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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2022.1115.TCRM.MinutesTOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING
OF THE FOUNTAIN HILLS TOWN COUNCIL
November 15, 2022
1. CALL TO ORDER AND PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
Mayor Dickey called the Regular Meeting of the Fountain Hills Town Council held on
November 15, 2022, to order at 5:31 p.m. and led the Council and audience in the
Pledge of Allegiance.
2. MOMENT OF SILENCE
A moment of silence was held.
3. ROLL CALL
Members Present. Mayor Ginny Dickey: Vice Mayor Peggy McMahon; Councilmember
Gerry Friedel; Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski; Councilmember Alan Magazine;
Councilmember Mike Scharnow; Councilmember David Spelich
Members Absent: None
Staff Present: Town Manager Grady E. Miller; Town Attorney Aaron D. Arnson; Town
Clerk Linda Mendenhall
Audience: Sixty-one members of the public were present.
4. REPORTS BY MAYOR, COUNCIL MEMBERS, AND TOWN MANAGER
A. RECOGNITION: Stellar Students of the Month for November
Mayor Dickey recognized the following students who were in attendance for their
achievements.
Shiloh Maroon
Charlie Schafer
Elisa Prescott
Julia Owers
McDowell Mountain Elementary School
McDowell Mountain Elementary School
Fountain Hills Middle School
Fountain Hills High School
B. PROCLAMATION: November 26, 2022, as Small Business Saturday.
Mayor Dickey issued a proclamation for Small Business Saturday, encouraging
residents to shop locally.
5. SCHEDULED PUBLIC APPEARANCES/PRESENTATIONS
A. PRESENTATION: Video on Make a Difference Day
Rachael Goodwin presented a video showcasing the services provided by
Fountain Hills staff and residents held on October 22, 2022, in support of Make a
Difference Day.
B. PRESENTATION: Annual financial audit results by Heinfeld Meech & Co.
David Pock, Chief Financial Officer introduced Jennifer Shields, Audit Manager
with Heinfeld Meech & Co. who presented the audit results and answered
councils' questions.
C. PRESENTATION: Economic Development— First Quarter Update
Amanda Jacobs presented the first quarter economic development update and
answered councils' questions.
6. CALL TO THE PUBLIC
Pursuant to AR S §38-/31. 01(H), public comment is per -molted (not resurrection matters NOT listed on the agenda. Any such comment l,)
must be within thejunsdiction of the Council, and (Nis subject to reasonable time, place, end manner restrictions. The Council will not
discuss or take legal action on matters raised during Call to the Public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal
action. At the conclusion of the Call to the Pudic, individual councilmembers may (if respond to criticism, (ii) ask staff to review a matter, or
ON ask that the matter be placed on a future Council agenda.
The following residents addressed the council under the Call to the Public.
Stephen Gav a Fountain Hills resident, addressed the council expressing his
appreciation for all their hard work during this term and encouraged the town to continue
its outreach to Canadians.
7. CONSENT AGENDA ITEMS
All items listed on the Consent Agenda are considered to be routine, noncontroversial matters and will be enacted by one
motion of the Council All motions and subsequent approvals of consent items will include all recommended staff
stipulations unless otherwise stated. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a councilmember or
member of the public so requests. If a councilmember or member of the public wishes to discuss an item on the Consent
Agenda, he/she may request so prior to the motion to accept the Consent Agenda or with notification to the Town
Manager or Mayor prior to the date of the meeting for which the item was scheduled. The items will be removed from the
Consent Agenda and considered in its normal sequence on the agenda.
MOVED BY Councilmember Alan Magazine to approve the Consent Agenda,
SECONDED BY Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski.
Vote: 7 — 0 passed — Unanimously
Councilmember Grzybowski Aye
Councilmember Magazine Aye
Councilmember McMahon Aye
Councilmember Scharnow Aye
Councilmember Spelich Aye
Vice Mayor Friedel Aye
Mayor Dickey Aye
A. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of the minutes of the
Regular Meeting of October 18, 2022.
B. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approve a Special Event Liquor
License application for the fountain Hills Chamber of Commerce for a beer
garden in conjunction with Stroll in the Glow on December 3, 2022.
8. REGULAR AGENDA
A. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: on the Town of Fountain Hills
2023 Legislative Agenda.
Jack Lunsford with the Lunsford Group reviewed the items listed on the 2023
legislative agenda and answered councils' questions.
MOVED BY Councilmember Alan Magazine to approve the Legislative Agenda,
SECONDED BY Sharron Grzybowski.
Vote: 7 — 0 Passed — unanimously
Councilmember Grzybowski Aye
Councilmember Magazine Aye
Councilmember McMahon Aye
Councilmember Scharnow Aye
Councilmember Spelich Aye
Vice Mayor Friedel Aye
Mayor Dickey Aye
B. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: on FY 21 and FY22 Development
Fee Audit Report.
Kevin Burnett, Senior Project Manager of Willden Financial provided an overview
of the development fee audit and answered councils' questions.
This item is informational only, no action was taken.
C. DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of supplemental funds for
Pumphouse Pilot Art Project.
Mayor Dickey opened the item up for public comment. The following resident
addressed the council.
Council -Elect Brenda Kalivianakis a Fountain Hills resident, asked that the
council vote no to this expense as it is not in alignment with the stated goals of
the fund.
The council took no action on this agenda item.
Clerks Note: Councilmember Alan Magazine stepped away from the Dais at
7:16 p.m. and returned at 7:19 p.m.
D. HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING, CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION:
Resolution 2022-43, declaring the Special Use Permit Ordinance a public record,
and adoption of Ordinance 22-07 repealing and replacing Zoning Ordinance,
Chapter 2, Section 2.02, Special Use Permits.
Mayor Ginny Dickey opened the public hearing and did not receive any requests
to speak. Mayor Dickey closed the public hearing and received no further
comments from Council.
MOVED BY Vice Mayor Peggy McMahon to adopt Resolution 2022-43 and
Ordinance 22-07, SECONDED BY Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski.
Vote: 7 — 0 Passed — unanimously
Councilmember Grzybowski Aye
Councilmember Magazine Aye
Councilmember McMahon Aye
Councilmember Scharnow Aye
Councilmember Spelich Aye
Vice Mayor Friedel Aye
Mayor Dickey Aye
E. CONSIDERATION OF Ordinance 22-09 for Short Term Rentals.
Mayor Dickey opened the item up for public comment. The following residents
provided written statements.
Al Ronca
Linda Curry
The following residents addressed the council.
Suzanne Brown the Director of Community and Government Affairs for the
Scottsdale Area Association of Realtors addressed council in -support of an
ordinance that adopts all of the new allowances created with Senate Bill 1168.
She urged the council to postpone a vote until further review and finetuning of a
couple of items to bring them into compliance with the allowances granted by the
Senate Bill.
Lyn Travte a Fountain Hills resident, addressed some of the concerns she has
as a realtor with the proposed ordinance.
MOVED BY Vice Mayor Peggy McMahon to approve Ordinance 22-09,
SECONDED BY Councilmember David Spelich.
Vote: 7 — 0 Passed — unanimously
Councilmember Grzybowski Aye
Councilmember Magazine Aye
Councilmember McMahon Aye
Councilmember Scharnow Aye
Councilmember Spelich Aye
Vice Mayor Friedel Aye
Mayor Dickey Aye
F. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: approving Second Amendment to
Professional Services Agreement 2023-021.2 with Top Leaf Tree Services LLC,
for Professional tree services.
MOVED BY Councilmember Alan Magazine to approve Amendment No. 2 to
Professional Services Agreement 2023-021.2 with Top Leaf Tree Services LLC
for Professional tree services in the amount of $50,000, SECONDED BY
Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski.
Vote: 7 — 0 Passed — unanimously
Councilmember Grzybowski Aye
Councilmember Magazine Aye
Councilmember McMahon Aye
Councilmember Scharnow Aye
Councilmember Spelich Aye
Vice Mayor Friedel Aye
Mayor Dickey Aye
G. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: approving First Amendment to
Cooperative Purchasing Agreement 2022-074 with Cactus Transport, Inc., for
Pavement Maintenance Services.
MOVED BY Councilmember Mike Scharnow to approve Amendment No. 1 to
Cooperative Purchasing Agreement 2022-074 with Cactus Transport, Inc, for
Pavement Maintenance Services in the amount of $154,609.86, SECONDED BY
Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski.
Vote: 7 — 0 Passed — unanimously
Councilmember Grzybowski Aye
Councilmember Magazine Aye
Councilmember McMahon Aye
Councilmember Scharnow Aye
Councilmember Spelich Aye
Vice Mayor Friedel Aye
Mayor Dickey Aye
H. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION. Approval of American Ramp
Contract 2023-051 for Skate Park renovation.
Mayor Dickey opened the item up for public comment. The following resident
addressed the council.
Caleb Dassinaer a contracted teacher for the Town of Fountain Hills, spoke in
support of the skate park renovations.
Wes Nourse, a Fountain Hills resident, spoke in support of the skate park
renovations.
Written comments - in support of the skate park renovations.
Brittni Thyfault
Lindsey Michaels
MOVED BY Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski to approve the American Ramp
Contract 2023-051, SECONDED BY Councilmember Alan Magazine.
Vote: 7 — 0 Passed — unanimously
Councilmember Grzybowski Aye
Councilmember Magazine Aye
Councilmember McMahon Aye
Councilmember Scharnow Aye
Councilmember Spelich Aye
Vice Mayor Friedel Aye
Mayor Dickey Aye
I. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: A cut and fill waiver to allow
hillside cuts in excess of ten feet for the development of a single-family residence
at 15341 E. Firerock Country Club Drive.
MOVED BY Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski to approve cut and fill waiver
CFW22-000001, SECONDED BY Councilmember Alan Magazine.
Vote: 7 — 0 Passed — unanimously
Councilmember Grzybowski Aye
Councilmember Magazine Aye
Councilmember McMahon Aye
Councilmember Scharnow Aye
Councilmember Spelich Aye
Vice Mayor Friedel Aye
Mayor Dickey Aye
9. COUNCIL DISCUSSION/DIRECTION to the TOWN MANAGER
Items) listed below are related only to the propriety of (i)placing such item(s) on a future agenda for action, or (ii)
directing staff to conduct further research and report back to the Council.
10. ADJOURNMENT
Having no further business, Mayor Ginny Dickey adjourned the Regular meeting of the
Fountain Hills Town Council held on November 15, 2022, at 8:38 p.m.
ATTEST AND PREPARED BY:
a G. Mendenhall, Town Clerk
TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
Ginn ickey, Mayor
CERTIFICATION
I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of
the Regular Meeting held by the Town Council of Fountain Hills in the Town Hall Council
Chambers on the 15th day of November 2022. I further certify that the meeting was duly
called and that a quorum was present.
DATED tsy' Day of January 2023.
Li- :a G. Mendenhall, Town Clerk
TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 1 of 77
NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
Post -Production File
TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
November 15, 2022 City Council Meeting
Transcription Provided By:
eScribers, LLC
Transcription is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not
be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
MAYOR DICKEY: Good evening, everyone. Please stand for the pledge and remain
standing.
ALL: I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic
for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Please remain standing for a moment of silence. Thank
you. Roll call, please.
MENDENHALL: Mayor Dickey.
MAYOR DICKEY: Here.
MENDENHALL. Vice Mayor McMahon.
MCMAHON: Here.
MENDENHALL. Councilmember Friedel.
FRIEDEL: Present.
MENDENHALL: Councilmember Schamow.
SCHARNOW: Here.
MENDENHALL: Councilmember Magazine.
MAGAZINE: Here.
MENDENHALL: Councilmember Spelich.
SPELICH. Present.
MENDENHALL: Councilmember Gryzbowski.
GRYZBOWSKI: Present.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Linda.
Our first item is reports by Mayor, Councilmembers and Town Manager.
Grady?
MILLER: Mayor, I have no reports tonight.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
MCMAHON: Good evening. I just wanted to mention that I attended the East Valley
Partnership Board Meeting and it was the first one in person for a long time, so it was
really great to see everybody in person vis-a-vis, not -- instead of Zoom, excuse me.
Also, the Leadership Academy had a really nice graduation for their class VI, so that was
really a special event. And we, Mayor Dickey and I, attended the Veterans -- you know,
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NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
putting up the new sign when you come into Fountain Hills off of Shea, on Fountain Hills
Boulevard, there's a new Veterans sign up there honoring the wounded veterans. And
that was really a great short ceremony as well. Thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Geny?
FRIEDEL. Thanks, Mayor.
We had a great fair this past weekend in town. And if 1 can take a second to just do a
little public service announcement -- at the basketball game on Monday, November 21 st,
if you bring a toy you get in free and then you get to throw the Toys for Tots into the
court at halftime, so -- get there and bring a toy.
Thank you, Mayor.
MAYOR DICKEY: Well, thank you.
Mike?
SCHARNOW: Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor.
Yes, it was a good festival. A three-day festival organized by the Chamber, of course,
and I was down there partially on Friday and all -day Sunday with Noon Kiwanis, so
raised some funds for our causes and beautiful weather. So Chamber of Commerce
weather, as they say.
And I guess it was yesterday, we had a second meeting of the Hall of Fame committee. If
you don't know, there is a Lower Verde Valley Hall of Fame and I'm on that committee
and next week we'll be announcing a nomination form, so if you know somebody who
you think is deserving to be in the Hall of Fame from this area, go ahead and nominate
them.
And lastly, today there was a Zoom meeting with Supervisor Galvin and some county
folks about the opioid settlement and it was more about pray for stab, but I'll give it to
Grady and give you some more details on some money that hopefully the town will be
getting soon, so. Thank you.
GRZYBOWSKI: Thank you.
First of all, I love Stellar Student Day. I love it when you guys are here. First of all,
having lots of people is kind of cool, but having the kids here really makes it special and
I'm going to tell you right now, you can stay if you want to. Don't make your parents
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NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
drag you out. I know you want to stay because these meetings are super exciting. Don't
laugh, they are.
Let's see. This go -round, Peggy already mentioned it once, but we had our Class VI
graduation for the Fountain Hills Leadership Academy. If you're interested in the
Leadership Academy next year, look for the applications probably late spring and you'll
find them on the I Love Fountain Hills website.
Last week, the Community Services won the Outstanding Sports Program from the
Arizona Parks and Rec Association for their Skate School and Skate Classic, which is
held in partnership with the local business, Brilliant Victory Skateboards. There's
actually a half -page -- I'm going to say ad -- but a half -page writeup on us in the Arizona
Parks and Rec magazine and if you know what you're looking for, were actually in this
little teeny-weeny picture right here, too, which is kind of cool.
And I know were talking about the skate park, so I wanted to be sure and at least mention
it in passing. So that's kind of exciting.
Thanks, guys.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, very much.
Yes, congratulations to that class, that leadership class. It was a very nice get-together,
despite the rain and the wind. And it was another bunch of good projects and I look
forward to working together with them.
Peggy mentioned Veterans Day. So I went down to the Veterans Day Memorial in the
morning, but then right after that -- oh, so they had the flyover three times and once with
the missing man flyover and then literally while everybody was looking up, I'm assuming
the resident bald eagle decided to make this big appearance. So it was a flyover that
just -- like, you could kind of hear the gasps of people. It was pretty amazing.
And then when that was over, we went over to Fountain Hills Boulevard where we had
the Purple Heart insignia installed with Phil Yen (ph.), and I want to thank Justin (ph.)
very much for that. He is a big part of that. And MCSO for directing traffic because the
fair was going on, so it was kind of a busy, busy morning.
I attended the Arizona Mayors Education Roundtable yesterday, which is a fairly new
activity for us. Manager Miller and the Superintendent Cain Jagodzinski is also part of it
and they talked about -- there's this Education Progress Meter. I think we'll get that
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NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
website out there. But it's pretty interesting. You can put any district or any school in
there and it's -- from my first glance, Fountain Hills looked pretty darn good.
And then their second presentation, which isn't public yet, was an economic impact of
post -secondary attainment, which obviously has to do with not only just the income of
the individual, but how that does to the rest of the community and fiscal health of
community, so that's it for that.
Our next item, as mentioned by Sharron, is Stellar Student Day. So the way we do this is
I read your name and the little blurbs about the kids, and then Angela (ph.) has your
plaque and then you just kind of come up here. And then when we're done, I come down
and the newspaper will take a picture and we'll congratulate you.
So we always start with McDowell Mountain. So I'll still do that tonight and our first
person is Shiloh Maroon, and come on up.
Shiloh is always a Stellar Student in PE class. She sets a good example with her attitude
and effort. She currently holds the record for most consecutive jumps with ajump rope.
ALL• [LAUGHTER].
MAYOR DICKEY: She always does her best and is a good friend to others. Shiloh is
always willing to help others and provide support. She is kind and respectful and a
pleasure to have in class. Shiloh Maroon.
Next, also from McDowell Mountain, is Charlie Schafer. Is Charlie here? Yay.
So Charlie is a Stellar Student in PE as well. He always does his best in the activities and
exercises. We recently had a PACER running test where students run back and forth
across the gym. Charlie was able to run 95 times across the gym.
ALL' [LAUGHTER].
