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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2022.0503.TCRM.Minutes TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING OF THE FOUNTAIN HILLS TOWN COUNCIL MAY 3, 2022 1. CALL TO ORDER AND PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE — Mayor Dickey Mayor Dickey called the Regular Meeting of the Fountain Hills Town Council held May 3, 2022, to order at 5:35 p.m. 2. MOMENT OF SILENCE A Moment of Silence was held. 3. ROLL CALL —Mayor Dickey Present: Mayor Ginny Dickey; Councilmember Mike Scharnow; Councilmember David Spelich; Vice Mayor Gerry Friedel; Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski; Councilmember Peggy McMahon; Councilmember Alan Magazine Staff Town Manager Grady E. Miller; Town Attorney Aaron D. Arnson; Town Clerk Present: Elizabeth A. Klein 4. REPORTS BY MAYOR, COUNCILMEMBERS AND TOWN MANAGER A. PROCLAMATION: Declaring May 9 - 13, 2022, as Economic Development Week. 5. SCHEDULED PUBLIC APPEARANCES/PRESENTATIONS A. PRESENTATION: Update regarding Independence Day activities. 6. CALL TO THE PUBLIC Pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.01(H), public comment is permitted(not required) on matters NOT listed on the agenda. Any such comment(i)must be within the jurisdiction of the Council, and(ii)is subject to reasonable time,place, and manner restrictions. The Council will not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during Call to the Public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action. At the conclusion of the Call to the Public, individual councilmembers may(i)respond to criticism, (ii) ask staff to review a matter, or(iii) ask that the matter be placed on a future Council agenda. 7. CONSENT AGENDA ITEMS All items listed on the Consent Agenda are considered to be routine, noncontroversial matters and will be enacted by one motion of the Council. All motions and subsequent approvals of consent items will include all recommended staff stipulations unless otherwise stated. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a councilmember or member of the public so requests. If a councilmember or member of the public wishes to discuss an item on the Consent Agenda, he/she may request so prior to the motion to accept the Consent Agenda or with notification to the Town Manager or Mayor prior to the date of the meeting for which the item was scheduled. The items will be removed from the Consent Agenda and considered in its normal Town Council Regular Meeting of May 3, 2022 2 of 4 sequence on the agenda. MOVED BY Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski, SECONDED BY Councilmember Alan Magazine to approve the Consent Agenda Items 7-A through 7-D. Vote: 7 - 0 Passed - Unanimously A. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of the minutes of the Special Meeting of April 5, 2022; the Regular Meeting of April 5, 2022; and the Special Meeting of April 12, 2022. B. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Adoption of Resolution 2022-22 approving the Public Art Master Plan Revisions. C. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Resolution 2022-23 Decommissioning and Removing Town-Owned Artwork " Man in the Moon" from Public Display in Fountain Park. D. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of budget transfers for the Special Revenue Fund, Tourism Fund, and Capital Project Fund. 8. REGULAR AGENDA A. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Adopting Resolution 2022-18 of the Mayor and Council of the Town of Fountain Hills, Arizona, setting forth the Tentative Budget and establishing the maximum budget amount for the Town of Fountain Hills for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2022, and ending June 30, 2023. MOVED BY Councilmember Peggy McMahon, SECONDED BY Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski to adopt Resolution No. 2022-18. Vote: 7 - 0 Passed - Unanimously B. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Ordinance 22-01, amending Chapters 1, 5, 10, and 11 of the Zoning Ordinance to provide the definition of family and community residence, the regulations for community residences, and provide the zoning districts where community residences are permitted. MOVED BY Councilmember Peggy McMahon, SECONDED BY Vice Mayor Gerry Friedel to adopt Ordinance 22-01, including the amendments discussed during the meeting. Vote: 6 - 1 Passed NAY: Councilmember Mike Scharnow C. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Adoption of Resolution 2022-11 approving an intergovernmental agreement with Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. Town Council Regular Meeting of May 3, 2022 3 of 4 MOVED BY Vice Mayor Gerry Friedel, SECONDED BY Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski to adopt Resolution 2022-11. Vote: 7 - 0 Passed - Unanimously D. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Resolution 2022-14 approving Amendment One to the Intergovernmental Agreement with the Flood Control District of Maricopa County for the Golden Eagle Park Dam-Debris Mitigation Improvement Project. MOVED BY Councilmember Sharron Grzybowski, SECONDED BY Councilmember Peggy McMahon to adopt Resolution 2022-17. Vote: 7 - 0 Passed - Unanimously E. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approving Professional Services Agreement 2022-071 with Shums Coda for 3rd party plan review and inspection services for Phases II and III of Park Place. Removed from agenda. F. DISCUSSION WITH POSSIBLE DIRECTION relating to any item included in the League of Arizona Cities and Towns' weekly Legislative Bulletin(s) or relating to any action proposed or pending before the State Legislature. 