HomeMy WebLinkAboutSPAC.2011.1024.Minutes TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
® MINUTES OF THE
JOINT MEETING OF THE TOWN COUNCIL AND THE
FOUNTAIN HILLS STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION
October 24,2011
AGENDA ITEM#1—CALL TO ORDER
Chair Koester Thomas: I'd like to call the joint meeting of the Town Council and the Fountain Hills
Strategic Planning Advisory Commission (SPAC) to order at 5:33 p.m. Shaunna, would you like to do
roll call?
AGENDA ITEM#2—ROLL CALL
Present for roll call from the Town Council were Mayor Jay T. Schlum (via teleconference), Vice Mayor
Ginny Dickey, and Councilmembers Tait D. Elkie, Cassie Hansen and Henry Leger. Councilmember
Brown joined the meeting at 5:37 p.m. Councilmember Dennis Contino was absent.
Present from the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission were Chair Audra Koester Thomas, Vice
Chair Curt Dunham, Nick DePorter, Mike Dooley, Alan Magazine and Barry Spiker. Commissioners
Denise Atwood was excused. Youth Commissioner Sarah Traylor was also present, as were Interim
Town Manager Julie Ghetti and Recording Secretary Shaunna Williams.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you, Shaunna, I'd like to remind both Council and SPAC to find a
microphone and speak into it. We are around the dais kind of awkwardly, but Shaunna asked me to
• remind everyone to use the microphone whenever you are speaking. I'd also like to thank Council for
joining us this evening. As our annual joint session is underway, we would like to present you with some
updates on what SPAC has been doing, and I'd also like to welcome, specifically, Commissioner Traylor,
who will be joining us for her very first SPAC meeting in joint session with Council, so kind of a unique
first meeting for her. So, we're happy to have her join us as well and, Mayor, I don't know if you would
like to have a few remarks.
Mayor Schlum: Yes, thanks. Welcome to SPAC and the Commission, Sarah Traylor. How are you
doing?
Commissioner Traylor: I'm good. How are you?
Mayor Schlum: Awesome. Good. You are going to really enjoy the commission you are on and we
really appreciate you stepping up, and please do not be shy.....(inaudible)...is going to be most
appreciated and respected, so we thank you very much....(inaudible). Well, thanks Chair Koester
Thomas, and thanks everyone for being there. Sorry I couldn't be there in person, but scheduling
challenges tonight, but I was able ....(inaudible).... a couple things to at least get dialed in and thanks
everyone for having a great, full Commission and...(inaudible)...and what I expect to be full Council for
dialogue tonight. That agenda's great. Thanks for crafting an important agenda. The letter from the
SPAC to Council...(inaudible)....
Chair Koester Thomas: Mr. Mayor, we are having a bit of a difficulty hearing you. It sounds like you
are breaking up a little bit.
Mayor Schlum: (Inaudible.)
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I
Chair Koester Thomas: Mr. Mayor, we got about 40% of that, the first 40% and lost the last 60% of
that.
Mayor Schlum: Oh, it was very good. I'm sorry about that.
Chair Koester Thomas: No reason to apologize. Is there a better phone? Shaunna was wondering if
she should get up and call you at a different number.
Mayor Schlum: No, I think this is probably the best. I'm probably in a bad area and I'll see if I can find
a good one.
Chair Koester Thomas: Well, if you want to jump in, try to scream as loud as you can and we will try
to hear you...
Mayor Schlum: I'll just turn it over to you,Audra. Thanks
AGENDA ITEM #3 — DISCUSSION REGARDING COUNCIL'S FY2010-11 GOAL 5.5 TO
"ASSEMBLE A CITIZEN BLUE RIBBON COMMITTEE TO DEVELOP A FINANCIAL
ROADMAP FOR THE TOWN'S FUTURE"
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and welcome to Councilmember Brown, who has just
joined us as well. As I mentioned, SPAC is excited to provide you an update on what we have been doing
for the last year, get any feedback that you have, and then get some direction on where they head from
here as well. We have a PowerPoint presentation that we'll lead you though. It's really just a
manifestation of information you have already from us, and we'll be happy to answer any questions or
take any comments from you as well as we go through the agenda. So, tonight's presentation, as you see
on your agenda, has three main discussion points. We are going to give you an update on the work we
have done on the Council Goal 5.5, from Fiscal Year 10-11, establishing a Blue Ribbon Committee to
look at the long-term financial sustainability of the Town. We are going to discuss some of our
reflections on economic development efforts here in Town and also take an opportunity to ensure SPAC
is aware of what our work program should be over the next year. So, with that, I'm just going to give you
a brief update of where we have been. As you know, last year in May you unanimously adopted the
update to the Strategic Plan that SPAC led, and the next month, subsequent to that, SPAC sent a letter to
you reiterating the importance of determining long-term financial sustainability for the community. At
the end of the year, about this time in fact last year, I met... SPAC sent me to meet with the Mayor to get
direction on where we head next, and SPAC had identified a few topics of potential interest. I took those
to the Mayor and ultimately received direction from Mayor Schlum to proceed with developing a
proposal to implement your goal 5.5 to assemble a citizen Blue Ribbon Committee to develop a financial
roadmap for the Town's future,and that's the work we have done since.
What is the foundation of the Town's Strategic Plan? As you remember, at the beginning of the Strategic
Plan there is a lot of discussion related to what the foundation for the implementation of the Strategic
Plan's success will be and that is financial sustainability. And, in fact, the principle recommendation of
the Strategic Plan is that Council reinitiate a process and to review and recommend a financing structure
and implement policies through which the Town's financial sustainability can be achieved. The Strategic
Plan articulates that without resolution to this single issue that the citizen defined vision will not be
fulfilled and the values, ultimately, of the community could be comprised. As of today, no actions yet on
this initiative have been taken. So, what we have done over the course of the last ten, maybe eleven
months, is do some research, do some soul searching ourselves, to try to provide you the best advice •
possible in regards to this particular agenda, or goal item that you had from Fiscal Year 10 andll, and
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what we surmised was a research, was a memo to you as well as a white paper that outlines some of the
® issues that lie ahead for the Town, not new in a lot of cases; and henceforth I'm going to turn it over now
to Vice Chair Dunham, who is going to present kind of just an overview of the issue paper that you have
already had a chance to review.
Vice Chair Dunham: Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome Councilmembers and fellow
Commissioners. It's great to be here this evening, and as Audra mentioned, we have been doing a lot of
thinking over the last few months about the future of Fountain Hills, and we take our role very seriously
as kind of looking forward, where you are often down in the weeds and fighting the daily battles, and we
hope that you rely on us to be looking out over the hood of the car trying to see what is coming and
provide you with advice to that. The white paper that we did develop really focuses on the financial
issues facing the community, and we found five key issues that we think need to really be strongly
considered in total, not as individual topics but as a total situation that our Town is in. Town finances are
one, the changing demographics are two, downward business trends, diminishing amount of students in
our schools, and declining property values. All five of those issues have kind of teamed up against us to
put us in a rather difficult situation. First of all the Town finances. I know this is nothing new to you,but
we have lost 30% of our operating revenues over the last five years. Construction has basically ground to
a halt. State shared revenues are going down and will continue to go down as long as the state grows, and
we have an unbalanced portfolio. We are reliant on outside funding sources and on unpredictable and
very volatile sales taxes. This is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of our budget is tied to fire and
police protection, which we cannot impact the costs of that. So,the rest of the budget is doubly impacted
by the inability to change the expenditures in those two areas. We have changing demographics. The
community is getting older. Our percentage of children under age 18 has dropped dramatically. Our
average age is 17 years older that the state average age, and vacant homes are at 22%, and the trend
towards housing and where young people want to live, towards moving toward more urban centers and
smaller homes and less lot to take care of, also impacts our ability to fill the vacant housing stock that we
have. We see that as a major issue. We have downward business trends. Sales taxes have dropped
nearly 40% percent. You can see the drop from 05-06 when we were in our hey-day of one-time only
sales taxes from housing construction, those monies come in one time and that opportunity is lost forever,
and we did real well on those for a while,but once they stopped we have seen the revenues go down and a
commensurate cut to our budgets in critical areas like infrastructure maintenance and other programs.
Building permits, as you can see, have gone down drastically, and for a community that relies so much on
sales tax those numbers are ominous. Our diminishing student population is a very high concern to us.
We see this as the biggest red flag that we could possibly get. You look around the country at
communities that are beginning to experience a tremendously high rate of failure, and the first indicators
are lowering school population and closing of schools. This should have shook the community to its
foundations and we're afraid it didn't, and we don't understand why,but we see this as real, real problem.
Our school enrollments dropped by nearly 500 students in the past five years, which is a tremendous drop,
not only to support our schools but also for invigorating our community with young people that can
become future leaders and future taxpayers in the community. Our property values have dropped
significantly. I think everybody knows that that has a mortgage here; that property values have dropped,
and hopefully we are at the bottom or are trying to claw our way out, but the market is still very, very
volatile at this point and it's really hard to predict the future. So, with these five key elements that we see
jumping out at us as collective community issues that need to be tackled, we have been soul-searching on
how to present you with a game plan to help support you in making the tough decisions that are ahead of
you. We talked about the Blue Ribbon Committee. We've talked about doing an analysis ourselves, and
the bottom line is that we don't see any magic bullets out there from either a Blue Ribbon Committee or
from our brilliant minds to give you a game plan to tackle. We know you are going to have your retreat
in November. You are going to know the knowledge of the results of the road bond in hand at that point.
® The staff is going to be giving you, I'm sure, a very complete set of tools for you to use and those tools in
one way or another will need to be implemented in some way, shape or form, I think, to turn, and our
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Commission thinks, to turn around the situation. Whatever those decisions may be, we are here to
support your moving towards financial sustainability in any, way, shape and form we can,but we are very
hopeful that some concrete and substantive measures will come out of your retreat in November so that
we can see and we can help move the community toward those financial sustainability steps. Without
resolution of this issue, we are finding ourselves kind of out of a job because the Strategic Plan is reliant
on fiscal sustainability and the initiatives in the Strategic Plan are going to take, at some point, some
resources, and right now, when we are in survival mode, the SPAC is concerned that we are not being
able to implement the plan and not being able to do the job we have been commissioned to do. So,thank
you.
Chair Koester Thomas: So, with that, I'll open it up for any comments or questions that Council or
even SPAC, if SPAC has any additional comments they would like to offer, I'd love to entertain those
now.
