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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCSAC.2025.0324.MinutesCOMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MARCH 24, 2025, VERBATIM MEETING MINUTES Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 1 - TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MARCH 24, 2025 The Community Services Advisory Commission convened a regular meeting at 5:00 p.m. at 16705 E. Avenue of the Fountains in an open and public session. Present: Chair Carey Reddick II; Vice Chair Rory Wilson; Commissioner Barnes; Commissioner Craig Rudolphy; Commissioner Ron Ruppert; Commissioner Natalie Varela; Youth Commissioner Shreyaan Nath (Arrived at 5:10 pm) Staff Present: Community Services Director Kevin Snipes, Executive Assistant Patti Lopuszanski COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MARCH 24, 2025, VERBATIM MEETING MINUTES Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 2 - WILSON: It is 5 pm, and I will call this meeting to order. Patti, can we get a Roll Call? LOPUSZANSKI: Of course. Chair Reddick is absent. Vice Chair Wilson? WILSON: Here. LOPUSZANSKI: Commissioner Barnes? BARNES: Here. LOPUSZANSKI: Commissioner Rudolphy? RUDOLPHY: Here. LOPUSZANSKI: Commissioner Rupert? RUPPERT: Here. LOPUSZANSKI: Commissioner Varela? VARELA: Here. LOPUSZANSKI: Youth Commissioner Shreyaan Nath will be arriving late today. WILSON: Thank you. A Call to the Public, which I don't believe there's anyone here. Reports by Commissioners. Does anyone have a report? RUPPERT: I don't have anything this week. RUDOLPHY: I would just like to say I volunteered along with Rory at the Irish Fest. Are we going to get a little update on crowd size or whatever later in your report? SNIPES: Certainly. RUDOLPHY: Perfect. Thank you. WILSON: And I also wanted to compliment you guys on Irish Fest. I mean, that's like my favorite event of the year. I enjoyed the setup this year, especially with the centralized ticket tent. I think that worked well. I'm not sure how you guys thought it went, but I thought it was a good improvement. So, thank you, guys. Anyone else? All right, we will move on to item number five, which is Consideration and Possible Action for the Approval of the Community Services Advisory Commission, February 24, 2025, Verbatim Meeting Minutes. Did everyone have a chance to review? Can I get a motion, please? RUDOLPHY: Move to approve the minutes of February 24, 2025. WILSON: And second? RUPPERT: I'll second. WILSON: Everyone say Aye. ALL: Aye. LOPUSZANSKI: Motion passes 5-0. WILSON: Thank you. Our next item is the Update Tree Protection Ordinance. SNIPES: We'll try the right one. So, we are currently getting ready to go to the Town Council with what we're waiting for some of the verbiage to get back to us from legal. We met with them this morning and concluded what we were looking for from them, and we should have that back, hopefully today or tomorrow, and then we'll get it on the next agenda for council approval. WILSON: Do you need any of us to, like, submit a comment card in support of that, Kevin? COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MARCH 24, 2025, VERBATIM MEETING MINUTES Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 3 - SNIPES: Yeah, I think that would be good, or we can do one as the group would be fine too. I think you guys have already voted on it, so I think we can use that as well, and that would be just fine. WILSON: I think that would be perfect, so we can show our support for that. SNIPES: Yes, that'd be great. Thanks. WILSON: Any other comments or questions on the Tree Protection Ordinance? Thank you, Kevin. The next item is an Update on Benches and Swings. SNIPES: All right, so we included some images in the packet of the benches and swings. There are two of them that are on the big screen up there to kind of give you an idea of how it looks because the vertical pictures are kind of tough to visualize and see exactly what they do look like. They're down around Page 27; it looks like you can see them. I've been on these guys a lot, trying to get them here because this has been done for a while. They have a part that is manufactured that they mount with that they haven't been able to get. They got bought out by a new company in the middle of this, and so it created some issues. I'm hoping to hear something by the end of the week that they're shipped because I know they're done; the only thing they need is the mounting brackets, and that does not decrease the frustration that I've been living with, so hopefully, these will go in soon. These are going to be awesome. We'll have two of these down by Fountain Park, and then we have benches for the new Pleasantville Park there as well, not Pleasantville Panorama Park as well. And picnic tables for Pleasantville are in this order, so I'm anxious to get all this in and allow Patti to start swinging on her swing. That's, frankly, the most important part. Yeah. So, hopefully, these get here; they ship from Ohio. It takes about a week to get them out here, and as soon as they get here, they'll be ready for installation. So doesn't take much time to get them up and running, but we got to get them in the state. It is critical to get them mounted. WILSON: Well, we appreciate the stress that you go through, Kevin. I was looking at these earlier, and I thought it was so cool that you guys were able to incorporate Arizona wildlife and stuff into it. And I like how it's kind of art to provide just a little bit of shade. But yeah, does anyone else have any questions or comments? RUDOLPHY: Are what we've seen the bases that the bench is going to go on top of, or is it just the structure that's going to be? SNIPES: Yes, it's just the structure they bolt directly to the concrete that we already have poured out there. And the artist that did it has an aunt and an uncle that live here in town, so we compared photos she had taken. She had been to Fountain