MAYOR DICKEY: This score was much higher than anyone else in the school. Charlie
works hard. He plays by the rules and he demonstrates good sportsmanship. Charlie
Schafer.
Next, we go to the middle school and Elisa Prescott. Is Elisa here? All right.
Elisa is an awesome middle school student and citizen. She works hard to maintain her
good grades. She's a great citizen and earns many PBIS points as she is kind and
respectful to everyone. Elisa.
Next from the middle school is Jayden Newsom (ph.). Is Jayden here? Oh. Well, we'll
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NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
read good stuff about him.
Jayden is always on task. He's helpful to others and respectful to students and staff. He
recently moved to the honors classes and by working diligently is flourishing. So let's
give Jayden a hand.
From the high school, Julia Owers. Is Julia here? Yay.
So Julia has been my student for two years and is a pleasure to have in class. She's quiet,
contemplative, and works very hard to remain at the top of her class. During a time when
many students are struggling to get back on track after the turmoil of the past two years,
Julia serves as a great role model in class for the other students. She's goal -oriented and
will be an asset to any organization that she chooses to work with. Julia.
And Devon Copeland (ph.) from the high school. Is Devon here? Is he hiding? No.
ALL: [LAUGHTER]
Well, I have known Devon for two years as his math teacher. Devon is an outstanding
student in class and he's also a very polite and respectful young man. Devon is a
musician who enjoys listening to hard metal bands such as Cannibal Corpse, yet he
remains down to earth, motivated to excel in school and is a pleasure to work with in
class and to converse with. And if he was here, 1 would tell him he has to look up my
son's band in Philly, because that one's called Crypt Sermon, so were all good with the
metal. Devon.
All right.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible).
MAYOR DICKEY: Good. Come on up. Thank you for coming, Devon.
Yay, congratulations, everybody.
GRYZBOWSKI: And remember, you can stay if you want to. Don't let your adults drag
you out.
MAYOR DICKEY: And of course, I always say, you are free to go, so.
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
MAYOR DICKEY: You won't hurt our feelings.
Let's see. Our next item is a proclamation for Small Business Saturday, which we like to
do before Thanksgiving. I'll read this from up here. We're not presenting it to anybody,
but it's just a good reminder.
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NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
Whereas, the Town of Fountain Hills celebrates our local small businesses and the
contributions they make to our local economy and community. And whereas, there are
32.5 million small businesses in the United States, small businesses represent 99.7
percent of firms with paid employees, small businesses are responsible for 62 percent of
the net new jobs created since 1995, and small businesses employ 46.8 percent of the
employees in the private sector. And whereas, 79 percent of consumers understand the
importance of supporting the small businesses in their community on Small Business
Saturday, 70 percent report that day makes them want to encourage others to shop small
independently owned retailers and 66 percent report that the day makes them want to
shop small all year long.
And whereas, 58 percent of shoppers -- lots of percentages here -- 58 percentage of
shoppers reported they shopped online with a small business, and 54 percent reported
they dined or ordered takeout from a small restaurant, bar, or cafe on Small Business
Saturday in 2021. And whereas, advocacy groups as well as public and private
organizations across the country have endorsed the Saturday after Thanksgiving as Small
Business Saturday.
So therefore, 1, Ginny Dickey, do hereby proclaim November 26th, 2022, as Small
Business Saturday and urge the residents of our community and communities across the
country to support small businesses and merchants on Small Business Saturday and
throughout the year.
So go shopping, support our local small businesses, especially on that day after where
everybody runs to the big -boxes, so thank you. But we have our own big -box, so you can
go there.
All right. Next, we are having some presentations and we were talking about Make A
Difference Day at our last meeting and that we were going to have a video to show.
Grady, is that you?
MILLER: It's all cued up and 1 believe -- is Kim Wickland (ph.) here?
Rachael, are you going to do this?
GOODWIN: 1 was hoping Bill would, I though Bill was on it, so -- Kim is not here.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Neither is Bill.
MILLER: We've got it all figured out. It just needs to be cued up, so.
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NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
GOODWIN: Kim is under the weather today.
MILLER: Okay. Our communications director is going to go ahead and play this back.
But just as a refresher, we just completed a few weeks back our annual Make A
Difference Day and this video about five minutes long or so and it pretty much shows the
highlights from this past year's event. And we're very fortunate for all the community
volunteers that we have in our town that actually come out on this particular day and help
out their fellow neighbors with projects that they have, particularly landscaping, cleaning,
things that they need to help out one another.
With that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Larsen, who's about ready to --
LARSEN: Well, you're talking.
MILLER: -- get this going.
ALL• [LAUGHTER].
MILLER: Okay. No, I apologize. We thought the video would be cued up, but it's
presently not. So I'm going to dig it up here. It's definitely on YouTube, I know that.
LARSEN: It's definitely on YouTube.
SCHARNOW: Grady, do you know about how many volunteers we had that day, or
approximately'?
MILLER: Rachael, was it over 200?
GOODWIN: It was closer to 400 that day.
MILLER: Okay. Why don't you -- why don't you come up and just kind of give the
recap as we're waiting to pull this up? That would be great. Because the number of
projects, too, I think with what we told you before the actual event versus what actually
we had as far as number of volunteers and projects, the numbers actually increased as
people waited until the last minute to sign up, so -- do you want to share, like, how many
projects that those 400 volunteers worked on?
GOODWIN: Sure. The --
[VIDEO]
GOODWIN: Well, I can talk really loud. I know you guys can hear me.
MILLER: You can just speak in the mike, here.
GOODWIN: Sure.
MILLER: Throw this out.
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NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
GOODWIN: No worries.
The Make A Difference Day, 1 know we covered this at our last meeting, was a great
success, as they have been over the last years. Kim does a wonderful job organizing. We
had almost 400 volunteers join us for the day with almost 40 projects. We had close to
35 residential projects where we did landscaping, where we did some cleanout for folks.
Most of these were exterior. A lot of -- again, a lot of yardwork for some of our older
community that just don't have the means to keep up with it. And then we did a number
of projects around our community and on our campus here. We did some plantings
around the Town Hall as well as down the Avenue of the Fountains. Again,
beautification projects to do so.
We also had a number of groups help us out by making care cards. They came to the
Community Center to design cards that we share with our homebound residents through
out home delivered meals program, so that happened.
We also had a number of donations shared with us, including our dumpsters for Public
Services.
And then last but not least, we also had a large project going on at the high school. The
high school did a major cleanup in partnership over there, and I want to say they had
probably more than 40 folks there. Mayor, I know you were there. It was a really big
group. They took care of a number of projects over there, including the cleanup of the
Special Needs Garden in that area. So I know that that was a really, really big success.
MAYOR DICKEY: The falcon?
GOODWIN: Yes, and the falcon.
All right, I think we are ready to roll. Awesome.
Thanks, Bo.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You're welcome.
MILLER: Mayor and Council, thank you very much.
As she said, it is a wonderful event and it was a lot of fun going around getting all the
pictures and seeing just the fun that people were having on that day. It's a lot of work, for
sure, but when you are passionate about something you are making a difference, and
that's -- I hope this video shares that.
[VIDEO]
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NOVEMBER 15, 2022 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
MILLER: There were a lot of volunteers, obviously, and a lot of people donated photos.
I also want to thank Bob Burns of the Fountain Hills Times for sharing some of his
photos as well to make this come together because it's -- when you have 39 or 41
locations and a lot of people to take pictures of, that's a lot of running around town, so I
can't do it all. But you can see some of the groups that participated that day and so I hope
this video, you know, they're happy with it and something they can use to help recruit
volunteers for next year.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Bo, very much. And I ended up following you around
kind of that day because I -- after I did all my work at the high school, I had to go to all
the other places, so.
Yes, Mike?
SCHARNOW: No, I do have one suggestion or recommendation for next year. In
addition to the t-shirts and the gloves and the water and all that stuff, maybe some kind of
pain reliever for the sore --
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
SCHARNOW: -- sore muscles the next day, just to, you know, not opioids of course, but
some kind of pain reliever, so.
MAYOR DICKEY: I thought your suggestion -- I thought you were going to give us
your address as your suggestion.
Thank you very much. So again, thanks to everybody for doing what you did for our
community.
Our next item is our financial audit. Grady, do you want to kick that off?
MILLER: Yes, I will.
I'm pleased to introduce Jennifer Shields. Jennifer Shields is the audit manager with
Heinfeld Meech. Under law, it's required that we undergo a financial audit every year and
Ms. Shields will be providing an overview of her review or her team's review of our
finances. With that, I'll turn it over to Ms. Shields.
SHIELDS: Thank you, Mr. Miller.
Mayor Dickey, members of Council, it's a pleasure for me to get to spend a few minutes
with you this evening to talk about the financial audit. I know it's often not everybody's
favorite thing to hear about, but there are a few key pieces of information that I'll go over.
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Our audit standards require that the auditor communicate with those charged with
governance, so yourselves, specific information and I believe you've been provided with
a copy of a letter that we sent that actually includes all of those required communications;
also, each one of the audit reports that we've issued. However, as Mr. Miller stated,
there's a statute that we're also required to be present to engage in dialogue.
So with that, I'll just kind of cover in summary. The audit itself started back in April and
that was when the engagement letter was issued and then preliminary fieldwork. We
come out usually two times a year, so the first visit that we made on site happened in
August and then the second visit was just a short time thereafter in September. And so
between those two visits we perform all of our site work, work with, you know, certainly
the finance staff, but then also other individuals throughout the town and in late October,
it was October 22nd was when we provided a draft of all of the audit reports to
management. Management has the opportunity to review all of those financial statements
and reports and provide concurrence and/or any changes that may be necessary before the
issuance of the report, which occurred on November 3rd.
So that's kind of the timeline. It seems like it's a very long time, but there's a lot of work
that goes on with that.
So in just talking about the scope of the audit services that we perform, the Town is
required to undergo an audit in accordance with both generally accepted auditing
standards as well as government auditing standards, and then we issue also and perform
procedures so that we can issue the report for some state compliance requirements related
to highway user revenue funds as well as the annual expenditure limitation report.
And let's see -- there was a very large accounting standard that was implemented this
year, so thanks to David Pock and his team for doing all of the hard work and doing the
implementation there. The standard was -- it's referred to as GASH Statement Number
87 and it's on leases, so there are some new financial elements, a new requirement in the
financial statements related to that.
In terms of significant estimates in the financials, obviously there are some estimates that
occur and the biggest ones that are present within the Town's financial statements are
those that include the useful lives of depreciable assets, as well as the allowance for
uncollectable receivables that may exist that are out there.
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There are no audit adjustments that we came across that are required to be reported to you
all this evening. And so that's really good news. There's also no disagreements with
management about accounting matters, financial principles, and those types of things.
Through the course of the audit, we do as a firm, HeinfeldMeech -- we perform nonaudit
services and those nonaudit services are in the form of actually drafting the financial
statements, so we have assisted with the preparation of that and then, as 1 mentioned
earlier, provided all of the reports for management to review.
Let's see. There are also -- as your independent auditors, we are required to be
independent, of course, in fact, and also to maintain our own ethical responsibilities
within our framework that we follow, and so I'm happy to report that we are still
independent and we did maintain all of our ethical responsibility.
In terms of the actual reports that were issued, I believe you all have electronic copies.
The largest one of those is the annual comprehensive financial report, a hundred -and -
some -odd pages long. And those are the financial statements related footnotes for the
Town for the year-end of June 30th of'22. Our pages in there are the audit opinion and
I'm pleased to report that there was an unmodified audit opinion, so in layman's terms
that's the clean opinion or the best opinion that you can get.
As we move into the other reports that were issued, a single audit report was required.
So the single audit is required when the Town expends more than S750,000 of federal
financial assistance in any given fiscal year, and so again with -- a couple of years ago it
started with the CARES Act money and then it morphed and -- so under the ARPA
federal stimulus act, the Town did receive monies and expend those monies in the last
fiscal year under the -- if I can get the acronym right -- the Coronavirus State and Local
Fiscal Recovery Funds. So that was the program that was audited there and there were
no findings that were required to be reported under the federal programs or under just
internal controls in general.
The other two reports also contained no findings, but they are the annual expenditure
limitation I mentioned and also the HEERF compliance, so compliance with the laws and
regulations for those.
And then just in summary, management as always is incredibly helpful for us in
gathering all of the documentation. It's no easy feat to gather everything that the auditors
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need and as Mr. Miller mentioned, of course we have a whole team of people that come
out and work on the project and so everybody has been incredibly helpful to us in getting
that information, so that it's just a mere short few months after fiscal year ends that were
here tonight to present the report.
And with that, I will be happy to answer any questions.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you very much, appreciate it.
Grady, do you have anything to add?
MILLER: I do not. It's a testimony to both the incredible staff that we have and the
financial practices and policies that the Council has put in place. So no, that's all I have
to say.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any questions from anybody on the Council?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Nope.
MAYOR DICKEY: Well, there you go. Thank you so much, we appreciate it and thank
you for coming out.
SHIELDS: Thank you so much.
MAYOR DICKEY: Our next item is our economic development presentation, our first
quarter report by Amanda Jacobs.
Thank you, welcome.
JACOBS: Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of Council.
So again, this is our first quarter report. I'll pull up our PowerPoint presentation and it's
through July 1st through September 30th.
And then actually before I officially get started -- I know some of you have met our new
management analyst, John Perez, but John, could you stand up?
I wanted to introduce him to some of you who have not met him or to our community
members. So John, welcome.
John has been with the town now two months. He has a little over three years of local
government experience with Maricopa, Mesa are just some of them and he obtained his
master's degree in public administration earlier this year. And so we're pleased to have
him join our small but mighty team. So we're now fully staffed.
MAYOR DICKEY: Welcome, John.
JACOBS: All right. So as usual, I'll go through our business attraction, retention, our
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grants, marketing, tourism, and then added some slides of data that, of course, our
community's been asking as well as our elected officials.
So our first quarter, we have some new businesses to welcome. Atticus Books & Music,
HonorHealth Primary Care, TDC Financial, and Veeta's Vegan. I know several of you
are enjoying Veeta's, so I've heard.
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
JACOBS: All right. Let's adjourn, right.
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
JACOBS: All right. And then I'll just kind of gloss through this. These are a few of the
businesses again coming soon. I hear either by the end of the month or beginning of
December, Manny's at Park Place, so again, you men, there's been all these women
clothing stores. A men's store will be corning, hence Manny's. Again, the end of the
month -- yes --
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
JACOBS: -- thank you. Y'all, it's going to be a long night.
All right. Business Retention and Expansion.
So I wanted to highlight one of our businesses, BehaviorAlly. So BehaviorAlly is direct
therapy for those who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
They actually started off in our BizHub, so Four Peaks Elementary School. And this is a
success, an exciting story where they relocated. They grew out of that space and are now
in our downtown off of the Avenue, and so went from 840 square feet to over 2,000
square feet and they also doubled in staff and counting. And then later this month
through our Business Retention Site Visit program, Councilmember Grzybowski and
Betsy LaVoie and I will be meeting with her once sort of the kiddos have left the
building, take a tour, and just leam a little bit more about what's happening in the facility
and what more the town can do to keep her here and keep growing.
So our Business Retention and Expansion continues to grow, so again the town and the
Chamber and our rotating councilmembers, so Sharron is joining the fun this month and
next month to meet with our businesses and there continues to be a common thread. One
is wanting some type of to-do list, checklist of how to start a business. Again, some of
our residents were in corporate America and had a dream to start a business, and they're
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doing that right here in their backyard and really didn't know how to navigate the system.
So again, it's not just Fountain Hills. It's Maricopa County, the state, so we're in the
process of doing that and working with development services.
Something new that has come up is our folks, specifically our restaurants, really don't
care who's putting on the events, whether it's the Town, it's the Chamber. They just want
to know about it because there continues to be a staffing shortage and they want to ensure
that they are staffing up so our residents and visitors who are coming here have a good
experience and return, not just to Fountain Hills but to the restaurants.
And then something new to announce that was also included in the Fountain Hill Times,
is earlier this year the Council approved a customer relationship management software
for the Economic Development Department that's helping us track data that we can
provide to you, but it also included a free business directory.
So what we've done is we've worked with the Finance Department, received all of the
businesses. We have uploaded that into what is called Bludot Open. Before we
launched, we tested with ten businesses that were retail, restaurant, hospitality,
homebased, to try to work out some of the kinks before that official launch and so it did
launch officially a couple of months ago. We did a print advertising campaign with the
Times, and then well start promoting it more directly to the businesses, stopping in with
flyers and social media.
And so again that's a free tool. When you go in there, you can search by category, so
again restaurants since we've got a round of applause, and then for the clothing store, you
can go in and each of our businesses have their own community profile. They can upload
promotions. So again, a good tool just to support the businesses and then as our visitors
are coming in, we try to keep those sale tax dollars here.
And then last on this slide, downtown. So a little bit generic, but to give you an update,
as I started in March a lot of our businesses were coming to myself as well as Mayor
Dickey to see some improvements along the downtown. Some of those were making
sure we put the banners up. The banner poles were empty.
