state, leased by the county. They came in and identified -- so the first time I've heard this, which was kind of cool in my aspect, is one of the assets they decided they needed to protect was Thomson Peak with the communication towers up there. Most public safety agencies have some sort of communications device up on Thompson Peak, it's in a great location. But they also said that our desert is our beach. If we're in California, that's where everybody would go. So they identified the desert out there as a high value target that they wanted to protect. I thought that was pretty cool. It's the first time I've heard that in 37 years. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 12 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 12 of 24 So with invasive species, they're always tough. They're tough to kill. Salt River and Fort McDowell, out along the river, they have saltcedar embedded in there. Saltcedar's a very -- I want to say dangerous invasive species because it takes out some of the other natural grasses there. But one thing to keep in mind is that when you take a look and you've got everything in bloom out there, most of that is low-lying -- we call it flash fuels, because it's lower; it's lower to the ground. It will go quick. The problem you have is when you start getting medium and ladder fuels like your creosote bushes, smaller palo verdes, smaller mesquite trees. Some of those things that end up growing and touching down to the ground, now that flash fuel has someplace to go. If you look out and you just got a field of pretty flowers now and your allergies are going nuts, in the event of a fire, that would probably move very quickly across it. Not that those aren't dangerous too. A lot of the fires that we see in Oklahoma, Nebraska, and across the prairies are field fires that will go for miles, because there's nothing to stop it. But there's really nothing more in there to be consumed, because there's the low-lying stuff, the flash fuels, are going to burn until they get to a higher fuel source. Once that happens, you go from the desert fires that have flash fuels, medium fuels, very few medium to heavy fuels, opposed to going to Flagstaff, where you've got the whole gamut. You've got flash fuels, medium fuels. Most of your medium fuels are all ladder fuels, ladder fuels go to the heavy fuels which are your bigger trees. And then you end up with the worst case scenario, which would be a crown fire, which is the fire all the way in the top of the trees and it just keeps going. They're very hard to fight and control and contain. We're a little bit luckier here from that aspect. We just have to deal with the high heat from the normal temperatures and a little bit of terrain. We've had a couple of fires up in Eagle's Nest. Again, the terrain there is a little bit trickier, but the way the houses are built and for the most part, the way that Fountain Hills is laid out, we've got washes. And as long as your homes are clear from the washback and you've got some protectable space, we'll have a fire that will run through the wash but the chance it's going to extend out to a residence or something, some other structure, is greatly limited. So what we train here is that we do -- in a wildland world there's wildland firefighters and structure firefighters. And a wildland firefighter, if a TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 13 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 13 of 24 structure or a house is a third of the way involved, they move on because they're not geared or equipped to do that. So the suppression side of -- the structure protection side of that crew that might be deployed in there, they'll take that house that's on fire and do that. They won't do anything with the grass that's moving towards the next house or medium sized fuels that are around the next house. They'll concentrate on that structure. And way back when we used to do a red rock, green rock, and you'd look at a house and you'd say, okay, this house has got a well defensible space around it, they get a green rock. This house has got a lot of wood piled up by it and broken down porch and a lot of things, that gets a red rock. So in the middle of the night when you're out there and you're looking, you go, okay, green rock we can go to the next house. And the red rock, you're going to do what you can to protect it from getting to the green rock house. But it's always a concern and we kind of joke in firefighter humor that this is the worst fire season we've ever seen. Unless you look at last year or the year before that or the next coming year, but we'll always take it seriously and look at it and do what we can. We work well with Justin as well, on his wash maintenance and there's times that we'll come in and say, hey, if you've got a little bit of time for your crew, can they clear this path so that we've got more or a roadway going into it? We did just recently update and replace a pump on one of our brush trucks that was probably midpoint fire district equipment. And we had taken care of it and nursed it along and got it to the point where it was ready for it to retire, so we were able to purchase a new pump which, as you know, everything gets really high-tech and moves forward. And the pump that we bought was a replacement skid. You pull the old pump out, slid that new pump right in the bed in of that F550, and it is my kind of pump, because it's got nothing electronic on it. It says, "more foam, less foam". So we finally got back to something that was a little bit simpler and it's got a hose reel on it. And our guys kind of train with that in mind that, hey, we've got it setup that almost all of our stuff we can fight being on asphalt. They might have potholes in it, but we're still on the asphalt. And we've got hydrants around town. We've got the ability where we can just lay a hose line. We got unmanned monitors. You can set that monitor down, tied to a fire hydrant that's probably pretty close to where we need to go. Leave that and go do something else, come back and take care of that. So when they laid out the town, if TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 14 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 14 of 24 you look at most of the building requirements that were put in, we don't have a lot of shingle roofs, we don't have cedar shake houses for the most part. A lot of it is tiled roof, flat roof, which has got some sort of a fire resistance to it, and stucco houses. In a firefighting world, on the wildland side, that's as good as it gets. YAZZETTA: Thank you. OTT: Yep. MAGAZINE: I have two questions. The first is, would you describe again, in a little more detail, the emergency system when someone calls 911 when it's been through Rural Metro? It's changing isn't it? And did you say it's a group in Mesa that will handle it now? OTT: Yes, ma'am. The way that it currently works, and this is pretty similar to almost anywhere you go in the country. At one point, there were two 911 centers. One was in Denver and one was somewhere in the east; I don't know. Past -- east of the Mississippi, so it didn't really matter out here. But 911 would go to one local center and then that center broke that out to the local areas. As things progressed, most of the 911 centers across the country are kind of run by the police agencies, and that's by design because you want to get the cops there first, right? So the 911 call would go to the police agency and then it would get dispatched to the fire department. Here it goes to Maricopa County sheriffs. They ask if it's a police, medical, or fire emergency. They may keep part of the call, based on what you tell them, but then they're going to transfer that call over to a fire agency dispatch center. Currently, it goes to Rural Metro, which is -- they've got a call center that they also run their ambulance business out of over in Glendale. If you were in Scottsdale and called 911, you're going to go to the Scottsdale police department. Scottsdale police department is going to transfer that to Phoenix Fire, which is the regional dispatch for -- if we split the valley in the 101 going east and west, things on -- for the most part, things on the westside of the 101 end up going to Phoenix. So Phoenix dispatch would dispatch Scottsdale fire. What will happen for us is -- and that gets a little tricky because there are parts of Fountain Hills that are actually Scottsdale, right? But because of the way that the borders are, that call -- you've got one in three chance it can go to Scottsdale, it can go to Maricopa County sheriff's, or if you're around this end, it might get picked up by Fort TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 15 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 15 of 24 McDowell. And that first call taker group, whichever that happens to be on the police side of it, they'll get that information out and then send it over to the appropriate fire department. What will happen for us in January, is that that call won't get transferred to Rural Metro, it will get transferred to Mesa. We're on the east side of the 101, so we're being dispatched by the Mesa Regional Dispatch Center, and there would be no -- you, as a caller, would not know any difference. For us, and this is not a slam on Rural Metro, we're a fire department that's being dispatched by a ambulance company, and in my world, there's a little bit of difference for that. It doesn't have as high of a priority on some things. Our communication side of things has degragated (sic) over the years and even now -- more so now that we're going municipal. They're not going to do anything to fix it for the next eight months. So our guys are -- at some point, in a little bit of jeopardy because of the communication system is not very good. But that's on our side, that's not on the call side. So you're placing the call, you would think everything's great. That's once that call taker transfers it to a dispatcher and that dispatcher starts talking to us, that's where we have the problems. But going to Mesa, that will clean up all of those issues. Mesa's got a little bit more robust system. It's a fire department, dispatching fire departments and ambulance companies, opposed to the other way around. So that's another thing that we're excited about is that we're going to get kind of, in our world, more of state of the art dispatch center. We'll have computer-aided dispatch. They'll be able to tell where each unit is. Somewhere down the road, we might look at applying for automatic aid, which is a regional system which dispatches the closest unit -- closest available unit, and that will cut down the response times. That's something that we're looking forward in the future, but we've got the key pieces of the municipal department that we need to put in place first, before we start looking at what we'll do. We'll have a solid mutual aid agreement which is a little bit different. We have to ask for that closest unit or additional units. In the automatic aid system, it's all -- they can tell on the computer screen. They'll say, okay, this truck from Scottsdale's closer to Fry's, than what our engine at station 2 is. They would automatically dispatch that. If we know that we're having problems, right now, we would go back to our dispatchers and say hey, can -- okay, in the future, when TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 16 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 16 of 24 we're dispatched