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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024.0227.TCRetreat.MinutesTOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MINUTES OF THE FOUNTAIN HILLS TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT HELD ON FEBRUARY 27, 2024 The Council Retreat of the Fountain Hills Town Council was convened at 16705 E. Avenue of the Fountains in open and public session at 8:32 a.m. Members Present: Mayor Ginny Dickey: Vice Mayor Sharron Grzybowski; Councilmember Gerry Friedel; Councilmember Peggy McMahon; Councilmember Brenda J. Kalivianakis; Councilmember Hannah Toth; Councilmember Allen Skillicorn (8:32 a.m. — 12:03 p.m.) Members Attending Remotely: Councilmember Allen Skillicorn (12:30 p.m. — 2:09 p.m.) Staff Present: Town Manager Rachael Goodwin; Town Attorney Aaron D. Arnson; Town Clerk Linda Mendenhall Audience: Approximately forty-seven members of the public were present. TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING Post -Production File Town of Fountain Hills Town Council Retreat Meeting February 27, 2024 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 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Good morning everyone. Thank you so much for coming. We're going to start today with our roll call. And then, I think Rachael will have some announcements. So welcome back, my dear. MENDENHALL: Thank you. It's good to be back. Mayor Dickey? MAYOR DICKEY: Here. GOODWIN: Vice Mayor Grzybowski? GRZYBOWSKI: Present. MENDENHALL: Councilmember Friedel? FRIEDEL: Here. MENDENHALL: Councilmember McMahon? MCMAHON: Here. MENDENHALL: Councilmember Kalivianakis? KALIVIANAKIS: Present. MENDENHALL: Councilmember Toth? TOTH: Here. MENDENHALL: Councilmember Skillicorn? SKILLICORN: Here. GOODWIN: Good morning everybody out there. Staff. We have a really big crowd this morning. I'm excited to see so many folks here. Just a few housekeeping reminders. We probably have a long day ahead of us. So there are snacks and drinks and whatnot in the back. We do have some breaks planned throughout the day, but if we need to take more, we need to rearrange, that is totally fine. Even though this feels like a council meeting, keep in mind, it's not a council meeting in the formalities sake. It is a retreat. We're here to talk. We're here to discuss things. We're here to get staff input and make sure that the directions we get today are consistent with the vision and the goals that the council has. So some of the projects and things that we're going to talk about are recommendations by staff. Some of them are recommendations and feedback by members of the public that we've heard. And then some of them are initiatives that have been brought Page 2 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING forward by different members of council. So we're looking forward to that. But as a reminder, it doesn't necessarily have to be super formal. I want to encourage our staff to engage and speak up if there's points of view or different things happening. But before we get started, I did want to ask Capt. Kratzer to step up. Some of you may know there was some activities happening last night. That was kind of unexpected, and I thought Capt. Kratzer would be able to share some updates for us. KRATZER: Hi. Good evening. Good morning, Mayor, council. So yesterday at around 5:30 p.m., we received a couple of calls from residents at Adero Canyon that there were several protesters blocking the entry gates to the community, both the entrance and the exit. There were three people specifically who were -- two were sitting over by one of the gates that let people into the community and then one was sitting by the gate that was exiting the community. And they had put a chain around the gate so the gate couldn't open. And then they positioned themselves on the ground in front of the gates with some kind of contraption. It was a tire with concrete in it, but it had PVC pipe and rebar, so they their hands looked like they were cemented into the tire device that was blocking the roadway as well. Deputies went to the location and made contact with the group. They were making chants about Nationwide and end your contract. Bless you. It ended up -- we talked to someone on scene. There was probably six other protesters on the sidewalk with random signs. And then there was a person who -- there was a couple of cameras with the group and a person who was kind of the coordinator -- very limited on information and what she would say to deputies other than they were there to protest a contract Nationwide had and they weren't going to move and that's all she had to say to us. So we found out pretty quickly that Scottsdale police was working the same exact situation on their side on Shea Boulevard at the entrance to Adero there as well. So this group had coordinated this. We found out with one of our TLOs that work at the ACTIC responded and came out. Myself, Lt. Lawson, and even Chief McFarland (ph.) came out to the scene. And some of the intelligence found was that this all stems from protests for a fire and police training facility in Atlanta, Georgia. They refer to it as Cop City. And Page 3 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING it's a lot of -- there's a lot of environmental protests for this place in Atlanta, Georgia. But these events are now spreading. There was some connection made to some residents in that community associated with Nationwide, which was the reason why they were there. So Scottsdale PD on their side, they had their mobile field force cut team come out and they've got a pretty sophisticated setup for these -- and they plan for these type of protests. And this was new to them, the devices that they had. They ended up having to use several power tools to cut the individuals out from their contraptions, which they did have the ability to free themselves if they wanted to, but they weren't going to. Once Scottsdale's cut team removed and extricated their subjects, then they came over and gave us an assist and did the same thing on our end. So I think by about 10:30 we had all three in custody and cleared from the road, and the others left at that point in time. We don't necessarily anticipate additional issues in the area, but we don't know what -- the day before in Tucson, the same -- a group of protesters likely affiliated with this group did some damage in Tucson at a couple of banks -- Wells Fargo, where they smashed windows and tried to throw flares into the building. And I think they made three arrests in that. So this was kind of a coordinated additional location that they decided to protest at. None of the protesters were violent. There was no issues. There were some of the typical chants about anti -law enforcement. But there was no danger or threats towards law enforcement or aggression towards -- they were charged, three of them. We booked into the jail last night. They were charged with criminal damage -- not -- criminal damage may come later. One of the gates didn't seem like it was operating afterwards. But they were charged with criminal trespass. They were charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. They did block all traffic from going in and out. The one thing that they were -- a gas truck had come at one point, a resident had a potential gas leak, and the protesters wouldn't allow the gas truck in. One of the residents of the home came down and talked to the protesters, and they decided that they would allow the gas truck in. And Page 4 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING once they moved, we hurried up and took that gate. And we were allowed -- we were able at least to allow traffic in and out. If it wasn't for that, traffic would have been completely blocked for probably until 10:30. So that's the update. If there's any questions -- I don't have a lot of information, like detailed information I can provide because it is still an ongoing investigation. But if there are any questions, I can try to answer them to the best of my ability. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Were they charged with felony or misdemeanors? KRATZER: Unfortunately, all charges that were associated were all misdemeanors, even the resisting arrest, because it's a passive resist. It's a Class 1 misdemeanor. The criminal trespass, a Class 1 misdemeanor. And the disorderly conduct is a misdemeanor. So yeah, they are misdemeanors. Hopefully the court will take into consideration the resources and inconveniences that were required for the situation. And hopefully that will go into -- and that is going -- those charges will be submitted to the town prosecutor and Fountain Hills. KALIVIANAKIS: And then how long was the traffic interrupted for? KRATZER: From 5:30 till 10:30. And for a short time there, probably about an hour and 15 minutes, while Scottsdale had to set up their cut team, all traffic was blocked and so no one could go in and out from that location. Fortunately, again, for the gas truck that allowed us to get traffic in and out of there after about an hour, and then for the next two and a half hours, we were able to coordinate one lane of traffic in and out. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. So our first item today is about the budget. And our CFO is going to come -- and actually, I'll probably just throw everything to you, Rachael, and let you make the intros. Thanks. GOODWIN: Absolutely. Well, you were on the right track. Our CFO, David Pock -- and just as a reminder, David is transitioning out of our agency. He's going to be leaving us at the end of the fiscal year. So we also have Paul here. This is going to be Paul's first Page 5 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING meeting and participating, although he's been attending all of our council meetings and been training and whatnot. But today we're going to hear from both of them as we do a revenue update on this current fiscal year and then an outlook for FY25. So with that, I'll turn it over to you guys. POCK: All right. Good morning, Mayor, council. So to get things started, we're just going to start with our second-quarter revenue update. We've done the first one back in November, I believe it was. But we got some updated numbers for you, and things are still looking good. So I guess I don't need these when it's that far away. I'm probably going to be looking at you, sorry, Councilmember, because I'm going to use your screen. So all right. So first of all, we start with the net taxable activity. This is all activity within the town that's subject to TPT or sales tax. So our total activity for the quarter was $188.7 million. This increased $11 million from the same period as last year. So it's a good trend, things are looking healthy. As far as our collections, what we actually collected. This includes all the different categories that we have. So we had budgeted $4.01 million and collected 5.4. It's increase of about $1.4 million over what we thought or anticipated and it's also an increase of almost 500,000 compared to the same period last year. As far as retail sales, it's by far our largest category that we receive each year. We had budgeted 2.5 million, collected 2.65. So $160,000 more than what we thought, and then an increase of $30,000 compared to last year. You can see these are all pretty stable. There's not a lot of deviation from year to year. And you can also see that it increases year over year as well. The most volatile category that we have is construction, and that's just based on construction activity within the town. Some of the big spikes there, you can see were either audit collections or a sale of a building project that fell under speculative builder -- that category. We had budgeted 356,000, we collected 966,000. So that's quite a bit more. $610,000 more, in fact. An increase of 246 compared to last year. MAYOR DICKEY: David, could you define audit collection, please? Page 6 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING POCK: Sure. So we do have -- the town does have a contract auditor that works for us, Al Holler and his team. They go over, looking for anomalies in the TPT collections. If they notice something a little off -kilter or something that they want to look into, they will go in and conduct a desk audit of different taxpayers. And they also have a -- when I mentioned speculative builder -- so they do have access to real estate sales. So if a project is built within a certain time period and then sold, it falls into that category. And so they would do the valuations and then have an assessment basically based on that audit and they're finding -- MAYOR DICKEY: And that's done, like, a periodical time? So like every six months or something like that, or is it continuous? POCK: No. It's continuous. They work each month on looking at the reports. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. POCK: Sure. All right. And then utilities communications, again, pretty standard -- consistent. It includes water, sewer, electricity, cable, natural gas, and Internet services. We had budgeted 287,000, collected 440,000. That's 153,000 more than what we thought, and an increase of 38,000 compared to last year. You'll definitely notice a trend that all of these are more than what we were expecting. That's because the last two years we have been expecting a downturn, at least, I've been anticipating one in TPT revenue because of the economy and kind of where we're going. However, I'd much rather be planning for less revenue and receiving a lot more, than the inverse. Right? So keep going. As far as real estate, this is long-term residential rental and commercial real estate rentals. Budgeted 2.68, collected 2.93 -- $25,000 difference and an increase of 3,000. This is the one that will be impacted next year in January when the residential portion of this goes away and that equates to about 600,000 a year for an entire year. But we'll talk more about that a little bit later. As far as restaurants and bars, this is the one that I kind of watch, just as kind of an early indicator of things maybe starting to slow down. We had budgeted 275, collected almost 400,000. So $123,000 more, and an increase of 27,000 over last year. So we're Page 7 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING still looking pretty good overall. I don't necessarily like that those last three months are kind of at the same place that they were last year. I'd rather see those up a little higher, but still doing well. And then services did take a downturn in that last month. You can see this includes everything from golf tours, short-term rentals are also included in this, and hotels we had budgeted 336, received 651. Still quite strong as far as what we were expecting, but it is a little disheartening to see that downturn. And some of that might be included with the changes, the short-term rentals that we've implemented over the last year. There might be fewer and fewer actually being out there. Then we get into state shared revenue. Again, these are all very consistent. You can see the sales tax revenues are coming in just about where we need to. We're a little bit below, but nothing significant. And then as far as the income tax, of course, we had this year -- and it's something that Paul would be talking about, the change in the flat tax and the different percentages. That's why it's so high above last year. But there'll be more detail on that as well. As far as the highway user fund, coming in same. Kind of what we expected, just a little bit below. Nothing crazy though. And then vehicle license tax as well, you can see that's a little slower than what we were told it was going to be. MAYOR DICKEY: David, is the -- POCK: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: -- triangle there in the beginning of the HURF funds; is that for this year? POCK: No. MAYOR DICKEY: That was another blue? POCK: That would have been 2020. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. POCK: So that was that one-time payout where they kind of rebalanced that fund. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks. POCK: Any other questions on these? It's -- sure. Page 8 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MCMAHON: Thank you. FRIEDEL: Mayor, I -- MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, sorry. I was looking at my -- FRIEDEL: Quick question. On the audit collection, we outsource that? POCK: Yes. FRIEDEL: And can you give us an idea of what that cost the town? POCK: What is it? 2,500 a month, so 30,000. FRIEDEL: Okay. Great. Thank you. POCK: And we do get a report from him each month. And his services are definitely more than paid for in what we receive. FRIEDEL: That was the point of my question. I wanted people to know that we're just not out hiring people to do something that isn't paying it back. POCK: Right. FRIEDEL: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? MCMAHON: Okay. I have a question. On the state shared revenues and for HURF and everything, do you anticipate, given what the legislatures have been doing with our flat tax rate, et cetera, how are you going to accommodate that in the future as far as projections, et cetera, if you don't mind? Because it's a downturn and we have yet to determine how we're going to make that up. POCK: That is true. We will be talking a little bit more about the flat tax. There's a whole other slide that will be talking about that and the impacts and what it could -- the differences it could be. We'll get into it. And same with long-term rental because that's going to be the other -- big one for this coming year. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. POCK: So -- um -hum. SOLDINGER: All right. Good morning, Mayor, and council. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm excited to be here today for my first presentation. My name is Paul Soldinger; I think I met everyone. But I'll be going over the town's budgetary process Page 9 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING and just giving you a brief overview. So here are some key statutory and policy considerations that we believe are important for council to understand. The town shall not spend money for a purpose not include in its budget. The town shall not spend money or incur liabilities more than budgeted in the purposes of the budget. And after adoption of the budget, transfers may occur between funds with council majority vote. So our first step in our budgetary process, as I understand it -- I know I am new to the town coming in -- but is forecasting town revenues and we use trends and available estimates from the League and the JLBC to estimate how much of the various revenues the town will receive throughout the year. And these monies go into different buckets. And so we'd like you to think of these funds on the screen as different buckets that these monies go into. As you can see, the general fund is the biggest bucket. We kind of emphasized it and turned it blue just for your consideration. And in the general fund, these are the types of revenues that go in there. A split of the sales taxes, 30 percent of vehicle license taxes; state -shared revenue such as the flat tax, the urban revenue sharing amounts that go into that fund; charges for services, and fines and forfeitures. The streets funds they get the HURF monies, the Highway User Revenue Fund monies and 70 percent of the vehicle license taxes, grant revenues, and transfers in. The capital projects fund receives also a portion of the sales taxes, as well as grant revenues and transfers in. And then we do have various other funds. A lot of these funds have to do with economic development, tourism, the downtown strategy fund and the environmental fund. There's also several other funds that we have in the town that are smaller in nature, that receive certain types of other various revenues. So an important concept that we just want to briefly explain today in the budget process and during our day-to-day operations, is that revenues must equal expenditures in the general fund, and therefore town staff is unable to expend monies from the bucket until the monies start filling up throughout the year unless there is available fund balance, which is also possible, especially at the beginning of the year. We're going to have Page 10 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING existing fund balances, which we'll talk about later. So this requires the town to take a measured fiscal approach of approving planned capital projects during this budget process, and it's critical for departments to monitor their budgets on an ongoing basis throughout the fiscal year. Another important concept we want to bring to your attention is contingencies. After we forecast revenues or in other words, estimates how much revenues will fill the town's general fund bucket, we go through the budget process with the departments at the department level, and we'll talk about that a little bit more on the next slide. But that kind of -- as you can see, that fills the bucket a certain extent. But once we do that, once we go through that process, we set contingency amounts in certain departments. And this is partly to satisfy the requirements of having a balanced budget, by filling the gap between revenues and expenditures, but also to be used in certain circumstances. Town policies allow contingencies to be used for unforeseen expenditures, emergency expenditures, and revenue shortfalls. And you'll see the contingencies pop right up. Otherwise, contingencies will often be untouched unless one of those three events on the screen happen. Further, if our revenues come in well below forecasts and exceed our contingency levels, we have existing fund balances and a rainy -day stabilization fund that we may expend from in accordance with town policies only if needed. MAYOR DICKEY: But can I ask a question about the contingencies? This is different than a contingency that we have built into, say, a project? Like, when we approve a certain project, there's always a contingency in there. It's not really for any of these three reasons. It's just whatever the percentage is. So that's a separate -- it's the same word, but it's a separate meaning. Correct? SOLDINGER: Correct. I'm sorry. Go ahead. POCK: So yeah. When we have like an owner's allowance in a project, it's in case there are any cost overruns in that particular project. It just kind of sets aside some for an unforeseen expenditure, right? But it is a different -- it's not included in our contingency amount in the general fund. MAYOR DICKEY: It's foreseen in a way? Thank you. Page 11 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING SOLDINGER: And Mayor, thank you for the question. On the screen, those three items, those are directly in our budget implementation policy on what those contingencies can be used for. So once revenues are set, we go through the process of meeting with the departments. And on the screen, imagine that individual as one of the department heads and certain divisions to set their next year budget. We begin this process by starting at their base budget amounts from the last year's budget from the previous year, and account for minor changes such as contract changes and slight modifications between line items, which we'll discuss a little bit more in a minute. So what we just want to emphasize is that departments can't really start spending monies until, number one, the revenues fill the bucket. And number two, the council adopts the budget during the budget process that we're going through right now. So once these things happens, the department heads can start expending those monies and using monies on town objectives, capital projects and things of that nature. So as we mentioned, departments may only spend from their adopted budgets, including different types of expenditures, staff compensation, payments to vendors, ongoing capital and outreach projects that have already been approved by council, operational budget supplements such as one-time requests and ongoing requests, and capital improvement plan project request after council approval, which we'll be going into as well later today. So our third step relates to budget requests. So after the base budgets are set, departments and divisions have the opportunity to bring forth certain types of budget requests, including supplemental requests and capital requests. And some examples of supplemental requests could be new goods or services or contracted services or new staff, which we'll talk about a little bit today as well, and capital projects; it could be for streets, it could be for a new playground equipment at one of the parks, those types of things. So we'll go through that process, consider those requests with the departments, and we'll discuss them with council for council's consideration. So the last step requires us to combine all the budgeted expenditures and ensure our Page 12 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING forecasted revenues are still intact, to put forth a proposed budget for the council's consideration. Final discussions will take place before the town settles on a final adopted budget for council's approval in early June of this year, and here are some key meetings coming up to consider. March 26th, next month, will be the capital projects work session. April 9th will be the budget work session for the proposed budget. May 7th will be the tentative budget adoption, and June 4th is scheduled for the final budget adoption. And then the town after that will use the fiscal year 2025 adopted budget as its roadmap and expenditure limit throughout the upcoming fiscal year. So that completes that portion of the presentation about the the town process for its budget. Does anybody have any questions? Okay. Great. MAYOR DICKEY: (Indiscernible). SOLDINGER: Yeah. So now I'll just briefly get into some items of consideration for an outlook for the upcoming fiscal year 2025. So Councilmember, to your question earlier related to the flat tax and the shared income taxes that the town receives, this is distributed to the town through something called urban revenue sharing that we get from the state. The state shares income tax revenues with municipalities like Fountain Hills through its urban revenue sharing program. And these distributions are on a two- year lag, and that just means that the town receives our share of distributions based on state tax collections from two fiscal years ago. In January 2023, the state instituted a flat income tax of 2.5 percent for individuals and across the board decreasing that tax, which may have an effect on our revenues, which we'll talk about in a second. The state also increased this distribution percentage from 15 to 18 percent starting this fiscal year, fiscal year 2024. And I think, from what I understand, that was to limit the impact on municipalities, which actually resulted in a slightly higher revenue share for this fiscal year, which is going to therein result in a decrease for the upcoming fiscal year 2025. So we've projected a $1.6 million projected decrease from fiscal year '24 to 2025 in this revenue, and we project our forecast about $4.8 million coming to the town for this urban revenue sharing distribution. However, I did want to note we just received initial forecast from the League, which was a little bit higher. It's about $5.1 million in their Page 13 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING initial forecast. Long-term residential rentals, I know David has had the opportunity to present this to council in the past already, and these are just a little bit updated numbers. The state eliminated its long-term residential rental sales taxes in the last legislative session, and this will begin next year, in January of 2025, when that tax will go away. We estimate a decrease of more than $300,000 for fiscal year 2025. That's just considering that it's only half the year and then prospectively or in subsequent years, fiscal year '26 and beyond, that's about $600,000 of estimated decreases to town tax revenues based on that elimination of that tax. MAYOR DICKEY: We did. That was obviously a big item. And when we were able to -- executive committee was able to meet with the governor, it was high on everybody's mind and if not doing away with this, possibly delaying again when it actually begins, is part of the conversation. But as you know, as you are in the state government that the actual budget may not be ready until a lot later, June or so. So I don't know when we'll know, but just know that there's efforts to try and either delay or do something to compensate for this, because it's a pretty big deal. It's a really big deal to some other cities and towns. So they're working on it. I don't know what's going to happen. SOLDINGER: Thank you for that, Mayor, I appreciate that. FRIEDEL: Let me. Can I ask you a question, Paul and David? With the increase in population in just Maricopa County and the State of Arizona, do those numbers reflect any increase tax collections with all that increased population? Do you know if they -- because I know where the number one fastest growing county, what? Three or four years in a row? SOLDINGER: Right. FRIEDEL: That's just the county, and I'm sure the state overall has done extremely well, as -- POCK: So there's probably a couple different things that are going to be going on. Obviously with more people, you're going to have more people working, or at least that's the hope, right? And more people working that would increase the income taxes. Page 14 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING However, we do have a lower income tax rate now, that's flat. So you've got kind of that dynamic on one side. On the other side, you've kind of got the population equation that affects us as a town and the percentage that we would receive from those taxes. So I would venture to say, and forgive me if this doesn't sound appropriate, but I'm guessing that the population of Maricopa County is growing faster than the population here in Fountain Hills. So that would reduce our share of those increased taxes if they increase. Because I mean -- so yeah, there's a lot of different variables going on. I'm sure the League is taking some of that into account. FRIEDEL: So I guess my point is we don't know all the effects yet? POCK: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: I guess the best -- I'm sorry Brenda. The pie is getting bigger, but our piece is smaller. Brenda? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I'm just a little confused on the urban revenue sharing. Our percentage went from 15 to 18 percent, but then we expect a $1.6 million projected decrease. Could you explain why we're going to get a decrease? I'm just a little confused. SOLDINGER: Sure. Yeah. Mayor, Councilmember. It's a great question. It is a little bit confusing. And so I've been learning about it and reading up on it quite a bit. So if you go back and I don't have the amounts right in front of me at this time, but before these changes went to place, our revenues were more in the $4.5 million per year area before these changes. And so there was this kind of one year artificial jump because as I mentioned, this calculation is based on a two fiscal year lag. So it's based on income tax as the state has received two fiscal years ago. So for fiscal year 24, we actually received kind of a jump in revenues because it was based on fiscal year 22 tax collections, which was a good -- you know, after the pandemic and the increase of income in the state. POCK: Flat tax. SOLDINGER: And that was before the flat tax took effect. So in January of 2023, it was half of fiscal year '23. So all of those things considered, we kind of got an artificial bump this current fiscal year, and that's going to level off because of that flat tax and the Page 15 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING lower income tax collections prospectively. So that's why the amounts going -- our projections for this year were $6.4 million, and then we were forecasting about $4.8 million for the coming year because of the flat tax implementation. And it's also on the slide. It may also be from general lower individual tax collections, not just the the flat tax implementation. FRIEDEL: Brenda, you just have to get out and spend more, please. KALIVIANAKIS: So and going forward, do we expect it to be more towards the 6 million or the 4.8 million in the outlying years? SOLDINGER: Yeah. Mayor, Councilmember, great question. So based on League forecasts that were just sent to us, and actually based on the JLBC -- the Joint Legislative Budget Committee forecasts -- we're going to see another decrease after fiscal year '25. So fiscal year '26, they're projecting about a ten percent more decrease. So as I mentioned, the League estimates for fiscal year '25 come in at 5.1 million. They're projecting that it will decrease for the Town of Fountain Hills to about 4.6 million the next fiscal year. And then it will start to stabilize and start going up a little bit by about, I want to say about five percent per year, the next two years prospectively. But of course, that all has to do with the economy and how people's income tax collections kind of go through the process. And then that will be adjusted accordingly. KALIVIANAKIS: Right. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. SOLDINGER: No problem. MAYOR DICKEY: I think one way to look at it is that we have the usual things that are on that you can't really predict. But by making it a flat tax, they knew that the amounts that cities were going to get were just going to go low. So they compensated for that by raising the amount. The 15 percent has been there forever like since the '70s or something. So to go to the 18 percent to try to -- so it wouldn't be so abrupt. KALIVIANAKIS: Well, it was pretty abrupt. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. At least it's next year, not this year. So thanks. SOLDINGER: Okay. So just one kind of future revenue impact. It's not going to come for about five fiscal years after this fiscal year. But related to Prop 302 tours and monies, Page 16 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING the town receives about $67,000 annually from the Arizona Office of Tourism for tourism purposes. These monies are collected by the state and are derived from car rental surcharges and one percent tax on hotels in Maricopa County. The town accounts for these monies in the tourism fund for tourism, marketing, and programing purposes, and these monies will sunset in fiscal year 2030, with an estimated negative future impact of $67,000 to the town that we would use for tourism purposes. All right. Hopefully you haven't gotten tired of me talking yet. I still have a little more to go. I just want to talk a little bit about the revenue splits. So these are some of the major revenue sources the town receives and how they're split between the buckets. Local sales taxes, which are the largest town revenue source, those are split between five funds, which I'll discuss in just a minute. Related to the flat tax, the urban revenue sharing, income taxes, those 100 percent go into the general fund. The highway user revenue fund monies, the HURF moneys, they go 100 percent to the streets fund. Vehicle license taxes are split between the general fund and the streets fund. And there's also transfers to other funds that we use to fund certain programs that we'll discuss as well. So as I mentioned, the local sales taxes are the biggest town source of revenue. I believe we're forecasting about $17.6 million of these revenues for fiscal year '25, and that's based on a 2.9 percent local sales tax rate applied to almost all categories collected for in -town purchases based on past council approvals. So 2.6 out of the 2.9 percent goes directly into the general fund, .2 of the 2.9 percent goes directly into the streets fund, .08 percent goes into the economic development fund, and .02 percent goes in the downtown fund. And then after that takes place into those four funds, we do an analysis of the sales tax related to construction sales taxes, and we put half of those monies into the capital projects fund every month. So what do the amounts look like? We're presenting here in this pie chart fiscal year '25 forecasted revenues and what you can kind of expect to see in each of these funds. So in the general fund, we project about $14.9 million from local sales taxes. In the streets fund we project about $1.2 million. Economic development and downtown funds are Page 17 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING combined, as you can see in the pie chart. I believe the downtown fund is 121,000 we're projecting and the economic development fund is the $485,000. Combined that's about $606,000 for those two funds. And the capital projects fund, as we mentioned earlier, that will fluctuate based on the construction sales taxes coming in depending on the year. But we're projecting about $905,000 going to the capital projects fund from this revenue source. MAYOR DICKEY: Just to make a point about that construction sales tax, it's because we really don't want to put that into anything ongoing. So putting it into the capital funds is a good idea because that is more of a one-time deal. SOLDINGER: Thank you, Mayor. Okay. That completes my presentation unless anyone has any questions. But I will be turning it over to John now to talk about the code enforcement officer. MAYOR DICKEY: When we had the table about unspent fund balances; is that later? SOLDINGER: Mayor, yes. That'll be later in the presentation. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks. GOODWIN: Mayor, if I may? And John, as you get situated, I wanted to kind of call out Paul. Thank you for walking us through the process. I think that really helps clarify, especially for folks who who may not understand our budgetary -- how long the budget process takes. One of the things John mentioned -- or Paul mentioned was that staff bring forward supplements, and usually we talk about the supplements internally. We call it the green sheet. It's a sheet that's usually printed on green paper for whatever reason at one point in time, I think because that's what we found in the closet. Nonetheless, it has all of the supplements. Well, one of those supplements this year was requested through a council discussion about a code enforcement officer and the addition of that. And we thought today was a good day to kind of talk through what that would look like. There are others, there are lots of other supplements, and we will be talking about those when we come back for our budget discussions later, I think, in April. But this one today has so many things associated with it. It has a lot of questions around it, not only from council but from staff and how it would work. So we thought Page 18 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING today would be a good day to sort of deep dive and look at that and get the idea of, if we do want to do this, then great; staff will continue down that path. If we want to deviate or take a different direction, today's that day to kind of talk through that. With that, John. I'll turn it to you. WESLEY: Mayor, council. So as Town Manager mentioned we've been asked to look at the options and directions we might go with another code enforcement officer that would be directed primarily towards some animal control activities. Addressing some of the concerns we've been hearing from residents of the town about dogs at large and off leash in our parks and so forth. So a little bit of background to get started. In going back and researching this, we found that the town did have animal control officers previously. About 15 years ago it was decided that they weren't as necessary and we ceased providing that service. Instead began to contract with Maricopa County Animal Control. That's been a contract of about $30,000 a year. We've run into some recent issues with them in fulfilling that. There was a significant cost increase that came this year, their performance in being able to come here and provide the level of service that we wanted was not meeting expectations, and we can get the basic service from them without any contract. So we terminated that contract at this point and we're looking for options for how to address this particular issue in town. We have done some surveys last year, April, May, and November. Code officers went to various parks at various times and days to see what was going on in terms of the numbers of dogs on and off leash. And you could see the numbers from those particular periods when we did those searches. So a lot of dogs; we didn't really find that many off leash at the time the officers were there. So the proposal is for an additional code enforcement officer to help address this issue. You can see the costs involved there for the officer. There's some offset in the savings we have from the previous contract with Animal Control. There would be some one- time costs to provide a vehicle and some other equipment for this person in this position. As currently envisioned, and it has been discussed, the basic duties of this officer are Page 19 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING described in the top part of this slide: patrol parks and public areas. If they see somebody with a dog off leash, they would inform that they need to get their dog on leash. They could request their name and contact information, but there's no obligation for them to respond to the officer or to do as asked. If there is some type of confrontation that ensues, MCSO could be contacted to come and assist with the situation. They would not be able to really stop a person and approach them and do anything more to try to get them to comply with the codes. They would not be able to confiscate a dog or write a citation. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor? GRZYBOWSKI: If we were to have, let's say, animal control here all the time. Maricopa happened to have somebody here all the time, which we know we can't afford. So I realize that's not an option. But if we did, could they do any of those three things that our code officer would not be able to do? WESLEY: Mayor, Vice Mayor, I believe they can. I'm not sure how much any of the others have been looking at -- have looked into what all the animal control can do, but I believe they can confiscate the dogs, approach people, get that information -- get the dogs. They have the equipment to do that and the training and the vehicles and so forth. GRZYBOWSKI: But we're assuming that was if it was Maricopa County, because Maricopa County would have a place to take the dog, where even if we had someone here that could confiscate the dog, I can't take him in. So yeah, I'm sorry my husband would divorce me. So we would definitely have a problem with what to do with the animal. So that's a big part of why we can't do that in-house, as it were. WESLEY: Mayor, Vice Mayor, so that's going to come up on some subsequent slides here, but yes. GRZYBOWSKI: Okay. Thank you. GOODWIN: And if I can just chime in to clarify? Yes, animal control can absolutely confiscate a dog. But they are limited in what they can compel someone to do, i.e. if they come up, just like John said, if they approach someone with a dog off leash and say Page 20 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING you need to put your dog on leash and you know, the person tells them, well, you can't make me and walks away. They can't make them. They don't have arresting powers. They don't have anything of that nature. But they can issue citations. Again, it's sort of a tricky thing because in order to issue the citation, the person has to provide their ID and cooperate, so to speak. And if they choose not to, there's not much that animal control can force. GRZYBOWSKI: Which is no different than if we had our own in-house code enforcement officer doing it. So basically, the only difference would be confiscating the dog? GOODWIN: Arguably, yes. And then there will be some other differences that we'll talk about. But yeah, for this conversation, absolutely. GRZYBOWSKI: Okay. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. MCMAHON: I need clarification, please, if you don't mind, John. This is a general code enforcement officer. This isn't just the dog catcher officer, correct? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, that is correct. In terms of our current organizational structure, what we're looking at would be a code enforcement officer. So this person would also be trained and available to do other types of code enforcement activities if they're not fully occupied by taking care of animal issues. But that would be their focus and their primary responsibility. MCMAHON: So the code enforcement officer would be a general code enforcement officer. Primary responsibility is to back up the Code enforcement officer now, but also take care of animals, et cetera. Or is it backwards? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, right. I would say the other way around. Their primary responsibility would be to take care of the parks, the dogs, looking for those issues. And then as they have time, they would back up the other code officers. MCMAHON: Is the animal problem, for lack of a better word, tantamount to requiring a full code enforcement officer for that? Or can it -- if this is agreed upon and we haven't discussed it up here, can that be reversed? Where the primary is to help the current code officer and spend maybe half of his time or whatever being animal control officer? Page 21 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING Because maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't heard that we have that many problems with animal control in town. WESLEY: Well, Mayor, Councilmember, that's one of the reasons that we're wanting to have this discussion today, because that's the direction staff needs to understand. We need to get from council is what priority this really is and how you'd like to see it approached. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? TOTH: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Director Wesley. Actually, to piggyback off of Councilwoman McMahon's statements a little bit. I believe that my opinion lies, that this should be a smaller percentage of what this code enforcement officer would be doing if we were to take him. I understand that we do have complaints regarding dogs that are off leash. That's something that we can have some focus on. But I believe that our current code enforcement officer is pretty overwhelmed. Am I correct in saying that? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember Toth, yes. We have two and a half officers currently, and they are busy all the time. They -- TOTH: Yeah. No, I would imagine. And considering -- would. Sorry. New tangent. Would the code enforcement officer have anything to do with enforcing business licenses? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, we do work with the finance department on that issue, as they have people who are not getting the renewals. Our staff does go help with that. TOTH: Would there be any opportunity for a new code enforcement officer to be more preemptive? In that, if -- not just if someone's getting late on their renewal or not getting their renewal, but if we have a new business in town, do we have someone that's approaching and saying, hey, just so that you know, you're required to get this business license, it's $50 a year. Do we do that? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, we don't have anybody that's doing that at this point. TOTH: Could we make him do that? Page 22 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING WESLEY: We could look at that and see what we could do. Yes. TOTH: Okay. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman? FRIEDEL: Thanks, John. You answered one question. We have two and a half staff code enforcement right now. Could this job be done on a part-time basis? A, and can we cross -train some of the other people that we currently have who could fill in? And maybe we have a different shift that hits these parks or wherever this problem is? Again, I'm not seeing this as a big off -leash problem in the town, and maybe I'm missing something. But I'm just wondering if we need a full-time person for a part-time problem. I don't see that as being a solution, but maybe I'm wrong. So I'm just throwing that out there. So maybe we start out at a part-time and see how that works out, and maybe a little cross -training and have other people be able to fill in as well when needed, if the problem arises. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? TOTH: Sorry follow-up. Councilmember Friedel made something pop in my head. Our current half -- you said we have two and a half at the moment for full-time equivalent. Would our current half be interested in going full and then we're not onboarding a new person? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, we could discuss that with him. He's a retired police officer, and I'm not sure he's really looking for full-time work again. TOTH: Okay. WESLEY: But it's certainly a possibility. He does have a particular interest in dogs. And so you know, maybe, but we'd have to explore that. TOTH: Well, understandable. And I would like to further discuss whether or not dogs are the focus, because I think maybe we should be talking about other responsibilities if we were to take someone on. But understandable, I want him to enjoy his retirement. So. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. So it seems that this would be a person, Page 23 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING according to your statement, that would be primarily a dog enforcement guy. And if he had any extra time, he would go to code. If we didn't hire somebody that had the credentials of a code enforcement officer, but just a dog catcher, would we save on that $95,000 a year figure? Because I think I know a lot of people around town that would do that job for probably 35; a lot lower. That's $100,000 a year. Seems to be a lot of money for somebody that can't approach somebody, can't confiscate a dog, and can't write a citation. So it just seems like they're walking around dog parks screaming at people to get a leash. It doesn't seem like a very good value for our money, unfortunately. Again, if they weren't credentialed to be a code enforcement officer, could we just save some money on that? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, certainly we could look at that as another option. MAYOR DICKEY: We also had some other discussions about that. So it's not just off - leash. It's other things: the cleaning up, and things that happen at the median, and on people's mailboxes and stuff. And I know they can't be everywhere all the time, but when I see people have to put signs on their mailboxes telling people not to let the dogs use the mailboxes in front of their homes, it just feels like -- I don't know, I guess, maybe, because we hear it more, but I've heard a lot of issues. But again, it's such a vast -- you can't be everywhere all the time. The other sort of overlap with this is having someone at the park that might be kind of like a ranger type. Because there's other -- you know, I think that that's where, you know, this says seven dogs. I don't really know where that came from because there's been a lot of talk. GOODWIN: That's what was observed. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Because I mean, I hear up at Adero and at the parks and people actually getting bit. And so I think it's something that I think needs attention. But I don't know -- you know, the answer is not easy. The other part is to ask law enforcement, do they have any sort of a part of that, that maybe we put the money into the contract or something. And I don't know if that's something possible. But I'm also not opposed to the idea that they could do more of the regular code enforcement jobs as well. Councilwoman? Page 24 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MCMAHON: So can we go back to the beginning? Does the town need another code enforcement officer, John? WESLEY: Mayor, Councilmember, I will always say yes to that question. The three or two and a half that we have, they're constantly busy. There's always more that could be done. MCMAHON: Right. WESLEY: In the scheme of the needs of the town, is that the next highest priority? That's something for the town manager and the council to figure out. But -- MCMAHON: Right. WESLEY: -- we could use one. MCMAHON: Because I have heard complaints about the fact that codes aren't being enforced, et cetera. And so I guess my question is this, if we're looking at this is it important for the town, since there are -- no offense, I don't mean to insult you and your team behind in code enforcement -- looking at a code enforcement officer, but also assigning him or her dog catcher responsibilities. I mean, because I think if we're going to spend money like this. I think we ought to get everything we can out of the dollar, so to speak. And if it can help your team enforce codes and do double duty, then I think we really, seriously need to consider that versus part-time. That's my opinion. MAYOR DICKEY: And to get back to what Hannah was saying too there, I think that's definitely a need and about the businesses. And I know that in the future we'll be talking a little bit about our business license process, some of that pre-screening a little bit. So I definitely can see what you just said. Yes, ma'am. GOODWIN: If I can bring it together? And everybody has all of their -- has very valid points in what you've offered up here. I wanted to kind of share, and you kind of saw some of the numbers that John mentioned. Staff went out -- a lot of this conversation has been going on for the last, let's say, nine months to a year. We've heard comments, we've heard feedback. It is a little bit cyclical in terms of there's lots of dogs out in the parks right now because it's beautiful and everybody wants to be out. We don't see too much of it in the summertime when it's 120. A lot of folks are just not out. You see it a Page 25 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING little bit again evenings, sunset, sunrise, that type of thing. So it does have a bit of a ebb and flow to the concerns. That being said, we took that time -- and Vince, you kind of saw Vince nodding in the back. I think Vince was our willing participant to go out and visit the parks at different times and different hours to observe. How many dogs did he observe and how many of them were off leash, and those are the numbers that you saw. And he did, I think, three different times, different parks for about a week or so each time to kind of, again, just observe and gather data as to is there a problem? How big is the problem? What are we seeing? So what we're bringing forth is a response to the concerns we've heard. Not necessarily that we are endorsing that, yes, we think we have a rampant problem. It's the intersection of we're hearing the public, we have or had animal control who while in theory is our enforcement agency, really weren't able to do what we needed them to do. So there was a service gap there. The question is what do we want to do about it? Councilmember McMahon, you kind of mentioned it, is this the -- do we have a problem? It's a matter of perception. If we do, we can certainly bring on a new code enforcer with a focus there or just say, hey, it looks like we need a code enforcer for across the board, this would be something new under their responsibilities. But I don't want to put out the false impression that that's going to solve the off leash problem, because it probably won't. Again, it's one of those things. It's like having deputies on the road, does that help speeding? Yes, it does. Does it solve it? No. It's generally a situation of opportunity. So I just want to make sure that that's kind of -- the expectations out there are clear. Does that make sense? MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman? FRIEDEL: Thank you, Mayor. I was just going to say there's no teeth here to do anything to stop this. I mean, this is just -- you can't stop and even approach a person, and you can't take their dog, and you can't write a citation. So I mean, if it's bad behavior, I don't know that this is the solution to curb that. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, I guess, that calls to the question, what can we do like that? I mean, what if we had really big fines, for example? Like, with speeding all of a sudden, Page 26 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING or like, using HOV lanes, when you see that $700 thing on the sign, you're like, I'm not going to do that. So there's got to be other things that we can do to make it have more teeth, as you said and make it matter. And there's also education. There's a dog -- there's Bo, and our insider, and things like that. So the word is out that this is going to be something we're going to start enforcing. And again, looking to the point where maybe they can issue citations or give them that authority. GOODWIN: Yeah. And that's actually -- I was going to ask John or Vince. We kind of have talked through this multiple times at a staff level. Because it's not just code enforcement. Obviously, there's parks involved, there's MCSO involved. It has a lot of crossover. So my ask was going to be if John or Vince could walk us through a situational scenario that said, if there was a confrontation, somebody said put your dog on a leash, they said, no; here's what would happen. If they said, I need your ID, here's what had happened. If there was that, can MCSO come and help us enforce? Do we need to make changes to our code so that we can issue citations? Again, that's assuming cooperation. If we can -- generally speaking, our code enforcement tend to send citations via the mail, if I remember, Vince. I mean, if you have an address and you know that there's a violation, you can send that code violation that fine to that person. So how would that work? Can you walk us through some of that? HATCHER: So good morning, I'm Vince Hatcher. I'm the senior code enforcement officer here for the Town of Fountain Hills. Thank you, Mayor, for bringing me on five years ago. When this became an issue that was brought to my attention a year ago, it was something that came to my attention via Facebook. We have not received one complaint at code enforcement about dogs off leash. Not one. Right now we're responding to barking dog complaints. We're responding to complaints from people who aren't picking up the dog feces. We respond to those, we cite, we've had people in court for those. Nothing about a dog off leash. When this came to my attention, I proactively went out at 4 o'clock in the morning because it was summertime; Fountain Park, Golden Eagle Park, Four Peaks Park. I stayed away from Desert Vista because that's where the dog park is down there. So during that time, for two weeks, somewhere Page 27 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING between 4 and 500 dogs were observed walking in those parks and a grand total of five off leash. Of those five, during that two -week time frame in June of 2023, three people cooperated and put their dogs on leash, and two laughed at me and walked away. There's not really -- I don't have the authority because I'm not post certified by the State of Arizona anymore. I used to be a cop, but that went away and I'm now a civilian. We, in code enforcement, deal with properties you don't really deal with people. If I walked up to a person and I demand identification and the captain will support this, that is a detention. That is something that's given to me by the State of Arizona through Arizona Post. I can ask the individual to give me their ID. They don't have to. If they're there by car, I can get a license number. We can obtain the location, we can mail them a citation, and yes, we will do that. At Fort Peaks Park the most of the people that are coming to that park are from the neighborhood. I would have to stalk them back to their house to find out where they live, try to prove who they are and write them a ticket. So that has been what we have been experiencing up till now. And right now, code enforcement is also dealing with the rental registration. We are out there looking for business license issues that are brought to our attention by finance. We do contact those people. We get the license updated. Yes, there are brand new businesses coming into town who are not getting business licenses. So on top of the yards, the yard parking, the illegal parking, the buildings that aren't being permitted, we're also dealing with the dog issue and the parks that we're going to. MAYOR DICKEY: Sure. FRIEDEL: You mentioned ADOG. I wonder if it would be any benefit for us to get some input from them. They deal with dogs all the time. I don't know if we've thought about that. GOODWIN: We have worked with ADOG. Thankfully, we have a pretty strong relationship with ADOG and they've helped us put out information about, leash up, clean up kind of campaigns and things like that. So they certainly have helped with the education component. In truth, they would like to see, I think, more enforcement actually, as well. Not only just on our standard leash laws about having dogs off leash Page 28 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING outside of the dog park, but the rules that are inside the dog park as well, they would like to see more enforcement there. So they've actually expressed some concerns. And to the extent we've worked with MCSO on that too, to say, yes, there are park rules, but how do we enforce them in the moment? And again, it kind of becomes, is it -- I hate to say it this way. Is it a dog on dog, you know, situation? Is it a dog on human situation? And that can all matter. We've obviously directed them, if it's a dog on dog situation, call animal control. They're the best ones equipped to do something, but they are not able to respond in the moment. It is a several days later you'll get a follow-up call. So that can be difficult. So while ADOG is a great resource for education, enforcement is a different thing. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? MCMAHON: So going back to my original question. If we're going to spend this kind of money on a code enforcement officer, we need a code enforcement officer for a lot of things that they are having difficulty addressing. That there could be a problem with animals, they can all -- not just one code officer, but it sounds to me like almost all code officers are addressing that. So I think my focus would be on hiring another code officer. HATCHER: Madam, if I could address that. The officer who's going to handle dogs requires special equipment and special training. And that training, right now there is a national certification organization that we could be certified through. But that is specialized training. And the officers that work for animal care and control through Maricopa County right now, that have completed that, they're also carrying personal equipment to protect themselves from the owners. Well, yes, the owners. It's a very passionate subject matter. And if you go up to somebody -- when I worked for Maricopa County and I worked with the animal control officers, I did a civil backup it's called. Where we went, they had to take the dog. I was there to protect the animal control officer from the owner. Because the owner, in most cases, was not going to allow anybody to take that dog. A lot of it had to do with bites and the dog had to be quarantined. It was required. So it's a specialized trained area. If you want all of the Page 29 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING code enforcement officers to be cross -trained to do this, we're all going to have to receive that training. The issue that I've discovered is, we don't have a body, a governing body that does that. When I contacted animal care and control, they do all their training in-house. They would not take one of our officers and allow us to come there and be trained with them. So my question is, and I don't have the answer for you right now, where would we get that training? I don't know. My suggestion with Director Wesley was we find an officer or find officers and see how much they're getting paid and offer more money. And we get one of the officers who's already trained and certified to do it. Then they could focus on that. We can train them to do other code enforcement activities if things appear to be slow. As the town manager just advised, in the summertime this is very slow. We don't have a lot of activities. And we can use the help with regard to the other stuff that we're doing, so. MCMAHON: Thank you. I appreciate your time and I appreciate your suggestion. And maybe that should be looked into first before deciding on spending $100,000 on a code enforcement officer if the focus is going to be on animal control and people control. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? TOTH: I have a further question for our code enforcement officer. Considering that when you performed your survey, there were about 400 that were on their leash following the rules. That five that were off the leash, three of them complied with you. Do you believe that this issue, even if we were to say, okay, we hire this one person, we get them certified, they're our animal people -- guy, but we're having him help you on other things as well. Even if we do that, do you believe that this is an issue that requires another body on its own or requires pepper spray certification, considering our percentage of compliance here? THE COURT: And it's okay. TOTH: If it's loaded, I apologize, I just -- HATCHER: Yes. Give us another code enforcement officer, please. TOTH: Okay. HATCHER: So I didn't do it just once. I've been out on three separate occasions as Ms. Page 30 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING Goodwin has advised you on that. The time frame that I went out, Fountain Park first thing in the morning, there is a tremendous flood of activity with people with dogs. I went to all parks in the afternoons, in the morning, even as late. I live here in Fountain Hills. I walk my dog -- my two dogs, every single day, so I see an awful lot of activity with the dogs. We have a lot of activity on the Avenue here with dogs, dog activity. So. Every time I went out there, there was, in a two -week period, observed somewhere between 3 and 500 people with dogs. On a Wednesday morning at Fountain Park, in one and a half hours, I counted 68 people that walked their dogs that were there. One guy was off leash. As soon as I started walking towards him, he put it on leash and that was the end of it. I never made any contact with him. I don't think this is a big problem for us here in Fountain Hills, because we are a known dog community. People know that they can bring their dogs here. They take them everywhere. They're in Safeway, they're in the restaurants, they're on patios. We have signs that everybody is very welcome to have their dog here. Most people comply. One issue I had at the dog park at Desert Vista was an issue where there was a guy throwing a ball for his dog, and when I approached him, he explained he couldn't go into the area where the dogs are allowed to be off leash and throw his ball, because then five dogs ran for his ball. And then there was an argument with some of our friends from the dog people that run that there, so. And I sympathized with him, but I explained to him that the code is the code. You got to put it on leash. What I have not seen or heard yet, we do have an instance that I heard from Councilwoman Kalivianakis where she was approaching an individual. The dog, I believe, was on leash when it did attack you? So that is a personal situation that right now I have not heard. I have observed dog on dog. But as far as this being an issue with as many people that we have here, I don't think it's something that we're now experiencing. Again, code enforcement has not received one call of somebody complaining about a dog off leash at a park or anywhere else. We do have an issue in a neighborhood. We have one neighborhood. There's a big issue with dogs, and we're addressing that. Those people have been to court now on three separate occasions. Page 31 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING We're about to go to court again on them. So code enforcement is doing what we can and we deal with properties. And when the problem is at the property, we address it with the proper rule. TOTH: So to summarize what I'm hearing, perhaps we don't need someone specializing in dogs, but we do need someone. HATCHER: If we're going to address this as something with a dog issue, we need someone specifically trained to handle it with dogs. Because they do have the ability -- animal care control can use a snare and take a dog. They can do that. If the dog is off leash -- and I've been there when officers have just gone up and taken the dog, put it in the truck, and then we deal with the owner. So it the equipment that we need is specialized. It's a truck, it's environmentally controlled, it's something that we can transport a dog too. If it turns out to be something where we do have an issue like what Councilwoman Kalivianakis ran into, where it's a bite, that dog has to be quarantined. We can transport that dog down to the animal care control in Mesa. But it does require special training and special equipment. TOTH: Okay. So to re -summarize perhaps this issue isn't something that we need to focus on, but it sounds like your department as a whole, not talking about the dog issue, still needs help. You need a body. You just don't necessarily need a dog specialized pepper spray wielding. HATCHER: I don't know if I can answer that question. TOTH: Okay. That's okay. You don't have to answer that. That was very, very much a narrative on my end. HATCHER: So that's going to take us to another area that we will need explained. Go ahead. TOTH: But thank you for your help. And thank you for providing your expertise. I will rephrase that in my opinion, we do not need someone who is focused on dogs, but I think code enforcement needs someone -- another body or another part-time person. I understand the concerns. I understand that to someone who experiences an issue with a dog, this is a very pressing issue. But considering just the town -wide percentage we're Page 32 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING talking about here, especially considering how many people have their dogs around town, that this isn't really something we need to have a hall or a park monitor for. And I think it puts a little bit of a damper on the park experience, if a pepper spray wielding code enforcement person is standing at the park at the ready. I think at some point we need to consider how much we want to be babysitting people. I know that code enforcement itself needs help, but I think that this issue does not require, in my opinion, somewhat of an extreme reaction and especially to the tune of 100,000. FRIEDEL: One last question. Do we get any help from MCSO, if they're out patrolling, they see somebody with a dog off -leash? I'm not trying to give you any extra work, Captain, but I'm just wondering, is this a county thing and a town thing and not MCSO? GOODWIN: My understanding -- and Captain, hop in if I'm wrong -- is that if there was a life and death -- if there was a dangerous situation, a dog is mauling somebody or charging and it's or rabid or whatever, and it's an imminent threat. Yes, MCSO will absolutely step in. But if it's a dog off leash because they're running around a park, MCSO is not going to do anything. MAYOR DICKEY: So I think that the perception or whatever and the reality, however we're talking about it is quite varied. Because, I mean, I feel like I not only -- actually not at parks, but just walking in my just regular experience, I've had dogs charge out of homes and such. We've had incidences where family members have been bitten. So I don't think it's not a problem. But I'd also agree that it should be where somebody would have other jobs. And again, it's not just off leash, there are other things that occur at parks too. So like park rangers and such, not to make their experience bad, but I mean other cities have park rangers that have enforcement capacity or authority. So I don't know, Rachael, maybe just some more thought into how this could look. I think you're hearing that probably somebody to help code enforcement out is there, but I don't feel comfortable ignoring this problem. I have heard from many people about it and experienced it. And sounds like maybe you did, Brenda. And again, there's not, like a lot of ways that people can be everywhere on every street. Page 33 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING If a dog comes out of a yard or such, but it's kind of a combination of things. People need to know what the rules are, what the laws are, so they don't laugh at our code enforcement officers who approach them when they're just trying to do their job, it's unacceptable. And I think what ADOG has said is legit. And I don't think we should just ignore it as part of -- if we're going to go forward with adding somebody, whether it's part-time or full-time, I don't think that that should not be part of it. And maybe code enforcement isn't the place for it. You said you'd never heard anybody call you about it. And frankly, that probably wouldn't occur to me to call code enforcement about it. But we canceled our Maricopa County Animal Control, so we have nothing now. Even if there's a -- I don't know what they do if there's a javelina in the road or whatever, or kind of an aggressive coyote. GOODWIN: They're still obligated to provide services. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. GOODWIN: Our contract was for extended services for beyond their standard scopes. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. GOODWIN: But to your point, and it's not lost, is that -- and I know Kevin can vouch for this too. The parks get calls. The parks get calls about dogs off leash because it's generally where it happens. And so we generally get calls or they're reported to park attendants or staff in parks or whatnot. So it's not to say that it's not happening, we certainly know that it is. It's just again, perception to the extent of where and how and what we can do about it. So what I'm hearing is we'll take this. We'll, again, come back through at the staff level to sort of see if there's some other measures, even if it's just mild measures, whether it's some code changes to give some more abilities and capabilities to existing staff. And then also review the potential of bringing on a standard officer, a code enforcement officer. That would be, again, usable throughout the entire town, not just focus on animals. And then we'll circle back on that. Great. MAYOR DICKEY: Would you like to take a break? It's up to you. Yeah, I see some yesses. I guess we'll do that. Thank you. Page 34 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING [CLERKS NOTE: THE COUNCIL RECESSED AT 9:52 A.M. AND RECONVENED AT 10:09 A.M.] MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Stop all that frivolity. We're getting down to business again. We're going to change up the order a little bit and talk about the Panorama project first. And I know we -- so we don't take comments, but only know that what we're doing today is discussing. So there'll be plenty of chance to have input. If you hear something you really like or hear something that you'd rather veer away from and you're in that neighborhood or not, just let us know. But Justin, if you -- do you have anything to add, Rachael? GOODWIN: No. What I was going to just kind of preface is that -- and you kind of all saw it in my email that this is not our CIP discussion. We have a whole day set aside in about a month to talk CIPs and talk about all 20 projects or whatnot. Today we're just hitting the highlights on a couple. Why? Because they're a) high viz, they're probably not projects that you have heard of yet. And so we wanted to sort of introduce them and get your thoughts about them before we get too far along. And because they will have an impact on our community in terms of traffic, in terms of, again, just being high viz and high impact. So we're going to talk about three or four projects today just to sort of make you aware. But keep in mind this is not the full CIP, we will have a whole day about those. So with that Justin, you're going to get us going? Awesome. Thank you. WELDY: Thank you. Madam Mayor, Councilmembers, thank you for the opportunity. And I thank you for allowing us to skip ahead. There are a group of residents here that have been working with town staff and the manager in regards to phase II Panorama since its inception and during construction. And I will say in regards to engagement, a large number of those people on more than one occasion have come down to the project and stood and listened to me speak and give updates in the field that we're going to be seeing shortly. This project right here was originally a concept plan during phase I of the Panorama storm drain pipe. Please note at the time we had the catastrophic failure and a decision Page 35 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING was made to move forward to correct the first nearly 3,000 feet of pipe. This phase right here was included. Due to funding challenges related to that it was broken out into two phases. The photo that you're seeing on this slide right here was formerly a drainage area that primarily took storm water and natural spring water out of the town's property, through some private property, and onto the sovereign nation. This area was considerable issues for many, many years, primarily because of the ponding and stagnant water. It was very difficult to do any maintenance on because you couldn't get any equipment down there. The decision was made as part of phase II panorama to pipe approximately 800 feet of this and utilize free materials to create the space you're seeing now. The proposal is to create a nature walk in this area by installing a meandering walkway that comes off from the bottom right-hand side, near where that white vehicle is at, and kind of meanders through this. Part of that would include trees, shrubs, other plantings, and a place to sit. I had mentioned earlier that there is a large group of the residents here, and they understand they can't speak. So we put together a code and I indicated that when I held my hand up, if they were in support, they had an option to do the same. And I only do this because rarely do we get this type of involvement in a neighborhood where they have designated several representatives, and those representatives have been in touch with town staff since the beginning. With that said, one of the discussions that we've had internally with the town manager, Mr. Snipes and I, is whether or not this area should be designated as a park. Let me give you some of the primary reasons we were discussing that. It allows for the same staff that maintains the parks, and we know the quality of them -- second to none -- to also provide maintenance and guidance for this area. But it also allows for the town to post and enforce rules in regards to time and type of use. The second option would be that it would just be part of open space, and it would be public works. While we certainly do an incredible amount of maintenance on the medians, washes, and other open space areas, there is certainly a considerable amount of Page 36 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING difference in regards to those two types of uses and designations. With that, if you have any questions that I might be able to ask, I would be glad to do so. FRIEDEL: Thank you, Mayor. A couple of questions, Justin. So the thought is putting a six -foot -wide meandering sidewalk through there. Do you have plans then, to cover the rest of that open space with some kind of ground cover, like granite or something else that would eliminate the dust and the dirt that's being blown all over? I was down there a couple of times and happened to catch a gust of wind. So if you have an answer to that, fine. If not, if that's something we need to talk about? Great. Or are you looking at planting grass in there similar to Fountain Park? WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, the intent would be to plant native plants, trees, and shrubs in there and then use some type of granite. The size and color would be determined by Mr. Snipes and his team, regardless of the designation, because they are really experts in that area. So basically, there would be -- all of the surface would be covered with some type of mulch treatment, granite or otherwise. FRIEDEL: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman. SKILLICORN: Thank you. I'm just kind of curious if this would be an expansion of Fountain Hills or Fountain Lake Park, or this is going to be a new -- I think it's a fabulous idea and it's a good way to protect that area, so it's never going to be developed for something else. I'm just curious if we designate that, it's zoned park and rezone it that, or if we actually just expand the Fountain Lake Park to that plot of land there? WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, I would defer that based on the designation. Whether it's going to become open space right away or whether or not it's going to be a park, the town manager would provide guidance on the latter if it becomes a park, and whether or not it will become an extension as we move forward. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. MCMAHON: Sorry. Thank you, Justin. A couple questions, if you don't mind. If this is a open space meandering walkway, which would fit in with the environment, there might be a higher, smarter use in the sense for quiet. Not to say no to your idea as far as Page 37 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING extending the park; it might be less expensive to maintain that. But I have a question. At the corner right there, the lake's across the street is, are you going to plan on adding a crosswalk so that this can be accessed from the park? Or I mean, do you have the whole roundabout plans for this as far as pedestrian walkway across the street there? WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, currently we do not have a sidewalk plan or a connector from El Lago crossing Panorama at this location. However, we do have a crossing just north of this at the Lake Overlook trail crossing and in the near future we will likely have a marked crosswalk further west on Panorama. We are looking at that and I don't want to get into the future capital projects, but we have some discussions in regards to marked crosswalks. MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you. Also, not to put you on the spot, but in your estimate, would this be less maintenance than, say, a park or other usage; cost -wise and time - wise? WELDY: The cost of the maintenance really depends on the type of treatment. Historically, the types of trees that we plant and in right-of-way, we plant them and we allow them to become established. And then we turn off the water, unless we're in a prolonged drought. And not to create any confusion, the drought here is about 1,000 years long, that's how it became a desert. However, for plantings that go into parks, there's a little bit more maintenance related to that because they will continue to water to ensure their longevity and the trimming and stuff. So it's a little bit more costly, but it's not a very large piece of property. We would certainly do that as part of the long range planning and the five year horizon. MCMAHON: And thank you. Of course, I would assume you're going to get the homeowner's input on their preference for what this use would be? WELDY: To the extent possible, absolutely. We certainly want to create an environment that is welcoming to them and that they approve of. There are some areas in there that Kevin and I, obviously, will be making some decisions on the types of trees and the types of plants and shrubs, simply based on his experience related to that. But their input is absolutely valuable. Page 38 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MCMAHON: Thank you very much. WELDY: You're welcome. MAYOR DICKEY: So when you mentioned trees, I know that views are important to the neighbors. I just found that out. So I think as far as height and density and that kind of thing to be super sensitive about that. And then the sidewalk. So the meander would kind of serve as a sidewalk to -- would it get you from one place to the other if you wanted to, and it wouldn't be totally close to the road? WELDY: Madam Mayor, and indeed it would connect on the southern end near our spring water pump, and then meander and come right out at the curb opening ramp, which is shown on the top left corner of this photo, right at the intersection of El Lago and Panorama there and tie into that. MAYOR DICKEY: Perfect. And then the idea of a park, I think I would prefer that because then you can be closed after a certain time. I think, Rachael, you said maybe that's what you wanted to talk about the trail where it would even be more limited with use just to make sure that it was under our purview? GOODWIN: Yes, if I can, I was going to chime in, actually, on three different comments. To start with, Councilmember Skillicorn you mentioned whether it would be a new park or an extension of, I think if the idea is sort of we have -- if everybody likes the concept of it, we'll come back when we bring the CIPs back and make a recommendation then as to -- after we do some internal, like, pros and cons to make sure that whatever we recommend makes sense. And then, based on what you were saying Councilmember McMahon, the idea of maintenance I can tell you the idea we've all kind of talked about is we want to make it -- we want to make it an asset, a nice kind of pocket corner for the residents over there. But we also don't want to take on a huge maintenance expense as part of that, which is why grass is not ideal. We don't want to do heavy irrigation and mowing and heavy hands on maintenance. So whatever design comes forth, we'll be keeping that in mind. And yes, Mayor, to your point having it a designated. Whether it's a park or -- in other words, we were also talking about our trail heads. Our trail heads are designated from sunrise to sunset. So they do close at dark where our parks Page 39 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING have designated hours. That will be part of that discussion about whether it should be an extension of Fountain Park, in which case it would have the same times, or if it would be potentially something different. So we want to be able to come back with that recommendation at the CIP. Today we just wanted to make sure that everybody was kind of on board, that this is where the direction we want to go, and then we'll hone in a little bit more between now and then. Does that make sense? MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? Yes. KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Yeah. I really love the idea of having a park here and having the biophilic landscaping. Sounds good. The only thing I'm not too crazy about is an actual sidewalk with concrete. Is there some way that we can make more of just a natural, meandering sidewalk with like accented different colors of gravel or like a stone liner or something? So it's just more like a nature park. I think when you introduce the concrete, it kind of ruins, to me, just the natural land. I'd like to keep it more natural landscaping and -- yeah. Not go with the concrete. Is that possible? WELDY: There's two answers here, and one of them is coming shortly. Madam Mayor, Councilmember, the short answer is yes. However, the DOJ requires that if we build an amenity that it be accessible. And stabilized solutions, in regards to some of the other stuff we've used, absolutely, that is an option. It's just a little bit more challenging to maintain for those that may or may not have a physical challenge. And here comes part two of that. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. SNIPES: One of the things I was going to say is we just started talking about this project. But what we did up at Adero, right inside the gate entrance, we used a product called StaLok that is ADA accessible. And I think that would be a great use for it down through this section where it would blend in a little bit more. It's a little bit softer on the walk as well. And it's something where it would require about the same type of maintenance as you would be looking at for an asphalt or something like that. Where every eight or ten years or so you'll be needing to go in and touch up some spots, but not completely redo it. It's one where you can layer and fix any areas that have issues. So far it's worked out Page 40 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING really good up at Adero, so I think that could be a really nice addition to this area. SKILLICORN: Thank you. One quick question, and I don't know if Kevin wants to answer it. So I understand that if we do an improvement, it's got to be ADA. But I'm also kind of curious, what if this was something like -- the Panorama Trail Blazers made a trail on native landscaping or native area there. And this might be something that the local community might want to have input on. And maybe we don't have to make a decision today, but I wonder if that's an option instead of having a concrete sidewalk? What if, like the Trail Blazers basically want to come in and make a trail, even though it would be fun, maybe someday to have it connect up to the other trail just up the street? Just a thought SNIPES: Getting it up to the other trail would require going back out onto the sidewalk. And so -- SKILLICORN: Yeah. And is there a -- I didn't think -- I looked in the map here, and I can't -- when I zoom in on the satellite, I can't tell if there's a bike lane or something there because I know there's no sidewalk. I know that's a challenge. But I'm curious if there was a bike lane there and that would maybe facilitate that. SNIPES: Yeah. There -- SKILLICORN: I think we're getting ahead of ourselves, but I'm kind of curious if the people, I think they should decide if they want a sidewalk or if they want a more of a natural hiking trail, really. I mean, not that people are going to be having a destination to hike to, but it might look like it might fits better. It's up to them. SNIPES: And that's kind of the idea with the StaLok, as it does have -- it has earth tones to it so that it doesn't stand out. It just takes Tess maintenance to maintain it, and that's why I would recommend that there. The other thing that you brought up, as far as having it be an extension of the park, I would like to have it have its own designation. So if we have issues, someone doesn't go, it's Fountain Park adjacent. They can actually call it a name and so we'll know -- SKILLICORN: Okay. Well, there are some really famous people that are deserving of a name too, so. Page 41 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. You get it? Got enough from us? GOODWIN: Sure. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. Thank you very much. Did we have some -- did we have a slide that was still under the budget part, that was after the animal control? GOODWIN: Paul and David, on the on the detailed agenda up here, we talk about general fund allocation policies. Is that something we've already covered, or do you want to touch on that anymore? POCK: That was everything. GOODWIN: Okay. POCK: Appreciate it. GOODWIN: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Thanks. SNIPES: Sharron, you're not going to give the speech? You're not going to give the speech to stick around? All right. So we'll go on to our next topic. For the community services department, we've been looking at this piece of property for several years now. It kind of took on a name of Pleasantville, so we're keeping that for now. MAYOR DICKEY: (Indiscernible). SNIPES: I know, but we're keeping it for now. And this is going to come out of development fees only. So this is using some of the development fees that are starting to get closer and closer to expiring. We're not there yet but we're a couple of years now from losing some funds in this account. So we're proposing it using that fund. It is on the corner of Bainbridge and Golden Eagle, just north of Golden Eagle Park. That's why I did the bigger map. There you can see the triangle wedge of where it's at. What we're looking at having in here, we've had several discussions. But having it have basically a stargazing site, a classroom space in an outdoor feel, you can see it's lined completely with trees to where that it will block the views from the streets. And then the inner circle will be lined with a hedge to where that it's even more secluded to make it to where it's more of a peaceful spot. Page 42 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING We're looking at having a small trail going around it as well, where we can have some plantings and have it have a whole bunch of different types of plants to show people what you can grow and and how you can grow it, along with a couple ramadas. And it's just a turnaround parking lot to make it easy to get in and out of. So this is kind of our ideas. And then why we're bringing it to you. We've had requests from Dark Skys for quite some time to find a stargazing location. They have gone out while we had tournaments going on, and with our new Musco lights, they said it's amazing how dark it is there. They were surprised and thought it would be a fantastic location for it. So they are approving it. The residents who live up the hill, who have been complaining about granite and gravel and other things being dumped there, I teased the idea to several of them and they were in support of it as well. It will basically be a beautification of a vacant lot that the town has owned. So there's not a cost for the land. It'll make it to where that we can have some smaller outdoor classes. We constantly have requests for yoga and tai chi and things like that to get it outside. I think this could be a great location for that. As well as providing the educational planning trail. It also fits in with our economic development plan. So it kind of meets a lot of our -- checks off a lot of boxes. So with that, if you have any questions. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman? FRIEDEL: Thank you. Mayor. Would we still have the ability to use it as a staging area? Because I know that we do a lot of capital improvement projects like slurry sealing and and road work up on the north side of town. So we still have the ability to use that parking lot as a staging area if we needed to? SNIPES: No, we would lose that ability. FRIEDEL: Is there an alternative then for that? SNIPES: Looks like I got a yes -nod from Justin, so. FRIEDEL: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Where he lives right now. Councilwoman? Page 43 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MCMAHON: Kevin, it says $800,000 development fees only. Could you please explain what the fees were going to be, the costs, in a little more detail? SNIPES: So by using the development fees, it's funding that we've gained through development of the town, we get a percentage back from that. But it has an expiration date where if we don't use it to build on and add on to our parks, then we lose that money and it goes back to the developer. And so this is money that's been sitting there for quite some time. And so that's where we're trying to use it before we lose it. MCMAHON: And is that what you anticipate the full cost is going to be for it? SNIPES: Yeah. I'm anticipating coming in under that, but just because it is a new property and seeing what we get into once we pull out the storage, I want to see what the soil is like, to see if we have any issues from having asphalt and stuff like that stored there. Just to make sure that we're covered as we're doing it. And then obviously, we come in under a lot and that's my goal on this one. But just to make sure that we have enough, that's why that number is on there. MCMAHON: And also what do you think the timeline -- if and when we look at this again and approve it, what do you think the timeline would be, please? SNIPES: We'll plan on completing this in the next fiscal. MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you very much. MCMAHON: One more question. So the development fees, if I'm correct, can be used to build new parks but not maintenance going forward? So do you anticipate the maintenance on this park being much less than a regular park? SNIPES: Absolutely. It's a very small lot. I believe it's a little over an acre, if that. And so it's going to be nominal on cost of maintenance of. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Yeah. Another really great idea. I think this is just a home run. I love this idea. Just to tie it back to the Panorama Park, would this walking trail be kind of like what I proposed for the other one? Just kind of a natural gravel type of a thing? Yeah, because it is in brown. I don't have the picture now, but -- yeah. Again, I like that. And if we could use the same concept for the other park, I think Page 44 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING that would be perfect because again, it just looks like natural landscaping, but you know, spruced up. So yeah. SNIPES: And my thought on this is we haven't tried the StaLok, like, for a parking lot. I know they use it in a lot of state parks, and I think this would be a great spot to do that as well. To where that we could do a good test with it in a parking scenario. I know Sedona has done several hundred miles of trails with it, as well as parking lots. And they've had great success with it. And so it's -- to me, it would be the right spot to have a good sample to see how it does. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Good. And then as they do the different foliage, are they going to be like little signs like this is what you're looking at -- SNIPES: Yes. KALIVIANAKIS: -- and a little information about it? Yeah. Okay. Great. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilmember? SKILLICORN: Thank you very much. Yeah. It sounds like a neat improvement. Is there any way you can make it cost half that, though? SNIPES: We'll see. I would like to, but I just don't know -- what I don't know is if there's contamination or not. And that's the biggest part of that. But yeah I would like to. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? MCMAHON: Thank you. I think this might be for Rachael. Excuse me. If this is the designated stargazing place are we going to charge fees for that, or is it just going to be the town's contribution in conjunction with Dark Skys and have it be the designated stargazing place? GOODWIN: You know, we really haven't talked through it at that level. But my guess, and this is just sort of off the top of my head is, if the idea is that it's a designated location. So that if you're here visiting and you know that we're a dark sky community and that's why you're here and you want a place to go look, by all means, go. You know, it'll be posted and we'll have those rules. If we were to put on an event or some sort of collaborative thing that required registration or there were fees associated, then we would go down that path. But ideally it would be open and usable for anyone, and Page 45 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING that's kind of why we want to do it. Right now you have to wait till we have a star party or we have some other type of organized event. We don't have a designated place to just go on a Tuesday night kind of thing. MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: It's funny because when I was doing the Smithsonian thing that people were asking, well, where do you have to go to see the dark skies? And I was like, you don't have to go anywhere, it's right here. But but this is great. Two questions -- well, actually three. So first of all, thank you, Justin and everybody for being flexible on the use of that space, because it's been a discussion for a while. And I know that this is just a really beneficial way of solving some of those issues. Would we have enough development fees for the Panorama thing too? GOODWIN: I don't know off the top of my head. I think it would -- when we were discussing this, of whether it would be a park or open space or whatnot, we didn't pull out the fees. So I actually probably need to get with David and Paul to see what the fund balance is there and what's available, but potentially. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Because that would be just a thought because that's a new -- that would be a new park. So we might be able to use the development fees for that. And then -- yeah, the idea of the signs, maybe some of the folks that helped us with the botanical garden could have some input on this as well. Councilman? FRIEDEL: And will the hours be different since it's going to be for stargazing? GOODWIN: Good question. I think again, we would probably need to flesh that out a little bit internally to make sure that it's something that we can manage. But right now our parks are open till 11 p.m. so even if we stuck with standard park hours, that's a pretty generous window. If we needed to look at amending that, if there was going to be something special at 2 in the morning and we needed to do something, we would have to kind of cross that -- we'd cross that bridge later. But in terms of general use, we have pretty generous evening hours. SNIPES: Yeah. I think a lot like what we've done at Fountain Park when we've had some lunar activity where we've ran the fountain in the middle of the night to allow people to Page 46 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING come in. We just make a one-time limited exception and open it up for that sort of thing. I think we would probably follow suit with this as well. Thank you. WELDY: Thank you again for the opportunity. The first thing we're going to discuss is Shea Boulevard. Shea Boulevard has been under construction for improvements and widening and considerable amount of safety improvements since it was a gift from the county in the very early '90s. During that time frame, the lion's share of the money contributed to that construction came from one proposition or another, or some grants along the way. The total invested in the last ten years is about $4.4 million. The town's contribution to that is about 1.3. So it's about, on average, 70/30 splits. Keeping in mind that some of the projects were 97 percent when it was a grant fund and we paid 3 percent, but on average, the split is 70 percent from either ALCP or Prop 400 money or 97 percent of grant funding. The town manager, and I think it's important to bring this up. There's a couple of reasons. The portion that we're going to be working on next is eastbound between Palisades and Fountain Hills Boulevard. That's the south side of the road. We are very near 100 percent plans on that project, and it's going to be going to bid, and there's going to be some growing pains, let's just say. We're going to do our best to minimize it, but the bottom line is there are going to be days and nights when traffic is going to be restricted in that eastbound direction, and sometimes, but rarely, in the westbound direction. I'm bringing this up because recently we had a little issue at Eagle Mountain in Shea, where traffic backed up for a great distance -- eastbound traffic into Scottsdale. We certainly worked to resolve that when we were doing our sealing, but this reminded the town manager and I that there's 30,000 cars a day coming the opposite direction, and we need to get in front of this. The other reason we thought it was important to bring this up is, there's been discussion for a considerable amount of time in regards to the future and payment options or funding options for the rest of the streets in Fountain Hills, including arterials, collectors, locals, and some alleys. People are going to be asking questions, why are you asking us for money if you're able to do this on Shea? And here's a good example. There are at least some persons out there that believe that Shea is not relevant and does not need Page 47 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING any widening, and that money should go somewhere else. It's important to know that if we elect to move away from the ALCP planning in regards to Shea Boulevard, which started in the '90s, we simply cannot take the state's money and move it anywhere else. That money will be transferred into another agency's coffers so they can complete some of their projects. The only part that would remain would be that 30 percent of the town funding, which is a considerable amount of money over 25 or 30 years, but not much for a year to year. The second part of that, which is going to be the final phase, is going to impact eastbound between Fountain Hills Boulevard and Technology. There's a short section in there that will need to be widened as well to three lanes. And then included in that there is a westbound section between Technology and Fountain Hills Boulevard. So we're probably looking at '26/127, '27/'28, depending on available town funding for match and the ALCP, and obviously the voters when they go to vote and vote on the prop as it's coming up; that will certainly have an impact. Any questions related to Shea before we move on? MAYOR DICKEY: Just about the Prop 479. What are the ramifications if it doesn't pass to this project? WELDY: The ramifications to the town in regards to Shea are pretty substantial. We will only be able to spend the monies that are budgeted for, I think, the next three cycles. And then after that, tough decisions are going to have to be made at a political level at the governor's office that will include all of the stakeholders, including the Mayor of Fountain Hills. The other one to that is ALCP funding is we've applied for that to help us offset our cost for our other arterials, which is Palisades, Fountain Hills Boulevard, and Saguaro. That is a very big impact to the funding scenarios there in the 25-year plan. So while it's not currently in the 5- or 10-year horizon, it is in the 20- and 25-year horizon. And that has a big impact on this community in regards to funding and the level of service or the pavement condition index for those other three arterials. The aerial lifetime -- arterial life cycle plan for pavement. Arterial life cycle is what it is. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? Page 48 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I know this has been, I think, many years in the process. When this was first proposed were there traffic studies done that indicated that we needed this widening? WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, indeed. Keep in mind that it started when it was still the county's and the county engineering department would have been making projections in cooperation with the Maricopa Association of Governments and the Arizona Department of Transportation. So yes, the planning process, including projections, and also we get a traffic count every four to seven years -- or rather, they do to make sure that we're on track with the necessary increase or uptick in volume for that area. And we're really, really close, within a few thousand vehicles a day, to the projections that were made 15 or 20 years ago. KALIVIANAKIS: And so has there been any recent studies that indicate this uptick where we would need this this project? Because, again, just living here, it seems like there's never any traffic stacking or backing up. It always seems very free -flowing. And I know this is going to provide quite an inconvenience to our town for probably 18 months where it could go down to one lane. And I'm just saying, if we're going to put the town through this kind of aggravation were there will be traffic problems, there will be traffic backing up, there could be great delays, there should be a really clear indication that this is necessary for us to go forward. And then I also question, like you said, there's 30,000 vehicles that go through that corridor every day. I would imagine just a small fraction of them are people that live in Fountain Hills. Is that true? What part would be Fountain Hills and what is just a conduit to get from Scottsdale in the East Valley to Payson and other portions of the State? WELDY: So Councilmember, we have two questions. The first question was in regards to the count. So MAG just completed one five weeks ago. We'll get the results from that very shortly and be able to compare them. The answer to your second question is the intersection of Shea and Palisades is our highest count intersection. As you travel east to Fountain Hills Boulevard, there is a reduction and then as you travel further east, Page 49 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING saguaro, there is also a reduction. So our highest count is Shea and Palisades. And then it gets slower as you get east. So we would have to look at the passthrough traffic and we would have to exclude at least two of the big holiday weekends where we have four - day weekends. So there are two summer weekends where people are outbound, starting as early as Tuesday and then inbound everybody on Monday. So we can certainly pull those numbers together and provide them as we move forward on this project, to give an update in regards to the counts. It's difficult to determine the exact, but we can get pretty close. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. And then the other thing I'd like to address is there's currently a referendum on the apartment complex at the Target Center. And if that is successful, then I anticipate that that section of town, the Target will probably close -- the shopping mall will probably close, and a lot of the businesses will just go out of business. That whole section of town. Are we factoring that in to whether we need to expand the road and a section of town that's going to be dying? WELDY: It would be difficult to determine what the impact will have one way or the other in regards to that project. However, that section of Shea was already widened. In fact, through that development, that section was widened. Whether or not it will have an impact further west of there, I'm uncertain of that. The projections are not necessarily based on just one factor in regards to businesses and our multifamily or single-family homes. All of the factors are taken into consideration. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor? GRZYBOWSKI: One thing I want to point out is this has been a discussion for years. I've had a couple of complaints from people that may live along a viewing line of Shea, where they've got a bit of a fear factor that the price of their home may be in danger. I remind them that many councils have had been having this conversation. This is something we've known is going to need to happen for years. Your property was already valued at the fact that it was going to be an extra lane, years ago. So I wanted to be sure and get that point across. Also, it was mentioned that traffic seems free - Page 50 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING flowing now, which I agree, but we need to be on the front end of this before those -- this is not done just for Fountain Hills. This is done for Maricopa County and people passing through to get to 87 and to get from 87 back. So we need to be on top of this so we don't become known as that town that didn't expand their highway. And now they have to be in line an extra 30 minutes or whatever to get through a traffic light so that they can go to Payson for the weekend. I feel like that's very important to get across as well. I had one other point, and I may have to come back to that because I didn't write it down. But I just wanted to make sure that at least those two things got said. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? TOTH: Yes. Full disclosure, the Vice Mayor said a lot of what I was going to say. So thank you for that. The project is absolutely necessary. In that it will become absolutely necessary very soon. We are situated where we are 25 minutes, well, 35 minutes from two different airports. We're one of the only corridors to northern Arizona, right there on the corner there. And I mean, the comments regarding the referendum were highly, highly presumptuous. But even if that were the case, this is a significant amount of people that would be coming up north. And so I appreciate your work on this. I look forward to seeing it unfold over the next several -- or continue to unfold over the next several years. And thank you for breaking this down so eloquently. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Rachael, did you want to say something? And then. Peggy? GOODWIN: Sure. I just wanted to ask Justin if you could offer one clarification for us, which is if we were to not do the project, we understand that we could not reallocate the state monies, right? We would have to forfeit them and they would go back. My next question is, is if we did that, would we ever get it back again if we decided to do this five years from now, ten years from now. MCMAHON: Sounds like it (indiscernible). GOODWIN: Yeah. I said if we forfeit it now my concern is, would we ever get it back if Page 51 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING and when we were ready to do it? And again, that's probably highly dependent on Prop 479. There's Tots of things. But arguably my concern is that if we don't take it now, we may not have that opportunity. Do you have any thoughts on that? WELDY: I do. For the record, we've actually done this for multiple years due to limited funding. So Shea is about 15 years behind. So we've asked that they defer our portion and/or keep it in the bank for us. More often than not, it has been the design that we are required to use selected firms as part of the agreement, and the design takes a considerable amount of time. I think this section was actually, originally, supposed to be constructed in 2000. And a decision was made at that time to move to the other side westbound, which we refer to locally as the climbing lane. But to the rest of the folks, it's westbound Shea, the number 2 and 3 lane and sidewalk from Fountain Hills Boulevard to Palisades. And the reason for that was because that grant money was going to go away. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. MCMAHON: Thank you. Rachael said what I was thinking, but also I'm not seeing this type of allocation of money available for us to repair our streets on Shea Boulevard like this. What's the timeline on it, do you think? And hopefully this money won't go away, because I think that we can't ignore the fact that we have repairing our streets, improving our streets, et cetera, ingress and egress to and from Fountain Hills. So I don't want to ignore something as impactful as this. WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember, the phase eastbound between Palisades and Fountain Hills Boulevard, we intend to release that to bid, probably, in the next six to eight weeks and come back to the council prior to the summer break and ask for permission to start the project. FRIEDEL: That answered my question. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. So the 18-month thing that seems like a lot. On the south side, is it utilities? Is it grading? Do you know where that number came from? WELDY: Madam Mayor, I'm not sure where that 18 months came from. So as part of the bid documents, there will be an allotted amount of time that is reasonable, based Page 52 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING on the engineer of record. It's not likely to be that long. That's very, very rare. In regards to grading and stuff. Absolutely. There's some good news on behalf of that. Over the last 15 years, public works and engineering staff has worked with local developers to place material in these areas of Shea, reducing the overall cost for this by about $5 million. So the majority of that 18 months that it may have taken originally to fill all those giant canyons is now past because of the donated materials have been placed there. So it's probably -- and I don't want to pick out a number, but I'm going to say less than a year, including all the wrap-up and cleanup. MAYOR DICKEY: That sounds more likely and reasonable with this kind of project. I really appreciated this. Obviously will involve Bo and all of us, once it gets started. Just like, really tomorrow this is going to happen, the next day this is going to happen. But that's always what happens when you have to work on streets. And likely we'll be working on streets in other parts of the town like we've been doing for the last several years. And it does inconvenience people at the time but when you think about what Brenda said about the number of cars, that's actually why. The inconvenience part, because there's so many cars is why we have to do it because there are so many cars. So I really appreciate this. And I think you got the feel from everybody. Okay? All right. SOLDINGER: Not as in good shape as Justin. GOODWIN: So Mayor, our next -- we're not quite done with the CIP discussion. We looked at a number of projects. Again, they were just sort of our quick version of what we're going to be talking about later at the end of March. But one of the things we did want to talk about today was the process for CIPs. And this has been a discussion, and it's kind of come up here and there, about how, when we look at a project and you see it in March and you give it the okay, what happens then? Why does it come back? Why is there more discussion? Or why doesn't it come back? When does it come back? It sort of -- and so we wanted to kind of go through what we do now and then possibly make some suggestions as to how we could improve that process. That sound right? POCK: Sounds right to me. GOODWIN: Okay. Page 53 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING POCK: That's what the presentation says anyways, right? All right. So like Rachael mentioned, this is our current process or at least how it's worked since I've been here. So potential projects are introduced to the council at meetings like this, throughout the budget process. During the final budget adoption, the final list of projects is presented and passed as part of the final budget. So once that happens, then that basically clears staff to go out and do the procurement for those projects. There's a whole process involved, and we'll go through those steps -- or those different avenues on the next slide. But once that procurement process is completed or at least nearing the completion where vendors been identified and selected, then that contract with the vendor would come back to council and get approved. What isn't real clear on this slide, but there's projects that involve multiple contracts. So you could see multiple contracts back at council to be approved for the same project. And since that procurement process might be different timelines for each vendor, it could be over multiple meetings and things come back and forth. And so you could see a project for quite a few times. Once the contract's signed, then any materials and services are ordered or scheduled. And then if there happens to be some overrun where there's maybe a change in the scope or something changes from year to year, then you might see a budget transfer that would need to be approved, as well as any contract amendments, that sort of thing. And then finally the work is completed. That sound sort of familiar to what we do? Okay. That's good. All right. So the different procurement policies as far as -- these are council adopted and they are posted online. I'm not sure, do we still have visitors? Yes. All right. So yeah, the policies are posted online, so if anybody wanted to go and see the entire set, but I just basically pulled out the ones that are required for anything over 50,000. Which as you know, capital improvement, our project's over $50,000. So we can either have invitation for bids that's submitted. Those are received. They're in sealed envelopes. There's a scheduling of the opening. And then those are all based on price. So lowest, lowest bidder wins. Request for proposals is a little bit different. They do come in Page 54 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING sealed. Then those are evaluated by a selection committee based on predetermined criteria, one of which would be price. But that's not the only determinant. And then of course there's requests for qualifications, which is basically just looking for vendors that are qualified to do the work and that does not have to be evaluated. Again, it's by a selection committee, but price is not evaluated in those. Any questions on the procurement side of things? All right. So after some discussion and after -- we did a little bit of a different idea this current fiscal year when we did projects. Since the council goes on break during the summer, so after the second meeting in June, we typically don't see council again until the end of August, beginning of September. There is some lost time there for projects that are actually ready to go right off the bat. So this year we did identify certain projects that were basically cleared to begin, to start; contracts were approved. And after procurement, obviously the policies were performed. And you didn't really see them again until maybe a CIP update. That worked really well. Staff didn't lose any time during the summer when the council was on break. We'd kind of like to implement more of those types of projects and identify projects that the council's comfortable with doing that type of approval with. Then we kind of have a we use this traffic signal. I'm not entirely sold on the whole thing, but I didn't think it provides a pretty good indication, a visual, as far as how this might work. So yellow light projects where council likes the projects, but they want to be a little bit more involved, maybe a little bit more -- you know, a stepped approach to it. So staff would be cleared for the procurement process. Council would still come back with the contracts for council approval on contracts. Maybe it's something that where all the contracts could be approved at the same time, I'm not sure exactly how that would work. But so that you don't have to continuously see each individual contract. Maybe, one simple motion for all of them. And then, of course, the progress would still be updated at the CIP updates. And then, of course, there's some projects that just nobody likes for our current fiscal year. Maybe they come back and maybe there's a little bit more information, a little bit Page 55 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING more development, maybe, start getting some more citizen involvement. Or there's some more support, like that, and it comes back in the next year or some subsequent year. So that's kind of the idea. And we are looking to have a discussion on what everyone thinks about that. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? MCMAHON: Thank you for the explanation. However, I am still a little bit confused, if you don't mind. Especially with this year going back and forth on a few projects, it got very, very confusing. Sometimes I thought these projects were already approved, and then all of a sudden it seemed like they were coming back. One of my concerns is the fact that we have a budget period. We approve or you bring projects before us, and if it's not approved or it's not timely brought before us, it lags everybody behind; the staff behind, the budget behind, et cetera. That's my concern with this process, and I'm not explaining it as well as you're probably going to in a minute, hopefully. But I want to know if there is any step we can alleviate or add that is going to prevent that confusion and that lag that adversely affects staff time, preparedness, and budget consequences if that money isn't spent in that particular fiscal year. I know that's a large question, but it's a large situation that needs to be addressed. Thank you. GOODWIN: I'm going to see if I can help address it. MCMAHON: Okay. GOODWIN: So the answer is yes. And I think that this is actually a very exciting conversation for the staff. We've talked about it and how that lag is troublesome. I'll use a project like the splash pad construction. That that has a very sequential set of timing that we have to adhere to, right? We have impacts on the restaurants. We have impacts on the users of the splash pad. We don't want to shut something down in the middle of the summer when that's our only water -based activity. So we want to be mindful of timing. Sometimes it has to do with weather. Sometimes it has to do with seasonality. There's lots of reasons. Right? So to answer your question, in a perfect world, when you say yes, we like the Panorama Nature Walk project, please go do it. Tell us how it's going. Come back if there's a problem. And off we go. And then that is Page 56 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING sort of the ultimate green light. We won't come back for contracts. We won't come back for do you like this color or that color? We'll go forth with our best practices. We'll follow our procurement procedures that are online. We'll put out the proper RFPs or IFPs or whatever it is that we need to do to move forward and get the project done efficiently. If there's a hiccup, something comes back and oh, gosh, we didn't know this, something new, then we would come back, but otherwise it wouldn't come back other than an update where we go, hey, we're almost done, we think it'll be ready in March. Right? And then that would be an ultimate green Tight situation. We would love to get to where a majority of projects have that authority to where once they're approved, staff goes and does. Understanding that not all projects are that way, understanding that there are some projects that you'll, yeah, I really like it, but could you come back and tell us more, or could you go talk to these residents or these businesses before starting, could you get us some more details? So we understand that there's an interest and approval, but maybe you want some more details before we move forward? I'd prefer to keep those projects somewhat to a minimum. Let's say 80/20. 