Vice Mayor Dickey: Thank you. Okay, I'll be partly agreeing, partly defending us, and just reacting to
not only what you were just saying but also with your..., the update that you gave us on September 13th.
Just from something that you said which....that there was no action that addressed sustainable revenue, I
would try to defend in a couple of ways, which was we looked at fees again. Obviously, we took
sometimes two steps forward and three steps backwards, or however you want to look at it, but we did
look at the bed tax, we did look at restructured some fees, and you probably will realize that when we
were having these discussions there was a realization and we actually brought back the conversation to
the goals saying, hey, we are supposed to be trying since the income tax thing failed, or the property tax
thing failed, we were looking at all the different tools, and some of them are things like fire fees and
things like that, but then we continuously kind of fall back, and one of those reasons, and I'll go to the
bonds about that, is a lack of a strong, citizen led effort to get some of these things passed, either... so
concretely now, which would be with the bond issue, we needed a citizen committee. Obviously, the
Council can't do it. Unfortunately these things are campaigns. You need a campaign. You need a
mailout. You need somebody to write one thing in the packet, in the ballot, that says this is a good idea.
So, as a result, what we are seeing now is something that was relatively looked at something that was
going to be successful. When we talked about it,one of the things we said,if we have a project,a specific
amount of money to go it, everybody will, you know, be in the same mind of that, but now we are seeing
that, you know, that we are getting some pushback on that, so that is maybe, you know, something that
we could have used for that, and then the other things are that when we do talk about liquor tax, or liquor
fees, or other fees like that, and we get a lot of citizens here who are really upset and don't want that, then
maybe that's where we also need some backing and some help so that we are not always just hearing the
one side because you know we sit at our goal sessions and we agree with you, but then when the practice
comes down it is not always that easy. I also want to talk a little bit about the capital funds and the sort of
the... You obviously don't think it was a good idea for us to buy the building, but I would like to point
out that we did not use capital funds. We used contingency and other monies that were all one-time
monies, so by using those, which could not be used in another way, we were able to buy the building,
which if... I don't think that's a bad sign really, because what it did I don't think is a bad sign at all. It
not only helped us with the one-time interest of$270,000, but it's a 300 and something thousand dollar
per year until 2021, so even though it's not new revenue it's something that's not going out and it's a
sustainable thing for several years, so I think that that was something, was...., that you pointed out that I
think was something good that we did do. I also know that we talked about other things like stormwater
and utility fees and other things like that, and I guess I talked about the stormwater one a lot, and I think
that that is something else to look at. I think that what you say about being bold is true, but sometimes
being bold is tilting at windmills a little bit too, so we need to be realistic. I think I always agree with
your conclusions, but then they are not easy to get accomplished. And last, what I'll say is the graph
where the expenses start getting bigger than the revenue was something that Julie presented to us years •
ago before the recession. The recession exacerbated it in such a way, but that was the reality then and we
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really do either have to deal with it or we have to talk about what kind of a community we really want to
be and maybe that's the discussion.
Chair Koester Thomas: Comments or other questions? Reflections?
Mayor Schlum: I do. This is Jay. Can you hear me okay? I think I went into a good spot here.
Chair Koester Thomas: We can hear you now,Mayor.
Mayor Schlum: Good. I can hear you just fine, so that's great. Thanks for the download on that, Curt,
and going over the specific items. The majority of what we are facing is hitting the entire country, so
there are reasons to be concerned, but there are glaring reasons why we are facing what we are facing and
that's the global and certainly national economic downturn that has affected the state budget, and not the
national budget but the state budget, and of course local budgets and where we continue to balance the
budgets, and although many of the changes were significant that we made over the last couple of years,
obviously huge reductions in staff and huge downsizing in our government expenditures in order to face
what many call their new reality, the reason they were so significant was the economic downturn. The
ways we reacted to it, I think, have been innovative and have been in advance of most other communities,
so I'm extremely proud of the Council and the staff, in particular, for helping us through this very hard
time and of course helping to make very difficult decisions and doing so in a most respectful way,
particularly when you are having to reduce staffing levels, and handling that as best that we could, and
I'm proud of how that was done and sad that we had to it. The revenue piece, we also have to deal with a
great deal of reality and Fountain Hills is a very conservative community. Fiscally, the Council
represents the..., well not just fiscally but the Council represents the community, and Council, as you
kind of alluded to, when we are down in the weeds it's definitely trying to work on what's possible as
111) well, and I think we've done a good job doing that. It's not always been the answer that obviously some
of you wanted to see, or an outcome that some of you and some others in our community wanted to see,
but the art of the possible is what we deal with every day on the Council and we do our best, and the
results are not always pretty but the results are also, as I mentioned,are really tied greatly to the economy,
which unfortunately has seemed to flatten, not certainly getting much with legs, but some of the things
left in the wake of this economic downturn, as you mentioned, are sales tax revenues due to the single
family home and commercial constructions that really are less than stellar and almost non-existent a year
before, and also the decline in the enrollment at our schools which is certainly very, very concerning...
(inaudible)...but we can...(inaudible)...by having a vibrant...
Chair Koester Thomas: Mr.Mayor? Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Schlum: I hear you now, I'm sorry.
Chair Koester Thomas: Okay, you broke up there for the last,oh,twenty seconds or so.
Mayor Schlum: I think I hit the mute button with my face. I'm sorry. My cheeks hit the mute button.
So, the school closing certainly I think is a big sadness for our community and the fact that we have less
students here. It is also in the East Valley pretty indicative of what is happening. Many areas that had
very high home costs lost a lot of families due to the fact that housing got so expensive. Now that it's
been dropping back down, obviously it needed to drop, we will likely see a change to some of the
families, but there is also a lot fewer people moving because of the housing situation. So I'm not sure
how quickly that is going to help to resolve our families moving back to Fountain Hills. I mean they,
frankly, were priced out of the market and that's why we lost or didn't gain many students,but also there
are a lot of options for students, and communities such as ours, kind of affluent, they look for options for
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their kids and there are other options and that's what other East Valley cities are seeing as well, not....
About the same proportion of our community goes to public schools versus private schools. In the East
Valley, I think particularly, we are similar to Scottsdale in that respect, but that doesn't mean that that's
where we want to be. So, you know, we do our meetings with the school district and we are certainly
supportive, and they realize that,but as a community we don't like to see the school close, certainly. But
that was obviously a factor based on the number of students in our schools, and we would like to have
more students in our schools of course. The economy has hit us and the objective with the Blue Ribbon
Committee through our discussions is to have a group of folks come out that might be financial experts in
our community, not associated with the government with our Town, not associated necessarily with the
SPAC or those. We want to have some outside folks, and frankly we are not sure what they would come
up with, but we look to our citizens once again to utilize their vast amount of skills,talents and abilities to
help us understand what's the right mix for our community, and it's not necessarily coming up with more
money. We have seen a tremendous roller coaster with our economy and obviously its dramatic effects
on our budgets, causing us to make these huge changes. We don't expect that type of thing to happen
again, but perhaps this is our new reality. Perhaps it starts to grow a little bit more each year, but not a
hockey stick growth, of course. So, this group might come together to determine, well here's the proper
mix of where revenues should come from, and before we have had other studies done by folks we have
hired, and we have had other input, and right now we need to also measure,just as you had alluded to
several times, Audra, first, and then Curt, what's possible and is this the right time to do it? So I'm not
sure about those two things, if it's the right time or if it's possible to have a group work hard on coming
up with the right financial makeup for Fountain Hills and our future under the given conditions we are in
where it is extremely tenuous, extremely scary for many people out there and, frankly, we are in a bit of a
survival mode and maybe it is not the right time, but as I mentioned, if you may have heard me at the
onset, you know, we did receive your correspondence, and as a Council now we are here together to
collaborate and talk about that, and perhaps we will have some discussion or direction that will help
SPAC help Fountain Hills as a community move forward in the areas you guys laid out for us tonight.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you,Mr.Mayor. Commissioner Magazine.
Commissioner Magazine: I certainly understand that you can't make changes to improve the financial
sustainability of the Town without the citizens behind you. The fact is that I don't believe the citizens are
behind you because I don't think the citizens think we have a problem. I have seen no indication from
talking to folks that they believe we have any problem at all. Sure, they read in the paper that we have
reduced staff. Well, there are letters to the editor that say, "Have you noticed any difference. I haven't."
I'm also concerned about the optics. Over the last year, at least, I've read about a number of
expenditures, or planned expenditures or wish list expenditures, that I think send the wrong message to
the citizens. For example, there was presentation a few weeks ago about the possibility, if we have the
money over a period of years, to spend $1.8 million to improve the median on Avenue of the Fountains,
and I think that would be great. I'm all for it, but I wonder what the citizens think when they read it. I
don't think they read the part that says, "If we can raise the revenue." I think what they read is, "$1.8
million to improve the Avenue of the Fountains." Even silly things like contributions to..., for a... What
do you call? The rabbit....
(Inaudible.)
Commissioner Magazine: The sculpture. The rabbit sculpture. It's only $500, or whatever it is, and
it's..... It's how much?
Councilmember Dickey: $84 for the insurance.
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AM: $84 for the insurance?
Councilmember Dickey: Yeah.
Commissioner Magazine: Well, but, people read these things and they say, "A rabbit sculpture? They
are spending money on that?" And I could go on. There are a whole host of things, and I'm not
criticizing you for doing it because a lot of things are certainly for the betterment of the community, and I
think planning ahead, for example the Avenue of the Fountains and so on, but the optics are such that I
just don't believe that people believe there is a problem, and if they don't believe there is a problem, I'm
concerned about the road bonds. I'm concerned, and there are letters to the editor and you've seen them,
which don't make a lot of sense to me, but they're gonna make a lot of sense to a lot of other people,that
this going to cost us money. It's going to increase our taxes. What do we need it for? Aren't there other
ways to do it? Don't we need another analysis? And it goes on and on and on and on. So, guess I would
just caution you to be a little concerned about optics, what the community thinks when they see these
expenditures because they just don't believe that we have a problem. My other concern relates to what
the Mayor just said in terms of whether or not there is a Blue Ribbon Commission, or a group of experts.