And then several of our businesses on one side wanted to bring to our attention that they
did not have any trashcans or benches. And so thanks to Town Manager Miller and
Justin Weldy, those have been ordered. Again, even with those there's a supply
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chain issue, but were hoping to get those in hand and installed in the next six weeks so
again people have a good experience.
And so we've started off small with some of the businesses downtown. They're looking
to form a merchant association. I'm not going to steal all of their thunder, so stay tuned
over the next couple of months, but really the purpose is to work with the Town and the
Chamber to drive more economic development and businesses to the downtown. And so
whether that's some improvements again with placemaking, the banners, but also how
can we have some more events, but events that may not necessarily close the downtown,
making it difficult for visitors to actually get to the businesses.
So next, this is something new and we'll continue to report on quarterly, but our
apartment occupancy rate. So again, not always does economic development usually
display this, but again what is important is were working with Development Services and
then seeing how we're growing as a community.
So two of our newest apartments are Gunsight and Casa De Lago. Gunsight received
their C of O just in September and right now you see they're over 58 percent occupied.
Casa De Lago received their C of 0 in August, already at 83 percent.
Four Peaks Vista, those condos, some of them you can purchase, some are for rent.
They're at 65 percent.
The Havenly is 76 percent occupied, but 92.8 percent leased. So again, they're still in
that fifth and final phase of building, but folks have already signed on the dotted line and
are ready to move in.
Luna at Fountain Hills is at 93 percent and Park Place is at 94 percent.
And so the whole purpose, too, in showing this is as you can see, there is a huge demand
for people to come to Fountain Hills, our community, but is there a lot of demand? Not
so much.
And I can speak personally, too. Back in late February when I tried to locate here, I
accepted the job, I wanted to ensure that I was a Fountain Hills resident. It was difficult.
The stars aligned. I am a resident. But it was difficult. There was not a lot of options.
And so were wanting to have diversity when people are looking to move here.
Next, well go over this a little bit quickly. We'll probably just introduce this maybe once
a year, twice a year. But we're trying to get data as we are gearing up to have our
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economic development strategy with some of our community members in January. We
had to delay it to just make sure we got people there. There was lots of conflicts in early
October. But this is just to illustrate what is left vacant land that we can build on that's
residential, commercial, industrial, and lodging. We won't go through all of it.
All right. Vacancy rate of existing buildings. So these are buildings that are already
existing. So what this table's demonstrating is the overall commercial last month was
nine percent. That is an aggregate and includes the office, industrial, and retail. Some of
that continues to fluctuate by month. So I'll tell you our office is 17.2 percent, industrial
is I percent, retail is 5.4.
Our source is CoStar, which is one of the leading real estate commercial divisions that
provides data and analytics. I will tell you the office and the retail is slightly higher than
what they are publishing, what is in that report. And why is that? It is because through
our research what were finding is there are some businesses, property owners or brokers
who are not actively marketing their site.
So y'all, if I don't know -- if somebody is coming to me, 1 can't say hey, look at this. We
have 5,000 square feet. Or if I'm starting to target different businesses to say hey, you
should be interested in Fountain Hills, there are certain things that again I cannot provide
because I don't know.
So last month 1 shared with you were going deeper into one, meeting with property
owners, meeting with commercial brokers, to again understand why aren't they actively
marketing? Is there something that the town can do to assist them?
Some we can't even get ahold of them, and some are just choosing because of the cost to
produce a marketing brochure, to actually post it on some of these sites, is prohibiting
them to do that. But rest assured, your small but mighty team is going to go out there and
start documenting this. It would be more efficient if we had the data, but we don't. It is
what it is, and so well continue to plug away to close the gaps of those vacancies.
All right. So Arizona Office of Tourism Prop 302 grants, we mentioned a little bit of this
in August. So our estimate for this fiscal year, so ending June 30th of 2023, is over
67,000. 1 had mentioned we were waiting to hear back from AOT to see what rollover
money we would have. So again because of COVID they underestimated, so the Town is
actually going to get almost $18,000 more. We're working on putting together that
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strategy. But this year is the final year that there's any rollovers, so we need to spend the
money.
Some of the project element is targeting to Canadians and doing print advertising. We
are updating our Experience Fountain Hills website. We have hired data -driven
marketers. It is a business owner that used to live in Fountain Hills. She moved back to
Chandler to be closer to family. We won't hold it against her. But really what they're
doing is looking at the back end of the search engine, key words, making sure were ADA
compliant and giving us that data so that when we redesign it, it helps right to get the
right targets.
And then our visitors guide, a couple of things. Again, we will have those in hand in
December to be ready for January. Historically, we were printing those and distributing
them in March and April, which is a little too late. We're losing our visitors.
And then we've expanded it. So a couple things that were missing in the guide was one,
our dark sky. There's no mention. That will now be a full page. We are adding live
music and promoting our restaurants that are investing to have that other experience, if
you will. And then also including meeting and conventions, right? That again helps us
with fed tax and sales tax.
And then an update on our Arizona Office of Tourism, Visit Arizona Initiative Grants.
So in August, I came before Council and asked for your support to apply for three
different grants. We're going to start with the bad news and end on the good news.
So we applied for the Outdoor Revitalization Grant and it was the Centennial Pavilion,
also known as Rachael's Umbrella, and unfortunately we were not awarded. So again,
we thought we made a strong case that it was tourism related, but really the majority of
the use needs to be for tourism, so that's why it was not awarded.
Then we applied for the Partnership Grant, and we wanted to expand our annual Irish
Fest to two days. So I'm going to own that I made a mistake. So I had told Council that
it was going to be a 20 percent match. It was actually 50 percent. So when we got it
back we only got half, which didn't even cover the second day. And so I own that. I
apologize. So we had to deny the award.
But the good news. So the Marketing Grant. So last year we applied and accepted
$10,000. This year we collaborated with Community Services, the Chamber, the Dark
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Sky Association, our Community Relations director. And I said, let's roll up the sleeves,
we can do better than this. And so we applied for $230 000 and we received $230,000.
I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
So the team is already hitting the ground running, and so there are billboards on the
street, five to be exact. There's broadcasts and digital marketing that I'm hearing people
throughout the state, not just Fountain Hills, arc hearing. Again, updating the website,
doing print advertising with Phoenix Magazine. And then we're working with a public
relations firm to get, again, get us out there, wider, bigger. Right? Bo is doing a
fabulous job, but Bo too is just one person.
So how do we expand it with our marketing dollars? And we received not a request but
a referral from David Racich with Brokers Alliance as well as Peter Volny, who does our
big car show. They work with Evolve, Jennifer Kaplan, and so we're hitting the ground
running. Actually, we kicked it off today and we'll have her services for three months.
And again, that is to benefit the entire destination, so were working with our hotels, were
working with the museum, the Dark Sky Association. Lots of good stuff happening.
Quick update on branding. So again we had three focus groups. We had over 700
responses to our initial survey. And then the team is on track and the team is Gordley
Group to bring back a couple of options for Council to vote on, on January 17th. If for
some reason we don't, you know, reach that target, I'll continue to keep our Council
apprised as well as the community.
Partnerships. Again, I'm not going to go through all of this, but just a quick update.
Arizona Business Advisors, we have modified our agreement with them. We are
currently looking, so again I've given Council an update, but for our community were
looking to see the feasibility of having a coworking space and then we'll also be
partnering with ASBA as well as the Chamber to put on some free workshops to our
businesses related to social media, marketing, pricing as were facing inflation.
And then I think this is the last slide. So tourism, our hotel occupancy from last quarter
was 62 percent. Again, it's a little bit on par from, you know, looking at those months,
July, August, September, you usually see a decrease.
And then for our website, there was over 13,000 unique visits. And I told you I'm always
going to be transparent. It went down by almost 18 percent. And part of that is again,
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was there a lot of activity happening'? Not so much during the summer months. So we'll
be continuing to look at that and adding rich content to the website to keep people there.
And then, just in case you're interested, this just helps us with marketing. The top five
cities visiting: Mesa, Scottsdale, Phoenix, LA, and Omaha, Nebraska.
And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Amanda.
JACOBS: You're welcome.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
MAGAZINE: Amanda, as you well know, our citizens express real concern about the
number of empty storefronts in town. You have listed retail as 5.4 percent. First of all,
that does not sound excessive to me; however, if I hear you correctly, that's probably not
a correct percentage.
JACOBS: Madam Mayor, Councilmember Magazine, that is correct. I would say it is
slightly higher. I'm hoping by the next quarter, as again we're doing -- we're now led to
do some manual work, that were going out with those property owners, looking at if
there are posted signs, collecting that data. So then we can say at least 98 percent
accuracy what the rate is.
MAGAZINE. Do you have any idea how, if it were 5.4 percent, how that compares with
any other communities?
JACOBS: So great question and so looking at Phoenix, Queen Creek, Paradise Valley,
some of that we are in par with, specifically the office. And I think I've shared with you
guys, again one-on-one or in public, that right now is sort of the norm because of
COVID. People were sent home and some of those employees do not want to come back.
And so that's pretty normal.
The retail as it is, the 5.4, it's low. I'm saying it is a bit higher. It's probably higher in
Fountain Hills, compared to the other municipalities.
MAGAZINE: I've heard from more than one source that the reason some of the owners
of the retail shops are not marketing them has to do with taxes, and tax abatement and so
on. Do you know anything about that?
JACOBS: Madam Mayor, Councilmember Magazine, I do not. So I don't want to put
that out there unless I've heard from the horses mouth. So that, I have not heard directly.
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MAGAZINE Okay. Thank you.
JACOBS: You're welcome.
FRIEDEL: Hi, Amanda. Thanks, good report.
JACOBS: Hello.
FRIEDEL: A couple of comments. Maybe, I'm not sure, but maybe some of our
commercial realtors in town can fill you in on the real vacancy rates, so just a suggestion.
Maybe you can check with them.
And then I'm wondering about, you know, the outreach to the Canadian magazine and
that. Do we have any measured results from that at all? And the reason I'm asking that
question is because I'm wondering if we could take that if it's effective and maybe
duplicate it and go to a state that has high taxes -- we are one of the lowest taxed states in
the country -- and maybe find a magazine that appeals to the communities there and look
at doing some advertising there and bring a business here where they'll certainly thrive
because Arizona is one of the lowest tax states in the country.
JACOBS: And then so Madam Mayor, Councilmember Friedel, we are modifying what
we've been doing. Typically, we've done a print ad and then there's no call to action, so
there's no way of really knowing. I'll tell you, a couple quarters ago, we got a call from a
Canadian that said, I saw your ad. So you can only get word of mouth. So what were
doing is we're modifying and then maybe you saw it in one of the shots, by adding QR
codes to try to direct them to a site and then that's how we'll continue to start to get data.
MCMAHON: Excellent report, thank you.
JACOBS: Thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: I know I've been places where they asked you how you found out
about them and so I don't know how, you know, the sources end up finding out. So if
you are in, you know, who knows what -- the Grand Canyon or something and you stay
somewhere, they say how did you find this restaurant, and maybe there's some outreach
there that can happen.
The other thing I wanted to mention about the school district, so I mentioned that the
mayors group that I'm in now is all about economic development and education being an
economic development driver, and as we move forward with our partnership with the
school district, we will always be keeping that in mind. If we thought of them as a
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business, they would be the largest employer in town and I think that there's a lot of
opportunity there to continue building on that. I know Councilmember Friedel goes to
the games and he sees the spirit and he sees what goes on there and of course, we have
our Mayor's Youth Council here, so we need the youth. So that's what -- I hope that
becomes something that maybe in a few future report we'll have some more information
about that.
JACOBS: Absolutely.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
JACOBS: Consider it done.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Yes, Councilman.
SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor.
So this is my last meeting, or the last meeting 1 can say really anything. So -- because the
last one will be the goodbye. As I had said a couple meetings ago that I hope that you
focus on getting an anchor employer here to Fountain Hills, I think that would be a
gamechanger. So I hope even when I'm gone that that will be continued to be worked on,
and when is Dutch Bros coming?
JACOBS: Madam Mayor, Councilmember Spelich, so the last I heard a couple weeks
ago we're finalizing the construction documents. We're waiting -- the Town's waiting to
hear back from the other side, and then so as soon as we know, we'll let you know. I
know everyone asks me all the time.
MAYOR DICKEY: It's like one of the first field trips David and I ever went on. I don't
know where we were going, but we drove through and started asking them, so. You
know, the guy's sitting there looking at us like, I don't know if we can come to Fountain
Hills, you know, I just work here.
SPELICH: I only make coffee, man, 1 don't build (indiscernible).
MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. I said, could we have your card, you know? And we put the
pressure.
Thank you, Amanda, very much. Appreciate it.
Okay. Our next item is Call to the Public. Do we have any speaker cards, or Call to the
Public cards?
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MENDENHALL: Yes, Mayor. We do. We have one, Stephen Gay.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Don't give us your address, but just let us know if you live in Fountain Hills?
GAY: Yes.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
GAY: Stephen Gay. I live in Fountain Hills and I'm a recently retired captain with
American Airlines. So now I have time to come to town council meetings.
[LAUGHTER]
GAY: I'm not on the road all the time.
So on this last day of the current town council, I'd like to quickly thank Mayor Dickey,
our great councilmembers, our Town Manager Grady Miller, and all the staff for their
hard work during this term. I feel your efforts have made my town a much more livable
place and according to a recent survey, 96 percent of our residents feel the same way.
On a side note, I recently attended a presentation Officer Kratzer made and he talked
about law enforcement in Fountain Hills, and I was very impressed with his
professionalism and enjoyed the breakdown of calls the department makes, or takes. It
just confirms what I'd known for 18 years, that we basically live in Mayberry R.F.D.,
except for when marauders from neighboring towns dump their waste in Fountain Hills.
So anyway, I'd also like to acknowledge the fact that while we sit comfortably in our
chairs for long meetings lasting two or three hours, Officer Kratzer is stoically standing
in the back of the room there, keeping us safe. Not an easy task and I thank him for his
effort, and thank you guys for such a fantastic effort.
And about the outreach to Canadian people, I once met a Canadian, and if he is -- he was
a fine chap, very friendly and outgoing, and if all Canadians are like him, we need to get
all the Canadians we can here in Fountain Hills.
So thank you. I appreciate it.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And get some monitors here.
Yeah, Mike or Robbie, if --
MAYOR DICKEY: I think they just went in there, yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We're having issues with the presentation monitors on our
dais.
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MAYOR DICKEY: Seven seconds to power off.
Well, well move on to the Consent Agenda.
MAGAZINE: I just want to say it was -- even though it's our last meeting for three of
us, hearing those accolades is really, really wonderful. I wish we -- never mind. I'll stop.
MAYOR DICKEY: I appreciate that. On the 6th, we'll have an opportunity to speak.
Our Consent Agenda, unless anybody would like something removed, could I please get
a motion?
MAGAZINE: Move approval.
GRZYBOWSKI: Second.
MAYOR DICKEY: All in favor, please say aye.
ALL: Aye.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I (indiscernible).
MAYOR DICKEY: So our Regular Agenda item, our first item is the Legislative
Agenda, which I don't know if -- do we need that to be working, or is it working?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Can we see it up there?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I won't know until we try it out. I think it might work
everywhere but the dais.
MAYOR DICKEY: Okay.
Well, Jack, welcome. Come on up and we'll work our way through this.
MILLER: So as Jack is getting ready and trying to pull up his presentation, I wanted to
just remind the Council that this is the second year that we've had a Legislative Agenda.
Last year, for the first time with Jack's efforts and Council direction, we were able to get
our very first Legislative Agenda.
What is a Legislative Agenda? It's basically a nice fancy term for what are the Council's
priorities as it relates to the state legislature and trying to have our lobbyists go and
present our interests and try to defend our state shared revenue and other major policy
issues that the Town Council feels is very important.
I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Lunsford, who has a presentation on this tonight and he's
going to go over some of the areas that has changed from last year to this year. And I'll
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turn it over to Mr. Lunsford.
LUNSFORD: Thank you, Manager Miller, Madam Mayor, and Council. It's great to be
with you.
If 1 could add just one thing before I begin to what the Manager said, is this also gives me
broad guidelines and parameters within which to operate, so I don't have to call here
every once in a while and say, hey, can I do this or can I do that? This is really, really
important. It's a premise that I have operated under for most of my professional career.
So with that, I really appreciate the fact that the town has -- there we go -- that the town
has in the past adopted a Legislative Agenda and I hope and urge you to adopt this one
this year. I'm not going to dwell on this. You already know the mission, but I include it
because it is, again, part of my guidance in support of the town and the same for its
strategic priorities. You all have adopted these. You know what these are. I pull them
off of your documents. But they are, again, what helps drive me in what I do.
In 2022, we had some key positions that I want to remind you of what they were.
Obviously, number one was to preserve the urban revenue sharing at 15 percent. There
were conversations about reducing that. I'll mention what happened to it in another slide
coming forward.
Whether there was any expansion of legislative authority in SB 1487 investigations; there
were not, so we didn't have to deal with that.
Addressing the impacts of short-term rentals; and of course I was really excited to see it's
up for -- the ordinance is up for adoption tonight. I will tell you that I was able to weasel
my way into the negotiations at the very end on this. They were not simple. The industry
side was very specific on what they wanted to accept and also, I will just allude to the
fact that the Arizona Association of Realtors was at the table and they were very specific.