by Mesa, we would go to that dispatcher and say, hey, we can't get there, is there a closer Scottsdale unit? And they would say, yep, we see them right here. We'll push that button, and it's done. MAGAZINE: Let me give you just a brief example. There was an incident at Bashas' grocery store about eight months ago. OTT: I think I'm aware of it. MAGAZINE: And friends called 911 and it took 10 to 15 minutes to get there and they wanted to know the address of Bashas'. And the people calling said there's only one Bashas' in Fountain Hills. They insisted we need to know the address. Will that go away with this new system? OTT: I will say that on the -- again, the first call taker might have been a Maricopa County sheriff's call taker, okay. They're in Phoenix, in the basement of a building on Jefferson Street, I think. They might have moved them out of the basement, but they're here. And the things that I hear when people ask about, well, we called and this is what happened. I got to kind of take that with where we're at, who's -- what all the pieces are. So for someone to get the call and say it's the only Bashas' in Fountain Hills, that call taker might not even know where Fountain Hills is other than, okay, it's a blob over here. Okay, so as the call taker, I've got to figure that out, figure out how I can get there. If I have the address and almost every call taker, you watch any murder mystery show, any cop show on TV, that's usually in the first couple of sentences, what's the location of your emergency? What is your address? So that they can get the closest, most appropriate unit going. In that time frame -- that takes time to get that information. It doesn't meant that they're not working on it. I think -- I'm not a big TV show guy, but 911, I think is a kind of good example of how that call taker takes that call and they're working on a lot of stuff as they're taking that information. But gathering that information is going to take time and as that comes in -- and then, another thing that happens is people say, well, I got put on hold. We had a vehicle fire down by Little Fountains a number of years ago, and there were a lot of people that -- it was during the middle of the day. Everybody's calling and then people were calling us saying, hey, there's a problem with the system, we got put on hold, we didn't know. But you could have been the 10th persons calling about that. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 17 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 17 of 24 They've already got that. They've answered the phone, they just put you on hold. But in some instances, they might be able to tell by your cell phone location where you're at; that's not always 100 percent true for the location. So you might have said we're in Fountain Hills, and at that point they might have been working on dispatching the appropriate units but not having the address. I mean, if they -- this is the beautiful thing about where we live. We have enough people that lived or still live in areas where you call the fire station and say, hey, I've got a problem. And if you called the fire station and said, hey, we've got a -- we need help at Bashas', our guys are going to be out the door, knowing exactly where to go. The problem with calling the fire station is that if nobody's there or I'm in my office and nobody else is there, and I got to get up to go to the kitchen, you're going to hang up by the time I get to the phone in the kitchen and -- But those are some of the things and -- that's an exaggeration of what happens on the 911 side of things, but that truly does happen and it's not as immediate as everybody thinks or everybody wishes. And the time compression factor. I know that when I've been first on the scene, something's happened in front of me, I'm on the radio. I'm not going through 911. I'm going directly to an operator. I will tell you that it takes 20 minutes for our guys to get there, when I know that they're right down the street in a station 3 minutes away. And then I have to calm myself down a little bit, and go, all right, you remember how to do this. But also they're going to be here in a minute. My mind is saying it's taking a long time. And truly I've been on -- I had people call and say hey, we did it. We pulled the car records and there's something in there, things happened. Like, okay, it's a new call taker, or it's a new dispatcher, or this, or somebody's training, or they were short staffed and that's one of the problems that we run into now. I know the sheriff's department dispatcher's short staffed. Our area's short staffed. Both Phoenix and Mesa dispatch centers seem to be thoroughly staffed and well trained, so those things don't happen as often, but you're still going to have that. It's part of the mechanical type system, and the one thing with mechanical systems is that there's always some sort of failure in there. But we hope that that's not the case. And anytime you have a question on how long it took or what the call was, I can get that information now. I'll be able to TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 18 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 18 of 24 get that information in the future too and look at it. And we've had problems over the years where we've been able to identify those issues and get them corrected and then you get a change in management, and you've got to start all over again. MAGAZINE: I have a different question. OTT: Okay. MAGAZINE: Is every fireperson an EMT? Are they all required to do -- to learn to do cases of cardiac arrest and so on? OTT: Dave, do you want to answer that? We had this conversation the other day as we were working towards the budget and we're looking at personnel and that. Yes. And I'm going to say for the most part, there's a little bit difference there between some volunteer departments too, as we talked about. Some of the training is a little bit different there. But for us in the valley, every firefighter in the valley is going to be at least an EMT basic, which would be a BLS firefighter. Everybody on an ambulance, whether they are civilian or a firefighter, minimum level on that is going to be an EMT-B. They're all trained in basic life support. Then in the fire service, and if you're a young person or knows someone that wants to get into the fire service, if they go through a community college, get a firefighter 1 and 2, get their EMT, and then continue on and become a paramedic, they can do all that before they're 21. They can walk out of a community college with all of those certificates and pretty much go anywhere in the country that they want to work, because paramedics are -- we're hitting a shortage of them. And part of it is that you get a lot of guys that -- or a lot of personnel that are retiring, but also the demand is greater. Back 30 years ago, you didn't always have a paramedic on a fire truck. In the valley, it kind of became a standard that you have at least one. And now, you have at least two, because that one might have been the captain, but the captain's responsible for the overall scene safety, the safety of his personnel, the safety of the public there. And if that's the only paramedic that can administer drugs during a cardiac arrest, he can't effectively do his job. So a lot of people will have that paramedic as a captain on the truck and then another paramedic that's there. And we have a saying that paramedics save lives, but EMTs save paramedics. So you always want to -- and I never became a paramedic. I was always one of those TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 19 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 19 of 24 EMTs that were there that -- I worked with enough paramedics that when things were a little loose around regulations, you were doing things that you -- probably, today would get you in trouble doing. But you worked well enough that you knew what that next step was going to be. So CPRs changed a little bit in the world of things. We do a lot more compressions, push a lot more drugs. But that paramedic, we have two on every one of our trucks. So the staffing that we currently have up here is per the contract with Rural, we have eight personnel on the firetrucks. We have two on an ambulance. But of those eight on the firetrucks, five of them are paramedics. So our odds of getting the paramedic right there the first time is pretty good. We've had some staffing issues with Rural on some of the ambulance things, but again that's kind of a separate thing. But people will say why do I have a firetruck at my house? You're getting a firetruck because that paramedic's on that truck. If you had to wait for the paramedic to show up on the ambulance, there are a whole lot more firetrucks than there are ambulances. So you might be waiting in that first critical part and that's why we kind of push bystander CPR or public CPR. We also have public access defibrillator program in town that's been used a couple of times, but those are valuable times that it's been used. But that time gap is crucial. So for us, the best level of service we can give you is getting a paramedic there as soon as we can. HOENLE: Jill, do you have something? KEEFE: I do, but I think Geoff does. YAZZETTA: Oh, do you have something else? KEEFE: You go ahead. YAZZETTA: Okay. Thanks, Chief. Two quick questions. The community response team, is that the same as a CERT team? OTT: It's a little bit different. CERT has a different level of training and they do different types of emergency response. They would be more along the line of a disaster response. The crisis team is volunteers that -- we have them dispatched as part of our major incident response. So if we have house fire, we'll generally call the crisis team to come in and if they can assist the homeowner with if they need arrangements. They've got relationships with the hotels in town. And we're working on a better system of this, TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 20 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 20 of 24 of having pre-paid Visa cards and things for them, so that they can go out, either get food if somebody needs, get them into a hotel if they need that. Kind of bridging the gap between what's needed immediately and where Red Cross come in and provide some services. Not everybody will utilize the Red Cross system, which is there and it's a great system. We would put our crisis team in, what we would call, occupant resources, basically, in our overall structure. So we would let them deal with the homeowners. That might be helping them gather up their pets, getting them somewhere if they need to go to a pet shelter for the night until they can get things done. They'll coordinate with us and say, okay, they've got medication in the bathroom closet. Can we get to a point where we can get in there and get a cell phone for them, get some medication? The crisis team will do those types of things on that type of an event. We've used them quite a bit with -- even though they're not counselors, we use them kind of in a, maybe a counseling mode. And if we've got people that are in crisis, they're big with getting people hooked up at Reigning Grace Ranch, which is a huge local program for us. It's not in town but it's local for us. Great resource for youths that are at risk. Also adults that are having some issues, that's kind of a good outlet for them as well. They'll, as I mentioned earlier, if there's a sudden death instance, they'll stay