I don't care what they come up with, if the citizens aren't behind it I don't think they will go for anything,
and so I think there needs to be more of a crisis mentality because I think this Town is in a crisis. I think
it's in a downward spiral and I agree with the Mayor it is happening all over the country. But I just think
there has to be some kind of communication that it is being taken as a crisis and being dealt with in a
forthright manner.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you. Comments or other questions from either SPAC or Council? Vice
Mayor Dickey.
Vice Mayor Dickey: Thank you. To talk about the school a little bit, the one at Four Peaks. If there is
an opportunity to use that school for something else, like I know that some of the teachers are talking
about a STEM school, you know, science, technology, etc. — or other uses that would be for education
which could, you know, kind of be a double positive because using the building, of course, but also
maybe an attraction for some of those young adults, whether they're teachers or students, would be
something that would be a positive thing to try and get done. You mentioned the construction sales tax
and how that's a one-time...., and how we reap the benefits of those, but the idea of having any sort of a
resale tax at this point I think right now that would be a really difficult thing to bring up, but maybe it sort
of does open up the topic of other sort of legislative changes that would help us maybe, and that's, of
course, one that we could look at. The other thing would be not only the state shared revenue, but the
idea of the LTAF money and the HURF money and other funding like that, that has just been swept away
from city coffers, so maybe at some point we start looking at a different way to fund cities, which would
of course involve the League and other cities and towns to look at that. Instead of having a constant battle
year after year on this, maybe it's time for the cities to change that 1979 agreement into something where
we are more reliant on ourselves. Let's see, there was one other thing that you mentioned. Well, I'll
about it. I'll think of it. Thanks.
Chair Koester Thomas: Other comments? Commissioner Spiker.
Commissioner Spiker: Yes, thank you, Audra, and thank you, Mr. Mayor and all the Councilmembers
for your presence here today. Just in the last month, legislation was introduced at the federal level and
has currently been taken up by the House Government and Oversight Committee, which Congressman
Paul Gosar sits on, and there are two bills now, and there are House Bill 414 and House Bill 2188
directing the federal government to implement Lean Six Sigma across all governmental agencies and the
conservative estimate by the.., one issue lobbying group, Strong America Now, is that we would be able
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to save between $500 billion and $1 trillion per year in operating expenses at the federal government
level. Being fairly new to this Commission, and not that new but still fairly new to the Town, has theQ1,
Town considered taking a look at a Lean or a Six Sigma management strategy for reducing costs and
improving services previously?
Mayor Schlum: I don't think so. I don't think we've look at Lean Six Sigma and I'm not sure when or
if it's... when the right time would be to do so.
Commissioner Spiker: Right now. Tonight. I will email you the materials, and we have a lot of very,
very good people throughout the state and county and in this municipality who know how to do this. It
started with Motorola here in the Valley in the '80s. Dick Wintermantle is a citizen here in Fountain
Hills. He had a very important role in the rollout of Lean Six Sigma at Motorola. It saved the company.
Mayor Schlum: I think the best thing to do with that is to introduce it to our Town Manager and have
her evaluate it. Julie at this time, as our Interim Town Manager, evaluate it and see if that's something
she would suggest bringing forward, or obviously, you know, it would take some consideration
through..., with others on staff, and then to introduce it to Council. Most things will progress that way.
We, as you know, likely know, we made considerable cuts over the last several years from 88 Full Time
Equivalents, and over 100 prior to that when we had some law enforcement folks on staff, and now we
are in the 50s with Full Time Equivalent numbers, so, you know, there's probably always room for
improvement but I would venture to make a fairly safe guess that the local agencies who are closest to
things, and in our case we have in some departments just the mere..., the least number of employees we
can legally have on staff due to some requirements in the law by..... You have to have a...., you know,
and Julie knows this more than I, you have to have some people on staff and we may just have one in that
area, but I think that would be the best process. Obviously Lean Six Sigma and other Six Sigma-type
programs for quality and for efficiencies have been used for a long time, and TQM and other things in the
past, but I think that's worth looking at. I'm not sure it's as viable of an opportunity for us at this point,
but I'm not the one to make that judgment. I would rather leave that to our professional staff to determine
if there is some reason for us to consider that investment at that time.
Chair Koester Thomas: Councilmember Leger
Councilmember Leger: Where to start with this conversation? First and foremost, I'll go back with
respect to Six Sigma, I think that I spent 20 years in corporate environments doing those types of things,
so I'm very much familiar with Six Sigma. I think that our last Town Manager, who had a background in
that area, did a really nice job at reengineering our organization, downsizing our organization, enhancing
efficiencies in governance. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely, but as anyone that's engaged in
Six Sigma initiative, it doesn't happen overnight and it's a long-term solution. Our issues are more
immediate, but I think, you know, we throw that into the mix and thanks for throwing that out there,
Commissioner, and Julie can certainly take a closer look at that. I think if you spend any time looking at
our Town governance you may not agree in all of our decisions, but I think we are lean and mean and
extremely effective and efficient in terms of doing what we are in business to do. We are not in business
to create pain for our residents. We are in business to enhance the quality of life for our residents. We
are in business to do the best we can with the resources we have, and that's what our focus is and I know
that that is what your focus is. Now, with respect to strategic planning,the notion that what do you do, or
what can you do, or you should dissolve, how many sitting up here have been to a Council retreat, with
the exception of Audra? None of you, okay. I'm mentioning this because I have been involved in the
Strategic Plan since 2006, with Curt and the original Strategic Plan, so I value strategic planning in
general, but I ask that question because what we do is when we start our retreat is we start with your
Strategic Plan. We don't ignore it, and we build our goals based on your recommendations, and we
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correlate your goals with our resources and then put forward what we can possibly put forward, so I think
that there needs to be more credit given, or credit given to yourselves, that our goals, the genesis of our
goals are the work that you do, and I certainly appreciate that work and I will always appreciate that work
just being a planner by nature. One thing I would like comment is that this group has always been one of
our greatest assets in terms of a commission, and we have always had a very workable relationship, but I
must admit when I received this memo I just didn't think that this was the appropriate tone for
communicating your message, and I'm not going to go there and I'm not going to get defensive. We
certainly can do a better job,but to say that the Town Council has not had the desire to take the bold steps
necessary to ensure a sustainable financial future, making a statement like that and having a public
discussion does not help anybody. That's akin to the Chamber of Commerce saying that the Town is
business unfriendly. Who does that help? So, I take exception with this memorandum and the tone of the
memorandum. I probably should have started at the back page,because once I got by my angst and all of
that, it led to where I think we need to go. We have some questions and we need to answer them, and I
look toward you folks for answering these questions, and I'm open to any suggestion you can make
tonight to talk to us about financial sustainability. Yes, we rely on you for that, not..., not.... I know this
is very passionate and there is a lot of zeal here, but a lot of this just does not help in solving the types of
problems we need to solve. Just one more comment here, and please do not take this as a defensive
comment, with respect to bold actions or taking actions, as I stated earlier, the purpose of a municipality
and town governance is to enhance the quality of life or make the quality of life better for our residents
and we do that the best we can scraping with the dollars we can. Now with respect to the perception out
there, yeah, people will perceive we don't have a problem and we do have a problem. I've lived here to
long enough to know that we have a culture in this town, it's not negative, it's not positive,they don't like
paying taxes. You know, we're in the midst of one of the worst recessions in decades. That's why we are
probably here and you are writing this report. I don't think it's because of your effort or the Town
Council's effort. If you were to look at our first Blue Ribbon Committee and the first report they put
• out..... A group of citizens got together. Curt probably remembers this. The citizens got together. We
brought in a finance person and this is a report to help us with our financial sustainability, and just very
quickly in terms of actions, bold actions not being taken, I think it's important to recognize how we went
through this process in the past and how we can go through that in the future, and I'm not going to go
through each and every thing in here, but there is just a couple of things in here I'd like to point out.
Implement an aggressive sales tax audit. We did that. We brought people on board to do that.
Implement full cost recovery, fee for services. We reviewed our fee services. We are charging for more
things than we have in the past and in then some things we pulled our fees back because of, well, some
very good business reasons. Increase general fund balance. Maintain the general fund balance. That's
what healthy towns do. Our current balance is $6.1 million. That's not bad. It's taken a lot of effort.
Please. I hope I'm not sounding defensive. I'm just walking us through what the recommendations were
last time we were here and what we did. Now there's more we need to do, but I think it's important for
people to go through this exercise, including myself. Create an economic stabilization fund, a Rainy Day
Fund. We did that. We have $1.3 million in our Rainy Day Fund. Maintain Town taxes at 2.6%. It was
a very, very strong recommendation by this fiscal consultant, or this financial consultant, not to increase
local sales tax. We didn't do that. Consider implementing a primary property tax. We had the political
will to put that out to the voters, knowing what the culture was in this Town, and there was a good
education program, and it went down 80-20. Think about that as we look at our bond election. I hope we
have are a little more successful there. Increase hospitality bed tax. We increased hospitality bed tax.
Consider stormwater management monthly impact fee. We haven't done that. We continue to look at
that. Economic development; expand retail sales; attract destination resort hotels. Those are projects that
were in motion then and they continue to be in motion now, but you have a little thing called investment
bankers that don't want to throw money at any of this at this particular point in time. Not everyone sitting
up here is aware of all of the efforts of our Economic Development Administrator, but she is looking at
Coo these things. Consider funding major capital projects through a new quality of life bond. Well,that's our
pavement management bond that we are looking at right now. And, last but not least, look at update debt
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management policies. We have done that. Update financial policies. We have done that. Retire debt.
Whether you agree with it or not, we have done that. So,please don't take this in the spirit other than it is
a tough,tough time and we have taken bold moves and we have not shied away from doing these types of
things. So, I do not appreciate a memorandum that goes there because that tone does not do what we need
to do collectively to solve our problem. Now, with that being said, I am open to any suggestions anyone
can make regarding anything that's up here or anything moving forward. When I look at that list, I think
we have the answers to a lot of those questions. But don't undervalue your work. Our goals are driven
by your Strategic Plan. Thank you,Audra.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you, Councilmember. As SPAC knows, Councilmember Leger was
citing the Hocking Report, which we are all quite familiar with, specifically pages 46 through 51. I know
some of you already have it with you because we use it a lot in our commission meetings. Other
questions or comments from either Council or the Commission? Commissioner Magazine.