What we ended up with is legislation that now provides the guidance for which you will
consider this evening.
And the last one was the adoption of legislation, actually prohibition of the use on any
other days for fireworks, and I commend Representative Amish Shah, who ran that
legislation last year and we were able to support that. My only lament on that is, and I
tried to get the amendment passed, you may recall, where there's no teeth in it.
So if you think about this, you know, if somebody calls and said hey, I got fireworks in
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my neighborhood, and law enforcement's out in a different call, they're not going to come
to your house. There's a long delay because there could be something else. I proposed
some financial penalties for violations. I hope to try again with Representative Shah this
year on our behalf.
So the league has adopted their resolutions. I incorporate those because they were
unanimously supported --
Sony, my daughter in Washington, D.C., called me. And you couldn't hear it because it's
in my hearing aids.
Anyway, so I include these because they were unanimously adopted by the league. Key
ones, you know, the fact that you don't have to -- or we would hope that the legislation is
passed where you don't have to adjourn a regular meeting to go into special for adoption
of a budget, and then back into regular, and so on.
Number two doesn't essentially apply to the town, but in terms of number three, there was
actually some legislation last year that expanded this, but to allow for the posting of
notices in either newspapers or municipality website or a local newspaper or any or all of
those. The fact that we wouldn't have to require exhibits to be published if the exhibit's
location is listed within the adopted ordinance, requiring contact information on political
signs that are not directly affiliated with a campaign, support additional appropriations to
the state trust fund, and provide authority to grant local governments an extension in time
to review on liquor license applications.
Core principles always and 1 refer back to these again, but state shared revenues in
particular. The state shared revenue, urban revenue sharing, those are synonymous terms,
was at 15 percent. With the recent tax reform, it was increased to 18 percent for ongoing
now. It's in place.
Obviously, we want to do everything we can to oppose any preemption of local authority,
which is local control, protect the Town's ability to self -govern, fight unfunded mandates
that prohibit councils to set any policies, and really obstruct or stop one -size -fits -all
municipal government solutions that the legislature may propose and adopt. And you
wouldn't believe how often they do that, and they go, oh, you know, we don't like this
particular municipality. They will target them. And they'll run something and then it
applies or affects to everyone else.
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So as I mentioned, legislative position for'23, we want to preserve urban revenue
sharing. We want to oppose any legislation that reduces the amount of transaction
privilege taxes the municipalities may levy on food and oppose those that they may levy
on rental property.
Now, these last two were issues in the gubernatorial campaign, but that doesn't preclude
from any legislator -- now that we know who the governor is and who's not a proponent
of those issues -- it doesn't preclude any legislature from introducing those. So we need
to be prepared to oppose those particular things.
Also, we want to do everything we can to support the extension of Prop 400. 1 was in
that coalition meeting every week. The governor's veto was a shock to all of us,
including the sponsors. I've had direct conversations with those. And many of you have
been a part of, or had reports about what MAG is considering. Ijust heard yesterday that
there will be an effort for the alternative expenditure limit for K-12 in a special session,
and MAG and other entities are trying to couple extension of Prop 400 with that. Stay
tuned, because I don't know if either or both of those are going to happen.
Well, obviously, what I would like to see and Chairman Jack Sellers -- well, a past
chair -- of the Board of Supervisors has been proposing that Maricopa County get parity
with the other 14 counties. For those of you who don't know, the other 14 counties don't
have to go to the legislature to get authority to hold an election for their own
transportation. I've had direct conversations in the off season with legislators and there
are multiple opinions on it. So well see whether that comes to pass.
And anything else that might raise its head, although we thought that there might be a
moratorium with the passage of the legislation on short-term rentals, but you never know.
A legislator could introduce something else that perpetuates the negative effects or
adversely effects the ordinance of which we hope that you will adopt.
MAGAZINE: Jack, to your knowledge, has there been any discussion about permitting
localities to limit the proximity of short-term rentals, like we have done with sober homes
and so on, so that they're not bunched together or right next to each other?
LUNSFORD: So Madam Mayor and Councilmember Magazine, there were peripheral
discussions about those kinds of things. When the final compromise came down, that
was essentially off the board.
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Okay, so if I go quickly here, obviously nothing else in terms of 1487 provisions,
unfunded mandates, et cetera. I'm not going to stick with these. You've seen these before
and I keep them in there all the time. They are also in your printed document. So these
are our policy statements. You adopted these last year and we would like for you to
continue them all this year and again, they are in the agenda that you have received in
your packets.
So let me go to this one. I don't have a crystal ball. We know what the results of most of
the state-wide elected offices are. We don't know, maybe -- let's see, it's after 7. We
might know some more results forthcoming.
But what I wanted to talk about was the composition of the legislature and legislative
leadership. So it looks as if -- this could change maybe -- but it looks as if that the House
and the Senate will both retain single vote margins. So they will have the majority in the
Senate by 16-14, and the House by 31-29. It makes for real interesting negotiations
during budget because there's no votes to lose if you're in the majority party.
What is not known yet -- I speak because I don't know as of earlier today -- when the
House chose not to move forward with their leadership elections until after today's votes
and so on, they wanted to see -- or results, excuse me -- they wanted to see more clearly
who their members were going to be. Because there were some -- there's still some close
races.
The Senate, on the other hand, and this is somewhat unprecedented, they elected their
President and their Majority Leader and their Majority Whip. However, they allowed
three candidates who were trailing in their races by 4 to 7 percentage points to vote. And
the one who was elected Senate President was elected by one vote.
So my guess is, because some of those people are -- there's a good chance that two out of
those three are going to get defeated. And if that's the case, there's going to be a new
election for leadership because the presumptive favorite was the former Speaker of the
House, David Gowan, and he was looking to be President of the Senate and he was not
elected. So what does that mean? That could change again the dynamics of what people
like me and then you all in our conversations have to deal with.
Because we didn't have a governor's race declared until yesterday, we don't know exactly
what the govemor's agenda is going to be. We don't know whether there's going to be
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more preemption efforts or not. We have some legislators who are pretty conservative
and they have their own ideological view of how state government ought to work. So
we'll see how soon they get figured out that they do have to compromise.
And lastly, I have been attending all the study committee meetings, 1 think I've missed
one, for the housing study committee. I wish I could tell you today what those
recommendations are going to look like. The presentations are all over the map. They
did go out -- I did miss the ones, although I tried to watch them online -- they went
remotely to other parts of the state, Sierra Vista, I think, and Flagstaff and so on. Boy, I
wish Chairman Kaiser (ph.) good luck in trying to meld those down into a position
because then that will tell us what we're going to have to do.
So with that, Madam Mayor, I'm happy to be before you and I'm happy to stand for
questions.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Jack.
Any questions? Did we have any speaker cards?
MENDENHALL: Not for this item.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
I think you touched everything that we had spoken about earlier and I just want to
mention the sign ordinance one. Again, I spoke to the Gilbert mayor and I think we'll be
doing some work on that because that particular item is kind of based on some faulty
information. And my hope is that we just get the state to comply with the federal
government, or vice versa, just so that they're both same because the city is in the middle
and every year we go through this, so other than that, I don't know.
Did you have something to add?
MAGAZINE: Yeah.
Jack, 1 think you know my hobby horse is preemption. That every time they meet, I hold
my breath because they're going to take some powers away from us. Given the closeness
of the parties in both the House and Senate, do you think it might be easier to stop those
kinds of things?
LUNSFORD: Madam Mayor and Councilmember Magazine, again I had opened with
the fact that I don't have a crystal ball. My experience tells me that once the new
members -- and by the way, last I looked more than 50 percent of the House will be new.
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Think about that. Fifty percent of the House will be new. No previous experience
legislatively. And I think I calculated 43 percent in the Senate, but some of them were
crossovers. Okay?
So to your point, Councilmember Magazine, I think the stark idealists are going to figure
out that the agenda that they campaigned on, the things they wanted to do, are not going
to be that easy. Because I was asked one time a long time ago what party I'm in, and my
response was, I'm in the party of 31, 16, and I, and the 1 being the governor's office.
And so if we could figure out, I believe what will happen if Mr. Toma is the Speaker and
Senator Gowan is the President, I think we would have some experience level and
leadership that will bring the rest of the herd into the corral.
MAGAZINE. Jack, how many votes does it take to override a governor's veto?
LUNSFORD: Sony, say again?
MAGAZINE: How many votes does it take to override a governor's veto?
LUNSFORD: Madam Mayor and Councilmember Magazine, it takes two-thirds. Um -
hum. Yeah, 40 and 20.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Any other questions or comments?
Can we get a motion, please?
Page 248.
MAYOR DICKEY: I don't think we need a motion on this one, do we?
MAYOR DICKEY: For approving the Legislative Agenda.
MAGAZINE. 1 move approval of the Legislative Agenda.
GRZYBOWSKI: Second.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
All in favor, please say aye.
ALL: Aye.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any opposed?
Thank you.
Thanks so much, Jack, for coming out.
LUNSFORD: Mayor and Council, actually I really wanted you to adopt it, number one.
Number two, I wish all a happy and safe Thanksgiving, and I will see you soon.
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GRZYBOWSKI: You too.
MAYOR DICKEY: Our next item is a public hearing to hear our Development Fee
Audit Report, so I will open up the hearing. We'll hear the report. We'll discuss and take
comments, if there are any.
MILLER: Yeah.
MAYOR DICKEY: Grady?
MILLER: I just have a few introductory remarks, Mayor and Council.
Our Development Fee Audit, you're going to hear the report tonight from Kevin Burnett.
He's the senior project manager with Willdan Financial. Just as a reminder, this is
required under state law to conduct every two years, and so Kevin Burnett is going to go
ahead and give you a brief overview of this and I'll turn it over to Mr. Burnett.
BURNETT: Great.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
BURNETT: Thanks, Mr. Miller.
Yeah, I'm Kevin Burnett with Willdan Financial Services. So I've been doing these
audits for the last few audit cycles for you all. So it's a little bit different than the audit
report you got earlier on in the meeting, the financial one. This is basically what I like to
call a check -in on your development impact fees.
So you adopt development impact fees over a ten-year period. That's the planning
horizon that we look at. So the audit is just to kind of check -in and see where you're at
compared to what the study said. So the first part of that is the land use assumption, so
what were the development projections in terms of number of new single family homes,
the number of new multi -family units, square footage of nonresidential development?
How did you compare to what was projected?
So based on this two-year snapshot, which again is only two years out of the overall ten,
all your development projections -- actual development exceeding projections except for
industrial and office square footage. Both of those were down. But again we want to
make sure we're looking at the full ten-year period, not just this two-year snapshot.
The second piece of it is looking at your infrastructure. So what infrastructure did you
build over the last two years, and how does that compare to the development?
So the way the study was done, it looked at what the total investment were going to be
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for parks, fire and EMS and streets over the ten-year period. So they didn't identify you
need to spend this much money in this year, this much money in this year. So if we just
do a simple average of what does that work out to every year over the ten-year period,
you fell short of what the projection was. But again, we want to make sure we're looking
at the full ten years, not just this snapshot.
So then that falls into the third component, which is the level of service, which is
comparing those first two. So the level of service would be, how many park acres do you
have per thousand residents today? That's an example of the level of service. So you can
imagine if you don't add another park but you have new people move into the
community, the level of service has gone down. On the flip side, if you build a new park,
but you haven't had anybody move in, the level of service is increased.
In this case, we've had new development on the residential and nonresidential side, but
we didn't meet the infrastnicture. So in this case, the level of service for this period has
gone down. But the town's going to be looking at it over the ten-year period and making
the adjustments as needed.
And then the fourth piece that we do, which isn't part of the state statute, but it's a
sampling that we do. So we look at the permits that were provided, the development that
occurred. Making sure if it was a single family residential, were they charged the single
family development fees or were they mistakenly charged the multifamily fees? Same
thing on the commercial, office, industrial. Did it get keyed in properly, the square
footage? Was it 10,000 and got keyed in at 100,000, or was it keyed in at a 1,000?
So just making sure that the appropriate fees were assessed. And we found that to be the
case, with the exception that within the state statute there's a grandfathering clause.
So if you update your fees, but a development is already in progress, they have 24 months
in which they're still subject to the old fees as opposed to the new fees. So you did have
some developments that fell within that grandfathering clause. So if you were to
compare exactly what they paid versus what the fee schedule is today, there would be that
discrepancy. But again, it falls within the grandfathering clause, so they were assessed
the appropriate fees.
So by all indications from what we've done in our analysis, you're in good shape and you
followed all of the statutory requirements on your development impact fees for the last
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two years.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you
BURNETT: With that, do you have any questions?
MAYOR DICKEY: Any questions about the development fees?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Nope.
MAYOR DICKEY: So the -- you know, obviously if we overcharged and underbuilt that
would be the problem. So when you say there's less service, that actually means that we
were conservative in what we did and were very much complying, so we appreciate that.
Were there any speaker cards on this item?
MENDENHALL- No Mayor. There's not.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. And this one, I can just close the hearing, I guess. We
don't have to take a vote. And I appreciate your time.
BURNETT: Thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
So our next item is going to be talking about the Art Project at the Pumphouse.
Grady?
MILLER: Yes. Mayor and Council, Deputy Town Manager Rachael Goodwin is going
to be giving a report on this. You recall this item, this topic was before you a few months
ago and there have been some changes and so Ms. Goodwin is going to provide a report
on this.
GOODWIN: Thank you.
MILLER: Ms. Goodwin?
GOODWIN: Thank you, Mayor and Council. I am going to go through a quick review
of what we talked about earlier this year, back before the summer break, and then I also
have two members of our Public Art Committee here tonight to answer questions and
field any details that you may want to know about this project.
So with that -- this is a picture. We shared this back in the spring of the project. Known
as the Pumphouse Project, it is a series of art pieces proposed to be hung along the wall
that divides the park from the pumphouse down at Fountain Park, hence the name. In
June is when the Council gave approval for this Pilot Project and it's an outdoor
exhibition, as I mentioned. It's around a theme known as Legends and Lore of the Valley
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of the Sun and it's intended to be a one-year trial.
The project was intended, again, to bring public engagement into our arts and bring a
number of different pieces out to benefit and create a changing display. So that it would
be something new and refreshed every year.
It was designed to be art again on a four by eight, kind of a horizontal brushed metal
piece, so that it would be displayed and be durable out there for that year period, out in
the elements in our park.
The current status is that the Public Art Committee followed through with what they
intended, which was to solicit submissions. They anticipated about a hundred or more
submissions; however, despite promotion they received 62 submissions. A number of
submissions were by the same artist, so we had -- a number of artists put in multiple.
Due to that number, that lower than expected number, the project funding has not come
in as they expected. And though the Public Art Committee does serve as the town's guide
for our arts, it is under the Fountain Hills Cultural and Civic Association, and that
association does not currently have sufficient funding to underwrite the cost of this
project.
So long story short, in order to move forward, alternative funding needs to be secured.
The Public Art Committee has requested the use of the Fountain Hills Public Art Fund to
offset the costs of the project. What does that look like?
Currently, the town Public Art Fund has a balance of just over $76,000. The Council
previously directed staff to maintain a balance of about $80,000. That's equivalent to
about two years' worth of insurance and maintenance and cleaning and what not, to make
sure that we always had funding available should our art pieces again need that type of
upkeep. With more than a hundred pieces, that's a pretty good balance for us.
In the event that -- if we do move forward with this project and the pieces are sold or are
sponsored, the funding from that would go back into our Public Art Fund to offset the
expenditure requested.
The Public Art Committee is requesting $12,730 from the Public Art Fund to cover their
costs and their breakdown is as noted.
With that, I'm happy to answer questions or again, our Public Art Committee members
are happy to help as well.
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MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Rachael.
Questions? Yes, Councilman?
SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor.
A couple things. Two months ago when this was brought to us, I remember somebody, I
don't know who it was, but I had specifically asked before I placed my vote in favor of
this if the town was going to be on the hook for any money, and I was specifically told
no. So I wouldn't have been a yes back then if I would've known later on, coming
forward, that someone would ask for more money.
Secondly, I pushed years ago, maybe in my first year or second year, I thought it was
ridiculous that this was coming, that the maintenance of all these things, the insurance,
the upkeep and everything -- apparently we keep getting these ducks stolen. I don't know
why people are into ducks that much, but anyways -- so I pushed for that to be not being
taken out of the general fund.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Right.
SPELICH: In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a whole lot of money, but all of these
little things keep adding up.
So I do remember that the fund was supposed to be funded $80,000 and I think what the
Council needs to keep in mind is developers seem to be putting in their own art projects
recently. They don't seem to be putting in money anymore. It seems like, I'm going to
put in an art piece. They're paying for it.
So I have trouble with the balance of this going below $80,000. I'm not comfortable with
it.
But more importantly, I don't like being told one thing, and then two months later come
hack and tell me another story.
I don't hate art, so -- Ijust feel that it is $12,700. We're not flush right now and I'm
vehemently opposed to this.
MAGAZINE: Please remind me. We went through a whole discussion of the Public Art
Fund, how it was to be funded and what used for, and so on. What is it supposed to be
used for?
