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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2023.0228.TCRETREAT.MinutesTOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MINUTES OF THE COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING OF THE FOUNTAIN HILLS TOWN COUNCIL February 28, 2023 A Council Retreat Meeting of the Fountain Hills Town Council was convened at 16705 E. Avenue of the Fountains in open and public session at 8:33 a.m. Members Present: Mayor Ginny Dickey: Vice Mayor Peggy McMahon; Councilmember Gerry Friedel; Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski; Councilmember Brenda J. Kalivianakis; Councilmember Hannah Toth; Councilmember Allen Skillicorn Staff Present: Town Manager Grady E. Miller; Town Attorney Aaron D. Arnson; Town Clerk Linda Mendenhall Audience: Approximately thirteen members of the public were present TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 1 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT Post -Production File Town of Fountain Hills Town Council Retreat Meeting Minutes February 28, 2023 Transcription Provided By: eScribers, LLC Transcription is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. Page 1 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 2 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming. All you guys. But really appreciate it very much. Welcome to our 2023 retreat. And I think Grady, Pm used to -- so used to sitting next to you and going what do we do, what do we do? So I'll hand it over to you. MILLER: Thank you, Mayor. Mayor and council, 1'd like to thank all of your being here today. This is one of our more important workshops that we do. This is a planning session that we really kind of set the tone for the next 12 months and into the next fiscal year. I wanted to let you know for transparency purposes, this meeting today is going to be broadcast live on YouTube and it'll also be available for on -demand review by your residence. Also unfortunately because it is a very long session from beginning to end we are not able to actually broadcast this on Channel 11 and have it be recorded because it would take many, many hours to get it rendered for it to be able to rebroadcast on Channel 11, so for that purpose it's only going to be on channel -- I'm sorry on YouTube. Also, wanted to let you know you're going to see a number of presentations before you. They were actually being worked on up to the last minute yesterday that's why you didn't have them in your packet, and I do apologize in advance for that. Normally, we are able to get a lot of these items to you much sooner than what you ended up seeing. Also, we have not built-in breaks in the agenda. A lot of this will just play by ear so I'll rely on once you start getting a little antsy or starting to shift around I'll work with the mayor, and we'll go ahead and declare like we do with a regular council meeting a break. Also, I just want to let you know we have a number of refreshments we have coffee in the back water, donuts, danish, juice so feel free at any time during the session to get up. And if you do need to use the restroom and you don't want to have to wait for the break you're always welcome to do that as well. MAYOR DICKEY: So Grady, I forgot to -- MILLER: Mayor, did you have any other point to? MAYOR DICKEY: I forgot to take the roll call. MILLER: Oh, okay. MAYOR DICKEY: This is a real meeting so -- MILLER: Please. I was just wrapping up so -- Page 2 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 3 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: Sony about that. MILLER: -- why don't you go ahead and call for the roll call. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. MENDENHALL: Mayor Dickey. MAYOR DICKEY: Here. MENDENHALL: Vice Mayor McMahon. MCMAHON: Here. MENDENHALL: Councilmember Friedel. FRIEDEL: Present. MENDENHALL: Councilmember Kalivianakis. KALIVIANAKIS: Here. MENDENHALL- Councilmember Skillicom. SKILLICORN : Here. MENDENHALL: Councilmember Grzybowski. GRZYBOWSKI: Present. MENDENHALL: Councilmember Toth. TOTH: Here. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Linda. Sorry, Grady. Didn't mean to interrupt. MILLER: No, I'm done. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. So we're just going to go right down in order correct? MILLER: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: Our first item is regarding a stellar teacher of the month. Do you want to start with that? MILLER: So this was a request that came through from Councilmember Kalivianakis. And I'll let her go ahead. She's the sponsor of this agenda item so I'll let her bring it up. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you very much. Thank you, Miss Mayor. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. Yeah, I wanted to bring up this. Currently, we have a stellar students of the month who come here every month. And it's a wonderful experience. I asked Grady to put this on the agenda because I think it's also important we have a stellar teacher of the month maybe from the elementary the middle and the high Page 3 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 4 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT school. Stellar means outstanding, wonderful, better than everything else. It's a word of praise, excitement. Thomas Edison invented many things, but his stellar achievement might have been the light bulb. I've visited our schools on many occasions. I've toured the schools three times. I've sat in the classrooms where the teachers are teaching our children reading, writing, and arithmetic. I sat in with the special ed students and the teachers have experienced such patience and love and care. It's really touching. If you haven't toured the schools and saw our teachers in action it's just amazing. Our teachers here in Fountain Hills have a starting base pay of $38,000. That is very low for this metropolitan arca. They start thcm at like $50,000 in Mesa and Scottsdale. And so these people -- its kind of like your town councilmen they're not doing it for the money. They're doing it because they care for the kids they care for the school system, and they want to be here. We've all had professors and teachers that have affected us. And I guess maybe this is my way of just reaching out and thanking some of the professors in my past by hopefully someday they got a stellar professor or teacher award too. One in particular is when I went to junior college 1 took my final exam it was a English History 1588 and before. And I studied and I had it all down and we took the final exam, and I thought I just nailed it. I almost memorize the book. And it came back as a B minus. And I wasn't too happy about that. And so I set an appointment. I took the test in there. And I thought it was going to be like one of those Ralphie moments on the Christmas Story like he said oh, Brenda, I'm so sorry you're right this is the best thing I've ever seen. And instead he said no you deserve to B minus because he said I didn't see any individual thought. He said all you did was -- this was a parrot could have written this paper. And he said until I sce some original thought and some synthesis of what you learned he said you're not going to get a good grade for me. And that was -- that struck me and that set a course for the rest of my life, don't just parrot what other people say, think about things yourself, and make up your own conclusions, do your own thinking. And so that really affected me. So I guess good teachers are strong communicators, they listen well, they focus on collaboration, they're adaptable, they're engaging, they show empathy, patience, and they have real world learning. And I think that it would be appropriate for us to give recognition to the best of the best for our teachers. And that's why I hope when Page 4 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 5 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT this -- if this does come on a future agenda item then we can get the votes and get this done. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Brenda. Anybody have anything to add? Yes, councilman. FRIEDEL: I echo what brought councilwoman Brenda K. just said. And I'm wondering if we could take that a little bit -- a step further as well. I met with Cain last week and we talked about the possibility of having him come and give an update to the Council on a more regular basis as to what's going on in our schools. I think that would be healthy for everybody to know. He's got some new ideas down there. And so I told him that I would bring that up. So if that's something that we can investigate doing giving him five minutes once a quarter to give us an update as to what's going on in the school district I think that would be important for all the residents, the council, and the staff to know MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I meet with Cain regularly. And he is coming but we were waiting a little bit for more information about the consolidation. He wants to have some of those drawings ready to go and to show so it's probably going to be like April before they're ready But 1 do meet with them next week and I'll see what the status is. But as far as doing it regularly he or having somebody do that that'd be awesome thanks. Any other comments? I think we can definitely move ahead with talking more to them, you know what -- administratively what would it mean, who would make the, you know, calls and such. I know that they have the teachers of the month I believe at school board meetings. And then rotary does something. And then the chamber and golden eagle, so I don't know their methodology or whatever, but we would probably try to get a feel for what all of them are doing. Again, just a little bit about the Stellar Student. That was a leadership project from a long time ago, you know a way to get the kids in here. And you see the result of that how you know, their families are here and even though Sharron tries to make them stay, they usually leave. But you know at least it gives them that taste, and they walk into a building that maybe they wouldn't have before. So but 1 think you know I think well move ahead and figure out how to do it and thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. Page 5 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 6 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: All right. Anything else on this? GRZYBOWSKI: Actually, I did if you don't mind. I think it's a great idea but there's less teachers than there are students so maybe if we did it on a quarterly basis. Also, 1 was going to point out the number of avenues that they are already celebrated on a very regular basis. And the chamber also does a teacher of the year as a part of their big gala every year. I think quarterly is probably plenty because again of the number of teachers compared to the number of students. And it is very important to me that the students feel extra special on their Stellar Student's Day, so by adding a stellar teacher I feel like were taking away from the kids. And 1 really don't want to do that this is a very special moment for them. They make a huge deal about it at the school, so I don't want to take away from the children at all. And I also feel like the teachers want money. If we could give them money they would much rather have that than any celebration we could do at the council level. But I would like to entertain maybe a quarterly and not a monthly. Another thing I'd like to start doing quarterly, I was talking to Deputy town manager/community services director/whatever Rachel is called dejour, and I would like to see quarterly updates from all of our departments. So just tossing that out because now we're adding a whole lot of stuff to our agenda. Thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah if I may. I think you make an excellent point. Sharron and I would be for that 100 percent. I don't think this should be done on the nights of the stellar student. It should be on an off night when we don't do that because you're right I think it would diminish the Stellar s Student program. So thank you for that input. I think it's important. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. We'll figure out a way to do it and appreciate it thanks. Next we're going to talk about signs. I see John making his way up, so we'll go through this item. I know we have slides and such so that's great. Thanks. [Pause] WESLEY: Morning, Mayor and Council. Look forward to this opportunity to get a little bit more input from you as far as modifications we might want to see to the sign ordinance. So just a quick background for anybody who might not be up on the what's been going on. The staff has been directed to work with the Planning and Zoning Page 6 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 7 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT Commission to prepare some modifications to the sign ordinance and bring those back for council review and hopefully adoption. And so the council has asked staff to get -- our staff is still seeking direction from the council and that's the main discussion here this moming is to follow up on some of the preliminary input I have received and to see where the council as a whole as far as taking that forward to the Planning and Zoning Commission. We have scheduled a public hearing for the Planning Zoning Commission on March 13th to review the comments it was received from the council and see what other public comments we may receive at that point. And from there can zero in on the exact changes that we want to see to the ordinance. And so again, this topic today will be to review what input we received thus far and see what other direction that you have for me. So I'll go through again those items that I have received from various Councilmembers. One is that in section 6.02 of the ordinance which provides the definitions for each of the sign types somebody reading that particular section might not realize there's more to be found in section 6.08 that provides more detail and real standards. And so the suggestion was for each of the sign types to then add a reference statement to where they can find more detail. And so I've shown one as an example for the awning definition to add at the end then the reference to 6082 where they would then find the more specific requirements for how you can use awning signs, you know their sizes and placement and so forth. MAYOR DICKEY: John. WESLEY: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: So I know we have several things to go through, what I would call like low hanging fruit might be something like this. Do you want us to say as we go along like were fine with that kind of a thing or how would you rather have us do this? WESLEY: Mayor, however you would like to do it is fine. But yes, that sounds helpful to me as we talk about each one if we go ahead and have any discussion on them then that would probably be easier than trying to go back -- MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. WESLEY: --afterward. MAYOR DICKEY: And my impression of this one is that probably everybody would be good with that. Page 7 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 8 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT Okay. Thanks. WESLEY: That was a very good idea. So the next item that we have is in section 6.07 B sign locations and prohibited locations. There's some feeling that the language that's in there is a little bit hard to read and follow it's fairly -- written fairly legal type language so there may be some ways to clarify the language, maybe provide a more plain English introduction to the discussion about the prohibited locations, so it'd be a little bit easier than for the average person to understand what were trying to accomplish with that list of prohibited locations. And then there's some feeling that that we should go ahead and allow temporary signs on Shea. Right now they're prohibited or have been prohibited. MAYOR DICKEY: First two look good. We like describing things in an easy way to understand them. Third bullet point, I would not be in favor of that one but obviously that's something to discuss about having signs on Shea. Vice mayor? MCMAHON: I'm not in favor of it because I think that it detracts from our town especially when people, visitors, et cetera, and even families that live here drive that's what they first sec before they come in to Fountain Hills and to have it cluttered with so many signs I mean think back of the election and how trashy that looked in a lot, a lot of places. And l just don't think it's -- 1 really like not having signs on Shea. I wasn't distracted by them or anything like that and I would really like to keep it that way. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. I would be for signs on Shea. I guess the attorney in me and Aaron maybe you get the same spidey senses, but it seems kind of discriminatory just to say well because you're on Shea you can't have a sign but if you own a business some else -- elsewhere then we're going to let you place that sign and from -- and you can promote your business greater than somebody else. It just seems to me more fair to if we let some people do it we should let everybody do it. The people on Shea they're trying to make a living too. GRZYBOWSKI: I wholeheartedly agree that we should tell our Shea businesses you need to be able to put the signs up, but unfortunately we cannot regulate against the sign content. So to go to the Bone Haus or to go to the Fry's or the Target and say you guys can do it but we don't want any others. I just -- I'm not a fan. So basically, I'm saying I'm against the temporary signs on Shea altogether. I do support their trashy theory. The Page 8 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 9 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT number of photographs that I've gotten of temporary signs that have popped up over the past, what are we talking two months, I don't know, whatever it is is surprising. And then I see them when I drive. And yeah, it looks trashy. And people during the election were pleased that our streets did not have all the signs on. And as soon as you hit that -- literally as soon as you hit that Scottsdale border it turned into absolute trash. So unfortunately because we cannot regulate against the sign content 1 would not be for the temporary signs on Shea. Sony to all my business people on Shea. MCMAHON: Can I speak? Also, as for businesses on Shea, they have permanent signs there. They have monument signs, the buildings -- the businesses have been there for the most part. I don't think it's discriminatory to have an area where you don't have signs. It's permissible. And you know I don't know what else to say. I don't think that it would be a good idea to literally trash a up with them. GRZYBOWSKI: I will say the signs that are allowed on Shea for the businesses on Shea are kind of chintzy. That is one of the big complaints that the businesses on Shea have said to me. If we could do something about that that'd be great, but I don't think a temporary sign is going to be the answer to helping our businesses or helping our residents in the fact that they have to look at the trashy temporary signs that have been there for months and months and all bent and ugly. FRIEDEL' I'm for the signs but if there's a better way to do it. We've got about 20 businesses back behind the Target plaza in the laser area that don't get any signage, so if we had a better monument sign that could address that I'd be all for it. But I think we need to take the handcuffs off of our businesses. Every sale they make puts money in the towns TPT fund, and we operate our town primarily on that income. So we can talk about finding a solution, but I think we also need more monument signage for that business park behind Target as well. And there are a couple of other areas in town that need to be addressed with monument signs as well. SKILLICORN : Mayor, on that especially the Councilman Friedel's comment about the monument sign, I am going to be in support of that. I don't think that's, you know, germane today's discussion, but I want to let the businesses that are in that industrial park know that we have not forgotten about them and that I will be advocating for that Page 9 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 10 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT purpose. I think that's something that we want to probably maybe control ourselves so with it the size, format that in style is up to our purview but that's something around the future. But you know, we have tens and tens of thousands of vacant square footage on Shea Boulevard. The current prohibition in signs doesn't work. So I believe we're gonna change that. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Miss Mayor. Sharron, 1 understand your point about the trashy signs, but Miss Mayor, didn't we talk about this like last town council meeting about section 6.02, like making them durable signs and signs that look good and the ones that are the trashy, the ones that are temporary you know a box, you know, with you know whatever, can't we address both? MAYOR DICKEY: I think as we're moving -- oh, sorry. Go ahead. TOTH: Oh, no you go ahead. There was a question toward you. I'm sorry. Okay. All right. I was just gonna say that I am for the signs on Shea and it's because of the same reasons that Councilman Friedel mentioned we need to take the -- and Councilman Skillicom, we need to take the handcuffs off of our businesses. We have all this vacant land on Shea we need to give them every opportunity to be successful. And I had been very outspoken about my feelings about our restrictions on temporary signage and how that affects our business owners. I feel like it's probably not a surprise to anyone that I support this. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Everything that were saying about content is still true so and as we're moving on I know that you're suggesting allowing more per business and such. I don't know. You know, we got balloons, we have banners, we have all kinds of things, so this isn't as clear-cut as it seems, you know. This is just the first part of it. Having temporary signs on Shea for the businesses that are on Technology and such so are you going to do that on the other side too so if you have a business on Saguaro, you know, that far deep in are you going to let them put signs on Shea also? People on Technology can have signs on Technology just like everybody else. But you're talking about quite a few businesses back there who chose to put their businesses back there and letting each one of those have signs on Shea I think is going to look terrible. I feel an obligation to our residents as much as I do to our businesses if a couple of A -frame signs makes a difference in a business I think that's something that you need to think about a Page 10 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 11 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT little bit. And our town -- when you say it doesn't work it's been that way forever. We never even allowed temporary signs until this most recent sign ordinance. What we did was every year we allow it. We'd say okay another year you can do it here or there. Take it down every night. So our sign ordinance that exists right now is the first one that actually quote -unquote by right, I don't want to even use that word, but has let temporary signs be there stay there on their property, no taking down at night, no having to ask every year for a renewal. So this is quite permissive in a way. But seriously if you ask what you were saying about Vice Mayor driving into Fountain Hills, I mean I can't even tell you how many times over the 40 years I've lived here that that's what we've heard from people who want to move here or come here or bike here or whatever. And to you know, to just take that entire scene away I think is not something I want to do. I entertain what you were talking about the other signage and Grady knows I've talked about this before, helping in a way like even like when you come in on Saguaro off of Shea, having something like you know X is here or whatever but nice signs like in Paradise Valley, Tempe there are so many cities that don't allow any signs in their rights of way at all. So I don't think that were being discriminatory in any way or odd in any way. And were trying to figure out ways to make this work. So you know I'm all for looking for solutions but just saying allowing temporary signs on Shea is not something I'm in favor of at all. Sharron. You had your light on. TOTH: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Sony. TOTH: That's okay. I trust business owners to make the correct decisions. They care about this town. They're invested in this town. 1 find it hard to believe that they're going to put a sign out if it doesn't help people find them if they're way down to Saguaro. I also find it hard to believe that they would pack a bunch of signs onto Shea because then nobody sees the sign, nobody sees anybody signs because they just see a clump of them. 1 trust people to make the right decision. The people of this town are smart people. They care about this town. They care about the views as well. I believe that this just takes the handcuffs off. I would entertain the idea of specifying what types of Page 11 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 12 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT temporary signs. Like the blow-up guy maybe is a no, I would think, or the gorilla, or the gorilla. My point being, I think it's important to take the handcuffs off of our business owners. And 1 have faith in the people of this town. I don't believe that were going to be trashed up. GRZYBOWSKI: It's not going to be only the brick -and -mortar people that put signs up. We'll get the I buy uglyhouses.com guy. We'll get the mattress dude. We'll get the junk removal dude. What's the one that 1 saw -- we'll get the landscaping guy. It's going to be more than just our brick and mortar. Once we open this up it's -- again, we can't regulate for content so we can't go and tell our business people it's only you guys you're the only ones that are allowed. So maybe we do this in baby steps. I don't know -- I don't have a solution for that but instead of just saying signs are allowed on Shea, is there a way we can open up the door a little bit to see what happens and then maybe go okay this is great, this looks good, let's open it up a little more. Once we open it up we can't pull it back. You can't -- that's just not fair. So is there a way where we can meet in the middle, still make our brick -and -mortar people happy, but still also not pollute it with all the other crap that we all know what we don't want, and we can't regulate for that stuff MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor. MCMAHON: Are we talking just regular signs or are we talking directional signs to businesses because I have my car done but one of the businesses that's behind and he said the only thing he was -- would like is to have a directional sign out in front on Shea because otherwise he's -- his business is fine. He's getting a lot of repeat business. But basically given where he is in the back he wouldn't mind having a directional sign. MAYOR DICKEY: Council. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor. So there was like -- I know, Mayor, I know you had a couple questions about like you know if were going to allow someone that's here in Saguaro to have the same provision to put a sign out versus down by Shea. And in the draft that I submitted on industrial zones I said a thousand feet from a property line, and for other areas you're allowed I think it was 60 or 90 feet from a property line. So there was a different standard based on where you are. And we have to, you know, remember there are businesses that are tucked away in corners. And yes I agree that they agreed to put up shop there and asked me why the rent's a little bit lower there, but you know, we Page 12 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 13 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT want them to succeed also. We're a community. We want everyone to succeed. We want to give them the opportunity. So some of that has been addressed. You know, Shea you were already saying no billboards, no electronic signs, and frankly, you know, I'm making make a point and clear that I don't like electronic signs whatsoever. This is not going to be Las Vegas ever. But there's got to be some give and take and we have to be I'm looking out for our neighbors and helping them too. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you. Yeah just as we're giving John guidance on this and for it to go to Planning and Zoning just on the record I do agree that I don't want a proliferation of a bunch of signs on Shea, like 20 signs on a street corner that would just be a horrible look. So I think as we craft this you know maybe people that have a brick and mortar on Shea are allowed to have their own personal sign of made of durable materials, okay. But no if there's a bunch of businesses on Laser or Technology or whatever, I don't want them to be able to put that however far and then clutter those intersections I think that'd be a dead no for me. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I wanted to mention then I'll ask you Grady but that the you know, like I said the, you know, calling it handcuffing businesses is a little unfair because this is a -- like I said, this was a permissive sign ordinance that was unanimously passed. And as far as I'm aware of when I talked to Betsy (ph.) and such there were a couple -- there were like pretty much two areas that they'd had complaints about. So this has been in effect for over a year. And I am not aware, maybe I'm wrong, but I was only aware of that one little comer on Shea and then the Plaza Fountain side so that they could, whoops, have it on the back and on the front. Other than that I never heard anybody feeling handcuffed or complaining about the sign ordinance that passed except for during the political season so I don't like that idea that we were handcuffing anybody. And again, I have to say if a temporary sign is a difference between succeeding or not 1 have to wonder about you know the chances of it succeeding at all. Again, this is a town that's for many, many years didn't have any temporary signs allowed. And Paradise Valley doesn't. And Tempe doesn't in rights of way. We said if it's on your property this is a very permissive sign ordinance in existence right now, so I don't -- I don't appreciate that characterization to tell you the truth of a unanimously Page 13 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 14 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT approved sign ordinance that went through five meetings -- four or five with us before we actually made the decision then a summer of talking to realtors and talking to businesses to come up with this solution. So again, I do think there's probably some ways we can get around some of this whether it's a permitting process or whether we have some sort of a fund to help with monument signs for particular areas but this just -- this sentence right here is not -- I wouldn't support that. Grady. Oh, I m sorry. MCMAHON: Also, I don't think we would have the staff to manage it and both signs if they don't comply with the ordinance or whatever. I just think that would add so much more to the code enforcement people and they already have a heavy workload, so that's another factor we need to consider in is the staff able to add this load to their already heavy workload. MILLER: Thank you, Mayor. Mayor and Council, good discussion on this item. It appears that there is probably consensus based on what we're hearing to allow the temporary signs. But I also think that there can be some other regulatory ways that you can manage this. One of the things I had just whispered over to our attorney and that is we can actually limit the locations so you're not getting the proliferation all along Shea. So you could just have the locations where these businesses have requested the signs. And so like maybe Laser, Technology, and maybe the comer Saguaro, or something. I'm just throwing that out as another way of managing and controlling this so that you don't have proliferation of signs soon as you hit the town limits all the way to the B line. So that might be another way. That will then pretty much limit it to the brick and mortar that you're talking about without getting in and limiting it to brick and mortar if that makes sense. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. So we can move on I think. And obviously, there'll be probably two Planning and Zoning meetings and then we'll have a meeting so the public will have an opportunity to let us know how they feel about this. MILLER: Yes. WESLEY: Okay. Thank you. So next on my list is with regard to A -frame and T-frame signs. Change this to allow them in the Town Center right of way without a permit. Page 14 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 15 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT Currently, we require a permit for those locations. Reduce the clearance around the sidewalk if one is placed on a sidewalk from six feet to a three-foot clearance. And then also reduce the distance from the curb from three feet to one feet -- one foot. MAYOR DICKEY: First off, are there safety issues with the six foot, three foot as far as wheelchair accessibility and are there safety issues with the curb change? WESLEY: Mayor, with regard to those two. Three feet still does meet the very minimum on the ADA so that -- that would still meet that requirement. Staff would have some concem with the one foot just because of you know that close proximity to the moving vehicles and -- and people getting in and out. I believe the previous code was at one foot however and so in that regard it would -- would I guess it must have worked before. MAYOR DICKEY: Right now with the rights of way in Town Center so I thought we were allowing that. We don't allow that? Or-- WESLEY: Mayor, within the Town Center area in the pedestrian area we allowed them in the -- in the right-of-way with a permit but the encouragement was to try to find a place on your private property along the sidewalk first. MCMAHON: Would you think that would be a good idea to not allow them to have a permit or is the -- or is the permit situation working out just fine? WESLEY: We -- Mayor and Vice Mayor, we haven't had anyone apply for the permits over the time that we had it, so -- MCMAHON: You know is it because it's still restricted, or they just are ignoring the fact that they need a permit? WESLEY: I'm afraid I couldn't answer that question why we haven't gotten any. MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: The permit's not -- we don't charge for that, do we? WESLEY: Mayor, I m sorry. I don't remember for sure if we ended up putting a -- MAYOR DICKEY: No, I don't think -- I think if we -- WESLEY: If we do, it's a -- it's a minimal -- like a 25 fee but I'll recall if there's one in the -- these permits or not. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Well, these things will -- if we don't change what our other standards are for rights of way then I'm okay with that because I think that was kind of Page 15 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 16 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT the intent anyway when we made the change for downtown. I don't like the six-foot, three-foot thing because 1 can picture something in the middle just a little bit and then if it's only three feet to the storefront and three feet to the street 1 have a little bit of a problem with that. What -- could you tell me what you think that there's a problem that needs to be solved with that maybe one of the people that suggested it? Brenda? KALIVIANAKIS: What I wanted to discuss was just the last item with John. Would reducing it from three feet instead of one foot to two foot alleviate some safety concems? WESLEY: Mayor, councilmember, every foot it's further back it just gives more clearance. If it's I believe right now wc'rc talking primarily A -frame signs in the Town Center area versus othcr places where there might be more moving traffic. When we have moving traffic we have a little bit even greater concem because just as the traffic moves and creates that -- that wind that can blow signs over -- KALIVIANAKIS: Right. WESLEY: -- that gets in the roadway whatever. Downtown a little bit less concern from that regard but there are -- people are getting to and from the vehicles, you know, up the curb, past things, and given that a little bit more room I think it makes it a little bit more functional. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. WESLEY: Bumper overhangs those types of things, it all works a little better the further back it is. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. I'd be Flexible on that. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Brenda. The -- so the six-foot, three foot who suggested that? I'm just saying, what's the motivation for suggesting that change? Because that one concerns me about access -- wheelchair access. GRZYBOWSKI: I'll let one of the people that made this suggestion. FRIEDEL: I don't remember who suggested that, Mayor. But if we're meeting the ADA requirements at three feet, I don't see an issue with that. We haven't had any issues, incident reports, or accident reports, or anything like that that I know of. Maybe I'm Page 16 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 17 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT wrong. John, have you had any comments on that? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, no, I have not. FRIEDEL• So it's something I think we could -- we could try. I think it's more of a visibility thing if I'm reading that correctly. So we could try it and -- and see what Happens. If it becomes a problem then we need to address it. SKILLICORN : Mayor, I think we've received some feedback from the businesses that they think that the -- that -- that it -- the longer distance has been a restriction on them. So get into something that complies to ADA I think it's fine. Now, to my knowledge I haven't heard of any complaints of someone saying hey you know the sidewalk is blocked I could not go across the sidewalk because there's a sign on the way. So I think we need to waive that. Now if we start hearing those complaints this should be tweaked. But this is just simply a request of some you know business owners in town. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilmember. GRZYBOWSKI: I appreciate the three-foot ADA safety requirement. The times that I've had an opportunity to walk with somebody who is in a wheelchair or push the wheelchair, three feet is exactly the amount you need. There is no wiggle room. If their hand is out -- I'm going to use my sister as an example. She's not able to bring her arm into her body so it has a tendency to whop against people and things that she walks by. So I feel like meeting the minimum requirement is -- again, it's the minimum, and I feel like we need to do a little better than that. So my request would be can we change it to at least four feet just because having the opportunity to see people try to maneuver in that little three feet amount of space is gut -wrenching to me. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I mean, I would go along with the two feet in the curb thing and then four feet for that. I mean, I'd rather see the six feet. 1 know you don't hear -- maybe you're not hearing complaints, but visually I often see signs that are in the middle of the sidewalk and if you were in a wheelchair that would not be fun. WESLEY: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: So this just makes it seem more possible for that to happen. If you Page 17 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 18 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT say three feet and then it's going to be a little bit over. I've seen it a lot. So maybe there's no complaints. And you know, maybe nobody's experienced it but I know there are a lot of folks that go around in scooters and wheelchairs, or you know whatever, and I think that's really narrow us. Councilmember. SKILLICORN: Madam Mayor, now once you said you saw the sign blocking the sidewalk, was that in compliance? Would that be in compliance how it's written here? I mean if it's in the middle sidewalk -- MAYOR DICKEY: No. SKILLICORN: -- it doesn't sound like it's in compliance of what -- what is written here either. MAYOR DICKEY: It would not be in compliance with -- SKILLICORN: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: -- either ones. SKILLICORN: So even the current more restrictive ordinance did not control this rogue sign we're talking about? MAYOR DICKEY: Right. But I guess like, speeding, you know, you don't change the speed limit just because people are breaking it. I would prefer to keep it at six feet but if we want to do four that's fine. I don't -- again, 1 don't think three feet -- I know that that is the bare minimum 36 inches, but I think we should like you said, can do better. WESLEY: I've got some notes. Are we ready to move on? Okay. So continuing on still with the A -frame signs. So right now we allow one per Business. The proposal is that we allow multiples and there are different ideas on how that might be done. Maybe we set a aggregate maximum sign area of some amount one example here is eight square feet. And then you can have one eight square foot sign or two four -foot signs or five and a three, or you can provide some flexibility and options there within certain criteria, maximum size for any one sign. Currently, it's a six square foot three foot tall is the maximum for any one side. MAYOR DICKEY: The maximum -- I mean the allowing more than one, we talked a little bit about two, right? Is that -- I mean you're not going for more than that are you? KALIVIANAKIS: No, just what we talked about the last meeting. And I think the Page 18 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 19 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT reasonable accommodation was just one per entry access aggress. I think that would solve this whole section. MAYOR DICKEY: I agree with that. That would be good. What do you think? SKILLICORN: So Mayor, this is -- well, this is not quite my language. I was advocating for a nine total if there was two signs and then six if there was one. Effectively, my thought process you get -- you can have two smaller signs. You know, let's say you have a unique situation where your sight lines are restricted or whatever, so you get two, at you know, a certain location -- you know a certain -- you have locations or if you want to have one of the full-size signs you're fine. And I didn't want to have you know giant ones at all. But you know, there's -- it seems to be a pretty much a standard out there which is I think that like two by three feet or something very close to that. If you want to have one of the larger ones that's fine but if you have a unique situation where you need to have two sight lines, and there's a couple spots in town where they have that, I mean, I can think of a few. That's what this flexibility was. And that -- so this is a tiny bit different than what I proposed. I'm not sure whore the change came from, but that that's the reason there. MAYOR DICKEY: The -- but the -- okay. So but if they had a sign at each entry that wouldn't be the -- the eight foot. So there'd be like one of the four or whatever the other the four but what -- what is the difference? Just that you've wanted it to be nine instead of eight? SKILLICORN: Well,Ijust— MAYOR DICKEY: Is that okay then? Is eight okay though? SKILLICORN: Eight -- MAYOR DICKEY: Two by four then? SKILLICORN: Eight is just fine because I don't -- I don't -- we're talking about standards here and I also want to make sure there's not confusion I was like well is that eight total that both sides. MAYOR DICKEY: Well -- SKILLICORN: You know, it should be each -- each side you can see. I didn't want to get into the tricky games like that, but I just want to make it sure that you know there's you know the little bit larger -- you know maybe because it's not large. But there's a Page 19 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 20 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT whole bunch of them in town that are a little bit bigger they're fine. But if you have one of those, just one; but if you have a little bit smaller sign, you know, I thought it was okay. You know, I know that when we went around with John and other councilmen, you know, we even talk about different directions, but I think we settled on language that if it was too small, it's fine. One of the, you know, regular size. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Miss Mayor. I think the one sign for entry access egress is perfect. If a business can make a compelling case why he would need two signs if he's got one access and egress point, I think he could apply for a permit and maybe have this town take a look at it and either approve the permit or deny it based on a compelling circumstance that it would really hurt his business. And so then we could do those -- the two signs on the case -by -case basis. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Sharron. GRZYBOWSKI: I just wanted to point out that it does say sign for each entry. For the verbiage, I do want to indicate that it's not to exceed two because we do have -- one business I can think of off the top of my head that has more than two entrances. And as for why the eight square feet over the nine is probably they just did that because eight is in kind of an industry standard kind of thing, so that's probably where that came from. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Keep in mind too what we just did for the downtown, so if they're going to -- this right here is for your property but if we -- if we are allowing right of way for downtown people this -- this will have ramifications too. So the size part especially because of the way downtown is, so just keep that in mind. Thank you. WESLEY: And the next one on the screen is allowing a placement of a temporary sign, I think in particular, the A -frame sign away from the business and not necessarily right at the business. I think this comes back to some discussion about places such as down on Laser and Technology we've got businesses that are away from the Main Street and so allowing one of the signs to be some distance from the business a few hundred feet or maybe even up to a thousand feet. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. Page 20 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 21 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT SKILLICORN: John and Council, what my thought process was as 1 drafted that, was just that if it was zoned industrial, so Technology, Laser, and that, was a thousand feet from the property line because there's no traffic there. They're still -- you remove it every evening so if it doesn't make sense for your business you're not going to go put a sign up because you got to take it down every night. And then for the non -industrials, you know, like -- you know, think of, you know, over here in Town Center there's a few spots where having it 60-foot from your property line or 90-feet could be very useful because where's the traffic going by. And if you've got traffic going by that's not a problem, but if you're tucked in a corner that was going to be something to be helpful. And that was what I drafted. Was 1,000 for industrial and it was either 60 or 90 for non -industrial feet. MAYOR DICKEY: So just to make sure 1 get this right. The -- these are not going to be then on their own property? SKILLICORN: I was going to say it would be on right of way. And the distance was from their property line which I should be very specific about that. It's that if we decided to enforce it it could be. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. I don't -- yeah. I don't -- I don't like this one to tell you the truth because banners are really something that can look bad really easily. SKILLICORN: And I don't think were talking about banners. We're talking about temporary signs. WESLEY: We're talking about -- SKILLICORN: These are durable -- WESLEY: A -frame signs for this. SKILLICORN: Yeah. Durable A -frame signs. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh. SKILLICORN: And again the requirement is that you're picking them up in the evening. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. SKILLICORN: So if we -- MAYOR DICKEY: It says banner signs right at the top that's why I thought we were talking about banner signs. 6.08 A 4, banner signs, but were not? WESLEY: No, were still in 6.08 A 1, the A -frame, T-frames. SKILLICORN: A -frames and T-frames. Page 21 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 22 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT WESLEY: And we'll bring it up again under yard signs. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh I'm looking at the one on my computer here so -- KALIVIANAKIS: That's the one you pulled up. Look to your left. MAYOR DICKEY: I am now, yeah. KALIVIANAKIS: There you go. MAYOR DICKEY: I'm looking at the agenda on my computer. Okay. Great. Any other thoughts on that then? Thanks. GRZYBOWSKI: Wait. I am going to reiterate I would love it if we could figure out how to help our, for example, Technology Drive people have some sort of signage at the corner on our property. I realize it's not something we can discuss here but I feel like it would solve a crap ton of problems, temporary signs, ugly houses signs, all that kind of stuff and make people happy. Having them remove it at the end of the day, asking them to remove it at the end of the day sounds like a great idea but I don't know that it's going to happen regularly, so this may be a problem. But if were going to say it has to come down at the end of the day, at the end of your business day it is what it is. SKILLICORN: Mayor, Councilwoman Grzybowski, thank you for advocating for the monument sign. I think that our businesses would obviously love that. Again, I don't think that's germane to this discussion but very, very soon we have to seriously get together, create an economic development plan, and this is going to be one of the key parts of the economic development plan. We really have to help those businesses back there. And what I would advocate for something is that we control, we can control the size, shape, basically, go hey you guys get a sign produced within this parameter and we're going to put it up. And you know, and then we -- you know, we can actually have them create their own, you know, group just like we have like our Plat 208 and stuff like that to control where the placement in order and things like that because I don't want to get into that business. But I'd like to control the look of it, the style of it. And you know, the businesses don't need it that's fine they're not going to participate. But I think it's an amazing thing we can do for them and they're going to own a part of' it right, so I think that's good. From the taking them down I think it's just a reasonable restriction. We'll -- well see the -- the Page 22 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 23 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT scoff laws real fast, the ones that don't do it. And you know there's -- you know there's -- there'll be certain consequences for that. FRIEDEL: I think giving the town staff direction to come up with an agenda item or discussion item at some point on monument signs is what you're hearing here today too so we're all in on that. So I think I agree with councilwoman blue that it could solve a lot of issues down there, especially along Shea and Saguaro as well. So at some point we need to address that. Can we give -- MILLER: I think there's consensus for us -- FRIEDEL: All right. Thank you. MILLER: -- to add a future agenda item. FRIEDEL: Okay. Thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: And yeah, I'd like to concur with Councilman Friedel and Councilman Skillicorn on that about the monument sign for sure. And just to reiterate, John, for you again, my concern about the proliferation of signs when it says to be placed within X of the business, that's -- when this thing is drafted you have to keep that in mind that we just don't want a bunch of signs on that comer. It's just -- it's just going to be an eyesore. So as you draft that please keep that in mind. WESLEY: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I'm going to bring something up about the location of businesses. If some of those businesses that chose like you even said to, you know, set their businesses up on Technology or wherever any place that isn't on a main drag they're probably paying less rent or there was probably some sort of a benefit for them to have it there, so if you have a business that's in a hidden place, somewhat hidden, keep in mind there's -- they probably have competition in town who are paying higher rents so that they're visible. So I think that we would tread carefully on assisting because you know you get what you pay for basically. And if you decided hey I want to be right in downtown Center and I'm paying X, you know what -- and now the town's giving money to these guys who are in the same business as me, but they happen to be south of Shea or whatever so I think we need to keep that in mind as long as were talking about businesses and such. Yes, ma'am. Page 23 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 24 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT GRZYBOWSKI: Ijust -- I'm paraphrasing what you just said. Did I understand that you just said that the town might be giving these people money? That's not -- that was not my insinuation at all. My intent of my comment was l feel like we need to help them with a sign at the corner to let people know what the businesses are at the corner. And by help, I don't mean financial help but zoning help, property help, that this is the right of way, you guys can have one pillar sign and just the list of the businesses. And I believe Councilman Skillicom talked about the order. You know we can deal with all that later. But my intent with my comment was not financial help at all. I didn't mean it to be taken that way. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, councilwoman. SKILLICORN: Mayor and I don't think we've -- I don't think any of us thought that it was monetary help. And I also that's a great point about certain places that they pay more in rent. One -- and just -- but another point in this discussion is that some of those people are there because they're zoned that type of use is in that area and they don't have a choice to be in Town Center. MAYOR DICKEY: That's good too because then they won't have competitions located there to either so. Okay. WESLEY: Right. Ready to move on? MAYOR DICKEY: Yep. WESLEY: Okay. So now we're on banner signs. So for a non-residential use in a residential zoning district primary example we have of that is churches, could be other things, to add a provision that would allow seasonal waiver of up to three months. The code has been that you're allowed at banner sign for 30 days a calendar year. It does provide for application but temporary use permit for extending that time and no one's taking advantage of that at this point we have recognized as we have been implementing the ordinance. And we do have a number of churches around that have seasonal events and some might even have permanent frames up to change out the banner that goes in those and so those have always been kind of a little bit of a question. I think this might help address that kind of issue. MCMAHON: Why the increase to 90 days? Did it -- did the banner situation work out well for 30 days, and why the increase to 90 days? Page 24 or 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 25 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT WESLEY: Part of the banner increase was due to the fact that you have a lot of different seasons. And I'm thinking about the sports places like All American Bachelor Pad (ph.). What's -- Milton's Place (ph.)? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Tap House. WESLEY: Tap House. They have different seasons to their -- to their approach to advertise. You've got the baseball season. You've got football season, soccer season, various other seasons. I don't know what else they -- they do. But so the thought process was to give them a little bit more time to have a banner up and to advertise for their business. MCMAHON: Have you seen different banners up? WESLEY: Yes, I have. MCMAHON: Okay. And so usually these events are they a month long, are they just a particular event for a couple nights that over the year the -- the time would be equivalent to 30 days and that would still be sufficient? WESLEY: I don't know any season that lasts just 30 days, but now a shorter event would have been the Super Bowl. And I saw a couple of those up and they're gone. MCMAHON: Yeah. WESLEY: So the 30 days would have worked for that, but you can't do that for a football season or a baseball season or that type of thing. MCMAHON: I guess I was thinking that they were advertising a particular event that has -- that they're having at their facility like the Tap House that you know a few days would be sufficient for that. But I like the 30 days through the calendar year I think it is less -- again less messy for the town to have to deal with signs all over the place. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. GRZYBOWSKI: Is that me? Oh, yes. Okay. My concerns over banner display and whether it be 30 days, 90 days, whatever days, are we telling them out of the year or is it 30 days and I'm going to take this one down and put in the exact same spot another banner for another 30 days or 90 days or whatever? If were trying to regulate banners by allowing a banner in the same spot over and over and over and over again you're not really regulating a banner you're just allowing a temporary sign. If the intent is that's okay but we don't want the banner to get ugly that's why it has to come down after the 30 Page 25 or 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 26 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT days or the 90 days. So basically, I'm saying what -- what's driving this, where are we going with this? Then I had another concern that I didn't write down. And oh, I know new businesses. That was my other concem. Are we going to allow it for 180 days or one year? If 1 remember correctly from my marketing days and Amanda is probably the best person, when you put a new item on the market you are allowed to label it new for one year. So if we go by that then technically I feel like we should be allowing new businesses to put it up for a year. And then again, we're talking, is the banner going to be worn and trashy at the end of the year? So I just -- 1 want to toss that stuff out as were thinking about it and having a conversation. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Hannah? TOTH: So 1 would agree for one year with a new business, I think going off of that standard with calling a product new, calling a business new, I think it makes sense. As for the banner itself if a banner gets trashy that doesn't make your business look good. Again, I think a business owner is smart enough to know okay it might be time to order a new one. Going back to all banners displayed for up to 90 days. These are banners that are on their business, right? It's not somehow staked in the yard, were talking about on their building; is that correct? WESLEY: Mayor, councilmember, it would be -- it could be staked in the yard, the banners. TOTH: It could be. WESLEY: Ycs. TOTH: Okay. I'm trying to find a gentle way to say it, but 1 don't really know why we care. It's 90 days. It's a banner it's for the business. If it makes their business look bad they're not going to use it. 1 don't know why were arguing over whether it should be 30 or 90 days. FRIEDEL: And as far as it being trashy, I think we could probably write something in the ordinance to address that. If the -- if it's torn, tattered, trashy, bleached out it's got to be removed. WESLEY: Mayor, councilmember, there arc some maintenance standards currently in the ordinance that we could look at see if they would need to be modified. Page 26 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 27 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT FRIEDEL: Thank you. WESLEY: Thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. I keep going to the bottom of the list. MAYOR DICKEY: I'm sorry. KALIVIANAKIS: I said I've had my light on a long time and I keep going to the bottom of the list. I had it on before Hannah and Gerry. SKILLICORN: That's how it works. That's how it works around here. KALIVIANAKIS: Oh my God. MAYOR DICKEY: I don't look at that. I just look at your light and 1 don't know who did it first. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Go ahead, Allan. SKILLICORN: No. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you. Yeah, just to address some of our concerns. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I think Sharron raised a good point as far as it's the 90 days but it's yeah, can they just put up another 90 day and another 90 day and another 90 day, so I think that's got to be addressed, a period of rest before they can reinstall. So 1 think that's an excellent point that Councilwoman made. As far as the 90-day number and I know there's like well you know why did we pick this.? So this -- this was based on feedback that we had from business owners. And so I mean this is pure -- you know, we represent them, they came to me, and they said we would like 90 days. So this is their number, not my number. So this is the people that have businesses here. As far as new business is concerned I know they say that a new business will succeed or fail within one year, but I think the banner should be up for a shorter period maybe six months. I think a year is just way too long. So I would be for a six month on new business. Thank you. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor. Part of this I think, you know John could answer. You know there is a standard of how it's supposed to look already. That's in the ordinance. From what I've seen I think that's fine. The number was actually a compromise. Businesses asked to use these. You know, the previous allowance was 30 days per calendar year. And a lot of these businesses they have, you know, their -- the vendors they work with give them these banners for free, so they have any opportunity to Page 27 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 18 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT use them, they want to use them, right? If we allow them to use them every day of the year they would. This just was a compromise. 1 mean, 1 was actually okay doing longer than this, but you know 1 think this is a compromise that we thought itself it was fit. For the new business Banner, you know, I think this came from we found some businesses in town that were using banners instead of signs that actually were not in compliance and sometimes you got to learn from what people are already doing. And it is typically the -- 1 think well, what was I think we allowed if there's new management, right, John? You're allowed like 30 days or something. I threw out the proposal of 364 days. And if you could come in town and you can make a go of yourself. And after a year you know you're like okay I'm committed. I'm gonna go spend a few thousand dollars on a real sign great. But I can't -- I can't say you come into town and like -- you know and there's a lot of barriers to entry to businesses but additional one is you have to get this monument sign, you know -- or you know like a you know a professional a sign up front is very expensive that's just another standard business -- a standard that is pushing them away. And I want to be more business friendly than that. If it was shorter than the year we could consider it, but I did -- 1 was the one who threw out 364 days for a new business. You'll have to be a new event. It wasn't just like hey we hired a new cashier you know we can't do that. But I really want us to be attractive destination for businesses. And I think our residents want that too because they want -- they want places to frequent instead of having to go over the hill. MAYOR DICKEY: Then the I think six months is good. It's interesting because as a consumer if 1 see something saying new for a year and even though what you said Sharron is a standard, I -- that -- I always wonder about that because it's just -- it's not new after a year but 1 -- so 1 like the six-month idea. What bothers me about the 90-day obviously 1 would prefer to keep it at 30 but the 90 day is the paragraph before it. So a non-residential use in a residential zoning district add a provision to allow application for a seasonal waiver for three months, so is that separate from the second one? Because I wouldn't want residential zoning to allow banners for 90 days, so I just want to clarify that. WESLEY: So I can address part of that, Mayor, as far as in in a residential zoning Page 18 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 19 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT district if it's a non-residential use those would be the only ones that could have a banner to begin with, so it's not just any residential use. MAYOR DICKEY: But if they had a banner in a residential zone they would keep -- could keep it up for 90 days in a residential zone? WESLEY: Correct. Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: So like if it was-- 1 don't know, what would be that like a preschool or a -- not like a doctor. No. What kind of business could be in a residential zone beside a church? WESLEY: That's the main one that I can think of. The schools are -- are also in residential districts but they're not technically subject to our ordinance. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, like a private -- like a -- SKILLICORN: Charter school. MAYOR DICKEY: -- kid's school, like a preschool or a art school or something like that that isn't like a exempt from -- WESLEY: Right. Without having my list up of allowed uses in the residential district -- MAYOR DICKEY: That's just it -- that part is something I wouldn't want but maybe the fact that they have to apply for it, 1 don't know. I don't like the residential area part of it. But I think when you talk about sports bars and all that 1 think we're all fine with seeing football turn into hockey or soccer or whatever, So 1 don't really have a problem with those -- that kind of business and in a business district but I don't like the residential part unless we can make that application a little more narrow. WESLEY: Well -- MAYOR DICKEY: I have a question. As far as allowing banners to be displayed for 30 or 90 days, that's per calendar year like -- WESLEY: That's correct. MCMAHON: -- it was the last time, correct? WESLEY: That's correct. MCMAHON: Okay. And that will be clarified? WESLEY: Yes. MCMAHON: Thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: And just -- Ms. Mayor, as far as residential zoning district, I mean, I Page 29 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 30 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT think it'd be fine to do those for 30 -- personally, I think it'd be fine to do those for 30 days and maybe a commercial district for 90 days. There's a distinction we could make there to get some kind of a compromise. If it is a residential zoning district we could do a 30-day. If it's a commercially zoned district for your sports bars and that sort of thing then it could be for the football season, baseball season, then those could be designated for 90 days that may alleviate your concern. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. TOTH: 1 gotta say 1 disagree with making the -- the difference between the non- residential and the residential. Again, it's their property. People take pride in their property. And 1 think the people of this town are a lot smarter than the government tends to give them credit for. I think when we nitpick over details on how long they can have a banner up whether they can have a banner up I think were overstepping our boundaries. People take pride in their property. They'll do what's right for their business or for their property. GRZYBOWSKI: I wholeheartedly agree with what was just said but a lot of times we don't notice when our house needs to be painted or when things are fading. You see it every single day and you remember the flashy sign when you first bought it and that's how you see it every single day when you pull up. I went on vacation for a week came home and looked up at the house when 1 first got home and went oh my God this place needs to be painted. So you -- you just miss it when you see it every single day. One of the reasons why it's very difficult for us to say when your sign gets trashy you need to take it down is because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So trashy to me might not be trashy to somebody else. And we had this conversation when we talked about this stuff initially. I spent a lot of money on my A -frame sign, and I think it's fantastic but somebody else doesn't like it, well, I'm sorry again there's a big subjectivity involved there. MAYOR DICKEY: So I agree with that and also I know that we all see faded feather signs everywhere, we see a lot of things in disrepair, so while 1 would hope that -- that you were you know on the right track with that we -- I see it every day, so I -- you know, I think it's -- that it's our responsibility when you hear all the things you hear about our town that's not by accident I've said that 100 times is because we and everybody before Page 30 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 31 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT us has put things into place to make this community look and operate the way it does. So I don't think it's nitpicking at all. I've lived here 40 years and everything about this town has always been the way it looks, the beauty, and so it's not nitpicking to me. But I am -- you know I think the 90 days after what Brenda said that's good. The six months. I just don't like the residential part, but you know we'll see what comes forward. Again, it's going to go to P and Z twice, come here, community will have a chance to -- to let us know how they feel. WESLEY: Move on? Okay. Yard signs. So again these are little wire signs little -- with maybe foam core top, kind of a lot of political signs are -- are this type. So the proposal is to increase this from one to two per lot, allow more than one for business, and again, similar of what we talked about with the A -frames to allow them with the X feet of a business so it could be down at the corner if you're not at the -- at the busy -- on the busy street. MAYOR DICKEY: So this state could have A -frames and yard signs? WESLEY: Yes. Much like we already do. MAYOR DICKEY: And what do we do right now? WESLEY: I'm sorry. MAYOR DICKEY: And what -- what is it right now? WESLEY: So right now you can have one per lot of a yard sign. And then it's another -- you don't have the size up here. I can't remember now, three square feet, two square feet in size, really small. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. I'm not in favor of it but we'll just move on I guess and bring these things back. WESLEY: Okay. No further discussion there. As far as the distance, I'll -- we talked about with the A -frame signs apply it -- apply it here. Electronic message centers. So currently required to display a message for at least eight seconds before change. Suggestion is to reduce that to four seconds, so they have more changes and more quickly. Require -- so currently you're required to have a static message when the -- the business is closed. The suggestion is that for particularly weekends businesses closed go ahead and allow the message to rotate. And then also there's at least one comment to -- a question why we even allow electronic message signs and maybe we should eliminate Page 31 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 32 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT them. SKILLICORN: I'm probably the one that talks about eliminating them. But -- so I think the changes here are appropriate. And we've got a couple situations where we have some businesses get to run their electronics sign differently than others based on their hours of operation which I don't think is fair to everyone in town. And then so I -- I think the compromise that I'm thinking of is that the three or four we have in town whatever number is, allow these changes that go in place. But I would prefer no more electronic signs in town. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. TOTH: I just wanted to address that third bullet point real quickly. John, we already have language in there that requires it to be dark sky compliant; is that correct? WESLEY: That's correct. TOTH: Okay. Thank you. 1 do understand the concern and if we were to have every single business get an LED sign that would probably still cause a dark sky concern. But the reality is is that these are extraordinarily expensive first of all and we have that language in there. I would -- I would disagree that this threatens our dark sky cools. MAYOR DICKEY: So anybody can put up one of these signs. There's no limit to them. And then if -- even though they're expensive the one hand you say the businesses are very expensive on the other hand it's kind of like you're assuming that they wouldn't be able to afford it. They're very expensive you don't know who, when, new business or whatever can afford to sign and have one, so 1-- I would like -- personally, I'd like to not see any of them in town, but I'd like to see if it's at all possible while being constitutional that we limit the number of them in town. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. 1 am a very business -friendly person but I -- I don't like these signs at all. I concur with -- with the Vice Mayor and with Allen that 1 -- I would call for the elimination of these signs. I think we have enough. There's been enough of them around town. I know they're supposed to be dark sky compliant but there's one on Shea that does a white light, and it does a flash and it's -- it's very bright at night and that can't be dark -sky compliant. I just don't want to see our town with all these Page 32 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 33 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT electronic signs so I would say grandfather the ones that are in there and that's it. We're done. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor. MCMAHON: But also -- we also I think have to take into consideration that they're going to be building out the Dark -Sky International Center and that is even going to eliminate the fact even more for lack of a better word that were a dark -sky community. So I really think given the fact that that is going to be put in town that we really need to be careful with having too many of these electronic message sides in town because they'll deem it in violation of the dark sky. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. GRZYBOWSKI: According to John, that these signs do meet the dark -sky requirements. If that's the case, have we also found out that multiples of these signs still meet the dark - sky requirements? The second part to my question would be is, have we talked to the dark sky people? If were -- if we're looking to limit them my suggestion would be that we do it maybe by street allow them on Shea or allow them on Saguaro. And obviously, whoever has them now gets to keep them. That's the way these things work. But I feel like we keep talking about how it's going to affect the dark sky, or it shouldn't affect the dark sky. Have we actually talked to the dark sky people? MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilman. FRIEDEL: Thanks, Mayor. John, do we have any applications now for any new electronic signs, do you know? WESLEY: No. FRIEDEL: No. Okay. And I'm just wondering will the dark skies -- WESLEY: We have one -- FRIEDEL: Excuse me. WESLEY: I stand corrected. We have one that's -- I'm not sure they actually applied yet, but I think they have if not they will be soon because I know they're planning to construct very soon. FRIEDEL. So there's one in the works. WESLEY: One in the works, yes. Page 33 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 34 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT FRIEDEL: Okay. And I'm wondering if the dark skies people will want one of these signs out in front of there. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No. No. MAYOR DICKEY: Maybe. MILLER: I just wanted to remind the council there was a question about you know if there can be some grandfathering. So if the council were to put in an absolute prohibition in the sign ordinance on these, what that would mean is that those that are currently existing are technically grandfathered. They -- it would be considered a non- conforming use and so so long as they didn't do anything major like if they needed to replace the sign or whatever that would then fall under our new code but if — if -- if it is a non -conforming use it's effectively grandfathering it for the duration that it's there. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. TOTH: I believe that the original intention of these updates to the sign ordinance was to create opportunity for our business owners and even for our residents. I would wholeheartedly disagree with a ban of LED signs. I find that to be regressive not progressive when we're trying to help. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I'm definitely in favor of getting rid of the electronic signs because when we passed those whatever years ago that was a big issue at the time. And you know it barely did get through but 1 -- I -- I agree with that and especially because I know they're expensive, but anybody could get that. John, do you remember if the eight -second, four -second thing had any safety things about trying to read it too fast or -- or anything like that? When those first started I know we had a conversation like that. WESLEY: Yes, Mayor. The -- when these first came out they -- many of them had very long time frames before they could change the message because of concern about driver safety and being distracted by the changing message. It's my understanding the industry that the eight seconds has become pretty much the -- the standard across these codes because of that meeting most conditions and -- and not causing a safety issue. I've not researched it since this came up to see if that is still true but that's the way Page 34 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 35 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT it was previously. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I -- I think the eight seconds is fine particularly if you -- and -- and I'm not in favor of having it -- well I get councilman's point about which businesses are open and when, so I'm not sure about changing that second part. So if we -- if we do the second part which says allowing businesses to keep them on even when they're closed then I would really want the eight seconds only because I -- I -- you know, I just think that's too much. I mean, we know where some of the ones are in town. We know there are some homes by them. So -- WESLEY: I will say that -- excuse me for interrupting, but that particular language about when they can -- what happens when the business is closed, we wrestle with that language a lot when we did this before. It's tricky to write but we will see what we can do with the council's concerns to make some adjustments there. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Vice Mayor. Oh. MCMAHON: I'd like to make a comment clarification is that the town does support our businesses and also that if a business can't have a neon sign any longer, a new one, they still have other signage available so it's not going to like make a big difference or because they can't have one their -- their business isn't going to be successful et cetera, there's other signage available for that particular business. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor. On that -- the display while they're closed versus open, I'm hoping whoever had a conversation with me -- I swear it was somebody here, brought it up that there's some businesses in town, I want to say it was a chamber, was not allowed to do it on weekends or something whereas there's others that are allowed to do it on weekends. Does anyone -- councilman Friedel, why don't you comment on that. FRIEDEL: I did -- I did hear that too. That -- that it wasn't a level playing field. And I'll make a comment, councilwoman McMahon if you talk to the people down at the theater they would flat out tell you that that electronic sign has increased their viewership or however you gauge it tremendously for them, so I think it's important for them anyway if you talk to them about it they'll say that that sign there has been a success for them a Page 35 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 36 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT hundred percent. MCMAHON: Let me clarify it. If from now on we do not allow neon signs what I was saying the business still can have other signage. I wasn't saying that it didn't work for the -- the particular the theater or anything like that. If we're gonna not allow -- grandfather in the existing ones and not allow further ones there's those businesses can still have other types of signs. MAYOR DICKEY: We could also maybe say you know almost like with a read -- you know when you build onto a house or whatever if the sign that they want to replace it with if they ever want to, this is also out there, but could -- if it didn't change the size and didn't change the intensity or whatever then maybe they could still replace it with another sign like it. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. So again, I'm okay with any future, you know, prohibition of any future electronic signs. And part of it -- technologies changing. They can get more flashy, more offensive to the eye, basically because of the newer technology so 1 did want to point that out. But also future stuff, even as we go forward when there -- couldn't they get an estimate -- like let's say someone has an existing non- conforming right and they -- their -- their LEDs start to flake out and they're like well, we really want to have another one, you know, couldn't they request an SUP? It doesn't mean we have to approve it, right? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember that would depend upon how we write the ordinance. If we want to write it to allow that. Certainly, there'll be allowed routine maintenance of an existing sign and determine what is routine maintenance with regard to electronic message sign. I'm not sure what all that might entail they could probably do some fairly extensive replacements with an existing sign box as time goes on. SKILLICORN: And Mayor, John, I think the -- the -- the council here is pretty approachable if there's a situation that arose technology changed, the way people use them changed, and they were less you know -- you know, they weren't as bright or something. But even so I -- we have a little different character here and if we let this -- if we have this open anyone can get electronic signs, it could be Las Vegas. And -- and I know that I'm exaggerating, 1 know that that's -- that's -- you know, that's not realistic but I never cared for that in other towns and I -- I you know if there is something we want to Page 36 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 37 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT be friendly to businesses were going to do we can. We're gonna -- were gonna fill these vacant locations but were not gonna -- but we're not gonna have -- were not gonna change the character of our town either. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. So I think we could do that you know to take care of the four or so that are here. SKILLICORN: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks. WESLEY: Next, I think were about to sum up here. So those were the things that -- that I'd received comments on prior to the meeting with regard to possible amendments. Are there other things that other Councilmembers have thought about or since then are there anything about the different sign types we allow or don't allow? We've only focused on temporary signs or anything about permanent signs? Again, just anything else anybody has, they want to bring up at this point before I go on to the Planning and Zoning Commission and get other public input? SKILLICORN: Mayor, John, I just want to -- this is going to be an evolving process I mean, I think there's things we can discuss on permanent signs, monument signs, and such in the future, but I think we want to work through this process give Planning and Zoning an opportunity, talk to Planning and Zoning let them do their jobs you know in a -- you know and move forward. But this is not an end of this conversation. I think we want -- there is -- there has to be a balance struck of what the town people want, what the businesses want, and what that looks like, and that -- it's gonna be evolving. FRIEDEL. I would agree with that. And I would just like to say thanks for your time, John, on this. 1 know you made a couple of site visits with councilwoman -- councilman Skillicom and myself, so we appreciate your efforts and your time involved with this and Brenda your work as well. So it's -- like he said it's -- it's -- were going to be revisiting some other parts of this as well. WESLEY: Okay. And then just again to wrap up March 13th is when we have their schedule for first P and Z hearing. We'll go from there. 1 would expect it to take at least two there. You've given me a lot of things here to try to massage. And we don't know what other input were going to receive. It may end up taking more than two meetings at -- at Planning and Zoning Commission but once we are done there we'll come Page 37 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 38 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT Back. Earliest it will be would be May 16th it could be past that. And that's what I had. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah, just -- just to -- Ijust want to agree with Gerry. You've really earned your paycheck this past month and a half and so thank you for your patience and for all the emails and for -- for working with us to try to get this right. I really appreciate your time. WESLEY: Glad to do it. MAYOR DICKEY: So before we had like a little part about all these pictures of all these different kinds of signs, are we doing that now too? WESLEY: I wasn't planning to do that. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay because then when you say no more -- whatever suggestions then the suggestions arc no, you know, airman or whatever, you know the penance of things that were -- that are existing now, I want to keep them that way. WESLEY: I thought you (indiscernible) . MILLER: Mayor and council if there's no further discussion on this particular item our next item is the Citizen Streets Committee will be providing an update to the mayor and council. This might be a good point for a break if the council wishes to have a break. If you want to go through this I believe this would be the 10 or 15 minutes. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. MILLER: So I'll leave it up to the council to decide if they want to take a 10-minute break now. MAYOR DICKEY: You bet. Come back at 10:10. Thanks. MILLER: Okay. Thank you. [Pause] MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks, everyone. Our next item that were going to hear from our Streets Committee made up of citizens who've been working so hard on our behalf. Grady. MILLER: Yes, Mayor thank you for the introductory remarks. I'm very pleased to have a third of our committee here today. If you can just stand up when I call your name. We have Jerry Butler. And we have Bernie Hoenle. And we have Chris Plumb in the back. And then we also -- the presentation were going to have Mark Graham. if Mark -- unfortunately, he's going to Page 38 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 39 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT just wave because he has a crutch, and I don't want to make him stand up. But we've been making quite a bit of progress, the committee has, and we're not quite there with the plan but they have some information they would like to impart with you today. 1 think we are about four weeks away from probably having some preliminary information that we'll be able to share with the council on a plan and a report. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Graham who is going to present on behalf of the Citizen Streets Committee. Mr. Graham. MARK GRAHAM: Thank you, Mr. Grady. Mayor and Council, it's great to be here to give you an update as Grady said. By the way, I did not hurt my foot by tripping in a pothole, so I just want to make that clear. [LAUGHTER] UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible) stores. MARK GRAHAM: Yeah, exactly, would not be good. So let me see here. So again, as Grady said we had given a couple presentations in the past. The one in May and also in October. Mr. Butler did that the last time. And so you know what we really tried to do here today is to give you a quick update as to the fact the things that we have been working on and the direction that we've been going. This has been a much longer process than any of us really thought it was going to be. But nevertheless, there's a lot of data to go through, there's a lot of situations as Gerry formally said is streets are kind of like snowflakes, no two are alike and even though -- you know we've made progress. I -- and t -- t really want to recognize that this is not a situation where the town has not done anything, right. Streets are something that they start deteriorating as soon as you put them down, so it's just a matter of being able to come up with enough money, resources to take care of our streets from the day they were born until the time they've got to be replaced. So that's really kind of what we want to talk about here today. Let's see here. So since the last update the town had hired a consultant to -- consultant's not a really good word for what these people do. These are like scientists. These are like road scientists. And they've surveyed our streets. You saw or you may have seen the van that ran around town very high-tech equipment and it really -- what they really do is they take pictures of the road, Page 39 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 40 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT scan the road is kind of a better description of it, collect all this data, and then -- and then we start processing it. They have completed their survey. They've collected all the data. And what the process is now is to try to consolidate all that information down into workable data that we can analyze by street, by type, by location, and try to figure out exactly what -- what needs to be done. And just for those who don't know, we break -- break down the roads in four categories you'll see there on the screen arterials, collectors. Arterials are the main -- are the main roadways. The collectors are those streets that take neighborhood streets and dump them out onto these collectors. And then the locals arc everything you know within a -- within a residential area typically is it probably the best way to look at that. And so RAS has completed their survey but they're crunching all the numbers now and from that we hope to be able to -- well, you don't hope, we will build some models to kind of figure out where we're going to be and what needs to be done. And more importantly how much this is possibly going to cost us. So that's kind of where that is. And so as Grady said we're probably four to six weeks maybe away from having some data that -- that will allow you, the council, to make some decisions about you know what we're going to do and how we're going to be able to do that. You know I did want to mention you'll see up there in the slide this is kind of an important distinction here. There's 160.9 -- let's say 161 center line miles is what this survey was done. And what they really do is they drive -- if it's a two-lane street, they drive down the street and they go from curb basically to curb or center line if you will. We have a total of about 390 lane miles of roads in Fountain Hills so when you see you know 160 you know you almost have to double that if ifs a two-lane road if that makes sense. I just want to give you that background. Can you hear me okay or do I need -- Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. And so what we have -- that we want to examine -- and 1 think it's an important distinction here is the roads in Fountain Hills arc made up of really two types. There's the pre -incorporated roads and the post incorporated. And the way to really think about that is pre -incorporated -- let me -- yeah, I'll go down this road. The pre -incorporated streets were basically desert graded, maybe a thin coat of -- of material put on top for some -- some support, and then asphalt. It's like the worst thing you could do. It's almost Page 40 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 41 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT like a driveway being put in. That's about the consistency of it. And these roads are handling a lot of traffic. The post incorporated roads are those roads that are taken down below natural material, built up with a base, put on what I could call ABC material, which is a highly compactable material, asphalt on top of that, so it's a much better road system, lasts longer, as long as you maintain it. So this really -- and we're at that point where -- and I -- I asked David to hit me up the side of the head if I misspeak here, but 1 think were kind of at the point where these -- many of these pre -incorporated roads, there's nothing more we can really do for them in terms of maintaining them or extending their life. A lot of that's just got to be rebuilt. And the rebuilt obviously is a very expensive process so you know well be taking those factors into account when were going through -- were going through the roads. I want to jump over to a couple charts. And I think charts can be really helpful. I personally am not a fan of percentages or averages but unfortunately, at this point this is all we have because you know 1 had -- speaking of teachers, you know, I had a teacher before that said you know whenever -- a business teacher and he said you know percentages are great, but you know you got to understand what the percentage is of. You know and so when somebody says percentage, oh, okay over what? You know, so you can mask a lot of things, hide a lot of things in percentages. So this first slide is the entire network, we call the network all of the streets combined. And this is based on the RAS information that we've just received a really high level, okay give us some averages. And so you can see the first four bars take us up to what we consider a fair road condition which is about -- am I looking at the right slide? Yeah. So the arterials are like 70 percent, collectors at 65, and local roads are 60 percent. I -- I'm telling you that just because -- yeah, let me back up. This will make more sense in a second here. So if you look at this slide what you're really saying is you know our streets aren't really too bad if you look at all of the streets over there and those right three columns, yeah, that's pretty impressive. But again, this is an average this is putting everything together in a big bucket and the town as I mentioned earlier has done a really good job with what resources that they've had to -- to work on our streets, so we've seen some improvements over in these -- you Page 41 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 42 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT know, in the better roads. We've been spending money. We're probably just not spending enough as it -- as it turns out. But again, more on that when we can report our final report to the -- to the council. So these are the post -incorporated roads. And what I really want to draw your attention to are really three things here or two things. The -- the first three bars on the right-hand side really kind of indicate how much work the Town has put into our roads. And we've put -- we've thrown a lot of money at trying to keep these roads as usable as long as we can in the neighborhoods. But you can see by the other four although it doesn't represent a good -- a huge percentage, those are -- are really deteriorating. 1 should -- well, so the -- so then the final slide in this is -- this is the pre -incorporated streets. And you can kind of see a little bit of where the concerns arc starting to -- to manifest themselves. If you look at you know the tall yellow bar chart in the center down to the left, you can see we're starting to degrade in -- in terms of the level of a quality of those roads and the importance that we're going to have to really start paying attention to in terms of taking care of these roads. I know I'm flipping through some of this chart, but I don't want to bore you guys completely with -- with everything here. So and again, I want to -- I want to emphasize the PCI in case for those in the audience or the council that aren't aware, PCI stands for pavement condition index. It's a kind of a standard -- MAYOR DICKEY: Mark. MARK GRAHAM: -- scale of zero to 100. MAYOR DICKEY: Mark, we have someone with a question. MARK GRAHAM: Oh, I'm sorry. MAYOR DICKEY: I'm sorry. Yes. MARK GRAHAM: 1 didn't see a light. FRIEDEL: Just --just a quick question. MARK GRAHAM: Yes. FRIEDEL: Maybe a reference for people that arc viewing this. When you're talking about the pre -incorporated roads what are the age are we -- are we talking about so people have a reference point? MARK GRAHAM: Right. We incorporated in 70s -- mid-70s, I think. So anything built from the first home built in Fountain Hills up to the mid-70s is probably -- Page 42 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 43 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MILLER: So yes and we used to before incorporation we had a road district. And so it would have been the roads that had been put in by the developer and then eventually done by the road district right. MARK GRAHAM: Right. Right. Is that helpful? FRIEDEL: Yeah. MARK GRAHAM: Okay. Thank you for clearing that up. MAYOR DICKEY: Speaking of the road district, though, that was a property tax for those of us that lived here for those years. So anything -- anybody that was here before 1989 paid property tax to the road district. MARK GRAHAM: Okay. So the current average pavement condition index for the local streets, and the next couple few slides are going to talk just about local streets, is at 68. So a 68 on a scale of 168 is probably my grade point average through most of my life so give you some indication as to you know I'm not the smartest -- smartest guy, same with our roads. You know 68's not -- not great but they're serviceable to -- to some extent. The current backlog -- the streets -- and I wanted to find this. This backlog is really the streets below a 40 on the PCI, which required as I said previously full -- full reconstruction is about 10.5 of the local streets. So here's really where I want to kind of get into some meat of something that it was eye-opening as to me personally and probably to staff beforehand but when we got some of the data back from RAS, it's like okay what do we get for $10 million? So $10 million just to -- just to be clear there was like $2 million of monies that the council had put to the streets. And we had 8 -- I think 8.5 from federal, I was going to say AARP but that's not the right term, but you get it. [LAUGHTER] MARK GRAHAM: So it came up with a total of $10 million. And so I think what's really important and it was enlightening to me, is that these are local roads, and we can have these rebuilt for $10 million. And I think that's the game plan right now is to rebuild these particular streets. Does this have a pointer on it? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It should. MARK GRAHAM: It may not. Let me just -- Shea -- Shea is the lower left corner white line there. Saguaro's going up. You can see the lake up there. So as a point of reference Page 43 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 44 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT will give you an idea. There's not a lot of roadway here but this is what $10 million buys us in the road reconstruction of local -- of local streets. Here I'll try to make -- WELDY: Madam Mayor if I may. I'm just going to interrupt Mark briefly. This is half of that. What were showing you now in blue is a representative of half of that $10 million. MARK GRAHAM: Right. And that's because the other half would be built in '24. Okay. So we get about -- so I'm kind of a numbers guy, so I broke it -- I asked Justin, am I right on this? I think we get about nine miles of road rebuilt for $10 million. Bargain, right? MAYOR DICKEY: And we're saying rebuilt not -- MARK GRAHAM: Rebuilt. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. MARK GRAHAM: Right. This is -- and rebuilt -- what were basically saying is we're going to grind down the asphalt, well save as much as we can use to reuse as filler for the new street, the base material, and that sort of thing. So we're not just like digging it up, hauling it away, and dumping it. We're trying to recycle as much of that material as that can be recycled on to rebuild these roads. And then, of course, brought up to a much higher standard with a better base and asphalt curb to curb. Okay. So that's what you kind of get. So about nine miles. Or the other way I look at it is about a mile for a million bucks. Right. Councilwoman. GRZYBOWSKI: I think the slide before said four miles of roads. MARK GRAHAM: Yeah. Into Justin's point, four miles this year and then that $10 million also carries over into 2024. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on that. Okay. So what were really obviously trying to find -- or what were learning is is the price of -- the price of street reconstruction is very expensive. Now if we can do some -- some lesser cost things on some of these other streets, obviously, you know, we're not gonna -- it's not going to be a million dollars a mile on every street, right. We'll grind down. Maybe we can just seal. Maybe we can -- or do what they call crack sealing. Maybe we can do crack and slurry. Justin has -- has some pilot programs out there on a Page 44 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 45 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT couple streets that the -- that the town has done that look promising and maybe there's ways to save money there but with all of the data that has been collected from RAS, it now goes into these -- through these models that we will try to build so we can establish priorities, whose streets get -- get fixed first. Thinking about we can't save this street we know we got to reconstruct it, so I'm not going to put a lot of money into that that I know that were going to have to tear up anyway, and let's just try to set our priorities and so that's kind of the mission of the committee at this point. MAYOR DICKEY: Mark, to that point -- MARK GRAHAM: Everybody can -- MAYOR DICKEY: -- I just wanted to mention that -- and I know there was frustration over the last several years about some of the work that was done but that's precisely why to try to prevent streets that maybe people didn't think were in that bad shape but were trying to stem off that tidal wave that they told us about six years ago or whatever, so something looks fine, you're having a picnic on the beach, but there's a tidal wave coming. MARK GRAHAM: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: So -- so I understand that obviously there are a lot of roads that were going to be the million dollars a mile but then we have to prevent that. So it was a frustrating process for everybody because they didn't see the attention going where they thought it should go but in the meantime were trying to stem it from becoming a rebuild. MARK GRAHAM: Right. You know as a resident of Fountain Hills, you know, I want my street taken care of, but my understanding is that the streets belong to all of us even if I don't live in a neighborhood. You know, those people need as good as streets as everybody else. And so we have to take ownership as a community I think to take care of all of our streets even if it's not in our area, even if I'm live in a gated community you may pay extra to have your streets taken care of but you got to pay for the streets to get you there and you got to pay for the streets to get you from your gated community to the store, and to other services, and to get your Uber delivered, and to get your Amazon trucks delivered, and your mail, so on and so forth. So our -- you know, my personal message is you know the streets belong to all of us and we all have to burden -- bear the Page 45 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 46 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT expense to keep them up -- up to date and repaired. You know the -- our ultimate goal is to try to get all the streets to the point where we can just do maintenance, but in reality they're always -- they're always going to decay even if you keep it up it's not going to last forever. So we have to figure out a plan here to take care of the streets now, take care of what has to be reconstructed, make sure we take care of the maintenance, and have a plan for rebuilding those roads as they need to -- to come up. Every year that we kind of delay the ones that were, yeah, maybe we can push this off have now maybe fallen over into this other category. So you know it's just a -- it's a never-ending cycle of fixing things as they need to be fixed if that makes sense. I think -- so let's just jump to the next steps. You know following all the modeling and everything that we've got to do, to Grady's point, we'll -- we'll try to get back within four to six weeks to have a really solid plan finally. You know we had a lot of data. This study was done five, six years ago which typically most towns tried to do this kind of a study every five to six years. And frankly, a lot of the time spent by the committee was -- was digging through this information. And then at the end of the day we said can we count on this information, do we trust this information, do we trust the deterioration models that they use then compared to what they are now? So it was the decision that that we've got to get up-to- date information in order to make some realistic plans to how we move forward. So I know it doesn't sound like a lots been completed but there's been a lot of -- a lot of analysis and discussion and understanding about the whole streets. And again, you know, my message is these are all our streets. And you know, even our main streets, you know, we're finding potholes on them. And you know, I asked Grady one day I said you know I'm -- I'm on Palisades down there going towards -- going towards you know like a Safeway area for lack of a, and I've seen all these potholes picking up. And he says yeah. He says you know that's kind of like the slurry seals that we've put Band-Aids on over the years, and you build that up and then they start popping off. So you know it's getting time for even some of our major arterial streets to get a more serious update in terms of reconditioning so that they'll last longer. So hopefully I've answered your questions give you some insight as to where we are going to be and the time frame. And any other questions I'm happy to -- if any other questions I'll be happy Page 46 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 47 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT to refer to Justin or to David. FRIEDEL: Just --just a comment. I want -- you know what I want to thank you and the committee for all your hard work on this. It's tons -- MARK GRAHAM: You're welcome. FRIEDEL• -- and tons of time. And you're right we're all in this together. MARK GRAHAM: Yeah. FRIEDEL• So we all need to buy in. MARK GRAHAM: And I shared this last time I was at -- made the presentation to the council. And my motivation yeah, I had in my previous slides 1 did a lot of housing development and so there was road constructions, so I've got a background in that. But mostly 1 lived in a community which will name -- which will remain nameless in Arizona that didn't take care of their roads. And it's a big community, a big city. And I just saw them from the time I was 15 years old until 1 left there in the mid-80s they just kept ignoring the streets. And it's just bone charring to ride down the streets of this community. And it's -- I -- and my commitment to Fountain Hills was I didn't want this to happen to Fountain Hills. We've got to make sure that the Town Council and the residents -- the residents really need to understand too that all these roads are ours and we've got to take care of them and there's a cost involved with it. And that's just -- that's just a fact of life. So -- MAYOR DICKEY: Vice mayor. MARK GRAHAM: Vice mayor. MCMAHON: Thank you very much for your studying but leaming everybody we really appreciate it because it's going to provide some really good guidance on how we spend the $t0 million. MARK GRAHAM: Well, thank you. MCMAHON: As to spending the $10 million, this is either to David or Justin, since that's what we have right now. And it's a lot of money. We may not be able to replicate that after 2024, so would you think that a bond initiative is one of the best altematives to being able to take care of our roads and pay for them. We're starting now because in two -- two years there's going to be an election year, so if you think that that is the resolution for money because you're not going to find that much money in Page 47 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 48 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT the budget for streets, I don't think again, so what are your thoughts on the bonding? Or David Pock? MAYOR DICKEY: Money guy. POCK: Yeah, I guess I'll -- I'll take that one. And I believe part of the -- the streets committee, that is part of their recommendations that'll be coming back to the council as far as different funding options. I would be surprised not to see bonding as the major part of that so. Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor. Just and -- and thank you for everything that was here. And there was the map with the street maps on there. And I just wanted to clarify, is that road work that's going to be happening this year, this calendar year, or is it '23 and '24? POCK: '23, '24 is my understanding. Am I correct on that, Justin? SKILLICORN: Well, then my clarification -- because I want to say that was only -- someone said half. So are there other streets -- you and -- I think -- so is that map there, was that '23, when there's another half that's '24'? Kind of give me -- fill us in on that. WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmembers, we actually had several different scenario maps that indicated what we were going to complete before June of this year in blue and next fiscal year in red. However, we were moving those segments around. And because it takes a considerable amount of time to run an algorithm based on the funding scenarios, the red was not ready before the cutoff date last night. And so we're currently showing you in blue what we intend to do our best to complete before June of this year. And then very soon we will come forward not only with a contract amendment for the work, the contracts necessary to complete this work, but with each of those contracts will be exhibits showing you the proposed locations. Blue is this year that is the map that's being shown now. Next year will be shown in red on those. It's important to note. And I cannot thank Mark and the entire committee enough for all of the time and effort they've put into this, the benefit to this community will be long lasting for generations to come for this donated time. But as we work forward with them on this and we begin to build these algorithms, you're going to see additional maps in the future that do not show Page 48 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 49 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT this type of work. And so the number will be lower by that $10 million. But in the future as we move forward and we come to you and ask, we are most likely based on direction from the town manager, going to use the lion's share of our currently allotted $2.5 million to increase the amount that we're able to accomplish next year. We'll also be using some unspent funding from the previous year in the amount of a half a million dollars. So the intent here is to demonstrate to the residents we're putting the money in the best place at the best time. And this is an investment. And then this is what we are asking for to help continue making that investment in your community. Does that make sense? KALIVIANAKIS: Can I -- MAYOR DICKEY: Go ahead. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Yeah. I'd like to reiterate, thank the -- thank yourself and the committee for all the hard work you've done. It's all volunteer. And it sounds like you spent a great deal of time on this and so we really appreciate your efforts. Just -- just so I can get an idea of the calculus into the -- the roads. You just took it off, but the roads that were in the blue, are these identified as the worst of the worst roads that were going to fix or is the calculus, well, these are bad roads but there's a lot of traffic on them? Could you tell me the calculus of how you determine why these roads are going to be repaired? MARK GRAHAM: Yes. Councilwoman, let me -- let me start by saying that these, my understanding, are all pre -incorporated roads -- KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MARK GRAHAM: -- which we know are not good, so they've been around probably some of the earliest developments in -- in Fountain Hills. And so you know it's kind of a combination that these were selected based upon their condition, the PCI ratings, and we just can't let them go anymore. You know, and so you try to prioritize it. And everybody's citizens questions are what about my street? My street looks like crap too. You know and so can I get that done? And so there's a certain amount of method to the madness depending on the size, the condition, and location I think all went into that -- KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Good. MARK GRAHAM: -- into that narrative, yes. KALIVIANAKIS: And then -- Page 49 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 50 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MARK GRAHAM: You know, it's not kind just kind -- you know, it's just a numerical calculation necessarily. KALIVIANAKIS: Right. Okay. Thank you. MARK GRAHAM: Yeah. KALIVIANAKIS: The only other thing and maybe 1 missed it in the presentation, but how many linear miles of pre -incorporation roads do we currently have after this project is done? MARK GRAHAM: Sorry. I don't have the answer. Justin or David, do you have that? WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, we -- we don't have the center line miles for that right now. And -- and to be respectful Mark did ask us for that yesterday. We were simply trying to get everything we needed to done for today and I was not able to complete that research. So we will -- MILLER: We can certainly get that for you. WELDY: --information to the council. MILLER: All right. I also wanted to point out for the Mayor and Council, for the purposes of this. So the firm that we have that helps us manage our pavement management program utilizes a software program based on the inputting of -- of the conditions that we saw earlier. So it helps us make determinations or recommendations as -- as Mark mentioned the worst of the worst. And also the big emphasis on this was the pre -incorporation streets, the local pre -incorporation streets, those are more expensive because they don't have the base material and so on a cost per linear mile it's going to cost much more to do those. The other question I want to get back to, there was a question earlier about you know, financing and bonding and things like that. And we're going to get much more into that with the council at a later time. But I did want to let you know that the -- the model in Arizona because a lot of cities are not generating enough revenue through either their primary property tax or their sales tax or the Highway User Revenue Fund, which is a gas tax, the Highway User Revenue Fund I think has been the same amount since like 1986 or'87 and it's not been increased. But yet if you look at -- and then you've got all these Alternatives now for you know instead of buying fuel people are getting electric vehicles Page 50 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 51 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT and you know such, so our actual consumption of -- of gas and fuels is -- is actually probably stabilized and it's starting to go down. And so as a result the tax is just not going to be generating that much and it has not been for years. So the bottom line is is that most of these cities have to come up with other financing mechanisms to be able to meet the needs. They just don't have the resources to do this with their existing revenue sources, so I just wanted to just let you know that. FRIEDEL. Talking about revenue sources, I'm wondering right now our development fees they go into three different pots, I believe it's parks, art, and roads. With our need for maintenance on our roads coming up and I'm not saying reconstruction but just pure maintenance, could we take a look at those percentages and maybe reallocate or recast that somehow so that were a little bit more road heavy now when we need the money to do the maintenance? MILLER: So under state law the development fees it's very, very strict on what you can use the money for. You can't use it for any maintenance whatsoever. We have to keep the -- there are separate buckets. So you have the park development fees they have to be used just for new development of parks based on growth, so that growth pays for growth. The streets -- we went through an entire infrastructure improvement plan. And that was the modeling that then they were able to come up with what the fees needed to be and then how much revenue would be generated so if you remember right, and I don't have the information with me. But on the development fees on the street side, we never used to have a development fee for streets, we do have it now. It can only go for things that are growth related and it has to be either widening or traffic improvement like intersection, like traffic signals. And so we cannot -- and we can't mix these buckets. They all have to stay in their respective area. So and did you have something you needed to add to that? ARNSON: No. The mayor and Councilmember, to the town manager adequately addressed that. We're -- the point is is that getting development fees related to roads can go a little ways not very far, I think is probably the -- the short answer. MAYOR DICKEY: And we are under -- we get assessed or audited or whatever you want to say on how we actually use our development fees. For example we talk about the potential light at Palomino and that's one of those things where somebody put a Page 51 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 52 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT development in then you can say yeah, these are development fees that we can use because of the probable increased traffic. The other thing we talk about cities. What Grady was talking about with the HURF funds, you know that 18 cents and I know when the price of gas was going crazy everybody's like wow that's going to really help but it didn't because it's just the same 18 cents no matter how much the gas actually costs. The Prop 400 discussion goes right along with that because the infrastructure needed, it's not only cities that are unable to keep up, but it's the county and it's like literally the state. So any place you go roads are an issue and that's why the -- you know, we've been on Prop 400 for you know almost 40 years and we're looking to try to do another 20. There's a reason for that. It's -- it's one of those things that are necessary. I wanted to also mention that when we first started I think maybe 2010 is when we started seriously saying we need a pavement improvement plan. So in those days we did the zone -- you know we looked at zones and so you learn, right, as you go. So that was a great step though because it was like okay we need to kind of define this. Then we went to the next assessment and all of these road studies, and such lcd to the same conclusions and to just put in a little bit of history here, the -- we tried four property taxes some of them are related to fire district because when we lost the fire district in '01 that was another three million or so dollars a ycar less that we were taking in, again, a property tax that people who were here earlier paid. Road district, fire district, that's a lot of money to lose as a property tax. When the fire district was dissolved they raised the sales tax a bit so we -- we had property taxes that failed, we had two bonds. We tried a $28 million dollar Bond or so in whatever that was, and that failed. That one was -- would have been great because it took care of all of Palisades' curbing all kinds of stuff, but that one failed. Then of course the $8 million one for Saguaro which is now paid off We have zero debt. That one passed, thank goodness. We did put this extra ARPA funding in. I think we've been trying to bump up that 2 million a year that we were putting in, again, which doesn't change. It hasn't gotten better. Councils in the past including in 2019 or so raised sales tax which isn't something that you like to do but kind of up against the wall when it comes to tools that we can use to generate the kind of Page 52 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 53 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT regular yearly funding we've needed two million, three million, and when we did that last property tax I think it was first going to be 7 million a year, and four of it I think was supposed to go to the road. So it -- this is not a new issue at all but maybe it's become more visible, maybe people are really starting to see what happens when you can't stem that tidal wave. So I want to thank you so much for all -- all of the work that you're doing which is a continuation of the assessments and the action that previous mayors and councils and -- and this council is attempting to take to get ahead of this issue so that we can finally reach, hopefully, that maintenance time. I don't know how many years down on the road that is but when we do that we're maybe $3 million a year, $4 million dollars a year which might be actually doable for us, well -- we'll stop this from being something that turns into all of these ones that are on [he back whatever you call it the -- MARK GRAHAM: Yes, Mayor, I think you're correct. We've got a lot of catch up to do to get to that kind of maintenance level I think. So and one -- one way that were -- we hope this committee hopes to do is just FYI, we broke the committee down into two groups one is what we call the technical group. They're the ones -- they're the number crunchers. They're the ones that know everything, you know, what goes into the roads. And then we have developed a communications side of the committee and they're all about public outreach and trying to educate everybody not only council but all the residents it's just about how serious this problem has become. You know, we've got to get the data in order to support that first. But you know, we -- we -- you know, we know that it's going to be a serious number that -- that were going to need some -- some sort of additional funding yet. But I don't want to go down that -- I don't want to go there until we -- I don't want to use that -- [CROSS TALK] MARK GRAHAM: Yeah, I don't want to keep using that button. So yeah there's some big decisions that are going to have to be made by both the council and the citizens of Fountain Hills to get on board to take care of our streets. This is a -- as I started when I said this is a joint effort. Everybody is responsible for everybody's streets. And yeah, it's just the way it is, so thank you for your -- MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman? Page 53 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 54 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT FRIEDEL' 1 want to make sure I understand this. So we've got Bart Shea going to finish Park Place along the avenue, that's new residents coming into our town probably I don't know 400 units, figure two people a unit that's 800 people can we justify using any development funds for changes in intersections around that area rather than taking it from Justin's road -- road pot? MILLER: So yes, I hope you didn't take that I was saying we couldn't do anything like that, no. We certainly could. We would need to probably come back to the council and probably amend what I would call our infrastructure improvement plan which is what was the basis for the development fees that you adopted. But it -- certainly, you can make changes to that. And so that could be something you could certainly substitute maybe certain improvements versus what we currently have in the plan. FRIEDEL' Thank you. MARK GRAHAM: And -- and one more input then and then I'll leave you. At our last meeting we talked about understanding what the committee is working on is pavement right and existing roads. And were not -- that means going through the intersections and paving it, right. We're not dealing with any sort of reconstructions or street lights or roundabouts or any of those kind of things, so we're just -- were going to fix these roads or get them up to speed or rebuild them. You know the -- the whole intersection is a whole another topic. And Grady had mentioned -- or as to ask the committee if -- if we wanted to take on that responsibility. And 1 think the committee in -- in general is open to that. So any aid that we might be able to give council in studying or making recommendations you know I think we can probably perhaps help in that area. I don't want to speak out a turn here, Grady, but we've got a lot of talented people who have built a lot of roads and maybe there's -- maybe there's some help that we can do. So -- MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you very much. We really appreciate it. And thank you members of the committee who came and -- and all of your hard work to get to this point. MARK GRAHAM: I'll let them know. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: I really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Careful there. MARK GRAHAM: Yes, thanks. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Our next item number 6. Councilman Skillicom is proposing an initiative streets first. Would you like to take it away? Page 54 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 55 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Let me just get my handout that I can pass around here. So it's quite -- it's perfect that it follows the Street Commission. Another one of these. And pass that down. If we need another let me know. So I think it's wise that we set a policy as a council on spending in the future. And you know part of this comes down to the budgeting process in the past. A lot of times staff prepares a budget. Council votes on it. And basically, kind of goes hey this is what we can afford. I think as a council we can be proactive and set our policy of what we think the priorities are. So of course public safety, you know police, fire has to be funded. But number 2, I think the council can come up with a dollar amount that they want to spend on roads, and we can drive that discussion. And then staff can go well how do we make this work? And if you know staff comes to us and go oh, you know, sorry, were -- you know, were 20 bucks short, then, you know, we can have that conversation on what to do. But instead of having -- you know, police and fire always at the top right and then discretionary funding and throwing in streets within discretionary funding that's how we have two and a half million dollars when it sounds like we need more. And you know I put in -- I actually put in $6 million there. And I'll explain how I came to that number. But I think it's wise for this Council to set a policy of this is how much money going -- you know, and it doesn't have to -- we don't -- we don't have to pigeon hold ourselves for down the road, but I think it's wise for us to consider this is what we'd like to be spending you know year to year on this. Of course, inflation's going to go up. Our revenues are going to increase. And then we can adjust it from there. But I think it's wise to actually direct staff of how we want to spend our money instead of staff directing us how they want to vote on it. And I think that there's a -- the change there could be very helpful. Of course, this would erode a discretionary funding, but it appears to me that the people of town prefer that for the next couple years. And then once we're caught up on these obligations then all of a sudden hey because we have the -- the weight lifted off our shoulders we can afford other things. So this -- I put in $6 million. That's something that we can debate and discuss, but where that number comes from. And I was thinking originally I was hearing a $60 million backlog number. Well 6 -- 60 million divided by 10 is 6 million that catches up on the backlog. And I think that having something planning for this instead of letting the numbers dictate us, I think we Page 55 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 56 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT should dictate what the numbers are. And just putting it out there for discussion. You know I have a couple other things on there. It was brought up in you know a public comment a month ago that you know we should discuss roads every meeting. I'm not against that. I think that's a great idea. Maybe it doesn't have to be every meeting but every month. I would love to hear you know -- you know the -- the streets department give us an update of like what was done. And it -- I mean, we're not talking like a 20- minute presentation or a PowerPoint but imagine every month it could be every meeting, but think of every month, hey this is what we did. You know the crews repaired these streets here. And next week or next month were thinking about doing this. Short, concise but it gives us that extra transparency I think town wants and when people know there's activity they're not going to complain about the lack of activity because they -- they know oh, that I didn't know that that street got replaced last week or there was some repairs, or a street had to get digged up because there was a utility underneath it. You know, I think that that would be very helpful. And it'll be a very short report. We're not talking about -- again, no PowerPoints things like that. I'm looking at you, Justin. I -- I you know at this -- I think that extra transparency, to know that it's a concern of ours, not that it wasn't a concern, but I think it's just respectful of the town's people. Again, planned repairs. You know, we could talk about the future stuff that's coming. That what we talked about today, the specific growth very helpful. You know if -- if more people saw that we'd get less comments about it. And I think that that's what we want to do. I think we also should have punch lists and checklists of things we want to accomplish. And you know every month we're not going to finish our checklist that's just how it works but being able to do that and have some accountability is great. And I think that after we discuss this and see where the direction goes I think it would be wise at a council meeting to actually do an ordinance or a resolution -- sorry, a resolution adopting this to actually give staff some direction on especially the numbers and how -- and what they're going to be and how it's going to be. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Any comments from anybody? Council -- Vice Mayor? MCMAHON: I disagree. I think that the budget dictates a lot, and the state law dictates a lot of what we can do. It's been obvious in the past years that $6 million has not been Page 56 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 57 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT available every fiscal year for the streets. That's unrealistic. We have the street committee that is assigned to tell -- which they just did tell us about the streets. Justin provides update on what's happening in the streets. There is transparency on it, so having another initiative I think duplicates all the efforts that's already being done. You can see over thc last few years ever since council's been here the streets have been an issue. They've addressed it every year. They do the best they -- they can within the confines of the budget. We -- you know, to drive that and to change the process that's already been here that's been effective, and we've properly use the funds in areas that are needed in the town. And 1 just don't see where we're going to get 4 or $6 million every year to put into this type of an initiative. Everybody's very responsible here. We're all transparent. They're all doing their job. We're all balancing the budget as how we can within state requirements and how we can in giving them -- getting -- getting the money that we get every year that fluctuates. MAYOR DICKEY: I have a question so the -- the HURF money, the two and a half that we always put in that doesn't include all of the work that you do when you're filling potholes or doing other work because you'll come and you'll tell us oh, we did this or that, but it doesn't -- how do you -- you know distinguish between the money that we use from HURF to the other -- because you're always out there doing something. I mean, there's a curb or there's a pothole or -- I mean, we did 100 and was it 30 something lane miles and you said you did 70 tons of fill, so where -- where does that come from? I mean, don't we have other funding that we use sometimes for roads? WELDY: Madam Mayor. Madam Mayor, the HURF funding covers all thc operations of the street department that includes all of the staffing, the utilities, the buildings, and the funding for all the different types of road treatment that we do. So that funding allotment covers all of those activities. MAYOR DICKEY: And that's the -- so I know sometimes it's more than two million, well, especially now because of the ARPA funding and such. But you know, I -- I'm -- and I've said this before, I'm not opposed to trying to make our part of that a little bit more. But the wholesale six million or whatever year after year to me is unsustainable and we have all these other items to take care of not that are always just canopies or parks, not to say those aren't important, but the -- you know, sorry about that. I didn't Page 57 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 58 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT mean it that way. [LAUGHTER] MAYOR DICKEY: But I mean -- and 1-- and I get it, but what we do every year is we get like we're going to today and you see that capital improvement plan, you're like whoa, you know and that's what we do. We decide, you know, this may not be the year. And -- and I think as Mark was saying what do we show as our -- as our effort. So you say maybe we look this -- this over, we go through this budget process, we say well, you know, we're not going to do this this year, whether it's a park thing or whatever, you know. But if it's a pipe that's leaking or if it's storm water related or whatever then we kind of have to, so the staff are the experts where they're there every day to give us what they feel are the priorities. Then it absolutely is our prerogative to -- to you know pick and choose and when you're in almost like a crisis situation I -- you know, again, putting a little more in. And again, we put 10 million in in the last two years, or we've got another big amount to go into next year, so that actually would probably get us to that 6 million at least for next year. But -- but to come out with a -- just a resolution or whatever like that from us when we're not the ones dealing with everything that's going on I'd rather not do it that way with the knowledge though that we are the ones that will look at all these capital projects whether we can use development fees. I mean, some of these projects are going to be grants. We won't do them unless we get the grants. So it -- I don't want to simplify what we have to do but I don't want to take advice from anybody except for the staff who are out there at those parks every day or on the roads every day because they're the ones that can determine the need. We can make a theme. We can make, you know, like obviously roads, but you also heard me just talk about four property tax you know going, for three bonds, all these different assessments, put $10 million and so -- we have been trying -- and we raised sales tax, you know, the things that you don't want to do. But we've been trying to do that and really the roads have been the reason for that all -- all the while. So I think -- I appreciate what you're saying but I don't want to change the way that we do things like that with a top down except for a philosophy top down which I think is legitimate. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I think that's kind of where we'd agree. Page 58 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 59 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT I -- I disagree. 1 think that we need to prioritize this. And I believe that, you know, it's not just staff that's telling us what -- what we should do, it's the residents. And when I'm listening to the residents, they want this to be a priority and I agree with them. And I'm going to represent them. And 1 -- 1 did -- you know, I hear a number that's too much. So $6 million is too much, what number can we agree on? FRIEDEL: Allen, I appreciate your vigor with the roads. Listen, in 2018 when David Spelich and I ran for council we ran on our roads first platform as well part of our platform, so every Councilmember up here agrees with you. We all know we need road work in this town. I d like to see what they come up with from the committee as far as a bonding package and maybe that -- that dollar amount, then we can plug that dollar amount in to supplement what we're doing. I'd like to see what their -- their results are. I think it would be fair to them and respectful to see what they have to say. Now, there's no question our carrying costs for bonds has gone up dramatically in the last two years. But I still think there's some room for us to do something along that way. But if you want to have an initiative for roads first or something or make a statement, a vote of confidence whatever you want to call it, I'm 100 percent behind it. I think everybody up here is. So -- so I -- that's my pledge too. I -- I think we need to get our roads taken care of. But I think being fair and listening to what their results are and what they come back to us and then plugging a number in here, I'm totally for it. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman, you can -- I'm sorry. TOTH: I turned it off. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. MCMAHON: I think that we're already -- we're already doing that. We're already having roads first. And there's no question about that. We don't need an initiative to -- to -- it's not going to supplement anything. It's not going to really change anything. We're already doing roads first. The town knows that. It -- it shows up in the budget. So 1 just -- I mean, there are so many other things that 1 think we need to pay attention to. And I just don't think an initiative is going to change or -- or make any difference or be a significant contribution to getting the roads more transparent or built faster. We're already all working on that. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. Page 59 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 60 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Yeah, I think that the-- the -- the-- the concept like you mentioned of roads first and set that as a priority to staff, I would agree with because like Gerry said I think everybody up here is -- is for that and I think people's probably since 2010 have been mentioning I think we need more work on the roads. So conceptually, I think it's a good idea. Also what Allen said about just the public knowledge and getting -- getting the word out there because we have done a lot of good works but I'm not sure if the town knows about it. And so maybe that might be a project for (indiscernible) or some people to get together. I'm not sure if every meeting we want to discuss this but so the people know that the good works that were doing and so that would be kind of a just a PR public relations to let people know. I mean, what you've put -- what we've put together for the next couple of years is very exciting and were going to get a lot of work done. And so you know I think we are putting the roads first, but we have to get that out there to the public. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman. TOTH: Thank you. Sony, 1 turned it back on. Stating a goal is the first step toward accomplishing that goal that's why in business school and other different fields as well they tell you to write down a mission and a vision statement. It's the same kind of idea as why we wanted to pass in that the environmental plan. Putting out a resolution for something that people do know is a priority I don't believe is a waste of time, I believe it's a commitment. And furthermore, transparency is something that we received a fairly low score for in the last survey of the public. I think it's extraordinarily important to prioritize that. We're supposed to be representing the public. Let's show them that this is a priority, that we want to listen to the Streets Commission. Let's go ahead and pass a street's first resolution but maybe well wait the four weeks til we have more firm data to get that exact number for the budget. I -- I don't believe that it would be a waste of time to ensure that it is written down that that is our priority. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. GRZYBOWSKI: We actually do have a mission statement. It's posted on the wall outside when you leave the room. 1 wholeheartedly appreciate the concept of a street's Page 60 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 61 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT first or road's first initiative however I feel like were doing that at the expense of other really important stuff. To say that people will understand why there's lack of activity because we got our streets fixed. We have people that complain about lack of activity now and streets aren't getting fixed. They want us to spend more money and have more classes in the classroom, more fancy fun stuff at the park, so I -- I don't think saying streets first automatically means people are going to understand because were going to do the streets first. Remember part of what our job is is more than just the handful of people that are the loudest and the most vocal. Our job is every resident and every business owner in town that being said Parks and Rec and it -- it's all a part of quality of life. And you've got the senior services people that have been paying taxes into the town for hundreds of years and I expect this from you. You hear that kind of stuff when you're going out on the street and to all of a sudden say were gonna -- were gonna put streets first and that means everything else sits a back scat to streets, I just -- 1 have a huge problem with that there -- it's -- it's very subjective to say that streets are more important to every single person in this town than programming. 1 don't think you're going to find that. And I agree that the -- with the mayor that the top down expense dictation is -- is not the proper way to handle this. We need to hear from our Streets Committee, and it needs to be something other than the sales tax dollars that we get now. How -- however we decide it needs to be done. If streets are that important then we need to address it as a bond and address it individually and say this is -- it is so important that this exact chunk of change is what's going to 100 percent go to roads. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, okay. Councilwoman. SKILLICORN: 1 -- I can close -- it doesn't matter if I -- if I could close. Why don't I close? If someone else wants to speak, that's fine. MCMAHON: As far as goals, they are written down. They're written down every single year and that's what their jobs are. They write down the goals. They look at the budget. And that -- that's what the goal is is to fix the streets. So this -- to just say initiative is going to be the goal that -- we already have the goals. And we already -- they -- that's why we have people hired they -- and then they go out and achieve it. So to say that there isn't any goals written down for streets is -- is a misunderstanding. I think there is -- Page 61 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 62 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT there are goals written down. TOTH: I don't believe that at any point I said that there weren't any goals written down. The statement originally was whether or not it was a waste of time to make a street's first resolution if were already doing streets first. My response was in that regard that no, I don't believe that is a waste of time. Furthermore, yes, I am aware that we already have a mission and vision statement. I was providing an example. MAYOR DICKEY: The idea of the streets first it's probably the first thing I've said at every state of the town for five -- five years, four years. So I think the -- the emphasis and the need for it is clear. The -- I do have to say and councilman I know that you disagreed with us on our legislative agenda but the -- the legislative agenda of the league and us following that included opposing the -- the corporate tax bill, the food tax bill, and the rental tax bill that, you know, you were in favor of. And collectively -- and those will cost us more than $3 million a year. So I have a little bit of a -- of a misunderstanding then because if we are going to start to take everything from every other item that we work on in order to come up with another four -- 3 or $4 million a year coupled with that I don't see the -- I don't see where that goes. I don't see where that goes because your vision here is to get attention to the roads. When you add another -- if those bills pass, I know one of them got vetoed but -- and you're unhappy about that, but I also know it's probably going to be in the house again. And I know there's pressure on all sides here, politically, for not to veto it or to help people with rent and all of those things if that happens to us this is -- this is just a pipe dream. We're going to be down more than $3 million per year every year if those things happen. So it's a little hard to reconcile those two things. I feel what you're saying. I want to do it. I think a resolution is just a -- I — I -- it doesn't serve a purpose to me. 1 don't see the reason to put something out there that we've actually been working on for years and years. And we budget our values when it comes time to it. We put -- we try to put a million dollars towards this infrastructure maintenance. You know, we're all like this for the liner on the -- you know, so what if that happens? Then that's a $13 million deal. So I don't think we can -- we would always be able to honor this for very long. But again, I'm willing to say that that is definitely our priority and that's why we have that committee. And we're -- you know, and he's -- he said taking Page 62 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 63 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT longer than he wanted it to. And -- and I understand the frustration with this entire subject but I'm not in favor of just making a -- a resolution like that. There's just too many other things that are part of our budget. Councilman. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor. And you know, just like budgets things like that change if unforeseen circumstances change something, you know, numbers change, you know, those are always items that we can address. You know, to address, you know, a couple of things that were said, and -- and -- and I am rehashing a little bit. I believe that if we don't set a priority and we don't set, you know, what our priorities are going to be, a couple months from now we're voting on the budget we might be disappointed. You know, and our town is a lot more than roads. 1 mean, obviously, the programs and the parks and recreation are important, but 1 will be crystal clear we don't have a $60 million backlog in programs and parks. We have a $60 million backlog in our roads. And that was a policy decision from the previous board. And that is a policy decision that this board has to rectify. And that red -- that -- to rectify that it's going to mean choices. And this is just one of the choices. Maybe there's other choices, but other than a tax hike 1 haven't heard anyone mention any choices. And you know, on some of those other issues I'm not going to support a bond. I'm not going to support a tax hike on the people of Fountain Hills. And also I just want to make it when -- when we come out with a budget that doesn't appropriately fund roads, I'm a no vote. And you know, I think I would encourage other people to do so too. And that's why it's very important for us to have these discussions today so that we don't have a surprise come summertime. You know, we don't want to come into -- and come in and not have enough votes to pass a budget. So that's why we have to have these discussions today and we have to prioritize our priorities. And really there is a backlog. And a backlog is for a reason. And we have to fix that. That's all. So and 1 -- it sounds like there's consensus to do the transport -- to the transparency part with a monthly update from roads -- you -- quarterly? GRZYBOWSKI: Monthly seems like a lot for Justin to have to put together, but I think maybe quarterly seems reasonable. MILLER: And -- and I just want to -- if I may. I'm sorry for interrupting you, Page 63 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 64 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT Councilmember. Right after that that was suggested at a council meeting under the call to the public we actually chatted about this at our staff meeting and we do think that we should do both a streets and a capital improvement project update that they could be done the same night. And we do think either monthly or quarterly would probably make sense. If we had the capital component, probably monthly makes sense. And then maybe streets may not be on every month maybe it might be a little bit more closer to quarterly because we don't do every single month other than some key issues because it's a seasonal kind of thing when we get out and we got the company doing all the -- the work in town. We can't probably do something on every month because we're going to be talking about potholes and -- and really routine kind of stuff, but we could certainly do more on the capital and certainly probably on a routine basis do much more than what we've been doing. We think it's a good idea. SKILLICORN: Yeah. And Mayor and Council, yeah, 1 mean, that's fine. I do want to reiterate we did have someone come to us and ask for every meeting. So going from every meeting in the quarterly is a big difference that's why -- I actually, I did put in monthly. You know, obviously there's some flexibility. And if-- if one month is light activity or you know, let's say it's monsoon month and we're busy with a backhoe every night and there was no time to do it that's fine. But and -- and 1 also look streets and capital are kind of 101. You know, is it a street project when we have a road that's flooded because you know the -- you know because it was something washed out? 1 mean, that's not necessarily a street project, that's a capital project. But they're one of the same and I think it's appropriate to talk about it. And -- and you know some of that's going to come on us. We've got to communicate that to our friends and neighbors and constituents also. But it sounds like that's really the only thing that we're interested in doing but you know I still want to reiterate that like -- like and I need to see priorities happen before I support a budget. And that's all. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Any other comments? Thank you. All right. Our next item is the fire department transition plan update. MILLER: Yes. Thank you, Mayor, council. We're going to have an update from our Page 64 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 65 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT fire chief. And I believe, when it's appropriate also for our chief financial officer on the transition plan. You'll recall that we had a study that was -- that took a look at our fire services and the council decided at that point right after that to look at moving in this service in house completely. So with that, we're going to go ahead and -- and turn it over to the chief who will give you a brief update on this. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. OTT: Good morning. My name's on that slide but there were a few more people involved with this. It was Grady, Dave Trimble, and David Pock, myself. We also had a independent -- independent third -party review of the budget. And it was another Dave that came in but he's a retired fire chief. He also is a instructor at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland. And one of the classes he teaches is finance for fire service. So he did review the budget and thought that we were right online with -- with our projections here. Again, this is -- this is a draft. We really only went out with Rural Metro to FY26. We don't know what a Rural Metro contract would be if -- if there is one in 26. There's some probably -- I don't want to say insecurity but maybe some thought on the -- the Rural Metro side of things that community fire is not necessarily where they want to be. We've been lucky enough for over the years we've added three percent increase on the rural contract side of things. But moving past FY26, when the contract would -- would expire there's been talk about making adjustments to make up for the losses that community fire has. Currently, central Arizona and that's just community fire for rural and central Arizona which is Pima and -- or excuse me, Maricopa and Final County. And they're losing over a million dollars a year, so the -- the projected thought from rural would be that it would be up over probably closer to double digits when they would renew the contract. We did go through -- like 1 said it was a collaborative effort. We kind of used the McGrath report as a -- as a starting point. We have looked at the -- at the budget numbers. We do have a one-time -- a one-time startup cost that includes things like our -- our moving our dispatch to the Mesa Regional Dispatch Center. And I'll go to that a little bit more. This includes personal protective equipment, some computers for dispatch, outfitting the station for -- for dispatching, and a number of other things for that one-time startup cost of 396,000 which puts the first year at 5 million --about 5.1 million. Page 65 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 66 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT The original estimate on the McGrath side was closer to 5.4. Some of the things that are different there is that there was a -- included in that startup cost was regional academy training for everyone that -- that's about $150,000. There was also some recruitment costs in there that was close to $60,000. And some other incidentals that coming from the McGrath side of things they put in that just to make sure that -- that we had those covered. Again, that was kind of where we had Chief Dave Bunce come in and look at that third party review to make sure that we weren't missing items in there. And as we move forward into FY25 we're slightly below what the projected rural contract is. And then moving into FY26, again, we're a little bit below that. These -- these are draft numbers there may be a little bit of change in there. This also includes full-time a HR person and ups the IT person a quarter of a -- a quarter of a person which rounds out that position that's already there. So this does take in quite a -- quite a bit. We did do a lot of work to this point to get us to these numbers, but that will maintain the same level of service that we've currently have to keep our -- the best outcome for our citizens and one thing to kind of keep in mind is the -- the high rating that was achieved was really due to the fact that the fire department here, the men and women that have served this town, feel that this town is their community. And that's really where the -- the high rating came from is the way that -- that our people here look after the town and its residents. So -- MILLER: Mayor and council if I may, I just want to just chime in on something. We're pretty certain that because of the inflationary pressures we've seen over the last two years, that rural metro when they do a reset in '26, '27. It's going to be a double digit. And it's going to actually exceed what you saw. If you can go back to the other slide. It's definitely going to be reset because their profit is getting eroded away with inflation. They're still giving their employees raises and such. And they're having to be more competitive with the market. So the -- the point, is we believe that in '26, '27 this is only going up to '26, but in '26, '27 when we'd be up for renewal with the Rural Metro contract they're going to have to reset. And even if we did just have three percent increases thereafter we believe it's going to be substantially higher in '26, '27 going forward than what we've been currently enjoying. And I just wanted to bring that up because that's Page 66 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 67 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT something when we had this discussion back when McGrath had done the evaluation, there were some questions that were fair and -- and reasonable because they were -- Councilmembers were looking at the current contract costs all the way through. But what I'm very pleased is with this independent person that weve hired to take a look at our numbers and also validate our numbers, and also seeing what other cities have recently -- or other fire districts that were similar to us that have joined some of these consortiums the training dollars are not what we were expecting them to be for us based on what they've expected of these other entities. So the $150,000 is not going to be something we're going to have to do. We're going to be able to do in a much more abbreviated training. And we're going to be able to do it over a longer period of time to get them up to speed. So it's going to cost less and it's going to be something that we're going to be able to do in a longer period of time. So with that I'll turn it back over to the chief. KALIVIANAKIS: Can 1 -- can I -- MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, yeah. Sure. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. When we -- this came up before it was the November 1st 2022 meeting. As a former council and the projections that year were Rural Metro was going to be $4,000,534 and the startup for the fire department for Fountain Hills was going to be $5,000,658 at a differential expense of over SI million -- $1.123 million. How did we -- how did we bridge that gap so significantly? You mentioned something about $150,000 for training but that -- this is over a million dollars. Where's -- where's the difference? OTT: Well, the -- the original -- Mayor and council, the original costs were -- were on the study that McGrath did. Okay. That was kind of a -- a overall comprehensive study to see where we would be starting. There are two different figures in there. One -- one was a -- at the $5.4 million was the startup for a cost that McGrath did not believe would meet the standards to meet Automatic Aid. Again, that might be from his, I don't say lack of knowledge, but what he foresaw as -- as meeting the needs for the Automatic Aid requirement. That's somewhere down the road as we get into it. But our staffing on his first model will meet the requirements for Automatic Aid. They had a -- that was the $6 million figure out of the McGrath study. When it comes down to it -- and that's why we had Chief Bunce come in and do a -- a -- Page 67 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 68 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT kind of an independent look at what the numbers were to make sure everything was covered. There are about 200 and 60,000 — closer to $270,000 total in costs that McGrath included the -- the -- are not necessarily needed for the startup for the Fountain Hills Department. Again, the difference that -- from the original startup costs to where we're at is about 3 -- $350,000. Again, some of that comes back into recruitment with $60,000. There was some testing and -- and some other things associated with -- with the hiring process that were about $180,000. So as those pieces come together they add up to that difference in there. MILLER: And -- and if 1 may I think the big, big difference is the salary and benefits for the additional personnel that we would have been required according to what McGrath studied and it believing we needed in order to join Automatic Aid. And so that's just -- that's a big difference right there. Was it another four or five personnel on top of what we have now? 1 mean -- and I'm talking -- OTT: Correct. MILLER: -- sworn personnel not the administrative. OTT: Correct. MILLER: And -- and over time as well. KALIVIANAKIS: And the human -- is -- will they have their own human resources department or is that going to be --- is the town going to handle the human resources? OTT: There would be an additional human resources person for the town, so -- KALIVIANAKIS: A full-time person? OTT: Full-time, yes. OTT: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: That's included though, right? You already talked about that? OTT: Yeah, that -- that's all included -- MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. OTT: -- in those costs, so -- MAYOR DICKEY: I think what this demonstrates is -- the point of doing this in the first place is to have it all in-house, having us be in control, having the chief be in control, and demonstrating exactly what we've been trying to do. And I know you mentioned November, but I brought my book on purpose with October 31, 2013 on it to show you Page 68 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 69 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT how long we've actually been working on this. Another thing you had mentioned Pima or -- or well, Maricopa, but Green Valley is taking over. Rural Metro shuttering three stations in Sahuarita. And then we know Carefree is going through this process. So I think that this is the direction that -- that -- that they're going to with their own business success and their -- their own business model. So -- oh, yes, sir.. FRIEDEL: And you mentioned the benefits too. This -- and seeing this, Chief, thank you for your work on this, it further reinforces the decision 1 think that was made that that local control is important on this -- on -- on this topic. And doing a little digging myself even the PSPRS and David Pock, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most of our guys will be going in at not at the tier 1 and tier 2 where we won't have that pension liability responsibility, I think that's just huge going forward. POCK: Correct. Right -- right now with the -- the personnel with Rural Metro if they were to come over there are no tier 1 or tier 2 members meaning they haven't worked for other departments and established themselves with that so it would be tier 3. MILLER: And Councilmember Friedel, you bring up a really good point we had discussed as part of the transition team we wouldn't be recommending membership right away. We'd probably be doing that a couple years into it, but we believe from what we have looked at the rates for the tier 3 PSRS is very comparable to what our 401 is right now. But at some point we would need to, in my opinion, need to get into PSRS -- I'm sorry, Public Employee -- I'm sorry, the Public Safety Retirement System. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: PSRS. MILLER: And the reason -- reason for that is we have to compete with other agencies, and we don't want to lose those that we get trained only because they want to go to those other agencies that are in the other retirement system. So at some point, very shortly after we bring this in-house wed need to be joining up with that. FRIEDEL: But again we won't have that -- that debt liability to deal -- deal with. OTT: That is correct. There'd be no unfunded liabilities so -- okay. MAYOR DICKEY: We'll go to the next slide. Sony. We kind of deterred. OTT: Are you done? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay. OTT: Okay. All right. We kind of put together a little timeline here. There is a lot more Page 69 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 70 01180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT involved in this but this kind of hits the key points. In FY 23, at this point, we've already identified long lead items, Rural Metro equipment, and the startup budget process. We're also doing cost estimates for MRDC which is Mesa Regional Dispatch Center, and the TRWC which I'll get into that on the next slide, and the associated equipment. And we've also started working on a ambulance RFP and developing the job descriptions and pay scales. And the ambulance contractor, Ambulance RFP, is something that currently there is not an ambulance contractor or contract for transport units that is part of the fire contract. The ambulances are supplied by GMR. We've got a rural metro rescue at one station and an AMR ambulance at another station. What we'd be looking for is -- and typically, in ambulance contracts there are no costs to the user which would be the town. They make their money off of the transports which is what they currently do. But the contract would give us a little bit of control over what we have provided to us. It would allow us to dictate the staffing. It would allow us to dictate the age and mileage of the ambulances being provided to us. It would also help us with the usable medical supplies that they would reimburse us for those because they bill for those. There would also be a revenue option in there that if we provide a paramedic on transport that when and they get that money back from the insurance companies because they bill for that additional medic, we would be able to recoup some of those costs as well. I think it's something that's -- that's worth looking into regardless of where we move forward at just so that we've got a little bit more control over that portion of it for our residents. We would be looking at starting that prior to the January I st go live date for the fire department just so that that portion is out and functioning before we would -- we would go live with the fire department. Just one less thing to worry about on that cut over date. As we move into the first quarter of FY24 would be hiring the administrative assistant to the fire chief to start the hiring process. And part of that, in FY24, would be hiring the staff ordering, uniforms, PPE, and developing the standard operating procedures handbook. We're also kind of paralleled what the town handbook is so there's nothing really different on the fire department side. There'll be some operational things that are not necessarily part of the normal town procedures where we have 24-hour staff now, we will have 24-hour staff in the fire department. Page 70 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 71 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT The town currently doesn't have it, so we'll need to reflect policies and procedures to kind of move forward with those -- those types of items. We would order the G2 package which is part of the dispatch process from the Mesa Regional Dispatch Center. We would also get that equipment. We already own the radios that are in the trucks and -- and the portable radios that we carry, so it's just a programming function of that. And then we would go live with the Fountain Hills Fire Department on January 1st In my world a holiday is no different than any other day. They would -- the contract is over with -- with Rural Metro at midnight on December 31 st. The -- the overall theory is the guys would change shirts, change dispatch channels on their radios, and it would be fully functioning as a Fountain Hills Firc Department at that point. As we move forward from January 1 st, we would also work for our application towards the Automatic Aid process which will allow us to get the closest unit response for anything. It would help us on our west end of town with some responses. It also allows for that worse day scenario that we're going to get help a lot quicker than we would currently under this situation or into this -- the dispatch organization that we're under right now. So those things are all -- all positives. It's not a given that day 1 we would be in the Automatic Aid. There are things that we would work towards with that. I've talked to a number of the surrounding chiefs and they all support Fountain Hills Fire Department being part of Automatic Aid and what that -- what we can add to this portion of the -- the valley and -- and the value that they see in that. So we've got full support on all the neighboring departments which is, I think -- it's a -- again, in my world that's a huge thing to have -- have the other departments fully support us. Any questions on the oil -rig timeline there? MILLER: This next slide is going to be a little confusing, so you're going to have to kind of walk us through and -- and explain the acronyms. OTT: All right. My -- my business is full of acronyms and so some of them have public -- you can use in public and some of them you can't. [LAUGHTER] OTT: But so MRDC is Mesa Regional Dispatch Center. And that is a dispatch center that's owned by the city of Mesa and dispatches members from TRWC which is Topaz Regional Wireless Cooperative. There is -- there are two dispatch centers in the valley. Page 71 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 72 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT One is -- one is Phoenix and one is Mesa. And if you --just geographically if you took the 101 as it runs through the border of Scottsdale in that north -south segment right there, departments that are on the west side of the 101 are typically dispatched by Phoenix. Chandler and Tempe kind of border both of those. They're dispatched by Phoenix. Mesa, Queen Creek, Superstition which is Apache Junction, Rio Verde, those are dispatched by Mesa and are part of the TRWC. We had a choice of where we wanted to go and apply for the ability to be dispatched by them. We're a much better fit for the -- for the Mesa system and the Topaz side of it. We would be one of eight members in Topaz. If we went to the Phoenix side we'd be one of 23 members and have much less of a say in how that runs and the reality of it is that Phoenix pretty much runs that system. So we felt that the -- not only size wise are we better suited for it, the cost on the Mesa cider are less per call dispatch than they would be on the Phoenix side. So overall another kind of deciding factor was that Rio Verde had a fire chief that came from Mesa that put Rio Verde on the Mesa Dispatch Center, so the infrastructure between Mesa dispatch and Rio Verde is there, which in my non -technical way of thinking is it should cover us fairly well. So were still kind of working through some of those items. But kind of the way the process works is we have the request for services from the city of Mesa. Grady has -- has already reached out to the city manager for Mesa. And it's in that process wove met with the Mesa fire chief So we're really kind of looking at all of these things in this circle right now which is where we're at. We get the direction from Mesa to the manager of the MRDC to say okay this is something that we want to look at. We want to bring Fountain Hills in -- into this mix. We want to make sure that our Dispatch center can handle that. And the number of calls that we run per month the joke was from the Mesa -- from the MRDC manager was that they managed more than that per day. So impact wise we won't be a -- a huge impact to the -- to the system. So the evaluate our call volume. They gave us some cost estimates for service which are included in our -- in our budget. The tech staff came out did a preliminary study which kind of showed what we really felt was -- was the case. They don't have any dead zones on their preliminary study. We're in this part right here. We're kind of waiting for the recommendation from the Mesa manager so that we can apply for membership in the Page 72 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 73 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT TRWC. Everybody with me so far? It's a little bit of alphabet soup but it all really comes down to having a -- a high quality dispatch center. So once we get the approval, the final approval from Mesa and the MRDC manager then we go to the TRWC and apply for a full membership in the TRWC. Part of that will be that there'll be a formal study. They'll hire Motorola or Creative Solutions (ph.). They come out and similar to what we're doing with the roads they'll go to every area. They'll make sure that all of the -- we have coverage for 100 percent area here. And at that point they would make recommendations if we need to add another antenna. We do have a tower at station 1 on Palisades. We also have space with Fountain Hills Sanitary District Crestview and have the ability to put an antenna up there if -- if need be to help fill in any gaps that they may find. I think that, again, based on the fact that Rio Verde has great coverage, Fort McDowell also uses a Mesa channel. They're not necessarily dispatched by Mesa which gets a little confusing in its -- in its own self there but again we've got coverage through here as well as Scottsdale and the Automatic Aid system uses Mesa channels when they need to. And they've got coverage on the east side of Scottsdale as well. So I think that our infrastructure costs will be fairly minimal at that point if any that. Then I mentioned the G2 package which is a -- a station dispatch package which will come in and allow us to get those signals from Mesa when we have a call. It's a little bit different than the system we have now. Those estimates are also included in -- in our budget. And then that would be a happy day right there. Membership approval on the TRWC which kind of completes that dispatch package. That's also one of the criteria for the Automatic Aid application is that were dispatched by one of the two regional dispatch centers. So if there's -- are there any questions on the alphabet soup there? FRIEDEL: I have a comment. Thank you so much for all this work. You've done a very thorough job on this. And I know just speaking for myself on this, council, 1 appreciate that effort and I think every resident in this town will appreciate it too. So I think we're going to have a good quality fire department and I'm anxious to have it happen. OTT: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman? Page 73 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 74 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor and Chief I just got a couple questions here. One the -- like the current $4 and a half million to rural metro, does that include ambulance service or is that a different line item? OTT: There is no charge for the ambulance service. As -- and there would not be a charge if -- if we do a contract for ambulance service. There's a -- I could do a whole another -- whole other slide with a lot of other acronyms, but basically the ambulance services in Arizona are set up on a CON or certificate of necessity. There are five CON certificate holders for this area. Four of them are owned by GMR and one of them is Maricopa Ambulance. The thought is -- and again, we're working through our town procurement department to help kind of formalize that RFP to go out. But my guess would be that it's probably going to be looked at by AMR, which is a GMR company, which currently has an ambulance here or Maricopa Ambulance which services Scottsdale. They also have a secondary contract for Rio Verde. But those would be -- again, be no cost on the contract itself. Where they make their money is that they build a patient when they're transport them through. SKILLICORN: Isn't GMR the parent company of Rural Metro? OTT: Correct. SKILLICORN: Okay. Yeah. And I realized that it's -- you know, insurance company pays for that when -- when your guys go and get a cat out of a tree, you don't hand the cat a bill. But ambulance service is very different than ifs -- you know, insurance companies pay for that -- OTT: Correct. SKILLICORN: -- and there is a profit motive there. Is that the case -- is the case of a zero cost for all of them? I mean if it were my business I could show you a spreadsheet of revenue expenses and I can tell you if it's profitable or not. You know, I -- I don't know I mean I almost wonder if the -- the current contract subsidizes our -- our fire contract a little bit because they do make a profit on it. OTT: I'm not really sure on the financials on the -- where the money comes from on that side. 1 do know that the ambulance that we -- the fire rescue that we have which in the makeup of GMR is kind of separate from the AMR Ambulance. The -- the fire rescue that we have does pay for itself on the -- on the Rural Metro Fire side of things. So with Page 74 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 75 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT that in mind that keeps it attractive for an ambulance company to come in for a contract because they're not losing money trying to keep an ambulance here that doesn't -- SKILLICORN: Uh-huh. OTT: -- that doesn't transport. SKILLICORN: Yeah. And that -- and that's the profit center. And that's typically why like fire districts they're -- it's about the admin service and -- and that's what, you know, actually subsidizes the cost for fire and -- and rescue. Curious, the -- the -- the Rural Metro employees, the-- the firefighters themselves, are they going to go with Rural Metro or are we hiring new people? OTT: They're -- per each person up here, they are -- are willing to come over and be Fountain Hills Fire personnel. So everybody that's up here working now, the goal is to bring them over as -- as Fountain Hill employees. SKILLICORN: And the Rural Metro staff, what is their -- they're not involved in the plub -- the Public Employee Retirement Plan currently, right? They are -- they're in their own, you know -- OTT: Correct. They're the -- the company has a -- a 401k. They will match up to five percent if the employee contributes five percent. SKILLICORN: And the -- the public employee, is that a defined benefit, or is that a defined contribution? OTT: Under tier 3 there's -- MILLER: It's a hybrid. It's actually both a defined contribution and also a defined benefit, so it's like a traditional pension plus also -- like a 401 component. SKILLICORN: Uh-huh. MILLER: That was part of the reform that they did a few years back to try to address. SKILLICORN: And that's because all the new -- it would be considered new hire, correct? MILLER: So all new hires would be under that tier 3. I believe it's the -- the tier that they would be. And -- and there's -- it's -- right now, we would not have an unfunded liability as part of that. But were also not looking at joining it right away either. We would be -- they'd be in our 401 initially. SKILLICORN: Thank you. Page 75 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 76 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MILLER: I did want to bring up and you brought up the special district site for the fire districts and ambulances. So a number of other cities have started bringing in the ambulance service as part of their fire services 1 think it's too much of a risk for us because you have to invest in the ambulances and you have to do the billing and -- and yes, you could do a third -party billing. And -- and to your point that tends to be the more of the profit center on this. SKILLICORN: Uh-huh. MILLER: But 1 think as a community you know with -- with two stations, I just think it's just too risk -- too risky. And so that would be something in the future we'd like to see. Some of these other cities who just recently gotten -- gone into that. And 1 think it'd be something we'd want to look and see if it would be worth it but as far as I'm concemed contracting initially and having the contract is really the way to go because it's -- I think we want to be risk -averse initially on this. SKILLICORN: And -- and that I -- that I agree. I think that answers -- actually, great if you can give me the retirement details I'd very much appreciate that. I still think this takes like a double triple look at numbers. MILLER: So what I can tell you is our 401 right now is 11 percent and it's a mandatory contributory plan. So the employee has no choice. They have to contribute 11 percent. SKILLICORN: Uh-huh. MILLER: And it's matched by the town at 11 percent. I don't have the tier 3. We looked at it a few weeks ago and I don't have that, but we'll -- we'll certainly follow up with you and get you that information. SKILLICORN: Is there a separate -- you know, that's obviously 401 K that's retirement. Is there a separate disability insurance -- MILLER: The town does carry right now -- SKILLICORN: Yeah. MILLER: -- a separate disability plan for -- SKILLICORN: And I would love to see a spreadsheet with those numbers. MILLER: Okay. We'll follow up at a later date with you -- SKILLICORN: Yeah. MILLER: -- on that. Page 76 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 77 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT SKILLICORN: I think that concludes my questions. I mean, I still want to double and triple look. I just -- I am probably more risk averse than -- than most so -- MAYOR DICKEY: Speaking of risk, the idea of being on Auto or at least Mutual Aid is -- is a safeguard for our community. Does the Automatic Aid include any sort of equipment that we might not have that would be made available to us if we had some kind of a different sort of an incident? OTT: Madam Mayor, Council, that -- the Automatic Aid system has both the technical rescue teams and hazmat teams available as part of the response. Again, that's something that we don't currently have. Rural Metro doesn't currently have. And it would be kind of cost prohibitive for us at this point to try to formulate a, at least a hazmat team. We do have low angle technical rescue capabilities here. But anything over what the criteria is that makes it a high angle opposed to a low angle, we don't have the ability to do that without calling in additional resources. Under the Automatic Aid System that would be something that would be, again, as it implies, automatic opposed to us having to check for availability for someone that was willing to come help us. FRIEDEL- And Chief, I think if I remember correctly our new ladder truck once we enter that pool is a benefit to some other surrounding areas as well, right? OTT: That's correct. And -- and part of the Automatic Aid is -- is that you need to be able to provide services as well as get services. So -- but the call volume on the -- on the east side of Scottsdale is not that great. There are two areas of Scottsdale that you can't get to from Scottsdale that 1 would see that medical call volume wise we would probably run a few more calls in there. One of the other things is that Fort McDowell is also trying to get into Automatic Aid. Rio Verde just recently got into Automatic Aid. So again, that kind of bolsters are reliance on each other out here a little bit more. And it -- it would be a good overall benefit to the -- our part of the valley here. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Any other comments or questions? So it looks like it's almost noon. Do you want to stop now or is that -- MILLER: If the councils -- MAYOR DICKEY: -- okay with the captain? MILLER: If the council is up for it I think it's almost 12 noon so why don't you take your Page 77 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 78 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT lunch break now. We'll try to get back in maybe 20 minutes because I'd like to try to make sure we can stay on the schedule. MAYOR DICKEY: Sounds good. Thank you. MILLER: There are box lunches in the back of the room there. And we have some bottled beverages off to the far right. CLERKS NOTE: Council recessed for lunch at 11:56 a.m. and reconvened at 12:24 p.m. MILLER: Mayor and council, we're going to go ahead and so we could try to stay on schedule, were going to go ahead and proceed with the next presentation. So the next presentation is to provide the council an update on the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office intergovernmental agreement. So you'll recall that last year we did a extension of services that actually ran out through the end of June of -- of 2022. And we did a one- year extension of the intergovernmental agreement. David is going to come up to the podium -- Or actually you're going to do it from your seat there? He's got the remote and we're going to go ahead and give you an update as to where we are with that we just met with them about a month ago. And -- and then will kind of give you some information as to the -- the major points that we're trying to get included in the next agreement. With that, I'll turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer David Pock. CLERKS NOTE: Councilmember Skillicorn left the dais at 12:26 p.m. and returned at 12:27 p.m. POCK: Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Hope you enjoyed your lunch. Hopefully you're not so full that you fall asleep during this presentation or the most exciting one that's coming up in about three items. So as Grady mentioned yes this is MCSO, IGA kind of just an overview or where were at since our last discussion. So a little background. The current agreement that were operating on under currently began in July 2012. The initial term was for five years and so that covered fiscal years '13 through '17. After that initial term then it was five one-year renewals that took us through fiscal year '22. In fiscal year '20, there was one amendment done that changed the staffing ratio for the sergeants, also included some changes about ammunition charges, and then replace their indirect cost recovery with a three percent quote -unquote resort fee as we like to call Page 78 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 79 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT it. And then in fiscal year '22 as Grady mentioned there was an amendment to extend the contract one additional year, so that we could work on this new IGA. In anticipation of the contract expiring and -- and a new IGA being done, we also had a contract review conducted by our auditing firm HeinfeldMeech. They went through and looked at five fiscal years and got a little bit of information about how MCSO was performing against the contract, what was included in that. Also, we did a study -- a law enforcement study and hired Matrix Consulting. And that report was issued in November of this past year and kind of built on what HeinfeldMeech was able to put together, put it in terms of law enforcement since they had that expertise. Based on those two reports we were able to get a list of different recommendations to go present to MCSO. And that was done last month. As far as just some general considerations before a new IGA can be brought to council for approval or adoption, one of the main things that we're going to need to address is the staffing levels in that. Based on what we heard from Matrix, we -- we heard a lot of discussion about proactive time and how many deputies we had, how many we have contracted, how many we actually have, and even though we were short staffed or against that contract how much proactive time those -- those deputies had so that's something that needs to be addressed. A new IGA is going to have to be approved by the Board of Supervisors. So that's just gonna take some time, so it's not something we'll be able to necessarily wait until the last minute to do. [COUGH] POCK: Excuse me. Something that we did learn during our meeting last month with MCSO -- and you heard you know if you're watching any of the news or know what's going on MCSOs had a little bit of a challenge retaining deputies and also recruiting as with any other law enforcement agency these days. So to help in those efforts they've actually had a couple pay increases over this past year. They also are offering some incentives and bonuses to aid in recruiting. So obviously, that's going to pass along. So just to put a little -- a few things into perspective as far as fiscal year'23 our contract cost increased six percent over fiscal year '22. Considering the pay increases and bonuses and incentives I'm anticipating -- or we're anticipating that this increase for fiscal year'24 going forward into the new IGA is going to be at least a double-digit increase. So -- Page 79 or 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 80 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MILLER: So and -- and also we think that maybe we can hasten a little bit of that with the staffing that Matrix was recommending and what we currently have as far as staffing so that might be able to help get some of that double-digit increase down somewhat. POCK: Thank you for that water break. All right. So as far as the recommendations that we -- that we went with the MCSO, probably the first and foremost was the annual credit or offset mechanism to reconcile annual charges so each year when we receive the attachment A which is basically the worksheet based on the current year for the next year service, so it's basically forecasting our charges for that following year. At the end of the year we'd like to have a mechanism that would say okay well, we anticipated that this was going to be the cost. We anticipated that we were going to have 19 deputies and -- and so on and so forth. A way to reconcile that back to what actually occurred for that year. So that would definitely be a -- a big improvement. The next bullet point is dedicating all of District 7 to Fountain Hills. Currently, all of the Rio Verde and Fountain Hills deputies are located or consolidated within count -- in District 7 and stationed out of Fountain Hills. We would like District 7 to be Fountain Hills deputies only so that it's a little bit more transparent. It's a little easier on the billing there's not something to back out in reports and that sort of thing. MILLER: We found out too that Queen Creek -- when Queen Creek had the sheriffs office that Queen Creek had it -- Queen Creek was its own district as well. So it seems like it's something that they can readily do for us. POCK: We'd also like to implement monthly reports to increase the visibility and allow comparisons for staffing, investigations, and -- and that sort of thing. MILLER: The -- the last item you'll remember when Councilmember Spelich was on the -- it was a really big deal to find out on the criminal side what the clearance rates were. Basically this is the crime solved and what the rate of -- of clearances were. So we're going to have a number of performance measures that is going to make the overall intergovernmental agreement more responsive which Dave just put that slide back up. POCK: It's like I'm reading your mind. Yeah. So also including some performance measures. The only one that's currently in our IGA is response times, which they actually do very well. And our Matrix Consultant pointed that out during their review as well. Page 80 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 81 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT But it is a good time to include others. So and again, back to the dedicated District 7. If -- if it was dedicated to Fountain Hills that would be easier to do as far as those performance measures. As far as that possible staffing changes, these are things that have been discussed in the past. I put them in here maybe to -- to prompt some discussion so that we can address it going forward. There has been talk about adding an additional school resource officer. We currently have one. We've got two school campuses. It kind of makes sense to have another. As well as officially adding the deputy service aides. As you know we've -- we've got a few that are here now. They're not contracted. It's part of our contract. We're not paying anything for the -- those individuals here. If you remember back again to the report that there was quite a few. A lot of the calls for service that we have are maybe welfare checks, vacation checks, that kind of thing. Deputy service aides are able to do those types of calls. They're also able to stay behind maybe after an accident you know secured safety while people are -- while that scene's being cleared. It wouldn't tie up a deputy that's maybe able to go do some other duties at that time. So -- MAYOR DICKEY: Dave, can I ask you some -- POCK: Sure. MAYOR DICKEY: Is that what the -- that's not the posse, right -- POCK: No. MAYOR DICKEY: -- or is that something different? But they still exist but we just don't have one here is that -- POCK: As far as I know there's -- MAYOR DICKEY: -- what your understanding is? POCK: -- no posse in Fountain Hills. MILLER: Yeah. They're -- they're around the valley but we do not have a dedicated one just for our community. POCK: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: But there wouldn't be anything stopping that from happening, correct? I mean, it -- the program still exists. POCK: Correct. Page 81 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 82 or 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: I mean, you know -- POCK: As far as -- as far as I know, yes. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. POCK: And as far as I know it's a volunteer type organization so -- MILLER: Yeah. The -- the sheriff basically has this in the valley, but he is also required considerable amount of training for the requirements. So they almost have the same requirements not -- not quite but quite a bit like what deputies would be required to have. So it's just a liability situation to ensure that -- that the volunteer posse members are not going to be creating a liability situation for Maricopa County Sheriffs Office. POCK: Right. And yeah, just in case you didn't see him, we do have Captain Kratzer here he is you know supporting the undercover look today, but he might have some more information as far as what kind of training deputy service aides actually go through. KRATZER: Yeah. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Regarding the posse we do still have the posse program in place as many know with Sheriff Penzone. Excuse me. In our court order, the posse program was revamped to where any posse member who was already a current or existing posse member or wanted to be a future posse member, the hiring process for them or the vetting process is now the same as an actual deputy sheriff, so with the full background, full psyche eval, all of those things that a deputy sheriff would have to have to wear the uniform, carry a gun. Some of our posse members don't carry a gun but they still have to go through the background hiring process. So that weeded out a lot of the posse that were already there. Some of them didn't pass their background. Some of them weren't interested in going through that. And the ones that remained were the ones that passed. So we went from having a posse here in Fountain Hills probably when I first got here of around, I don't know if it was eight or nine, and now, there actually is still a Fountain Hills posse. It's made up of two members. The Fountain Hills commander -- posse commander who -- he's a busy successful business person and he's in Chicago probably two-thirds of the year, so I rarely see him. And then the other member is not very active either. So it's essentially non- existent in Fountain Hills. The program is still there. It still could get revamped if we still got members. But across the board we're seeing a very low number of volunteers coming into the program. And then if they do come in they have to want to be assigned Page 82 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 83 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT to Fountain Hills and not one of the other many posses that are there. So hope that helps. MILLER: Larry, just one other thing. I — I don't want to just talk about the posse today but when we had inquired about using them for special events like town special events we learned that there's actually quite a bit of a span of control. You want to kind of explain how that works? So it's -- it's not like you just get these posse members and -- I mean, there -- there has to be supervision over them. And you want to explain how that works? ICRATZER: Yes, that's correct, Grady. So with the court order that we're under the span of control for a sergeant or supervisor to deputy or line level personnel is one to eight. And if you exceed that number you have to articulate to the court monitor in the federal court why you exceeded that. So that really did handcuff us in terms of having -- back in the day when I worked in Queen Creek, we'd have parades or special events, and we'd have ten posse members you know for two deputies working the event. So that really did take that aspect away where those -- those posse members per the court order do count towards a supervisor span of control. So if we have six deputies working at an event and you had two potential posse members who were willing to come out and work, you would now be at the eight. You couldn't have three, four, five, six at that point. It had to be a combination getting the aides. So that is correct that that really did damper that. And then now with the low-level posse as it -- as it is in its current state we don't have the posse ability anyways for these special events like we did probably five years ago. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Okay. The easy question is like I'm assuming the town doesn't incur any expense with the deputy service aides, correct? KRATZER: At the moment, no. KALIVIANAKIS: At the moment. Okay. What I'm afraid of is when you go to a university that you said professors teaching classes and now all they do is write books and all you get is -- are teacher's aides. It's the same thing with doctor's offices. You used to be able to see the doctor and now you see a doctor's aide. What I'm afraid of here is if we're going to be paying Maricopa County for deputies and they're going to be sending deputy service aides, and so I would just like to address, is there any possibility that there's going to be a lot of deputy aides to replace deputies? KRATZER: It's -- do you want me to just take on this, David? Page 83 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 84 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT POCK: Sure. KRATZER: Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Kalivianakis. That -- we've had the deputy service aides now in existence for over a year now. We've had two of them here in Fountain Hills. One of them has been out for quite a while on a medical issue. But we've had one that's been consistent over the last four months on his own. And they do handle, as David said, a variety of calls. They can handle any call that is -- there's no suspect, that there's no crime in progress. Usually it's a report after the fact. And so that's where they're just taking factual information that the person's telling, them documenting if there's any follow-up, it's either assigned to a deputy or a detective. They do go and help -- help us handle minor accidents with no injuries. If a deputy has an accident with injuries and the vehicles are being towed that can take up to 30, 45 minutes so that service aid can sit there and wait for the tow truck and allow the deputy to go available. I don't know in -- in my -- I was skeptical with -- when the program first started that it wasn't going to provide us a whole lot of resources that were useful. And I've completely changed my opinion on that in terms of -- so this is my perspective. I -- I -- I kind of get where you're coming from for maybe Town Council or residence perspective of the -- you know, the switch there. But from my perspective as the division commander seeing that these deputy service aides can handle some of the low-lying calls. MCSO -- we differ from some of the other agencies in the valley where we'll take a report and respond to any call for service. Some agencies, and what the study had recommended is that maybe we cut out some of our -- you know, I don't know if it was your study. We're simultaneously doing a study with MTSO, a staffing study. And a lot of the recommendations arc that we quit responding to minor traffic accidents with no injuries. Or like Phoenix PD if you call in a fraud case you -- you call it in you call the information in and someone takes the audio and -- and writes what the person said. There's no officer coming to take that report. MCSO has not got to that point, and I don't think there's any interest and getting to that point. So the deputy service aid while we're taking calls for any kind of call that we get, I think they really serve a purpose. So I guess that is something though -- I -- I don't foresee you know the town saying they want to pay for 18 deputies and MCSO coming Page 84 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 85 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT back and saying well, we'll give you 15 and we'll throw in three deputy service aides. I do know as part of our normal town contracts moving forward that was a -- kind of a starter plan to see how it went. And I think moving forward the plan for the agency for any town contracts or any of our patrol districts is to require a minimum amount of deputy service aides as part of what we do and how we operate now. So I do think moving forward there will be a plan in place to provide deputy service aides. You know, and I don't know if the town will have the ability to say we don't want those two and -- or one, we don't want to pay for it. We want just deputies. 1 guess that'll be determined. So 1 don't know if 1 answered your question, but I do think there is a -- there is a probability that deputy service aides will take calls that deputies used to take, but they won't take any of the calls that a deputy should be responding to a crime in progress, suspect that's identified, any of those type of calls. KALIVIANAKIS: And then I'm assuming that the county also has insurance for these aides and adequate so if there's an accident or if they accidentally kill somebody's dog they're not going to sue the town, they're going to sue the -- the county; is that true? KRATZER: That's correct. They're -- they're all insured. MILLER: Yeah, we have a liability provision in the contract that completely provides protection for the town. So that's -- KALIVIANAKIS: Would that be in our policy or their policy? MILLER: No, it's their policy. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MILLER: And they indemnify the town. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. POCK: All right. So yeah. And then as far as -- just pass those deputies aides. If we wanted to maybe offset some of those costs with those other -- with the school resource officer and deputy service aides we might be able to adjust the patrol deputies to a low -- to a lower number based on -- on that discussion that we had when Matrix presented their report. So currently -- currently, our staffing levels -- and 1 don't know if I put it in this presentation, but one of the things that we did ask MCSO to do is to get away with -- away from this term of Beats just because nobody understands it except for law enforcement people. Page 85 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 86 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT You know, I think I remember seeing some TV shows about walking a beat or something in New York, but I don't know what it means. MILLER: Even their own budget and finance people didn't understand that. POCK: Right. MILLER: We had to actually point to the definition in our IGA so that they could like realize how many full-time equivalents it ended up being. POCK: Exactly. So according to the contract one Beat equals 24-hour coverage seven days a week for 52 weeks. What -- to have a person stand and you know on duty for that amount of time. So we have 3.8 of those. And that basically equates to the 19 Patrol deputies, three sergeants, 2.55 detectives which isn't a calculation or based on the calculation in the contract we would only have just under two. So that 2.55 was something that was written into the contract. For some reason, 1 wasn't able to find the specific reason but that is a higher number than what is required in the contract. Where was I? 1.25 lieutenants with the -- currently, the one SRO, clerical office assistant again which is more than what the contract requires based on the calculation. And then three quarters of a captain, but he's a full captain to me as far as I'm concerned. [LAUGHTER] POCK: So that's it as far as for the presentation. So if we have any questions. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. FRIEDEL: I have to bring this up. I like the additions to this. And this is not a slide on you or Captain, but where are we at with the audit and the -- and the funds that were due this town from that audit that all that hard work went into by our staff, by the people that we hired? I'd like to see something in this contract as an offset or a credit to make up for what were owed. We know we were understaffed. It was brought out by a couple of other parties. It hasn't been addressed. I think we should have something in here or a demand letter or something sent to these people and get this rectified because we are owed funds. And I think it's important that we get that taken care of and get that elephant out of the room because it's -- to me it's a cloud hanging over what were dealing with here. And we're gonna -- we're gonna sign another contract with these people after they didn't perform in the last one. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But anyway if this isn't the right place to bring this up let me know and well bring it up at another point in Page 86 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 87 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT time. MILLER: Mayor and Council, Councilmember Friedel, we -- we have discussed this both publicly and also in executive session, can't get into the executive session discussion, they disagree completely with our assessment. And you know, it's one of those situations -- and I -- as much as we believe that there was a level of service that was not provided because of the staffing deficiencies and what we paid, they made a really good argument. When you hear their argument they said and they made it very clear that they still continue to provide the service and it was there and they provided the service whether it was the FTE count or not, they continue to provide the level of service. And if they needed -- if we needed anything more than that they would have provided it. So we have stated that. I believe we sent a letter, like a demand letter to their chief financial officer from our chief financial officer. We're not getting anywhere on this. So if anything, it -- there is an impasse. However if you can go back to the other three slides I believe there is an offset that because of this all that came about we are going to have a new provision that is going to allow us at the end of the next l2-month period to be able to demand and they are agreeing to in the agreement, to refund as any money that is owing to us. So if anything what we went through with the audit that has come up with a way to -- a mechanism for us to demand and get money back to the -- to the town. 1 understand exactly what you're saying Councilmember, but I don't know what else we can do and -- and they're the only provider at this point that is providing the service, so I -- I don't know what else to tell you at this point. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor. So Councilman Friedel, Grady, thank you for that. And actually this is the what David Spelich was -- former Councilman David Spelich was talking about like over a million dollars I want to say the number he used. Is that documentation or the response from MCSO? Did they send us a letter? I mean, can we -- can we see that or -- MILLER: Didn't the chief CFO send you a letter back? POCK: I don't remember if it was an email. 1 know we have the presentation where they had their response. Page 87 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 88 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT SKILLICORN: And some of this might be old news but 1'd love to see that and evaluate. And you know, this would not be the time and place. We'd have to be an executive session talk about a lawsuit but if it's millions of dollars, it's probably worth our while to pursue that. But that's not -- that's not the scope of this meeting here. I still think through negotiation I mean this is something that I think we have some sort of remedy. I mean, it sounds like as I recall -- I mean, I don't know the exact details of what Councilman Spelich was talking about, but I want to say that there were, you know detectives that were billed to us that were never here or not working on things and you know, 1 think that's a serious charge. And I think that discussing it in a public way like this -- I -- you know, the media is here I think that that is appropriate. I think that the record should reflect that -- that, you know, I have not seen the numbers and I haven't seen the details. I'm more than happy to look at them, but you know Councilman Spelich has a -- you know, was elected one or two terms whatever it was. I mean, I think his questions should be answered and answered in a public session. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Yeah, I agree with Councilman Friedel. I -- 1 think there is just a little bit of a cloud over this contract. And I was -- been made aware of this. This -- I guess this would be a question for you Aaron. As -- as you have reviewed the contract, isn't there a provision for a third -party arbitrator or some kind of an ombudsman to handle this kind of a dispute? ARNSON: Oh, Mayor and Councilwoman, I'd have to go back and look at it specifically but regardless, 1 mean, there would be some sort of dispute resolution procedure in the contract, yes. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. MILLER: There wasn't in the current one. ARNSON: Oh, there wasn't in the current one. Okay. MILLER: That's -- that's -- that was part of the issue. ARNSON: Okay. KALIVIANAKIS: There wasn't? MILLER: We talked about it. Page 88 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 89 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT FRIEDEL• There was or was not? MILLER: There was not is my understanding. ARNSON: Right. MILLER: Because it -- it -- I'm sorry. It's typically something you don't see in another government providing another government service. So it would be if you had a -- you know a private entity that we were in contract with for services. ARNSON: Right. MILLER: But no, you don't typically see this between governments. KALIVIANAKIS: And -- and just because it's not specifically enumerated in the contract -- ARNSON: Right. KALIVIANAKIS: -- doesn't mean we couldn't ask for it. ARNSON: And that's a great -- that was the point I was going to bring up -- MILLER: We talked about that. ARNSON: -- is that it just because it's not laid out you know on the plain terms of the agreement doesn't mean that if there's a dispute where we can't come to an agreement of the parties that a mediator or something of that nature wouldn't be appropriate. KALIVIANAKIS: Precisely. ARNSON: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: I think some -- like I think some people have mentioned that they don't know how the details or have not, you know, heard all of this which did go on for a while and I, so I'd rather not discuss it because I think there's legitimate disagreement about what this -- but it was never millions of dollars. So let's just -- if were going to talk about the media were going to say that. I have a couple questions. So the District 7 aspect of it means they won't be physically there anymore either at -- MILLER: No. MAYOR DICKEY: -- housed at our -- MILLER: That's not -- that's -- it just means they'll still be on assignment downstairs. And we didn't have an issue with that. We made it very clear. We just wanted to have separation budgetarily from the Rio Verde assigned staff and employees. Page 89 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 90 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: 1 -- that's good because I think we always like to have more people around that are in law enforcement. I also wanted to ask about community policing. So as long as were talking about things that we might be able to put in here or -- or ask about. 