Commissioner Magazine: Councilman Leger, if this had a title it would be "extreme frustration." We
know you share the frustration that we have, and I think all of us, you more than us but us more than most
citizens probably, see the deterioration in the Town, see the changes and are very concerned about it, but
as was said earlier, there are no magic bullets. I just wanted to say to Councilwoman Dickey, you
mentioned legislation and I have raised—I don't think I have raised it publicly with you folks,but... and I
don't know even if it's legal — but I don't think that the snowbirds, the people that have second homes
here, are paying their fair share. They come in and out of town. We welcome them. They use our
facilities. They go to the restaurants. They are welcome members of the community. I was one until
about three year ago..., two and a half years ago. But I just find myself wondering if there isn't some
way to influence them—I'll use a benign term—to contribute financially to the maintenance and upkeep
of the community. For example, I know it would take state legislation, and even before you get to that
point you'd have to determine whether or not it was legal,but I wonder if people with second homes, who
by definition are more affluent than other people, could pay a user fee, an annual fee of some kind,
whether it's, let's say $1,000. I don't remember the exact numbers, but when I heard the number of
second homes in this community I was astonished. If you multiple that times X, you could raise a lot of
revenue. Now, one of the problems is going to be the camel's nose under the tent. Some people will say,
"Well, once you establish a figure, then the Council can just raise it to whatever they want." There are
ways around that. I just wonder if there has ever been an analysis of that kind of approach to see if we
could recoup some of the costs.
Chair Koester Thomas: Commissioner Spiker.
Commissioner Spiker: Yes,I just wanted to make a clarification. First of all, I am wanting to clarify if I
am directed to speak with Acting Mayor Ghetti about Six Sigma.
Chair Koester Thomas: Acting Town Manager, your mean?
Commissioner Spiker: Town Manager. Pardon me,Mr.Mayor. I'm coming to you next.
Chair Koester Thomas: I'm sure Julie would be happy to coordinate.
Commissioner Spiker: And, Mr. Mayor and Councilmembers, Lean Six Sigma, just a clarification, is
not—I want to underscore the word "not"—about headcount reduction. It is not about taking people out
of the business processes, and in fact the figure that I quoted you with the savings at the federal
government level, the estimate was done with zero headcount reduction. It is the waste that occurs in the
transactions in the business processes. The town of Mesa at one time took 90 days to get a building
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permit and they reduced that to 22. They took, with no headcount reduction, they took all that waste out
of the processes and, yes, Councilmember(indecipherable) is correct,TQM and Ed Deming, who went to
Japan to help rebuild Japan, no one listened to him here in America in the '40s, but Deming, Shewhart,
Toguchi, Duran, Ishikawa, Crosby, all of these are the names familiar to those of us who have been doing
this work for 30 years,and it is not,I want to repeat,not about headcount reduction.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you. Any other comments, questions, regarding the Blue Ribbon
Committee? Well, to sum up, I think we just look forward to your actions in November and as we...,the
offer stands that we are happy to help and support the effort in any way before, during and after, of
course. We are always looking to forward this initiative. It's near and dear to SPAC's heart and it was
born before the original Strategic Plan, as Councilmember Leger and Vice Mayor Dickey both pointed
out, an effort that charter member, charter SPAC Commissioner Curt Dunham also recalls, and so I think
what you hear is the passion from this Commission, who has been meeting on a monthly basis and,
frankly, more often than that over the course of the last year, regarding this particular issue and the need
really to move forward on it for the true long-term financial sustainability and, frankly, not just the
financial sustainability but the long-term future of the Town of Fountain Hills.
Commissioner Dooley: Madam Chair?
Chair Koester Thomas: Commissioner Dooley
Commissioner Dooley: Sorry to jump in late because I was still thinking this over in my head. One of
the things that came up in our group that I think is a concrete step in the right direction would be to do
some statistically valid research in the community as to where people are in their understanding of our
financial situation. Everything we have now is anecdotal, or you hear from the people who are the
110 loudest speakers, but where is the rest of the community? And if we know that, once we know that, then
we can determine, gee, there's a huge education process that needs to occur or not, and also get a better
sense of where they are on some of the possible solutions. I know that's been done before and we don't
have any resources at the moment in our committee to do that,but it certainly would be something that we
could take on and make sure it happens, and, like I said, I know that our previous Town Manager did a
little stuff on the internet, but that's not valid research. That's just, you know, whoever wanted to
comment.
Mayor Schlum: You know, this is Jay, I think that's great. More data is always helpful. I just think we
in a different time in our country right now and anything government does.... It's got to be citizen led if
there is any restructure of how our community's finances are put together and, yes, there's been a lot of
study on who's paying what, and it is clear that since we are a sales tax driven community that those that
are living here year around,paying sales taxes year around, are funding the majority of the services in our
town. So, those that are here part time, we love them. I don't think we'd consider any type of a fee
because I think that would scare everybody away, but the equity in our services that are delivered and,
since we have gone to program budgeting thanks to Julie and the Finance team, we've really been able to
tell what things cost, and that's helped us to charge more for services and understand how much things
cost us, and on the revenue side we realize that there is certainly a benefit to having our winter visitors
here because they do bring and enhance the business, too, and they really help sustain, but they also do
leave and that sales tax spend leaves with them, and that's been pretty clear for a while. I really don't see
a great deal of opportunity for government to come up with a solution --just here, right now. I just think
that maybe it's a year or maybe it's two years,but it really needs to be a citizen driven type of a process if
we are to look at how we are, and I think that's what the Blue Ribbon Committee would be,is how do we
structure our town going forward as far as our revenue structure? And again, it's not about getting more
revenue. It's about having more of a sustainable revenue that doesn't ebb and flow as much as we've just
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went through. Heck, in trying to survive this economy and, you know, other communities have zero
savings left, they've spent everything, and we see that we have infrastructure, you know, starting to fail.
We don't have money to redo the roads the way they need to be done, so obviously we are bringing that
to the voters, but I don't..., you know, I think, you know, we could come up with some great data, but I
don't think anything, frankly, that we come forward with as a government, as a Council, or as a
Commission is going to have a lot of legs right now. There is not a lot of trust for government,to say the
least, and people are scared, and having people pay more, which is usually what's presumed when
government talks about revenue is they want more, and that's not what we are just saying here, but that's
what's presumed. People are hurting. They don't have the money to pay more, and particularly the
seniors, so we've got to be even smarter than we've ever been if we want to restructure how our
community's financial revenues are coming in or how they are structured. I know it's not an answer, but
I'm just trying to keep it real. I don't see that happening and that's largely why it has not happened.
That's why you guys are frustrated, and it is in our Strategic Plan, and I'm glad that Councilmember
Leger went through so much that has been done and, again, the Strategic Plan is much more than the
sustainability of us financially. Obviously, that's a very important element, but that does guide us every
budget season. That's what guides our Council and how we set our goals is based on the Strategic Plan,
which is the feedback from many, many people in Fountain Hills as to what they feel is most important.
With limited resources, we have to make tough decisions. But I'd love to hear some more feedback.
That's just one guy's opinion here, and I just think we see it around the country. It's just not something
that folks are really open or engaging towards is government ideas on how to restructure finances right
now. All they want us to use cuts,and obviously we have had to cut in order to balance budgets and we'll
continue to balance our budget.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Any other questions or comments from Council or
Commissioners regarding the Blue Ribbon Committee? I'm going to go with Councilwoman Hansen.
Councilmember Hansen: It's just, just very quickly, and it kind of goes along with what Jay was
saying, it's so necessary now to just walk that really fine line and find the balance. I mean, people are
panicking and, I mean, we have to be realistic,but to say that we are in dire straits and the Town could go
bankrupt and start saying things like that, only kind of fuel the panic that they are personally feeling, so I
think we need to be sensitive to that right now and, I mean, one of the things that the Council has been
working on and staff has been working on is, you know, finding additional community events, things that
just kind of are bringing people more together,just kind of strengthening the bond that, you know, things
are really tough right now and we are all in this together, the government, the citizens, you know,
everything and try and build that camaraderie that doesn't take a lot of revenue, you know, finding
creative ways to do that, but just strengthening our inner core, and then down the line is, I mean, someday
things are going to get better. They have to, and then, you know, really start being more progressive and,
you know, kind of really attacking, you know, the bigger goals that we want to get to, but I do kind of
agree with Jay that right now we are all in survival mode,and that was all.
Chair Koester Thomas: Vice Mayor Dickey.
Vice Mayor Dickey: Thank you, and it's funny that you just said that because I just wrote the word
"events" down because this reminded me, and what Alan was saying reminded me of when we were on
the School Board and there were times when the community maybe wasn't as supportive of bonds and
overrides and things like that, and at one point we actually got to double sessions, it was actually before I
was on the board and, you know, talk about feeling the pain, but you know that one or two years was
somebody's second and third grade. You know,that was the only second and third grade they were going
to get. Or like, what Cassie was just saying, you know, I'm always saying my kids grew up here—they
are 30 now — but those events, I mean, I don't want anybody to not have that opportunity, so how can •
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we 9 So, you know, things can be bad. We can stop picking up trash and we can have, you know,
overgrown intersections and all that stuff and, you know, that is a consequence of not having enough
people working here and those are the kind of things they really need to try to avoid, but it's really a
dilemma,Alan,because I think, I know that you are right. They are like, well, it's not really bothering me
any, but it kind of is, so I hope that, as Cassie was saying things, as they start to turn around we really do,
and you said it too, Henry, we are trying to make this as good as we can with what we have. We know,
and just like we did at the School District, we used to go down to the legislature and say, you know, you
are punishing us because we're doing well with so little, because they'll say, well, your kid's are doing
good. And we say, yeah, they are but, man, you know, all the effort that went into it. You shouldn't be
punished for being able to do okay. And that's kind of what I would like to do is to say we are doing
okay and we've got to get through this and we will get through this, and again it is eventually going back
to, though, what do people want? You know, what kind of a community do they want? They say we
don't want any taxes, but then you want to cut one or two of these contracts by a little bit of percent, or
you have to not have, you know, a transportation, and then, you know, or meals are going to go up or
those kinds of things that really do affect people then, you know, you don't like government except for
when you need something. So,that's a dilemma that's everywhere obviously. So....
Chair Koester Thomas: Commissioner Magazine
Commissioner Magazine: I certainly don't speak for SPAC when I say this,but I hear a lot of comment
about when it turns around and it will get better, and so on. And I just find myself wondering, even if the
national economy improves, why will it get better? The community has a declining population, but let's
assume it grows to its maximum potential. Are we going to see a lot of new commercial development?