Park, took a whole bunch of pictures while she was here a few years ago, before we ever had this conversation. We selected her based on seeing some of the art that she had done, having no idea that she had any connection. And lo and behold, our favorite artist also was, had been out here and had a whole bunch of pictures, and I think she did a really good job with it. The idea was to incorporate the whole feel of Fountain Park in a swing setting. And I think she did a really good job of capturing it. And both the plant life as well as the animals that we see out there all the time. So, I think they did a really good job as well, but I want to see it live. WILSON: Thank you, Kevin, and welcome, Shreyaan. (Arrived at 5:10 pm). Our next item is the Arizona State Puzzle Donor Program Centennial Pavilion Update. COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MARCH 24, 2025, VERBATIM MEETING MINUTES Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 4 - SNIPES: We're getting closer to our next order. We're at six, pushing the seventh right now. We have one that we're trying to figure out some verbiage. Apparently, Presbyterian is a big word and so fitting it on the puzzle pieces is creating some challenges, along with what else they wanted on there. So, we're working with them right now to come up with some solutions for that one, and hopefully that comes through, and then that will give us seven of the 10 that we're looking to get to place our next round of orders. RUPPERT: Kevin, do you think a representative from the town to set up shop for that Dark Star Festival with the activity that's going to go on in the Community Center would help? SNIPES: We wouldn't do that because it's not our event, so going over and plugging into it. No, there's a separation there for a reason. So yeah, we would not have anything set up for that one. WILSON: Thank you, Kevin. Our next Update is from the Mayor's Youth Council. NATH: Hello, everyone. I’m now back just ran into a bit of traffic on the way here. But at the Mayor's Youth Council, I couldn’t attend last week's meeting because I was out of town, so I gave the update virtually. But this week, or this month, rather, we had a bunch of events, like our big one was Irish Fest. We were in the kids’ section, where we didn't really man the inflatables, but we oversaw the scavenger hunt that was going around. And we were just in charge of directing people where they should go, where they shouldn't go, just general event guidance and stuff like that, and trying to make it lively for the children. And that was our big one. We also had right after the February meeting, we had teen takeover. That event was a huge success this year, where last year we had like 80 or so people, but this year we had like 120, so that event turned out to be a whole lot bigger and with a whole lot less funding too. So maybe in future events where we do have more funding, we could make that event a whole lot bigger than it was this year and make it much more of an event that may attract people who weren't initially going to attend the event. So those were the two big things that came from the Mayor’s Youth Council. Our next event that's coming up is Eggstravaganza, which I believe, around Easter. I don't know the exact date, but it should be on the calendar, and I’m just trying to get that word out. WILSON: Awesome. Thank you, Shreyaan. Any questions or comments? Cool. Our next item is an Update on Future Agenda Items and Speakers. Does anyone have any ideas? RUPPERT: Well, Patti sent out a tour coming up. Everybody, keep that in mind and RSVP back to Patti for that. VARELA: Desert Vista, right? SNIPES: Correct. RUDOLPHY: So, how was the last one? I missed the last one. RUPPERT: It was really good. We were there, probably two years apart, maybe two and a half, and just the changes in that short amount of time, and what's happening in the future, and the detailed work that's going into it, are really all coming together. And as Kevin says, that's his favorite park. I remember that, so it gets special attention. VARELA: It seems, though, like the usage is up dramatically there for even for events, but then, I mean, for pickleball and everything. COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MARCH 24, 2025, VERBATIM MEETING MINUTES Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 5 - SNIPES: Yeah, that park has had the most significant funding and improvements, for sure, since I've been here 10 years now, and to see it go from a park that never had any residents at it to there's always people there. And you know, I was there not too long ago on a random Wednesday, and there were 25 cars parked throughout the different parking lots because there are four parking lots now that are there. And it was like one o'clock in the afternoon, so it wasn't a big rush hour, and it was all the amenities that the playground, the pickleball courts, the tennis courts, you know, the people walking their dogs, kids riding bikes. It's just a different scene than it was years ago, for sure, and adding all the amenities is greatly reduced our vandalism and graffiti. We're not seeing near the regularity that we saw there in the past, either, which is a tribute to it being so active that it's tough to get away with anything there without someone calling and getting you in trouble. And we've had several that we did prosecute over the years and won. And so, hopefully, the word's out, and it continues to stay that way. It's one where you just never know what the next group could come through and decide that they want to be vandals again, and we've got to start over. But for right now, it's been, it's been fantastic over there lately, and adding that restroom was a big key to activating that side and keeping it nice and busy and more usable for our residents. RUDOLPHY: And I can add something. It's not a definitive answer yet, but it appears that the school district is going to bulldoze the