9. COUNCIL DISCUSSION/DIRECTION to the TOWN MANAGER Item(s)listed below are related only to the propriety of(i)placing such item(s) on a future agenda for action, or (ii)directing staff to conduct further research and report back to the Council. 10. ADJOURNMENT The Regular Meeting of the Fountain Hills Town Council held May 3, 2022, adjourned at 9:09 p.m. MOVED BY Councilmember David Spelich, SECONDED BY Councilmember Alan Magazine to adjourn. Vote: 7 - 0 Passed - Unanimously TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS r (� Ginny ckey, ayor ATTE T AND PREPARED BY: • izabet 'Klein, Town lerk Town Council Regular Meeting of May 3, 2022 4 of 4 CERTIFICATION I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Regular Meeting held by the Town Council of Fountain Hills in the Town Hall Council Chambers on the 3rd day of May, 2022. I further certify that the meeting was duly called and that a quorum was present. DATED this 17th day of May, 2022. Eli abeth lein, Town Clerk TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 1 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Post-Production File Town of Fountain Hills May 3, 2022 Regular Town Council Meeting Transcription Provided By: eScribers, LLC Transcription is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * * Page 1 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 2 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Now we will call to order our regular meeting, and I would ask you to please stand for the pledge and remain standing. [Pledge] MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Please remain standing for a moment of silence. Thank you. Roll call,please. TOWN CLERK KLEIN: Mayor Dickey? - MAYOR DICKEY: Here. TOWN CLERK KLEIN: Vice Mayor Friedel? VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Present TOWN CLERK KLEIN: Councilmember McMahon? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Here. TOWN CLERK KLEIN: Councilmember Scharnow? COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: Present. TOWN CLERK KLEIN: Councilmember Magazine? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Here. TOWN CLERK KLEIN: Councilmember Spelich? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Present. TOWN CLERK KLEIN: Councilmember Grzybowski? COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Present. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, all. We'll start with our reports by the Manager and Council. TOWN MANAGER MILLER: Thank you, Mayor and Council. A couple of weeks ago, the Chamber of Commerce held its annual gala event and it was really well attended. As part of that event, the Economic Development division annually gives an award to what it considers to be the top attraction or something that was offered new to attract tourism in the community or nearby. And We-ko-pa Casino Resort was recognized for their significant investment, the employment. We have a number of residents here who actually live here and also work there. So anyways, that was kind of exciting to give it to the tribal community next door, and they do so much with the money that actually comes back to our community through a number of grants. So that was great. Page 2 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 3 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Another noteworthy event I wanted to share with the Council was that last Saturday, the Town was the host for the annual Arizona Sister Cities conference. We had about 80 attendees at the Community Center, and it was actually organized by the Sister Cities Corporation-- Fountain Hills Sister Cities Corporation and also the Fountain Hills Sister Cities Commission that the Council appoints. So it was a great event. And we had-- the diplomatic core was represented there, and the featured speaker was the Mayor of Cusco, Peru, which is the gateway to Machu Pichu. So we had a really, really good conference. That's all I have, Mayor. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Councilwoman? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Good afternoon. I also attended the Sister Cities Conference, and it was really informative, and I met a lot of wonderful people who really are passionate about being part of that conference and the Sister City Organization. And also, I think it's two weeks ago, we had the CARES Forum on dementia friendly. A great speaker, great turnout. I mean, we just had some really fantastic results from that, a very high level of interest. A friend of mine is called who wants to champion being a dementia-friendly city. So I'm looking forward --we're looking forward to working with her on that. So thank you. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: I, too, did attend the Chamber gala, and it was quite a -- quite an event that they put on. So thank you, again, for all that hard work. COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: I was thinking, Mayor. I got a pretty long list here, Grzybowski. I don't know. Well, Gerry is being modest here, because I was at the Chamber gala, as well, and it was on the 22nd, and he was chosen as Volunteer of the Year by the Chamber. So congrats Gerry on that. [Applause] COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: And on the April 20th, the Drug Prevention Coalition, we hosted a symposium at the Learning Center, and we had 75 people. And the Mayor kind of opened our proceedings, but we had a panel discussion about drugged and drunk driving. And a lot of parents and students were there, so it was a very nice event. And our own Judge Melton from our Municipal Court was one of the panelists, as well as one of our former Councilmen, Tait Elkie. So that went well. On the 21st, Valley Metro, we had a