Analysis shows that even if you fill every square inch with commercial, it doesn't solve our financial
problem. I'm just trying to think through why... I think this community's different from a lot of others.
A lot of others will grow tremendously when the national economy comes back, but we are a bedroom
community. We can only grow so much. We can only have so much commercial. You can't have that
many more families in terms of housing. The sales tax is what it is. Yeah, people will spend some more
money, but why do you feel... I'd be interested to hear why you feel, or what conditions would be
necessary that would make the Town turn around and do so much better.
Vice Mayor Dickey: Well, I think we will eventually need a property tax or some other sort of
sustainable, because years ago before the recession, and Julie showed us, we had that problem. So you
are exactly right. We will never be sustainable. Either that or you stop, or you truly become a bedroom
community, which we can do if we have to. We can do that and then we don't need the revenue as much.
Councilmember Hansen: And is that what we want?
Vice Mayor Dickey: Exactly.
Commissioner Dooley: Madam Chair.
Chair Koester Thomas: Commissioner Dooley.
Commissioner Dooley: I think what we are concerned about is, when is that process going to start
because it is going to be a long, long process. If there in fact is an 80% majority that's against a property
tax, it's going to take forever to convince enough people that it's necessary if we want to have a high
quality of life, so I guess we are kind of feeling why can't we start? Let's start. And to me that process
41) starts with educating people about our current situation. I mean, I know that people don't understand how
the finances work. They don't understand the fact that we've lost all of this construction related sales tax.
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It isn't going to ever come back. You know, that to me is a start. People I've talked to one-on-one, when
I explain that to them and I say, "You know, we're really struggling with the solution might be. What do41/
you think about a property tax?" And they say, "Well, you know, it'd probably be okay if it's not too
big." You know, it's that..., but we can't talk to everybody individually and we aren't going to convince
everybody individually, so I guess my concern is let's get started because if we wait three, four, or five
years we might get to the point where it isn't salvageable.
Chair Koester Thomas: I wanted to come back to Councilmember Leger because I know that you are
one of the trifecta that raised your hand, so I don't if you still have a comment or would like to share, or...
Councilmember Leger: I do have several comments locked up inside of me that I would like to share.
However,I'll defer to Councilmember Brown.
Chair Koester Thomas: Councilmember Brown.
Councilmember Brown: Thank you
Councilmember Leger: We're a polite group. I read that in the Republic over the weekend, so...
(Inaudible.)
Councilmember Brown: So, let's talk about the national economy turning around and how that will
help Fountains Hills. I'm going to be a little more positive toward Fountain Hills and the end result for
Fountain Hills because I could..., I, professionally,could get down on Fountain Hills as quickly as any of
us, but I'm not going to let myself go there. I think Fountain Hills has way too much to offer and I think
when the national economy turns around we will once again have a healthy construction go through town
for maybe as much as 10 years, hopefullyl0 years, and during those 10 years Fountain Hills, we —
everybody up here and all the citizens—need to be aware that when that's gone, it's gone, and we've got
to find something to replace it. So, do I agree that now is the time to start? Absolutely. You prepare for
war during good times, and during bad times you prepare for peace. So, I absolutely have to agree that
now is the time to start it. I am deeply saddened by the same attitude that we've talked about. Your
organization and your committee is so, so, so valued by the Council, and just because it's tough in the
trenches right now, now it's time to even get together and pull harder together, and I am frustrated also. I
mean, it doesn't matter what we say, we get in trouble for saying it, but we still have to say it, and so, you
know, let's try to move forward as a group because you're too valuable to this Town and what you
produce is a great thing. So,those are my thoughts on this.
Chair Koester Thomas: Councilmember Leger.
Councilmember Leger: Dennis Brown, did you read my mind? Let me put it in a little different way. I
was going to say, I think, some things very similar to that. Alan, I know how much you care about this
Town, and how everyone up here cares about the Town. I think we've all had an opportunity to interview
you all, and we believed in you and that's why I brought you up here, and I know we all bring different
professional backgrounds to the table, and the IQ sitting up here is just..., is just, it's amazing. It's
unbelievable, and we've all been so incredibly successful, you all, looking at your resumes and your
professional career, that you have that drive, and we have the same drive too, and it is frustrating, Alan,
when we are where we are at, and I would like to just put out there that we have our Interim Town
Manager Julie Ghetti, that sits in on SPAC and will be in the future, and please relay to her your
frustrations. Please relay to her your ideas and she will see that we receive those, and then we can kind of
prevent this from, you know, getting to that point of wherever it got, but I heard a couple of suggestions
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up here tonight--Six Sigma, surveying,fees. They are all ideas. No idea is a bad idea and keep the ideas
coming, and may I ask when you are going to start revising the current Strategic Plan?
Chair Koester Thomas: We're not planning to(inaudible).
Councilmember Leger: I just thought I'd put that out there. I mean review it, update it, looking at it,
continuing to engage in continuous improvement, applying Six Sigma to the Strategic Plan?
Chair Koester Thomas: I'll reserve that for actually Agenda Item#5
Councilmember Leger: Okay. Good transition. Thank you.
Chair Koester Thomas: Commissioner Dooley.
Commissioner Dooley: She reads my mind after all this time. I agree. I think we need to work together
and I apologize if it came off as adversarial, the memo. It wasn't intended to be. It was intended to get
your attention, and I think it did.
Councilmember Leger: You had my attention before the memo. We could have written.... I mean, we
understand. So, if that's any consolation, we understand what the issues are and we are all struggling
with them.
Commissioner Dooley: What I wanted to do is call the issue of the Blue Ribbon Committee. Should we
continue with that? Should we not? Do you think it... I mean, frankly, we don't want to spin our wheels.
We don't want to do a lot of work for nothing. So, you tell us if you think that it will be value to you in
helping you go where you need to go, or not. And we have different options, depending if you say, yes,
you think a committee recommendation would be helpful. We can do it ourselves as a committee, or we
can try to bring people in, or some combination,but what should we do?
Chair Koester Thomas: Vice Mayor Dickey?
Vice Mayor Dickey: Are you talking about the proposed work program, or beyond that, or more about
the revenue enhancement aspect?
Commissioner Dooley: Revenue enhancement.
Vice Mayor Dickey: Thank you, Chair. Before what you said, Mike, about educating them one-on-one,
and Curt knows this and we all know this from the Strategic Plan, that when we had all of those meetings,
and I've gone to every Town Hall since 1985, when those people are there, and after you are done with
your either one day worth of it, or two days, or we had pilots and things like that, the people there end up
agreeing that you do have to something like that, and it usually does boil down to a property tax because
we don't, you know, have one, but, you know, there are other things you can do, but that is one that is
logical to own property and pay for fire and police protection, that kind of a thing. So, would that be
something that the Blue Ribbon, or would that be something to actually go forth? I don't know how
many people you can reach in that two years, or three years, or four years, but it's been proven, at least in
my mind, that when you put that kind of time into it, the people there start to come to the same
conclusion. So, I don't know if that's worth trying.
>,. Commissioner Dooley: Madam Chair.
Page 15 of 26
Chair Koester Thomas: Commissioner Dooley
(11/
Commissioner Dooley: I think the issue is, whose role is it to educate the consumers, the citizens. We
don't feel that that's a SPAC responsibility, and the other issue that is going to come up is that it's going
to become political right away and, you know, even the Council is probably not supposed to take a
political direction, but it will be perceived as that because they'll say, "Oh, this is pushing for property
tax. That's what they're after. That's what they want." So, how do we educate the community without
that backlash?
Chair Koester Thomas: And just to take the opportunity to dovetail Commissioner Dooley's
commentary, I know that Andrew is not with us but David is, and we have received, and Julie knows
coming to, gosh, how many SPAC commission meetings because Julie always presents every month a
financial update, so we've asked for that as our monthly meeting, so she's been with through this whole
thing, but we've always asked for our role. We want to be as helpful as possible, constructive to the
Town as possible, and when it comes to educating and/or leading those kinds of efforts we've always
been counseled that once it becomes an issue, you know, take the road bond issue at hand, SPAC, any
appointed commission, and Council cannot then, and Town, cannot lead that effort to be for or against an
initiative, and so Andrew has always advised that SPAC needs to take a quite background role when it
comes to those kinds of advocacy efforts, and henceforth in previous years of debating this topic in
SPAC, that been one of, as Commissioner Dooley highlights, a frustration for us and how we can be most
suited to the Town's move forward without, of course, breaking the law. And so I think what
Commissioner Dooley is asking is, you know, to what extent can SPAC be part of any initiative, the Blue
Ribbon Committee initiative, or do we wait to see what happens in November? Do we take heed for next
year? I think in this particular issue what Commissioner Dooley is asking, because we have been
(indecipherable)along as we have worked hard over the course of the past ten months, is what role do you
want SPAC to play and what is constructive for SPAC to play for the Town's future? Vice Mayor
Dickey.
Vice Mayor Dickey: When SPAC was first formed, I always remember the converation at that Council
meeting had to do with the role and it was championing the Strategic Plan, and if the Strategic Plan is just
so wound and almost impossible to move forward, at least that seems to be, you know, the message that
it's very difficult to move forward without addressing this elephant in the room there. How can you be
the champion of the Strategic Plan if you feel that we can't even go and try to move forward with some of
the Strategic Plan goals if everything is stymied by having no...., not enough revenue. That's a difficult
thing to get over. So how do you champion the Strategic Plan? I mean, I don't see any difference in that
purpose, and I still believe that that's true because that's kind of always what we go through where we say
the Town wanted this. This was a community driven goal. You know A, B, C, whichever one it is, but
then when it comes down to actually doing it, then you get the opposition, so I sincerely believe we do
need a champion for the Strategic Plan and it is exactly the center of where everything else comes from.
Chair Koester Thomas: Well, I think to that end, you know, I think what's best at this point is,I've had
a chance to review your agenda in November, and perhaps as you are going through your large, deep
toolbox of how to move forward in the very short term, and perhaps in the next three, four or five years or
even beyond, maybe one of those tools is SPAC, and in your November discussions you can offer a
suggestion for how or if you want SPAC to move on this or a related issue. We are certainly happy to
serve the Council in whatever capacity you would like, particularly pertaining to the long-term financial
sustainability of our community. If that is not seen as a valued entity, that's certainly okay with us, too,
and that's why we are looking for your direction, and perhaps November will be a good opportunity, as
you are discussing that specific issue,to pull the SPAC card if necessary.