GOODWIN: Great question. I'm going to try to be really concise with my answer
because it is a complicated policy.
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The long and short of it is, when a developer comes in they have two options. They can
pay the fee and the fee is a graduated fee somewhere between one-half of a percent to a
full percent, or in lieu of those fees they can install a piece of art. And I think that's what
Councilmember Spelich was mentioning. A number of them are choosing to put in art
recently.
When those fees are collected and they -- the chance, when we do collect them, they go
into our Public Art Fund to cover exactly what we talked about, maintenance, upkeep,
cleaning. We have annual cleaning. We do have damage that occurs to our pieces. We
have age -- just things that happen over age and deterioration and things like that. We do
have pieces stolen or damaged, including quackers, which is the ducks. We've had pieces
on occasion again thrown into the lake. We've had pieces -- so that fund is there to help
us recover those costs. We do have insurance fees and things like that so all of our pieces
are insured, but that fund goes to help sustain our long-term arts program.
Now, if that fund does reach a point where we are -- you know, I'll use the word flush
because that was what was there -- if we have a substantial balance, we can use it for
acquisitions as well if there's a piece we want to commission or there's a specific reason
we want to add a piece to our collection. Those funds can be used for that as well.
We've just not used them recently for that purpose.
MAGAZINE: We have a fair amount of construction going on in the town and I'm
going to presume that some of the builders will be adding to this fund, rather than all of
them buying pieces themselves. I guess I don't understand -- I mean, I understand
Councilman Spelich was told it wouldn't cost anything, but I don't see the problem. I
don't see the problem with spending $12,000 for something like this, especially since
you got 76 and you're going to be -- and you'll likely be getting more. MAYOR
DICKEY: Councilwoman?
GRZYBOWSKI: I don't like to have a hypothetical conversation. We have no idea if
they're going to buy their own art or contribute themselves. Again, I'm going to quote my
friend Jack. We don't have a crystal ball, so we can't make a guess on that.
We did ask as a group, specifically, is this something you can swing? Again, we've got
outstanding art that hasn't been installed yet. And we were told yes, we got it. Not quite
like that, but that is what we heard.
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We were also told that this was a pilot program for a year. We can't even make it through
the first year. If it was a year and if it was successful and if we had some extra money in
there, 1 think 1 would support it. But I think at this point I'm going to be a no.
MCMAHON: I concur. I think that given the money factor and we directed to keep it at
$80,000, I think going further below that, I don't think that's going to be responsible on our
part.
They came before us. They said they were going to fund this. I don't think there is a
guarantee that we can -- or hedging our bets and thinking that we're going to get this
money back. Given what the status is and they're already asking for money, I don't feel
comfortable moving forward with it and depleting the coffers even more. Ijust think
that's irresponsible on our part.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman.
FRIEDEL: I would agree with what's been said and maybe they need to -- with the lower
number of submissions, maybe they need to scale back the size of the project and do
something that's more affordable for them.
MAYOR DICKEY: We just had a presentation about economic development and
tourism and obviously this goes along with that. It's one of the efforts that this town has
made and now a hundred pieces of art and obviously we have more.
Most of our art that's donated is of much more value than what we spend on insurance
and on cleaning. This was obviously unforeseen, but I agree with Alan about the fact that
we have -- the other part of Amanda's presentation was of the condos that have gone in
and what we anticipate in the future.
And 1 think this is a good project. I always -- you know, we've been waiting for the wall
to be done for quite a while and COVID and all that and then school project and you
know, a lot of different things have been bounced around. This seemed modern and new
and exciting as far as that goes, something different from the way we've done art.
So obviously, no money is nothing, but $12,000 is something that 1 think will be easily
replenished either by -- quickly by the Public Art Committee, and again this fund is for
public art, or with some of the construction and other projects that are coming.
I wondered if anybody from the committee would like to say anything, and then we can --
Yes, ma'am, come on up.
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And then we can hear from the public.
MAGAZINE: Can I ask a question while she's coming up?
MAYOR DICKEY: Yes, sure.
MAGAZINE. Or maybe one of you can answer this.
What is the annual cost of what the money is set aside for, such as insurance and repairs
and so on? What's a typical annual cost?
GOODWIN: About 40,000.
MAGAZINE: 40,000 --
GOODWIN: That's why the 80 balance is about two years' worth.
MAGAZINE. Oh so it's 40,000 per year.
GOODWIN: Yes. Um -hum.
MAGAZINE: Ah.
WILLIGROD: So Mayor Dickey and Councilmembers, I'd just like to clear up a couple
things. It was five months ago, I think, when we presented to Town Council. At that
time, some projects that are currently under our administration and your administration -
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The mike.
WILLIGROD: -- oh -- should have been completed at that time. So we feel like we
have an obligation to see those uncompleted projects through. Therefore, our money is
tied up. We just, as a committee, cannot fund this new project without the completion of
the old projects.
Also being said, we do intend to have some potential revenue coming in and we're very
excited about that. Really can't release all the details of that, but it looks more positive in
our direction. This project should be a breakeven project. The panels will be sold for a
thousand dollars each. That'll be $4,000 gained. And also sponsorships at a thousand
dollars a panel. That right there will be the $12,000 needed. It's not so much as not
being able to fund it. It's just that our funds at this time are obligated and therefore we
can't in good conscience go forward with this and then have to recoup the money at a
later time.
So any questions concerning that?
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
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MAGAZINE: Not concerning that, exactly, but if this were all delayed for six months,
give an opportunity for developers to put more money in, would that do any harm to this
project?
WILLIGROD: Probably not. I could say -- I've already delayed it a month and a half,
just so that we wanted the art panels to be up during the major time that the public was
here. No, I don't -- I mean, that is a possibility for sure.
MAGAZINE: I think that might be a reasonable compromise. To delay this for six
months, see what happens in terms of infusion of cash to the balance of the projects and
so on.
SCHARNOW: Yeah, I tend to agree with that as well. I mean, I like the project. I want
to see it go forward. But I think a delay would be okay as well, you know. And I'm just
wondering, 12,000, not so much maybe from the other developments but maybe just have
a single purpose fundraiser just for this. I don't know. I know everyone gets hit up all the
time for sponsorships and all that kind of thing, I get that, but so does the town, you
know?
So I -- you know, I kind of have mixed feelings on it, but yeah, I mean, 1 think if we
delay it and if you guys can sharpen your pencils a little bit more and make it work.
You know, it's like the blue Christmas tree for first responders. You know, a group has
taken that over for fundraising, you know, 8,000 every year. So I mean, there are efforts
out there that can work, so.
FRIEDEL• Maybe we can get a report in three months and see where we are. And then -
WILLIGROD: Yeah. Yeah, we can do that for sure. I mean, I understand your
concerns and I think that's reasonable, what you're suggesting. And I don't think it'll
deter us too much if we push it back for three months.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Also you brought up, ma'am, the fact that you have these projects in the pipeline and that
they're not finished. You know, two years ago the Council gave $50,000 for the lighted
crystal --
MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, the Fountain of Light.
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SPELICH: What's it called?
SPELICH: Fountain of Light, sorry. And two years, 50 grand -- where is it? I mean, I
think the residents -- if were going to spend money on art and everything, let's get it
installed before we start asking for more. That's all.
MAYOR DICKEY: A motion?
MAYOR DICKEY: Let me just make sure there weren't any speaker cards. Were there
any?
MENDENHALL- Yes, Mayor, there is. Town Council Elect, Brenda Kalivianakis,
would like to speak.
KALIV IANAKIS: Good evening, Mayor, Town Council. Thank you for giving me this
opportunity to speak on the funding of the pumphouse.
Before I do that, though, 1'd like to just take an opportunity to address what I would
consider a regrettable misunderstanding. On occasion I've had disagreements with this
Council on matters of spending and on public policy. It has never been my intention to
be disrespectful to this body or to talk down to you. As a Christian, I am commanded to
respect our governing authorities. I subscribe to this belief. I respect each and every one
of your dedication to Fountain Hills, and I commend you all for your service. Being a
mayor or a councilman is a very difficult job. It's thankless and you don't do it for the
money. And my previous engagements with this Council, they were meant to provide
input for your ultimate decision on a subject. It was never meant to be rude or
disrespectful.
To those members that will be leaving us, I wish you good fortune, I wish you Godspeed,
and I want to thank you for your service to the town.
For those staying, I look forward to us pulling together, making thoughtful decisions, and
working for the common good of our beloved town. That is my wish.
Regarding the pumphouse, this expenditure, although it seems small compared to other
capital improvement projects, must be scrutinized like all expenses, no matter how large
or how small. This seems to fall squarely under the want to have versus the need to have
projects that we've mentioned so many times before. Do we need to have this mural
project at this time?
It is my understanding that the Fountain Hills Cultural and Civic Association was going
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to underwrite the cost of this project, but at this time doesn't have sufficient funding. I
would call on the FHCCA to hold a fundraiser, find a donor, or somehow otherwise self -
fund this project as was originally contemplated.
It would be my desire to deny this request and to use funds -- to use funds from our
Public Art Fund. The Public Art Fund is for maintenance, repair, and insurance
expenses. It seems to me funding this project would not be in alignment with the stated
goals of the fund. I respectfully ask for you to vote no on the expense.
I also agree with Councilman Spelich. I recall that conversation when they said they
were not going to ask us for money, and thank you for bringing that up. And I do feel
like that's how they got it here and now they want the funding. Thank you for that.
And also Mr. Magazine, Councilman Magazine. The delay in the project seems very
reasonable to me, so maybe we can come up with other funding sources. Because I think
everybody here would like to see this done, it's just who's going to pay for it.
So thank you for your time tonight. I appreciate it.
MAYOR DICKEY: I'll just quickly mention that this Public Art Fund is not, as we spoke
earlier, not just for maintenance and insurance, but it is for acquisition, so when we have
it -- we've done it before. We did it with the horse in front of the Town Hall and
obviously with the Fountain of Light and so it's definitely an okay use of it. But
obviously, not something that the majority wants to move forward with at this time.
So I don't know that we have to put a time on it, because perhaps some funding will come
in before that and then it wouldn't even have to come before us, I don't think, so -- is that
your agreement?
So -- all right. Well, why don't we just -- what's the word? It's not tabling, but it's not
addressing it right now, or --
ARNSON: Yeah. Either take no action, or move to continue, or something.
MAYOR DICKEY: Why don't we take no action, because we may not have to, okay?
Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay. Thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks for coming, Jenny.
Our next item is a mouthful, Special Use Permits. We have John up here to drill down
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for us.
WESLEY: Presentation up here, just a second. We're already a couple pages in here.
Okay.
Mayor and Council, this evening I brought to you a proposed tax amendment of the
zoning ordinance dealing with Chapter 2, which is the different procedures, and
specifically, Section 2.02.
The overall chapter deals with rezoning site plans, special use permits, those other types
of processes that we deal with in the planning division. As we had been working with
these different sections of this chapter over the last few years, I've noted some
deficiencies, some things out of date, some things that are confusing between the
different chapters. So I've been working on a comprehensive update to the whole
chapter, but it was quite a load to bring all of it at one time, and because each section
works independently of each other will be bringing it forward a section at a time and
chose to start with the Special Use Permits because it's one of the ones we use most
frequently and had some of the bigger needs for some changes.
So just real quickly, a couple of examples of some of the issues that we're trying to deal
with between sections. So Rezoning, Section 2.01(C) talks about hearings and the notice
requirements for that. It's very clear there. When we get to Special Use Permits it's
buried a little bit in Section 2.02(D). It doesn't even have a hearing title to it anyplace,
and it doesn't include all the information we really need and doesn't follow the procedures
that we actually use for those notices for those types of hearings. Also the notice that we
have this opportunity to improve that consistency, so what you'll see over time as we
bring the different sections, we'll clearly label the headings and there'll be a section
labeled hearings in each of the different chapters, so you'll be able to find exactly what
we're looking for.
So here's just an overall example of the existing 2.02 versus what is proposed in terms of
the layout and the different section headings, which again I think will be more clear for
users in the future. And again as we bring the other sections through, you'll see that the
listing will be pretty much the same, particularly at the start where there's very many of
the same types of ideas.
So I'm going to quickly go through some of the major changes that we have in this
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section and we have attached to the report a strikethrough version of the ordinances as
well as a clean version.
So Section 2.02(A) provides the purpose for Special Use Permits. There's no changes to
that section.
Section 2.02(B), Applications. In the current ordinance section 2.02(B), it is General
Regulations. We'll move that to the end as there's some things in there that are still
important to use, but we want to keep Applications as a consistent second piece of the
sections.
So with regard to the Applications piece, were updating that to reflect our current
procedures of taking electronic applications versus the current one that talks about paper
and how many copies you provide and that type of thing. We also then provide a little bit
more detailed information on what is required with the application and adjusting the
wording regarding the site plans. Right now, it does provide some flexibility in that site
plan requirement, but it's worded a little bit oddly. So hopefully what were proposing is
a little bit more clear in terms of starting with the idea that a site plan is required, but then
give some ability to adjust what is required specifically in that site plan based on the
nature of the application.
We're also adding this new provision in terms of this Good Neighbor Policy, or Good
Neighbor Statement, and it's something that's come up several times as we've worked on
Special Use Permits and I've seen this in codes in other communities where it's a part of
the application. We can easily recognize or identify what some of the challenges are
going to be, so have them include with their application a statement of how they're going
to address those issues, how they're going to work with their neighbors around them with
their proposed development.
And then other items that were in the current Section 2.02(B) have been moved a little
bit.
The new Section 2.02(C) provides a review. It tells us the steps that we go through to
review an application from initially coming in and staff review and what were looking
for, and the back and forth with an applicant as necessary to have a complete application,
and then how that moves on forward then through the P&Z (ph.) and Council hearings,
and includes some timeframes for that to happen, both on the staff side and on the
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applicant side, to make sure it moves in a timely fashion.
Section 2.02(D) then provides the notice standards. It includes the -- it's in the current
ordinance, or including all three forms of standard notification, that's posting on the site,
mail notice to property owners within 300 feet, and publication in the paper, and
establishes a 15-day minimum requirement for those notices.
2.02(E), Hearings, this is mostly a new section, although it pulls from portions of existing
sections. It provides again an overview of that hearing process. It talks about who can
appear and establishes time limits. It allows for investigations of the request by the
hearing body and for a written summary of the testimony to action, so basically the
minutes of the proceedings.
2.02(F) gets into the Actions. It's mostly existing, with some reordering from what's in
2.02(D) and (E). Currently, there's a maximum limit on continuances at the P&Z level of
60 days. The few times I've had to think about that, 60 days has usually been a bit of
challenge, so we're extending that out to a 90-day continuance, allows for the
Commission or Council as they review the Good Neighbor Policy or Good Neighbor
Statement and get feedback from the public and staff to request and make modifications
to that to be sure we're addressing concerns of the neighborhood. And currently there's a
requirement in there for SUPs to get to Council on the first hearing at least eight days
after the Action by the P&Z. That's too short with our standard procedures and so I've
lengthened that out to a 28-day timeframe.
2.02(G) lists the timeframes Council is currently familiar with --
MAYOR DICKEY: And Council -- Vice Mayor has a question.
MCMAHON: Excuse me for interrupting, but under Investigation, the hearing and the
investigation aspect of it, can you please explain how that works a little bit better for me?
WESLEY: So--
MCMAHON: That particular process.
WESLEY: Sure. So in my tenure here, we haven't really used that to any great extent, in
terms of any type of information investigation. We have had SUPs that have been
continued, particularly at the P&Z level, sometimes here at Council because you wanted
some additional information and looking at what's proposed and how it might impact the
neighborhood. The wording of this, it's a provision that's in the current code that we're
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continuing, but it would allow for a more detailed investigation. It would even allow for
members of the board looking at it to be part of that investigation, I believe, if they
wanted to do so.
MCMAHON: So when they order an investigation, that's done rather quickly so that it
meets the 28-day requirement?
WESLEY: This would be the 90-day continuance--
MCMAHON: Oh, okay.
WESLEY: --timeframe.
MCMAHON: Okay. All right.
WESLEY: It still can be fairly quick because we talk about doing the investigation and
writing a report and getting the hearing set and so forth.
MCMAHON: Okay.
WESLEY: It's not a lot of time, but that would fall within that.
MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you.
WESLEY: Oh. Council, going on then with the -- Council's been aware that we've had a
number of Special Use Permits come back to Council because currently the ordinance
sets a six-month timeframe from approval to get a building permit. That can, as you've
seen, often be a bit challenging. Sometimes they're still finishing up the site plan, then
they have to get the building permit and getting professionals to do the work, that makes
that a bit of a challenge. So we've proposed to extend that out to six months to submit for
the building permit and a full year then to obtain the building permit.
As we discussed this with P&Z, we noticed another shortcoming in the current ordinance
in terms of once you get that, is there anything that really stops the SUP? So I've added
in another standard of 18 months to actually start the use.
So that can still be a bit of a challenge. If you're building a building, you get that
building permit after a year, six months to build the building and start the use, that may
be tight, so we still may see some extension requests. But it puts another cap on it.
Particularly if a building is already there and were just waiting for them to start the use, it
gives us something to tie that to.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
MAGAZINE' Should there not be some criteria to determine whether or
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not to give an extension?
WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, that's not an item that's come up. I'd have to think
about that a little bit. Usually, it's because of economic conditions that the developer has
encountered or lack of getting the professionals that they need to draw up the plans. But
we could go back and add something like that the Council would like.
MAGAZINE: Once they have a Special Use Permit -- never mind. I was thinking of a
question. Ijust answered it myself
WESLEY: Okay. Section 2.02(H) deals with Revocation. This is the same as the current
provisions in the ordinance, how we'd go about revoking a permit. If one gets issued and
needs to be revoked, basically we go back through that same hearing process.
2.02(1) deals with the General Regulations. This is what was currently in 2.02(B) and
we've just moved it down. It provides some understanding of -- and my mind just went
blank on that one. The SUP, if it's issued for a property, if it doesn't get vested by the
current owner, they can't transfer it. That owner has to at least get the use started and
then if somebody else buys the property they can continue that same use permit, some of
those issues.
2.02(J) is new and is again one of the reasons why 1 wanted to do this. We have nothing
in the code currently that tells us how to handle modifications or amendments to an SUP
once it's approved, and so we're adding some language on that and defining what those
are. So if we have a minor modification, that can be done administratively. Majors and
amendments, that would come back through the hearing process to P&Z and Council.
As we reviewed this, and particularly Vice Mayor McMahon looked at the ordinance, she
identified a few things where maybe there's some wording improvements that could be
made. And so I've listed those here for the Council, just a few little changes in some
wording to make them more clear there and again here. It cleans up and it makes the
wording a little clearer and where we had some repeat language in one that we really
don't need. So wed make those changes.
Oh, I'm not quite in there. Okay, a little closer.
So I'd make these changes, if the Council approves it, the ordinance so you could do so
with these changes being included.
So P&Z looked at this at a couple of meetings, gave us some suggestions and voted for
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approval at their second meeting, and staff recommends approval with the modifications
shown in the staff report during this presentation.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
I'm going to open a public hearing. And do we have any questions for John?
Comments?
No? Did we have any speaker cards on this item?
MENDENHALL- No Mayor. We do not.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Just one thing I wanted to mention because I know it's come up in other -- and it might
not be just specific to Special Use Permits, but I think over the course of talking about
development agreements or anything else, we seek to find a definition of when something
is actually started and if there's any sort of a deadline to when something has to be
finished and how do we define that. So as we go forward, I think that's something that
seems to be recurring and just to keep that in mind.
Any other questions or comments?
Thank you. Can I get a motion please?
MCMAHON: I make a motion. Move to adopt Resolution 2022-43 and Ordinance 22-07,
excuse me.
GRZYBOWSKI: Second.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
I always do this. Close the hearing.
All those in favor, please say aye.
ALL: Aye.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any opposed?
Thank you.
Do you want to keep going?
We'll keep going, and let me know if we can make it to the work study session.
Our next item is about short-term rentals, which should go fairly quickly.
Grady?
MILLER: I'll go ahead and turn it over to our Town Attorney, who has worked
extensively with a work group on this particular issue and I'll turn it over to Mr. Arnson.
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ARNSON: Do you mind, Linda? Thank you so much.
Mayor and Council, thank you for the opportunity to discuss this item with you tonight.
The Council has seen this before and our Town Clerk is quickly getting that up and
running for me.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Linda.
Would you mind handing me the clicker as well? Thank you so much.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Are you able to speak louder?
ARNSON: I'll try. Sorry, I'm losing my voice a little bit from today.
The Council will recall that at the October l8th meeting, we discussed a draft ordinance
for Council consideration. That draft ordinance included a number of sections. We don't
need to review them all here. But the Council did provide direction for us to prepare a
final ordinance regarding vacation and short-term rentals and regulation as now allowed
under state statute, including the standards and operating requirements that are present in
Section 11. So the final version of Ordinance 22-09 is now before the Council for
approval. It is substantially identical, substantively identical to the version that we
provided before with a few notable exceptions and well go through those right now.
The first is that based on advice and direction from our Town Prosecutor, Mr. Iacovino,
staff has expanded the definition of nonresidential use in the ordinance to specifically
clarity that it includes unruly gatherings and other uses that aren't lodging related. There
are some of those definitions that are set out in statute that we've incorporated into this
ordinance. The purpose of that is to improve clarity for individuals to know what is a
nonresidential use and to enhance the likelihood of enforceability for the statute, because
if we don't have that greater degree of enforceability what's the use of the statute is the
view.
Secondly, we did eliminate from Section 8-611, the proposed requirement that a landline
be operational on the premises. That was included in the original model ordinance. After
speaking with the Paradise Valley Town Attorney and some other city attomeys, the
background and basis that Paradise Valley used to justify that requirement, I don't believe
the record necessarily supports here. We'd have to do quite a bit more study and research
and flesh that out, in order to make that something that we could incorporate into ours.
So we have removed that from the final version of this ordinance are recommending
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against it.
Third, we've added some language that clarifies the town may inspect to ensure
compliance with Ordinance 22-09, or with any other town building code or ordinance.
Finally, we've incorporated a delayed effective date of February 1, 2023. I believe we
discussed that at the last Council meeting. There are two reasons for that. The first
reason is to be able to provide the public and owners of short-term rental properties with
notice that this is forthcoming, and secondly, to allow us time to post. Under state law,
we have to have 60 days to post any new fee that were going to charge. So that gives our
Finance Director, Mr. Pock, time to make that happen.
A couple of other points that are not necessarily changes to the ordinance itself, but that
were identified by the Council, one of which is up on the screen here and one of which
I'll just identify for the Council.
The Council directed staff to explore possibly expanding regulation of parking at
vacation and short-term rental locations. The Council will note that Ordinance 22-09
does not itself regulate parking. We sort of went back and forth on the pros and cons of
including a unique specific regulation and we think that the best approach is for staff to
rely on our existing parking regulations in 12-3-09 (ph.), which bases parking in
residential areas, residential zones, based on square footage and parking per number of
vehicles per square foot, to try to enforce that as best we can in the area. We think it's
probably about as close as we'll get to proactive enforcement with regard to short-term
rentals and there's no reason necessarily to distinguish between those uses.
The Council will note that -- and this just came to my attention this afternoon -- but that
there was a request to comment form from a member of the public or from the AZRT
(ph.). I'm not sure what the organization is. But from an organization that has to do with
short-term rentals, an advocacy group for short-term rentals, talking about background
checks and refining that language a little bit to make sure that were talking about
performing background checks on the booking guest, as opposed to every individual who
comes through the premises.
Upon reviewing that, that makes sense to me from a legal perspective. I don't think
there's any way to regulate or enforce that otherwise. So I'm not even necessarily sure
there needs to be a language change. It may simply just mean we're changing 8-6-10
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(ph.) to booking guest as opposed to -- and tinkering with that language a little bit, but
that's with the Council's permission an administrative change that we can make on the
back end. It certainly doesn't need to come back before the Council for approval, unless
the Council wishes to see it.
As far as next steps are concerned, staff is, of course, tonight seeking approval of
Ordinance 22-09. If approved, staff will, among other things, post that fee schedule that
we discussed a little bit earlier and bring that schedule before the Council for a public
hearing and adoption as required by state law. We expect to have that happen at the
January 17th council meeting, early next year.
Staff will -- I believe our Finance Director intends to engage a third party provider to
identify residential rentals. I think there has always been some concern in town about,
you know, where exactly are they and what number of short-term rentals do we really
have in town. I think we'll be able to get a much clearer picture of that with whatever
third party provider Mr. Pock identifies and well be working with Bo and Bo's office to
notify residents and owners of those upcoming changes to the permitting process and the
required fee. We want people to be on notice of that well before the February 1st
deadline for compliance.
With that, I am happy to take any questions or comments. Thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Counselor, correct me if I'm wrong. The town currently is in possession of a list of
people that have short-term rentals?
ARNSON: Mayor and Councilman Spelich, I actually do not know if we're in possession
of such a list. I'd have to defer.
MILLER: We have had one in the past and I thought I saw the Finance Director shake
his head. So he just did the thumbs up.
SPELICH: Okay. I think that the town should take the opportunity with the upcoming
Super Bowl coming to Arizona, the Waste Management Open -- there's already on social
media tons and tons of people who are posting to rent their properties and everything. I
think that this would be an ideal opportunity for the town to capture the people that have
been falling through the cracks. Because I believe -- I don't know what the number --
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how many people are on the list. Are you able to disclose that?
You've got the I'm going to make something up face.
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Don't give away his secrets.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible).
POCK: Mayor and Councilman Spelich, the problem with our current list is that there
isn't any -- we don't have any way to enforce people to come and update the list. So it's
just a list that's grown and grown and grown. We don't know if they're all active.
People could've sold their house, moved, stopped renting it. So --
SPELICH: So let me ask you this. Is the third party person -- I know that this is going to
be something that happens in January and I'm not going to have the power to take the
garbage out. But is this third party that you're thinking about hiring, is this the person
that's going to clean all this up?
POCK: We'll actually have a much better list, yeah, after -- because with this new
ordinance, we'll be able to actually require annual updates to information. The third party
is basically going to be identifying. They basically go out to the Vrbos, the Airbnbs, all
of the vacation rental sites, pull that information and match it up to addresses, so that we
have an actual address for each one, and then check it against our permits.
SPELICH: Okay. Because I would think that with, like I said, with this Super Bowl and
everything, this would be an ideal time. There's too much money to be made for these
people that are going to rent their homes with all these events coming.
I forgot my other question. You're off the hook.
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
SPELICH: I forgot it. I'm having a senior moment.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
MAGAZINE: I suspect a problem, unless I misunderstand, is that I think there's probably a
lot of people who rent just for those events and are not Airbnbs or whatever, who rent
during the year. I don't know the answer to that. But there's a lot of money to be made
from these people just renting for, for example, the Super Bowl. So I don't know how you
deal with --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible).
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SPELICH: The other thing that I wanted to bring up is the fact that I think I've had
residents in the past approach me and say that they've tried to register and it was difficult.
It was a difficult process.
Now, I don't know if that's true, if there was a problem with the online thing. But that --
we should also make that as easy as possible for people to get in, register it, make it nice
and easy, not complicated, and then I think we would have more participation. Because
there is people out there that want to do the right thing, but if they try to do the right thing
and they get technical issues, they're not going to want to do the right thing anymore.
MILLER: Mr. Pock, you want to explain what's in place?
POCK: So right there, when we Lind somebody or somebody wants to come and register
a rental, there's actually three different steps.
The first step, they have to get a TPT license. That comes from the Department of
Revenue and if you've ever filled out their application, it's a challenge. So that's most
likely where that's coming from.
The next part is notifying the county with the property classification.
And then the third is filling out our form. That form's probably ten questions, so it
shouldn't be that difficult on our side, but definitely feel for people that have to fill out
the joint applications.
MAYOR DICKEY: The TPT that you're talking about from DOR, is that what all
businesses have to do?
POCK: Um -hum. Yes. There is --
MAYOR DICKEY: So everybody figures it out.
POCK: They do have an abbreviated application that if you fit the criteria, just for short-
term vacation rentals, that you can use, but there are some limitations.
MILLER: That was like for three or less —
POCK: Yeah.
MILLER: -- is what you were telling me today.
MAYOR DICKEY: But either way, the long-term one is the one that every business in
the state does, so --
You mentioned Super Bowl and I saw in the paper -- it was also like a how-to. But I
have to give them credit because they were informing them of this new law and telling
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them if they had to do these things. So it was in the Republic.
Do we have any speaker cards?
MENDENHALL: Yes, Mayor. We do.
First, you have the two written comments, one from Al Ronca and the other from Linda
Curry.
And two speaker cards. The first one is Suzanne Brown.
BROWN: Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers.
I'm Suzanne Brown. I'm the Director of Community and Government Affairs for the
Scottsdale Area Association of Realtors.
I'm happy to talk to you tonight. I wanted to start off and let you all know that we are
truly in support of seeing a good ordinance be passed that's adopting all of the new
allowances that are being created with Senate Bill 1168. However, we do have some
concerns and we respectfully ask the Council to continue this item to allow for further
review and finetuning of a couple of items to bring them into compliance with the
allowances granted by the Senate Bill.
For example, regarding the requirement of sex offender background checks, these should
be for the booking guest, not all guests as stated in Senate Bill 1168.
Also, in regards to the record retentions and inspection of the records by the town, we ask
you to consider the requirement that records be available to the town for examination
raises concerns under privacy protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the
U.S. Constitution, which safeguards the rights of people to be secure in their person,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Fourth Amendment applies to civil searches
such as municipal code inspections as well as criminal searches.
The Supreme Court of Arizona has stated that the Article II, Section 8 of the Arizona
Constitution, often referred to as the Private Affairs Clause, has the same general effect
and purpose as the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution to the United States.
We ask for the advice of the Town Attorney as to whether the record inspection
requirements conform to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution and the Private Affairs Clause of the Arizona Constitution.
Also, in regards to -- there's a couple of other items to address, such as the limitations of
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the number of persons in attendance for social gatherings. We noticed under the
definition this is for no more than ten persons, that a social gathering can be anything
as -- regarding -- we have Thanksgiving coming up. I don't know about all of you, how
large your family is, that extended family, you're having them over for Thanksgiving
dinner. Persons refers to children, not just adults. I understand that the limitations is to
try and reduce the chance of nuisance parties, but we also need to take into consideration
some of these other items, such as a normal family gathering, something that's peaceful
and not disruptive.
In summary -- there are a couple other things, but in summary we ask you to please
continue this item to a future meeting, to allow for further review before the final
adoption and ensure a strong, enforceable ordinance is passed.
Thank you for your consideration this evening.
MAYOR DICKEY: Do we have any other speaker cards?
MENDENHALL: Yes, Mayor. We do.
Lyn Trayte?
TRAYTE: Hi. Thank you for pronouncing that correctly. I appreciate it.
Madam Mayor and Councilmembers, I am a resident of Fountain Hills for the past 16
years. I'm also a realtor with Russ Lyon Sotheby's International Realty. That's right on
the Avenue. And I am also a member of the Scottsdale Association of Realtors
Governor's Affairs Committee. And we have gone over this proposal and there are some
concerns that I have as a realtor.
One has to do with the lengthy determination of what you feel needs to be in the
advertising of these properties. I don't think a normal ad could take that much verbiage in
it and have it be legible without it costing a lot of money, and I don't understand why
some of that verbiage is in there. It seems awfully verbose and unnecessary that -- I
mean, you don't even see that kind of verbiage in the second party listings where they
regulate quite a bit in the Airbnbs and Vrbos.
Also, the background checks as we said and I know you covered that. The attorney
covered that by saying it would be the booking guest rather than other guests as far as
having the background checks. There was something in there about going door to door
and talking to neighbors, and I feel that being very destructive. I know that some
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neighbors could get angry if there are some abusive issues, but I don't know that that's the
norm in Fountain Hills.
I actually lived on Jacklin Drive when the Golf Zoo came into play and I know some of
you were around here then and we had a lot of opposition for that because we thought
that was going to be very destructive, when in actuality it wasn't. And I think --when that
went up the street, that this was going to happen. It just created a lot of turmoil and a lot
of unnecessary concem as to what might happen when in actuality it wasn't a big issue.
People were very good in how they kept the property. The parking wasn't an issue.
There weren't a lot of parties. People were not disruptive, so that I didn't feel was
something that needed to be done and I don't want to see that happening.
I think our community -- I know we're trying adopt ordinances that are similar to the
other ordinances in our fellow communities like Scottsdale, but we are a unique
community. And I have put clients in short-term rentals and I've also represented clients
with short-term rentals and I know we do the utmost care in trying to get good quality
renters to come into our community. And 1 know you can't always regulate an individual
that owns their own home trying to do it without somebody like me helping out in that
process, but -- and I know there are some regulations that come into play, but I just don't
want us to throw out the baby with the bathwater and make it too confining that we limit
so many people that we need to come to our community and see how wonderful it is.
And if they're coming here in a short-term rental and they fall in love with the place and
they come back and buy, that's to our advantage and I want to see that happen.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you very much.
Do we have any other speaker cards?
MENDENHALL: No, Mayor. Not for this item.
MAYOR DICKEY: Ijust want to mention that one of the commentors -- the comments
that we had in addition to the one about the background checks was from somebody very
much in favor of this. I have another letter here from someone very much wanting us to
pass this and we also have, of course, speakers at our meeting last -- well, two times ago
when we talked about this who are in favor and I've had a lot of conversations with folks
over the last years who are really looking forward to us passing this.
I had a question about the Paradise Valley -- so what we put into ours passed scrutiny
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with AG's office from Paradise Valley and is also in the state statute. That was my
understanding, that those items are in our ordinance, the state statute and some of the
stuff that had passed the scrutiny in PV. Is that correct?
ARNSON: Mayor, that is correct. Everything except for Section 11 is what appears in
state statute, and what appears in Section 11 is taken almost uniformly from the Paradise
Valley ordinance that was the subject of a 1487 challenge, yes.
MAYOR DICKEY: Okay.
ARNSON: And it survived that challenge.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Councilman? I'm sorry, go ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Go ahead.