board meeting. It was the first meeting for our new Page 3 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 4 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING CEO, so that was always exciting. And that was -- later that day was the Fountain Hills CARES event that I attended as well, and found it very informative as my mother-in-law is in those stages of dementia, unfortunately. So it was very educational. And the 29th, we had a vow to drive sober discussion at the high school. Junior and senior classes did different presentations by a woman whose son was a drunk driver and crashed head on, wrong-way driver, and then his best friend and passenger in the seat was killed. And he lived for, like, another 18 years very disabled and so on, but he passed away a couple years ago. But she gave a very, obviously, emotional presentation. It was right before prom on the 30th, so we felt it had a good impact to the high school kids. And then, Take Back Day. Well, welcome back, Captain Larry. It's good to see you. And our Sheriffs Office and other folks coordinated the Take Back Day where we collected prescription and other unwanted drugs out front here at Town Hall on Saturday, and took in 59 pounds in 4 hours. So I just thought I'd pass -- MAYOR DICKEY: Wow. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Okay. Well, Mike, you win. My husband's got coworkers in town, and I've been entertaining them for two weeks. I did go to the Chamber gala and I was going to say congratulations to Gerry, as well, but Mike stole that from me. I did get a tour of the Bell Park Legacy Sports Complex with the East Valley-- Phoenix East Valley folks. And I got to say, that place knocked my socks off. It has every sporting event you can possibly think of, plus training to get better at each sport. And it's for the kids, it's for the adults, it's crazy. Also, there's a bar, so that's fun, too. And then, of course, the Arizona League Legislative call yesterday. Otherwise, I've been with the work peeps. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Councilwoman. Thank you, all. So I signed a letter with 26 other mayors from the League asking Congress to allocate water infrastructure funding dollars to Arizona. I went to the theater to do a proclamation for Ross Collins and the 20th anniversary of the Fountain Hills Youth Theatre. Sister Cities, that was great. Again, thanks to Christine Colley for getting that into Fountain Hills. And the Award Gala was great. We gave the Mayor's award, which is really all of us, to the Fountain Hills Medical Center and Emergency Room. They had won two other awards Page 4 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 5 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING that night, as well. And I want to congratulate all of the nominees, and those who were recognized, and the Chamber for a very successful event. I was appointed to the nominating committee for MAG -- executive committee, so we'll be doing that in the next year. They have the one-year term, so June is usually their last meeting and then we take the summer off. We did have MAG regional counsel. Yesterday, the Fountain Hills Civic Association -- Cultural and Civic Association had their annual meeting at the Batchelor's Pad, and that was really good. They did a trivia night, so that was --that was fun. And then last,just to toot my own horn a little bit, 48 Women of the Decade --we had that announcement a couple months ago, but we had the luncheon at the Biltmore. And it was quite humbling and very nice to be there and recognized that way. That's a Centennial Legacy project. So that wraps that up. Our next item is the proclamation for Economic Development Week. So next meeting, on the 17th, we're going to have a good presentation from Amanda, but right now, I'm going to just come down and give her a proclamation. Amanda, you want to come up? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: That's pretty good. She's been here less than two months, and she gets a proclamation. MAYOR DICKEY: I'm going to give you the fancy one to hold, and then I will read from the one that I can actually read. All right. You got it? ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR JACOBS: I got it. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. This is Amanda Jacobs, our Economic Development Director. And like I said, she'll be presenting at our next meeting. And also, a new video just went up. I think Bo just put that up about tourism and Fountain Hills. There's no town like it. So anyway. Whereas, the International Economic Development Council -- come closer-- is the largest professional economic development organization dedicated to serving economic developers, and the International Economic Development Council provides leadership and excellence in economic development for communities, members, and partners through conferences, training, courses, advisory services and research, in-depth publications, public policy advocacy, and initiatives such as the Accredited Economic 4•&'k .S@T kY=a-.4+-0iP.v„;*.wk+;3. r'.•:: =._ .' .L.,,n q}n ma;i..c*w+L44u.k4'. 