•
Page 16 of 26
AGENDA ITEM#4-DISCUSSION REGARDING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS
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Chair Koester Thomas: Okay, let's move on to agenda item number four, discussion regarding
economic development efforts. Councilmember Leger talked about Lori's efforts, and actually we do
know Lori's efforts. We have asked for presentations from Lori on economic development. As you
know, the Strategic Plan highly values economic development efforts in the Town and has several pillars
that we need to move forward on. Henceforth, that's the reason why we asked, you know, Ms. Gary to
come in and speak with us. In fact, we have received not only a presentation from Lori, but also from the
Convention and Visitors Bureau on their branding initiative, and wanted just to share some of our
thoughts. We often cite to the Town Manger, in this case the Interim Town Manager, to pass along our
thoughts and feelings on our SPAC meetings. We have long meetings all the time, and we were kind of
under the impression that we do that all the time, so if it needs to be a more formal communication effort
to ensure that you are hearing the gist of what's coming out of SPAC on a more frequent basis, perhaps
we'll take that opportunity and I can work with Interim Town Manager Ghetti to ensure that that's
occurring because we often do cite those kinds of comments in our long, tortuous SPAC meetings. And
overall, the comments I think that we heard from both the Convention and Visitors Bureau and Lori were
good. You know, I think we are really excited to hear, specifically, Lori's efforts in targeted industries.
We were happy to hear the three in particular— professional, technical. Health care is near and dear to
SPAC's heart. We have often cited that as a potential opportunity for our Town, as well as finance, and
we think this is a strategy when we are looking at basic employment that is really going to serve our
Town long-term and really talk to some of the issues that we have already discussed today. We are a little
bit more cautious with the tourism focus of the Convention and Visitors Bureau brand. We have received
that presentation and, you know, SPAC has felt that the Town has long chased the entity of tourism, and
we have long chased tourism as an element for economic development strategy, and we're not so certain
that there has been a lot of measured results in that. While we think tourism is a really important element
of an overall strategy for economic development for our Town and, ultimately its economic development
portfolio, SPAC is unsure that its use as a singular instrument is wise, and we'd rather actually see a more
balanced approach to economic development, one that attracts employees and their families here to fill
our homes, to fill our schools in particular, and I think this is an..., equally is an important strategy as we
consider any kind of renewed attention to downtown development, which has come up recently over the
course of the last five years, and particularly the last three years with the Swaback plan. Any kind of
sustained development in that area is really going to be critical to a population that we are going to need
to be able to sustain that, and so SPAC feels it is really important to be focusing on those basic
employment generating activities to increase our population in town and to bring the right kind of mix of
people to town that will ensure the long-term sustainability. When we go back to the indicators that Curt,
I should say Vice Chair Dunham, had mentioned earlier, what strategies are best to address those five
indicators we have already talked about? You know, Town finances certainly, if we had a spike in retail
or commercial activity, there might be a bump in sales tax activity. Changing demographics. We need to
replenish our population for the next generation to come. We need to be thinking ten, twenty years down
the line, and I don't know if that is going to be brought through tourism. I think that's going to be
brought through a more basic employment strategy to bring more families here. Downward business
trends. Again we may see a bump in some additional patronage to our businesses, but our existing
businesses are needing help and so we again need to look at that long-term population generator that is
really going to bring a good mix of folks here, and when you talk about diminishing students and
diminishing property values, really a strategy that's more sustainable there is when we come to a more
basic economic develop strategy. And so, while retail activities certainly help, it is a foundation of what
we have currently, long-term we need a more balanced portfolio, and SPAC would encourage to ensure
that we have an economic development portfolio that matches that balance. And so, in general, based on
the presentations we have received and the information we have received, you know, SPAC would
encourage a more cohesive and coordinated effort of our economic development effort strategies and
resource allocation to these efforts. We suggest a balanced approach for the use of the very limited
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resources that we know that are available. In fact, bottom line, we want the biggest bang for the buck
because we don't have a lot of investment opportunities for economic development, and so we want to1111
ensure that we are using our resources quite wisely and effectively, and again, as usual, SPAC is always
willing to help in whatever way possible and would be happy to support the Town's business recruitment
strategy in whatever meaningful way the Town would see fit. This has been a topic of SPAC a lot. I
would be happy to open it up for either additional SPAC comments -- we have been talking about this
recently in our SPAC meetings--or any comments or questions from Council.
Mayor Schlum: This is Jay. Can you hear me alright,Audra?
Chair Koester Thomas: We can hear you,Mayor. Thank you.
Mayor Schlum: Good. Thanks. I think what you represented SPAC's wanting seems to be in lock step
with what we've advised..., or what our Town Manager has our Economic Development Administrator
working towards. Now, resources are limited, and then you also mentioned the tourism effort perhaps
being too focused on destination,and utilization of some of those resources, from what I'm hearing,could
be reallocated towards other areas for economic based job growth, but I don't —maybe I'm not
understanding—I don't see a great... I don't see really any difference in what you're sharing, and all the
time you said you've been talking as a group about... It seems like we're going down that path,and what
am I missing? I don't quite understand what I'm missing, apart from it sounds like SPAC thinks perhaps
destination marketing is not our.... , or shouldn't receive potentially as much resource funding, and again
this year we haven't determined how much to spend on any one given area related to tourism yet. That's
coming before Council soon related also to the branding, but I don't see any difference so I need help
understanding where the discrepancies are.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you,Mr. Mayor. Commissioner Magazine.
Commissioner Magazine: Mr. Mayor, a couple of points. I was impressed by the presentation that the
Visitors Bureau of the Chamber made, but it's basically a PR... It's a PR approach. It's making the
Town look terrific, which it is. It's ads in magazines. It's websites. It's trying to attract certain kinds of
things like weddings and so on, and while I think that's important the future of the Town, in my view,
over the long term, is going to be based on economic development. When you bring in retail you bring in
low wage jobs. When you bring in new economic development, you bring in high wage jobs and people
who tend to stay in the community. I think there were two things. One, and I've said this at SPAC, and
I've said it to Lori Gary, and I've said it at the Chamber, I think the two go hand in hand. You want to
present the Town in the most favorable light, particularly in the valley, or in the state, or even nationally.
You want people to look at the Town as a place to reside and live, and possibly even open up retail shops.
That's absolutely necessary. Also, though, to get people who run businesses and are forming major
businesses to look at the Town in a way that says, "I can create a major business here," or"I can move a
health care facility here,"or "I can put in a private hospital," or"I can...,"and you can go on and on and
on. Those are the kinds of facilities and businesses and jobs that will sustain any community, and so I
think it's important that they work hand in hand. I want to put a little finer point on the financing. I don't
know if anything has been approved, but I know that the..., I was here for the presentation when the
Visitors Bureau asked for, I don't know, a $100,000-plus, and I'm going to embarrass Lori. Lori has a
tremendous plan but she's a single person, one person, and you can't do anything reasonable in terms of
encouraging economic development with one person. You simply can't, and so the allocation of
resources becomes absolutely critical. Personally, I think the Council should be putting much more
emphasis on the financial aspects of economic development because that's where the future of the Town
is. It doesn't mean you don't fund and finance and help the Chamber and the Visitors Bureau, but if
you're looking long-term, as opposed to the next year or two, trying to get a few more businesses in, •
Page 18 of 26
that's the direction I think you should go. To add three businesses, like we are right now, a paint and a
III couple of other things, but losing six at the same time, isn't progress and that is likely to continue for a
long time to come in this community, at least that's what I fear. Whereas economic development has
more permanence.
Councilmember Leger: If I may?
Chair Koester Thomas: Councilmember Leger.
Councilmember Leger: I don't disagree with you at all, and I think our Economic Development
Administrator is doing a tremendous job with her limited resources, and she's talking to folks now in all
those arenas, so she is doing the work and she is getting it done. The notion about the six businesses
leaving town kind of gets into a philosophical discussion. I mean, who's ultimately responsible for the
success of their business? And I think that that's hyped up a little. I mean, when you look at those six
businesses, I mean, one was Blockbuster. Look at their model nationally. They didn't go out of business
because of anything to do with Fountain Hills. One of the restaurants that went out of business, the same
plaza they are having a booming business. It probably has a little to do with their business model. I
mean, I can go through each and every one of these. It's not defending anybody, but sometimes
businesses fail. As a matter of fact, small businesses are failing by the thousands every day under all
circumstances and under all economic conditions. I mean, I'm not going to go through each and every
one of those businesses, but there were some very, very good reasons why they failed and there was no
correlation between what the Town did or did not do that contributed to the failure of those businesses. I
mean, look at Blockbuster. Look at Redbox. Look at Netflix. That's one of the reasons why they failed.
You know, and at the end of the day we are talking about the future. You know, we do have a bandwidth
for about 10,000 more residents. We did annex the state property. My goal in annexing the state
0 property, leaning more on preserving the state property,that the annexing of that property was to get more
boots on the ground. The only thing that's going to help businesses in this Town, and I'm not an
economics major and an economic development expert by any means, but Economic Development 101 or
Economics 101, it's all about rooftops. So, we do have a capacity for,you know, more rooftops out there.
We do have a tremendous capacity for something happening in downtown. I mean the pieces to the
puzzle are in the box, you know, and it's just a matter of getting them in play, and it is multi-variant. It
is multi-variant, and I think that branding our Town and presenting our Town in a positive image does
help bring residents. It does help businesses because the perception out there, when you talk to people
down at GPEC down in Phoenix, and Lori had an opportunity to bring them out here and I met with them,
they came out here and they were, wow, you know, this is not like we thought it was. It's very different.
So, Alan, I agree with, you know, the things you're saying. It's multi-variant, and as was stated earlier,
there's no silver bullet, so I think we need to peck away with all of what we can, but I think the branding
initiative is needed because perceptually I think it can aid..., help Lori, and as you well know the
branding program is not drilling down specifically on tourism, it's branding Fountain Hills, which is why
I bought into it, frankly, not to brand tourism but to brand Fountain Hills, and I think that's helpful to
where we're at. Thank you.
Chair Koester Thomas: Vice Mayor Dickey.