SPELICH: Counselor, can you chime in on the Scottsdale Realtors Association
bringing up the Fourth Amendment? I think that's a stretch. I don't see how -- I mean,
tell me if I'm off base here, but 1 don't see the argument.
ARNSON: No -- well, in truth, and I'd rather not give legal advice in public. But in
truth, to respond to that, certainly the Fourth Amendment does extend to civil searches
and there's no question about that. To the extent there's any implication that we intend to
undertake a search of any records, et cetera, without some indication that there's, you
know, probable cause for that search, I think is unwarranted, no pun intended. So that's
sort of my condensed response to that, Councilmember.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilmember?
GRZYBOWSKI: After the comment about the advertising verbiage, I ran through the
ordinance document and I'm not going to lie, it is long. But it's not like we're asking them
to put it in a newspaper ad. It actually says that the owner shall complete and
prominently display blah, blah, blah, in the short-term rental's online lodging
marketplace or other listing. So it's an online verbiage that we're requesting. It's not like
it's an ad in the Fountain Hills Times that you have to put these four paragraphs in.
ARNSON: Mayor, I did want to respond to one other comment regarding the neighbor
notification requirements that I believe the last speaker brought up. I will note that it is a
written notification requirement, not a verbal or an oral notification requirement and it's a
one-time notice prior to the first rental for the neighbors directly next door, across the
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street, and diagonal. And there are additional notice requirements if there's a change in
contact information, et cetera. But otherwise, we believe it's a fairly limited notice
requirement in scope.
FRIEDEL. So that's not a door to door knock or anything like that? Just a written --
ARNSON: As far as I read both the statute and our ordinance, it wouldn't be a knock
necessarily. It just says written notification. I don't think we care how it's done.
FRIEDEL: So one other question for you. So the Fourth Amendment doesn't need any
more researching as far as you're concerned? We can go ahead with what we've got right
now? We don't need to do any more checking on that and bring this back?
ARNSON: I'd be happy to report any additional information I find to the Council. And
to the extent we need to make adjustments, I think I'd be happy to report that to the
Council in a privileged setting and we could make those adjustments in a public meeting.
I don't anticipate that will be necessary.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Councilman?
SCHARNOW: Yes. Kind of along the same lines -- I mean, I was kind of curious about
that issue as well. I mean, because I know it was a big topic of discussion during the
sober living item. So this is different, or it's -- you know, that's what I'm kind of
wondering.
ARNSON: Part of the -- Mayor and Councilman Schamow, you may recall that one of
the issues that we had during the sober living discussion was the nature of what towns are
allowed to regulate, right? And we have extremely constricted regulatory authority on
the one hand, in the prior incidence, and at least relatively broader regulatory authority
granted by statute here. So you know, in order for there to be -- 1 think it's a little bit
comparing apples and oranges.
SCHARNOW: Okay.
ARNSON: So that's the distinction that I'm drawing. It's not to say that the Fourth
Amendment doesn't apply in this context. It does, let's be clear. I just want to make sure
that everyone understands that to the extent an inspection is required, yes, there would
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have to still be a legal basis for it.
SCHARNOW: Okay. Well, that makes sense. And the only thing, I did get input from
one gentleman in town. He has a small, you know, Airbnb type thing and just a little one
room, you know, type thing. And he just kind of, you know, and unfortunately it's been
brought up that yeah, there've been some bad apples out there that have forced this to
come to fruition. And 1 mean, I'm all in favor of it. It's just -- he just kind of feels it's
like an undue, you know, burden on the small guy who's complying with everything and
now he has to go through all this stuff, which I understand, but again it's just unfortunate
that with a lot of things in life, a few bad apples will create additional regulations.
ARNSON: And Mayor and Councilmember, to respond to that point. I do think that, of
course, some of the points that were raised are policy determinations for this Council.
And I understand that I'm only speaking for the legal perspective and telling you as a
council what I think is within the bounds of our authority. The Council has to weigh
those competing interests, right? The interests of property owners and those who are
marketing their residences for a lawful purpose of a short-term rental and the public
health, safety and welfare of residents who have an interest in regulating this use.
So yes, Councilmember, that's my response to that.
MAYOR DICKEY: If there's anything else, would someone please make a motion?
MCMAHON: Okay. I move to approve Ordinance 22-09.
SPELICH: Second.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
All in favor, please say aye.
ALL: Aye.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any opposed?
Thank you.
SCHARNOW: We were clear up the background check thing, or? MAYOR DICKEY:
Yeah, the background check, including what you had mentioned. They can fix that,
yeah. Thank you.
Our next item is a Professional Agreement, Top Leaf Tree Services.
Grady?
MILLER: Yes. Mr. Weldy's going to be coming up to the podium, but these next two
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items on the agenda, F and G, will be handled by Mr. Weldy in his remarks.
Mr. Weldy?
WELDY. Thank you, Mr. Miller.
Madam Mayor, Councilmembers.
The first one is in regards to trees. As you will note, not only town staff including
Community Services, Parks and Rees but Streets, we do a considerable amount of daily
or weekly maintenance, as do several contractors that work for each of the different
departments. What we are lacking is a professional team with the equipment necessary to
get higher up into the trees and do some of the more challenging and complicated items.
The agreement we have for consideration tonight will help accomplish that, not only for
the Public Works division, but for also Community Services and Facilities in the event
that they need these services for any work they have coming up.
With that, any questions you might have I'll do my best to answer.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Justin, don't we have a
bucket truck?
WELDY: Madam Mayor and Councilmember, we do not, sir.
SPELICH: I thought I saw one with the town logo on it.
WELDY: We do have a traffic signal group that does work for us with a bucket truck,
but they do not have a town logo on it.
SPELICH: How much are those?
GRZYBOWSKI: The logo?
SPELICH SPEAKER: No.
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
SPELICH: You're going to miss me.
WELDY: Councilmember, the last one that we elected not to replace was around
195,000.
SPELICH: Okay.
FRIEDEL: Justin, just a quick question. Do we put this out to bid every year, or how
often do we look at this?
WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, on this particular case, this group works for
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several other municipal governments.
And let me be clear here, we already have an annual landscape maintenance for open
space and washes and parks and those types of things. This is a separate, special niche
for the actual tree trimming, the larger and smaller ones in large groups.
Most recently, you may have seen this group under this agreement prior to asking for an
amendment, working on the Avenue or along Saguaro trimming those larger trees.
FRIEDEL: So they're the only one that we reached out to, or they're the only one that
reached out to us?
And then the second part of that is, are they a local company from town?
WELDY: The due diligence that staff did indicated they were the best working for other
municipal governments. They have several municipal contracts.
The second answer to that is we did look at several other ones. In fact, we have two or
three others working for us, one of whom is indeed local. But for this specialty work --
and lastly these were the ones that we are suggesting.
And the last part is this company is not local in Fountain Hills, but they are in the state.
MAYOR DICKEY: Do we have any speaker cards on this item?
MENDENHALL: No, Mayor. We do not.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Are there any further questions or comments?
Can I get a motion, please? Yes?
MAGAZINE: Move to approve amendment number 2 to Professional Services Agreement
2023-021.2 with Top Leaf Tree Service.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
GRZYBOWSKI: Second.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks.
All in favor, please say aye.
ALL: Aye.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any opposed?
Thanks, Justin. Next item?
WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmembers.
The next one is actually something that was brought to the Mayor and Council and the
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town staff, believe it or not, in the winter of 2018, and the spring of 2019.
We had some residents on El Lago, west of Fountain Hills Boulevard, that asked town
staff to get out and do a traffic count, do a speed and volume study. We did that.
Unfortunately, the results of that did not favor some of the things that they had wanted
and asked for. And since that time, we have not only been working internally, but with
the Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee on coming up with that.
During this multiyear process, it should be noted that staff reached out to several
professional traffic engineers and asked for suggestions on what we may or may not be
able to do there within a reasonable amount of time and for a reasonable amount of
funding.
We were directed to speak to the City of Glendale and the City of Phoenix, who used
pavement markings to narrow the travel lanes by adding a wider bike lane and a wider
parking lane and narrowing the two-way left turn lane to make it appear as though the
travel lanes that were typically used were narrow. And by default, this actually forces
motorists into self -compliance and has them slow down.
With that, we brought it to the Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee. They asked for
some additional information. It took us a considerable amount of time. We were finally
able to produce that and come back to them. We did get a unanimous vote from them to
bring it to this full body. A little bit more challenging after that.
Once it was decided to move forward, we then had to do an assessment of this long, wide
section of El Lago. Again, this is El Lago, between Fountain Hills Boulevard and
Palisades.
Over this spring and last summer and the prior winter before that, we went in and
removed several sections of pavement and concrete and repaired that, and then we came
back and filled all of the cracks and made a couple of more repairs. The reason for all
this upfront work is the type 2 polymer slurry that we're recommending as part of this
traffic calming measure. Because we have to redo the striping, the best way to do that is
to cover the existing and so it allows us, one, an opportunity to apply the correct
treatment at the right time to a long, wide road in the Town of Fountain Hills for a
reasonable amount of money and two, achieve and improve our safety goals that were
outlined by this Mayor and Council when they directed the Town Manager and staff to
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look for solutions a few years ago.
With that exhaustive and long explanation, if there are any additional questions related to
this traffic calming measure, I will do my best to answer them.
FRIEDEL: Do you remember what the grade of that road is? WELDY: Madam Mayor,
Councilmember.
There is a section near the eastern limit prior to arriving to Fountain Hills Boulevard that
is probably 10 to 12 percent.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman.
SPELICH: You're done?
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
So $154,000. You had the machine. I was visiting some friends that live off of El Lago.
You had the machine there that was capturing the average speed and everything.
WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember.
We did actually two different speed and volume counts on El Lago at two different
locations.
SPELICH: And what was the average speed?
WELDY: The average speed for downhill east of the stop sign I believe was 31 miles per
hour. It was the 85 percentile.
SPELICH Do we know if Captain Kratzer, if he can answer, have we had a radar
enforcement there? In that particular area? 1 know that you guys blow up Saguaro,
Palisades, the right turn onto Shay. And 1 know those are all your honey holes. But is El
Lago on the radar? I'm just trying -- this is a lot of money to spend.
KRATZER: Councilmember Spelich, that is not an area that we frequently run radar on.
It's not known to us as being complaint -driven for speeders or an area that deputies target
based on crash data currently. So in the time I've been here, we've not focused any added
traffic enforcement in that area, outside of maybe a deputy just picking random locations
and running radar.
SPELICH: I'm just thinking how many deputies we could have sit there and run radar for
154,000. I think we could post up a guy there permanently.
KRATZER: That's math I can't do right there.
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
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MAYOR DICKEY: Can Ijust ask, this isn't just a stripe. This is maintenance of
pavement, correct?
WELDY: Madam Mayor, this is -- in fact, we've already done all the necessary
underlying issue repairs and crack filling. This is going to be a new coating over that
pavement, which will not only allow us to do pavement markings, but it will move this
large section of our backlog out about five to seven years for any additional pavement
maintenance, possibly longer. So yes, it's maintenance of pavement.
MAYOR DICKEY: So that's the answer right there, really. That's what we're doing is
pavement maintenance on El Lago Boulevard. Also, one of the other ways of the speed
mitigation we talked about was sidewalks, which obviously would be more expensive
than just the striping. So I think this addresses that, but I guess just from my knowledge
of what we've done so far that the bulk of this is because we're repaving, or whatever you
want to call it, the road, correct?
Mike?
SCHARNOW: Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor.
No, I was going to say the same thing because, I mean, just recently, the other day I was
driving up El Lago and right by the Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, I mean, the
amount of crack filling material is like mind -boggling. So obviously, maintenance is
needed regardless of neighborhood complaints or the speeding. So I mean, this situation
is more about maintenance and then people are saying, you know, we don't take care of
our streets. Well, this is one way to take care of our streets. I don't see any other way of
looking at it.
SPELICH: Well, let's call it what it is, then. Let's not wrap it up in the cloak of safety.
Let's just say that it's for maintenance.
MAYOR DICKEY: Do we have any speaker cards on this item?
MENDENHALL. No, Mayor. We do not.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Are there any other comments or questions for --
GRZYBOWSKI: Actually, real quick. I used to live and have to take that road all the
time. I used to live down there -- up there -- whatever.
I will tell you, I realize we're looking at 31 miles is what you found as your average. 1
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feel like the people that turn from Palisades onto El Lago go a heck of a lot faster than the
ones that actually originate from downtown and go that direction. And we all know
about the speeding on Palisades. So I do feel like when they turn right or turn left from
Palisades onto El Lago, those are probably -- if 1 had to look at the neighbors, those are
probably where the faster people are coming from.
SPELICH- People in a Testa
MAYOR DICKEY: Well, I don't know what kind of car they have, but -- you know, I
was there walking very often and you're very right.
So if there isn't anything else, could I get a motion, please?
SCHARNOW: Yeah. I would say, you know, we do this and have Captain Kratzer have
his guys out there. So move to approve amendment number one to Cooperative
Purchasing Agreement 2022-074 with Cactus Transport for pavement maintenance
services in the amount of $154,609.86.
GRZYBOWSKI: Second.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
All in favor, please say aye.
ALL Aye.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any opposed?
Thank you.
We're going to move on because I know folks are here, okay? And then we'll break
before the work study session.
Our next item, please.
Rachael?
GOODWIN: Good evening, Mayor and Council.
I'm back. This time, we are going to talk about a skate park.
As many of you know, our skate park was discussed at length during our Council Retreat
as a CIP project for this year. Per direction, we are bringing it back for final approval this
evening.
In review, our skate park was built in 2007 and has had more than 15 years of use and has
started to deteriorate. We have done our due diligence including maintenance and
addressing individual concerns. However, it's at a point that requires significant
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rehabilitation.
The skate park has long been a popular amenity within our park system and it serves a
pretty broad clientele and sees constant use during nice weather. You probably
remember that last fall we had a partnership with Musco and we added LED lighting to
the skate park for the first time ever, and that has been a tremendous hit with our users
and we have seen evening. As a result of that evening access, our use has gone up by
roughly 300 percent.
Here's some photos of the current condition of the skate park. You can kind of see the
cracking, the deterioration of the rails as well as the concrete there.
You can also see that there's quite a bit of use.
This past year we also -- with the renewed interest in our skate park and the addition of
the lights, we partnered to introduce a new Skate School program, as well as our Skate
Classic event. I want to thank Councilmember Gryzbowski for mentioning that both of
these events combined actually won a state award last week. Both programs saw
tremendous engagement. We sold out of our Skate School each time we've offered it and
with our inaugural Skate Classic we had more than 30 skateboarders out there showing
off their best stuff.
So what've we done so far? In the spring a new project received your preliminary
approval via the CIP. So this summer, the staff began engaging our stakeholders about
the redesign. In June, we held a public meeting with 25 members of the public to attend
an open session at our Community Center where we discussed the current conditions and
then suggestions were shared for improvements. We had ages from 8 to 48 there, which
really shows just the breadth of our users for this amenity.
Following that, we shared a digital survey that was forwarded to all of our users and then
posted throughout social media and we had 90 responses with a variety of additional
suggestions and ideas.
I'd like to point out that that's a pretty darn good engagement number for one single
amenity in our community.
Many of the comments requested improved features and a more logical and useful layout,
including elements that serve both beginner, intermediate, and advanced users, so that
skaters of all ages -- I will not even just say skaters -- wheeled users of all ages, because
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it's not just skaters that use this facility -- have access to the space and feel like it's made
for them. We want to help all users have -- feel like it's a space that was designed for
their ability and to help them grow in their skills.
The addition of a pump track, a skate bowl, and improved ramps were all features that
were requested by local users.
Here you can kind of see the shared renderings that were designed with these concepts in
mind.
Pending the approval, the skate park renovations would begin in January with completion
due by June 30 to comply with our fiscal year. We have the budget allocated and that
contract is set to not exceed $731,640.
I shared this rendering here. You can kind of see the space that has the red fencing
around it represents the existing space. The items including the bowl and the pump track
would be the added amenities.
And then here's one more rendering from the opposite perspective.
And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions about the project. I know we have a
number of users in the audience as well, who are here to answer questions as well.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
Yes.
MAGAZINE: Aaron, what's our liability situation?
ARNSON: That's actually a very interesting question, Councilmember Magazine.
So first of all, I don't know that the liability necessarily changes from what exists right
now. But aside from that, there is a state statute that limits liability for recreational use.
Recreational use of like park facilities and skate facilities, et cetera. I don't remember the
exact statutory reference, but my recollection of that statute is that serves as a pretty good
bulwark against our liability for these types of facilities.
MAGAZINE: Do you know offhand whether or not there have been any claims?
ARNSON: Related to the skate park?
MAGAZINE- Right.
ARNSON: I do not know.
MAGAZINE- Okay. Thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
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SPELICH: Alan's worried about breaking a hip. So a tremendous amount of money. I
mean, a mind -boggling amount of money.
I'm not opposed to it, but -- I don't mean to suck the life out of the room, but I'm going to.
We still don't know what the Community Center's going to cost, to fix the Community
Center. A million?
I mean, we have Mr. Buick (ph.) here. Buick, right? Okay. I knew it was Buick or Ford.