with the family. Kind of help the family get going down the road that will benefit them. There they do -- man, I don't know. It's just such a great group of people, I can't keep track of everything they do. And we're kind of responsible for them. They work under me in my structure. But I also include them in my town budget. So when they need uniforms and the shirts that identify them and the jackets and the hats and the things that they need because they might get called out in the middle of the night. That comes out of our budget and we're happy to do that and happy to take care of them. We give them a place to meet, we help them with training where we can and they seek out their own training and pretty much make that happen. But I couldn't do what we do without them. YAZZETTA: Sure. Thanks for clarifying. And then is there a CERT team locally? And if not, is there any plans to put one together? OTT: We currently do not have a CERT team but if you're wanting to take that on, we'd be more than happy -- TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 21 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 21 of 24 YAZZETTA: It would be a good leadership academy project. OTT: It is beneficial. YAZZETTA: Yeah. OTT: One of the things -- and it's kind of along the lines of with the crisis team. We have a little bit of a turnover in there but have no shortage of people coming back that want to be involved. But sometimes there's not enough to keep them busy. And a lot of CERT teams in smaller areas, they kind of have that same issue with there's not enough to keep them busy. Being the emergency manager for the town, with the exception of COVID, that's one of the easier jobs I've ever had. We don't have a lot of emergencies here. The training -- and if they keep up on the training, that's kind of one aspect of it. There is a little bit of CERT to CERT, where if another municipality has a CERT team and they needed some help, they might be able to do a regional callout. But I've utilized CERT teams in -- we help with firefighter funerals. And we've used CERT teams in the past because they usually have a lot of radios that are on different frequencies. They've got people that can kind of help with some of the logistical type things. So the CERT's a valuable project -- YAZZETTA: Sure. OTT: -- and it's something that on the rural side of things, would have been a little bit harder to establish. Could have been a town established thing, and as we move forward with the municipal department, we can definitely take a look at that. If there's enough interest, we'll be more than happy to do that. There's cost involved with it, but there's also grants that will help with that process and equipment and things. You know, everything's got an expiration date on it, so you stock a trailerful of stuff -- YAZZETTA: Yeah. OTT: -- and you end up throwing it out because it never gets used. YAZZETTA: Thanks, Chief. OTT: You're good? KEEFE: This strategic planning committee will be taking on updating the town strategic plan in 2024 and knowing that, I'd like your opinion on are there any key topics that you think we should be aware of and focused on for updating the plan? TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 22 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 22 of 24 OTT: I think that -- HOENLE: We don't mean to put you on the spot. OTT: Well, I was trying think how I could shuffle this over to Larry. HOENLE: I mean, we'll definitely be getting back to you but if you had something on the top of your head? OTT: Yeah. You know, I think the plan's great and we review it frequently on the town director side of things. I'm always happy when I looked and I don't have a line there. But we would be more than happy to participate in it. And I think that as we move forward I'll take a look at that and see what I think that more line item detail than just the bald priority on there. But we always -- well, we'll always back up everybody else's priority on there if they need help in trying to achieve that. So we're well with community services, developmental services, even public works; we work well with them as well. But we're always happy to be a part of it. KEEFE: Thanks, Chief. HOENLE: Okay. We've kept you on your feet long enough on this one. But appreciate the conversation and not a question but a big shoutout. I really appreciate your services and we used them about two weeks ago when we were cleaning up around a building too. That snake removal, I mean, on the spot; it was a very big diamond back. But that's something that a lot of people sort of take for granted. Our fire department, they're going to show up and yeah, maybe they just put them over the wall or take them down at the end of the cul de sac. But that's part of living out here. So thank you. OTT: You're welcome. We're always glad to do it. And also, in 30-plus years, that's been a big transition for us, where there was open space you could take a snake. But snakes are kind of territorial and they tend to find their way back to where you moved them from. I don't know what the farthest distance a snake has gone but we had gone kind of the whole gamut. We'd be able to take them out to a wash that didn't have a house behind it to -- we collected them. There was a student at ASU that was milking snakes. So we'd collect them, he'd come, take the snakes, milk them for antivenom; that kind of went away. At one point we were allowed to -- or there was not really an issue if you kind of dispatched the snake. They're a little bit more protected now. And again, it was nothing that we really took any satisfaction out of. It was just at some point, what TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 23 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 23 of 24 are you going to do with them, because you can't take them anywhere. So now a lot of people are a little disheartened that we're not taking it farther away, but Rural at one point, had moved towards, unless the snake was keeping you from getting in or out of your house, or in your house, they weren't going to dispatch us. And I came back and told them, you know, as long as I'm up here, it doesn't matter where the snake's at, call us. Because I don't want somebody that doesn't like snakes to feel threatened by the snake even though it's not keeping you from leaving your house or whatever. And a lot of times, now, this time of year, they're not going to be there. We'll get called and by the time we get there, they've already moved off. But they're moving a little bit faster now. They're looking for food and water and either hot or cold place. But we're more than happy to come help move them. And when McGrath did the fire service study -- they're from Chicago. And we're talking about snake removals and I had to explain to them what that actually meant. Because the department that he worked in and worked around, they never had a snake call. But I'm just glad that they're smaller in nature for the most part. And I had read an article on a department in Thailand and they're going after anacondas and big snakes. I don't like little snakes, but I'll go help you get rid of your snake. And we're always glad to help. If you've got a project that you need done, always happy to be part of that. HOENLE: Thank you, Chief. Did you have another one? KEEFE: No. HOENLE: Thank you very much. OTT: You're welcome. And my door's always open in my office, so if you ever want to stop by. I'll get back with you on the project. If you want more information on CERT, I can dig that up. I've got a few friends that have started CERT programs. YAZZETTA: (Indiscernible) a few years ago, but a great program. OTT: Yeah. Very good program. YAZZETTA: Thank you. OTT: All right. Enjoy your afternoon. HOENLE: Okay. Moving onto next topic. There was a note that came out from Patrick. Hopefully, you've seen it. Talking about the next meeting we'll have an update from the TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 24 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Page 24 of 24 town on the status of the strategic plan and metrics that they're using. And then, we'll also be in the throes of determining our commission leadership. So you'll be thinking about that. I'm sure Patrick's going to have some comments and talk about it before the meeting. And then talking with Angela before this meeting, we have three potential vacancies. We have some people that are on here that want to renew. We had another vacancy with Mary leaving. And that will be announced on the 2nd, at the council meeting. So we'll be full up again. And then, the next meeting will be coming up on the 24th of May. And any other questions, comments, business, afterthoughts? Do I hear a motion? MAGAZINE: I move we adjourn? HOENLE: Second. KEEFE: I second. HOENLE: All in favor? ALL: Aye. ITEM 6. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS STAFF REPORT    Meeting Date: 06/28/2023 Meeting Type: Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Agenda Type:                   Submitting Department: Administration Prepared by: Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant to Manager, Mayor/Council Staff Contact Information: Request to Strategic Planning Advisory Commission (Agenda Language):  CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of the minutes of the Regular Meeting of May 24, 2023. Staff Summary (Background) The intent of approving meeting minutes is to ensure an accurate account of the discussion and action that took place at the meeting for archival purposes. Approved minutes are placed on the town's website and maintained as permanent records in compliance with state law.   Staff Recommendation(s) Staff recommends approving the minutes of the regular meeting on May 24, 2023. SUGGESTED MOTION MOVE to approve the minutes of the regular meeting on May 24, 2023. Attachments SUMMARY MINUTES AND VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT  Form Review Form Started By: Angela Padgett-Espiritu Started On: 05/24/2023 04:17 PM Final Approval Date: 05/24/2023  TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING OF THE STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION May 24, 2023 1. CALL TO ORDER Chairman Patrick Garman called to order the meeting of the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission at 4:01 p.m. 2. ROLL CALL Members Present: Chairman Patrick Garman, Vice Chairman Bernie Hoenle; Commissioner Kevin Beck; Commissioner Jill Keefe; Commissioner Cynthia Magazine; Commissioner Phil Sveum, Commissioner Geoff Yazzetta Members Absent: Commissioner Kevin Beck; Commissioner Jill Keefe Staff Present: Deputy Town Manager David Trimble; Executive Assistant Angela Padgett-Espiritu 3. CALL TO THE PUBLIC Pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.01(H), public comment is permitted (not required) on matters NOT listed on the agenda. Any such comment (i) must be within the jurisdiction of the Council, and (ii) is subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. The Council will not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during Call to the Public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action. At the conclusion of the Call to the Public, individual councilmembers may (i) respond to criticism, (ii) ask staff to review a matter, or (iii) ask that the matter be placed on a future Council agenda. No one from the public spoke. 