Vice Mayor Dickey: Thank you. And, Alan, I think I agree exactly with what you were saying because,
and Lori knows this, that's why I've been kind of hammering about a college, or whatever, since 2003,
because I think that along with the rooftops and more residents I would like it if people who didn't, they
even necessarily have to live here, but if they came here to work, and then obviously having the
opportunity for smart people, or you know whatever, I don't mean to say smart people, people that live
here have the opportunity to actually work here also in a profession, a real profession. My question is,
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everybody is talking about the branding and making decisions on funding. It... Was the branding
presented to Council? Everybody is talking about it. Was it presented at a Council meeting?
Commissioner Magazine: Yes. You were in Italy.
Vice Mayor Dickey: But was that the branding?
Commissioner Magazine: Yes. I was here. I've... When Francesca was here....
Vice Mayor Dickey: Because I was under the impression I wasn't the only Councilperson who hasn't
really seen that,the...
Commissioner Spiker: I haven't seen it.
Commissioner Magazine: Well,Madam Chair.
Chair Koester Thomas: Commissioner Magazine.
Commissioner Magazine: I actually testified, and it was on the branding, and I believe you were out of
Town. It was Francesca, on behalf of the Visitors Bureau, who made that presentation.
Vice Mayor Dickey: Okay,thank you. I thought that that was about the contact, and I did not know that
that was about the branding, so I'll have to watch that again because I...
Councilmember Leger: Well, I can help clarify that. I think that what Francesca did was kind of a high
level presentation where she introduced the concept of branding and the deliverables and the benefits, so
forth and so on. I'm not sure what presentation that SPAC received. Did you receive the same
presentation? Did you guys receive a vendor presentation where the actual vendor that's working on the
branding program came forward and kind of drilled down on it? And I think that's what we need to all
see. I know Tait and I have had an opportunity to see that because we are on a committee, because it's in
its infancy stage. I think what's been rolled out is kind of at a higher level and that's where I get my
information that it's more of a broad based branding program rather than branding tourism. So, Ginny,
you are partially correct. It wasn't a drilled down presentation, but it was part of the three things that
those dollars allocated for would potentially cover in terms of services, and the branding was, you know,
fee for service.
Commissioner Dooley: Madam Chair.
Chair Koester Thomas: Commissioner Dooley.
Commissioner Dooley: When their presentation was made, we were told that their focus was in three
areas: golf,weddings and events. That, to me,is tourism.
Councilmember Leger: That's true. I mean, that's how they're... How would you say? That's how
they're presenting it. If you see the actual branding program itself, it's branding Fountain Hills and it's
branding its assets, its trails, its lifestyle and the things that you mentioned. That's why I've advocated to
have that group come before you all, as well as the Council. And, Julie, I know that there's been some
pushback on that, not from a negative perspective but they wanted to have a better product procured
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before they presented it. That was last time we talked about it. Is that kind of where it's at? Tait,did you
want to..
Councilmember Elkie: Yes, that's my understanding in speaking with the Chamber and some of our
BVAC meetings, too, that the folks that they are using as far as the branding campaign is concerned that
they're..., you know, you only get, you know, one chance to make a first impression, so they want to
make sure that they put their best foot forward with that, so there have been, as Henry correctly pointed
out, some higher level, you know, not necessarily discussions but presentations. We have heard about it
in BVAC and there was one, I think one Council, we had one meeting, informal meeting, with some folks
from the Chamber as well, but to speak on that and,Commissioner Magazine,I agree with you. You say,
"I'd love to see a hospital here." I think we would all love to see a community center. We actually had a
meeting earlier this year with, help me out Julie, and I think Rick was in the meeting, but who was the
gentleman from Scottsdale Community College? We had him in town.
Councilmember Leger: Dana Saar?
Councilmember Elide: Well, it was Dana. He helped to facilitate the meeting, but it was the.... The
only thing that's coming to mind is archbishop,but that's not what it was,but it's some high...
Councilmember Leger: The chancellor?
Councilmember Elkie: The chancellor. Exactly, the chancellor. It's kind of like the Pope, and he came
in and we all had a meeting. We showcased the Community Center and the Library and, "Look at this
wonderful space over here. Wouldn't this be great for culinary arts or some type of community college?
We've got all of the facilities at the Community Center for you to put classes on," and it all sounds very
• wonderful, but then they look at the numbers and they said, "Well, the numbers just aren't there. We
can't do it and we're not going to..." You know, they're looking at other areas, so there is some
opportunities, and I think they are doing something at the high school, but, you know, when push comes
to shove, it's just not there. It sounds like a wonderful idea, but if you can't get the buy-in and get the
investment, you're not going to get it done, and because the Town relies so heavily on sales tax revenues,
you know, we do have to look at those retail businesses to come into Town to help provide those revenues
because in a situation... and perhaps I'm missing something here, but if we had a, you know let's say a
Motorola were to come in here and put a factory in here, and they weren't necessarily selling out of
Fountain Hills, well, we would just have more people in Town, perhaps visiting the businesses that are
here, which is great, but they are not paying property tax, they are not paying other fees, so we'd have
another business in Town that's using our services, using the roads, without really contributing towards
the Town of Fountain Hills itself. But I completely agree with you, Commissioner Magazine, that we do
need those types of businesses here and it would be wonderful and it would put Fountain Hills on the
map, so to speak, but it is all about, I think, getting people in here and the rooftops, and we are probably
not going to see that any time soon with 22% vacancy rate now, so that's probably going to be some time.
Thank you.
Mayor Schlum: This is Jay. If I may...
Chair Koester Thomas: Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Schlum: Thanks and great comments, and I think probably a good year ago, or maybe soon after
more of the....., the Downtown Vision Plan is now almost two years, the Council and the staff really
made a turn of focus toward building our daytime population, and certainly Lori is going to answer the
calls to any retailer that wants to come in, any business that wants to come in that makes sense for
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Fountain Hills, give them information and get them connected with the right folks that are ..., or she's
brought in to help give some information to real estate agents working on a commercial deal, and she's4111
always available. What really turned our efforts toward daytime population, knowing that businesses
such as the one above the All American Sports Grill that has insurance folks there, you know, twelve
months out of the year. They are not winter visitors and they are there and they need to eat, and they're
right in downtown already. We need more of that. That's what will help us to be more sustainable,not to
mention provide good jobs for folks that live here in Fountain Hills. It causes them not to have to leave
Fountain Hills and also to..., which would help us to stymie some of the retail leakage dollars when
people leave Fountain Hills. Obviously we are next to a pretty amazing city, Scottsdale, known as a
shopping mecca and on top of it being a great place for resorts and such, but, boy, once people leave
Fountain Hills there are a lot of opportunities to spend money elsewhere, not necessarily needed because,
well, most everything is available here,but keeping folks here is important, and that building that daytime
population, having some great base jobs that we've been talking about here, has been the focus for a good
amount of time. Now, you might read in the paper,because it's kind of exciting that a Dunkin' Donuts is
coming, or you know this or not,because people do get excited about, you know, what type of restaurants
are here. We've been waiting for 40 years for a Dunkin' Donuts or whatever. So you might read that
and, of course the business that close, it's horrible to hear that. These people invested their heart and
soul, and the Town has been there on every instance to do whatever we can, and, you know, we have a
$50 business fee to be a business in Fountain Hills, and really that's about it. We stay out of the way.
We try to keep the streets up and the amenities up and make it look good, and for the most part it's a
beautiful community. Obviously our roads need some work, and we are addressing that in a direct way,
giving the citizens the opportunity to make their decision on that, but we are focused on bringing jobs
here, and Lori is utilizing as many resources as she can, and would we like to spend some more money in
that area? Absolutely, but, boy, it's very hard to find (indecipherable) these days, and in fact if we fully
spend the budgeted dollars that could go towards destination marketing and our marketing efforts to the
Tourism Bureau, if we didn't spend half of that that's still not a whole lot of money, so I'm not sure what
(;)
difference could be made, and Lori did her best to argue towards that very same thing, Commissioner
Magazine, about a year ago in the budget process. If you want all of these things done, I need more
resources and, you know, she was straight up with us. If you want to go wide and deep, I need this. If
you want to go wide and shallow, you know, I can get by with this. But right now we are kind of a little
closer to the wider and shallower, but she is now a little more focused on just that, that daytime
population and building those base jobs, so I'm feeling good about the strides and steps she's made over
the last six months to a year on developing that daytime population, and in particular on the retail front,
being focused on bringing vitality to our downtown, with the fortunate inclusion now of Sofrita and All
American Sports Grill and some of the other businesses down there that are really bringing some folks
down there, I'm hopeful we can have a vital downtown, at least a good start to it. So,that's kind of where
I see things are at, and I'd love to have more resources for economic development, and I'd love to have
more resources for destination marketing and branding and all these things that can make us feel good,
but also do a job of sharing our..., the beautiful parts of our community more often and more effectively
than we do today.
Councilmember Elide: Madam Chair.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilmember Elkie.
Councilmember Elide: Thank you. Just to..., as to revenue, as everyone up here has aptly pointed out,
and probably knew before you came up here, the property tax is probably going to be the thing that will
help sustain the Town in the long term. The reality of it is, based on the previous vote, 80-20, it's going
to be years before you convince enough of the residents here, if you're successful in doing that, to vote
for a property tax, and it's going to be quite some time. So, looking at, as far as our financial abilities, or
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•
our abilities to increase revenues with the Town, it's quite limited. We've got the sales tax, and we've got
the utilities tax, and we've got fees, court costs. That's really kind of the bulk of it. The fees are fairly
nominal as far as our total budget. So, we've got sales tax, which no one wants to increase our sales tax
even more to be one of the highest in the ..., or we are already one of the highest, so a communication
utilities tax is the next one. You're going to hear us talk about that in our toolbox probably at the retreat.
So, what is the single most largest expense the Town has? Well, it's public safety. It's fire and police.
Now, one of the things that I've thought about, and I don't know if this is appropriate to request or task,
Madam Chair, if you'd let me know, to task to SPAC, to this Commission, is one of the things I've kind
of thought about, and I've talked to Julie and our previous Town Manager and I think some fellow
Councilmembers about, is looking at lobbying and changing the legislation that deals with the fire district.
The fire district, as you know, we had in years past was dissolved. The Town Council opted to dissolve
it,or to assume that responsibility to the tune of about, well,it currently about three million dollars a year.