So he's going to give us a presentation. You know, in his last presentation he was saying
it was going to be north of a million dollars. I don't know what this presentation's going
to be.
Believe me, I know that the kids and people will use this. I know that they're going to
draw people to this. I know you can have events there.
But I think with an ask like this, there's got to be a give. We've got to give something up
to get this. I just -- I don't know if it's your umbrella for 400 G's or your -- you know,
something. It's just a lot of money.
I can't leave -- I've been a fiscal conservative. I can't walk out the door blowing money
like I just went to the casino. I think there's got to be a give and take. I don't know what
your thoughts are -- your thoughts are, I'm sure, just give me the money. But I just -- I
think that's a lot of money. I'm sure Councilmember Magazine agrees that that's a lot of
money.
MAGAZINE. I do.
SPELICH: And I know it's needed. I know that. I mean, all you have to do is look at the
picture and see that the ramp comes down into a concrete box. I don't know exactly who
designed that, but it wasn't definitely anybody that knew what they were doing.
So in my massive amount of skateboarding experience and BMX-ing back in the day --
I'm lying.
I just would like to think of what your thoughts are and what other Councilmembers
thoughts are. I'll approve it, but we got to give something up that's going to take the
place of this. And I prefer it to be the roundabout study.
FRIEDEL: So I've been out to that park several times. It is kind of a mess. I've been in
conversations with a gentleman from the town that's got some people that might be
involved in another part of that.
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But I think, David -- correct me if I'm wrong, Rachael -- I think 300-or-so thousand is
coming from development fees, that we already have that money sitting there to use for
this project.
GOODWIN: You are correct.
FRIEDEL. So you've got a couple of other improvements that you were going to look at
doing at Desert Vista, for 200 this year, 200 next year, or 200 the year after, something
like that. Could we table that stuff, take the development fee money and the 400 that
you had on the books for that and get this project done? Would you be a little bit more
pleased with that?
SPELICH: What are we getting rid of again?
GOODWIN: I think what I'm understanding is that there's concerns over the cost, which
is understandable. I can see that. We do have development fees allocated for about a
third, about 300 of this, with the remaining four coming from our CIP. If there is a give,
so to speak, the give and take, are there other projects that we're willing to do without? I
think you kind of touched upon the idea of the Centennial Building shade structure —
GRZYBOWSKI: Rachael's umbrella.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Oh, sorry.
GOODWIN: -- also known as the umbrella. I think that that's probably an easy one to
kind of tag. The other improvements around Desert Vista is also an option, or even
considering other projects that aren't park related, whether we have other things identified
in the CIP.
My hope is that we can work with some partner groups. We do have some interest about
funding and things like that. But again, if the project does not meet approval, then those
funding options aren't on the table any longer. So I'd love to see if we can move forward
towards that and explore those options to help offset some of the costs as well.
Some of the other improvements around Desert Vista are somewhat tied to this, i.e.,
there's the idea of adding a ramada so that there's some shade or some other -- some
support to this project. But it is not in conjunction with this project. They operate
independently. So whether we give the shade structure up, whether we talk about
foregoing other things in the CIP, I think that's all options.
MILLER: A couple points I just want to bring up, and thank you for bringing up the
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Community Center. As you know, we're going to have a discussion and a study session
immediately following this meeting.
The firm has identified approximately $4 million and it's not something that would have
to be spent necessarily immediately, and it's something we can probably work towards
saving to get to that point, like we do with all of our capital improvement projects. We
don't typically put them in one year and then they're funded the next year.
The other thing I wanted also to remind the Council is were in this highly inflationary
period of time right now, and so it would be really not a good idea not to approve this
tonight, and it sounds like you're moving towards wanting to approve it. But I'm just
concerned about cost escalations that a project like this might have if it's not approved
tonight.
And we're going to see other projects and you'll have another opportunity at future
projects when the contracts come back to you, as you always do. So again, that's your
opportunity. I think I heard Councilmember Friedel say that maybe some of these other
projects might be something we might want to give up. I heard the same thing from
Councilmember Spelich.
So what I would say is, let's make a decision tonight on this, on the merits of this project
alone tonight, understanding that if it's not approved as is that this could actually cost
more money, which is taxpayer money, which is something I really would not want to see
happen. And then as we have agreed for this fiscal year, as we come back we're going to
bring projects back to you in the form of contracts and you'll always have the final say in
the award of a contract, much like the discussion is going tonight on this.
So I think that there's some really good work that's gone on this. You heard earlier from
(indiscernible) that we need to be spending some of our money in the development fees.
This ones been on the books for many years to do, so I think that this is a really great
project and it's great to see a lot of the users here tonight. But I think that you brought up
some really good points and I'm not discounting what has been said tonight. I just -- I'm
concerned if this doesn't get approved tonight, it's just going to cost us more money in the
future.
MAYOR DICKEY: Alan?
MAGAZINE: I too favor this, but I too am concerned about the cost and I'm just
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wondering, you know, would the 300,000 plus the shade and whatever you call it, would
pretty much cover it. Is there any reason why we can't make the decision tonight on
removing the shade structure from the CIP?
ARNSON: Sony, Mayor. Can I jump in really quick?
I mean, that is certainly a point for discussion. It's not an action item that's agendized, so
no, we could not. We could not take that action tonight.
MILLER: And if I may --
MAGAZINE: Can I come back later?
MILLER: If I may, Councilmember, we had heard loud and clear that the Council
directed us to try to find grants and other sources of revenue to help offset that cost and
you heard earlier tonight that we didn't get a grant for it. As far as we're concerned,
that's tabled right now until we can find some other grant and that was the direction the
Council had given us previously.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
FRIEDEL: Two quick questions. What's the age of the current skate park?
GOODWIN: Just over 15 years.
FRIEDEL: 15 years? And what's the lifespan on the new one?
GOODWIN: Probably in that same wheelhouse. Again, our conditions aren't very kind
to amenities and things like that, so we do have -- they do have a life cycle but they're
usually somewhere between 12 to 15 years, is probably reasonable.
MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman?
SCHARNOW: Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor.
Yeah. No, I think it's an excellent use of the development fee money. I mean, that's
almost half the project, or a third or so, so I like that aspect of it. And then the existing
park, 1 mean, how much -- I mean, are you going to rip it all out and redo it? Or take
what's there and take services down, or how's that going to work?
GOODWIN: Well, I think the idea here is if we can reuse it -- if we can keep some of it
that's in good shape and whatnot, there is some -- as commented earlier, there are some
layout challenges that it was not laid out, necessarily, with the most comprehensive idea.
It was laid out, originally, to be added to, and then that addition never happened. So it,
sort of, was laid out, again, illogically. And so, we will have to make some amendments
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there. But yes, if we can maintain -- keep things, we certainly want to do that because,
obviously, it all contributes to the bottom line and how much we can do.
SCHARNOW: Well, I think, you know, over the past several years, I mean, we've done
a lot of improvements at Four Peaks. We've, you know, talked about lighting at Golden
Eagle not too long ago. We've done improvements to Fountain Park. You know, the dog
park had improvements. So I just think this is logical next step in the order or our parks
in keeping them current and safe and up to date. So I'm all in favor of it.
MAYOR DICKEY: Sharron?
GRZYBOWSKI: I agree with Councilman Schamow. And one of the biggest
complaints we get in town is, there's nothing for our kids to do, there's nothing for our
kids to do. By expanding this, we're giving our kids more stuff to do. I was, also, very
impressed with your survey and the people that you had you show up to the
meeting -- would you say, between the ages of 8 and 48 were participating, which why?
You think that's, like, normal? I'm excited that there's 8 year -olds that's out there that
want to take up skating. I think that's super cool. But 48 does shock me a little bit, I'm
going to say. But that's, you know, ten years in my past, maybe, you know, I would have
done it, I don't know. But I was just very impressed by the age group that showed up and
participated in helping to design and talk about this.
MAYOR DICKEY: Do we have any speaker cards on this item?
MENDENHALL• Yes, Mayor, we do. First, you have two written comments from
Gerald Campbell and Grant Paulsen, and both support the skateboard park. And then we
have --
MAYOR DICKEY: There's another one too, sorry. Wesley, right?
MENDENHALL- Yes, but he also -- he is going to speak.
MAYOR DICKEY: Oh good, thank you.
MENDENHALL: Yes, he showed up.
The first one to speak is Caleb Dassinger. Is -- all right.
DASSINGER: They said all of my best points. Yeah, my name's Caleb Dassinger. I'm
the owner and president of Brilliant Victory Skateboards, contracted by the Town to
teach the skateboarding school, which 1 love to do. Again, you guys went over most of
my best points, here. We've been just winning awards left and right. This expansion's
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incredible, you know, I helped design it, essentially. Some of the other people here did
too. This would just be huge. I can't tell you the amount of support I get. This could
turn into international competitions. I mean, I've been in skateboarding and doing it for a
living a good part of my life now, and I just think it's the way to go. I know 700 grand is
700 grand but you know, you'd make me really happy if you made it.
ALL: [LAUGHTER]
DASSINGER: So that's it. That's all you need. Right? So -- but that's -- yeah, the -- it
looks amazing and just I hope we all can come to an agreement on this.
So Mayor, Council, thank you.
MENDENHALL: All right. The next is Wes Nourse. He also provided a written
comment and then showed up at the meeting and wants to speak in person.
NOURSE: Good evening. Thank you, Mayor Dickey and Councilmembers.
1 grew up here, lived here for over 20 years. Went to high school. I was there when this
park was first built, the first version of it. I've seen it, kind of, deteriorating over the
years. And I just know that the kids would be super happy about having this here. I
know. growing up, there wasn't much to do in town. Having this offered would be
amazing.
I mean, improving on the area around it, also adding the gazebos which would be, I
know, a couple years down the line. But once this project's completed, this will be, like,
on the map as one of the best parks in the southwest, with the pump track and the ball
combo. It's just a really good layout for the space. So Ijust came here to support and if
you guys have any other questions or comments for me about the park, I'd love to help
out. But anyway, that's about it.
MAGAZINE. You don't look like you're 48.
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
NOURSE: No, 36. 36. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: How much can we put you down for?
ALL: [LAUGHTER].
NOURSE: Okay. Thank you.
MENDENHALL: Our next speaker card is Brittni Thyfault. Are you still here, Brittni?
Well, she's -- she's for it.
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And then Lindsey Michaels signed up to speak, but she had to leave. And she just says, I
support this. Let's get our kids outside and move away from YouTube, TV, and video
games. My kids love the skate park and are looking forward to the expansion. Thank
you.
She probably had to get home to her kids.
And that's it for speaker cards.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Any other comments or quest -- I'm cony'? Oh okay.
Any other comments or questions on this item? Great.
Can I get a motion, please?
GRZYBOWSKI: Move to approve the American Ramp contract, 2023-51.
MAGAZINE' Second.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. All in favor, please say, aye?
ALL: Aye.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any opposed? Thanks, very much.
MCMAHON: Thank you.
MAYOR DICKEY: Appreciate it.
One more item and then we do our work study. This one -- this one will be quick too.
Cut and fill.
WESLEY: Mayor and Council, I'm here to present to you a request for a cut and fill
waiver on some property, on Firerock -- Firerock Country Drive.
Chapter 5 of the subdivision ordinance sets out standards for grading and particularly gets
into the issues with cut and fill waivers. Basic purpose of the ordinance are stated here,
trying to maintain the natural topography as much as we can.
With regard to the cut and fills, anything greater than ten feet needs to come to council
for a waiver. In this case, were good looking at this lot. It's a little bit odd -shaped lot
with a long neck that comes out to the street and has some pretty good slope across it
once you pass that throat.
Morris residents -- Morrison residents is proposed for this property. And here's a couple
more views.
SPELICH: This is one home?
WESLEY: This is one house, yes. Although, can I get the -- it's
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working, yes. So it is one house. There is this detached under garage and workout area
here, but it is one house. And the area of the cut and -- significant cut and fill is in this
area.
A couple more views of the property. A couple different directions.
So I've highlighted, in here on the blue, the approximate area of the cut that would be
greater than the ten feet, with a maximum area back here in the -- this corner where the --
this garage is. A little over 20 feet here, then it goes down to -- then about the time we
get here, it's the ten -foot range. A couple of cross sections through here that show the
natural grade versus where the cuts would be.
So you see, this is looking to the west. And that view you saw before, so the wall is up
here, the grade is coming down. So again, the biggest is back in this location. And some
cross sections looking the other way. Again, this is the northern of the two -- two lots,
biggest cuts in here. A little bit less on the other garage. They should come down.
So, as we look at this in terms of the slopes and where it's at, visual impact from the street
out on Firerock, you really won't see anything from there. The properties to the east
down the hill will be looking up, over a retaining wall. So they'll see the tops in these
buildings when they get put it, but they won't really be able to see that cut that was made
that much. Through there.
The code encourages to look for alternatives to the cuts. And so the -- the alternative
would be to try to move the house further down the hill and spread things out so you
don't need that much of a cut at that one location. But as you do that, you create more --
Fsmaller cuts elsewhere. And you get -- and the more retaining walls and that type of
thing. Those are some of the alternatives that could be considered. Eliminating that
north garage would reduce some of the cuts. Changing it to multi -level design would --
could reduce some of the cuts, but that's not desired by the property owner who's -- who a
little bit older and looking for a -- more things on the -- on the one floor.
The Firerock Community of Architecture has reviewed the plans and have approved
them. And other designs could result in more cuts elsewhere on the property. It's not
very visible from the surrounding properties. We feel like the intent of the ordinance is
being met and by reference. So we had cuts as large as just 29 feet with a narrow canyon,
and almost 27 feet in Firerock Parcel B. So this is less than those were at the maximum.
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Staff is recommending approval.
SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. John, what's the fee
associated with this?
WESLEY: With the waiver?
SPELICH: Yeah.
WESLEY: There is no fee for a request to waiver.
SPELICH: We need to get one. Obviously, by the size of that house, they can afford a fee.
What do we need to do to make that happen?
WESLEY: Talk to Mr. Pock and get something on the fee list.
SPELICH: The next council needs to do that. Anybody that can build a house like that
can afford the fee.
FRIEDEL: John, have there been any comments from any of the neighbors or anything?
WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, there have been no provisions in this waiver request
for any notice. So we haven't had the opportunity for any notice to neighbors. Again,
since the HOA has approved it, we assumed they have done any of that discussions
internally.
GRZYBOWSKI: A couple years ago, 1 had the benefit of sitting down with former
Councilman Brown, who is a local builder. And he and I discussed a number of, not lots
in specific, but just basically, we've used so many lots here that the lots that we're left to --
with are, kind of -- sorry if you're out there that owns this lot -- but weird and obscure
and may require special permits, just like this.
I don't think there's any denying it. If you think the house is too big, that's a personal
thing. But we need to start thinking outside of the box for some of these kinds of lots. So
I don't have a problem. unless it's hard to tell by the pretty pink and blue lines that you
had on your picture, but it appears to be above the other houses. My question is, is it
going to block somebody else's view?
WESLEY: Right. And Councilmember, the best we can do from -- from this one -- let
me point it out. So again, we're talking the house is built in here, we're going up the hill
to the house that's up here. So they'll be looking over all of this. UNIDENTIFIED
GRZYBOWSKI: So it's already above the other --
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WESLEY: Yes.
GRZYBOWSKI: -- that's kind of what I was guessing. So I don't have a
problem with it then.
MILLER: And Mayor, if I may, too, Ijust want to reiterate, I believe Mr. Wesley (ph.)
also indicated that the Firerock Homeowner's Association. Board also endorsed it. And if
there was a blocked view, that's something they would have had a concern with.
SCHARNOW: Yeah, that was -- that was the first thing I was asking myself when I
was reading through this about -- so it's good to see the community of architecture
approve this. And then, you know, it also occurred to me during this, it was a bigger
issue years ago, as far as cuts and what happens to the dirt, you know, because there
was a lot of illegal dumping back in -- years ago. So I -- you know, during the
inspection process, do we, you know, look at that at all or kind of see where they're
taking the dirt because 1 know this is not going to be kept on site, is it?
FRIEDEL• They're selling that dirt, is my guess. Dirt's valuable today.
SCHARNOW: Well, 1 know but I -- I just want to make sure it's not dumped
somewhere it's not supposed to be.
WESLEY: The designer's here and he may be able to answer that question a little better
than I can. There will be some adjustment onsite because they will be leveling out the site
for the houses. It would otherwise be going down the hill. I don't know if they end up
with extra dirt or not. My guess it they probably do and I think Councilmember Friedel,
you're right, there's a lot of places needing dirt and they typically are able to sell it.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any further questions? Do we have speaker cards on this item?
MENDENHALL: No, Mayor, we do not.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
All right. I'm ready for a motion, please.
GRZYBOWSKI: Move to approve cut and fill waiver, CFW22- -- what is that, five
zeroes, 1.
MAGAZINE: Second.
MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you.
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All in favor, please say, aye.
ALL Aye.
MAYOR DICKEY: Any opposed? Thanks, very much.
Our last item is discussion directions from the Town Manager. Do we have anything?
No?
All right. We'll adjourn and we'll take a break before we start the work study. Ten
minutes. Thank you.
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