1 know the way our places laid out it isn't as easy, but I would love to see a little bit more of that where the interaction is almost like at the schools where the kids all talk to the resource officer. And if there's ways to interact. And I know you do coffee with a cop and things like that, but I like that emphasis on that. 1 also wanted to ask about statistics. I know a few years ago -- I'm sorry Sharron, I didn't notice -- GRZYBOWSKI: No, Ijust popped on. MAYOR DICKEY: -- we had a per capita cost comparison with all the other cities whether they -- and we were so by far under per capita and per square mile of coverage from MCSO that I would like to see something like that again given you think it's going to get higher because we still have to put that relative to others. The only one that was close was Queen Creek I think, but then they went with their own. And so I would venture to say were probably still in really good shape when it comes to that. And again, when you have the lowest per capita, the lowest per mile, and then you're one of the safest zip codes in the valley, those are things to add in with all the other items that were talking about. So and I also want to thank you because I recently had to report a -- a potential threat to me. And I appreciate all your help with that. Councilwoman. GRZYBOWSKI: The November lst council meeting includes a draft report of recommendations from the Matrix Consulting Group. And if you look at pages -- beginning with page 4, they have law enforcement services recommendations. One of their recommendations is that we go from our 2.55 detectives down to two. They also suggest that the MCSO should report quarterly upon contract performance metrics to help identify issues early and devise potential resolutions. MCSO should develop a more comprehensive monthly invoice following Fountain Hills -- allowing Fountain Hills to perform a more effective financial monitoring of the share of charges. This should help resolve potential future contractual overcharge issues. There's -- there's a few other things there but those are a couple of the things that I wanted to point out quickly. Page 90 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 91 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT But 1 mean, I realize 2.55 down to two isn't going to save us a whole bunch of money, but that was one of the recommendations. The other number is if I remember correctly they said maintain the existing services. The three deputies per shift, the one Sergeant per shift, the support services which include the school resource officer, the admin, and the 911 dispatch. They said maintain -- they suggested that we maintain all that stuff. ' POCK: So Mayor, Councilmember, just to expand on that a little bit. So you're correct with the -- the detectives the contract actually calls out for .5 FTEs per beat. So if you say we have four beats that would be two detectives. I would say on the patrol side though with maintaining those numbers that you mentioned, that is the reduced staffing that we had when he was conducting the -- the study. Since that time and I wanted to make this point is as a result of the audit and the study, I think the captain would say that he's fully staffed now. So it did prompt some manager level changes at MCSO and actually got Larry the bodies that he needed to staff the contract completely. So 1 don't know if he wants to talk about that level of staffing versus what it was like before, but I think that's the -- kind of the discussion that we need to know what kind of staffing levels we want to ask for in the IGA. So -- KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. This isn't regarding Sharron's concern. The first thing I'd like to say is I'm -- 1 find it very disturbing that a threat was made on you that was serious enough to have to report to the sheriffs office. That's just unbelievably just terrible. So I'm so sorry for that potential threat. It's -- still it's ridiculous. But I did want to flesh out, Ms. Mayor, that you're -- did -- are you advocating like a citizens on patrol or something when -- when you just mention your statement? MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, you mean, the community policing? KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: It's just a way -- it's -- it's an actual defined -- MILLER: May I? MAYOR DICKEY: Go ahead. I'm sorry. MILLER: It -- it's -- it's actual philosophy. So it's where law enforcement works with the residents to help develop that rapport -- KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Page 91 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 92 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MILLER: -- so that they are more readily -- you know they're using their eyes and ears and -- and they're sharing when they do see things happen at the time that they see things happen. It's just a whole different philosophy. It's been around for like the last 20, 30 years, right, Larry? And -- and what you'll see is more often they'll -- they'll be out on beats. They'll be doing their patrols and -- and or maybe doing a bicycle patrol or walking patrol. And they'll just be interacting with people. It's not just driving through a neighborhood or something. It's -- it's much more interactive than that. And developing rapport with the residents. KALIVIANAKIS: Would -- would they have like uniforms? And it would be formal or informal? MILLER: No. MAYOR DICKEY: They're actual police officers. MILLER: It's -- it's police that are still doing it. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: It's more like the way our city is laid out, it's not -- our town is laid out it's not as easy to enact it because you're not walking around so much, we're mostly in the automobiles but it's just a -- KALIVIANAKIS: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: -- philosophy that f'd like. But no, they're actual deputies working. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. I like it. FRIEDEL: Can I make one request? MAYOR DICKEY: Of course. FRIEDEL• Can I ask for some consideration for an executive session on this audit -- MAYOR DICKEY: Sure. FRIEDEL: -- to bring these new Councilmembers up to date? I don't think it's an insignificant amount of money, personally, based upon what I think our people found. So -- but I -- I think it would be good to have a conversation about that and a direction. So an executive session might be warranted for that. Thank you. Page 92 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 93 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Councilwoman. TOTH: Thank you. Just a really quick question. So I remember not too long ago there was that update where the -- excuse me, where our detectives are in downtown, is that still the case? KRATZER: Councilmember Toth, that is currently the case, yes. TOTH: So we don't have detectives that work here on a regular basis? KRATZER: There are not detectives that are housed here anymore. Excuse me. TOTH: Okay. KRATZER: So the main difference was, yeah, prior to MCSO changing logistically that detectives were housed in each patrol district. We had three that were housed here, physically stationed here at the district. And then the agency made the decision to centralize all detectives and that was -- I want -- it's not quite been a full Year, probably been about cight months now. And all district detectives were now housed centrally in downtown Phoenix, so they still are assigned all the cases that would normally be assigned to detectives. They still get call outs from our patrol staff here for cases that are higher in significance or more complex cases, and they still respond and work the cases. They're just not housed here. That is the difference -- TOTH: Okay. KRATZER- - currently. MILLER: Larry, do you want to kind of explain when you have some -- some minor crimes you -- you have a -- kind of a hybrid how you're kind of approaching this due to that change, so you want to express that to the council? KRATZER: Yeah. So what Grady is talking about is our Squad 5. And we've talked about that a little bit at some of my monthly reports. In that squad they're -- they are a hybrid patrol squad. The detectives on -- or the deputies on that squad were former detectives working in those detective roles who opted to go back to patrol for whatever reason maybe not wanting to be on call 24/7. So what we've done with that unit is we will still utilize them to kind of bridge that gap. If there's things that come to us that are important for -- here -- us here in the town all utilize those deputies. I'll assign them a case that may be normally a downtown detective might have gotten and would normally Page 93 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 94 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT get to maybe and whenever they would get to that case, but maybe the case is a little bit more pressing in terms of like getting to the bottom of all right do we have -- do we have a significant crime here, do we have a suspect who's outstanding that we can bridge the gap and not, you know, have our downtown detectives have to come here get caught up with the scenario. So we're utilizing the Squad 5. And you may have seen it talking about some of the community policing aspect or philosophy based on that last study and now being fully staffed. The plan has always been -- since I've been here with Squad 5 or the amount of deputies that we had at one point that we didn't have for a long time after that, was to utilize them to be more interactive with the community when a HOA or a community calls and they want to talk about watch program -- neighborhood watch, those deputies will go out, they would speak to, you know, if there was an HOA -- HOA meeting or a board meeting they would talk about some strategies or plans. You may have seen within the last probably four months since we've been fully staffed, deputies on bikes now going up and down the avenues riding around the schools, being at the parks on the bikes. That was something when I didn't have the staffing levels that we were -- we were supposed to have, that I wasn't able to implement. So we're now back to doing those things. And those are the deputies that are doing bike patrols community policing being more interactive with the community but also then working some of these cases that might be the in-betweens where, yeah, it's going to go to detectives but on the list of priority of cases that they have it's probably not going to be worked immediately but I can assign those cases to these deputies and then they can handle those kind of middle level cases. So it's a way -- it's a creative way we found to try to still make it very personal for the town being that the agency made the change that they did that did take the detectives out of the patrol district here. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I notice those previous comments I think were critical of the contract not the service, and obviously, it's very important. Just a couple notes is that I personally have worked with an MCSO aide. And it was actually quite efficient because in my other contacts with Tempe Police or Phoenix Police, it's -- it's a long wait to talk to an officer long, long wait. Page 94 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 95 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT With this aide there still may have been a little bit wait but it was much more efficient. And then, basically, that person was able to take the stuff that an officer had to do and summarize it and get it the officer and it was so much more efficient in the program. So we do appreciate that, and it works out. A couple questions about the detective staffing. I know just -- so obviously it sounds like the detectives are now in Phocnix not out here, have the total number of the detectives gone down in the last couple years or is it the same or more? KRATZER: Councilmember Skillicom, is your question regarding more detectives assigned to this area or Fountain Hills -- SKILLICORN: Well, so -- KRATZER: -- or in general? SKILLICORN: -- part of it -- part of it comes down to is you know how do we make sure that there's accountability in the contract? I mean, we mentioned going from two and a half to two if they're not stationed here. 1 mean if they're stationed here hey look you know we have a physical body, we have key card swipes, things like that to verify that. But if they're not here, how do we -- how do we have some accountability and verify that? KRATZER: David, I'll let you speak on that in a minute. I see you're ready to talk about that. But one of the -- one of the things that I can speak to on that is I think that is where from the town's perspective with Mr. Miller and David Pock when they met with MCSO's executive staff one of the requests that they made was that the detectives be housed back out here and that is something that, when they met, they met with our Deputy Chief Russ Skinner. He's the number 2 in command under the sheriff. I don't know what the decision is on that or if the decision -- he did talk about logistically, this is what the agency has moved tom and you know carving out a difference for you know one area might be a challenge. And I don't know that he committed one way or the other. I can let David maybe talk to that if that's something that he has knowledge of. But one of the other things that I know David was looking at and Mr. Miller was looking at was some sort of -- and it came from Councilmember Spelich when he was on is that you know can we get some reporting of the assigned cases to detectives of cases that are in Fountain Hills -- Page 95 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 96 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT SKILLICORN: Yeah. KRATZER: -- and then the clearance rate. And I think all that kind of speaks to the accountability, knowing if these cases are being assigned, if they're still being worked, they're still actively being investigated and solved whether it's in an active case and there's no solvability factor or that it is getting solved and cleared by an arrest. So I think those are some of the things that go into the accountability aspect of that, but I'll let Mr. Pock speak on the rest of that. POCK: What he said. But you know you've made a couple comments there I just wanted to clarify and make sure there isn't any confusion over. During the initial findings that we received from HeinfeldMeech, the auditor, when they went through and -- and checked as far as the contract the staffing required and then the staffing as reported by MCSO with payroll records there were no -- in those records, there wasn't any indication for HeinfeldMeech, or they found no indication that there were detectives on those payroll sheets. However, during -- when that was brought up with our meeting with MCSO it was just a reporting kind of a coding thing. We actually did have detectives here. And there were actually three. So it was just a matter of the way it was reported by MCSO. So I just wanted to be clear that there has never been a time where we haven't had any detectives it was just a matter of getting it -- the records and knowing the correct code to find them. SKILLICORN: That's very helpful. And then just makeup of officers and let's say aides too it might be a little different, MCSO, did they -- I assume they have mostly full-time sworn deputies. Is there a few part times also? KRATZER: No, all of our swom personnel are fulltime. SKILLICORN: Are all fulltime. What about the aides? KRATZER: They're all fulltime. SKILLICORN: And then what's assigned here, you know, do we still have, you know, effectively are mostly the -- the same core group of deputies that -- you know, you get to know the community, you get to know individuals, the individuals get to know the deputies, things like that? KRATZER: Yes, Councilmember Skillicom, that's correct. And one of the things in the contract that is outlined is that the town manager can have some input or say into Page 96 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 97 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT personnel assigned to the town. And then there is a -- there is verbiage in the contract about a two-year commitment minimum for the patrol staff that are assigned here which is for that reason for them to get to know the community, for them to understand the nuances of -- of the community so you're not putting new bodies in and out of here every other month where you know they don't know -- you know, when we talk about those things it's like the issues with short-term rentals that a deputy working in maybe downtown Phoenix never had to deal with and all of a sudden now it's a quality of life issue that we deal with quite a bit here. So for those reasons, yeah, we try to keep the core. And we're -- we're fairly successful at keeping our main core of deputies here with the exception of deputies who get to promote up or go to detective positions and advance in their career. SKILLICORN: And Mayor and Captain, so it sounds like the town manager's looking over your shoulder on that schedule too, right? Is it the same for aides? Is it the same core or is it -- is that maybe a little more transitional? KRATZER: That potentially could be more transitional. But what I found in the time that we've had it I've had the same two for the entire time. And both of those two deputies neither of them live here in town. One of them actually lives Mountain Carefree but wants to keep working here in town. He had the opportunity to go to District 4 which is Carefree Cave Creek to be closer to home but he enjoys working in this community and is opting to do the commute -- SKILLICORN: Okay. KRATZER: -- to work here. So 1 don't see it being -- it could potentially be different than the patrol deputy staffing. I could see it not being as vital, but I think out of just the way business is done they're probably going to stay pretty set in a district. SKILLICORN: Thank you so much. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. KALIV IANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Just --just to clarify what I -- I think you said and without having to go back into the minutes and re -read it, is there talk underway right now of bringing those detectives back to Fountain Hills? Is that what you Page 97 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 98 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT said? KRATZER: Yes. Councilmember-- KALIVIANAKIS: Kalivianakis. KRATZER: Kalivianakis. Sony. Not (indiscernible). I hope I didn't speak out a turn on that. I do know that that was something that was -- that Town Manager Miller had been impressed upon by the council to have those Councilmembers put -- or the detectives be put back here. And it was presented to our executive staff. 1 don't know if they've provided a response back on that yet or not. I'll be honest, I got the impression that it's thc way thc agency was moving, and that the agency may come back and say were unable to do that. But I'm not -- I didn't make the decision. I don't make that decision. And I don't know if that decision has been made. But I do know that the request was made that we do house them back here. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. KRATZER: So whether or not logistically -- KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MILLER: And the requests had to do with the -- the intergovernmental agreement. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MILLER: So that would be actually spelled out in the intergovernmental agreement. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Good. Well, thank you for doing that, Mayor and Grady. Thank you for making that request for us. I -- I do hope it turns out to be a favorable for Fountain Hills because there's a very favorable tertiary aspect to having detectives here as we all -- as you know. And that is when you're investigating something with a deputy or Lieutenant they're right in the next room and so you could tap on that experience level of having a detective here. Even if we had one detective here and that you're a busy shift so it would be a very valuable. Because right now, of course, they have to go through a process to get input from the detective. So I just -- I just hope they bring them back. FRIEDEL. I know former Councilman Spelich had volunteered to help us with this contract and the IGA, have we reached out to him at all for any input? Is it too late in the process? Can we get his opinion on what we've got here to make sure we're all buttoned up on this? MILLER: We -- we thought that before we bring back a draft IGA to the council that a Page 98 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 99 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT team of three retired public safety officials would have a chance to look at it and give us some feedback. It didn't make sense to do it on the front end because we had the -- the Matrix study that provided a lot of great direction. We also had David Spelich's direction. So from my perspective I think it makes more sense when we get a draft and before it's ready to take to our council, I think it's -- it's -- we've got like three people I know off top of my head that 1 would have run by and -- and David would be one of them. FRIEDEL: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: I have a question about the detectives. So do all detectives work every kind of crime or incident? KRATZER: Mayor Dickey, that -- that was the way it was when district detectives were at -- assigned to the district. And that was -- I probably didn't do a great job of kind of rehashing that or going over that again. That was the main driving force of -- of the sheriff deciding to centralize the detectives and put them in downtown Phoenix because before when they were at the district they wore all hats. They did property crimes. They did paper crimes. And then they did person crimes. So a detective today might be dealing with an assault case and then tomorrow he might be working on a fraud scheme case. And so I think the belief from the agency was that they weren't specialized in any one area. So what they have now is as they're centralized, the detectives are broken up into person crimes detectives and that's all that they do. They were broken up into paper crimes detectives and that's all that they focus on. And then their property crimes and that's all that they do. So if today we had a large burglary here in Fountain Hills that was a high dollar burglary we would call our detectives and our property crimes detectives would come out process the scene and work the case. So and the idea was they would get specialized training in that area of expertise that they're in and not have to worry about trying to be good at -- for three things but an expert at the one thing. So that was the mindset behind the move and the centralization. So did that answer your question? MAYOR DICKEY: Is that happening then? KRATZER: That is happening now, yes. MAYOR DICKEY: So is it -- is it possible that we would get better service by them Page 99 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 100 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT being located downtown? KRATZER: 1 believe that's the -- that's the outlook on it, that it would be better quality service. What I can say is in the time that we've already went to this in the last eight months the response of the detectives and the call outs, they're coming out for cases that usually when we had district detectives here, may not have risen to the level of us having the detectives come out at, you know, one in the morning for a burglary, and now this unit because they have more detectives assigned to those -- each unit for person property and paper crimes, they're coming out on the calls that detectives normally wouldn't have coming out -- came out on. And so it does seem, from my perspective, that these cases are getting better attention. I guess the solvability factor would maybe be important to see. But I -- but I do believe that that is the and -- and just if -- if it was ever of value the offer has been made by our captain of that division and even the chief of that division to come out and do a presentation of -- of the benefits of having them centralized. And 1 know it was that in you know request to having the detective staffed back here and them wanting to at least give the reasons why we went to it and -- and show the benefish -- the benefits of the town of what they get with them being centralized. Understanding that, yeah, you're not getting the detectives that are housed here. And -- and I'm down the middle on that. I -- I totally see, and I always appreciated having my three detectives here and being able to go to them and make certain cases that were important for the town priority. Whereas when they're downtown, you know, it may not have the same level. Like for example when we had the damage at the park if that gets assigned to a deputy downtown, a property crimes detective, with $700 worth of damage, you know that might go on the stack and be the fifth priority case. Whereas, here in Fountain Hills if I had my detectives here because in Fountain Hills it's a big deal and we need to get to the bottom of it and hope deter that crime might be the detective's top priority of that day. So it gave me -- it gave a little bit of flexibility in that regard. But then in the bigger picture I'd also see the value of having the expertise in each area. So I think you could slice it either way. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, that's worth knowing before we know -- we should know what we're pursuing and why. Page 100 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 101 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT Anything else? All right. Thank you very much, everyone. Our next item is a request by Councilman Ski llicorn to review homelessness issues. Grady or Allen? SKILLICORN: Yeah, I've got a handout here. I think Grady did ask me for stuff, but I don't think I got them to him in a timely fashion for the packet. Yeah. This is a -- I just -- I threw this together. It's something that we should just discuss. You know, I do have some ideas about things. And there's one thing I forgot to put on here that I wrote down. So clearly you know there's -- homelessness is unique but it's riot really homelessness that we're trying to tackle because you know there's nothing illegal about being homeless. But there's certain things that we can enforce as a community and probably most of these ordinances are in the books, but you know we can enforce littering, we can enforce, you know, jaywalking, and specifically, someone coming from the right away into traffic to ask for money. I mean, that would -- you know would be -- it is hazardous and it's jaywalking. We can enforce different kinds of public intoxication standards, you know, public urination and such. So there's things that we can do there to actually address the problems and not, you know -- you know, not punish someone for our circumstances but for actual violations there. So that's something that we should discuss. And I'd like to probably give people's ideas before I move on to that second part because there is something that -- and it isn't necessarily about panhandling. It's about you know really a different issue. And then the third one was that I know I talked to Grady about this quite a while ago, about potentially -- you know if we're looking at especially some zoning changes about parking, you know, we -- there are some things we could address about overnight parking and -- and things like that. But 1 mean, 1 just -- maybe get some feedback from people. You know some of this might be -- sound controversial but you know, frankly, you know, most of these ordinances and laws are in the books. MAYOR DICKEY: You're right. They are on the book, so I think that enforcing those are on the table. But 1 don't know about the jaywalking one because we just put a crosswalk that like almost the only one in a very big arca in Saguaro, so you might have to look at that one a little closer because I know that there's a lot of people have to cross. Page 101 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 102 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT And I don't even know if we have a definition of jaywalking in Fountain Hills. Or I mean because if you're just -- if you are only allowed to cross at a crosswalk I think there's probably a lot of that going on then. SKILLICORN: I don't think we're going to omit any crimes here. But I -- something obviously, we should probably a lot of this talk with, you know, our representative from MCSO, but 1'm going to guess that you know if -- if the council decides to put more direction of this there's certain things MCO (sic) is not -- like let's say -- let's say we passed an ordinance like Glendale did, I have a feeling MCSO would not enforce it. We could always have that discussion, but we know we -- maybe it'd actually more realistic to talk about what can be enforced. There might be a greater directive. I mean, even if MCSO would issue a ticket for something, you know, is the county attorney going to you know actually going to do something with it also. And that's something you probably have coming down for you guys. You know, Captain, do you have any thoughts or comments? KRATZER: Yeah, Councilmember Skillicom, thank you. I can speak to a couple of those things. There -- Fountain Hills is unique in -- in a lot of ways especially in the area of crosswalks or lack thereof in the large gaps that are between intersections, so you know there is Arizona revised statute about the requirement to cross at a crosswalk being that one is provided. And then there are some exemptions for areas that has like a -- like a side road that might connect and there's no crosswalk allowing individuals to cross in those areas without being in violation of not crossing in a crosswalk. The one thing -- and you know, I'm not at all trying to suggest that you're stating this, but one thing we would have to just be certain of MCSO is that we're enforcing everything equally across the board, that were not looking to enforce certain rules on certain people more than we would for the general public. So like we couldn't make sure that we're just, you know, tackling ajaywalking issue for those that we believe are homeless to get to the, you know, bottom of that or maybe fix that issue. We would just -- if were going to do -- you know enforce and -- and step up our enforcement on -- on jaywalking or littering, it would just need to be across the board that were enforcing that with anybody in the town. And you know, one of the things we know, we get the feedback, we get the calls for service from residents, you know, Page 102 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 103 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT regarding some of the homeless individuals in town. And some are violations, and some things aren't violations. And we're just pretty clear and transparent with the caller that yeah that's, you know, not a violation of the law. There's nothing, unfortunately, that we can do to resolve that issue. But then there are some things that we can do to make sure that the deputies are well aware. We've worked with the businesses here in town Safeway, Bashas, the Circle K's to just remind them. And I -- I took the time to clearly outline to the store directors and managers, you know if they -- what their abilities are and what they can do if they have individuals on the property that they don't want there. You know, how they can trespass them or tell them they're not allowed there, that they could call us, and we could provide that formal notice. When it crosses the line of being trespassing in a criminal violation just to make sure they totally understood what their rights were as a property owner or store or a business. And then we sent deputies out kind of in the community policing aspect to go and meet with the store owners and businesses and churches in the valley just in the town just to kind of reinforce the email and the topics that we talked about. So I do think that there are, you know, steps that we can take if -- you know, one of the things we get called on quite a bit are for cars parking overnight and some of the private property locations, and so we have trespassed numerous individuals that were homeless individuals living out of their vehicles from those properties. And kind of what we see on some of them as they'll move along to another private property until they get asked to leave. And you know, until they actually refuse to leave or have been told to leave and they don't they haven't broken the law yet. So were -- were taking calls for that. We're -- were doing those things. The littering, I know that was a issue with maybe one or two individuals pretty consistently of -- of you know, leaving trash behind in a certain area that they like to panhandle. And some of our contacts with some of the folks in town who were homeless, not all of them, but we -- we did identify that several of them have some -- what appears to be some mental health issues where a deputy will make an attempt to contact them, even just to check on them give them some bottled water, see if they need any resources. And -- and some of them don't want any contact law enforcement. One individual runs or yells a deputy any time they go near them or come by them. So unless there is a violation Page 103 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 104 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT of the law we're not forcing that contact. You know, it's a consensual contact. So 1 know I said a lot -- a lot of that and t may not have said anything, but if there's anything more I could ask -- answer for you. FRIEDEL I noticed you had permits on here Allen. Cottonwood has a permit process for panhandlers. Maybe that's something we could take a look at and see what they're doing up there. MAYOR DICKEY: Who does? FRIEDEL: Cottonwood. SKILLICORN: Actually, Mayor and Councilman, 1 -- 1'd like to finish each kind of section, but yes, we can talk about that. So not snubbing or anything but -- MAYOR DICKEY: Go ahead, councilman. SKILLICORN: All right. Yeah. And if just -- I don't know if anyone has any other questions. So Captain, if the council gave you more direction of you hey, the -- you know, we'd like to look at littering more, we'd like to look at some of these other things more, the -- the -- especially, the jaywalking. I mean, I'm not specifically -- but if -- I don't know what the crime is if -- but people should not be filtering in the intersections in the road because people are going to get hurt. And I want to guess that there's -- there's also some sort of ordinance or law against someone just randomly going out in the road to panhandle basically. And you know, that is a safety issue, and you know, it could -- but if there isn't maybe we address that. But I don't know, do you need more direction from council to be more effective? KRATZER: Councilmember Skillicom, council can obviously, you know, give us their recommendations or requests for added enforcement and -- and we would -- we would definitely oblige to, you know, as long as it's enforcement that we can take that wouldn't be targeting. And -- and that's not to say we can't enforce littering or impeding the roadway because it typically folks that may be doing it would be homeless, 1 mean, to -- to your point that is a safety issue if people are going into the roadway where cars are and panhandling. I mean, that's a crime and we would enforce that. So one of the things 1 think a lot of people believe is that in the medians that you know people can't be in some of the medians. Page 104 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 105 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT And we've had some internal conversations and there are some things that have been done in some cities and towns that prohibit that. I don't know the ins and outs of that. You know, we usually just enforce law we don't come up with the laws or take part in the drawing of the laws. But we -- we could absolutely if that's you know council's requesting that we take added enforcement on specific issues we absolutely would. We would just make sure that were doing it equally across the board for, you know, all individuals not just one population. So and then in regards I know you said earlier if there was an ordinance passed. And Grady's experienced this in the past with the prior captain who was here if there is an ordinance that's passed and MCSO feels like well this could put us in jeopardy of -- of -- of targeting or discrimination, like our -- the people that represent us as the Maricopa County's Attorney's Office. And we would just run it through our legal team to make sure it's not putting us out there if we were to enforce the -- the ordinance or the law that, you know, it's not putting us in any undue concern of discrimination or anything like that, so I hope that answers your questions. SKILLICORN: And that's appreciate -- that's understood. And actually there's an advantage to having a contract with MCSO because let's say we passed an ordinance like that if -- if MCSO is not going to enforce it because there might be constitutional issues it protects us from, you know, that liability. So that -- that is something that's there. Yeah, I think you -- MAYOR DICKEY: Aaron has something to say. Let's see what that is. ARNSON: Sure. You know, I -- I want to speak to a couple of the issues that we've been discussing on -- on this subject. The first and sort of 30,000-foot level is that I think the way that we've been discussing going about this process is right. The first thing that we should do -- that you should do as a council in consultation with your -- with your town attorney and any other individual that we may need to bring into the conversation from town staff, would be to have -- talk about what courts have found to be constitutionally permissible and what they have found to not be constitutionally permissible. We've done a fair amount of this research and some of the councilmembers who have held over from the 2020 -- from 2020 will recall that we've had an executive session about -- about that before. Page 105 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 106 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT So that would probably be useful to revisit or to visit in the first place for some of the folks that just recently came on. So that would, I think, really help set the groundwork for what's going to be within our scope at all right going forward. Most of the things that you put on the list here, at least the ones in the top, are perfectly within the scope of what the council can do and frankly should do with respect to providing, you know, direction for enforcement. There are other things and the town manager, and I were just sort of talking over here, that where there are things that are -- are pretty clearly, we can get the into these more in an executive session in a privileged setting, but types of ordinances like aggressive solicitation and things like that, that -- that simply don't stand up to constitutional scrutiny anymore particularly post Reed v. Town of Gilbert. So we can talk through those, but I wanted to -- to bring that to the councils attention that I -- like most of these discussion points I would like to be able to provide you all with the opportunity to -- to see what's going to withstand legal scrutiny and what's likely not particular. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor. MCMAHON: Capt. Kratzer, don't you enforce these particular littering, jaywalking regardless of the -- if the person is homeless or not across the board? I mean, isn't that your job as a police officer and your -- your team? KRATZER: Councilwoman McMahon, yeah, I would say that that would be within the normal scope of our duties and there would be an expectation by me and the lieutenant and the supervisors if those violations are occurring that they'd be enforced. MCMAHON: Regardless of whether the person's homeless or not? KRATZER: Yeah, that's correct. MCMAHON: There could be a drunk citizen peeing in the bushes or however you want to say it, you see him you're going to enforce it, right? KRATZER: Yeah, I would say -- MCMAHON: There's no need to have any extra directions or anything for you guys. I mean, you already know your job. You know approximately how many homeless people we have here which compared to other cities is not much. And I don't feel like this is singling them out. And I -- I just don't think an ordinance or anything like that is necessary. You're already doing this. Page 106 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 107 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Now, this isn't necessarily a question but just an observation I guess because of my former experience as a prosecutor. Littering, jaywalking, intoxication, urination, a woman came up to me a couple weeks ago and said that someone exposed himself to her and her child and she reported it to her town council person and I'm like -- KRATZER: (Indiscernible) duty. KALIVIANAKIS: -- yeah, maybe to be reporting this to Maricopa County. So I tend to agree with the vice mayor. This is really -- you're going to enforce these things if you see them, but you don't see them, so that's what we need the public for is to -- to if they see something say something. This is all about what the -- what the mayor was talking about with community engagement. And again, maybe we should do a PR -- a publicity -- a campaign to tell people, yeah, don't tell your town council person when your house got robbed. Okay. Take it up with the people that are responsible for that. And -- and that note last night, I had went to the Tap House around 10:30. And there was a gentleman who was extremely intoxicated that left the Tap House, went out to the street, and collapsed dead drunk. And we reported that. And you probably got the call around 10:30 last night on the -- on the Parkview. KRATZER: They did not wake me up. KALIVIANAKIS: Oh, okay. [LAUGHTER] KALIVIANAKIS: Well, there was a call at 10 30 last night and that was made by your town councilwoman. And so again, you know, you see something like that this guy's gonna kill himself. He wanders out in the street and collapses. So this is really just about seeing something and reporting it to Maricopa County and then they'll follow up. Or if in the case of urination or exposure just take -- take a picture and then you can call 911. Okay. And they can handle it. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. GRZYBOWSKI: One of the things I wanted to remind people 1 talked about it at the last council meeting which I'm pretty sure was last week, the crisis response team is working with Larry and his crew and with Dave and his guys to go out to these kinds of things. Page 107 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 108 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT They are trying to help as much as they can. I don't remember if 1 gave this as an example last week so if I'm repeating myself I'm sorry. One couple said they didn't want help they just needed to be able to fix their car. And Tomayos (ph.) people took him out to wherever and got the -- whatever they needed just to fix the car. And 1 assume they actually got it fixed and left. And then Dave worked on reimbursing them. So in addition to these things happening we do have what I have felt is a gap with somebody offering to help when the -- the fire or the police crews go out there, we do have another alternative forum that's beyond just giving them a ticket for doing one of those lists of things there. Which I think is also a very important part of helping the homeless population. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Sharron. 1 know councilman mentioned Glendale. And I just wanted to say that Glendale and Phoenix are all getting -- having legal action against them. So to Aaron's point I think well -- we should look at this and see what we can do in a legal way to try and alleviate some of the suffering. And as you know, obviously, Grady wrote in all of these efforts that are happening between us and with MAG, the whole Arizona Town Hall that just got done a couple days ago or with their report was all about this, so it's -- it's everywhere. It's something that is multifaceted you know, and -- and were all working on it. But I think we'll have an executive session at some point and then see where we go. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor. And I'm all for Glendale using their legal resources to fight this all up the Supreme Court and not ours. But we should learn from them when something happens. And you know the new makeup of the Supreme Court might change things too. But kind of moving on to the next one this is something an old town -- my old town did is -- and I put in their sensible street peddling regulations. So I don't see it so much here maybe because it's so hot here, but we used to have where I came from charities would go out in the intersections and they would give away tootsie rolls for your -- your -- basically your change -- your pocket change right. And this was a big fundraising thing. Well literally, they're out there in the street. It was dangerous. And one thing that my old town did is that we made -- we asked them to register. We created an ordinance that they had to be registered. They do like a, you know, a video safety training, like, you know, like, in like a 30 minute, you know, how to Page 108 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 109 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT not get run over by a car. They had a little -- wear a little like yellow vest and it -- it was also -- you know, it got rid of a nuisance, but it whittled out if you're legitimate charity you -- you would comply. If you're not legitimate you would not comply. But also I think that this address some -- if we have panhandling issues. And 1 think that we probably do. If we have a panhand -- like -- and I don't want to say panhandling but a -- like a peddling ordinance. You know is the person -- does the person have a permit? Does the person have training? And you know and -- and this is a -- a legal way of preventing, you know, people from having someone come up to their car window and asking them for change for good and bad reasons. MAYOR DICKEY: I'm pretty sure we do. Grady. MILLER: Yeah, I just wanted to just say I mean, I -- I hadn't thought about that from a panhandling standpoint, but we definitely have a peddler's license requirement. POCK: Yeah. MILLER: People like going door to door. POCK: Yeah. MILLER: So they have to take out a license. And David, do you remember what -- how that works? Like it's only good for a certain period of time, correct? POCK: I believe it's 90 days for a peddler's license. MILLER: 90 days. The license or permit is only good for that. SKILLICORN: That's fair. MILLER: And it's a very nominal amount but that way typically they have to show it too if somebody goes door to door and somebody doesn't want them or wants to make sure they're authorized they have to show it. They have to carry it on them at all times. POCK: Correct. Each one -- KRATZER: Like people go indoor -to -door selling magazine subscriptions and that kind of stuff. POCK: Right. It -- it is a badge that they have to -- I mean, anyway, a laminated badge that each person that's associated with that license receives -- SKILLICORN: Yeah. POCK: -- after the background check. Page 109 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 110 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT SKILLICORN: Thank you. And Mayor, staff, I want to be crystal clear this is not panhandling, this is peddling. But the activity of approaching someone at their car window is -- it's the same activity. POCK: Right. SKILLICORN: And this is a way to regulate it appropriately and legally and safely. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Anything else? Oh, you're still -- I'm sorry. SKILLICORN: No, I don't have -- another question or something about that one. It is -- so we already have an ordinance on the book maybe you and I will chat about it. MILLER: Sure. Yeah. [CROSS TALK] MILLER: Yeah, it's 8-2-3, is that -- ARNSON: Yeah. And I took a quick other look it's 8-2-1 and then all the sections that follow in Chapter 8. So -- SKILLICORN: Okay. Yeah. We'll probably get an updates. Maybe -- ARNSON: Okay. SKILLICORN: -- maybe work with the captain. And then the last one that I did not include there in this I wrote it on mine, but that's something I talked to Grady a while back about and if we are going through the zoning -- you know, actually any zoning changing -- changes on private property, we could consider some sort of language about overnight parking bans on private property as part of our zoning code. And to give you an example you know the -- you know, on vacation a few years ago I took a trip out to Yellowstone. Drove across the country. And it's very common for urban campers to use either Walmart or other big box store retailers to camp at. And I remember recently having a situation where 1 had a car that, you know, needed service and I was in a town that I -- I was like well, 1 could -- 1 could leave it ovemight at the service center and they had a ban on it in that town. And that that business it was -- it was specifically the Walmart like Auto Tire Center. Well, Walmarts are always I like that. But the that town had an ordinance not allowing overnight parking there. And that's -- you know, maybe that's something that we consider here. Maybe you know -- you know, I know there's some that already have Page 110 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 111 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT some owning and that they allow it because there's -- there are some parking lots private parking lots here where they allow that kind of activity already, but maybe that's another thing to look at and there's an avenue for us to act through our zoning laws. MILLER: It's a good question. In fact, I gave direction to our development services director after you and 1 talked. So right now he's going through a parking ordinance 1 believe, correct, John? But I also asked him because it -- it was a completely different request that you and I had. So it would likely be a parking regulations that would be addressed outside of zoning. So because right now, I mean, we might get into a Prop 207 and kind of situation where there's a taking if we try to mandate you might have like a car service center that if they -- like the -- the Big 0 Tires might have cars parked out at night, so we may have to just go down instead of through zoning we may have to just do it as a parking regulations ordinance. SKILLICORN: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and that was not my intent. I mean, that is -- you know, I'm a busy guy. I need to get an oil change. I -- I ain't going during working hours like I'm going to go when I have time to drop something off. MILLER: Right. SKILLICORN: So that's not my intent to change, but you know, there's opportunities to -- you know, I mean, we -- we are the jewel of the valley. And we -- there's things we can do to keep it that way. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, no signs. No. [LAUGHTER] SKILLICORN: No billboards. GRZYBOWSKI: In addition to the cars that have to maybe drop off their car tonight because they expect it to be worked on tomorrow morning or the -- the tire folks that park the cars that they're currently working on outside of their garage at night, we have to remember we've also got the rental car people that have cars parked in parking lots and we've got the U-Haul people or Budget Rental Truck people that that is -- that's like their advertisement too. That it's parked on the street to remind us that we can rent the truck, but it's also the only place they have to put it. So we have to keep that stuff in mind as we come up with those kind of ordinances, please. Page 111 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 112 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT SKILLICORN: Absolutely. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. We're going to move on to the community center now and talk about --1 think, are you going to do it, Justin? WELDY: Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Councilmembers. It's without a doubt the community center is -- is one of the most popular amenities that the town has, and it's as widely used as any one of our parks, and I would argue gets as much traffic -- foot traffic as some of our local streets. With that said, obviously during the renovations, it was brought to the current staffs attention that there were issues that we were not previously aware of in regards to water coming in the doors, windows, and walls. Since that time under the direction of the Town Manager, Mayor, and Council, and working with community services staff we have managed to address the lion's share of these issues. We're going to go through just a few of them here that we have -- all these things were identified and addressed. The first one up there with the check mark wasn't widely discussed but it was a necessity to address this because it was strongly believed that some of the moisture in the community center prior to us removing the floors and seeing water running across them, could have been possibly coming from under the slab. There's still a possibility of that moisture because there's not a vapor bearing under that slab, but we now know that the under -slab pipe investigation -- so these are the sewer pipes and other pipes under the -- under the building they're not leaking. I would like to say and for those of you that did not have an opportunity in regards to the window wet ceiling, I'm a homeowner . Do a lot of work on my home and a lot of caulking and after having seen these professionals work on the community center, I probably will not ever do it again if anybody can see me. Their work was amazing. They did not actually touch it with their hands. They brought it here as a specialty product. They tinted it to match our paint and or our trim. And if you walk over there and look at it it's amazing. We now know at least based on the last few storms including the wind, rain, and dust that that wet ceiling around those windows is working. How long that's going to work as a term a determination that the architectural firm that we are now working with, and we're going to discuss that shortly, is going to provide that information for us. But for right now it's working. We also addressed -- and oftentimes, you would hear myself or the facility supervisor right behind Page 112 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 113 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT me here I use the term no hub. And so basically what were describing is a mechanical drain pipe that's really not mechanically fastened but it's kind of a pressure fit. The community center has a series of roof drains that actually come down through the walls and then go under the slab. The town staff, Steve Bartlett and -- and his two plant mechanics, Paul and Mark, have addressed again the lion's share of those. But each time another one pops up because we're talking about a 20-plus year -old building, they look to discover where the water's coming from and correct it. So the roof drain couplings for the lion's share if not in their entirety for right now, have been corrected. The next item with a check mark and there's a lot of update on this in regards to the biological growth. And that's the term I'm going to use here. We had the remediation that was discussed at a previous council meeting. The professional companies came in. They taped everything off. They opened up the walls. They removed the biological growth. A forensic testing lab pulled samples from there. Everything was cleared. And everything was put back together. So the organic matter has been removed and everything sealed up in the walls. KALIVIANAKIS: Can Ijust address it as we go along? WELDY: Yes. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Justin, when I read the report it said that the -- that growth was done in the lobby, but 1 didn't see any mention of the rest of the building. Was it done in the rest of the building too or just the lobby? WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, what we did was we -- we initially tested inside of the building and those tests determined that the atmospheric air in that building was safe to breathe and there were no issues. To be fair we also got baseline samples from outside the building from this building and also the library. It should be noted that the air tested outside of the town's building had a large number of spores in it compared to the interior, which means our scrubbing system is working. With that said, that was -- that information was provided to the town manager. It was decided based on discussions that we would go ahead and have that forensic testing facility make some small holes in areas where organic growth may or may not be and have them tested again. That is when we got the test results back. And we got some positive tests from that. And then we -- Page 113 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 114 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT again, under the direction of the town manager, we went back in again and tested other locations after feedback received not only from this elected body but from the residents to test other rooms. With the areas that were tested and the areas that were detected including some in the main hallway those areas and that remediation was taken care of based on the aforementioned testing. Can I give you a guarantee right now that there's not any organic matter in any one of these buildings or growing outside of it, absolutely not. But we have test results that indicate that we do not have any harmful air in the buildings right now. You're welcome. The next one is we've had numerous discussions and it's shown on our facilities replacement -- in our facilities replacement fund to deal with the roofs on all three buildings. Fortunate for us, again, we have a very professional facility supervisor through research and development. He was able to speak to numerous roofers. One of them came out with a plan. We discussed the plan internally and with the town manager. A test area was done. And I'm going to take just a minute and explain what I believe is an incredible benefit here. Originally, we believed that this type of polyurethane roofing -- am I saying that correctly, Steve? STEVE BARTLETT: Sure. WELDY: -- would most likely either have to be heavily washed or removed and replaced. Very, very expensive endeavor. Newer technology and or the treatment that we're testing right now does not require that removal. Obviously, it requires some cleaning and some prep, but the type of application that this is we're told and there's research to back this up that we can apply this over the years as opposed to having to place-- replace these roofs. And we're talking about a few million dollars is what we're talking about that we can save. So we'll know more very shortly about this test patch. One of the other items that's and -- and this is still ongoing, but we believe we've corrected the majority of it, are the thresholds at the doors. There was another area on the west side of the building for those that might be --not -- might not be familiar with each of the rooms it was the old Flynn (ph.) room, but on the west side of the community center there is a walled off area with a canopy over it. Water was falling into that area, ponding up against the building, and running in the building through that door and the Page 114 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 115 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT windows. That concrete has been removed. That void filled with granite. And to date, at least to my knowledge, we've not had any additional water from that. Lastly just for the check marks for it, and -- and there's a lot of stuff here and I understand that. 1 appreciate your patience. Steve and his staff met with professionals, and they tested the HVA system in that building. There's still some outstanding stuff that needs to be done in regards to balancing. But more importantly when the temperature comes up they're going to be able to run their final testing and give us a report. We -- we know this for a fact, the building creates an incredible amount of humidity and -- and dehumidifiers were placed in the building several months ago and literally collect gallons and gallons of water a day which is helping not only with humidity but some of the unpleasant odors as a result of it being a closed system. Any questions in regards to these few check marks that we find very, very important? CLERKS NOTE: Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski left the dais at 1:51 p.m. and returned at 1:53 p.m. KALIVIANAKIS: Just -- just one observation if I may, Ms. Mayor. And that is just kudos and congratulations to your staff, and to you specifically, Steve, for the outstanding work you guys have done. This has been a lot of outside the box thinking. And I know on the -- the 850 square foot test pad on the roof that was at a significant reduction in cost as compared to conventional means, so thank you for saving all that money and for -- for looking for the technologies that maybe weren't available a couple years ago, so job well done. WELDY: And -- and thank you for bringing that up. I would also like to thank Steve, Paul, and Mark as well. They literally worked through the holidays, days and nights so we could get in and do the remediation, and remove the organic material, and the restoration while the building was either closed or its use was substantially reduced. And that was literally over the holiday system. They were here through that time. So thanks to them and also the community center staff for constantly supporting our barrage of can we do it Tuesday night, can we do it Wednesday night. These right here is just some of the stuff that we had discussed in the past as you -- if you'll recall, we secured a forensic engineering firm, Allana Buick & Bers. That individual that represented them, Eugene Buick, gave a couple of updates here. This is Page 115 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 116 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT just some of the information that they were recommending as part of that -- the whole process here. I'm not going to go through each one of them. These are some of the wet sealing areas that I had described earlier with the magicians that did the caulking. This is one of the areas around the building that we still need to address which is actually where I'm going to segue into the next part. We were fortunate enough to secure an agreement with a local engineering -- or architectural firm that their specialty is actually building deficiencies. And they come into this with an incredible amount of knowledge and -- and they were actually referred to us by Allana Buick & Bers for relationships they have not only in the valley but other cities and states where they've worked together on this type of issue. Gensler has been out with Steve and his staff several times. They are not yet ready to prescnt anything to the Mayor and Council in regards to their analysis. They will be doing that soon. The town manager and I had an incredible amount of discussion about the next few sets of numbers you're seeing. Keep in mind that we were working with Allana Buick & Bers to try and come up with some rough estimates based on best construction practices and the blue books and the manuals that were out there. There's an incredible amount of numbers here. I personally, am uncomfortable with these numbers because at that time the architectural firm had not even started their analysis. But to be clear and -- and to demonstrate that we have nothing to hide, these were some of the original numbers that were provided by Allana Buick & Bers with the support of town staff and the information we provided. Again, we are going to get much more accurate numbers and a much more accurate timeline that it will allow us an opportunity to have open dialogue discussion, planning, and budgeting, again, for arguably one of the town's most popular amenities. And once again, I would argue gets as much traffic as some of our roads. So there's a lot of numbers here. I will certainly share this with any of you but it's in our past presentations. We look forward to coming back. And in the future it'll not only be Allana Buick & Bers and most likely Eugene Buick himself, but also a representative from Gensler. We would like to do that if not at a council meeting a workshop so we can concentrate just on this important asset. MILLER: So I'd like to be really brief on this. So while it looks like a scary number the Page 116 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 117 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT 2.9 million to $4 million, were talking a 40-year building having the storefront windows and doors replaced. We're not talking about what we're going to have to do in the next few years. So so far what the firm Buick has told us is that the window wet ceiling is is really going to take care of it. And he has said that in the past experience that he's dealt with like high-rise skyscrapers and such that that has tell -- that has added 15 years of life to those buildings. So I have every reason to believe that this is going to be something that we're going to probably be able to get to probably 35 to 40 years. And we want to start planning for that though. And so you're going to see when we get into the capital improvement budget you'll see a number there and well -- we'll talk a little bit through that. My concern is 1 don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves because in 15 years labor costs and manufactured window costs are going to be completely different than what they are today. So we're gonna -- were gonna downplay that a little bit once we get into the capital improvement program. WELDY: It's a lot of information some of it you'd seen in the past. This is basically an update to let you know once again based on direction from this elected body of the mayor and council, town staff has not just sat back and waited for someone else, including but not limited to fairy godmothers or cocking musicians to just show up on their own. We've worked to address these issues and will continue to do so. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you very much. WELDY: You're welcome. MAYOR DICKEY: Appreciate it. And yeah were going into the capital stuff now or we're going into the budget first. MILLER: Budget. MAYOR DICKEY: And but we'll be talking a little bit more about the community center. But again, echo everybody's gratitude on all the work here. So next is -- David, you're going to do the budget update or preview I guess. POCK: That's right. Is everybody hanging in there? MAYOR DICKEY: I know. I'm looking at the clock I'm like oh -- POCK: This -- this -- MAYOR DICKEY: I want -- POCK: 1 mean -- Page 117 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 118 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: We're supposed to get done at three so I don't know if you can -- POCK: I will tell you that this is very short, very concise. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, I bet. POCK: Just a couple slides. It'll be over before you know it. And if you believe that -- MILLER: David, it sounds like you're the doctor giving us a shot. POCK: Yes, right. [LAUGHTER] POCK: This only hurt a little. All right. All right. So yeah, fiscal year 24 financial preview can only start in one way and that is looking at where we are in fiscal year 23, so that's going to be our first -- first couple slides. Then we'll start taking a look at fiscal year 24 kind of look at the overall budget process since this is basically the first public meeting -- first budget meeting that the council has. We'll kind of go over what's going to be coming down the road for the next few months. Clear your calendars. It's going to be great. So fiscal year 24 the projected revenues, kind of -- that's my -- my crystal ball a couple slides to see where were going to be headed. That's where everything starts. And then we've got some base expenditures. These are just base expenditures. They do not include any of the supplements or any recommendations or anything like that, that's just strictly what it is from year to year. And then we'll look at some summary slides on the supplements and then answer any questions or comments. So as it stands right now what I did is I took where we ended last fiscal year, so the end of June 2022 and compared it to where we were January -- or sorry December 3lst of 2022, so half the year is represented here. So it gives you some kind of idea where our fund balance was at the end of the last fiscal year, adding in any revenues that we received for those six months minus any expenditures, and that's where we were December 3Ist. So you can see the streets fund down a hundred thousand dollars, a $120,000 that's in addition to whatever revenues we collected for those six months. If there aren't any questions I won't go through each of these. I will just point out that this first slide. And you'll see these broken down into different categories, these are all the restricted funds. These arc the ones that we basically have no control over where the money's spent, so it's all determined by state statute, bond Page 118 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 119 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT payments that sort of thing. And then development fees are obviously restricted to what they can be used for. The next is the committed funds these are all basically regulated or set by council regulation. So first rainy -day fund obviously the largest. You can see we ended -- last year we that 20 percent of five percent -- or 20 percent of five-year average general fund revenues was just about 3.5 million. You can see with the actuals for fiscal year 22 brought up that 20 percent has grown about another $400,000. So revenues over five years have been increasing each year so that's a good thing. You can see the other fund balances there. And then assigned funds. These are basically by policy. Anything that would be, you know, after the first of the year if Tustin does a requisition and it becomes a PO becomes encumbered that becomes assigned funds because that is where that money is going to be used, so it becomes assigned. So you can see the different funds there. MAYOR DICKEY: Dave, how do we decide -- POCK: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: -- which one -- what goes in the environmental fund since we don't have that fee anymore? I know I ask you this every year. POCK: It's-- it's all a transfer. So everything that goes into the environmental fund is from the general fund. And yeah, we kind of decide a transfer amount each year. Transfers are a little bit different than -- because we don't really budget for transfers, but we do provide council with suggested transfers for each at the end of each year and you approve them that way. They're not budgeted because it's already revenue that's collected and -- and accounted for and expenditures will be made from that -- wherever they're transferred to, so we don't want to double count those so -- MAYOR DICKEY: And that's just kind of an example of a need coming up that, right, you know storms or whatever. POCK: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: Or if something breaks. Just as an aside the environmental fee, we are going to try to get an answer on that very soon. And well see where we go from there. POCK: All right. Yeah, 1 think last year that we had transferred 500,000 I believe from the general fund into environmental fund for this year. I will make a point on the Page 119 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 120 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT Facilities Reserve Fund. It's kind of a holding -- holding area right now. We had some general fund savings as a result of the ARPA funding that we put in that fund so that we can make a little better returns until it gets transferred to the Streets Fund next fiscal year in fiscal year 24. And then it also has S2 million for the lake liner that's been allocated to that -- towards that. And then Unassigned Funds. Basically everything that's left after those first three categories are taken care of is unassigned funds and available for use. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Just one quick question. I'm not sure who would be the right person to ask us to. But in the past year, what projects have we used Environmental Fund monies for? POCK: So Justin actually does all of the expenditures out of that fund. It's a -- I know storm water and -- and sweeping that sort of thing. So -- WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, of the Environmental Fund is used for our street sweeping, our wash maintenance. It is also used to support the electronic household recycling in the form of traffic control and off -duty officers or staffing if needed, and also the household hazardous waste event. MILLER: Yes. I was just going to add, Justin, you also have a contract for a company that does scoping to also look at our storm drains to make sure we don't have failures or something like that. So we have a camera system that goes in and checks out our storm drains, correct? WELDY: Correct. It's -- it's the same firm that does our storm drain cleaning, so with all of our pipes and culverts. We have a multi -year capital project where we started with the pre -incorporation structures to avoid having the same situation that we had on Panorama a few years ago, where we had catastrophic failure. The Environmental Fund covers the cleaning if necessary for that's -- that portion and also the inspection and the report tied to that. MAYOR DICKEY: And if the -- if we had continued to collect a fee which would have been 5 or 600,000 thousand a year, you can use that money for capital projects, so for literally for fixing the culverts and -- and such. It's not restricted to cleaning or maintenance or anything, we just don't have as much in there right now to do those big projects. POCK: All right. And then as far as the last slide for fiscal year where we're at right Page 120 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 121 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT now, this is just a summary of all the different fund balances. You can see the fund balance across all funds for six months has increased. Keeping in mind that there is that 4.2 million in the -- in Facilities Reserve. The -- the metrics at the bottom, you will see that the numbers are -- are lower but that just reflects at the end of the fiscal year we do have all that unassigned fund balance that hasn't been transferred yet as of -- usually, we do those transfers right after the audits completed in November, so that's why that has gone down. As far as the transfers, we did the 1.5 million to the Facilities Fund with the 100 -- or 1 million for the lake liner, and then we did 500,000 to the Environmental Fund, and then we had about 3.6 million that transferred to Capital Projects Fund. Any questions on this year so far? All right. So as far as the -- the process going forward, the whole process starts in November with a kickoff. Departments start going back looking at their base budgets moving between line items as they see as necessary. Those base budgets are brought back and were met -- or meet with the town manager and myself and our accountant, basically, go through their budget make sure the base budget's all in order. And then on February -- the beginning of this month, we actually did our budget open house and public outreach. That was the first time that we had done that before the council retreat which 1 think went over very well. Of course, we're here today. And then next month we got a CIP work session. The following month is April. Well bring back the proposed budget with all the input from today, input from the CIP work session, and as well as the town manager's recommendations for supplements. We'II walk through the proposed budget that night. Tentative budgets adopted the first meeting in May. And then a final budget. And the implementation memo gets adopted first meeting in June. All right. So then as far as forecasts go for all funds. I didn't think that it was reasonable with the state of the economy right now to say that we were going to just cruise right into fiscal year 24 without some kind of speed bump, so I did reduce our revenue expectations for next year across all funds, especially the -- the TPT. I reduced it by about ten percent just because I think there might be some -- a little bit of slow down if you've been watching. So all that said, these are the different projections. Fiscal year 23 is the actual adopted budget numbers. Fiscal year 24, of course, it's -- will be part of the proposed Page 121 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 122 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT budget. These are all, obviously, subject to change if something happens before April though so stand by. All right. As far as the breakdown for General Fund Revenues, you can see that reduction in -- in the local taxes or TPT. State Shared Revenue should remain about the same. We usually get those final projections, usually, April, beginning of May, so we'll have those amounts. And then of course permits, charges for services, rent, and fines all the rest. FRIEDEL: David, I'm glad to see that you're being conservative on those estimates, but I have a question. This might be for John, it might be for you, but I'm wondering if we can take a look at a market analysis across all service businesses that want to come into the town. And what I'm getting at is protecting our TPT. We have a lot of service businesses in this town already that we don't get any revenue from. So in an attempt to minimize that somewhat, is there some kind of a look at we can have, some kind of an ordinance to say that, you know, we want to make sure that there's a fit for them before we give up valuable commercial space in our town and not -- and lose the opportunity for TPT to grow in this town? Is that something that's reasonable across all service -oriented businesses? What do you think, Aaron? ARNSON: Sorry. Well, I'm trying to unders -- I'm sorry, Mayor and councilman, I gucss I'm trying to understand the question. So is the question more along the lines of when new businesses are trying to come into town are they generally a fit -- FRIEDEL. Like -- ARNSON: -- or -- FRIEDEL: Like, I'll give you a couple of examples -- ARNSON: Sure. FRIEDEL. -- off the top of my head. Like we've got a lot of banks already. So we've got a lot of nail salons. And I'm not picking on anybody, I'm just using these as examples. We've got a plethora of all those types of businesses. We're going to have valuable commercial property going up when Bart Shea gets done on the Avenue, 8,000 or so square feet. I -- I'd like to see something in there that adds to our -- our bottom line. our TPT. So if we're going to get another service business in there -- everybody that's Page 122 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 123 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT here is fine, but anybody new coming in, can we -- can we have an ordinance that would show some kind of a need for that? ARNSON: Well, it -- the -- and maybe our economic development director as well can speak to some of the efforts she's making to direct those kinds of new businesses into town. I know from a legal perspective if there's commercial property available and someone wants to lease or buy it it's a matter of competition -- FRIEDEL' Right. ARNSON: -- between private property -- FRIEDEL: Right. ARNSON: -- between a business owner and a private property owner. So as far as the legalities are concerned were probably fairly limited in that, but we maybe take -- undertaking other steps to make sure that we're attracting the kinds of businesses we want. Amanda, am I right? JACOBS: Thanks a lot, Aaron. Mayor, Councilmember Friedel, so as -- as Aaron said some of it our hands are tied. It's a free-market enterprise where we can't dictate some of those things. But as Mr. Wesley and I have new folks coming in they're looking maybe to convert some of their existing zoning and wanting to come to staff and council and modify that or maybe they have the rights -- the right zoning, we're giving feedback to whether or not we support that. Some of the existing councilmembers, you know, someone met with us about some senior living in our town center, and we admitted we were opposed to that. And so that's where we can provide our expertise and guidance to -- to push more for something more positive for our sales tax and bed tax. John, did you have -- WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, from my perspective, what that would sound like is going into our commercial zoning districts and either outright removing service businesses or require them to go through a special use permit in order to operate which gives us some level of review versus a retail business. I think if we were to look at that and talk that over with our attorney we may have some challenges with either of those approaches but particularly removing them outright. Page 123 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 124 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT FRIEDEL: I'm not asking to remove anybody -- WESLEY: Right. FRIEDEL: -- first of all. WESLEY: So any -- any amendment that makes it more challenging for what has been a permitted use in a district could raise some challenges. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. GRZYBOWSKI: I kind of see it as discriminatory that we're even having this conversation. If somebody wants to rent my building and they're legitimate -- legitimate business I collect rental tax that I turn into the town. If it happens to be a service industry I'm sorry hate on me all you want but I'm a business -- I'm a building owner and this is what I do. I offer my building for rent. So I feel like if we're trying to be business friendly you just turned a bunch of landlords offjust even having this long of a conversation about it. FRIEDEL. First of all I don't agree that it's discriminatory, it's across the whole base so its not discriminatory. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, I think we have value -- FRIEDEL: It's a question. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, I think - 1 -- to her point -- to Sharron's point I think what she's saying is that were saying service industries might not be as welcome as others or any industry that isn't filling our tax base. And but there are other benefits, right, I mean if it's a doctor's office or an accountant or something then there's somebody maybe gonna have lunch. So I -- I would agree that I -- it would be kind of a -- something I wouldn't want to pursue necessarily especially because we have so much office space, right? Isn't that one of our big vacancies. So but I get your point, like, you know, you got a comer glass area of Park Place and you're like, I hope that you know becomes a -- you know, the famous martini bar or something. So I get what you're saying but I think there there's value in all the businesses that choose to come here and the customers that use them. Anything else? Everybody's quiet. POCK: They're -- I think they're all thinking about martinis. [LAUGHTER] Page 124 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 125 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT POCK: So I am yeah. Okay. So what I did too -- so just -- I should have mentioned this earlier. The revenues were for all funds. And then I -- we looked at the General Fund. Since the Street Fund is another major fund and a major topic of conversation I've included a slide just for streets. And then we'll move on to the expenditure side. So as far as the Streets Fund, as you're aware, two tenths of our sales tax goes into the Streets Fund for pavement maintenance, that's that $1 million. State Shared Revenue is obviously HURF and the VLT. Charges for services and rent, that's in lieu of fees that could possibly come in if SRP wanted to cut up one of the streets or something we'd -- it would go into this fund. And then 41,000 for others is basically reimbursements investments and that sort of thing. So you can see a total of $4.2 million going into the Streets Fund on just a revenue side. That does not include the $4.2 million that's scheduled to be transferred. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Dave, just a real quick question on -- this was a state shared revenue and even a TPT, is there any backlog that we have to plan for? I mean, are they prompt about the payments? POCK: Oh, yeah. SKILLICORN: And the -- POCK: Like clockwork. SKILLICORN: Is the -- is the TTP, is that monthly, quarterly, how does that work? POCK: So TPT we actually get weekly as people file their taxes for the prior -- for the prior month. SKILLICORN: Okay. POCK: HURF we get two payments a month; one in the beginning of the month one in the middle. And then VLT, I believe is monthly. I'd have to check. SKILLICORN: And share -- and shared revenue is? POCK: Those are the shared revenues. SKILLICORN: Okay. Okay. POCK: HURF and -- and VLT. SKILLICORN: So and never late? POCK: No. SKILLICORN: Okay. Makes your job a little easier? Page 125 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 126 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT POCK: It does. MAYOR DICKEY: On its surface it's like $3 million for State Shared Revenue. Is that something that would go straight to streets then? POCK: This is directly into the Streets Fund. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. POCK: So it's -- it's all of the HURF funds go into here. And then there is an 80/20 split of the VLT, so this is 80 percent of that VLT plus 100 percent of this. All right. Something that we don't normally talk about is the expenditure limitation, so Ijust wanted to give you a little bit of background on that and make one point at the end. The purpose, obviously, it's part of the Arizona Constitution. It basically limits the control -- or the expenditure of local revenues and future increases. So the Economics Estimates Commission of the Department of Revenue comes out with these figures each year for each municipality. They're adjusted for population and inflation each year. I don't know the exact calculation but that's how they tell us they get these numbers, so I believe them. Applies only to expenditures of local revenues. And there are some exclusions that do apply. And usually the ones that we commonly use are grant proceeds, a portion of the HURF over a base amount and then reimbursements and recoveries. So the preliminary limit that we just received for fiscal year 24 is 34.3 million. The point that 1 wanted to make is that this increased 2.4 million over the current year. Now, you might say well, that's great. It is but when you go to look at the reason why it's 2.4 million more than this year it's all inflation. Just to put it in perspective fiscal year 22 to fiscal year 23 was $150,000 increase. So keep that in mind. I will say also that for fiscal year 22, our limitation was just over 31 million. The actual expenditures that applied after the exclusions was just about 21. So we are $10 million less than what our limitation was which is a good thing. MAYOR DICKEY: Do they use the inflation rate? Do they take housing and fuel into account when they decide what that's going to be? POCK: I'm assuming they do. Like 1 said 1 don't know the calculation exactly and what they use. And you know, obviously our population hasn't changed much from year to year, so that's all -inflation numbers. I'm just not exactly sure which categories that they used to calculate it. Page 126 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 127 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: Well, I know it's not money, it's a -- it's a limit but if it was money and we're not buying houses in our business here it might be something that has a little more value to it than just strictly keeping up with inflation if -- if that is what's included with that number. POCK: Okay. All right. So then Base Expenditures Overall Funds, you can see General Fund, again, adopted 24.8. The Base Expenditures and General Fund 19.3. Then that Special Revenues Fund, that, again, includes that contingency. The largest part of that is in the Special Revenue Fund, the Grants Fund. If we were to receive $10 million worth of grants we can spend $10 million worth of grants. If we do not receive $10 million worth of grants we can't spend it. So -- so that one's got a large contingency in it and it's not necessarily that -- meaning that we're going to spend that amount. Capital Projects. You can see that's just basically the administration and a small contingency that's built in to that fund. It doesn't have any -- obviously, it doesn't have any projects budgeted for next year until after the CIP work session. Internal Service Funds. That's our vehicle replacement fund, facilities reserve, and the IT, $600,000 you can see. Debt Service Fund. Those are the our three bond funds. We don't have any bonds outstanding, so it's basically just fund balance. We do have Eagle Mountain which is a majority of that 15,000 just in case we did need to use it for something wed be able to use it. And then as far as General Fund expenditures you can sec that broken down by type, got payroll and benefits, dues, and memberships, meetings, tradings, maintenance and repair, utilities„ contractual services that's obviously public service -- or public safety, both fire and law enforcement. I will say that only half of the Rural Metro contract is in there since that will be ending in January or December. The fire department startup costs are all part of the supplements which you'll see in those -- in the last slide and will be included when you get the proposed budgets. MAYOR DICKEY: Sorry. But does the contracts also include like landscaping or any of those other stuff? POCK: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. POCK: You got equipment and improvement, damages, vandalism, internal service Page 127 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 128 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT funds, again, capital expenditures, and then that contingency is basically departmental contingency so we keep a -- a small amount in development services, small amount community services in case -- like our -- our contingency for development services is if we do a third -party type contract with inspectors or something like that we can use that, (cough), sorry, for those expenditures. You can see -- if you don't remember, the revenues for the General Fund were actually higher than what's here as far as expenditures, so it's $4.3 million less than the revenues. Obviously, when we go back in, add any supplements that are approved if they're still less than we have a contingency line item to add in to the balance. Any questions on the General Fund? All right. So on to the Streets Fund as far as -- same categories by type, payroll and benefits, dues, memberships, maintenance, and repair is where all of the pavement maintenance expenses are -- are kept or categorized, and again, contractual services and supplies. Again, a small contingency just in case we needed that. So you can see that the -- the base budget for next year is basically the -- the adopted budget for this year pretty -- pretty dam close. This obviously, will change as the proposed budget comes forward. Also, during the proposed budget, I'll have estimated fund balance -- estimated fund balances for the end of the year so we'll know what's going to be carried over. That's obviously if more money is available, more money can be used. As far as the supplements that were submitted, one-time expenditures totaling 77,000, ongoing non -personnel there were 45, rate 146 000, and then the ongoing personnel nine supplements for 2.2, you guessed it, fire department is a large part of that last line. So again, those would be coming through on the proposed with town manager recommendations. Congratulations. No, there are no prizes. [LAUGHTER] POCK: But there's no quiz either and so -- MAYOR DICKEY: Done. POCK: All right. MAYOR DICKEY: Any questions or comments? I know we have more to come. POCK: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: So I really appreciate it. It's a good first glance. Page 128 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 129 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT Our next item is along the same lines only we're talking about capital. Everybody want -- everybody okay or do you want to break? TOTH: Two minutes. MILLER: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Five minutes. TOTH: Five. MILLER: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Five minutes. MILLER: Five is great. SKILLICORN: It's negotiation. How about three and a half. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Five minutes. [LAUGHTER] [CROSS TALK] CLERKS NOTE: Council recessed at 2:29 p.m. and reconvened at 2:38 p.m. MAYOR DICKEY: Maybe we could get started. I'm sure Gerry will be here in a second. Are we starting with for me -- pardon me? SKILLICORN: He was here. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. That's what 1 -- 1 thought so. And I was like uh-oh. 1 think -- I don't think he'd mind if we just got started. MILLER: So we're going to go ahead. We have David Janover, our town engineer has responsibility -- overall responsibility for our Capital Improvement Program. And so he's going to go through and give a little bit of an update on those that are -- those projects that are in the current fiscal year and then also go through those that are in the proposed Capital Improvement Program. So with that I'll tum it over to Mr. Janover. JANO V ER: Thank you, Grady. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Pleased to be here to take you through our Capital Improvement projects. And again, just a big picture just to keep in mind that what we go through today we're looking to get some input, some feedback, guidance. And then, of course, we'll be back again on February 4th -- March 14th in a few weeks as part of the budget cycle and the -- for that CIP presentation. Page 129 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 130 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT So let's just jump right in. As Grady mentioned were going to give you a -- kind of an update on the current capital projects and the proposed FY24 proposed projects. And were also going to review the proposed capital projects in the five-year planning horizon. So first were going to start with our community services. And by the way I am joined by Rachel Goodwin our esteemed director of community services, as well as the person sitting next to me -- who was sitting next to me, Justin Weldy, our Public Works director for additional information and a historical perspective as needed. So looking at some of the updates for Community Services projects. The park sidewalks improvements P3054. So the amphitheater sidewalk entrance slip hazard was replaced with new sidewalk that had more traction and also the sidewalk exiting Plaza Fountain side was also replaced to eliminate a trip hazard there. P3048 our shade pole straightening at Fountain Park. Great news the straightening of the 12 poles that support the shade structures were completed and they were completed under budget. Fountain Park some updates here. The playground lighting has been scheduled and it's slated for completion this fiscal year. And switching over to Golden Eagle Park. We have shade structures that are going in at three of the ball fields. They had their footers poured and the frames installed this month, and shade fabric should be installed in April. And then the sports field lighting that has been -- has been ordered, the LED lights, and the project will begin in June and end in July. And I'll -- I'll bring up a little bit more about that later on in the presentation. Switching over to Desert Vista Park. Construction started and will be completed this fiscal year on the Skate Park and other park improvements included the sidewalk connector from the Mini Pitch to the Skate Park. That was completed as well as the -- what -- other completions this year that's scheduled for this fiscal year is the Ramada installation and the concrete pad sidewalk, dog park, and leveling. Now, were going to over to Four Peaks Park. We have our playground lighting that has been ordered and will be completed in May. And other improvements that will be completed will be landscaping installation, granite, trees, and plants. Those are currently underway and will be completed before the end of this fiscal year. So looking at proposed capital projects for community services. We have Sunridge Natural Park. So you should have some handouts up on the deus that had some Page 130 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 131 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT information in there about the public outreach that was done and some public input that was gained. So this project is for the design and construction of a neighborhood passive park in Sunridge Canyon known as Sunridge Natural Park or SNAP, as a nice acronym. This park is identified in the general plan. And a public charette, again, was held earlier this year where the conceptual design was presented, and public input was gained. So this Si million cost for design and construction would be coming from the Parks Development Fee Fund. So Parks Development Fees would be funding this. MILLER: If we can go back. JANOVER: Yeah. Sure. MILLER: Rachel, did you want to address any -- of some of the key points? You compiled some feedback from some of the residents that came to your open house. GOODWIN: Sure. As you -- as was mentioned you have a handout in front of you. It sort of synthesizes sort of the general feedback we heard. We tried to kind of distill it down. We had just over 60 folks respond and join us for that public input session. It was very lively. I did a lot of talking that night as did most of our staff. But it was actually really great to hear some of the feedback, some of the concerns. And -- and you know, share the thoughts and the concepts behind how we got to where we are and dispel some concems as well as understand where the -- sort of the origin of some of the other concerns came from. So you can kind of have that feedback in front of you. Staff is looking for final direction on this project. I know this project has come up multiple times before council. We have taken a number of steps to make sure that we are trying to be transparent and include public feedback in this process. I've had a chance to talk with some of you, even take some of you out on site to kind of visualize the space. So we are just looking for council feedback in whichever direction you'd like to go with this project. I'm happy to answer any questions or we can talk more at our CIP workshop. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. SKILLICORN: Mayor, Council, when 1 talked to residents of Sunridge I get the feeling that they're not interested in this so I kind of want to judge the council here maybe raise their hands. I'm all for scrapping it. 1 mean, we're -- would we have -- do we have support for it? Page 131 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 132 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: I -- we -- I don't know that we have this level of a discussion right now, but let me see what -- SKILLICORN: Well, if there's no support for it why would we go ahead and use any more staff resources on this? MAYOR DICKEY: Hold on one sec. Rachel -- well, let me ask you to say what you want to say first. TOTH: Okay. I just had a question Rachel. GOODW IN: Uh-huh. TOTH: 1 know back when 1 was still running I did that tour with you and Kevin and thank you for that again. I did visit the site area and kind of take a look at it. I was wondering if showing those renderings would change the opinions of the neighborhood. I promise there's a question in here. I just -- I'm given a lot of content first. It appears that it kind of hasn't changed most of the resident opinions. If it were to be something that we decided not to do this year, what would you use that Park Development Fee Fund a million dollars worth for? GOODWIN: That's a question. So the -- the quick answer is we don't have to use it for anything this year. It doesn't go anywhere. But it does have somewhat of a clock on it in that the Park Development Fund does have to be spent down within ten years of receiving it so it's not that it has to be used this year or this corning year, but we do need to make a plan for what we would like to do with that funding within the next probably two years or so. At least, get a plan on the books and start working towards that. We have had some conversations. Again, you can kind of see the feedback has been almost 50/50, not quite. It has been in some -- and some folks are were very adamant, some folks were, yeah, 1 could see it, maybe I don't love it, but I could see maybe how it would work or how some people would like it, but it might not be my thing. And other people are super in favor. And some people are in favor of it being very, very active. So we definitely got an across-the-board feedback. One thought is that if the park, as rendered here today, is to -- still feels too developed or too aggressive in a way there is the -- there was a conversation that seemed to have some potential to just potentially make it -- do the trail component without the actual parking side of it, having just community access for trails to kind of downsize what it is without Page 132 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 133 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT doing away completely. I will say there was a lot of eye-opening when we talked about if it does become deemed a park, a true park, it gets the labeled as a park, it has a lot more enforcement ability -- enforceability in terms of whether it's littering or trespassing or other things. We have tools that are -- and resources to enforce that. Where now when it's -- if -- if there was that problem we don't have those means. so there's some benefit there if to -- to kind of see around those -- those concerns. So there's that option too. So again, this is just a rendering nothing's in stone. If we want to find a happy medium we can do that too. If we choose not to move forward with the project the million dollars doesn't go anywhere but we do need to start talking about what we would like to do with it. Did that answer your question? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Hello Rachel. GOODWIN: Hello. KALIVIANAKIS: Anecdotally I've talked to a lot of people that live in Sunridge and again, this isn't scientific, but I didn't find a lot of popular support for it. As the town councils, we should be representing the people of Fountain Hills. I think the Homeowner's Association of Sunridge should be representing the homeowners in Sunridge. After speaking with the homeowner's association in Sunridge they don't want this. And it seems to me that they would have a very vested interest in doing what's right by the people of Sunridge otherwise they'll just be voted out and the people will replace them. So it seems like the decision, to me, would rest heavily not all the way but with, you know, what is the homeowner's association president and board want to do? And it seems to me that they are not in support of this project and that's why I'm not in support of this project. However, I do like your idea about just with no parking and -- and just doing the trails. And when I mentioned that to people they're like, well, I think we'd like to hike on the trails that'd be great. But 1 think what the people don't like is the parking because it's going to bring people from outside the neighborhood. It's going to bring possibly homeless that sort of thing. So I -- I think -- I think you're right on the mark when -- when you say that, you know, we can still develop it but to just cut it back a little bit. MAYOR DICKEY: Grady. I'm sorry. Page 133 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 134 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MILLER: Yeah. So we were talking about potential other future park projects. So as part of the park's master plan there are some potential locations that have been identified. There was also a school board meeting just recently that I had to leave early for on Ash Wednesday, but one of the talks that the school board was having at their work session had to do with McDowell Elementary School and if the town might have some potential interest in that site. And we've talked internally that that would be a site we think we can easily see the -- the fields and all that being converted into a park. And it's not an existing park of ours so it -- we could use the money for renovations and -- and new things to make enhancements. And I don't think that would be one that would have resistance from residents that have had a school there all these years. So it kind of reminds me it's almost like a Four Peaks Park that we might have an opportunity. I love the idea about the trails that this might be some sort of a middle ground that -- that we might be able to reach with the residents there. So I -- 1 think that's a good middle ground on that as a proposal. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. FRIEDEL: I like the idea of the trails too. And I've heard that from several people. I'm wondering that million dollars you -- at one time, we had talked and visited Desert Vista Park, talked about putting a fence along the parking lot area. Could you use that money down there and put a fence in? GOODWIN: Possibly. You're going to see that project proposed as we move through the proposed CIPs. So there are a couple of other projects that could potentially use the development funds. I would need to clarify because I -- my understanding is it's all about adding new and it has to be new resources. I don't know if that would fall but other -- there's other projects out there that may. If we do move forward with the trail concept and eliminating the parking and the other pieces, obviously, that brings this price tag down on this development significantly. So we do want to look at where that neck -- where the next set of expenditures would come whether it be through a partnership with the school district and a new site there or other amenities in existing parks, so that's definitely an option. FRIEDEL: And you have a certain number of years to use those development fees I think, right? Page 134 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 135 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT GOODWIN: We do. Uh-huh. MAYOR DICKEY: She said two years or something? FRIEDEL: Is it -- GOODWIN: We have ten years from the time of receipt. So each -- there's a -- there's some -- different sums that have different clocks on them. FRIEDEL. Yeah. Yeah. GOODWIN: We're not up against any clock per se right now but we will be with and then probably the next two to three years, so we want to make sure we have that plan. MILLER: When we did the splash pad as an example, we -- we tried to spend all the old money, so we were not going to have to give that back so -- GOODWIN: Correct. Uh-huh. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman Grzybowski. GRZYBOWSKI: In talking to residents as well as flipping through the reasons for noes here, I think making the --just the trail part, not talking parking lot at this point, will help with some of the resident's fears that they seem to think that riffraff is going to come in and 1 believe I even read a concern about the cartel. Because like you said we have more -- I hate to say power, but we have more ability to be able to do something about whether we want to call them riffraff or the cartel or whatever adjective we want to use, so I -- I do think that that helps to answer some of their fears. I am a little concerned, however, that we as a people are generally lazy and don't want to go walk to use a park. We like to drive to use the park, which is kind of an oxymoron but moving past that, I feel like maybe you keep that in the maybe one day really, really that'd be awesome to have column and leave the space there for it so you can add it. Because I do think that if we turn this into a natural park sans parking that we'll eventually get complaints hey these people are -- are blocking the street so what are you going to do about it? So I feel like you need to have a solution on the back burner just in case. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. TOTH: That's something I'd consider as well as just if those people would then just park on the street and we haven't really solved some of that concern. I'm interested in exploring that idea and the change in price tag. And I also wanted to throw out there that Page 135 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 136 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT if we could look into what upgrades would need to be done if we did do that partnership with the school. 1'd be really interested in seeing how to make the best of that property that at the moment wouldn't it be used. GOODWIN: And Grady, maybe you can speak more on this, and I don't know the timeline on that property or when that consolidation happens. MILLER: John stayed for the meeting, so John probably has more details on that. GOODWIN: Okay. WESLEY: They didn't get that specific. MILLER: Okay. GOODWIN: Okay. Meaning, 1 don't know if it's the end of next school year, if it's the end of the following school -- I'm not sure when -- if -- if they've developed that timeline yet so it may still be a number -- at least, a year if not more down the road before that even could come on -- on our end. MILLER: Yeah. And we have a joint meeting that is likely going to -- FRIEDEL: They did talk about maybe having some kind of a ballot measure -- GOODWIN: Okay. FRIEDEL. -- to give them permission to either exchange, sell, or lease a property, or any of their properties. And then they have up to 20 years to do something. GOODWIN: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. And it would have to be voter approved -- MILLER: Yeah. Right. MAYOR DICKEY: -- so that's another part of that. But if we did go ahead with this with just the trail aspect of it we could use the older money, right. And but I am -- I'm a little disturbed by some of these answers because who's the riffraff, you know because we live on the other side of town, we're going to drive over there and be riffraff in their park. And I have a more -- and also since people aren't really seeing this, the survey was 60 people that lived there, one person that didn't, and then who -- who wants it, 29, who doesn't, 32. So maybe the one person that doesn't live there was one of the noes, so it's really close. And again, just on a general discussion about parks. You have neighborhood parks. And you have community parks. So this is a neighborhood park. And when you look at -- you know there's national standards for how many parks there Page 136 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 137 o1180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT should be per population, I think or area, how would -- how -- we've always been under parked if that's a word. So this is not just a park for people that live around there, right? I mean, would this serve any kind of a purpose or is it just a neighborhood park that doesn't help that big standard? GOODWIN: It -- it's all of the above to be to be honest. It does -- it does meet standards or help us move towards that goal of being in national standards because it is a -- it's acre per certain population. I don't remember it is off the top of my head. But yes, we -- we are below that standard. The other goal that a lot of communities work towards is to have a park within walking distance, i.e., a ten-minute walk or Tess from as many residential communities as possible. We -- when you look at a map of our parks and our locations we have a lot on our eastern side if you will. Four Peaks Fountain Park and Desert Vista all sort of align on our eastern half. Our western and southern portions don't have a lot of walkability. Now, granted a lot of our southern space especially south of Shea is private. There's not a lot of space for us to incorporate a park, so having something in this community is a walkable resource for the residents is -- is an ideal that were working towards as well. So it checks a lot of, again, sort of standard boxes but it's also designed to serve the residents. Again, our hope is that our -- that the folks that are supportive of this will want to use this. I will tell you I've had multiple people say I don't really want you to do it but if you did it I'd probably use it. Which was kind of funny. I'm like okay. But the trails seem to be the most attractive component. The parking seemed to be the -- the -- the hang up for most people. So it seemed like a reasonable compromise to say let's try the trails, let's sec how it goes. Hopefully they go exactly as we hope, and people use them and -- and enjoy the -- you know the beauty that's out there in a responsible way. And then if we need to look at other next steps we can do that. And if it's going great and does needs nothing more than so be it. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I just -- I've asked that question because the HOA represents that neighborhood, but we represent the whole community so if this is something that would be a benefit for the whole community then I think we have to take that into consideration too. That said though, I'm okay with the trail stuff. MILLER: So we can help move this along. I -- I'm kind of sensing there's consensus for Page 137 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 138 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT the trail so if you're okay what we'll do is well revise the numbers on this downward and when you have your Capital Improvement Program workshop on March 14th you'll see a different project here. Where it will have to use placeholder number, it's probably not going to be the definitive number, but it will not be Sunridge Natural Park it will be Sun Ridge Trail System or something like that that well bring back to you if that -- is that okay? MAYOR DICKEY: Brenda. MILLER: I'm sensing that. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. MILLER: Okay. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. Pm just --just want to consent -- thank you, Ms. Mayor. This under -- under parks thing, you know, I think any responsible public policy whether it's building a church or a business or something it's always a matter of policy that you'd ask the neighborhood whether they want something or not. That's just baked right into the cake. And so for -- for us to say well, it's good public policy. We need more parks. And so we're going to force you to take this park because of the rcst of the community, I just -- I don't like that mix. I think that we should listen to the people. And if they don't want the park and if they want a less of a park, I think that's better public policy. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. TOTH: I just have one last comment on this. And 1 think it applies to other parts of the Capital Improvement Program as well. I think this is a David Pock question. What exactly happens if we don't use that money in the 10 years? Do we just lose it? Do -- does it get moved somewhere else? What happens? POCK: That would be great to know. We don't want to have to find out because it would -- TOTH: So -- POCK: The -- the way that the statute reads is it's retumed to who it was collected from. So you go back and find out who paid you those funds ten years ago and then refund them their money. Yeah. TOTH: Okay. ARNSON: And Mayor and Councilmember, developers keep pretty close watch of if it's Page 138 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 139 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT being used or not. And if they don't -- 1 have been in other communities where they have had -- had to return it so it's a -- it's a little bit of a hit. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. ARNSON: So that's the risk. Yeah. POCK: I -- I will say that we are doing a really good job on spending these before -- way before -- well, I shouldn't say way before, but years before they expire. So I think we're -- right now, I think we're right around five years through the oldest fund. And it is a first in first out so, you know, we're spending the oldest money first. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks. FRIEDEL: Thanks, Rachel, for your good job. JANOVER: Okay. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. Okay. So this picture may -- this photo may look familiar to you. So this is a CIP park sidewalk replacement program. And 1 just mentioned a few moments ago that under this program we had addressed some -- the amphitheater sidewalk. So this is a sidewalk replacement program. It's a four-year program that was approved by council in this current fiscal year, FY23 was year I. FY24, which is next fiscal year is year 2 of 4. And the program was approved for a hundred thousand dollars per year for four years. And it's intended to replace sidewalks in the parks that are creating potential safety issues due to root lifting or -- or other issues, heaving, and so forth, and it's meant to reduce the risk of slip and falls within the town's park system. And we have been utilizing for that purpose and would like to continue utilizing it for that. So we are requesting a hundred thousand dollars for FY24 to continue the second year of the four-year program. Do you want me to stop after each, see if there's any questions on each? MILLER: I'll interrupt you. JANOVER: All right. All right. I'll pay attention. MILLER: (Indiscernible). JANOVER: Okay. I'll pay attention. No worries. P3053. This is the Centennial Pavilion and Pavilion Improvements. So the Centennial Circle here on our town campus is large, but underutilized space. The project is designed to make the new pavilion area become more of a programmable space that could be utilized by multiple departments to host many outdoor events, as well as become a revenue generator for the town. So this Page 139 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 140 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT project would require moving some of the existing art pieces that are out there within the area, adding lighting, adding a large shade structure to make it more welcoming during the hotter summer months, the existing monument signs recognizing the Arizona Centennial known as the five C's, as well as art dedications would be renovated as well. And so staff is requesting $200,000 for the shade structure and $50,000 for pavilion improvements for a total of 250,000. KALIVIANAKIS: Excuse me, Ms. Mayor. 1 thought we had grant funding set up for this. GOODW IN: I'll chime in. So we have -- we have identified two grants. We sought two grants. We were denied two grants for this project. That doesn't mean that we won't continue to look for grant options. In fact, I think we should continue to do that. But what you'll notice too is on the screen you kind of see that outline of a person next to what essentially is a hundred puzzle pieces making out the State of Arizona. What we -- what staff really came together to think about was the Centennial Circle needs to be renovated, in general, regardless of whether we do a shade structure or not the actual monument signs are failing, they're illegible, they're starting to show -- it's -- it's time for that space to be renovated. A number of the trees are actually hollow and -- and beginning to fall. There arc safety concerns there. We lost three in the last storm, or actually last summer during the storms. So there's the component of Centennial Circle and its renovations and then there's the shade structure, which the staff continues to look at that and go that's really sort of the coup de grace, that's the piece that goes -- that sort of unifies the whole space. We've had a lot of discussions with the library, with the museum, with the dark skies, and everybody seems to love the idea. We have a number of programs that have said yeah if you had that wed go outside. Whether it's our lunch and music program that we have at the community center on Fridays. Whether it's, again, yoga groups, meditation groups, whatever that might be. But were lacking a funding mechanism. And I agree with you that grants is probably that way. The other suggestion we have is a fundraiser. And that's what the puzzle pieces represent. Was it the concept that we often have people call and say wed like to do something in memory of grandma, of grandpa, of somebody who lived here, what can Page 140 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 141 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT we do? We used to have a bench program where you could purchase a bench around Fountain Park. We have since concluded that program. We've heard all of the benches that we need have been purchased and dedicated, so we don't have any benches available. This seemed to be a good partnership to say when someone is ready to make that donation would they like to buy a puzzle piece? The puzzle piece -- then that funding goes towards offsetting the cost of the shade structure. Ideally, it would be 100 pieces. I actually say 99 because 1 think the town should put a fountain in the space where Fountain Hills is located geographically on this. So if we sold 99, we sold them at, arguably, say a thousand dollars a piece, that's 99,000 we would raise towards the offset of this shade structure. Now, that's just a thought. That is how staff has kind of developed this. It is open for ideas and concepts, but we think the resulting art piece of the state would complement the space and again, tie together that renovation concept as well. So that is the proposal to see what council thinks of that and how that might work. KALIVIANAKIS: Ms. Mayor. Again, I love the other out of the box thinking and raising the funding for this because I actually -- 1 like the shade structure. I think it'd be a great addition to that area. And so yeah if any -- any help that you need from me to do the -- the fundraiser I certainly would -- would be up for that. And then as far as just going back for grants 50/50. what do -- what do you think? GOODWIN: Yeah. I mean, I think we -- we have identified a number of grants that we qualified for and then, unfortunately, they kind of changed the terms on us and said well, actually we don't do capital projects. We really like to do public awareness campaigns or things -- well, that's not really how it was identified. But nonetheless, I think what I'd like to see in an ideal world is the approval to move forward with the project. It's a lot easier for us to go out and get a grant when they know the project is a go, when they know we have our matching portion already set to go. So that if we move forward and we say yep were ready to go here's our project and it's moving forward and they say great here's your grant funding, then we come in under budget and that offsets what we would have spent. Ideally, that's how that would work. But again grants as you -- as we all know grants are -- are kind of they're -- they're -- Page 141 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 142 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT they're difficult to predict but it doesn't mean we don't go after them. And thankfully we've been relatively successful in the past so I do think we can probably identify something. And even if it's a small offset with a couple of smaller grants at a, you know, maybe five or ten thousand or something like that to just sort of -- again, whatever we can do to offset the impact of the budget would be great. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. GRZYBOWSKI: Two things. I had to write the second thing down before it slipped my mind. I feel like it's a good example for us to set to spend some time and money on Centennial Circle to spruce it up and make it look good because you've got the dark skies people out there, for lack of a better term, begging for money so that we can make this happen. If we show as a town that this area is important to us, the community garden is being moved, and now look what we've done with the community -- with the Centennial Circle, then when they come out to tour the area they'll see oh, wow, this town is -- they really want this kind of thing. Then the second thing I wanted to do was ask you to mention the cost of the puzzle because that's one thing that I think is missing is you blew my mind when you told me how basically inexpensive it is to do that. GOODWIN: Yes. Councilman Grzybowski asked, you know, that's great if you brought in 99 -- 99 -- $99,000 but how much is it going to cost to make it? We've been working with a local vendor to sort of develop this concept and to their credit SteelCrest has been great. They have been really excited about the project. When we get excited, and our vendor gets excited we know we've sort of hit the sweet spot. They anticipate a -- an overall cost less than $5,000 for the full piece to create all of the puzzle pieces, to create the frame, and do all of that work. So it really does come in as a true fundraising element. There's not a lot of overhead involved in this project. MCMAHON: I think it's a great idea. And thanks for not giving up on it. Because I really think it'll be well used, like small bands in the summer evenings and things like that. And 1 do think it's going to be part of the attraction to the Dark Sky Center as well. And it will complement the library. It'll complement the community center too, so thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: And just —just one more -- I'm sorry, Gerry. Go first. Page 142 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 143 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT FRIEDEL- No KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Just one more thought too. Since this is going to be in such a close proximity to the International Discovery Center it seems to me they have a stake in -- in putting this thing up too, maybe we could ask them for some help because I'm sure if they have events there -- I know. 1 know but if they're -- MAYOR DICKEY: (Indiscernible)? KALIVIANAKIS: When they build that they're going to probably want to use this to do a lot of parties and hosting and stuff so Joe Bill might have to get a phone call. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. FRIEDEL: 1 was just going to say that. I think everybody likes it, all the users around the circle, tell them to bring their checkbooks, so I was mirroring Brenda. But didn't we agree to do your skate park in lieu of this? And or -- or -- are we -- or we approved like $50,000 if I remember correctly? GOODWIN: We did. So -- and that's where -- when we decided -- when I want it to be clear that we heard council say we like the project, but you need to find some money for it. And that's where we came back to say okay the grants we -- you know, we -- we struck out twice on grants that doesn't stop us, but we'll keep going. The puzzle project is essentially what were coming back with to say hey, this is where we're coming up with a concept of how to raise some additional funding for this project that's not contingents on grants and it kind of serves the need for this remembrance program that has been retired that we do we -- we -- we truly get probably two to three calls a week on how people can donate or what they can do for a loved one. So we'd really like to answer that need as well as do this and it seems like a win -win. So to answer your product question this is sort of the alternative funding route we're trying to propose. FRIEDEL: Okay. So 1 have a couple more points to make. I like the puzzle idea. Can you do more than one of them? Maybe you'll attract more people at a lower price point, possibly. Just throwing that out there. You've got a lot of other projects that you want to get done. This one while I like it and there's a place for it, is it better off -- are we better off waiting until the Dark Skies Observatory is put in before we rip that all up? Is there going to be any duplication of efforts around there? I know there's landscaping and other things that have to be done there too. So I'm throwing that out there so that we make sure Page 143 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 144 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT that we're not doing something that's going to be affected by other construction projects or access to areas for them to construct. And then you've got a lot of other projects on your list here maybe we should see what you've got there and not necessarily say no to this but maybe put it on the back burner a little bit and get some more detail? GOODWIN: Why don't we plan to bring you some more detail when we come back at our CIP workshop and that'll give me some time to talk to Dark Skies a little more, get a little more input, and then I can maybe give you a better idea there? TOTH: I would agree just to prioritize the projects. Obviously, I'm an event planner. I like the idea of more event space in town. It's not that I hate this project or anything. It's just that we've spent a lot of time talking about prioritizing where our funds are going, and I think we need to do that in our CIPs as well. I will say the 50,000 for pavilion improvements I would approve that absolutely 100 percent because I've brought I think this year alone five friends to town and try to give them the tour and they go oh, you can't read the fifth one for the Five C's. So that 1 agree is necessary. I would be interested to see how much we're able to fundraise for the puzzle but the $250,000 number, looking at all the other numbers on here, is where I'm a little held up. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks. I agree with the fixing the climates and the cotton and all that because that really does need it. And it's such a beautiful idea. It's such a wonderful place. Okay. I think we know where we're going with this. FRIEDEL: We do. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Next. JANOVER: Okay. This is the Golden Eagle Park field lights. I mentioned this briefly moments ago. So as part of our FY23 budget last year the ball field light upgrade project for Golden Eagle Park was approved and it was to be paid over a two-year period with 700,000 paid last year and 700,000 to be paid this year, so this year is -- is year 2. So the four ball fields within Golden Eagle Park currently use these dated metal halide lights. The fixtures, and the poles, the wiring are more than 20 years old, and they are in desperate need of replacement and upgrade due to failures. The item -- this item has been highlighted as a future project within the CIP for the last five years. And a transition to the LI -- LED lighting is -- is recommended to be consistent with other park amenities as well as to increase the longevity of the fixtures. Page 144 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 145 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT LED lighting is also going to reduce glare and light spill and it will improve the impact on nearby residents and it will also reduce operational costs for power use as they are much, much more efficient than the metal halide lights. The resulting cost savings from these LED fixtures will offset the investment within the warranty window and new lighting will be warranted for parts and labor for the next 25 years through Musco. So staff recommends approving the second year or the second half of the funding for $700,000 which will complete the upgrades to all four fields. And by signing the contract last year that actually allowed the parts to be manufactured to be able to for us to complete the installation in July of this year. So this one's really kind of a slam dunk. We really need to do this one. TOTH: I'm about to surprise you. I'm all for it. I believe there's been other issues as well including the timer on the lights. You then have to wait, what was it half an hour for them to turn back on? I believe there was a -- wasn't someone electrocuted? MAYOR DICKEY: Not quite, but almost. [LAUGHTER] [CROSS TALK] MAYOR DICKEY: It was a shock. TOTH: Okay. Someone was shocked. Point being this is -- I see it as a need not a want. I'm all for it. JANOVER: Thank you. Okay. Moving on. This is project P3036 Desert Vista Park. So Desert Vista Park has been in need of an improvement for several years. The improvements began with turf renovations and accessibility upgrades including a crosswalk and a walking loop back in 2021. So this is actually the second year of a $400,000 multi -year improvement plan for Desert Vista Park. Staff began this multi -year improvement to the park this year -- this current year by installing a ramada near the playground and adding a sidewall connector between the Mini Pitch and the Skate Park. So this year staff will be lighting the new section of the walking loop on the East End and also adding a cross -training fitness area to the eastern portion of the park. This will be the town's first outdoor fitness park and will provide residents with the ability to cross -train in the parks for free while enjoying the beauty of the surrounding area. The project is being supported by the American Legion and the Rotary Club with Page 145 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 146 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT the donation of the shade structure and the equipment for the fitness area. This is also going to activate an area of the park that has been underutilized for years. This project aligns with our strategic initiative of improving public health, well-being, and safety of our community. So with that, staff is requesting the second half of the $400,000 funding for this two-year project for a total of $200,000 in FY24. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Well -- JANOVER: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: -- that's probably good. JANOVER: Good. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks. MILLER: Dave, if you don't mind, could we just kind of speed it up a little bit? I'm -- I'm sorry to be rude it's just that we have -- JANOVER: Oh, yeah. Sure. MILLER: -- we just have two more items on the agenda. And what 1'd like you to do is save your -- your commentary for the -- the March -- JANOVER: Sure. MILLER: -- capital improvement dedicated meeting. JANOVER: Absolutely. MILLER: So I'm sony. JANOVER: No worries. Okay. So the next project is a Fountain Park Hillside Protection. So this is really to take care of erosion control on the Panorama Drive Hillside. So for this project we are recommending a hundred thousand dollars for re- grading and fortifying the slope and to make this area a landscape hillside protection area, to slow the erosion and improve the aesthetics of the -- of the location. It would also include rerouting of the existing sidewalk. And so that were requesting $100,000 for this project. This is the Fountain's Park Splash Pad Picnic Area. About 20 years ago there was -- the sludge was -- the lake was drained and the sludge from the lake was actually stored at this location about 20 years ago. The amount of the sodium in the soil has really made the -- the area unable to sustain any turf growth. So with the addition of that newly renovated Page 146 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 107 o1180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT splash pad we want to take care of our picnic area. We need far greater picnic areas. The staff is recommending $550,000 to design and construct the shaded picnic area with 20 picnic tables and two ramadas near the splash pad with an additional six picnic tables. So again, we are asking for $550,000 for that project. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh. KALIVIANAKIS: Go ahead, Gerry. FRIEDEL: Did I get you -- did I get you this time? I've been -- I've been out here several times since we talked. This area is an embarrassment for the town especially with our iconic fountain sitting there and our splash pad. I think it needs attention. We talked about some other funding sources and some help in this -- in this area, so bring back the details so we can get a good look at this. And it really needs attention. And if we can increase our outdoor dining space for these local businesses along there, I think it adds to the town's coffers and it makes that area presentable because it is -- because it isn't right now. MAYOR DICKEY: Brenda? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I just want to know if this $550,000 includes tearing down the trees and repairing the sidewalk. I know -- this -- I don't believe we own the sidewalk but the damage that has been done to the sidewalk was caused by our trees, with the root structures going down there. They're actually getting all the way into Euro Pizza Cafe into their little patio area and their pavers. And so I'm hoping that for this much money that we will get rid of the trees that are doing this damage and we will be responsible to fix the sidewalk because right now Merita at the Euro Pizza Cafe put up the cones because the sidewalk is so abutted, and people are tripping and falling. And so I think this is -- it's very dangerous. Again, it's not our property but if we worked with the -- the landowner and tell them we're prepared to fix this damage that we caused, I think that -- I would hope that would be in the 550,000. GOODWIN: I'll chime in on half of that. I do know it does include the tree removal. I can't -- I don't believe it includes the concrete replacement, but we can work to see what that number would look like and get you more details when we come back. KALIVIANAKIS: Aaron, what about liabilities for that? Page 107 of180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 148 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT ARNSON: Obviously, basil -- I'm only basing this on what you're saying, Councilwoman, and what I'm hearing right now. Surely we'd want to evaluate where -- where it's actually coming from and the extent to which anything that's on our property is causing it. I want more information before I -- before I make an opinion. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MILLER: In --- KALIVIANAKIS: Just want to make you aware. ARNSON: Yes. MILLER: Intemally we have discussed about having them dedicate that to us because people associate it. They think it is the town property. KALIVIANAKIS: Yes. MILLER: And so it's embarrassing because you know, I guess with our trees causing the uprooting of the sidewalks and then the business owners say no, it's -- it's -- it's their sidewalks but we're causing the issues. So it would be best for us probably just to take that over, dedicating some time. ARNSON: If we're causing the issues, yes -- MILLER: If we are. ARNSON: -- then what would be right. WELDY: Madam Mayor, if I may. I want to be clear here those trees were not planted by the town of Fountain Hills. Those trees were planted by the Plaza Fountain Side Improvements, both phases. Now, the town engineer and I have been working with community services and the town manager and we've actually -- we're just in the second phase of a survey of that area to determine exactly where the property lines start and stop so we can determine how to best move forward. But it's -- it's very, very expensive to undertake what we are proposing here. And the proposal's not yet finalized, is that we asked them for a sidewalk easement, a permanent one. In -- in that ask we will be asking them to fund their portion of all of those repairs. Again, the trees were not planted by the town and -- and I'm not certain that the electrical and or the irrigation for those is even maintained by the town because the electrical and the benches are part of their improvements. We agree wholly that that is a -- an area that -- that poses numerous hazards. We've not turned a blind eye to it we're working on it but it's a little bit Page 148 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 149 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT challenging and complicated. KALIVIANAKIS: I just hope we are working on it because this is almost like a law school question if somebody plants trees on your property that does damages to a third person, it's complicated. But if the trees were planted on our property with -- with our approval then I think we would -- we would have the liability issues there because again it was -- just because they paid for the trees it's still on our property. Anyway, my opinion. MAYOR DICKEY: Hannah. TOTH: I like this project. I think that area is an eyesore and Fountain Park being our namesake that's -- that would be a priority for me. I'd love to see what you come up with for other funding sources but as of right now 1'd be a yes on this. JANOVER: Thank you. Okay. So this is just a summary of the projects in the ask in FY24. Obviously, well come back with a different number for Sunridge trails and everything else seems to be -- and of course the Centennial Pavilion. So we will update that and bring this back to you on the 14th. So 2.9 million at the moment, it was what we were asking for for 24, but that will be updated. And then this is the outer year of ask in the last two years of the sidewalk replacement program. That's the last two years of the $400,000 program. Now, we'll transition to public works. So we'll just -- I'll just take us very, very quickly through the existing projects that we've completed this year. So this is a Phase II Panorama Storm Drain. As everyone knows, this was just completed. We had for many years standing water vector control issues and mosquitoes. And so this pipe project and pump project has been completed. And right -- right now we have a graded area of about three acres for the town to pretty much try to make a decision of -- of what we are going to want to do with that in the future. But right now were in very, very good shape on this project and it's been complete. Existing grant projects that are underway. We have our Sidewalk Gap Infill at Palisades and -- along Palisades and Saguaro. So this is actually a grant project. And design is currently 60 percent complete. This will fill in gap sidewalks along both Palisades and Saguaro boulevards. In FY24, we will be asking for a town share of construction which is going to be $200, 1 17. And again, this is already underway, so we are committed Page 149 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 150 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT through IGA and MAG to -- to complete this. The federal share is 3.3 million so we're -- we're doing really well on this one. This is the Shea Boulevard Widening, also this is another federal grant. Design is complete on this project and it's going to construct an expansion of Shea Boulevard, westbound Shea between Palisades and Fountain Hills Boulevard. The ultimate build out when it's complete, when the whole project is completed, will widen Shea Boulevard to six lanes construction. Construction is going to commence later this year and is scheduled for completion in fiscal year 24. So fiscal year 24 request is for $169,500 for our portion of construction. MAYOR DICKEY: Can our part come from development fees, basically because it's widening? JANOVER: I don't know -- was -- if -- I'm not sure if this was in the HP or not. MILLER: We'd have to look, but I -- I want to say this portion, not the future MAG Prop 400 was actually coming out of -- of the development fees. JANOVER: We can verify that. MILLER: Yeah, we'll verify that before the next capital -- JANOVER: Thank you. This is the Golden Eagle Impoundment Area Improvements. So design is 90 percent complete for the first phase of the drainage improvements at this -- at -- through the park. We will mainly be taking care of the channels -- the drainage channels that run through the park because this is actually -- we received storm runoff from three different washes, Ashbrook Wash, Crystal Wash, and Cloudburst Wash. Over time, the stormwater runoff has increased due to upstream developments and so we need to address, critically, the channels that run through that park. So we're going to be taking care of channel improvements. We're going to be constructing flood walls, drop basins, rip -wrap, irrigation, and electrical utility relocations. So construction will begin towards the end of this fiscal year and continue probably into next year. Design is currently 90 percent complete. And we will be -- the remainder of phase I should be about $500,000 in next fiscal year. We also have a -- a grant for phase II which is just some trash racks on the -- and dam improvements. And that's a Flood Control District grant that we have for 90,750. FRIEDEL: I got a quick question going back to that -- Page 150 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 151 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT JANOVER: Yes. FRIEDEL: -- that slide. I see you've got some across Golden Eagle, does that include the properties where -- where there was a quite a bit of erosion through the backyards? No? Justin, that's something different? Okay. JANOVER: Okay. Thank you. This is also a -- a Flood Control District grant that we have successfully applied for and received from the Flood Control District. So this is Grande and Rosita. This is a drainage channel that runs between Grande and Rosita. We'll be fortifying that channel. And design is currently at 90 percent completion. Construction will begin before the end of this fiscal year. And the remainder of construction will take place most likely in the next fiscal year. Our town share of the remainder of construction is 15,625 and the flood control's portion is 46,875. This is also a under the same small projects grant that we get from the Flood Control District. This is another project that we did at the same time, that we applied for. This is Deuce Court which is a cul-de-sac. And again, we had lots of -- lots of drainage and flooding issues at this location, so we are upgrading and replacing some of the infrastructure there and redesigning it so that it will operate properly. Again, design is 90 percent complete, and construction will begin before the end of the fiscal year. And the remaining construction in fiscal year 24 is going to be just $5,000 is going to be our share in the Flood Control District's share is 15,000. Safe Routes to Schools. There's no monetary outlay here. We had applied to MAG, the Maricopa Association of Governments, several years ago for safe routes to schools funding for our three schools: McDowell Mountain Elementary School, the middle school, and the high school. So studies are going to be completed for all three schools by MAG's traffic consultant. And they're going to be looking at on campus and off campus cues like drop off cues, pick up cues, looking at the best ways to make it safe for all modes of transportation, for kids that are walking and biking to school, and -- and driving, parents for -- for drop off. So the cost of the studies are covered by the grant completely. The match funds for the town is really just measured by the cost of town staff during the hours expanded overseeing the project, so there is no capital expenditure on this, but we Page 151 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 152 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT just wanted to make you aware that this is on the books. Now, we'll just talk about projects that are in progress. So this is our Wayfinding Signs. So this project will fabricate and install wayfinding signs at strategic locations throughout the town. We did have plans that were completed several years ago but they were not signed or sealed, so this year we had started with value engineering. And we -- we did get a structural engineer on board to sign -- to do structural calculations for that. The value engineering will give recommendations to give us proper sizing for -- for our wayfinding signs, so that it reduces cost of manufacturing and materials. So were requesting $250,000 to complete this construction in fiscal year 24. This is a signal at Palisades Boulevard and Eagle Ridge Drive and Palomino Boulevard. We are currently at the 90 percent completion of design. However, we did run into some of -- somewhat of the hiccup with preemption -- preemption design for emergency vehicles. We had some -- some issues with that, so we just needed some additional design money, 30 -- about 34,910 is the quote that we got in order to address that issue. So that is what we're going to be asking for for fiscal year 24. And we do not currently have a construction year for this yet. We're anticipating getting -- applying for grants for construction for this project. But we are looking to complete the design. Now, we're going to talk about the programs -- annual programs. So this is our Town wide Guardrail Replacement program. We did -- we maintain about 10,000 linear feet of guard rail within the town. And there was a change in federal guidelines in 2014 and as a result several segments of our guardrail do not currently meet federal guidelines. We did do an assessment last year of the guard rails and this project will just follow the recommendations of that assessment. So we do intend to apply for HSIP grants to offset the cost of replacing the guardrail and this 50,000 per year represents our share of that cost. D6047. This is a Miscellaneous Drainage Improvements. So this is really just a $50,000 placeholder that we include annually in our CIP to address any drainage issues that we come across that arise. It's to construct new drainage facilities, major repairs, or extending existing facilities at the locations of future road widening projects. This year, you can see on the -- KALIVIANAKIS: Ms. Mayor, can I just ask one quick question? Page 152 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 153 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT I know were trying to move along here but the -- if you go back to the last slide? If they change the design in 2014, are they requiring us -- were not grandfathered in to -- to change it to the newer standards? JANOVER: Mayor, Councilmember Kalivianakis, it is in our best interest to do that mainly for -- from -- for a liability standpoint. If there are issues mainly we just want it to be as safe as it should be. But if there is any issues out there and there is an accident and we -- and we find that we were not in compliance with current standards, that can open the town up to liability. KALIVIANAKIS: To a guardrail lawsuit? JANOVER: Yes. KALIVIANAKIS: That's got to be a novel concept. How many years would this $50,000 expenditure go on for? You said it's multi -year. JANOVER: I believe we have it in there for, I think it's three years -- three or four years. Three more -- three more. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you. JANOVER: Thank you. So again, the -- the photo on the right just shows a previous -- a recent project we completed on Fountain Hills Boulevard at Balboa Wash at the crossing. We extended a pipe and extended the shoulder with some -- some fill. So this project is our Town Wide Storm Water Infrastructure Rehabilitation. And it's 100 -- $150,000 program. Again, another multi -year program. And mainly this takes care of ongoing cleanings, inspections, and clean outs of our -- of our drainage infrastructure. Now, getting into the proposed capital projects for next year. Director Weldy had given that update sometime earlier today on the Community Center renovations. We were asked -- originally, we were asking for $850,000 for next year for FY24. We're actually going to dial that back we don't really need that much. We're -- were seeing -- we're going to, of course, wait to see what comes from the architect and some cost estimates that we get from them. But we went ultra conservative with what we were asking for as far as 600,000 a year for the next five years. But we're going to dial that back somewhat and well come back with a different number that -- that's more in line with what we think will be reality excuse me. FRIEDEL. Excuse me, Ms. Mayor. Page 153 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 154 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT When you say renovations, is this for improvements or just to fix the drainage and the storm and all that stuff? JANOVER: This is to fix all the moisture intrusion. KALIV IANAKIS: Okay. Thank you. JANOVER: Yes. Yes. Thank you. This is a bridge repair. Again, this is another multi- year program. We have 23 town bridges here in town. And the Arizona Department of Transportation does inspections every four years. And we actually have three bridges that are in need of maintenance: Sunridge Drive over Paddle Wash. Sunridge Drive is Cholula Wash, and the Golden Eagle Boulevard, Bristol Wash. So we -- we need to make sure we perform our regular maintenance on these bridges before these issues become more serious. So we're just requesting 75,000 per year to maintain and repair our bridges. This project is for Proposed Sidewalk on Fountain Hills Boulevard at the Church of the Ascension. And this will construct ADA compliance, concrete sidewalk, and retaining wall on the east side of Fountain Hills Boulevard in front of the church between Crystal Ridge Drive and Segundo Drive. This is a critical section in our Short -Term Sidewall Gap Elimination Program. And we are requesting $290,000 for design and construction. We've already completed design. Design was actually completed about two years ago under our sidewalk infill program. WELDY: I'm going to interrupt you for a second. JANOVER: Okay. WELDY: Madam Mayor, Council if I may. For those of you not familiar, this is on Fountain Hills Boulevard just north of Segundo. This was identified as a high priority, actually, almost three and a half years ago now because of the complexities to design and install this sidewalk, vision if you would, there's a steep slope there as you can see with the picture on the right with rock on it. We actually had to do a separate design. This gap elimination piece of sidewalk is in the very general vicinity of three different worship centers. Each of those individual centers will have a positive impact from this because it allows connectivity to those worship centers and most importantly, adds an additional connector to the town center via Segundo. This is just part of an ongoing multi -year, but again, this was identified as a priority several years ago. It just took us a little while to Page 154 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 155 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT get back with the actual construction cost. JANOVER: Thank you. Thank you. TOTH: Thank you, Justin. And I do agree that the connectivity is important. That $290,000 for that stretch and the design's already been completed, I'm struggling to see why a relatively small amount of sidewalk is going to cost us over a quarter million. WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember if I may. The slope area there that's on the private property is covered with 10-to-12-inch river rock. The only way that we can support that private property is to build a short retaining wall. That retaining wall has to actually hold that slope back. So it's not just a simple vertical wall. It actually has a foundation that goes underneath the slope. To remove a section of that, build that improvement, and then put those improvements back, the river rock if you would, and make it look like the sidewalk was always there is a pretty spendy endeavor. A good example is the challenge that we faced for the Desert Vista crossing. We had to build very similar type of walls there which drove the cost for that up. Another excellent example is sidewalk in511 on Saguaro and Palisades for $3 million. Those same walls. All of this cost escalation is a result of these very steep slopes. And on most of these you can't just cut it out and re -grade it. In this case it would have a very negative impact on their parking lot. We would have to reduce the size of it to lay the slope down. TOTH: All right. Thank you, Justin. I think at this moment, I would recommend holding off on this project only because of how much of a cost it is and how much we're trying to focus on road maintenance. I'm all for connectivity. I agree with the sidewalk and field project, but I think this specific part can wait. JANOVER: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor. MCMAHON: I have a question about that. You just said you've been working on this for three years, right? And if we wait longer the costs are going to continue to go up, correct? WELDY: Well -- MCMAHON: I mean, are the plans going to need to be changed et cetera? 1 mean, it's Page 155 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 156 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT like why -- why make it a six or seven- or eight -year deal? WELDY: Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, the plans aren't going to change. So we have a sealed set of plans from an engineering firm and they're going to remain. We paid for them. They're ours. Is it going to have an increased cost, absolutely. Everything is going to cost more in the future. How much more, I -- I would be challenged to predict that based on today's market volatility. MAYOR DICKEY: Just related a little bit, do we -- are we anticipating any street work there anytime soon? WELDY: Not in the very near future. JANOVER: Not that I can -- MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. JANOVER: Not that I can recall. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. JANOVER: Okay. This is -- this project is a Low -Flow Roadway Drainage Crossing Improvement program. This is a newly proposed annual program for $200,000 a year that were asking for. That would be for design and construction of improvements at low - flow roadway crossings that have a nuisance -- you can see it's just some nuisance flows across the top of the -- the asphalt. So this is something that would just -- would allow us to go through. We have about 30 crossings -- 30 of these crossings within town. This would just allow us over time, over about a 20-year period to go through and address all these by raising the road or putting pipes underneath the road and addressing those. So we have had some recent locate -- 1 think it was on Leo Drive. We've had some complaints over there and that's where these photos were taken. So these are the types of situations were looking to -- to address. MAYOR DICKEY: Again, I just ask to integrate that with any road work were doing. JANOVER: Yes, absolutely. And also we do -- we would be looking for potential grants from the Flood Control District for these type of projects, just -- just like the other ones, so that would certainly help offset our costs. FRIEDEL• I was just going to ask if you were looking for grants. And how many years is this program? JANOVER: It's going to be for the next -- out -- out in the five-year horizon but pretty Page 156 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 157 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT much until were done. MAYOR DICKEY: How many -- JANOVER: 15 to 20 years perhaps. FRIEDEL: How many places can you get done for 200 grand? JANOVER: Each place is different. Each location is different. They can vary. They can go from anywhere from 50 to -- FRIEDEL: So you're talking a million dollars over five years, that won't cover everything. JANOVER: Again, we -- we have to really do a major assessment of them. FRIEDEL: Okay. Thank you. JANOVER: It's really just a placeholder for now. Thank you. This is a Downtown Streetscape Improvements. So this project would design and -- and construct pedestrian path light poles and fixtures along Verde River Drive and Parkview Avenue. And each of these poles would have electrical receptacles for use by Community Services. The polls would also be fitted to accommodate the hanging of banners promoting the town special events et cetera. This project is very much supported by Economic Development Department, and we facilitate the expansion of downtown development. And the proposed improvements would really make the adjacent lots more attractive for development resulting in increased economic activity. So with that, staff is requesting $635,000 for design and construction of pedestrian lighting improvements. MAYOR DICKEY: The downtown area is something that is on all of our minds and so while this is something that I think adds to that overall desire to have that area have a certain look to it, I'm still -- however it's done, is I would still rather see attention to connectivity between down in the fountains and the park however that looks. So rather than -- you know, and again, this is nice looking and 1 -- and it goes along with -- with what Amanda's trying to do and such, but if we -- if we really want to complete that whole area, figuring out a way to get people safely over to the park and finishing up that would be more of a priority to me. JANOVER: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman? SKILLICORN: Mayor, staff, I'm curious. It sounds like a lot of money. How many bids Page 157 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 158 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT have we taken for construction on this? JANOVER: So we -- well, we haven't -- Mayor, Councilmember Skillicom, we -- we haven't actually gotten any bids on this. This was actually based on work that we have done in the past using this exact same -- installing these same pedestrian lights and including an escalation factor, so it's based on past performance. SKILLICORN: Thank you. For me personally, this is a little too rich for my blood. JANOVER: Thank you. KALIVIANAKIS: Just one quick question, Ms. Mayor. From the looks of that, is that going to have dark sky illumination directing it downwards you can see the banners in the sidewalks? JANOVER: Yes, Mayor, Councilmember Kalivianakis, yes that would be dark sky compliant. KALIVIANAKIS: Excellent. Thank you. JANOVER: Thank you. Okay. This project is a -- a grant project. Actually, we are currently preparing a RAISE grant application as we speak the deadline is tonight. So this is a multimodal path -- a multi -use path on the south side of Shea and a sidewalk on the north side of Shea that would eliminate a very large gap between us and Scottsdale. So the RAISE grant is an 80 percent share of the project. The project is pretty expensive it's $7.2 million because this is a federal grant. So 7.2 million of which the local match would be 20 percent or 1.44 million. Now of that we -- we would be cost sharing it with Scottsdale. And again, we are trying to get Scottsdale on board with this and we're kind of -- so Scottsdale's share would be 45 percent based on the amount of infrastructure that would be in their jurisdiction and 55 percent would be in ours. So we were asking for $792,000 total, so 100,000 in FY24 for design and 692 -- 692,000 for construction in FY25. Now again, this is a very, very long shot. Don't know if we're going to get this one. But this would only be expended if we actually got the -- got the grant. SKILLICORN: Mayor, Engineer, is there an extra couple zeros here? I thought you said 720,000. JANOVER: Oh, it's 7.2 million. SKILLICORN: Okay. Page 158 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 159 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT JANOVER: 7.2 million. SKILLICORN: How long does a sidewalk like this last? JANOVER: With proper maintenance this could last at least 50 years -- at least 50 years. SKILLICORN: Okay. So the price tag doesn't seem very high but it's going to be low traffic, but if it's really that long someone would use it. I know the politicians will use it when they put signs up. Okay. I'd like Scottsdale to do -- be a little more. I mean, and maybe we should do a study where the -- where the dollars flow. You know, people walking that way to spend money or walking this way to spend money. JANOVER: Interesting. Thank you. Okay. Our next project is the Panorama Drive Spring Pump Electrical Upgrade. So this -- this is really just to increase the electrical service at the pump from a single phase to three phase for our existing pump that's located on Panorama Drive that takes subterranean spring water and pumps it back to the lake. So we need to be able to operate that pump at a higher RPM, higher GPM so in order to do that we just need to upgrade the electrical system. So that'll be a hundred thousand dollars and we have to coordinate that with SRP. F3033. This is our video surveillance cameras. $75,000 per year. So this is an ongoing program the town purchases and installs video surveillance cameras at various town - owned buildings and facilities. And we've seen an increase in vandalism at -- at these facilities and additional surveillance cameras can deter vandalism and help us and with law enforcement in identifying vandals and an aiding prosecution. So were requesting to continue this annual allocation of 75,000 for surveillance cameras. This project is Fountain Hills Boulevard and Palisades Boulevard Intersection Improvements. So we are -- this project -- we did an evaluation of the intersection geometry and the level of service that was done at this intersection in 2021. So we are looking to optimize the signal timing at this intersection to reduce delay and increase the level of service. In order to do that we want to go from protected lefts only to protected permissive lefts which means that if you're waiting at a left -- to make a left turn and you get a green bulb if you just have a protected left it's just the arrow -- you can only go in when you have the arrow. If you have a permissive left it's when you have a green bulb and you have to wait for a gap in the oncoming traffic and then you can make your left during that cycle. So what were looking to do is do some median improvements to Page 159 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 160 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT increase the offset, increase the level of -- the line of sight so that people can make their left rums safely. And so this would require some design of $90,000 and construction of $200,000. MAYOR DICKEY: Would that be in every direction? JANOVER: Yes. All -- all directions would have -- would have protected permissive lefts. It just increases the -- the level of service and reduce the delay on all of the approaches. KALIVIANAKIS: And thank you, Ms. Mayor. I -- I know in -- in Scottsdale they have a lot of the blinking yellow turn, any chance of bringing those to Fountain Hills? JANOVER: Mayor, Councilmember Kalivianakis, we actually had spoken to the Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee about that about a year and a year and a half ago or so and that didn't really go over well. It was -- it was thought that it might confuse some people. It really --what it is it's -- it's really just yield, yield to traffic and you know you can make your left when -- as needed, when you can. But this is -- we're just going to do that with a -- with a -- a green bulb rather than a blinking yellow. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. I'd sure like to take that up again but it's just I thought. JANOVER: Certainly. Thank you. This is Saguaro and Kingstreet Drainage Improvements. We're looking to put in a couple of scuppers here at just south of King Street on Saguaro Boulevard to allow storm water runoff to -- if more officially make its way down into the Jacqueline Wash below. Weve found that after some major storm events it takes a very long time for drainage to -- to -- to make its way out of this intersection, so we want to help that along and -- and increase the safety and -- for drivers through that area. So this would be a 15,000 for design and 150,000 for construction for next year. So were asking for 165. This project is Palisades Boulevard and La Montana Drive Intersection Improvements. We have an intersection analysis that's underway right now. And so we're just trying to enhance safety for vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists through this location. We are awaiting to see what the recommended solution for this location's going to be, whether it's going to be a signal, whether it's going to be a roundabout, or we're not sure what that's going to be at this time. So we're just going to await see what that comes back at, and we'll bring it back to council when it's -- when it's ready. But we are looking to put Page 160 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 161 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT in 150,000 for design for next -- next fiscal year and then well come back with more information. This is a Calico Drive Landscape Beautification. Looking for 75,000 for design and 750,000 for construction the following year in '25. So this is just in response to resident feedback. We would be looking to replace the existing natural landscape flora on the south side of Calico Drive between El Pueblo and Del Cambre with new landscaping, ground cover, trees, vegetation, associated irrigation. And were also looking to consider biophilic plantings at this location as well. So again asking for 75,000 for design for next fiscal year. KALIVIANAKIS: But -- but the entire cost would be $825,000? JANOVER: Entire course would be -- yes 750 plus 75, correct. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: (Indiscernible). JANOVER: Yeah. And then we have a number of facility projects. I'll run through these very, very quickly. We have the town hall fire alarm panel and device upgrade for 90,000. Community Center interior lighting upgrade for 200,000. Council chamber's patio shade structure for 175,000. The town hall elevator cab renewal for 25,000. The building exterior ceiling on town hall for 25,000. The Maricopa County Sheriffs Office locker room renovation. It's pretty old and it's used a lot. So we need to upgrade that 125,000. And the replacement of our compressors for chiller number 3 for town hall that's 110,000. This town hall campus exterior lighting and electrical upgrade this is design and construction. It's a two-year project that would replace outdoor exterior lighting with new LED lighting. Where we can control the brightness and colors that can be modified to commemorate holidays and things of that nature. We'll put a new landscape granite mulch and address some landscape and repair and replacements campus wide. So for that were also looking to do a window treatment that would provide enhanced security for the council chambers. So design would be a 20,000 and construction would be 275,000 that would be split over two years, so 137,5 and '24 and 137,5 and '25. I know I'm going fast sorry. This is our town hall campus entrance column repair. So both entrances to the town hall have flagstone line columns as a design element and these stones are coming Page 161 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 162 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT loose so we need to address that. There's several options that we're looking at, but we want -- we want to reduce this -- eliminate this potential public hazard. So we're looking for $150,000 for next fiscal year to address that on both sides. Future projects beyond FY23 to 24. 1 don't know if you want me to move forward with these. MILLER: Yes. JANOVER: Okay. Okay. KALIVIANAKIS: Can Ijust bring up one more? I know we're in a hurry, but you know we have this retreat once a year. I noticed in your upcoming improvements what about the town -- town hall? Are we doing anything for mitigating the moisture that's coming through our windows and -- and repairing our ceilings? I've talked to town staff and -- and I know that, you know, we are every time it rains, we are getting interior moisture flooding, dripping. MILLER: Your -- your timing is perfcct because he had a project called scaling which was to seal the windows. Was that the -- the term you use? JANOVER: Yes. MILLER: The $25,000? So that would address the window when forced water coming through to the building. KALIVIANAKIS: Yes, were going to get to that. MILLER: Well, he just went through it. KALIVIANAKIS: Oh, was that on the list? MILLER: It was on that master list. Can you just go back real quick-- JANOVER: Yes. MILLER: -- so she can see that it's on that list? Exterior sealing. JANOVER: Town hall building exterior sealing for 25,000. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. JANOVER: Yeah. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Page 162 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 163 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT JANOVER: Sure. So now looking at our future outer year projects, you might remember several weeks ago we had brought a series of three brick grant projects to you for culvert crossings. One was the McDowell Mountain Road at Escalante Wash. One was Del Cambre Avenue culvert at Ashbrook Wash. And one was El Pueblo Boulevard at Ashbrook Wash. So we're looking to do culvert crossings, change those from low flow crossings to culvert crossings. And so were still waiting to see if we are receiving the grants or not. But if we do we have money programmed in here for design in '25 for all three of them and in '26 for construction for all three just what would be our share. MILLER: These are great because they're long overdue. And in my opinion, it really helps with public safety during calls for service to be able to get to where they need to go quickly. It also is a big inconvenience to some of the residents that live in the neighborhoods that are affected by these. JANOVER: And I believe this is the final one. Fountain Hills Boulevard at Legend Wash, another low -- low flow crossing that we would be looking to apply to the Flood Control District for a grant. So this would be a very -- again, this a very, very high-level estimate of 1.3 million for design and construction. So in FY25 we're looking for design of 50,000 and construction in '26 for 275,000. Again, that would be our -- our share. With that, this is just a summary of all of the Public Works' projects. The ones that have asterisks next to them are our share of a grant if there's a grant available for it. So just going through those. Again, the way we -- the way I went through it based on this presentation we were asking for 5.73 million for FY24. And then moving forward to the outer years this shows the -- the programs and the multi -year projects. And I'll just get down to the next slide that has the -- the summary or the -- the sums for each fiscal year. So we have 6.43 million and '25, 2.8 million is '26, 1.4 million and '27 and 1.3 million and '28. For a total of 17,833,402 for the five years, so that's -- that's our request. And of course, we'll update everything for the March 14th meeting. So thank you. MILLER: Brenda, you had something that you talked to me about as a potential project, did you want to just describe it and then they can probably work up something by the time we have this capital projects workshop? KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. Thank you very much, Pretty Ms. Mayor. Yeah, I had a PowerPoint that maybe we can share privately but when our Dark Skies Page 163 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 164 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT communities were initiated years ago, and right inside the -- the ordinance and the language was to have dark sky compliant illumination called like, street lighting, like you would in Scottsdale or anyplace else. But for -- this would be dark sky compliant lighting, so it'd be -- I've talked to Justin about this extensively. He's got all the schematics, all the plans. As the -- the fire department I think can -- can verify and -- and the -- the Maricopa County can -- can verify when they do runs at night it's very dangerous because there's a lot of people that they don't wear -- have a flashlight or wear reflective clothing and it's -- it's -- so our professionals even have this as a problem. The people have this as a problem. I did post this on my Facebook and got a lot of input. And there -- it was a consensus that everybody said is Fountain Hills at night is very dangerous. And this first came to my attention when I was just driving around at night when I first came here, and people just wear dark clothes at night and -- and they're not always in the intersections but that's on them. But I think if we could illuminate some of the intersections particularly the feeders going into downtown, that's why I asked you about the dark sky compliant lighting and the -- the program in downtown so people can be feel free to walk downtown with safety of the illumination, and then also to our parks. And 1 identified in my presentation some other particularly dangerous intersections that this would be particularly relevant for. Basically in my proposal like 1 called for four of the most dangerous intersections to be a trial basis that we could put up the illumination -- the dark sky illumination and see how the people like it. And if they feel safe if they like that then maybe we can expand the program further in the future. So that's -- that's essentially what I had. MAYOR DICKEY: Great. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. And just in the original language it did call for like what Flagstaff did. And Grady, I think you're very familiar with Flagstaff. I mean, they're a dark sky community. And you know they did put up dark sky compliant Illumination. And the Flagstaff is more safe than Fountain Hills to walk around at night. And so that was my idea. MAYOR DICKEY: There we go. Ready to move on to our next item which is to talk about council rules of procedure. We saw some items I think that we might want to talk Page 164 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 165 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT about and bring back for future changes possibly. You gave us a sheet here. Let's see. All right. So Grady, did we -- did you have anything you wanted to say before we got started? Or -- MILLER: So this is a -- this is a collaboration between Linda, our town clerk, our town attorney, and myself on some of the items that were going to talk about. As an example, you're probably remember about a month ago or so, we were concerned about the scheduled public appearance. And so we wanted to address that as an issue. Also there's been -- the way that we do the future council agenda items, we just had that on the agenda. But we have some other way that we think that would be more efficient and a better way of doing that. That was already in the works before the council took its action. So that I'm going to go ahead and move on to the first one. And I'm going to turn it over to Linda because she's done the most work on this. MENDENHALL: Thank you, Mayor and Town Council. As Grady said we were looking at different processes. And it was basically a method to make things more smooth and transparent to accommodate Town Council, their items, placing an item on the agenda. And so under notice and agenda there's 4.2, the agenda preparation. And so what we thought we could do is add to the actual council agenda a section and you'll see it in your handout called future agenda items or we can call it council requested future agenda items. And basically, what we're doing is at the meeting this will be on the agenda as a category. And at this moment you can bring up items for future council agenda. We'll even have it stated on here. It says members of the town council may request that an agenda item be added to a future council agenda. In accordance with the open meeting law there should be no discussion on the item other than to clarify the requests and to seek support from two councilmembers. This will make it a little bit easier you can talk a tiny bit about it but without going into detail and you can get your support. This eliminates the need to go around and ask many different councilmembers if they'll support your item. It brings it to the front. It gives more transparency to the issue. And we would also update that section of the submittal process under B2 we would add language that clarifies that mayor and councilmembers, the mayor or three councilmembers may direct the town manager through the future Page 165 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 166 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT agenda items category to place an item on the next available agenda for action. By adding this category to the agenda it's going to help you with your process. Is there any questions on this item before I go to the next item? Docs anyone have any comment? MILLER: I'd just like to just add one other thing. So the other thing is the direction to the town manager is kind of a catch-all. And so you might actually forget you want to bring up something but if you have this called out as council requests to add a future agenda item it's going to jog your memory like if you come and you want to do that at the beginning of the meeting. When you get to that item that's going to be your reminder versus, you know, direction of the town manager. So I just think it's a really good way. It's very transparent. And we're -- we're proposing that we keep it the same way as it's currently in the policy, which is basically it's a sponsor which would be the councilmember requesting it and just two councilmembers, so there's consensus to bring it up at a feature council. MENDENHALL: And it also allows -- when you do bring this up it allows the town manager to say oh, we might need to have a public hearing for that item so it can't be the actual next agenda. So we can negotiate when the next agenda it can be on depending on what the subject matter is. So that is also helpful. MAYOR DICKEY: And it avoids the three -council people talking ahead of time. That's always been something a little sketchy, a little bit too close to having four. It's been here a long time but this way it's just right at a meeting. I do have a question about the on an agenda for action. So that kind of narrows it down. Can we have it not for action but so it could be on an agenda to discuss even if action isn't possible for one reason or another either -- MILLER: I think that's a good -- MAYOR DICKEY: -- or maybe it's not even an action item, it's just like wanting to discuss something. MILLER: I think that's a good suggestion. It could be for discussion or possible action is a better way to -- MENDENHALL: Uh-huh. MILLER: -- to phrase that. Page 166 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 167 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MENDENHALL• Okay. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. Good idea. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. MENDENHALL: Okay. So well go into the next section in this area. It redresses the citizen or group may apply to have an item placed on the agenda as follows. We are recommending that that be removed from the council rules of procedure because we feel that there are many methods for the residents to bring items to your attention. And that's through call to the public. There's also on your website page how to contact you. There's many different ways for that. So we're recommending that that be removed. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The whole section? MENDENHALL: The whole section. Because in this way let's say if they bring it up to call to the public you're allowed to direct town staff to review that item or to research it or so forth and that's what -- that's how they can be addressed. MILLER: It's a very unusual process. I've never seen this in any other city where, you know, people can just like almost in a way demand to be placed on the agenda. It's just -- its a very unusual process. ARNSON: That's what I was going to say. Yeah. MENDENHALL: Do I have any questions on that? Or -- MAYOR DICKEY: Just this isn't total -- this isn't the ten-minute thing though? This is -- right? MENDENHALL: Yes, it is the ten-minute thing. [CROSS TALK] MENDENHALL. This would be the scheduled public appearance. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. MILLER: This is citizen -initiated ones, not -- MENDENHALL: Right. MILLER: -- you know, where you have guests that are present -- you know, giving presentations to the council or -- MAYOR DICKEY: Right. Hold on one sec. I'm sorry. I'm looking at page 10. Letters -- number C or something, scheduled public appearances presentations. MENDENHALL: That would be under the order of business. And -- Page 167 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 168 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: So that -- MENDENHALL: -- that would need to also be changed as well. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. MENDENHALL: So we would have to update that throughout the document. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Perfect. Thank you. MENDENHALL: Okay. So I'm going to move on. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor. This one is a little torn because as I read the rules I think citizens can initiate this on their own. I think that, you know, just like councilmembers have to have three -- three people request the same thing. Or -- or the mayor can edit the agenda. It would move meetings along faster if we had three -minute comments versus ten-minute comments. But 1 also -- it's -- just like other towns don't do this, it's a unique part of our town and our rules to allow people this opportunity. And sometimes three minutes can feel like there's pressure and become more confrontational than it should be, and I just wonder if its concise, if its germane. And you have, obviously, multiple people request it. You know, it has to be -- through the rules it says three people have to request an item, you know, three residents. I don't know if I mind that -- that openness and transparency there. So there's -- there's -- so I -- I think it's -- it's -- its -- it's a complex thing and I don't think we should be cut and dry either. MAYOR DICKEY: I was just going to say I want to make sure that I'm clear it's not three residents, correct? It's one resident asking. [CROSS TALK] MAYOR DICKEY: No. It's one resident that -- and then they can get three council to do it. MENDENHALL: Three council members, yes. MAYOR DICKEY: So basically, it's the same -- MENDENHALL: Uh-huh. MAYOR DICKEY: It's kind of the same thing. Like so if somebody wants something on an agenda instead of calling you up and having you call two other council people they just call you up and then you bring it up at a meeting and two council people support it. But it's the same concept. It's just all done at a meeting instead of behind the scenes. Page 168 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 169 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MCMAHON: How -- MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor. MCMAHON: How many times has this been used? MILLER: I can tell you probably a total of four times but two of them were short-term rentals when we were having the peak of the issues and it was somebody that was a-- a neighbors that were upset about the party house. And then it was somebody else that didn't like how MCSO was responding to the party house. So it was -- and we just have had maybe two others that I can think of. MCMAHON: So it really isn't used and really call to the public serves basically the same purpose. MILLER: Except for when we had the one request that just came up about six weeks ago then other people started contacting us to say that there -- they would likely be doing that if that meant that they can get more than three minutes to speak on non -agenda items. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. MCMAHON: I'm for -- I'm for it being gone. I just don't think it's used that much. MAYOR DICKEY: I think it was just (indiscemible). MENDENHALL: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: It depends on what you want. Thank you. MENDENHALL: Okay. And so I have a consensus that we would want to remove that? Okay. Perfect. Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: (Indiscernible). MENDENHALL: Next were going to talk about section 5. One of the things that we've noticed is that -- and I think we've brought this up before, not necessarily me, but I know that councilmembers have brought up before, that people don't necessarily read the rules of procedure and so they don't typically know that you arc supposed to have your comment card in prior to that item being addressed. And so what I thought was a good idea is that we do a statement of participation. And you have that in your handout. And it's -- I would say that after the roll call. And it would be letting them know how we handle and conduct business, so that we aren't distracted during, you know, a heated discussion on an item and then we continually have people coming up with comments. And I'm not sure if you had an opportunity to read what this statement of participation Page 169 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 170 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT would be. But it -- it states anyone wishing to address the council regarding items listed on the agenda or under call to the public should fill out a request to comment card located in the back of the council chambers and hand it to the town clerk prior to consideration of that agenda item. When your name is called please approach the podium and state your name for the public record. Please limit your comments to three minutes. It is under the policy of the mayor and council to not comment on items brought forth under call to the public. However staff can be directed to report back to the council at future date or to schedule items raised for future council agenda. This also allows them the opportunity to know how they're supposed to conduct themselves. They're supposed to say their name for the public record. They know now that they have three minutes. Some people may not know that. They may not read certain things on the agenda. This is just to help facilitate our meeting and conduct it in an orderly fashion. MILLER: And Linda, you would read this at the beginning of each council meeting? MENDENHALL. Yes, at the beginning of each meeting except for at a work session when call to the public is not permitted nor is it an action item. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. FRIEDEL: Can we add name and put town after that? MENDENHALL: Okay. MILLER: Good suggestion. MENDENHALL: That was great. MAYOR DICKEY: So just -- and -- and it actually says in what we have already that the cards would go in prior to council discussion of that agenda item. MENDENHALL: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: So this is -- MENDENHALL. It does. MAYOR DICKEY: -- a continuation of what we should be doing. So -- MENDENHALL. Exactly. MAYOR DICKEY: Great. Thank you. MENDENHALL: You bet. I also was thinking as -- as we were talking, sometimes it Page 170 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 171 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT might be helpful even to educate the public with a little bit more and maybe I could even put something on the website, a video or something how what council meeting runs, you know, with all my spare time. But I think that, you know, the things that we can do to equip our residents with more information I think that that's what's important. And we do want to hear from them. And so I think this will help -- this will help just give a little bit more order. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. MENDENHALL: Any other comments on that? KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. MENDENHALL: Yeah. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor, Grady. I also I think it would probably be a good idea and the mayor's been very good about this, but if you could in your statement just tell people that to please speak in the microphone? MENDENHALL: Okay. KALIVIANAKIS: Because the people at home when it's streaming or live they just can't hear even though we can. And so it's very frustrating for the people at home that can't hear the dialogue and then all they can hear is our response. So maybe we could remind the public of that. MENDENHALL: Yes. I can add that there. That would be great. MILLER: We tend to forget how intimidating it is to come -- because we're here and this is just part of our jobs but for people that are coming for the first time when you kind of see it when you have the Stellar Students. And the fear on the face of the kids and their parents. But it is intimidating so I like the idea of the video and -- and maybe just walking people through -- MENDENHALL' Yes. MILLER: -- how things are done and take away a little bit of that fear factor. MENDENHALL Okay. Let's see. Our next one I don't know how much time we have on this but it's -- it's more for, you know, how it's -- where we -- how we -- the procedents -- procedures for conducting a meeting. And some of the things that are listed here it's basically the order of business and participation of the presiding officer, observations, and comments that have been received. Page 171 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 172 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT I think we did much better today in our council retreat with speaking through the mayor. And so I just really want to bring that up again. And I didn't know if mayor wanted to say anything to that, you know, in support of that. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. And I did -- I noticed that that is on page l5 already MENDENHALL: Uh-huh. MAYOR DICKEY: So that's something. And just in general, and I don't know that's -- that these are changes. They're not changes. But I think one of the issues that seemed to get noticed is the difference between continuing and postponing and tabling, and what needs to -- what's allowed to be debated, what isn't. And when we -- when somebody really means to postpone something like to not bring it back, but then we end up using the wrong words and end up feeling like were under pressure that it does have to come back. The other thing is when you call for the question, I think that needs five votes. So maybe a little primer on some of this stuff or -- because it really hadn't -- hasn't been something that we've spent a lot of time on. The other thing is when you -- once you make a motion you can discuss. So that's -- you know that's fine, but you can't take public testimony. So be careful when you make a motion depending on when that is. I know we're supposed to take the testimony first and you know, take the cards if there is -- or if there are any. But once you do make the motion -- and plus then you have to kind of extricate yourself from the motion if the discussion ends up taking us in another direction and then want to amend it or withdraw it and that kind of thing. So there's really -- there's not a rush to make motions a lot of times but just so that you know that was something that has also kind of come up. And again, the what kind of discussion is allowed for when we do our activities. So those are like what we did for the last two weeks, not supposed to talk about it, right, and then direction to town manager. A lot of times that has to do with somebody speaking to us and saying you know we could bring that back or we could put that on an agenda if that's what we want to do. But there's always that little bit of -- of uncertainty on some of these things. So it were all patient with each other and make the meetings go smoother and of -- kind of read these things a little bit then -- then maybe we'll -- we'll be able to get through quicker and smoother that and with the decorum. MENDENHALL: Right. Exactly. And it's also helpful for residents because they -- Page 172 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 173 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT they're trying to follow along with what's going on and so it can be a little bit confusing. And -- and I know our residents are really involved and they really like to know what's happening. And so if we can make it a little easier for them I think that that's, you know, the way to go. And I do know that Aaron is going to be giving his rules of procedure and open meeting law. ARNSON: Yeah. Sometime -- sometime in the near future, TVD, not today, I'll be doing my -- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible). ARNSON: Yeah. I'll be doing my -- my council rules, and code of conducts, open meeting law, conflicts of interest, the scary talk that I give every year. So this would probably be a good opportunity maybe to -- to explore those things that the mayor discussed, and that Linda was discussing a little bit more. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. And then, Linda, the one thing that I keep getting told that I forget to do is to say how a vote went. MENDENHALL: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: So we're kind of -- so like if you say four -- four to three or something -- MENDENHALL: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: -- then I'm supposed to say such and such past or whatever. So I'll try to keep remembering to do that and then one other thing that's been sort of recent because of COVID we started taking the comment cards online. So there's some confusion because I think some people think we're going to read the whole -- MENDENHALL: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: -- you know. And it's a hundred words I believe. MENDENHALL: Uh-huh. MAYOR DICKEY: And then they feel like, hey, you didn't take my comment. So I don't know -- that's really not even in here I don't think -- the -- the online comment card. So we might want to think a little bit about if we want to continue them which, you know, maybe we do. I -- you know, I think it's a good thing. But to be clear, we'll say their name and their position. Page 173 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 174 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MENDENHALL: Yes. It is in here. MAYOR DICKEY: But they need to know that we wouldn't read it, you know. And -- and I think when you're on the website you know that it's not for calls to the public. So it's -- it's only for agenda items. And I think it would be, at least, you know if we can't read it at least saying their name and for or you know against or -- or whatever. But -- so that would be something to help clarify. GRZYBOWSKI: Excuse me a second. Is there any way we can alter the form that it actually says do you support, or do you oppose? Because I will get an email from a girlfriend the next day saying I opposed it, and she said I supported it. So if we could make it clear --- MENDENHALL: Right. I was thinking about that today, so we're on the same path. It doesn't have it on there, so we do need to have that on there because sometimes it's difficult to -- are they supporting it or are they opposing it? They give me two different answers. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible). MENDENHALL: They're on the same page. MILLER: We also require now -- they were able to submit it without having their email address. It requested it but they were able to submit it without putting their email address. MENDENHALL: Right. MILLER: The reason why we want that is sometimes they may need to have some follow-up and I've -- I don't have a way of contacting them. So that does -- it's required before they can even click submit. It won't let them submit it. So that's -- that allows us so that we can follow up if we nest -- if we needed to. MENDENHALL: Right. And I stand corrected when you were talking about the request to comment cards that are done online, it -- it does not address it. It only addresses the ones that are -- let's say people who come here, and they don't want to speak and then I have to separate them and say who's for and who is against. So I just wanted to clarify that in case -- MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. And those we do read because they're just like a blurb. MENDENHALL: Right. Exactly. Page 174 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 175 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MAYOR DICKEY: As if they came to speak. MENDENHALL: Exactly. So we can add that to the rules of procedure regarding the online card and add the opposed or for. And we also do need to -- and this could be in the video, that the people who come in they don't even put it through for or against. So -- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Not all of them. MENDENHALL: --- not all of them do but some of them do. Some of them are very good about filling out their form and others are not. So it's just a matter of educating. And if they're going to spcak it doesn't matter if they put for or against because they're going to let you know. It's the ones who don't want to speak that really need that to indicate that. I didn't really have a slide for questions because 1 was hoping we would just talk about it while we were -- MAYOR DICKEY: And it's just what we're doing. MENDENHALL: -- going through that. And so if there's -- MAYOR DICKEY: I have one more thing. MENDENHALL: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: We noticed in -- after Christmas and then we had MLK Day and then President's Day -- MENDENHALL: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: -- where our meetings were always a day after a holiday. And so with being closed on Friday and then on Monday you can see some of us might be looking at our -- our packet and not be able to talk to anybody until Tuesday which is, all except Grady because he's so lucky, but so for the rest of this year there's only one which is September 5th. But then right away again next January 2nd is the Tuesday, and January 16th is the Tuesday, and both of those. So we -- so since our rules and procedures say it's a second -- I mean, the first and third -- MENDENHALL: Third. MAYOR DICKEY: -- Tuesdays maybe we can say unless it's following a holiday and then it would be the Wednesday, right? Just like the waste management goes one day later because I think we start messing around with weeks that we might get a little messed up. Page 175 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 176 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MILLER: Yeah, so that's a good suggestion. Of course the council always has the ability when they go to adopt the schedule they do that in December for the next year. And the staff can just be really cognizant when they're putting together the schedule to make sure that, you know, that they recommend not having the Tuesday meetings if it's following a Monday federal holiday. MENDENHALL. Correct. And that's what -- the rules of procedures allow for council -- it says when the day for a regular meeting the council falls on a legal holiday no meeting shall be held on such holiday, but such meetings shall be held at the same time and the same location on the same day designated by the council that is not a holiday unless the meeting is otherwise canceled by the council. So it's a long way just to say you can have it another day. Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, for this year we only have September 5th -- MENDENHALL: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: -- so let's keep that in mind. Thank you very much. This item is 1 think Amanda, right? MILLER: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh. MILLER: Amanda -- this is going to be a real quick one. So Amanda our ED director's going to give a presentation on everything you ever want to know about columbariums and whether the town should be in the service of providing this for our residents. So anyways, Amanda, you're going to go ahead and do your presentation from there? JACOBS: Mayor, Councilmembers, so staff and council received a constituent inquiry regarding creating a columbarium on town property. We did some quick research in preparation for today's meeting, and we found looking at our 91 cities and towns that there was a low number. About three is what we could find, again, doing some quick research, where it was town owned that was Flagstaff, Mesa, and Glendale if I'm remembering correctly. We then looked to see if there's any possibility of using a columbarium within just the town. And we found five churches that are listed. I'm not going to go through all of them. Staff does recognize that of our nearly 24,000 residents they may not all go to this church, they may not go to a church, but this is what is available in our backyard. Before Page 176 or 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 177 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT we do any additional research we wanted to ask council to Mr. Miller's point, do we want to be in the business the columbarium business? So we leave it to council. I always think it's good practice to provide recommendation from staff Staff is not recommending moving forward with this. Again, we have nearly 24,000 residents. I'm only aware of one inquiry. We also don't know where we're putting this. Is it a building? Is it a room? Who's responsible? Is it staff? Is it a third party? The operational cost? And with that, Madame Mayor, I turn it over to you. MAYOR DICKEY: It could be a puzzle. You put names on that. MCMAHON: Have you looked into what's required in order to even consider this as far as building one? You know, like called a cemetery or anything like that? Because I don't think this is as easy as it's sounding. JACOBS: So Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, no we have not. Again, we wanted to do some initial research before we dove -- MCMAHON: Oh. JACOBS: -- too deep to see if there was a consensus to move forward. MCMAHON: Okay. And also -- I mean, what are -- I mean, what are the expenses and who -- you know, the upkeep and who's going to be responsible et cetera for that? I'm -- I'm not for it because I just think it's too complex of an issue. ARNSON: Mayor, could I just jump in real quick? I'm no expert in cemeteries or columbariums, but one of our other communities, at least, one of our other ones, does have one that we represent. It is not as easy as it sounds. There is an extensive regulatory scheme that we have to comply with involving notifying family members, handling of either deceased or cremated bodies, right. There's all sorts of things you have to comply with, and state regulations, and inspections that have to be done. It's -- it's not the easiest business to be in. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, you know, this has been something that's been brought up over the years so it's not -- you know, I know where there's one person or one constituent but -- but he or she is not alone in this desire. And I think when we went through the 50th anniversary thing it kind of brought that back that we're -- you know, we are an older community and I'm sure many of us from where we come from go and back and see or you know relatives and such. And so I think that was the thought process. I was Page 177 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 178 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT thinking that the Historic and Cultural Preservation Commission might be interested in researching it more. But I don't know. Nobody seems to agree with that. It'd seemed like a natural thing as a historic preservation for a town that's 50 years old with the people that are getting older. And so but if it and the -- and -- and then the thing that really pushed me over the edge was doing the overlook and seeing people there having a little service and throwing the ashes and 1 don't know if that's legal or not, but that was -- and -- and you know we're all kind of walking through like, you know, felt very intrusive. And that's not the first time. [LAUGHTER] MAYOR DICKEY: So there might be a need or a want by more than we think. But you know, obviously if the intention is not to go ahead with this then I will abide by that. FRIEDEL: I would agree with the staffs recommendation not to move forward with this. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I would agree with you, Ms. Mayor on this. I think it should be assigned to a committee. And I think that in a town like ours this is -- it's an elderly population and a community that has a deep pockets. I think if we put it out there that if somebody would like to sponsor this and have naming rights, like the Joe Smith (ph.), I think somebody might be willing to sponsor this and we could have something like this in our town. I mean Flagstaffs got Dark Skies. We've got Dark Skies. Yeah. They did it we can do it. So I think there's a way to do this without us even having to pay for it. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. TOTH: I would have to disagree because we would still have to pay for the staff hours for managing it and this is something that we don't have the experience with. As much as I can understand the sentiment of wanting to stick around Fountain Hills, it's a really special place. I love the idea of my future family coming back and visiting me and someday, but 1 think there's a lot of work to do for the living first. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. GRZYBOWSKI: I think it's a lovely idea. As someone that did something non- traditional with both of our parents they're in the Gulf Ocean right now, in case either one of you want to know. 1 think it's a lovely idea, but I don't think that it is something that we can afford to do at this time. I think it's an excellent idea if there is a property owner Page 178 or 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 179 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT out there that wants to do this themselves because having shipped ashes two times for two different parents to the people that put the coral reef together there was a lot involved in making it happen. And we couldn't do it ourselves. Only the mortuary people could do it. It was a lot involved. So 1 would suggest if there's a property owner out there or if the -- the person that asked the question knows somebody -- 1 think it's a lovely idea I just don't think that we can take it on ourselves. MAYOR DICKEY: And again, my issue with having with -- or my idea of having it go to the commission, which is a new commission, and maybe looking at projects or such, would be that they would do -- we're just up here saying we can't do it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't -- it would have to be you know municipal. There may be like you were saying a property owner or -- or maybe it's just -- in other words were guessing on what it takes if we were going to be the ones running it. I don't know that this is what the gentleman necessarily is requiring. And are there other things -- ways out there to do it that wouldn't mean we had staff time or were worried about, you know, health department and all that. So that was all -- it was my idea was to have them maybe do more of a deeper dive on it. But I don't think that these -- the support is here to do that. But -- KALIVIANAKIS: Well -- MAYOR DICKEY: -- I do think that visiting my parents does serve the living. And you know, there's other ways that that we're doing things and -- and I think it is a -- a worthy idea. KALIVIANAKIS: And if I could just follow up, Ms. Mayor. Thank you very much. Again, we're in agreement. Again, just reminding people that we -- we are an elderly community. There's a lot of people that don't have anybody to give their inheritance to. And if we were to set this up either privately or publicly with naming rights we could also set up an -- they could be required to have an endowment and so that would pay for the future of this project for even -- for staff costs for upkeep maintenance. And so again, we can just as a provision of the naming rights we just set up an endowment. And I think it'd be a beautiful thing to have in our community. MAYOR DICKEY: I appreciate that. We'II talk to the interested person and see if there's any desire to take this someplace else. Thank you. All right. So I think not 3 Page 179 of 180 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 180 of 180 FEBRUARY 28, 2023 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT o'clock. Sorry about that. But I think what Brenda said before we do it once a year -- KALIVIANAKIS: Before -- MAYOR DICKEY: -- and quarterly. KALIVIANAKIS: -- we adjourn, I do have one more -- just whenever you're ready for me. Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. I was going to do adjournment, so I will wait. KALIVIANAKIS: I just wanted to add when I did my dark sky illumination project I didn't know if -- I wasn't aware I was going to do that today, so I left out a couple important facts. A couple facts I left out was this was part of my Leadership Academy project and so I don't want to throw Gina (ph.) and Marie (ph.) and -- and Jill (ph.) under the bus because this was a corroborative effort to come up with this idea. And then the other thing I failed to mention too was after this idea came out and it went public and people kind of started to figure oh, they're gonna put street lights up in Fountain Hills, I did meet with the Dark Sky commission, with Vicki Betts and the vice president or vice chair, and they were in support of this. So as we think about going forward with this, we do have support from the dark skies people. And that's all I have. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Thank you, staff. Thank you, Council. Thank you anybody that was watching this. We really appreciate your interest and we're always open for your input Thank you so much. And if there's nothing else were adjourned. Page 180 of 180 Having no further business, Mayor Ginny Dickey adjourned the Council Retreat Meeting of the Fountain Hills Town Council held on February 28, 2023, at 4:41 p.m. ATTEST AND PREPARED BY: TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Gi y Dickey Ma r p L1fnda G. Mendenhall, Town Clerk CERTIFICATION I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Council Retreat Meeting held by the Town Council of Fountain Hills in the Town Hall Council Chambers on the 28'h day of February 2023. I further certify that the meeting was duly called and that a quorum was present. DATED this 18'h Day of April 2023 L'nda G. M€ndenhall, Town Clerk