80 percent of projects get a green light, 20 percent maybe have that yellow light of concept of like, yes, I like concept, but I want more details. That is what slows us down sometimes is the idea of going, we know we want to do it. We're trying to track down how much information council wants; can we get some more details. And that does kind of slide. And then of course the red light projects are, I love it but we don't have the money this year. Or hey that looks like it may be better after we get some road work done or we get something else completed; put it on the outer years but come back to it. Does that kind of answer your question? MCMAHON: Yes, it does address the question. So what you're saying is we'll eliminate additional steps by, when you bring a capital project to us or you're going to say this project, we want it approved in whole -- in totality, within these parameters, within these financial parameters, if we need anything else from you or we need to update council, we'll come back to you. GOODWIN: Correct. Page 57 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MCMAHON: Okay. And I don't mean to put you on the spot, but can you think of one? Like you said, there are certain projects that you wouldn't want to do that for because neighborhood involvement, et cetera. What type of a project? Can you just like differentiate for me? GOODWIN: I don't actually think it's the staff that would want to put a yellow light on it. I think it's more from a council level. MCMAHON: Okay. GOODWIN: If the council is not quite sure about a project or wants that input. Generally speaking, if staff bring a project forward -- if it's made it to that point where we're talking about it at this level, it's been pretty well vetted from the staff perspective and where we think we can get done and how we can get it done. It's more the yellow light would be applied by council. MCMAHON: Okay. Because in the past when I've sat up here and approved projects, you guys have been very, very prepared. You've gone through the paces, you've checked the contracts, et cetera. And I can't say anything else, but you guys are prepared. You know what you're doing. So I would appreciate being able to give you that authority to take it and run with it, so that it makes it a lot easier time saving for you guys, utilizing your time, your salaries better, et cetera. So yeah, I think that that would -- that's a really good idea. So thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Just Brenda, just one second. I just wanted to also mention that one of the things that seems to come back is not just whether we like the project, but if it was a multiyear project and then we feel like, wait, we saw this already and then we end up voting no on something that's year 2 or 3 of something, which makes no sense. So I wouldn't mind if that was part of the discussion. And I think when we do end up having to bring something back on an agenda to specifically say this was such and such project approved, such and such a day, whatever. Even the minutes even showing us that, so that -- because I know that it felt like Groundhog Day sometimes that we -- that's something Art Tollis used to say all the time because we'd be like talking about it, and he says like, wait a minute, I know we already did this. So I think to your point -- and then Page 58 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING the biggest reason I think that we would ever bring something back would be where we didn't have a good feeling about our revenue at the time or what our status was as far as being able to move ahead with something. Sorry, Brenda. Go ahead. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. No worries. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Yeah, I'm just going to kind of riff -off of Councilmember McMahon's concerns. And she mentioned that sometimes she was confused as far as the status of what we're doing and I feel that same confusion. And we have a number of retreats where you're looking for a guidance either way. And sometimes I feel like we've given you guidance to go ahead and then it comes back. We weren't sure or sometimes I think, like, we're pretty clear that we didn't want that. And then it comes back again. And I do find that frustrating. And I know we've discussed this before in your office, but if we could vote, and maybe we can't legally, but if we could vote and then we'll have a clear, well, that was five/two, that was a four/three, that was a seven/oh, slam dunk. Because if we can't have a vote, then sometimes you guys will walk out maybe thinking that you had an approval and some of us felt like you didn't and vice versa. So yeah, I wish that's something that we could drill down on because I just hate to waste the staff's time on something that we kind of clearly didn't want. But then it comes back again after a couple of months, and they've worked on it and they've prepared and spent hours and hours and then it's like, hey, no, we didn't want that. So I just wish there would be less confusion and I don't know what we can do about it, but I'm just going to throw it out there. GOODWIN: My hope is that -- well, I'm going to I'm going to agree with you that staff would like that too. So I think we're all in agreement that if we can come up with a clearer process, it will help everybody. And it may mean going through each project -- and I hate to say individually, where we say yes, five/two, seven/oh, four/three, whatever it is and go, okay, these are the projects that we have recorded as go get them done. And keep in mind that we're kind of following past practices right now, which I think is what the confusion is, is that previously when a project was approved, it was improved Page 59 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING in concept, and then we would go out and get a contract and then the contract has to come back and get approved. So I think that's where you're seeing these duplicate things going, I thought we already okayed this, why are we talking about it again? Because there's a contractual element to it where we say, okay, great, we're going to build a skate park. Cool. Go build a skate park. Well, now we came back. Here's the contract. Can you approve the contract for the skate park? We would like to be able to get to a point where we say, go to build the skate park and follow the parameters of our procurement procedure, and off we go. And that would, again, eliminate those individual steps, it would eliminate that coming back and talking about it and feeling like Groundhog's Day. It would help that process, I think. And then to the point of when we talk about these projects, getting a clear direction of, okay, these are the ones we're moving ahead on and we will give you updates. And I want to make that clear that we value that time to give you those updates. So everybody does feel like they know what's going on. So it won't be just a disappear and never hear from it again. We'll do CIP updates. We try to work those in kind of quarterly, so everybody knows what's going on and what the status is without having this arduous, repetitive process. Does that -- hopefully that would help? MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman? Thank you. FRIEDEL: Thank you, Mayor. Two points. One, not that it's not the level of trust, but I think you saw an example today, development funds versus CIP. I mean, when it's coming from that other bucket. Hey, go do it. Get it done. So there's a difference of mindset, I think, with that. GOODWIN: Sure. FRIEDEL: And then the second thing is I don't know if this has happened with this council, but you might have a CIP project that starts out in one year under one council bleeds over into the next council and then that's an issue. So keep that in mind too. I don't know that it's always lack of knowledge or trust, but it just might happen that that may come to bear at some point. MAYOR DICKEY: Aaron? Page 60 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING [CLERKS NOTE: COUNCILMEMBER TOTH STEPPED AWAY FROM THE DAIS AT 11:15 A.M. AND RETURNED AT 11:21 A.M.] ARNSON: Mayor, Thank you. I wanted to respond to Councilmember Kalivianakis' point about just real briefly, the legalities of voting or whatnot. I understand that we do have those restrictions when we're at a work session, for example, about formal action. But direction is -- we've had this conversation before, Rachael. Direction is always perfectly fine. And it may just be sort of moving along from past practice into this approach. And then whether it's Kevin or Justin or Rachael or whoever's the one presenting on the project to get that affirmative, clear understanding. And I think that's something that staff can take on and do better with as well. To say, okay, so based on this discussion, I am hearing X, you all like this. I am going to write this down on the list of things that we're going to move forward with. And if there's consensus or at least a lack of dissent, then I think that creates the clarity that you're looking for. MAYOR DICKEY: One of the things I want to mention is about the actual budget itself, when we're voting on the budget, because I know that that's where this conversation sometimes comes up, because somebody doesn't want to vote no on the whole budget, but they really don't want one of the projects. So if there's a way -- we could vote on individual projects and have someone still be able to vote yes on the budget, but they have made it clear that this particular project they didn't want to do, even if the majority does. So I think there's always that level of discomfort when we pass a budget. You don't want to say no to the whole budget because you don't like one of the parks or something like that. So just to keep that in mind as we move down the budget process, everybody has a right to say whatever they want and feel whatever they want about a particular item in the budget and even vote on it. I mean, we can vote on individual projects if we want during that process. So just to make that clear, because I know that's been a discussion at our final budgets. Peggy? MCMAHON: I want to address what Gerry Friedel said. For example, Shea widening, if this council elects to move forward on that, regardless of the fact that the council changes every two years, we vote in that project. We look at the budget that we're Page 61 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING utilizing the funds under and it moves forward. We're not going to -- the next council isn't going to really look back on that because our vote was already taken on that project. It's already started. It's been approved, et cetera. I mean, that's a big project I'm giving an example for. Right? GOODWIN: I think a good example might be and I'm going to bring this one up the when we do multiyear phases at a park. MCMAHON: Oh, okay. GOODWIN: For instance, when we do -- we did kind of a four- or five-year phase at Four Peaks Park. We went into that planning on using year-to-year increments and planning all that out. If we were to stop midway because they go, well, actually, I don't think we should -- it kind of leaves staff hanging. You're sort of in progress, right? And you maybe you have things on order, but you're going to install them the following year or whatever. It kind of leaves everybody in limbo. I think that's what we're trying to avoid. And the Mayor kind of brought that up is that when you have multiyear projects, maybe we want to move towards approving those in full, so that hopefully they can't be unwound if there's a new sitting council the following year. And I don't know if that's even feasible or if we can do that. MAYOR DICKEY: Aaron? ARNSON: Well I'll respond to that question, Mayor, by by answering it as follows. So no current council can bind a future council. Right? The fundamental principle is that if a future council wanted to go a different direction on any given project, they could. And that's the council's prerogative to do that. The question is, if you give your approval, what does it take to unwind it? And if it's a project, for example, of the size and the scope of the Shea widening project that we were just talking about, that's not something that we necessarily want to be easy to be unwound, right? Because that's something that if we're stopping when we're at 60 percent completion, that's going to create major havoc, and practically, a future council probably wouldn't want to do that. But it illustrates the point that this avoids that issue long-term. Right? If the council -- do they have the ability in the future to reverse course? Yes. But practically this avoids Page 62 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING the problem for the majority of projects. And for the majority of CIP projects that's a desirable thing because you are looking a fiscal year or two or three out into the future. You want that predictability and longevity, both for budgeting purposes and for operations purposes. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. So rather than something coming back because it needs to be approved and it might be a different set of circumstances, and people end up voting no on something that you already spent $1 million on. This way they would have to proactively decide not to continue that project, correct? ARNSON: Mayor, that is correct. MAYOR DICKEY: But they still could do it? ARNSON: Still could do it, but it would be a proactive -- I affirmatively dislike this project and bringing it back for reconsideration as opposed to every step of the way, there's another hurdle to jump over which, it's just not efficient or effective. MAYOR DICKEY: So next is the downtown. So should we get started because it's only 11:20 so it's not quite lunch time, or what do you want to do? GOODWIN: I mean -- MAYOR DICKEY: I'd like to get started if possible. GOODWIN: By all means, let's do it. MAYOR DICKEY: She's already standing, so she's on the way. Hello. JACOBS: Hello. Mayor, Council, we're here to talk about the downtown strategy. So at our fall retreat on November 2nd, while you couldn't take official action that day, we did ask you if staff could begin the process of updating the downtown strategy or if we needed to bring it back to council. And so we felt that we received support and started hitting the ground running. So we want to provide an update on the strategy, refresh your minds on some things, talk a little bit about CIP, and provide an update on the restrooms. Using the keyboard. Okay. So again, as a refresher, the 2009 downtown strategy, which is the last time the town updated it, you'll see that there's some dashed red lines that incorporated Basha's, former Havenly, now the Pillar, as well as the entirety of Fountain Park. We shared with Page 63 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING you that we wanted to reduce the scale of what we were evaluating, so we removed Basha's and the Pillar residential community. Why? Part of that is because some of that development is fairly new, so we most likely won't be doing anything as far as redevelopment revitalization. We also took out the park, and then you'll see just a little bit of green for the Saguaro frontage. And we'll talk in a little bit about connectivity from the Avenue to the park. So back in 2009, there was Tots of hopes and dreams of potentially building mixed use on the Fountain Park, having a hotel. And so as staff, we were a little bit puzzled. It's exciting, but with our fountain, is it going to block views? With the spray, is it going to spray people if it was an apartment or a hotel? And then also, whether we like it or not, Fountain Park has become our destination for events. So that's the rationale of why we took that out. And so this is what staff is focusing on. Again, as a refresher, we're wanting to look at land use. I've shared with you some folks tell me, well, Amanda, let's just start all over and blade everything and have it be 100 percent residential. Obviously, that is not going to work, especially as a town that does not have a local primary property tax. We're wanting to look is -- there's areas where we can add some flexible zoning, overlay districts, to help attract business in the business district, and that's alignment with the recently adopted economic development strategy and industry. We want to look at infrastructure, our streets, sidewalks. We've talked about lights. Getting a little deeper, are we talking about street lights? Are we talking about twinkly lights on trees? Are we talking about lights up and down. Again, getting more information. Again, the economics of it, business attraction, retention. What's going to get people here? How can we change what's currently happening in downtown? We want to look at public spaces, our linear park, the events, wayfinding signage. And then forecasting. So again, as we're hearing from the community, when they're like, well, we can just have 100 percent residential that that doesn't work, that we can show some modeling that shows the why of why we need mixed uses, not talking about commercial and apartments, but all mixed uses to have a vibrant economy. So here's our timeline. Again, we hit the ground running in January. February and Page 64 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING March will be having some focus groups. So again, looking at some vacant property owners, folks that are on the Avenue, folks on Parkview, over at Plaza Fountain side, et cetera. We'll be working with a landscape architect to get some conceptual drawings. That will happen in April. May, Angela will be sending or already has sent you a placeholder for May 15th at 6 pm. We'll open it to the public to get the entire public's feedback on what we're proposing, evaluating some of the concepts. In June, August, we'll look based on May's feedback. Do we need to have additional meetings? Do we need to modify some of the drawings? And then we'll also start preparing a draft strategy that we can prepare to council. We're aiming for September, again, depending on -- hopefully, fingers crossed you guys are going to love it and approve it unanimously. And then we can go into October. But if you don't, we'll add another meeting. But in October then we'll want to start working on a phased budget approach. How are we going to pay for this? So I shared with you in November something like this will be -- don't fall out of your chairs, a multimillion dollar project, obviously not in one fiscal year, but to show you that phased approach. And then going back when we talk about economics and then the land use, are there projects that are going to be added on our plate and is just staff time? Not necessarily an ask for 50 or a 100 grand, but if we're having to work with development services and economic development and our legal department to look at those overlay districts, to be able to lay all of that out. So our eye is on the ball, and then that -- it won't be 2009 and we're not updating things. All right. So CIP request for fiscal year '24/125. What is not being proposed? I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. The public that's watching that has still remained in the audience. But last year in the budget, there was connectivity from Avenue of the Fountains to Fountain Park. This is something -- not to go back to the last topic, but this was something that council then midyear terminated. But I'll hold some of you to your word that it's not terminated indefinitely, but because we are going through this downtown strategy, full-blown process, this is not something we were going to bring back or propose this next year. We want to look at other alternatives. So one thing that was proposed previously was a roundabout. So the architect that is working with us is Page 65 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING SWABACK. And so in talking to him, what was interesting is some of the rationale for the roundabout was because of thinking Fountain Park could be built out for all the mixed uses. So it's again, can we look at an alternative because staff, our businesses, residents do agree we need to improve connectivity. And you guys know too, professionally and for personal reasons, the ADA access we're wanting to address. That has been brought up. MAYOR DICKEY: So could you clarify then? So you're saying it's not going to be proposed, but then you're saying SWABACK is looking at connectivity and the ADA. JACOBS: Yes. So since we're looking at this downtown strategy, the whole downtown, not just the Avenue. Because some people too have thought, oh, the downtown is the Avenue. No, it's not as you saw from the previous map, it includes Parkview, it includes Palisades. We're looking at everything. And too, when we're forecasting and thinking of other uses, we want to look at that specific area and then understand is it a roundabout? Is it something else? We've heard of other creative ideas, but we want to bring that back this next year. So after this current budget with the plan. So it could be '25/'26, it could be '16/'27. But to just make sure we're on the same page that come March 26th, we're not proposing money for connectivity. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. So we're not proposing money. But when you say this is an overall huge project, how do we do that without talking about connectivity to the park and crossing safely and all of that, whether there's anything in the park in addition? So I'm a little bit confused. So you're just basically saying money for '24 or'25 that's not in there, but it is part of the whole concept? JACOBS: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. Thank you. JACOBS: And then also in November I had shared -- buckle your seat belts, we'll be proposing sidewalks. Again, talking internally, we're going to wait to make that request. Again we're hearing ideas of what would happen if, on Parkview you shifted where some of the restaurants are and you brought it more closer to the roadway? What does that do? Is there an openness? Is it realistic? There's not just one or two property Page 66 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING owners. There's multiple property owners. Also looking at the streetscape, and so meaning we're hearing sidewalks, but we've also talked about sidewalks, landscaping, streetlights, banners. So looking at all of that, that's a streetscape instead of just one thing. So with that being said, we will have some proposals that's focused on areas of the Avenue where we know that there's not going to be any change because it's developed. But you will learn more about that on March 26th. We want to make sure you come to that meeting and so does the audience. So a little teaser there. All right. So update on restrooms. So last year for this current fiscal year that we're in, that ends June 30th of '24, the council approved $35,000 essentially for design. So design too looks at the location, utilities -- don't just think architecture. Then you also approved $150,000 then to actually build the restroom. So we want to provide you an update. I did in November, as well as during my quarterly report in December, that the $35,000, we didn't think July 1 it was Christmas and start spending it. We have not spent it. And then we also wanted to look at creative ways of installing restrooms. So the previous amount -- so in totality 185,000 was based off of the Portland Loo, as you see. I did not name this. This is the name of the company. So this is a singular stall. When we provided this to you, this was economic development, public works. But we brought community services and other key stakeholders together. And the thought was, okay, if we're not just planning for now, but we've heard from our downtown businesses to plan for the future if we're having more events and activity, one stall is just not going to cut it. A single stall, and then, depending on Tots of usage will be destroyed in no time. At that same time as we were evaluating that and seeing could we attach other stalls, the company said no. We looked at rentals. So with my previous employer, sometimes we brought in what you call VIP rentals when you had big swim meets and the ladies were changing. We used sort of this model. We wanted to look to see if during the farmer's market this year, we could bring it in sort of as a test. In talking to multiple vendors, they could not guarantee to come on Wednesday. We would have to pay for an entire month. And then just again looking with about, depending on what you're looking at, Page 67 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING the number of stalls by year four or year eight, we could have paid for it. So we're saying these two are no longer an option. Then simultaneously, we reached out to the board at Platt 208. So just sort of beyond the seating and shade structure to see for location only if we could place restrooms there and have some type of partnership. So I just asked the question and the board went, took a vote. I was like, whoa, I was just asking a question. They're like, well, we did that on purpose. Per our rules, we have to have 100 percent ownership and there's over 100 property owners-- buy into that. So they're like, we just want you to know it's just not viable at this time. Then it took some time. We were looking with a private owner again within the Platt 208 and along the Avenue to see if we could use their restrooms. What we found is some of the businesses within Platt 208, actually the building structure was built in the '70s and '80s. Most of the businesses do not have a restroom inside the building. It is outside in a courtyard and it's shared amongst other tenants. With this particular owner, she owned all of it and so she was willing to come at the table. Again, brought the whole team. And as we looked so again, right, especially with Kevin, if his team is going to maintain it, does it have the same soap dispensers? Looking at all of that. Or then, are we going to have to do something new? We also had our building official look at this. And essentially this is also not a viable option. We would have had to blow it up and tear it up. Because it also doesn't comply with ADA. If you heard that -- '70s, '80s. So pre some of those things. And so if you're going to open it to the public you need to meet all the requirements. So if you didn't hear that I'm glad you didn't hear that. All right. So where are we at? And then I'm going to remind some of you, some of you guys last year -- it was actually last April, I had a proposal for over $600,000 for the downtown. Then we came back. You said, cut some of that. You didn't tell me how much. And I said, okay, how about 535? We were kind of all over the board. And I said, here, I'll take it away, because some of you said, Amanda, we know you're going to have to come back and ask for more money for the restrooms. I need more money for the restrooms. All right. So what we're proposing here. So again some of you know from previous Page 68 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING conversations, so the town owns property. So again if we're heading this way there's the sheriff's parking lot. And then as you're going to walk and grab a bite to Georgie's. In between there, that is our right-of-way, that is our land. We're proposing to put the restrooms here. It is a four -stall restroom. It is a turnkey model. In talking to the public, folks were very adamant, if you're going to do this, that they really desired, not a shared restroom, but one that specifically says men and female. So you'll see that. So for the women, there are two stalls. There's an area to change. So for getting off of work, can't head home, need a change for a little walk or jog in Fountain Park that is available. In the men's, there is one stall, a urinal. They also get a changing station. They want to do the same thing. Sheriff's department, they need to take off all that equipment, have that opportunity. And then on the outside you'll see too if you want to fill up your water bottle, have a water fountain. So the updated cost is $475,000. And so the difference is 290,000. And so we wanted to provide this update to council, again, not planning on starting to use the 35K, but to just touch base to see how you guys are feeling. And then we can bring this up again on March 26th for the full CIP discussion with the manager and the budget team. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. JACOBS: And Kevin's also here to answer any questions. MCMAHON: Thank you. Amanda. JACOBS: You're welcome. MCMAHON: I have a question. Based on the drawing, the adult changing area, if that was cut out and it made the building smaller, do you have any idea what the change in price would be? JACOBS: I'm going to look to Kevin or see if we'll have to get back to you. SNIPES: Very, very nominal. JACOBS: Nominal. MCMAHON: Very nominal? JACOBS: That's what Kevin said, yes. MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you. Page 69 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Any other? So basically you're saying all of the other options are just off the table. JACOBS: We tried. MAYOR DICKEY: And any other location is off the table. Because I think the obvious thing that we've talked about in the past is how close this is to this building, and this building has a restroom that we could then -- I mean, I know we talked about ways of blocking off so that people could actually use the restroom in here. That said, I'm not totally in favor of that. I would rather do something like this. The other discussion that was brought up in the past, though, was how near it was to the other businesses and how they feel about it. But I think that we need this there -- somewhere there. I wish it was could be further down towards Saguaro or more centrally located. And that's just totally -- there's just nothing. Is that the way we're looking at it now? JACOBS: That's correct. And so yes, when we've talked to you, the farmers market and Art on the Ave, they would prefer it be central. In talking to the businesses they're like Amanda, we're not going to tell you and the staff where to put it. We just want this option because again, if you're down this row where you have more retail and restaurants, you will see a window sign that says this is not a public restroom. So they're like, just please try to solve the current problem. And again, as we're planning together to maybe have a second Thursday -- it's not on Thursday, but those different concepts to to activate people within the downtown, that there needs to be a restroom. But you're right. And all of us have bumped into people downstairs where, again, if it's someone a little bit more elderly or you've got a mother with a toddler where it's like, oh, my gosh, this is just -- it seems just so far away. And they're like, we barely made it. So it's like something, at least, something a little bit closer is better than nothing. And then I'll look to Justin and and Janover, but again, as far as I know, there's not any other opportunities in our right-of-way. And then also too, from an economic standpoint, looking at other commercial, we need to think about that too. And how attractive is that to just plop a restroom in the middle of something to where we can reimagine? Page 70 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: That's true. But when, we've all been to plenty of places where there's restrooms available and they're necessary. And I think this is too. The other aspect of this, which was we've been talking about is pet relief station so that the Avenue median grass isn't used. We've been talking about how people, you know, drive and use that as a rest area for their pets and other parks and other parts of the country or even here have pet relief stations. And I know some of the discussion was to talk to the Park Place and that kind of thing, which I don't know how those went. But would this area be large enough to include a pet relief station so that when people are on the median and they're eating lunch and doing other things, sitting in the grass listening to our live music, that they're not sitting where pets have been using that. And even remember when we had all our electric equipment that we had to replace because of the damage from the moisture and such? So not to get into it too much, but you know what I'm talking about. So I would love for this to become something that we could combine with that. Or if there's another area that we could combine with that, or if the door is closed on it being part of -- I keep saying Park Place, but you know, and I don't want to put him or anybody else on the spot, but it's got to be kind of a part of the conversation. Because I believe a lot of the folks there probably use the median and maybe would use this too. So I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? JACOBS: Mayor. So again, I'll look to Rachael. I think because there's an active agreement, I think staff has kind of shied away to then approaching the developer to say, how about restrooms or doing a little switcheroo with the agreement. I think I've even gotten the finger, like, don't even think about it. So I'll look to Rachael and Aaron. ARNSON: Rachael? GOODWIN: Yes. I'll chime in and say, the Park Place development obviously is an evolving situation down there. Obviously, they have their next phases that are in -- they're in a holding pattern right now. We're waiting to hear more about those. We can certainly talk with them. I think the catch here is that we don't know yet their timeline on a lot of things. So while we recognize restrooms are a need today or Page 71 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING yesterday or as it were, it doesn't always coordinate with what their development timeline is either. So I think that there's a factor there. Again, this is also something that's likely -- I mean, we're right now we're eyeballing to put this on our property, on town property. So it's a town space. You know, we are then obligated for -- regardless, we're going to have to operate it, clean it, maintain it, all of those things. And when you have a weekend like last weekend with the fair, I can't even imagine what this would look like. I mean, almost to the extent to where it almost makes sense to not operate it when you have that many things going on because you can't maintain it. It's almost better to have the portable option available because it's just designed for that. But be that as it may, that doesn't answer your question. The question is, I don't know where Park Place would fall on that. I don't know that we can't have that conversation. But I think my biggest concern is their timeline versus ours. And then what that would look like. I know there's been discussion about would they consider putting in restrooms as their new buildings come online? From my understanding, I think there was some open dialogue about that. But again, I don't know what that looks like is that two years from now, five years from now? We don't know right now. And this is clearly a need today. Again, I don't know where the operational line is there either, it's their facility, in their building. Are we coming in and cleaning that and maintaining it? How would that work? So there's still a lot of unknowns in that way. In regards to the pet waystation, I think we could look at the space to see if that would fit, how it would work. I don't think it would alleviate the complete problem of pets on the Avenue. It would just give an alternative option. And certainly something's better than nothing, in that regard. Because to your point, there's a lot of pet owners in and around the downtown, whether it's in Pillar, whether it's in Park Place, and the surrounding areas. It's a popular animal destination. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Brenda? Or is it Gerry? KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. I think Gerry was first. FRIEDEL: Thank you. Mayor. So I wrote down a couple of things. I think the changing station, I'm not in favor of. I don't care how much it -- Page 72 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Less. FRIEDEL: -- how much less it costs. I think if you shrink the footprint of this building, you could do your pet relief station right behind it and then eliminate a big problem on the Avenue. I also wrote down Park Place because at one time they said that they would do something for us. I still think we should explore that. Why not ask them and ask them where they are? You know, you can accomplish a couple of things there. Also would get it further down the avenue, which is where everybody wants it, right next door to our building, a changing station for the MCSO sheriffs guys. They're right next door to where they're warehoused. So I again, I'm not -- JACOBS: It was just an example. FRIEDEL: I know. I'm not buying that one. Sorry. But I don't know, Fountain Park, I guess, is out of the question. If we were to put something further down in the park where it would actually be used for all of the major events, but then you'll get people that are that will complain about having to walk all the way down to the fountain to do whatever they need to do. So I think we need a little bit more work. I guess a double loo is out of the question, huh? JACOBS: Mayor, Gerry, we could look at it. I think staff was like, no -- FRIEDEL: See, I think -- JACOBS: -- it's still an additional cost. FRIEDEL: I know. JACOBS: Another 185 for a double loo? FRIEDEL: Yeah, a double loo. I kind of like the double loo. But anyway, with this current configuration, we're trying to be everything to everybody. When I thought we just wanted a stall or two. So I think for me, anyway, I think you could shrink that footprint, put your pet relief station right behind it, and solve a couple of problems. MAYOR DICKEY: Brenda? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I think all of us up here see the benefit and the utility of having the restroom, because we've been talking about this quite a bit. But the location of this restroom, I'm very concerned about. We want a restroom so we can pat Page 73 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING ourselves on the back. We check the box. But we miss the mark. To me, and this is just my opinion, if this isn't centrally located, and if it's by the community center and town hall, the business owners are going to have the same problem with people knocking on their doors wanting to use the restrooms, because this is so far out of the way. And it's a lot of money. And unless we can get this more where it's centrally located, where people will use it, I'm kind of hesitant to -- and I'd like the restrooms, but I'm hesitant to give the green light on this one. And as far as the pet station is concerned, once again, it's -- I don't see people using it when there's all that green grass out there. And I don't see them walking three blocks to the pet relief station. And I bet you they won't even know it's there for years. And so again, it checks the box. Well, maybe we can keep the grass cleaner and duty free. But again, it's just -- I'm not sure if people are going to actually use it. So I don't know. I'm kind of with Gerry on this. I think we have to maybe think about it a little bit more and see if we can build this someplace where it's more practical, where people will use it, and where it'll actually help our business owners. And so those are my concerns. MAYOR DICKEY: Aaron? ARNSON: The only thing I wanted to provide a little bit of input on was the suggestion about Park Place and Town Manager Goodwin said it pretty well. As we go forward, I think I've generally heard that there's a desire for other options, but I do want to -- I don't think it's a bad idea to explore from a legal perspective. I would just advise the council that we shouldn't count on it as a near term option. In the discussions and conversations that we've had recently with the developer, I think they'd be amenable to a discussion, but in terms of a viable alternative, I don't view it as a viable alternative at this stage. Doesn't mean it couldn't become one, but we're not there. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Well, that makes sense. So I don't think it's -- I mean, it's not optimal, but this is an alternative if town hall's closed or whatever, this is where you would tell people there's a restroom right there. You go to San Diego, you go anywhere else, there's restrooms, but they're far away from each other and you have to walk to them. So I guess, it's not perfect, but it's our property. Take away the changing area, Page 74 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING make it smaller. You put signage. There are parks that say this -- it's not a -- you can't use this for a pet relief station. You cannot use this. I know there's grass. It'll take forever for everybody to get used to it, but I think that it's worth it to try to stop that median from being a pet relief station. And it's overwhelmingly used that way. I really think it's important because we have benches out there, we have equipment out there. We sit on the grass and listen to music out there. I just think it's really important to treat that as a park that -- it's an amenity. We've got beautiful things there, they've got art there, we've got events there, and I would love -- and it wouldn't be easy, but I really think that if we make it smaller and we have this there, then at least we've got something, we have an option. And then we work on how long it takes for it to finally change and for people too. So that when you are down there at one of the restaurants and they say this is for patrons only, but there is a restroom there. And there's also three restrooms at the fountain. So you know, if they're closer there, then they can cross the street, right by -- there's three of them. So I think that this is an okay idea for me. We did want to put money towards it. The difference is 290. I don't know. Take away a little bit for the middle section. I think we should move forward. Vice Mayor or -- sorry. Gerry? FRIEDEL: One last question. Could we cut this in half and put one there and one down at the Fountain Park, maybe? I don't know. I don't know how practical that is. You did mention we have three down there now, but if we would be serving both ends of the Avenue at that point, is that something that's not worth considering or? JACOBS: Yeah. We're going to defer to Kevin. SNIPES: The biggest thing I think would be if we move down to the fountain is that's a hillside, and so trying to put something along that edge. FRIEDEL: Everything runs downhill though, right? SNIPES: Right, right. But that would be very costly to try and knock that out and make that work, I think. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor? GRZYBOWSKI: I believe Councilman Skillicorn's light was lit first. Page 75 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: You were on the bottom before. Councilman? SKILLICORN: Thank you. So I think this location is troubling because we have a public restroom right here, very close to this location. And if we're talking about the farmers market during the week on a Wednesday, it's open and it's public; the town hall is. So that's one concern I have about the location. And this is a half million dollars. I mean, that money could rent a vacant storefront with a bathroom in it, and we wouldn't need to build anything. This seems like too much. It seems like the wrong location. I think there's got to be a better alternative. MAYOR DICKEY: Vice Mayor? GRZYBOWSKI: Okay. So hear me out. I'm not the best at mathing (sic). I will say that that's why we have Pock and now, Paul. First, I do want to say that Scott and I have had a number of conversations about tract 208. He's on the tract 208 board. And it is literally impossible to get a 100 percent participation of the land and building owners in tract 208. They don't reply to communications. There's people that we know they own the property, but they're not even replying. We don't get bounce back emails, we don't get returned phone calls, nothing. So if they're not even participating in the annual vote, you know they're not going to participate in that. So I just wanted to make sure you guys know that that is completely out of the question at this point. Okay. So again, mathing (sic), not my skill. If we look at the building, it's about 414 square feet. So I'm going to use the Park Place rate of $21 a square foot and come up with $8,694 a year. Assuming that's all the space we get, which I realize that may not be how it works, but if we're just going to look at that, we divide that by 12, that's less than $800 a month. I don't know what the build out is for a bathroom, but now if you look at that, less than $9,000 a year and multiply it by 20 years, you're talking under $200,000 in 20 years to rent a space. So if we looked at renting a space, whether it be in Park Place or it be one of the other places that's maybe closer to the center area that we'd like it to be. Does anybody have any idea how much it costs to build out one of those spaces? If it's really only built out as a bathroom and not built out as a storefront with one little bathroom in the back end. Anybody have that kind of experience? Or maybe I Page 76 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING can Google it real quick or semi -quickly? JACOBS: Mayor, Vice Mayor, I don't. But it's also -- so do we want to take away commercial vacant space where we could potentially get retail sales tax for a bathroom? Maybe? GRZYBOWSKI: Yeah. I get that thought, but this would be a space that let's say we go ahead and do the build out, in ten years something happens and we have a bigger space in that area. The council can go, well, our lease is up. We signed an eight -year lease. The lease is up. Let's go ahead and cancel that. And they can have the space to rent to someone else. Because now, for whatever reason, we have this magical other spot that we actually own and we can build a restroom there. JACOBS: Very creative. MAYOR DICKEY: Brenda? GRZYBOWSKI: That's what I'm good at. KALIVIANAKIS: Just one more thing to consider. And that is, would the property owner and management open up a space so the public can use it as a restroom? The wear and tear on that space would be tremendous. And after ten years of the public going in and out using the restroom, it would diminish the value of the property. And if I own the building, I wouldn't let the town rent it to use it as a bathroom. This just a consideration. I'm not sure if they'd even let you use it for that kind of a purpose. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? JACOBS: Oh. Go ahead. MCMAHON: We're landlocked, right? This is the only piece of property we have to consider and look at for a viable restroom for people, regardless of where it's situated. I mean, down at the park we have some beautiful bathrooms that can accommodate that end of the park. People, like, you go places and you have to walk to the restroom. It's not a mystery. And I think if there's wayfinding signs, et cetera, utilizing this parcel of property for this and hopefully also for a pet relief station, I think it's what the council has asked you to look at. And I appreciate your time and looking at this. And I support it, but I would like it to be a little bit smaller without the changing rooms, so that we can Page 77 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING accommodate some room for a pet station as well. So thank you for all your hard work and all your investigation and talking to people, getting them together to look at viable solutions that really, from what you've told me, there isn't a viable solution other than utilizing this small piece of property. So thank you. JACOBS: You're welcome. Mayor, so what I'm hearing is there's still support for the restrooms. We'll look if we can scale back, remove the changing stations, see what it would cost to also add pet relief. Platt 208, staff met with them last week. They did bring up something that I would need to talk to Aaron about. So I'll talk to Aaron about it. We'll get back to you in March to see if this is then sort of our last kind of viable solution. But do hear what you're saying as far as not the most ideal location, but I'll tell you, staff on multiple occasions have walked up and down the Avenue -- what about this? What about that? No, we don't own it. We don't control it. And those were some of the things, as we were having conversations with the private owner that ended up -- it didn't work out is, again, there's always that give and take. And so when you're approaching someone privately, there's also, okay, what am I going to get in return? And then appreciate Aaron jumping into that sometimes too. And there's an active agreement and you start having other conversations. It's like, let's come back to the table, which sounds like we don't want to do. So again, we'll look at scaling back, see if there's other alternatives. There's just one in mind that again we had three of the board members suggest it, kind of as a last resort. We'll see if we can bring that back. Anything else? MAYOR DICKEY: Just maybe you can check with the property management on the items that Councilman Skillicorn and Vice Mayor brought up to just see what what that is. Maybe that's something that would convince us. JACOBS: Mayor, I can. I just want to remind you. So you guys received an email from me a couple weeks ago. The public won't get an update, but they are now because they were tuning in, until the quarterly update in April. But there are only two spaces left in the existing Park Place, and there are folks lining up at the table. We're talking retail and restaurant. I'm always honest with you guys, as the economic development Page 78 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING director, I would not want to say, please stop negotiations with the restaurant where we can collect sales tax, because we would like to talk to you about a restroom. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. SNIPES: Okay. Unless I get other direction. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Thank you. SNIPES: Thank you. GOODWIN: I think we are right on time, Mayor. MAYOR DICKEY: We are. And I know, and I'm sorry I forgot to mention this, but as we look at the infrastructure and the other things on the Avenue, I know that we talked about Wi-Fi. Making Wi-Fi available to anybody that's there, in any of those restaurants and also shade, which you had listed. But we've also discussed music. So just keep that in mind, Wi-Fi and music as part of that whole atmosphere. I appreciate looking into that too. Thank you. All right. So lunch time, right? GOODWIN: Yes, ma'am. So it looks like lunch is here. Angela and staff are getting it set up. The intent was to have a take a break. Patio is cleaned off outside, if you'd like to sit outside or in here. There's some tables set up. MAYOR DICKEY: Do you want to do it that way or take a little bit and then come back? Okay. GOODWIN: Yeah. I think we're on time to do so. If everybody's comfortable with that, do you want to shoot for 30 minutes, 45minutes? What time would you want -- MAYOR DICKEY: 30 is fine, I think. GOODWIN: Okay. 30 minutes. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. [CLERKS NOTE: THE COUNCIL RECESSED FOR LUNCH AT 12:03 P.M. AND RECONVENED AT 12:39 P.M. COUNCILMEMBER SKILLICORN LEFT THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS TO JOIN THE MEETING REMOTELY AT THIS POINT] MAYOR DICKEY: Looks like we're about ready to get started here. Did you hear me? Young man? So thank you very much. I hope everybody enjoyed their lunch. And our next item is going to be our streets discussion. And I think Justin will get us started. Page 79 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING Rachael, did you have any opening comments? GOODWIN: No. You're absolutely right. Justin's going to get us started. The streets discussion really is that. It is designed to be a discussion. We have heard and talked about streets a lot, a lot, a lot. So I don't know that we have a whole lot to share in terms of new information. Really, it's the question of what do we want to do next? How do we want to approach this? You have some recommendations that Justin has shared. You have some recommendations that our advisory committee has shared. I believe we have a member of our advisory committee back there who is obviously here. Again, there's no public comment. But again, as a commissioner or as a committee member, I'm sure that we can ask questions and hear some insight there. But really, we're looking for direction and how we're going to manage the budget upcoming, what we want to do there, and our approach moving forward. Justin, I'II turn it to you. WELDY: Thank you. As the town manager noted, there's no substantial changes in regards to what we have presented in the past. These are the fundamentals of the pavement management. We've all seen this slide a time or two. This is our pavement life cycle, and as a reminder, this has been tailored to the Town of Fountain Hills based on our rate of degradation or the amount of time it takes for the roads to deteriorate. This is the funding scenario all the way back to 2010. How much money was invested and where we received that money from. This is 2010 to '16, and this is 2017 to the current budget year. As a reminder, we are currently underway with the projects approved by the council for this year. We are probably about two-thirds of the way done with Jacklin. The last time I was before you, I did give you some promising and encouraging news related to the overall cost. Jacklin fell into that category where we no longer had to remove over a foot of material and rebuild it. Site exploration by the town engineer and myself and assistant engineer discovered that the subbase was suitable. We can now share with you that the next portion after Jacklin also is going to meet that criteria, and that is Firebrick. For those of you that are not familiar with Firebrick, it parallels Shea south of Saguaro and runs east from Saguaro back to the boundary limit with our neighboring Page 80 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING tribe. The next phase, which is the final phase for this year, which is Panorama. We're going to be in there either early next week -- late next week or the following week and do a determination after we remove some of that road to see whether or not that's going to require full construction or reconstruction, or if we're going to be able to just put the three inches of asphalt on it. And in that one, I think that one might be four, because it's a collector. Results are promising so far, but no guarantees. Again, all of this good news will result in an unspent fund balance. We do not know what that is until we are finished, but we will certainly share that with you when we get it all balanced. This was one of the slides that we put in here just for discussion purposes, in regards to if a bond was going to be discussed. Here are the timelines associated with that. This is what we shared with you several times now in regards to if we do nothing, where the backlog is going to be. These are the roads that are going to deteriorate to where it's going to cost considerably more to do anything at all. And then we show you what our current budget, which is approximately 2.5 million, what we can achieve with that. And then we go into maintaining the current pavement condition index. We see the funding needs for that. The ideal for maintaining a target backlog at about 8.1 percent. We can see the challenges that we're facing there. And then the last one there is to maintain the current backlog and get it just a little bit lower to 5.3 percent. So as you can see, we're running a little bit short every year. The exception is this year and next year, we will be utilizing funding from the federal government and Mr. Pock, and very soon Paul will be explaining to you about that unspent monies and what we can do with it year after next. We will certainly have some savings that we do not have the capacity to spend next year, but we will combine this year's savings and if at all possible, next year's savings, and we will use that year after next. So we have a little bit of time to make decisions, but not very much. With that, I have been forwarded some recommendations from the Streets Advisory Committee. One of those, and again this is just our recommendations. And there is a representative here. And if you have any questions, you're certainly free to ask him to Page 81 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING provide clarification on that. He's an excellent speaker and will do so. So these are some of the recommendations. Complete the following process. This is what we are under right now through this year. And then there is a discussion amongst that group to look at our roadway classifications. So currently we have arterial collector and local. There are some classifications that include minor or major. While we may be able to designate Golden Eagle Boulevard north of Palisades as a major collector based on its design and volume, changing that to an arterial just doesn't fit the definitions. The primary reason it's a dead end. Arterials historically move large volumes of traffic through a community. We can change it from a collector to a major collector. Another good example of reclassification would be Kingstree. We can certainly change that and/or Palomino from collector to major collector. But outside of that, there's not a lot of classification changes that we could make. Some of the thought process on that is, if one or more could be reclassified as an arterial, could we look at the ALCP funding for that? Certainly we could, but currently we don't have any of our major collectors that are going to meet that criteria simply because they do not convey traffic all the way through the town at one point in time or another, they either dead end or they end at an arterial. Open for discussion in regards to that. And I think it's important to note this. The word narrowing is their choice. Identify narrowing standards and options, and consideration should be given to curbing, striping, pedestrian, and bicycle applications to reduce future cost and improve safety. Let me clarify that to an extent. We use pavement markings as not only a cost reduction, but for traffic calming on El Lago, between Fountain Hills Boulevard and Palisades. For those of you that may or may not have had an opportunity recently, we also applied that same traffic calming to Grande from Saguaro to our neighboring tribal, and then also on El Pueblo, from Grande back around to Fountain Hills Boulevard, and on Glenbrook from Fountain Hills Boulevard back to Bainbridge. Pavement markings, in the fashion that we've used them, which is with an 8-foot shoulder, a 5-foot bike lane, an 11-foot travel lane, and 12-foot two-way left turn lane seems to be having some positive outcome. Other options to consider in regards to that would be something like Page 82 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING Kingstree. I do not believe, based on the design standards, that that should be 60 feet wide. There are several opinions. I will share mine with you. My opinion and the previous town engineer's is that that should be narrowed and sidewalks added to it to one, reduce the overall cost, two, increase safety and reduce the speeds through those traffic calming measures. So when we discuss narrowing, we have options. We could do it with pavement markings, or we can do it with concrete curb and sidewalk. We will certainly look to places like Kingstree, Palomino, Glenbrook. There are several that are in that classification area that could be narrowed using any one of the alternatives besides pavement markings, which we will do as we move forward. MAYOR DICKEY: I just want to mention something. The fact that we have to be so sensitive and worried about saying bikes and pedestrians and sidewalks and narrowing, I think is not helpful. We're looking at not only trying to lower costs, maybe have less pavement, but also to make it seem like wanting walkability community is not a good goal. Does not make sense to me at all, and I think we should be free to discuss this and not worry about the words coming out as if we're trying to take people's cars away. This is a way to give all of our residents and businesses and visitors choices on how they get around. We're not eliminating anything. But hopefully, as we start talking about funding, this may help need less in the future if we do some of these kind of things. And it's also addressing what I believe this community has wanted, which is walkability, whether it's actual sidewalks or however, so that we can connect and do our errands and it doesn't always have to be in a car. But we're certainly not taking anybody's cars or options away. WELDY: In regards to that, Madam Mayor, with little to no fanfare, we added just under eight miles of bike lanes in the Town of Fountain Hills with our pavement management practices over the past year. That's pretty substantial in a community that has not grown substantially. We simply did that using good pavement management practices and traffic calming measures that have proven. So eventually that will be on the MAG interactive map in regards to bike mapping. But their software had a little glitch so we didn't get it in. And that's some of the things that the advisory committee, they wanted Page 83 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING to discuss in detail the walkability. And when we're discussing that and adding bike lanes without eliminating or taking away from anybody is a good example. There are options out there to be explored that we can utilize as we move forward. We certainly need to have those discussions when we have these wider collectors, certainly on the arterials. We're making changes there in regards to the walkability by adding sidewalks through grants and council funding. MAYOR DICKEY: Saguaro's an (indiscernible), right? WELDY: It is. Another item that they wanted to discuss, and they've given me some bullet points here, is addressing intersection improvements. Create an intersection improvement plan incorporated in the annual pavement program, which to some extent we do. We look at obviously the intersections and any changes that need to be made there. One of the things that -- and we've brought some of these recommendations to the Mayor and council. We have certainly learned from past experiences that in some cases, a roundabout or a traffic signal may not be very popular. And those are some of the intersection improvements and/or changes that need to be looked at. While they may not be popular and they may be very expensive, if there are warrants that direct us that direction, we need to look at that, and we do and we bring it to the council. Another thing that is not real popular are always stops. As a reminder, we do not just go out and put up stop signs. We read the manual on uniform traffic control devices based on the conditions, and we take our guidance from there. It should be noted that when an intersection goes to an all ways stop, that's usually just the first phase of it meeting a signal warrant or multiple signal warrants. There is no clear direction on when you have to do that after you do an all ways stop. But we certainly do look at intersections, but they're asking us, the committee, to put some additional eyes on it and make sure that the council is aware of it. One of the other ones is draft mapping. Provide sample maps based upon general type of repair and date of repair. We do that to some extent. We don't go into great detail on the type of treatment that we're going to use, but if the council would like to see more detail on the exhibits that we provide when we're preparing to do a project or Page 84 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING asking for permissions to approve a contract, we can certainly identify through color coding and/or text whether it's going to be crack filling, slurry sealing, milling and overlay, full construction, if that would be beneficial. Another thing that they've had -- and they've had considerable discussion on this. The Town of Fountain Hills is not unique in regards to limited funding for maintenance. Other municipal governments, excluding the State of Arizona, whenever their funding is running short, and instead of billing the entire street, they usually just do the travel lanes and the two-way left turn if it's there, if not, if there's a raised median then they do the left turn pockets, they do mill and overlay on those, and then for the shoulder bike lane in those areas they do a different type of treatment which could, depending on the condition, could be crack fill with preservative seal or crack fill with a type 2 polymer. If you're in pretty