building to make way. It is up for sale, along with two other school board properties, and the real estate broker that they hired is not interested in trying to bring another school into that building and to keep it from being used as a school to compete with the existing schools, in other words, a charter school that they are pretty much going it's almost for sure that they're going to bulldoze the building and just have vacant land and then probably turn into residence homes. WILSON: Thank you, Kevin and Craig. Our next item is Review and Discussion of Upcoming Events and Volunteer Opportunities. SNIPES: All right, so I'll start with Irish Fest. So, through AI, which checks phone activity, it can show us where people come from, where they go to after the event, as well as. Is what's going on at the event. And this year, we were at 10.3 1000 people who were at the park for the event. We narrowed that down to just the window that the event is going on, which is up close to 3,000 people from last year, which is exactly what we were thinking when we were out there. It felt like it was about 3,000 more. A couple of the interesting things, I think, as well, is that there's a criteria where we use 1% equals 80 people out of that group. And so, after the event, Phil's Filling Station had 3.5% of the people who were at our event went there and stayed for 30 minutes or more. Fountain Festival, well, the Avenue had 2.7%, Saddle Bronc had 1.8%, and I just got rid of the thing I was looking at. Hang on for a second. Sofrito’s had 1.3%, Bone Haus had 1.3% Goodwill had 1.1%, which is interesting that a bunch of people went to Goodwill after the event. Oka Sushi was 1% and Sun Ridge Golf Course had .5% so it just kind of shows that the events not only are productive for the event, but they also help the businesses around now, certainly not all those people are all, you know, they it's who left from the event and went somewhere else. And so that's what it's tracking. But it shows that there's a positive influence on the town and the tax dollars that are here. So, we were excited about how the event ran. It's the first time we've gone up the hill. It was nerve-racking making that decision because if we had the same number COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MARCH 24, 2025, VERBATIM MEETING MINUTES Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 6 - of people, it probably would look small. Instead, there were 3,000 more people. We were like, thank goodness we didn't have everything tucked down into the park the way that we've always done it, because there's no way we could have handled that kind of load of people in that area. The rain made an interesting challenge again, but we were able to overcome that, and everything ran smoothly as far as the public saw. We certainly had some issues. We always do, but I think it was one of our best runs. We were out of there, and with the increased space size, we were still out of there around the same time that we normally had been. So that was good. It’s a big event for the small staff that we have to put on, and we couldn't do it even, couldn't even think about doing it without the help of all the volunteers and staff who volunteered to come out and work on the event. Only staff can handle money and commission members. So, we rely on staff to be there, to run a lot of the money-making side of things. But overall, I think it ran smoothly. We've had conflicting reports on people liking the ticket, not liking the ticket, but I think it functions better with it being a single 10. I agree with you 100% on that. Next year, we're thinking about adding another beer section, because our beer lines got too long. One of my pet peeves is long lines, and we added free food trucks, I think, this year, and that's still the lines were crazy long. All the food vendors were extremely excited about how much money they made. But I don't like it when our residents must wait that long, and the people who come to our events have to wait in lines. They were 30-40 minutes long in some of the food lines. But overall, everybody was happy with how it ran. We got nominal complaints about the lines. It's more of a me thing than it is the people that were there. I think we can always do better. So that doesn't stop today. So, we'll continue to make improvements to those. There's been some good changes that staff have made as far as we rent a U-Haul now to put all our equipment in instead of four different trucks running around all over the place, and it's just so much faster to just get it in there for the nominal charge that our local U-Haul place charges. It's well worth it, and we've been doing that for the last year or so, I would say, at all of our events, and it's been a game changer in our tear down when we're all tired and not thinking well and been out in the sun all day and all those other issues so but yeah, thank you to everybody who helped. Like I said, it's a group activity, and our volunteers come in happy, cheerful, and ready to do things, and never know what they're going to get hit with. But working their way through it. And every year, everybody comes through and makes it so we can put on an event like that because it's no small task, that's for sure. Coming up, we need some home-delivered meal drivers. They like for those to be in pairs, to make sure that two people who are running in or out of a car for several hours, or a couple of hours, are able to get along. We found that pairing people up doesn't necessarily work that way, so we do like for that one to be in pairs. We have the concourse in the hills got moved just as a reminder, so that one's coming up where it wasn't originally scheduled to be. We'll have the Music Fest right around the corner, that's April 5. We have concerts on the Avenue that are kicking up here for the entire month every Thursday. Yeah, Thursday. Couldn't remember if we changed dates or not. RUPPERT: The other one