A thought would be, and one of the challenges there. . . I wasn't here during that time but I've been
educated on both sides about as far as what the controversies were about the fire district and the Council
and things that were going back and forth. If there's a way to change the legislation that would allow a
Council to sit as the fire district, and to sit much like we do with our other community services districts,
and to have that taxing authority as a district, even more so if we had a public safety district that had the
taxing authority for fire and police both, and that would be something that I've had on my to do list, but
it's been at the bottom, or not at the very bottom but down there because of the amount of time that it's
going to take to look at all of the legislation and..., but that would be helpful if that was something that
could be done because, you know, if we were able to have the public pay for the public safety then that
would help through a property, strictly a property tax, and I think that would be an easier sell for our
residents because that's just public safety. Everybody likes fire and police, right? So, if we had that
option, we might even have the opportunity to put that on the property tax, have the opportunity to reduce
our sales tax and make this more attractive to businesses and that sort of thing. So, I think that would be
something that could be helpful and that this commission might task itself with if it so thought it worthy.
Thank you.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you, Councilmember Elkie. I don't necessarily pride myself in knowing
of Arizona Open Meetings Law,but I will cite that that's probably a better discussion for our next agenda
item, which we are not quite at yet, and I'll defer to David. I think it's probably a more of an appropriate
discussion, at least we'd prefer to comment on that in our next agenda item. But to close the loop
specifically on the economic development discussion, we simply wanted to provide you with our thoughts
and reactions. We had had these presentations, as it is an important issue, as you understand, for the
Town's future, and I'm hoping that the branding strategy is a little bit more polished because it has made
its debut, so..... There are six pages in Phoenix Magazine this month of the branding strategy, so I'm
hoping that they feel pretty comfortable with their product at this point because it is out in the street, and
that's part of the presentation, of course, we have already received from the Convention and Visitors
Bureau, so to that end I think we just wanted to share our thoughts regarding economic development with
you, and ensuring that we are maintaining a balanced approached.
AGENDA ITEM#5 -DISCUSSION REGARDING SPAC'S FUTURE WORK PROGRAM
Chair Koester Thomas: So, with that, I'll move on to agenda item number five, allowing us to maybe
pontificate a bit on Councilmember Elkie's suggestion, but also getting back to Councilmember Leger's
comment inquiring about the status of the Strategic Plan. We are not certainly requesting an update of the
Strategic Plan. We feel , still think it's a valid document. We delivered it and you unanimously
adopted it just a year ago, but indeed in our docket for this year is a review of the document. We are
currently in that. We will be bringing to you some recommended changes or revisions to the document,
and we hope to do that before the year's end, and so we are just finishing polishing on those. Also, as
Page 23 of 26
part of our annual activity, we will be identifying those initiatives that we think are most important as you
guys consider your Fiscal Year 12-13 budgeting planning. I realize November is focused strictly on the (44)
budget deficit, and we obviously support that discussion in any way possible, but to that end and moving
forward in identifying the initiatives for that budgeting cycle for Fiscal Year 12-13, we, as outlined in the
Strategic Plan, will be providing you with our advice on maybe some of the high level issues, maybe the
higher priority issues, that Council should consider as you initiate that budget planning. So, indeed
Councilmember Leger, we are working diligently on that aspect, and because this has spent a lot of time
maybe we are a month behind. We took the (indecipherable) to do that because we know that
November's retreat is focusing strictly on the budget deficit at hand and we wanted to get this joint
meeting scheduled to discuss the previous items. But with that, I'm going to call the question again as far
as beyond those issues related to the annual maintenance and championing of the Strategic Plan as set
forth in our by-laws,Councilmember Elkie has offered a suggestion as far as a potential work program for
2012 already. Are there issues at hand you want us to focus on? Commissioner Dooley had again asked
the question if the Blue Ribbon Committee now is a good time, or if there is maybe elements of the
initiative that you would like us to start working on? Is economic development an arena that we can help
the Town move forward on? So, I'll just open it up to your direction if you have any at time point in
time, and perhaps you will have more after your November retreat, as well, that you can certainly
communicate through me and/or Interim Town Manager Julie Ghetti, but open up this opportunity to
discuss the work program for SPAC,especially as it's concerned 2012. Councilmember Leger.
Councilmember Leger: With respect to the Blue Ribbon Committee, I think from kind of what the
Mayor was telegraphing, perhaps this isn't the best timing to move that initiative forward and maybe we
look and see and take a look at how the road bond goes and then step back and recalibrate. One of the
things that I found interesting in your report, you had your proposed work program and there were a
series of questions out there that it looks like you were recommending this is something that the Blue
Ribbon Committee could focus on, and I was kind of reading this over as were going through the
meeting, and I'm not sure, you know, once again how appropriate this would be in terms of your logic,
but as I look through all that, is that a possible project for SPAC? In other words, do we need a Blue
Ribbon Committee to answer those questions? I think that with the talent that's sitting up here and your
background, I don't believe we need a Blue Ribbon Committee to answer those questions,and I think that
I'd really like the answers to these questions,and I believe that you have the capability to do that if you so
choose. I need to watch my words. I'm not assigning anything, but it's a recommendation. So, thank
you.
Chair Koester Thomas: Any other thoughts? Mayor,are you still with us?
Mayor Schlum: I am. Thank you.
Chair Koester Thomas: You're sleeping?
Mayor Schlum: Did you hear me snoring?
Chair Koester Thomas: Yup,totally called you out.
Mayor Schlum: (Indecipherable.)
Chair Koester Thomas: Councilmember Elkie.
Councilmember Elide: Thank you. When does SPAC have another...? Well, you said that you meet
quite often. So, are you going to have a meeting before our meeting in November...our retreat?
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Chair Koester Thomas: It's right around that timing, Councilmember Elide. Let me pull up my
calendar quickly, see if I can get you the scheduling. We have our meeting November 16th, which is just
prior to your retreat.
Councilmember Elide: Right. Perhaps some discussion..., and the election, Julie, what day is it on for
the bond?
Ms. Ghetti: (Inaudible.)
Councilmember Elide: November 8`h. So, by the 16th you will know one way or another how we sit, so
perhaps in advance of that start thinking about what's Plan B, or what would SPAC recommend as far as
Plan B is concerned if the road bond does not go forward. What do you recommend as far as the Council
is concerned? You know, we have tightened the belt quite a bit, and we're looking at..., I know we are
looking at a number of other areas where we can continue to tighten it and consolidate and, I mean, I
think it's remarkable that folks in the Town are feeling like there's nothing wrong as far as the Town
government's concerned when we've gone from 80-something to 55, 88 to 55 or 54, or something
along...
(Inaudible)
Councilmember Elide: Fifty-eight, thank you. You're a numbers guy, I know. So, that's quite
remarkable and it really is a testament to the staff and what they've done, and certainly what the Council
has done with limited resources as well. I think we are all doing a good job, all of us up here on this dais.
So, that would be helpful, I think, for the Council to have SPAC's input as far as what Plan B is if the
road bond does not pass. Thank you.
Chair Koester Thomas: Councilmember Leger.
Councilmember Leger: If I may, in that I'm looking at the Hocking Report, if in fact we don't go with a
Blue Ribbon Committee, and maybe the SPAC's already done this, but, you know, really drill down on
this report and take a look at some things in there that perhaps we haven't done, or are there some things
in there that we could do better? I thought this was good product that came out of the previous Blue
Ribbon Committee and, you know, the gentleman that put this together had mentioned to me at that time
that, you know, there are limited options out there and these things don't necessarily change overnight, so
there might be some good stuff in here that,you know,we missed. Thank you.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you. Any other comments or questions? I think you have given us
some things to think about. Final call on SPAC work program?
Mayor Schlum: Yes,hello.
Chair Koester Thomas: Mayor. Mr. Mayor, go ahead.
Mayor Schlum: You woke me up, Audra. No, this is great conversation. I'm certain nobody could fall
asleep to this. This is terrific and with that I wanted to make sure SPAC, and I think our community,
whether it really is aware of the job you guys do, are extremely grateful for the talent and the skills and
the input and the work that you guys do and how often you do work, offline and online, and it is just very,
very much appreciated,and it's a tough time to be a Town. It's a tough time to be a business. It's a tough
time to be a Commissioner and a Councilmember, and the dialogue is good. You guys are very well
engaged and you do great and very important work, so it does not go unnoticed and we do hear what you
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say. We do... I think we are often, you know, 90-plus percent of the time on the very same page, so to
some extent we are preaching to each other's choirs, but we certainly are a better place and are seated in
position better with the SPAC doing its great work, and we have a lot of work ahead and we just have to
also focus on what's possible so,as many of you have said, we don't have you guys spin your wheels,and
I think looking at what other communities..., some of the questions that you shared that might guide a
Blue Ribbon Committee are perhaps good questions to consider either outside of a Blue Ribbon
Committee or just as good basis for all of us to understand the answers to, but I largely wanted to say
thank you all very much and welcome to the new Commissioners and keep up the great work.
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you,Mr.Mayor. Vice Chair Dunham.
Vice Chair Dunham: Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to kind of make a closing. I've been
really quiet tonight after my opening remarks. I just... I hope that.... I know that our goal as a
Commission is not to have any kind of acrimonious relationship with the Council. That was not the intent
of bringing up our real serious concerns. We all have to work well together to get through this. I think
Ben Franklin said, "We all need to hang together, or we will certainly all hang separately." I believe that,
and none of us are here for a pat on the back because we are not going to get it. Some of the decisions
that are going to need to be made are going to be unpopular and may cost many of us our positions, and
that's what leadership's all about, doing the things that need to be done regardless of the four people or
five people that come to the Council meeting or to our SPAC meeting. We've got to be above it. We've
got to be logical. We've got to be methodical and we've got to be strong leaders, all of us, and so I think
as a group we can all make that happen, and I hope we can and we are looking for your guidance and
we'll do whatever it takes to get it done.
AGENDA ITEM#6-ADJOURN
Chair Koester Thomas: Thank you for those closing remarks,Commissioner...,or Vice Chair Dunham.
I never give you enough credit. Alright, with that we will move to agenda item number six, which is j,
adjournment,and I'll offer a motion...., or I'll take a motion for adjournment.
Commissioner Magazine: So moved.
Commissioner Dooley: Let's stay longer.
Chair Koester Thomas: Is there a second?
Commissioner Dooley: Second.
Chair Koester Thomas: I'm going to give Commissioner Dooley the second. Proceed to vote. All in
favor? Opposed?
The motion CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY by those in attendance and the meeting adjourned at 7:30
p.m.
Shaunna Williams, Recording Secretary
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