rough condition, it's probably going to come across from me that we do an edge mill. That's where they they mill the edge of the road. And then we do chip seal with a cape very similar like we did on Chama. And so that -- and then we put a type 2 across the top of that, which makes it -- the longevity of it, not only the longevity, but the rideability of it moves those types of roads out seven to ten years, depending on weather patterns and conditions. But there are options. We certainly do not need to rip out and rebuild some of the wider roads. I wouldn't recommend any change of scope for the local road simply because they're on average about 30 feet wide, 32 feet wide, some of them a little bit narrower. One of the other bullet points is recommend policy changes/additions. Examine administrative policies for updating direction for street repair implementation. And then recommend an annual maintenance program for FY2025. Then they go on to give some direction to myself and the town engineer in regards to negotiating a contract with Roadway Asset Services, which we certainly do prior to entering into any amendments. Moving forward. This is one of their offerings for the fall/winter of 2024, public open house process and prepare and implement a survey for October/November of 2024. Mash all the data in November and have it available by January. This is the survey Page 85 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING information. In the spring of '25 draft a planned decision, including package options, implementation period, and cost per household/business or vacant land, and then provide after that the final mapping, the dating, and the package ID, in March or April of 2025. And then a final planned decision to slash vote or authorized by authorization by the council by May of '25. And then approve annual maintenance program for FY26. And then they go on to describe the administrative process for November elections need to be done by May or June of 2025. So what they are advocating for on some of this, there's a couple of things. One of them is whether or not the town or the council decides they want to go out for a bond, but leading up to that, get as much information from the public as possible. The last thing that they have written here in regards to that. If the bond is the direction the council wants to go is handed off to a campaign in June or November of '25, with an election target date of November of 2025. So that's one of two pages of their recommendations. One of the questions that they're asking me to ask you is, what is a possible plan as an alternative to bonding? Even if needed, resources are less than 40 million, where does that funding come from? MAYOR DICKEY: The reason I wanted to talk about, even if it's less than 40 million. So 40 million you know, the original report said 50 million. The RAS one said 64, but they went down to 40 because they removed the intersections as a part of the bonding. But with some of the savings that you've been talking about and that we should have a pretty good fund balance this year, even if it was below the 40, we're still looking at an annual need beyond, say, '26. So that's why if there was a bond in '25, obviously it would be more for the next year anyway. So it's possible it would be a less amount. But I still want my colleagues to talk about what it would look like to have to come up with another 3 or $4 million per year for several years in a row in order to get to that. We don't want the backlog to get to where we can't afford to repair. The other reason also for bringing up the bond, and where would we come up with that extra several million per year is, from what we just heard, looking at our future here for state -shared revenue, not only are we literally, probably, going to see a million or so less this year, Page 86 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING and then we'll start with the $600,000 Tess every year. And that was something that would have grown. So the 600,000 is probably a baseline, but that's what we're going to lose. So we've got that much less revenue coming in. And then they're still talking about the food tax, which this year we're off the hook. But if they go back to that that's an almost $2 million a year hit to us. So I think we have to look at this big picture and we have to look long-term. And that's why if there are objections to even discussing bonding or doing that, I would like to know what alternatives or what ideas there are in order to reach this and trying to make this number as small as possible. It's still not something within an annual budget that we can do without making significant changes in some of the other things that we do. So what are you willing to do? What do you -- we just talked to a little while ago about some projects. And there may be one-time shots where, okay, I don't want to do this project this year. Okay. So you just saved, you know, 500,000 or a million. But what about the other three or four million we need the next year and the next year and the next year? So I think those are the kind of things I'm hoping that we can talk about. And again, the idea of bonding is -- the residents decide, of course. So it's something that goes on the ballot. So we want to keep that in mind. But again, just to keep that in mind as we hear the rest of Justin's -- and then, if there's discussion, we would welcome that. MCMAHON: Want me to say anything about the bond now? MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. MCMAHON: Do I ask or say something? MAYOR DICKEY: Whatever you want to do. MCMAHON: Okay. In conjunction with the Mayor saying, I concur, because having sat here for three years and primarily talked about streets, observed the projects that have come before the council, I would say the majority, if not all of them, are mostly needs, not wants. They're not going to go away. Our community is growing, but yet based on legislation enactments, et cetera, our income is decreasing, which tells us that we can't rely like we used to on certain shared revenue and income. We've already heard from Page 87 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING our town community that they don't want a real property tax. So we don't even have that alternative. I don't even think that they would want to entertain it again. And given what you're saying and what Mr. Butler and his committee is saying is even if we add, like, another million or so every year, and I don't know where we're going to get that because we're losing that much income after this year, the streets are still going to be there and the cost to repair those is going to increase. It's not going to decrease. So we're never going to catch up. And that's a fact. And I don't even know if we can even get that creative to catch up. We haven't been able, as far as I know, on any town council to do that thus far. We're fortunate on prior council to be able to contribute $7 million, but again, that money is already allocated and is going to be spent. I think that our town's growing. We're going to have more people in it. We're going to be using our infrastructure and our streets more. They're going to need more and more maintenance. And I don't know if there's a viable alternative to look to our budget. I think that we're really going to seriously have to, like they suggested, get public input and seriously look at a bond. That's that's what I think. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I think to base these projections on a Fountain Hills growing is a misnomer because I don't think Fountain Hills is growing. For the past 20 years, I think we've been pretty static and we haven't had a whole bunch of growth. And so I don't think we can make assumptions on growth. Matter of fact, I've been an advocate for growing the town because if we did that, we would get more TPT, more tax revenue, more businesses opening up, and I think there's a lot of room for this town to grow. I don't think we're currently doing that, though. I know that the Mayor asked how are we going to pay for the roads and where are you going to come up with funding? But I think right now we're only applying 0.2 percent of our TPT to the road fund. And I think if we increase that I'm not sure -- we'd have to crunch the numbers with Paul and David, but if we increase that to correspond with what we need for the roads, that might be a good idea. We do have to come up with some creative funding. I think it's been demonstrated over the years that the town Page 88 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING doesn't have any appetite for a tax increase, for property tax, or for a bond. So I think it's going to be incumbent on us to come up with other creative solutions to try to find this funding. And so increasing the TPT portion for the road fund, I think would be a very good idea. MAYOR DICKEY: The TPT? Do you mean the -- KALIVIANAKIS: Well, the 2.9 percent that we collect? I think only 2 percent -- .2 percent is going to the road fund. That was on screen earlier, right? MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Got it. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. And so that's what I'm addressing. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. But it's not new revenue. It's revenue just taking it that would be going into the general fund or into some other funds. KALIVIANAKIS: It would require some belt tightening. MAYOR DICKEY: Right. Any way to come up with the extra money we would need for streets is going to come out of something else -- KALIVIANAKIS: That's correct. MAYOR DICKEY: -- regardless. Yeah. KALIVIANAKIS: And so it's just a matter of priorities at this point. And that's what I'm saying. If this is that kind of a priority then we might have to reprioritize. And that even includes bathrooms in the downtown area. I think we're going to have to make some tough decisions, as we get paid for. Just a couple other quick points that I wrote down. Palomino seems to always come up as far as being in a state of disrepair. And I know that you have found the cost savings to only do the three-inch mill and not the ten -inch mill. Have you and are capable town engineers looked into whether that would apply to the Palomino, as well as Jacklin and the other roads that you've discovered recently don't need the ten -inch dig? WELDY: We have not because Palomino is currently not on the five-year horizon. So we certainly will when segments and super segments are selected, but Palomino is just one example I use because we get a considerable amount of phone calls and emails related to Palomino. Page 89 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING KALIVIANAKIS: Yep. WELDY: So I use that and Kingstree as an example. Those are two locations that generate a considerable amount of concern and complaints. KALIVIANAKIS: Yeah. I think if we could do the less cost effective or less costly method of the three-inch mill and then do the the traffic calming with the bike lanes and the increase and just pave -- just use that lanes for the cars, it might be much more doable. And so that's just something to throw into the mix. One of the things that you said that the streets committee said was that we want the roadway maintenance plan for 2025. Don't we currently have a roadway maintenance plan for 2025? WELDY: We do. We currently have the segments selected, and we will be coming back to the Mayor and council as part of next year's budget to codify that and make sure that that's the direction that we want to go. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. Good. And then my last question is, when their estimate went down to $40 million because of the intersections, did that include getting rid of the 10 or 12 roundabouts that they had proposed? WELDY: I'm not aware of any roundabouts having been proposed. When they referenced intersections in their report, they were simply saying, let's just pick Palisades and La Montana, is there anything that needs to be done there in regards to traffic calming or safety prior to you spending any money on the intersection? Their thought process was this and they can speak on their own, but I was listening; is that if we go in there and pave it and then we put in a traffic signal or roundabout, then how much money was wasted paving that intersection? That was their approach. KALIVIANAKIS: Right. WELDY: While they did not indicate what type of change or improvement would be at an intersection, they did emphasize that we need to look at them. And as we're planning, which we do. KALIVIANAKIS: Right, okay. Just as I recall reading their entire plan, it did call for a number of roundabouts. Maybe it was just aspirational, but it was in there, to my knowledge. Anyway, that's all I have. Page 90 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Hannah? TOTH: Thank you, Mayor. While I do agree with the sentiment of wanting to help the town grow more, I have to very much disagree that we've been stagnant for the past 20 years. I've been here the past 20 years. I was little, but I can tell you there's definitely a difference. Park Place being the most visual example, but I've seen a genuine change in the age demographics. I think naturally the cycle is starting to turn back around, where four years ago, I was the only person under 60 in my church because my dad turned sixty. And now there's young people, there's babies. And I think that our community absolutely is growing, just as a sidebar. But when we talk about this topic, I do agree with the sentiment of seeing how much we can tighten our belt, even if that does mean that we do still have to supplement with a bond. I don't want the perception in the community to ever be that we're asking for a blank check. Or that they -- the people who watch these meetings, the people who have been involved, they're well aware that this has been years of conversation. However, the rest of the community that would have to vote on a theoretical bond, they haven't been watching the meetings. They don't know we've been conversing. The feeling nationwide tends to be that the government decides they need more money and asks the voters. And so I would like for us to be able to answer. And I understand if this ruffles feathers, but I would like for us to be able to answer, hey, this is how much we cut out of our general fund. This is how much we cut out of what would have been our capital projects. We need this amount to bridge the gap. Even if we're not saying all of it's being found in our budget if we realize that that's unrealistic, I completely understand that. But I would like to be able to give a little and say, okay, we found 800,000 by tightening our belts and making some hard decisions on the budget. We need you for the other -- I'm not going to do the quick math on that, but you get my point. Anyway, that's my spiel. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. FRIEDEL: Thank you Mayor. A couple of things. I think in the last 15 years, the town's probably grown 8 to 10,000 people in round figures. So there's been some growth, but not dramatic. The VLT tax, yeah. We're going to have to move this money around a Page 91 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING little bit differently than we used to. Right now, I think we go 70 percent to streets, 30 percent to the general fund. Maybe we need to look at reallocating 100 percent of that short-term to get caught up on some of the stuff. There's no question we're going to need bond help. And my thought was the pre -incorporated roads are probably in the worst shape. Maybe I'm wrong, Justin, do you have a comment on that or -- WELDY: For the majority, they are the oldest ones we have. And so some are in pretty bad shape and others are not. And I think this is important to share with you. Pre - incorporation roads, not all of them were paved prior to incorporation. They may have been platted prior to incorporation but paved after. And we're discovering more and more of these are the subgrade, for example, is in better condition than we were led to believe. And when I say we, collectively I'm talking about me right now, over the years, because by doing some exploratory work out there and digging them up, we're finding that some of it's not exactly as the records would have indicated, either verbally or on paper. So some of them are in relatively poor condition, others are not. But we face the same with a couple of arterials, Fountain Hills Boulevard and Palisade. FRIEDEL: So before we get to an actual dollar amount in bonds, is there a mechanism or a program in place to figure out what roads are in the worst -- I mean, as far as the pre - incorporated roads, what ones are going to need the most attention and can we put a dollar figure on that at all? So we have some idea when we go to do a bond, we can educate people, let them know this is what we're looking at doing; this is how we're going to do it; this is when it's going to happen; and this is what the cost is going to be? WELDY: We have in fact done that. FRIEDEL: Okay. WELDY: So there's two different assessments about five years apart that we've done that have identified the condition of each one of them. And we can break that down into segments and based on unit pricing, provide those costs. And that is in the executive summary. But there is a much, much bigger document related to that where you can go and look at every single segment. FRIEDEL: So maybe I think it would be important for this council to see that and have an Page 92 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING idea what kind of dollars we're actually talking. If we're looking at just starting this and biting off a chunk of it, let's get some real numbers and some real ideas to what we're talking about doing. Then the other point I wanted to make is that, every year we do a sweep at the end of the year, again, it's moving money around into different pockets. But maybe we need to take a look at changing our policy on the council level. And instead of 50 percent of it going to -- I think most of it goes right now into capital improvement. Maybe we need to break that up and put 50 percent into roads and 50 percent into capital. Now, will it shorten the window on some of the capital things that we're going to do? Absolutely it will. But if roads are that big of a deal and we need to catch up on some of this, I think these are things we need to look at doing. Again, it's a tough decision and it's going to limit some of the capital projects that we do going forward. But we don't have to do that forever. And then maybe that -- plus this project of looking at what we do for a bond, we can get a jump on some of this and get some of it put behind us. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks, Gerry. Just real quick. So we do have those numbers. We did get that big -- but it's like almost unintelligible for us to read it. But it is a lot of data. That's how they got to the numbers that they did the 64 million and the 40. But I still do think it would behoove us to have some of those crunched, which is, I think, what we're talking about with getting RAS involved because of maybe some of the change in the scope of the work. And also what we're finding is just by going by the date isn't -- FRIEDEL: Always indicative. MAYOR DICKEY: Right, exactly. And then what you mentioned about the VLT and such, those decisions are -- so it's like 300,000 or whatever. What we have to keep in mind, of course, and you know this, is if we do that, say a 1000 percent goes to streets, then that's 300 grand or 400 grand less into a general fund that is being kind of pummeled right now. So I think -- and also the idea of the money that goes to capital is because it's usually one-time. So you don't want to take construction sales tax, which is one-time money coming in and use that for maintenance. But we could definitely look at using it for a project. So I think there's a lot of good mixed up into this whole conversation. And Page 93 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING I'll stop because I know let's see. Looks like vice Mayor's next. GRZYBOWSKI: Brenda, I thought your light was lit. KALIVIANAKIS: It was. GRZYBOWSKI: Okay. Go ahead. Because I know you were before me. KALIVIANAKIS: I just got a -- yeah, super quick. I just want to cite my source for the growth patterns of Fountain Hills. And that would be the Fountain Hills Chamber of Commerce. GRZYBOWSKI: So a couple of things. I did a quick Google of population growth. And since the year 2000, we've grown about 15 percent. In the year 2000, we were just under 20,500. And as of April 2020, we're just under 23,900. So take 15 percent -- it's subjective, as do you feel like it's stagnant or not. But that's the numbers. Also, I wanted to point out that in November we heard from our streets advisory commission or whatever their official name was. Sorry, guys, I don't remember it, but that sounds good. And they broke down dollar values. We're looking at arterials is $5 million, collectors is 9 million, locals/alleys less federal funds is 26 million, and intersections with inflation is about 10 million. So we have dollar values from them that I think they broke out in an excellent manner for the concept of a bond. And I believe that was -- their point was instead of going to the voters and saying, we want $50 million, go to the voters and say, here's how we can break out that money. Are the arterials important to you? Check all that apply. Five million for this, nine million for that. And then that's how we, as an elected body, can see what's important to the people. So I feel like it's all already been broken out for us. We have the dollar values, and we have a really fabulous 17-page report from them that's attached to the November 16th -- I don't know now, I've lost that page, but I think it was November 16th meeting. So if we need to go back and refresh our minds on that before we have this conversation again, I think that's probably important. But it is literally all right there. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman. TOTH: Yes. Thank you for bringing that up, Vice Mayor, as well. The breakdown was fantastic. And I want to thank the citizens advisory commission committee for their lots Page 94 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING and lots of hours put into this. I fully agree with Councilman Friedel. There's going to need to, in my opinion, and based off of the data that we've been going through for some time now, there's going to need to be some level of a bond. My comments regarding giving a little and tightening the budget is I can imagine, from my perspective if I were not someone who was on the council, I would see myself getting a little frustrated, watching parks being built and realizing that the community is asking for that money. I understand that there's more that goes into it. I'm speaking purely on the perception side of it. So if we were to make some of these difficult decisions and say, you know what? Maybe that capital project needs to wait, it's beautiful. We're all for looking for the future. We want this community to succeed. But in order to look to the future, you need to make sure you have a firm, a strong foundation built. The foundation of a community would be the roads, that's how you get there. And this is something that, I think it would be irresponsible for us to be picking out the couch while we're pouring the foundation. I think we need to put a lot of thought into how we curate this next year's budget, with the understanding that there's still needs. We're still running a town. I'm not saying that we should be cutting everything out. That's not -- you know, the electricity bill. I just mean, when we are asking the community for a significant amount of money, we need to be showing them that we've made every effort we can. And when we're looking at these different capital projects, I would really encourage my fellow councilmembers to think about if you were offering a loan to a neighbor. They need $10,000. It hurts, but you can handle it. You're trying to help. They're going to pay it back. And they buy a flat screen TV and then they buy an iPhone and you go, now wait a minute, I thought you needed help with the bills. I didn't know I was helping with this, and although that money might have been what they saved for years to be able to buy an iPhone, there's still that perception and we want to ensure we're building trust in the community. That is my rant for the day. I will hop off the soapbox. MAYOR DICKEY: This is not a rant, and that is taken into consideration with all of the months of getting information from our folks. And the way Sharron broke that down, Page 95 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING that may even break down in another way, depending on the usage of the streets. Or maybe people really care more about the residential, or they care more about the arterials, but basically breaking it up, that's definitely an option as we go forward. The idea of showing that we're willing to put more money into streets, we've been putting more money into streets than ever before in the last few years. Of course, we were lucky with the CARES money, but as a council and the past council, we didn't need to decide to put all five million each year into streets, but we did. So I think we showed that the level of understanding of the importance of this issue is not lost on us. The other thing about, you know, I get the flat screen TV, but I don't know, is a is a park or is a public service quality of life the same as a frivolous thing? Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's just as important to as many people as the roads are. And that's why you try to get all that information. If somebody says, well, look, I don't care about parks, all I care about is streets. There may be people that say, I want the parks, I want the activities, and then -- I see your light. And I think you might be saying that half our budget goes to public safety. So anything -- almost half, 45 or whatever. So take that out, and this has to come out of whatever's left. And then what do you want to do about it? Because I feel like it's a pretty big decision, and I don't feel it's irresponsible to ask the community to pay for infrastructure that people who have been here for many, many years paid property tax. You say, however long you've been here, right? So 1989, 2002, we all paid property tax for fire. We paid property tax for streets. That went away and we've been playing catch up ever since. And but I do appreciate that you're leaving the door open to some sort of combination like this, acknowledging that yeah, there's probably a project or two we could avoid, but not every single year. And this is a every single year need. Rachae? GOODWIN: Mayor, you did steal some of my thunder. No, I really wanted to to take a second to say that a lot of this conversation obviously is not new, it's not a novel conversation. We've talked about this, and from the staff perspective, we've heard, hey, can we find something? And I don't disagree with what your point was, is like, hey, -- to use a phrase that we often say, have some skin in the game too, right? We Page 96 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING want to make sure that we're putting all of our resources. The catch or the hang up that we continue to sort of bump against is the idea that, well, not only are we losing $600,000 in revenue as well as the flat tax coming online, right? So now our belt just got tightened inadvertently by doing that. So okay, that that kind of stings. What are we going to do about that? And then we say, well what if you could find two percent? What if you could find three percent? Could you cut out a percentage? Okay. Well when we look at that and we go, okay, well where are we going to cut that from? 45, 48 percent of our budget is public safety. I can't cut that. It's a contracted amount. It's an amount that it takes to run and operate our fire and MCSO. So that's not eligible. So all of a sudden that pie just got a lot smaller. And I've got to cut a lot bigger to equal one percent. So then we start talking about the idea of ongoing, okay. If we don't do a project, we don't do a park. We avoid that cost. True. And we can take that value and put it into our streets. But next year we don't have that value anymore to give. We would have to probably find something that is a year over year over year. And I'm going to pick something and I pick on this and I'm going to apologize in advance because it's something that's very high viz, and I think people love, but I also think it's a high dollar amount. If we were to say we're not going to do Christmas decorations, we're not going to do the lights anymore on the Avenue. That is $50,000 every single year, that we won't pay for the lights that we will put into the streets. And that's an ongoing year over year. Instead of putting it here, we put it here. And that is what we're looking at trying to find is an ongoing year over year contribution to the roads. If that's the direction? However, and we can do that. We can talk about what can we cut out of the budget, out of our operating budget to create that. We talked about VLT, we talked about yearend surpluses, those types of things, we're going to talk about those here actually, as our last topic today, the revenue allocation. So it's coming. So we are going to have those real numbers to talk about. But with the understanding that those yearend things are really, really elastic. Some years there's a lot there. And that's a good thing. We get to divvy it up and do a lot of things. Some years there's not a lot there. It's a very small Page 97 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING number, and we have to really figure out. So my concern and I think I'm echoing some of what the Mayor mentioned, is that to rely on that sweep at the end of the year is probably not a -- that's a bonus more than it is a plan, if that helps. So we are going to talk about some of that. And I'm going to zoom out one more time because we're also going to talk about taking care of what we have, not so much even bringing more things on board, but taking care of the things that we have, such as this building, the community center, our fire stations. Those take maintenance and a number of things have to happen. So that's another expenditure that we're trying to negotiate in all of this. So if we are going to tighten our belts and that's fine. And we want to talk about that, we really need to talk about what we're willing to sacrifice in order to get there. Again, I use the Christmas lights as an option only because it's high viz, and I think everybody is familiar with the give-and-take of that. Are they a nice to have? Yes, they are, they're beautiful. They are a great attraction in our downtown. Are they operationally mandatory? No. So if that's what we're going to talk about and we're going to talk about making these sacrifices and this belt tightening, we should probably talk about the reality of what that looks like. So I'm just putting out those kind of concerns again from the operations side. KALIVIANAKIS: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Brenda? KALIVIANAKIS: Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Just quickly, just so the people know at home something that we all know up here. We discussed this morning a couple parks that we were going to -- the stargazing park and of course, the Panorama Park. And before you write letters to the editor saying, why don't you take that money and put it towards the roads? Those are paid for by what they call development fees. And development fees can't be used for the roads. They're created when Adero Canyon or Park Place builds a big building, we get a little bit of that. It goes into what they call developmental fees, and then we can use that, but the uses are restricted. And so the development fees every ten years, if you don't use them, you have to actually remit them back to the developers or whoever you collected the money from. So the parks that we're talking Page 98 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING about this morning, that money can't be allocated to the streets. It has to be spent on things like the parks. So I just felt that's something that people should know. GOODWIN: You're right. MAYOR DICKEY: Gerry? FRIEDEL: Justin, first, a note about the phones. I think a lot of people today would say that their phone adds to their quality of life, right or wrong. I think the world's changed a little bit, there's so many of those phones out there. MAYOR DICKEY: Phones? FRIEDEL: Phones, yeah. Can you tell me, are there pre -incorporated roads in each category: local, arterial, and collector? WELDY: Yes, there are. FRIEDEL: Okay. That's what I wanted to know. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: The other thing about the plan. So let's just do the 40 million. So say that's an extra four or five, whatever, for eight years. The beauty of the plan that we had heard about and even the other one, the RAS is that it gets us to a point where we can sustain the streets after that certain amount of time, with a lot less annual, not less than what we do now. But so now we do like 2.1, whatever. Even if we stretch that to three million, we could reach an equilibrium finally where that would take care of us and we wouldn't be talking about this. And I know I get mocked for talking about streets and lake liners, but these are real issues that need attention. And these streets have just -- it's decades -long. So let's let's try to move forward with something here. And also when you talk about the pre -incorporation and all that, if part of what we do when we go out to people is like, this is the plan, here's the street, here's like, so we talk about Palomino, but it's not on the next five years. And that probably makes people go, wait, what? How could that be? So what can we do to change that where we're actually addressing some of the things that are really visible and really important that people see? Palomino, Golden Eagles? I mean, that's one. I don't see that as bad. FRIEDEL: Trevino? MAYOR DICKEY: Trevino, yeah. And of course, my street. No. Number one. No. I Page 99 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING mean, I think we're having a good, good discussion here. And so what do we need? What do we need? We need to know what we should do next. So the reclassifications we talked about that. Maybe something that formal isn't needed, but maybe a way that if we did come up with some sort of a plan to divide them up, maybe there's a different way than just doing arterials and collectors and such, more based on use, so -- because it -- if we wanted the three packages to look similar in price but again, we're talking pretty far in the future. We're talking being ready to know what we want to do by next February. Right? WELDY: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: Or so? So whatever we need as follow-up, I think I heard some acknowledgment that we would need more than what we can squeeze out, even if we make some of those funding changes that we're going to discuss now. It's still the same pot of money. So we can allocate more, but we can't make more. And then, I think we talk a little bit about what can we do to continue to show that we're putting more emphasis and money into it, and that some of the things we do that aren't streets. We may be taking from different funds and just continue to communicate as much as we can that we're united in this. So that's the way I feel about it. I don't know if anything else needs to be decided or anything at this point. Rachael or Justin? WELDY: I'm going to leave with you with a couple of more parting gifts. As we're having discussions about tightening belts and alternative funding, let's discuss what we can and cannot do with bond money. Bond money cannot be used for maintenance. And in regards to checks and balances, when we don't have tandem CFOs, we'll still have one that's going to oversee that and someone else is going to be overseeing that. So bond money can only be used for mill and overlay and anything above and beyond that, not maintenance. So that's one of them. And the other one is, when collectively a decision is made, it basically needs to be unanimous. Simply because when there's decisiveness and discussions about dollar thresholds, when it's time to make that decision, we've certainly learned from the past that just open dialogue and discussion with uncertainty from the dais has resulted in an incredible amount of criticism in regards to you can't Page 100 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING even make up your own mind. Why are you asking us to do it? That's what we heard from the people and the staff as well. The town manager and I, we certainly heard it from the folks in regards to that. So we gave it an effort and things didn't go well. So here we are back. Lastly, anyone that wants to do any archival researching every single elected body that I have been involved with and we're now approaching 17 years, has made a commitment and followed through to identify funding for the streets, with the exception of a couple of years there when there was simply nothing left in the piggybank and no more belts to tighten, every single elected body has put as much forward or as reasonably possible forward. Keep in mind that some of that when things got tough and we mentioned the one -offs, so we're going to move all this into streets and do that. Well, now we have to take care of an issue related to one of the buildings or other infrastructure. Got a claw some of that money back. The money that can't be clawed back out of that is a contribution from the state. So we appreciate your support on this. We look forward to an open dialogue and working forward on the next steps. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. POCK: Took my mouse upstairs, so I have to do this standing. All right. So did you have anything that you wanted to say before this starts? GOODWIN: We're in the home stretch. We're almost there. We kind of just alluded to it. We're going to start talking about the last real discussion that's left, is talking about revenue allocation. What do we do when we have leftovers at the end? And generally speaking, we do. And that's a combination of things. And I'm sure Pock and Paul will both get into it. But it's sometimes it's projects that we haven't finished that we're rolling over. Sometimes it's overage, it's revenues that exceeded our forecasts, which is always a good thing. And sometimes it's a matter of we came in under budget on our standard operating. So it's a lot of different things, but it's very elastic. And so we do have some guidance as to how we reallocate that at the end of the year where it all goes. But there's some suggestions and some discussion about potentially changing that. Whether that's for streets, whether that's -- Page 101 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING POCK: Facility reserve. GOODWIN: Facility reserve. Thank you. Or other things. So with that, take it away. POCK: I will say that I have a warm, fuzzy feeling because I know some of you have looked at your presentations beforehand and you've mentioned things that are going to be gone over in the next couple slides. So thank you. That makes me feel appreciated. All right. So the first one that we're going to talk about is VLT, which is one that we identified earlier as a revenue source that is split between the general fund and the streets fund. It's 70/30 currently. That equates to about -- it's more than this, but it's about 300,000 a year that goes into the general fund. As kind of a little background to this, and the things that I've spoken to Rachael about the last couple of months, is that we do have quite a bit of revenue going into the general fund. Even with our conservative budgeting and our conservative forecasts, as far as revenues, a lot of the money is directed towards the general fund. With that it's more than what our budgeted expenditures are for our base budgets plus our supplements. So we have had a large contingency amount in the general fund the last few years. That hasn't been an issue for three years, because we've had a lot of exclusions allowed by our CARES Act funding, and then the two years of ARPA funding. We were able to exclude those from our expenditures. It gave us some more play as far as that limitation, the expenditure limitation goes each year. So the thought is, if we redirect some of that revenue that is going to the general fund into other funds where they're actually going to be used, we can reduce that contingency amount. And that allows us to budget in the funds where we need to have budget available. This year we currently have 5 million -- over $5 million budgeted for pavement maintenance. Well, that takes a pretty big chunk of budget. If we've got $2 million in contingency in the general fund, that has to be -- first of all, we have to make sure that we have the revenue coming in and expectations. If we did that, then we can move that contingency budget into other funds that we needed to do. Which is what we did this year with the capital projects. And it led to some of the problems and the confusion with CIP projects coming back and forth and that sort of thing. So all that's in the background. So this is obviously one of the easy Page 102 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING kind of gets that we could reduce 300,000 in general fund, put it to where it's actually going to be spent in the streets fund, and it would reduce the contingency and kind of that holding place, I guess, for budget or that limitation on the budget. MAYOR DICKEY: I have a question. The idea of the of the contingency in the general fund. So as a project comes up for streets, we're not allowed to take that money out of the general fund? POCK: We could. It's when we do our auditor general forms for the budget, we have to say which funds it is going into and that sort of thing. This 300,000, let's just say, for fiscal year '24 is showing up as revenues and general fund. So the budget basically is that 300,000 budget is having to stay in the general fund. It does take another act or approval from council to move that budget from general fund to the streets fund. If we just do this on the front end, it would reduce that step and we'd be able to have more budget in other places and other funds. FRIEDEL: It's cleaner than -- MAYOR DICKEY: Given that it's going -- I'm sorry. FRIEDEL: I'm sorry. MAYOR DICKEY: I was just going to say, given the discussion that we're having about the rental tax and such, would this 300,000 be better to leave? First of all, I'd like to get down to why the 70/30 was ever -- you know, what made that a good split and is that still valid? If not, then sure. But the other part is $300,000, is that, like, really important right now to keep in the general fund and then, go ahead. POCK: So I'm going to take the second one first, because I can say, I don't know. If I'm correct, it was originally 50/50 and then it changed. There is a history to it being kind of this -- well. And I think at some point it probably was needed in the general fund, and it was probably before Wayfair and probably, before a lot of those things. You know, when the town was having more problems just operating -- The Great Recession, that sort of thing, so. I know I'm not sure how -- there were previous discussions with prior managers where it was -- it didn't want to be removed out of the general fund so that operating expenses could be covered. I just don't think at this point it's that necessary Page 103 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING for that dollar amount to be there. And I think we can actually do a little bit more, even with looking at what were the numbers for fiscal year '25, even with those reductions for long-term residential rental and the flat tax, we still have quite a bit for contingency. Not saying -- it's probably, like 1.8 right now, just with basic numbers. I think $1 million in contingency is a good idea, just because you don't know when the next storm is going to hit or you know revenues don't come in as expected. So I think that's good. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, is the rainy day fund in the general fund? POCK: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: So I guess I'm not totally understanding why we want to remove $300,000 from the general fund. But Gerry, you had something to say. FRIEDEL: I was going to say from your bookkeeping, and it's cleaner to do it. POCK: We would put -- we'd be able to plan for expenditures where they're going to actually happen instead of putting them in contingency as this excessive amount and then moving them later. Mayor, to your point, moving the 300, we have more than enough revenue to cover our base expenditures and supplements. And in addition to that is about 1.8. So if we take and reduce that to about $1 million level gives us about 800,000 for next year. Just initially, round numbers which are subject to change, which I get to say that every year. MAYOR DICKEY: But don't we -- aren't we supposed to have like six million in the rainy day fund or something to get us through a third of the year? POCK: We do. And that's separate from what we're talking about. That is set aside and committed for that purpose. So in addition to that, yeah, we're just talking about revenues we're expecting to receive next year. And expenditures for next year, not counting our fund balances. TOTH: I just wanted to say I appreciate you taking a look at this. The 70/30 split makes sense to me. I think that this is reasonable. It's cleaner, like what Councilmember Friedel was mentioning, and that it's looking ahead to where that money would end up more than likely getting sent to anyway. So I appreciate you thinking of a solution to that, since our contingency needed to be looked at, and I'm all good with this. Page 104 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: What? So what is your proposal? POCK: So yeah, that was all just background stuff. Right. So okay, so this is the way it looks right now for fiscal year '25. If there was not any changes made, we could take that 373 and basically reallocate it all, 100 percent to the streets fund. And that could go towards our skin in the game. Right? Not my skin in the game. You don't want it, it's old and wrinkly and over tanned. But anyway. So that's the proposal is to move that 30 percent, just make it a 100 percent in VLT. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? MCMAHON: Is that for just this -- this is one time? It's not for future? POCK: This would be ongoing until it gets changed again, basically. So like from what I believe, it used to be 50/50 and then it got changed to 70/30. This makes it a 100. If future councils can go back to 50/50 or 65/35, whatever they'd like to do. But yeah, this would be changing -- this would be a change in policy. MCMAHON: So is it the change in policy for a dollar amount, or is it a change in policy for the percentage allocation? POCK: The percentage. It would just be one hundred percent of VLT would go to the streets fund. MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you POCK: And it would -- not that Bea doesn't love doing the math every month, but it would be a little less work for her too. TOTH: Sorry, I got excited. I didn't realize you hadn't said it yet, but yes, this is what I like. So I'm talking about the skin in the game. This is pretty much exactly what I was just talking about five minutes ago. So thank you to both of you for being awesome. POCK: So that's something -- we can talk more but that's the point of that. MAYOR DICKEY: I'm fine with making the change, but it's a little incongruent with us losing 600,000 plus whatever else, the 1.8 million or whatever that was and kind of like, okay, you're saying it and I'm assuming Rachael is okay with this. So this is less money going into the general fund because of these fund balances. But I always, like you said, these -- or the contingency, but these things are -- they change. And some of this is Page 105 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING because you started something, didn't get it done in that fiscal year. So it's not real money. So I just need a little bit -- but I'm fine with it. I mean, it's not that much money. POCK: All right. And feel free to jump in, if you think of something. FRIEDEL: But it can always be changed back too? POCK: It can be. As far as losing the 600,000 though. So leaving fund balances from prior years out of it completely, leaving the rainy day fund out, leaving all of the fund balances out. Just next year, the revenues that we're planning on connecting or collecting would be more than what we need to cover our expenditures. So this 300,000 wouldn't be needed to cover what we plan on spending. If that helps? MAYOR DICKEY: It helps a lot, except that we're making a policy change. And I don't know where the numbers came from. I like to kind of know what the intention was for 70/30, but if it was just kind of random, then. But again, this is sort of like a one-time thing. But we're -- it's fine. FRIEDEL: But we're not voting on this today though? GOODWIN: No. It will come back because it is a policy change. But I did want to articulate one kind of difference is that because it would be an allocation right out of the gate. It's not subject to that end of the year surplus sweep. What do we have? What we don't have. Was it a good year? Was it a lean year? Was it -- and it's more of that consistent contribution year over year versus the one-time. So that's why I was trying to say when we talked about identifying something that is consistent versus waiting till the end of the year and hoping we have some leftovers. But that being said, this -- and we're basing this off of, you know, Pock and Paul's recommendations that says we have consistently brought in enough to cover our expenses in our operating fund and our general fund. If that horizon changes, if that looks like that's not going to happen as we move forward and down this path, this is where we're going to come back to and go, well, this split isn't working anymore. We are now going to be operating in the red. We've got to figure out another way. So yes, it can be undone. It can be changed back. But this is one recommendation to figure out how we can help the narrative that we are Page 106 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING willing to put more in the streets, meet us halfway, help us figure out how to get this done. So that does help that, like you said, that perception that we're trying to put more in there, we're trying to find ways to do that, that hopefully is stable and is consistent. So that's kind of where that came from. SOLDINGER: I was just going to say Mayor and council, one thing that's in policy in the rainy day fund, there is a policy that allows the town to dip in those reserves. If there is a 25 percent or more loss of state -shared revenues or local sales taxes. So at least that gives us a little bit of buffer if those contingencies are being depleted by those revenue losses, that is another option the council could consider going forward. POCK: All right. And Bea did do some digging. As far as the history, it used to be a 100 percent in the streets up until 2020, and then it got switched; 30 percent going to general fund, so. MAYOR DICKEY: (Indiscernible). POCK: Right. And well at some point it might have been. MAYOR DICKEY: Might have been. POCK: Yeah. All right. So that's something that we can look at. And then -- MAYOR DICKEY: David, could you speak in the microphone? I was just asked to ask you. Thank you. POCK: Okay. I thought I was doing really, really well, but. All right. So these are just our budget numbers. All right. So then we also have some transfers that we do every year. That top line is the streets fund, obviously. Before CARES Act happened, it was about 200,000 a year, and there was some back and forth between the CIP fund and the streets fund, and that was something that we actually did away with, because it didn't make sense for the CIP fund to send 200,000 to the streets fund, and then vice versa. So then of course, with CARES Act, we had the $2 million in surplus that first year and then the 4.2 for the last two fiscal years. All of that's been transferred to the streets fund. The next one, and Mayor, I know you've mentioned this before in the past, but the environmental fund that was something that was in place when I started. It was also when, I believe 2019, when the fee got suspended. It doesn't appear that that fee is Page 107 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING coming back any time soon. It has been recommended, and -- well recommended by auditors that if it doesn't have its own revenue source, dedicated revenue source, we really shouldn't have that fund. I agree with that recommendation, especially since it doesn't look like that that fee is coming back. Just to move money out of the general fund every year to fund the environmental fund so that money can be spent from there. Doesn't make sense. And this is something I haven't talked to Justin back there, so let me know if he's, like getting ready to club me over the head or something. But we could spend that money out of the general fund in public works under its own org codes, that we can still track those expenditures, but we don't necessarily need that fund. But you can see what we have transferred in at the end of each year. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, I did ask about that. I don't know what the chances are to talk to the AG about that. It's unresolved. We had wanted to do a public safety fee at some point too. That would help. A lot of that is going towards, like, the water management, the culverts, and all of that. So I think it's -- FRIEDEL: Wash maintenance? MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, wash maintenance. And so it's perfectly good in public works, I think. Yeah. I don't think we can hold out really worrying about being able to refill that with any other sort of revenue source. POCK: All right. Which brings us to the next fund that we fund with transfers at the end of the fiscal year, and that's facilities replacement or facilities reserve. This is a fund that's basically used for major maintenance each year. It's things that don't qualify as CIP. It's things that you normally don't want to hear about, that you don't care about, you just want it to work. You want the pumps to work on the fountain. You want the roof on the community center to keep the rain on the outside. Yes. So it's those types of things. When the study was originally done, I believe it was 2015, 2016, somewhere around in there, it was originally advised by the people doing that study that it be funded at $1 million a year. I think it might have been 900 and some thousand a year, but let's just round up and say a million. You can see, up until this year, we've just been putting in 500,000 and even one year we skipped it all together. And if you remember Page 108 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING what happened that year, it was just everything was up in the air and nobody knew what was going to happen, so we didn't fund any in '21. And we also -- and then that last line is what we've actually set aside for the lake liner, which, I think that's a really good start to know that that project's coming down the road. It's not going anywhere. It's going to happen one day. I won't be here for it. Sorry. Yeah. Unless it happens before June. But no, we don't want that. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, God. POCK: So anyways, it's a really good start. It's a down payment. That is definitely -- and she stepped out, but that's more skin in the game for that project. The only thing I would say as far as the facilities reserve goes, I think that should be -- we've got a lot of projects that will be coming up in the future, that we will need to have set aside some money for. In addition to the lake liner, I would recommend that that continue to be funded at $1 million a year, but. So are there any questions on those? Not yet? MAYOR DICKEY: No. We're going to -- POCK: No. As far as this goes on the direction that I'll take back and then we'll see what's involved. Obviously, the VLT, we can make that policy change before we adopt a new budget. The environmental fund, there might be a little bit more involved. It might not just be a oh, let's switch it kind of thing, but we'll find out. All right. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? MCMAHON: So you're suggesting that we transfer $1 million a year into the lake liner fund, right? POCK: Into the facility's reserve fund. MCMAHON: For? POCK: Just for major maintenance on other projects other than the lake liner. That fund was originally set up to be funded at $1 million a year. GOODWIN: Outside of the -- POCK: Outside of the lake liner. MCMAHON: Okay. POCK: So that should be the minimum. And then if you put more towards the lake Page 109 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING liner, that's even better. MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you. POCK: And that would all be dependent on yearend fund balances and that sort of thing. Make sure that if it's a good year we want to make sure that everything is being taken care of. All right. So as far as unspent fund balances. We've already reported multiple times on what we ended the fiscal year '23 with. You can see that ending fund balance, and this is where I get to say my favorite thing that I get to say during budget season, these numbers as far as the fiscal year '24 ending fund balances will change. Hopefully, they don't change that much, but that's our best guess right now. Based on what we spent so far, what we anticipate spending throughout the rest of the year, and revenues coming in. So as far as -- and when we were talking about streets and Justin brought up the unspent, I just want to make this comment. So end of fiscal year '23, we had $6.9 million in the streets fund. Right now, that fund balance at the end of this coming year will be $1 million higher. When Justin does his fiscal year -- or when we look at his fiscal year '25 budget it can use the fiscal year '23 fund balance. And then whatever he's budgeted for this year. So unspent fund balance in the streets fund from a prior year can be used in the following year, obviously, if we've got the expenditure limit to use it. That makes sense? MAYOR DICKEY: Yes. So do you know with the streets fund, just take that for example. How much of that is because projects are going to overlap? I mean, I know that's happened before where something's just not done by June 30. So it's not -- again, it's not like we have all this extra money hanging around, it just hasn't been spent yet. So I'm not asking for that right now, but just to kind of keep that in mind that this isn't just a lot of money that's sitting around. POCK: Right? So at the end of fiscal year '23, last year, we had transferred 4.2 right? From the ARPA savings. We obviously couldn't spend all that because we didn't have the budget to spend all of that necessarily. Then there was some that didn't actually happen. So I mean, if we had leftover budget, then that would roll over to the next year. But yeah, we will have that. Page 110 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING [CLERKS NOTE: COUNCILMEMBER TOTH STEPPED AWAY FROM THE DAIS AT 2:03 P.M AND RETURNED AT 2:05 P.M.] MAYOR DICKEY: And with this cap, with the environmental fund balance, will you be able to just put that into, like, a -- I mean, capital is it the CIP where the money would go for the culverts and fixing Golden Eagle Park, all the leaking stuff, and water management? POCK: So if we were to do away with the environmental fund, that could just go back into the general fund. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. POCK: That's where it originally came from. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. POCK: And then it would be spent from there. It's not spent. MAYOR DICKEY: It doesn't have to go to water stuff because that's really what it was there for mostly, and the washes and stuff? POCK: Right. Well, the transfers -- this 528,000, that we're anticipating at the end of the year that would have just come from general fund. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. POCK: I think the last environmental fee -- well, Rhonda's been collecting whatever she can whenever they show up. So I can't say the last time we got a fee. MAYOR DICKEY: But I know when we've made expenditures, we've called it coming from the environmental fund, so I didn't know if that was restricted. POCK: So yeah. If that went into public works or if we wanted to continue this for another year and just not fund the transfer. I mean, if you wanted to track it that way and then just spend it down to zero, we could absolutely do that. So that, that use that it was collected for in the past -- MAYOR DICKEY: I'm fine as long as it's just clean. There's no use having a fund called that that we don't have anymore. Gerry? FRIEDEL: Yeah. That that would all flush through a public works if Justin used it anyway, right? Page 111 of 112 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS FEBRUARY 27, 2024 TOWN COUNCIL RETREAT MEETING POCK: Right. GRZYBOWSKI: Flush? FRIEDEL: No pun intended. POCK: Oh, oh, I'm out of slides. MAYOR DICKEY: Number 12. POCK: Any questions? MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Yeah. Perfect. So any questions about any of that or about anything, really? Rachael, do you have any wrap up? GOODWIN: Yeah, this is kind of last call. This is the idea. If there's anything -- we've kind of covered a lot of ground. If there's questions that have come up as we've moved forward, if there's something that rung a bell that we were talking about now that maybe made you think about, CIPs or downtown, now's the time to circle back on anything. If there's any closing thoughts or questions, you've got a captive staff here to answer. So kind of last call. Final thoughts? MAYOR DICKEY: Well, I think it looks good. And Rachael, I just wanted to thank you, too, because -- and I know Sharron did, because you've been keeping us involved, knowing what to expect when things are coming. And I think this is a good example of that, that everybody here is together. We're all trying to plan for the next year, but keeping us like, say, okay, this is where we're at now and doing your emails to help us. We really appreciate that. And I think this went really well and we appreciate your time and all the work that went into doing this, but it makes the next steps easier, doesn't it? So thank you very much. Councilman? FRIEDEL: Yeah, I just wanted to echo that and say thanks to the staff for for today, I appreciate it. GRZYBOWSKI: Sorry. One closing remark for me. I don't need to know if he has an excused absence, but I just wanted to point out that Councilman Skillicorn missed today's streets conversation, just like he did for our special work session in November, if I remember the date correctly. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Anything else? Thank you. We are adjourned. Page 112 of 112 Having no further business, Mayor Ginny Dickey adjourned the Council Retreat of the Fountain Hills Town Council held on February 27, 2024, at 2:07 p.m. ATTEST AND PREPARED BY: TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Gin Dickey, Mayor Linda G. 1 endenhall, 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 27t'' day of February 2024. I further certify that the meeting was duly called and that a quorum was present. DATED this 16th Day of April 2024. Linda G. MQfidenhall, Town Clerk