4. REPORTS BY COMMISSIONERS AND TOWN MANAGER Chairman Patrick Garman Commissioner Phil Sveum Commissioner Cynthia Magazine Commissioner Geoff Yazzetta Vice Chairman Bernie Hoenle Deputy Town Manager Dave Trimble 5. UPDATE: Fountain Hills 2022 Strategic Plan Implementation • Economic Development Director Amanda Jacobs • Chief Financial Officer David Pock (tabled to next meeting) 6. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Appoint a Commission Vice Chairman MOVED BY Vice Chairman Bernie Hoenle to APPOINT Commissioner Geoff Yazzetta to Vice Chairman of the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting, SECONDED BY Commissioner Cynthia Magazine Vote: 5 – 0 passed – Unanimously 7. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Appoint a Commission Chairman MOVED BY Commissioner Geoff Yazzetta to REAPPOINT Chairman Patrick Garman to Chairman of the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting, SECONDED BY Commissioner Cynthia Magazine Vote: 5 – 0 passed – Unanimously 8. COMMENTS FROM THE CHAIRMAN 9. NEXT MEETING DATE: Wednesday, June 28, 2023 10. ADJOURNMENT Chairman Patrick Garman adjourned the regular meeting at 4:52 p.m. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS _________________________ Patrick Garman, Chairman ATTEST AND PREPARED BY: ___________________________________ Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant CERTIFICATION I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Regular Meeting held by the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission in the Town Hall Council Chambers on the 24th day of May 2023 that the meeting was duly called and that a quorum was present. DATED this 28th day of June 2023. _____________________________ Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 1 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 1 of 24 Post-Production File Town of Fountain Hills Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes of Regular Meeting May 24, 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. * * * * * TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 2 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 2 of 24 GARMAN: All right, I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Fountain Hills Strategic Planning Advisory Commission as of May 24th, 2023. So Angela, could you start things off with the roll call, please. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Yes. Thank you, Chair. Chairman Garman. GARMAN: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Vice Chairman Hoenle. HOENLE: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Beck. Commissioner Keefe. Commissioner Magazine. MAGAZINE: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Sveum. SVEUM: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: And Commissioner Yazzetta. YAZZETTA: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Thank you. We have a quorum. GARMAN: All right, awesome. We have a quorum this afternoon. Okay. So next, number 3 on the agenda, I'm going to go down to the Call to the Public. I don't know if anybody submitted any comments, Angela. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: No. We have -- we have no one. Thank you. GARMAN: All right. So no Call to the Public this afternoon either. So we're moving along. Let's move down to number 4, which is going to be reports by Commissioners and the Town Manager. And we're going to start things off today with our -- our newest Commissioner, Phil Sveum. SVEUM: Correct. GARMAN: Close as -- close, I will learn. But I think Phil was just sworn in today. So we're going to let him go first and -- and do introductions. So go ahead, Phil. SVEUM: Oh, thank you. Pleasure to be here. I'm anxious to provide whatever I can for my input and -- and serve the community. My wife and I moved here last year. We're very excited to be in Fountain Hills. As I mentioned, I'm a graduate of Arizona State, 1976. Been coming back ever since and TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 3 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 3 of 24 knew we'd end up here some -- at some point. And today of -- sale of our business in Wisconsin and moved here a little bit earlier than I thought. But enough is enough. We're happy -- happy to be here and I'm happy to -- to serve on this committee. GARMAN: Awesome, thank you. Thank you very much. So moving along, I guess from left to -- left to right, Cynthia. MAGAZINE: I think for the first time I have really nothing to report. Can you believe it? GARMAN: Geoff. YAZZETTA: Good afternoon, everyone. First, Phil, welcome to the Commission. I had been here for about a year when I was appointed as well. So I see you like the ground running, too. So looking forward to getting to know you better and serving alongside you here. Real quick Senate Kavanagh secured a $10 million fund within the state's budget for the International Dark Sky Discovery Center. I sit on that board, along with Kevin Beck. And all of a sudden, overnight, the project went from being, we hope we can do this to it is a viable project now. We're at $18 and a half million. And we need to raise a total of about 25 million. So some larger donors are starting to look at this with a little more credibility and then possibility here. So we're hoping to get this project started sooner than later. It'll dovetail nicely with a lot of what we've got going on here in the strategic plan and I think we'll be a big boost for the town. So that's all I got, thank you. GARMAN: That's great. And I know, Joel (ph.), I think he briefed us just a few months ago on that -- YAZZETTA: Yeah. GARMAN: -- so yeah. Bernie. HOENLE: Glad to be here. I just came out of the last two hours meeting on the street committee. And our next order of business we'll make a presentation to the Council on the 20th of June. And right now just working through a lot of details. GARMAN: Nothing like being in the crucible in that, right? Dave -- I know you -- David, right? TRIMBLE: Yes. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 4 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 4 of 24 GARMAN: Okay. Sorry, I wanted to make sure. Anything for the Commission? TRIMBLE: Not that's on the -- again, Dave Trimble, Deputy Town Manager, Administrative Services Director. I'm sitting in for Rachel Goodwin, Town Manager, who wanted to be here. She is upstairs where Bernie just came from, on the streets committee, working with them. So that is a meeting that's still going on. So thanks for coming down, Bernie. And welcome to Phil. That's my only real update this morning. And from time to time, the staff, at their weekly management meeting will go over the SPAC's strategic plan. And we did that. And just kind of a touch in -- touch base on it. So we did that this morning. And I know we have Amada Jacobs here, our Economic Development Director, who'll give us more on the -- on her end of things. But we did touch base on all the different touchpoints this morning. So that's about it. GARMAN: Awesome. Great, thank you. So moving down to agenda item 5, I -- we, you know, we do updates, implementation updates, I'm -- periodically provided by the town. And if you look at the outstanding document that was printed out and given to us. It's the strategic plan and it's, I guess it's more of a timeline implementation plat, timeline. I would call it the template that we have. And if you look, the -- the column about three over, it says, "Projected Completion Dates." So we put those in to -- to the last plan to kind of give us an estimate, you know, to look and see how things are doing on implementation. So a few of them, you know, were -- had the first year, which March would have been the first year. So I know looking through those and talking to Angela and Rachel, tried to get the folks from the town that were responsible for those items that we thought could be done within the first year to -- to come and brief us during this year, and at least before we go on our summer recess at the end of June. So it's really awesome to have those folks here. So I know David Pock is going to come in June. I think John Wesley is going to come in June to talk. And we wanted to thank Amanda for coming, economic development piece of the plan, to talk to us today. So thank you very much. The floor is yours. JACOBS: Your welcome. So Mr. Chair, Commissioners, good to see you guys. It's been, I think, a year since I presented. I know when I was before you, it was just four TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 5 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 5 of 24 months being into -- in the role. So I was drinking from a firehose. Sometimes I still feel like that. And so as the Chairman mentioned, just going to focus on a couple of the items that are that -- that first year. Just give you a heads up. And so the targeted collaborative economic development, one of the items is a business advisory group. And that's changed a bit since, you know, I was drinking out of the firehose. So how we're tackling this item is several ways. So in June of last year, I started meeting with several business owners in the downtown area. And there was a desire to really focus on the Avenue. And so the downtown area takes into account Vere River, Parkview, and Palisades. But because there's a lot of development and growth already happening on the Avenue, this particular group, again, wanted to just focus their efforts on the Avenue. And so after six months of meeting, they officially formed the Avenue Merchant Association in January are meeting monthly. And so again, that's taken up a lot of my -- my time. And that is good, because who is at the table are business owners on the Avenue. And so they're able to tell me that, you know, we want to see more commercial growth as business owners and most of them, too, are -- are residents. They're wanting to see more activity, such as events. In the budget, we have a line item for -- for placemaking. So doing more art, but not sculptures. Looking at different murals. A lot of our businesses don't like to look at those lovely, white utility boxes in front of their businesses and are wondering, you know, could we work with SRP to turn that into artistic pieces. And so again, that not just ties into the economic development quality of life but, of course, tourism. Also, the Fountain Hills Chamber of Commerce, monthly, has industry stakeholder meetings. And so putting together folks from retail, from the financial and health institutions. And so I'm attending those meetings as well. And it's really good to hear from these folks, especially the restaurants in retail because things, as we know, have been challenging during COVID and after. And so they're knowing firsthand, you know, the struggles and -- and what we can do. And of course, I've been saying, and some of you've heard, the biggest struggle, obviously, is work force. And so having to -- to really tackle that. That, of course, is a TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 6 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 6 of 24 national issue not just a Fountain Hills issue. And some of it being truly stemming from -- from COVID. We were forced to go inside the doors. We want to stay in our home. It's much more fun. We don't want to go to the office. So there's -- there's that part. But there's also looking at our demographics. And our average age is 58. And so in the coming months during summer, I know some people are taking a break and a recess, but I will be rolling up my sleeves, meeting with council and putting together, finally, that