says Wednesday. Wondering it's Thursday, right? SNIPES: Yeah, which one says Wednesday? No, it shows here on the special event calendar, Thursday as well. It's like, right by the April concert, oh, yeah, I see where they wrote it. They wrote wins, but they have it on Thursday there. Yeah, no, it's Thursday, yeah, it's not Wednesday, because that wouldn't COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MARCH 24, 2025, VERBATIM MEETING MINUTES Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 7 - be possible. So, let's stick with that. It's a Wednesday or a Thursday. I mean, yeah, let me make it more confusing. It's not Wednesday. Let's do Thursdays. Those are our big ones that we've got coming up. The Eggstravaganza is on April 12th. I think we have volunteers set up for most of the things we need. There might be a couple of spots left if you're interested. Please reach out, extra hands are always good at those events. We'd certainly appreciate any help that we can get. Giving a Lift drivers the same gig is what it's just single drivers. It doesn’t have to be in pairs on that one, but we keep increasing more and more for our driving, giving people rides to anything from doctor's appointments to therapy or anything like that. Our Music Fest volunteers. I know that several of those got filled over the weekend, so this is a little bit outdated, but they're still the positions that we're looking for. So, if you're interested, that's a fun event. It's not too rugged on anybody. It's pretty, it's much more relaxed compared to the Irish Fest. Hopefully, this year it's bigger. We've kind of changed our platform and how it's set up and how we're running it. We've gone to more cover music than bands have come in and played their own tunes. We found that when we paid more for a band that only plays their own music, typically our crowd leaves when they come on, so we paid the most for the band that gets seen the least. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So, we decided to go a different route this year, and this year, it is rock, and roll based, and we're running through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, as you get as you go through the evening, that should be a good event. I think the bands that are coming will be a lot of fun and much more interactive than what we've had in years past. That's pretty much where we're at right now. RUDOLPHY: I have a question on Give a Lift. At one time, there was a discussion about the PTO providing bus service or Uber-type rides. Has anything ever become of that? SNIPES: Yeah, we're using ride share right now. And so, when we don't have people that can, and we're encouraging people to use them, it's a very low cost to the riders. I want to say it's $2.50 each way, or something like that, that they can get a ride through that, and the town subsidizes that for the people that use it. Don't quote me on those numbers, but it's a very minimal charge to the people writing. And that's worked out well. We just got to where we were. We had too many people needing a lift for us to be able to pull it off for everyone. And so, as we've gone down that road of subsidizing, it's worked out well. We're typically doing right around 50 to 55 rides a month through them, and up through this year, it was about 30, so we've increased that quite a bit. So, the world is getting out, and that is helping, but we're still trying to do as many local ones as we can with our own drivers. I think it’s easier to talk people into getting rides from people who are from here, versus just someone that comes and gets them, they feel safer and more comfortable with that, just because that's the way they feel. But it doesn't mean that the other is just as is just as safe and has proven to be very efficient from time of call to time of pickup has been around 20 minutes for them, and that's good, I think, when you're talking about a ride that's that cheap considering our location. WILSON: How we're the ticket sales for Irish Fest? SNIPES: That’s a good question. I know we were up substantially, but I can't remember exactly, and I don't see it on this list, but we can get that information from you. I know I want to say it was a 20% bump from the prior year. So, we had far more activity going on, which is part of the reason that the COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MARCH 24, 2025, VERBATIM MEETING MINUTES Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 8 - lines were long, which is part of the reason that I'm not happy with how long the lines were, but yeah, everything was up. We, I mean, we didn't. We didn't break even; that event never does. I think we were at about 10,000 that the town ended up paying after everything was settled out. But for an event that size, that's pretty impressive to even pull that off. WILSON: Awesome. Thank you. Kevin. Any other questions or comments? Cool. Our next item is an update on the next Community Services Advisory Commission meeting, April 28, 2025. Does that work for everyone still? All right with that. Can I get a motion to adjourn? VARELA: I move to adjourn our meeting. RUPPERT: I'll second. WILSON: All those in favor, say Aye. ALL: Aye. LOPUSZANSKI: Motion passes, 6-0. Having no further business, Vice Chair Rory Wilson adjourned the Regular Meeting of the Community Services Advisory Commission held on March 24, 2025, at 5:57 PM. COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION ____________________________________________ Chair Carey Reddick, II ATTESTED AND PREPARED BY: ____________________________________________ Patti Lopuszanski, 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 Community Services Advisory Commission in the Town Hall Council Chambers on the 24th of March 2025. I further certify that the meeting was duly called and that a quorum was present. DATED 28th Day of April 2025 _______________________________________________ Patti Lopuszanski, Executive Assistant