proposed economic development strategy. And the goal is, I'll be working with the chairman to bring that to -- to SPAC to get your guys' feedback before it goes to council to see if you want to provide comments, if you want to make an official recommendation. But we're going to have to start having hard conversations of, do we want to just stay as is, status quo? Do we want to be known as a retirement community? Or what I'm hearing is no. We want to be vibrant. We want to grow. And in order to do that, we are going to have to -- to change, sort of -- of our makeup. But it's also changing some of our -- our policies. And then last year, too, with the Business Advisory Group, I've been meeting again with current, but then also some retired business owners that, again, have relocated here, like Phil. Phil and I have had a conversation. So that when we have people knocking on the door to say, hey, we're interested in Fountain Hills, that I have folks that I can pick on to say, hey, do you mind taking someone on a tour of Fountain Hills. Or you know, they're sort of interested in bioscience. Tapping into people to say, okay, how are you successful? What do you see the, you know, success in Fountain Hills? So that is how we're tackling this. The next one, again, and not that first year, continue to improve the public health, well- being, and safety of our town. So here, it was just two years, I think, last month or earlier this month that Fountain Hills Medical Center celebrated their two years. They were here before council last week giving updates. And so sometimes this month, I know we're almost at the end of it, but they'll be providing telehealth services for our residents. And then they're also looking at, hopefully, coming soon, that they're going to be able to provide ambulance service. Last year on our health primary care and urgent care opened. And so again, just looking at that targeted industry of -- of how can we grow but finding TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 7 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 7 of 24 out from residents what else can we do to expand services to our residents and visitors. And then, of course, too, the town is officially a dementia-friendly community. And then, I'm just going to look to Mr. Trimble to help me, and I think there was the first Memory Café -- TRIMBLE: (Indiscernible). JACOBS: -- thank you -- that has -- that has occurred. And then, so again, even though these are in one year, a lot of this we see as -- as ongoing. It's not, oh, it's done, we're not going to do this next year. We'll continue to -- to focus on these efforts. And so with that, any questions I may answer? GARMAN: So thanks. We're going to open it up for discussion and -- and questions. And I already saw one for you out of the corner of my eye, but Cynthia. MAGAZINE: When is the first Memory Café and where is it located? JACOBS: That's where I'm gong to need help. I think it's occurred. So Mr. Trimble -- TRIMBLE: Yup. JACOBS: Okay. TRIMBLE: I'm not the expert either but I did ask a few questions because I didn't know what it was all about either. So it's a -- it's kind of like an ongoing event at the Community Center that is sponsored by the town. So they -- if I'm understanding it right, it's a place where both the -- the person that's having issues remembering things, maybe me right now, and their caregivers can go for a little bit of a respite, if you will, because, you know, it's just an ongoing thing that just wears on people that are particularly giving -- giving care. And also the folks with dementia issues. With memory issues. But they can go and gather and -- and just be together with people of the same issues and -- and kind of get away. Get out of the house for a while. I'm sure there's more to it and Jennifer Lyons and/or it'd be Sheryl Ponzo (ph.) over at the Community Center probably could brief us more on that. But that's kind of the idea, is a little bit of a respite for a couple of hours. JACOBS: And then Commissioner Magazine, we'll follow up. I can send you an email, just to make sure that -- is it happening the third Tuesday or, you know, of every month. I'll follow up on that. GARMAN: And you just -- there you go. How are you? TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 8 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 8 of 24 SVEUM: How's it going to be determined whether this is going to be a retirement community or a vibrant, diversified community? JACOBS: So Mr. Chair, Commissioners, really what -- what that's going to be is -- is our residents and through this proposed economic development strategy. So some things I've -- I've chatted with a few of you about. Or again, publicly is, for instance, taking that downtown area, looking at Palisades, we've had some challenges. So there's office that is available, where I could submit a proposal or get somebody in there, but we're having issues with the zoning. So for instance, bioscience or optics. Some of that leans more towards industrial, for instance. And so we're having to say, no. Because with some of these proposals, they're showing a growth plan. So we're going to have to look to see, to be more attractive, have the proper zoning. But then, looking at the downtown, there's going to have to be policies and investments made to make it vibrant. To make it attractive to young professionals. Some of that is sort of low hanging. Some of it is a lower cost. But some of it is a larger investment that we'll have to see if -- if over time, Council and the community are -- are supportive. And so again, it won't be overnight. It won't be in a year. But different strategies can make it a vibrant, growing downtown. SVEUM: Can I follow up on that? GARMAN: Yeah, I didn't, and one thing, if you have -- when you have the time, we have the strategic plan that -- that we helped draft. You know, it was approved by our Council, March of 2022. It's just over a year ago. So that contains, you know, four pillars, and one of those is economic development. But things like -- like you talked about is -- is throughout the strategic plan. And one of those, when --you kind of looked at brand image, that' sone -- how we going to image the town? So these -- these are topics that are in -- to help provide a guidepost in the strategic plan, but our council, you know, elections every two years, work on this, seems like every month. What's our town going to be? Right? And -- and the voters have a say in that through their elected members. And then, we just help provide guidance based on information that we gather from the town. But a lot of the tasks and the ways are -- are in the current strategic plan. And wherein the previous one -- and the previous one on ways to -- to do TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 9 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 9 of 24 what Amanda is talking about. Okay, now, you can follow up. Go ahead. SVEUM: Well, I think more from -- from a -- a residential angle of how people can be able to move here and find affordable homes or apartments. And what -- what can be done to enable that to happen. And I guess it goes back to how do people living here have a -- what's their vision of it to become? Is it another 10,000 people? Is it another 15,000? Is it -- is it staying as it is? That's -- that's my question. I don't have an answer. I'm just wondering how that type of surveying is done with the community. Is there going to be an effort to do that? I -- that's what I'm -- that's what I guess the larger question is. GARMAN: And we -- we are that vessel to a certain extent. When I say, "we are," we are -- we help as being part of that vessel, like, it's our charge to see what the pulse is of the town, do surveys, do workshops, do interactions, and see what the town is thinking. And in a kind of a nonpartisan way, put together an overarching plan. And we've touched on all those things, just within the last year. But you know, we'll talk a little bit about affordable housing and demographics and -- and all of that, that are a part of the town. But you -- you're exactly correct. Those are all issues that we -- that we deal with. JACOBS: Nope. That -- that was perfect. And then I know, Geoff and Phil were able to tell what -- attend one of our workshops where, too, we introduce the concept of work force housing. And then so far, I mean, it was a smaller group that attended but they -- they were interested. They're like, okay, we -- we get it. Because again, it's -- it's starting at sort of that higher foot level and -- and why we're proposing some of this. I think sometimes it's that that, also the root cause of -- of why are we asking? Why -- why are we changing? So but no, perfect. Perfect answer. Chairman Garman. GARMAN: Geoff, go ahead. YAZZETTA: Real quick, I just want to address something you were asking about. So the strategic plan, if you look at the council agendas and planning and zoning agendas, you'll see Guiding Principles. And those guiding principles stem from this plan. So you can see how it tethers into the decisions that Planning -- Planning and Zoning are making recommendations. But the decisions Council makes reflect what's in this plan. I mean, we advise them, we don't direct them. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 10 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 10 of 24 SVEUM: Sure. YAZZETTA: Yeah. I just want to fill you in on that. SVEUM: Of course. YAZZETTA: Cynthia, you had your light on first. So do you want to go? MAGAZINE: No. If you have more, go ahead -- YAZZETTA: Oh, okay. MAGAZINE: -- talk later. GARMAN: Go ahead, Geoff. YAZZETTA: Director Jacobs, great to see you. JACOBS: Great to see you. YAZZETTA: I've said it many times before, you bring a great energy to this position. And it's very important for the economic development and the vibrance in this town. I know we've had many discussions, you know, in person, at the events you've hosted. I wanted to ask about the utility boxes. Is that just an idea right now? Or is that something that is already in process? Because my colleagues and I in the City of Los Angeles, we did many, many utility boxes. And if you need, like, a primer on it, I'd be happy to furnish that information to you. JACOBS: Thank you. So Chairman, Commissioner, so I'll still say it's preliminary. We've had -- last year we started conversations with -- with SRP to -- and they -- they were open. And so then it was now getting some funding. So now it will be after June 6th. If the budget is adopted, we'll start having more formal conversations. And then, putting together a timeline to start seeing some of these things happen. Because again, it was, it's now been almost over a year. I remember my first day, starting to walk downtown, talking to the businesses and, like, could you do something about this? And of course, you know, you want to make a -- a good impression. So it's like, oh, rats, it's been over a year. But hopefully, in our first quarter of the budget, so July to September, we can start to see things happen. YAZZETTA: Sure. JACOBS: Build some excitement. YAZZETTA: Yeah. We used a -- JACOBS: Thank you. I appreciate -- I appreciate your help. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 11 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 11 of 24 YAZZETTA: -- of course. Yeah, we used grant funding, local businesses would sponsor them. And it's a great way to showcase local artists. I know there's a lot of local artists here in Fountain Hills. So just, you know, another one of those things that you notice while you're in town. It's like, hey, there's something special about this place. So excellent, thank you again for everything you do. JACOBS: Thank you. GARMAN: Awesome. Cynthia. MAGAZINE: I'm going to throw you a curve, perhaps. But I think that you heard Geoff mention the Discovery Center, the Dark Skys Discovery Center, the huge funding that we're now getting from the State. It's probably just a question of time before we begin to build it. JACOBS: Um-hum. MAGAZINE: I think the town needs to get ready for that and I'm wondering if you have anticipated that? This is probably something that would be addressed in the next plan, by the time this is built. But I think it wouldn't hurt for the person in charge of economic development to include the Center in your discussions with businesses you're trying to attract. I mean, because this is going to be a real star. [LAUGHTER] JACOBS: Yeah, pun intended, right, Cynthia? And so, yes, we are starting as -- as staff, so community services, our town manager, development services, public works. Again, it's going to take an army. We're starting to -- to plan for that. And then just last week, starting to have discussions again with the other piece of the puzzle, with the Dark Sky Association on programing. How can we make it more robust? What is similar? What's in alignment with the Discovery Center? What are things we need to plan for? And some of it's been timely. I've just, you know, Geoff's saying this -- this announcement. But also, we've found out just a couple weeks ago, the Arizona Office of Tourism, they had started a couple years ago through Governor Ducey, a visit Arizona initiative. So taking some of the ARPA funding, targeting it towards tourism, because that again was one of the largest industries hit by COVID 19. And how do we make our -- our marketing more robust? And so I asked the staff, we have a new governor, there's also a new director of AOT, is TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 12 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 12 of 24 this going to continue? And it is. And so this year we were able to secure $230,000. And we were able to give a portion of that, only 25,000, to sponsor the Dark Sky festival. But having conversations of -- beyond just the festival, what are ideas that -- just the Dark Sky, so the Board, the Association have, that we should start thinking about and maybe could secure more -- more grant funding. And so we'll be meeting with them again in another couple of weeks. And we also had a conversation last week with Mayor Dickey and Manager Goodwin of, it's also probably timely to have the Council and Board meet up in a workshop. And so we'll be planning that in the fall. So Commissioner, we're on it. MAGAZINE: (Indiscernible). JACOBS: You're welcome. GARMAN: To my left -- to my right, okay, so I have a few. Can you go back to the -- the actually, the begin, like, the second slide? Yeah, that -- JACOBS: Yeah. GARMAN: -- the Business Advisory Group. That was specifically in our plan. So is there a plan, and this has been espoused by some of the commissioners as far as topics to put on our agenda, going forward. And we -- we have a lengthy list. We try to get to them. Do we have a, you know, I would call it a downtown plan, you might call it an Avenue plan -- is there a plan for the future of our -- of the Avenue? JACOBS: So Chairman, there is, what I've been told -- GARMAN: And that's not accusatory, that is just -- JACOBS: -- oh, no. GARMAN: -- does one exist? JACOBS: Nope. Yup. GARMAN: Because if one does exist, my next question is going to be, can you come brief us on it at some point? But go ahead. JACOBS: So -- so there is a plan. It looks like it was completed in '08 or '09. And we also know what happened during those years. The great recession. So there's conversations, I know some folks are, like, we'll, let's continue -- continue to work on that. But I think again, over the summer, having the conversations of, could it perhaps do TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 13 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 13 of 24 a refresh? Is that something we can tackle internally? Would we have to invest some dollars to update that? And then to go on, you know, to what you said, what Phil said, of -- of serving more -- having more workshops. Again, I know that that was done. But '08, '09 again, we've just -- the climate has really changed. So but there -- there is. And maybe we talk of, well, do we bring that or -- or do we wait to see if there's an update. GARMAN: That's interesting. Is -- as we, you know, we turn the clock from this summer into this fall, we're actually, you know, looking forward and actively beginning to refresh the plan that was just approved last year. Because that's what we do, right? Look to the future. So it'd be, I think, really helpful and -- and we would all like to hear, maybe, what it looked like back then or what your thoughts are going in the future. Whenever that comes about, you'll find a welcome audience here. And the invite is always open for you to come back. JACOBS: No, absolutely, we're happy to do that. And I'll bring John Wesley with me, our Development Services Director. GARMAN: Yeah. JACOBS: He has more knowledge. GARMAN: And what about the -- the Shae Corridor plan? Is that -- now that is actually a plan, right? Is that something that can be briefed to a -- to a commission? JACOBS: I think so. I'm going to defer a little bit to Mr. Trimble. Do you -- GARMAN: The Shae Corridor. TRIMBLE: I'm not sure on that. JACOBS: Okay. we'll have to follow up. And just to make sure I'm understanding what type of a plan that -- is it more, like, road infrastructure or again -- GARMAN: (Indiscernible). JACOBS: -- okay, economic development. GARMAN: It was, you know, there was a plan that -- that was realized what's there now. And then, I think, I believe Grady had told us that there's another -- a plan as far as where we go from where we are now. JACOBS: Okay. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible). TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 14 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 14 of 24 JACOBS: I know, I'm not -- yeah, I'm not quite sure. GARMAN: Okay. JACOBS: Mr. Chair, we'll get back to you. GARMAN: I think there is. I think it involves housing and businesses and -- and other things. Repurposing some of the, you know, the empty business -- businesses that are there, so. JACOBS: Okay. Was that the Swaback? Swaback Plan? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible). JACOBS: That's -- yeah, that's the downtown specific area plan. So with the Shae, I'll -- I'll look into that. GARMAN: Okay. JACOBS: Unless, too, we're thinking about the different conversations that has been had with the Four Peaks Plaza, which I call the Target Center, or Tarje (ph.). UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That might be it. GARMAN: That might be it? Just a different name? JACOBS: Yeah. GARMAN: Yeah. JACOBS: But we'll follow up. We'll look into that. GARMAN: And then, as -- as we go forward, just more of a statement, too, is, you know, we have the four strategic priorities in our plan now, but we're looking to refresh those over the coming year. So we'll see. I -- I imagine economics will -- will still be very strongly represented in that plan, for sure. But it had, you know, that encompasses sometimes in demographics and -- and like you were saying, how . how to get kind of workers into Fountain Hills and -- and but there's a democratic process. When people vote, you know, they'd always kind of make sure we're going in the right direction. Let's put it that way. Changes our course. Alters our course. Right? So I just wanted you to know that as we go forward, we will probably reconnect with you because economic development is always important. It always has been in the plan. So we need to continue to stay close with you. And please, if you, if something comes up, please come and talk to us because we're working on the next plan. And we want to help you. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 15 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 15 of 24 JACOBS: Yeah. No, absolutely. And we want to make sure there's alignment. GARMAN: Yes. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible). GARMAN: Yeah, Phil. SVEUM: I expected you to be at every meeting. So -- I'm kidding. [LAUGHTER] YAZZETTA: My question is, part comments, part question, but I've always felt the school system is a vital part of economic development and vitality of a community. How are the school -- how is the school district going to be kind of intertwined with this commission? That we can work together. I mean, it seems that there's -- there's certainly a strong effort to improve schools, grow the schools. How can we work together with them to see that that can happen? Because every -- each helps each other, right? I mean, the better the schools, the better the economic vitality. The better the schools, the better -- and it -- and it continues to climb. So how are they involved? What piece of the pie are they involved with this -- with what we're doing? JACOBS: Chairman, do you want to start with that as -- the -- what you guys are doing? And I can answer -- GARMAN: So that -- the background that the -- the school, kind of like the sanitation district is separate from the town government here. Right? So -- so they do work together. And we did meet with school board when we were devising the last plan to talk about. And I agree with -- with everything you said. And we do need ideas to try to work together. I do know the superintendent there is -- is working with the town as far as just some things that he's brought about. He -- he's looking instituting internships with the students. So in order to graduate, you have to have so many hours interning in a business around town. Right? We also have the -- the vocational school that kids go to. So there's a lot of opportunity there is what I'm -- what I'm trying to say. So I guess more -- more to follow on that as far as we're concerned. We -- we are briefed by members of the -- of the school board. And we brief them as well. So we do have a relationship. We -- we've usually talked to them offline and not, like, they would -- they TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 16 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 16 of 24 normally would not come and brief us. We usually meet with them in the interim and have more of a -- a -- what do I want to call it, nonofficial meetings with the school board. That's how it's been over the last decade. JACOBS: And then also -- GARMAN: (Indiscernible). JACOBS: -- within by here of being here, first, you know, there was transition with the superintendent. The, of course, the election and -- and change of the Board. And in trying to figure out, okay, what are we going to do with the current, you know, floor plans if you will, that we have. Are we going to consolidate? But you're absolutely right. As they're navigating their plans, they need to be working closely with the town and economic development. Because again, that's the quality-of- life piece. And if you're attracting the young -- the young families, it's, you know, we want the kids to be staying in -- in the school system. And I think tackling, I have heard, don't quote me, that perhaps 500 students actually leave Fountain Hills and are going to -- to other school districts or --or charter schools. I think also, finding out, like, what's the -- wat's the why behind that? The how -- how can we keep them here? And then having it part of our -- our marketing plan. MAGAZINE: Mr. Chairman. GARMAN: Go ahead, Cynthia. MAGAZINE: With the development of the current plan, there was a small -- we broke up into subcommittees. There was one subcommittee, very, very concerned about trying to bring the schools together with the -- with town. And reality set in. We could just do so much. But we spoke with a member of the PTA. We had tried to incorporate some of that into the plan. But we have to be careful. Because it is a separate entity. Just to let you know. GARMAN: That's all the questions I had. I don't see anybody else's light on. So -- JACOBS: Thanks so much for the opportunity. GARMAN: Thank you very much for briefing us. And -- and, you know, just to reiterate, you're always welcome coming back to kind of get a sense -- either to brief us on what's going on or to give us a sense of what's going on or to ask us to help in any way. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 17 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 17 of 24 JACOBS: Yeah, absolutely. GARMAN: Always there. JACOBS: Happy to. Thank you. GARMAN: All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. So before we move on to agenda item 6, Angela, I wanted to make sure we made a statement about the minutes from last month because we didn't approve the minutes and I'm -- I'm thinking that maybe the -- the transcript not ready? PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Correct. Correct. They've been behind so we have yet to receive those yet. But so those will be on the June 28th meeting for approval. And hopefully along with the meeting minutes from today's commission meeting, too. So they'll be double. And what I'll do, as soon as I get those, I'll just send those out in advance, so you have time to look them over, okay. GARMAN: Right. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Sorry about that, my apologies. GARMAN: And I know I don't have a vote. And I don't know what that contract looks like. But I would love to go back to the way it was before we had a verbatim transcript. And that is, yes, verbatim transcript into the microphone. [LAUGHTER] GARMAN: Okay. Okay, we're going to move on to agenda item 6, which is we're going to look at the -- the vice chair and the chair for the coming year. So we're going to start off with the vice chair and I was going to hand it over to my partner, Bernie. HOENLE: Sort of picking up on a model that -- that we used previously with the planning commission that I've been on -- working on the last plan. We rotated some of the of the internal leadership positions around. So what I'm offering up to do is change out the vice chair's position to another individual. And to pick up, I don't plan on not continuing or not working or doing anything else, but I think the leadership role is good to move around. And so that's what I'm asking for approval right now. And to resign from that position and then after that's approved, then I would like to make a nomination. GARMAN: All right. I don't think -- first of all, thank you. Thank you, Bernie. I don't think we have to make a -- a -- an action for you to resign. Right? I mean, we reappoint TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 18 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 18 of 24 these every year. HOENLE: Right. GARMAN: So I think we're reappointing for next year. We're not resigning. And so I don't think we need to make a motion on your resigning is what I'm saying. So I think, if you wanted to say anything else and then follow up with the -- with a motion, that would be -- that would be fine. HOENLE: Okay. Sounds good to me. GARMAN: Yeah. HOENLE: Now, do we need to make the appointment of a replacement as a formal motion? GARMAN: Yes. HOENLE: Okay. I move that the new vice chair for Strategic Planning Advisory Commission be Geoff Yazzetta. GARMAN: So Bernie, there's a -- a motion on the table. Is there a second? MAGAZINE: Second. GARMAN: So I hear a second. Thank you, Cynthia. Is there a discussion among the councilmembers about the -- the motion to vote on Geoff Yazzetta as the new vice chair going forward? Any discussion? GARMAN: Yes, Cynthia. MAGAZINE: Here, here. [LAUGHTER] GARMAN: Your lights on -- nope? Left to right, I see no other discussion topics so we can move on to a vote. Right? So correct -- all in favor of Geoff Yazzetta being the vice chair going through the next -- next year, say -- say aye. ALL: Aye. GARMAN: Those opposed -- I think that was unanimous, can say nay. I think it was unanimous though. Correct? And that's five, five to zero, unanimous. All right. Thank you very much, Geoff. Geoff, got any comments? YAZZETTA: I do. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, fellow commissioners. I appreciate your confidence in my ability in a leadership capacity. Been here in Fountain TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 19 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 19 of 24 Hills about 18 months and I don't plan on leaving. This is a wonderful town and I'm looking forward to seeing this current plan forward and helping develop the next plan so that we can help Fountain Hills reach its fullest potential. So thank you, everyone. GARMAN: So -- so that's good. We're done with the unanimous decision, and we move on to the next agenda item which is agenda item number 7, which is the appointment of new Commission Chairman. Are there any motions on the table? YAZZETTA: Yes. I move to reappoint Patrick Garman as Chair -- MAGAZINE: Second. YAZZETTA: -- of this Commission. GARMAN: All right. So we have a motion from Geoff for me to remain as Chair. I thought I heard a -- is there a second? MAGAZINE: Yes. GARMAN: Cynthia seconded. Is there a discussion on me, Patrick Garman remaining as the chair over the -- over the next year? MAGAZINE: I would just like to say I think it would be a terrific leadership team. The experience that Geoff had in California; he brings so much to the table. Plus his enthusiasm for being here. It seems that Geoff belongs to everything here. He's joined all of it. So he will be well informed. And I have watched him over the last year that he's been on the commission. He does a good job. He does his homework. Patrick, it goes without saying that, you know I've been applauding your leadership with this Commission, that you have revitalized it. You have kept it going during the summer. Sort of like a mini- or maxi-leadership academy. And I think that that's been very good. Particularly for any of our new members. So with that, I just want to say thank you to both of you for being willing to do this. GARMAN: All right. I see no other discussion, okay. [LAUGHTER] GARMAN: Everybody's prepped and ready. So then we'll -- we'll move on to the vote. So all those in favor of Patrick Garman remaining as the chairman over the next year say aye. ALL: Aye. GARMAN: Those opposed. Looks like it was unanimous. Thank you very much. I TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 20 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 20 of 24 accept. I do -- I would say that Geoff, you do need to bring the coffee from now on to the -- to these meetings, at least. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible). GARMAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So those two agenda items, Angelia, we all good with both of those? PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Yes. GARMAN: Set for the next year. Awesome. Okay, so move on to agenda item 8, which is comments from the Chair. By the way, I -- I know I'm going to make some comments and if anybody has some final comments, you -- you're more than welcome. Usually, we're racing, you know, to get done before the hours. But we're -- we have some time today. Which is not -- not normal. So some of the comments I have. I -- I was able to meet, if you've known over the last year, I've been reaching out to the other commission chairs here in Fountain Hills, to have conversations with them and to see if, you know, they could brief our commission on goings on in their commission and maybe the plans that they have, like we had for the McDowell Mountain Preserve. That was awesome. And that I can then go and brief their commission as well on the strategic plan for the entire town. So this month, a couple of weeks ago, I met with the Community Services Commission Chair, Natalie Verela (ph.). I think that's how you pronounce her last name, Verela. So Natalie was great. She's been here a while. She's very happy to talk. She does want to come visit -- and brief us, community service, because we have an awesome Community Service Director and interim Town Manager, I guess. And -- and also the commission, we have a great parks system and have great planning to go along with that. So she has asked me to come and brief her commissioner first. And then she's going to come brief ours. So I think we can expect her here, maybe August, September time frame, and tell us what's going on in her commission. Which is awesome. And then I wanted to mention, really quickly, we -- we're really -- I'm starting to look into our plan for next year and starting to put pieces together on what we're going to do. So when we're sitting here next year at this time, we've accomplished something that we set out. So I -- I'm a big believer that if you plan something it tends to happen. It might not be the outcome that you envisioned, but something happens when -- when there's a TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 21 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 21 of 24 plan. So I wanted to start putting together ideas and kind of something, electrons on a PowerPoint slide on what we're going to do throughout the year so that we accomplish our goals. So that will be laid out, I'll be talking to probably each one of you individually and trying to put that together into a plan that we can look at and discuss next month in the June meeting, to give everybody a chance to kind of think of where we might be going over the next year. As far as strategic planning goes, you know it starts with the big, whatever you call it, overriding pillars, strategic priorities. We have four strategic priorities. The previous plan from 2017 had five strategic priorities. So it -- it' s not in stone. Usually less is better. But I think it's -- we need to start and refresh those priorities over the next year. And the way we refresh those priorities is not just, hey what do I think or what do you think? It's actually out and talking to people in Fountain Hills. People vote, people live here, people pay taxes. So that's going to be the plan throughout next year, is to see if we can divide into two or three groups and go out and work to get the pulse, to get the opinion, to get data on what the people that -- that live and work in Fountain Hills believe are overriding strategic priorities might be over the next five to ten years. So get ready, because we'll all have assignments heading into the next year. Okay. And some of those, as you think, and as we move into next -- just the next month, think of ways that we can gauge the -- the ideas that the people in Fountain Hills have. In other words, surveys, in-person workshops. Right? Taking an opinion poll somehow, maybe in person at a festival. Some ways to be able to get out, talk to people so that when we're here next -- next year at this time we can say, hey, we think with a certain confidence that these are going to be our strategic priorities going forward. And this is why we think that. Because we talked to people, and this is what they told us. Okay. Next -- next month also on the agenda we are, hopefully, going to have a presentation from David Pock. He's the Chief Financial Officer for the Town, again, on the implementation of our strategic plan which -- which is really great, and I appreciate the -- the Town folks coming to talk and the directors. It's -- it's wonderful, actually. And also, I think John Wesley might, might as well. Right, Angelia? I think he might be on -- on the calendar. So we can look forward next month to have those presentations TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 22 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 22 of 24 from the Town. And to talk about -- talk about what, how you think we should work throughout the next year to start refreshing our plan as we go forward. All right. That was a lot from me. Any other comments? Bernie. HOENLE: Just like to add a positive from being back on the Commission. And that's being -- staying engaged. Because when we were on it last time, we put the plan on the shelf and took a big break. And we didn't even have any meetings or anything for a while. So -- so keeping it moving along, bringing in speakers, starting to look at a year down the road now, and getting some of the metrics back -- where are we on the plan? Is it working? Do we need to make any tweaks. Because a plan needs to be revised as it's required. It doesn't need to sit on the shelf for ten years and say it didn't work. So if there's something else that we need to see to -- to do it as it goes along. So staying engaged is great. Topics and the speakers, we've had plenty of conversations about that. And trying to set a direction is probably the key thing that's been missing a lot. It's been documenting what we're doing today. And not really where things are headed. And so taking a look at trends. Some of the things that Amanda brought up. Things have changed in the last 10, 15 years. So we need to be able to approach that. And even as -- as Phil mentioned, there are a lot of different touchpoints in this town. There's the Chamber, there's the schools, the 501(c)(3)'s, volunteers, I mean, there's so much augmentation on -- on people and roles that they play, the PTO, there -- there's lots of different power groups. And they all have an idea of what's going on. And sometimes we just go past one another. So it -- it's really good to keep in touch with them. Another example is what used to be called Vision Fountain Hills. That was a whole other organization that was almost parallel to our planning group here. But it was a private group. So if it's still there or not, it probably doesn't matter, but it -- we need to know about it and to see what sort of efforts are going on. So there are lots of things that we could get into. But again, I -- I think I brought it up at a previous meeting, we're a planning group and an advisory group, not an operational group. But we need to be looking five to ten years out. And not be restricted by the current budget. So that's my two cents. And I like being here. GARMAN: Thanks, Bernie. Phil. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 23 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 23 of 24 SVEUM: I've heard, I guess a lot of potential guests coming before us, but I didn't hear the councilmembers nor the mayor. And I do think it's important. They are the policymakers in this community. It's good to, whether it's, I guess offsite, like coffees and so on, which, I've done. Just to learn a little more about what their vision is. But I think at the end of the day, they're the ones that are going to accept or reject any product that comes out of this Commission. And I would like, I guess, their involvement and input during this process as we're -- we're having presentations made by staff, whether it's from the financial standpoint or the -- I don't want to call it the political standpoint, because I don't -- these are community server -- servants as far as I'm concerned, in that role of alders and mayor. But I think it is important that they come and talk with us a little bit about what their vision -- by the way, they are a great conduit to what people are thinking in this community. They are the ones getting the phone calls, the emails, the -- the stops on the street to -- whether to say thanks or to complain. Right? Or read the paper. Letters to the Editor. Whatever it might be. But I -- I think that their involvement is -- is good during this -- during this process. Again, that's just my opinion. GARMAN: Thanks. Cynthia, no. MAGAZINE: (Indiscernible). GARMAN: Well, I -- I know that, you know, the political winds will shift at least two more times, right? We're going to get a new mayor. We're going to have at least two more elections before the next plan comes out. So and we do work with the council members. I don't think you're going to see them come in and brief us or -- but I do think that we will be able to interact with them and hear what they have to say. That -- I will tell you that just being here for a little while, there's a thing called Open Meeting Laws in Arizona, which there probably is, you know, throughout the United States. Very -- very touchy. Very -- I'm now cognizant that this is transcribing but open meeting laws are important. And we always need to make sure we have a quorum, and that business is done out in the open in an official, right, meeting. So things we talk about, if we want to have a -- an opinion from the -- from the Council, we do that in either their open session, I go and brief them, or we go and brief them during their open session. Or TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 24 of 24 MAY 24, 2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING Page 24 of 24 we do go and brief them once a year. They have a retreat in February and -- and we go there and talk to them for that day as well. So those are kind of opportunities. But we always kind of got to do it in an official meeting where quorums are present. Right? That's -- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Absolutely. GARMAN: -- that's what I've been accustomed to. Okay. Anything else? Okay. Thank you all very much. Thank you all. Thank you for sitting in, by the way. Thank you very much for your presentation today. I'm going to go ahead and adjourn this -- the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission for Fountain Hills today. So thank you all very much. And we'll see you next month on June 28th, the Wednesday before the Fourth of July weekend. All right? Thank you. [MEETING ADJOURNED AT 4:52 P.M.] ITEM 7. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS STAFF REPORT    Meeting Date: 06/28/2023 Meeting Type: Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Agenda Type:                   Submitting Department: Administration Prepared by: Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant to Manager, Mayor/Council Staff Contact Information: Request to Strategic Planning Advisory Commission (Agenda Language):  PRESENTATION: Yearly Review of the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission by Patrick Garman, Chair. Staff Summary (Background) Attachments SPAC Yearly Review Presentation  Form Review Form Started By: Angela Padgett-Espiritu Started On: 06/27/2023 01:50 PM Final Approval Date: 06/27/2023  Fountain Hills Strategic Planning Advisory Commission 2023-2024 SPAC History Review Town Surveys Past Workshops No Implementation Monitoring Sporadic Meetings Work in Progress: Will Add to This as We Go Past Approved Plans 2022, 2017, …… Vision Fountain Hills Surveys 2022-2023 Exposure to Strategic Issues 24 August 2022 •Community Services Update by Rachael Goodwin •Chamber of Commerce Presentation by Betsy LaVoie 28 September 2022 •Environmental Plan Update by John Wesley •Biophilic presentation by Jeny Davis 26 October 2022 •Young Community presentation by Betsy LaVoie 16 November 2022 •Arizona Alliance for Livable Communities presentation by Kenneth Steel 27 July 2022 •Economic Development Director Update by Amanda Jacobs •EPCOR Water Conservation presentation by Doug Dunham 22 June 2022 •Chief Financial Officer Update by David Pock 25 May 2022 •Environmental Plan Update by John Wesley 25 January 2023 •International Dark Sky Discovery Center presentation by Joe Bill 22 February 2023 •McDowell Mountain Preservation Commission presentation by Chair Scott Grzybowski 22 March 2023 •Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office presentation by Sgt. Philip Asiedu 24 May 2023 •Economic Development Director Update by Amanda Jacobs Financial Economic Infrastructure Health, Well-Being, Safety 26 April 2023 •Fire Department presentation by Chief Dave Ott Timeline: 2023 -2027 Implementation Familiarization + Strategic Priorities + Signature Strategies + Supporting Tasks Editing, Socialization, Submission, Approval March 2022 Plan Approval 2023-2024 2022-2023 2024-2025 2025-2026 2026-2027 2023-2024 –Goal Reaffirm Strategic Priorities Surveys Non-Profit / Service Organizations Workshops Council Retreat / Executive Work Session Split into Workgroups:Adhering to AZ Open Meeting Laws 3x2 (Chair Floating) 2x3 (Chair Floating) 2x2 (Chair and Vice Chair Floating) Presence at Town Fairs/Events Town Staff Sensing Session Ways to Garner Citizen Input: ITEM 8. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS STAFF REPORT    Meeting Date: 06/28/2023 Meeting Type: Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Agenda Type:                   Submitting Department: Administration Prepared by: Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant to Manager, Mayor/Council Staff Contact Information: Request to Strategic Planning Advisory Commission (Agenda Language):  DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION:  Future Agenda Topics SPAC 2023-2024 Work Plan Staff Summary (Background) Form Review Form Started By: Angela Padgett-Espiritu Started On: 05/24/2023 04:11 PM Final Approval Date: 05/24/2023  ITEM 9. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS STAFF REPORT    Meeting Date: 06/28/2023 Meeting Type: Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Agenda Type:                   Submitting Department: Administration Prepared by: Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant to Manager, Mayor/Council Staff Contact Information: Request to Strategic Planning Advisory Commission (Agenda Language):  COMMENTS FROM THE CHAIRMAN Staff Summary (Background) Form Review Form Started By: Angela Padgett-Espiritu Started On: 05/17/2023 10:26 AM Final Approval Date: 05/17/2023  ITEM 10. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS STAFF REPORT    Meeting Date: 06/28/2023 Meeting Type: Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Agenda Type:                   Submitting Department: Administration Prepared by: Angela Padgett-Espiritu, Executive Assistant to Manager, Mayor/Council Staff Contact Information: Request to Strategic Planning Advisory Commission (Agenda Language):  NEXT MEETING DATE: Wednesday, August 23, 2023. Staff Summary (Background) Form Review Form Started By: Angela Padgett-Espiritu Started On: 05/17/2023 10:26 AM Final Approval Date: 05/17/2023