'aiss;-s-tae is.A 's. ,.r---- 3+.xA;iit Page 5 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 6 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Development Organization Program, the Certified Economic Development Designation, and the Entrepreneurship Development Professional. Is that all? So again, whereas economic developers promote economic well-being and quality of life for their communities by creating, retaining, and expanding jobs that facilitate growth, enhance wealth, and provide a stable tax base, and they stimulate and incubate entrepreneurship in order to help establish the next generation of new businesses, which is the hallmark of the American economy. And whereas economic developers are engaged in a wide variety of settings including rural, urban, local, state, provincial, and federal governments,public-private partnerships, chambers of commerce, universities, and a variety of other institutions, and whereas economic developers attract and retain high-quality jobs, develop vibrant communities, and improve the quality of life in their regions. And economic developers work in Fountain Hills within the state of Arizona. Now, therefore, be it resolved, I, Ginny Dickey, on behalf of the Town of Fountain Hills recognizes the week of May 9th through May 13th as Economic Development Week, and remind individuals of the importance of the community celebration which supports expanding career opportunities and making lives better. There you go. That's a mouthful. Thank you. [Applause] MAYOR DICKEY: Do you want to say anything? DIRECTOR JACOBS: Well,just thank you, to the Mayor and Council. In 2016, the International Economic Development Council created this week just to raise awareness on what economic development is, which, as you heard, is a mouthful. And so next week, we'll have a social media campaign. And so we ask you to help share that awareness and share those posts on the social media platform. And as the Mayor said, there's a lot of exciting things -- I know that you know -- happening in our wonderful town. And so if you guys have time, come to our next council meeting to hear of the updates. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. DIRECTOR JACOBS: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks so much. Page 6 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 7 of 80 MAY3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Thanks so much. Next, we have our call to the public. Do we have any speaker cards? COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: What about Rachael? MAYOR DICKEY: Oh. Wait. What? COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Rachael? MANAGER MILLER: We have a scheduled presentation, Mayor, on Independence Day. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. It's not on my written one. Sorry about that. Rachael, you're up. Thank you. Why don't I have that here? COMMUNITY SERVICES DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Sure. Sorry. All right. I'm here this evening to give an update on our annual Fourth at the Fountain, our community Fourth of July celebration. And I know -- I've talked with a number of you -- I know this has been kind of a hot topic lately, and so I wanted to just kind of bring and share some community information about where we are. So these are some photos from our past events. I think most of you have seen them or participated with them. It's a great time down at the park. Usually, our event is from 7 -- starts off at 7 with a band. We do fireworks around 9. We have a general attendance of about 8 to 10,000. These are our budgets. We have about $20,000 for our fireworks display, and then another$30,000 to support all of the other amenities, whether that's our entertainment, all of the portable items that need to come in, our road closures, and all the fees and what not associated to put the event on. Just gives you a big picture idea of what we generally do. However, this year, fireworks are really, really hard to procure. It is not just us; it is a-- it is a national issue. But the long and short of it is that roughly 70 percent of the commercial-grade fireworks are manufactured in China. And due to a number of circumstances, including staffing, including covid, including factory closures and whatnot, they're really hard to procure. And then, if you can find them, they are quite expensive. So we've been watching this and working with our vendors since the first of the year. Unfortunately, we were hoping to have some good news to share by this evening that we were able to make -- you know, make some positive progress there. Unfortunately, that is not the case. So what we've done is we've met with a lot of our other community Page 7 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 8 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING groups around the Valley. We've been reaching out to figure out what is everybody else doing? How are they managing this situation? And this is just a sampling of other communities and where they're at with this conversation. A number of them are moving with Fourth of July programs without fireworks. A number of them are looking to do alternative entertainment, including drones or laser light shows. And others are altering their date in order to procure fireworks when and where available. So this just gives you an idea. So where that leaves us. The way we -- the staff-- has looked at it, we have essentially three options. One is to move forward with our standard event on July 4th. We have our band, we would have our food trucks, we have a potential for a partnership with Bone Haus. We would still need most of the supporting logistics. However, the likelihood of getting fireworks is low. Alternately, we could cancel the event hanging on to that budget. As you saw, it's not a small budget, and reallocate that budget and still do -- and still light our fountain for that evening. Or we can work with a new fireworks vendor that does have the availability for an event on July 1st, which is a Friday this coming year. So again, we would hold it similar to what we traditionally do on the 4th. We would need -- we do recognize that we would need to do an intensive marketing effort, because our Fourth at the Fountain is sort of our label. So we would need to make sure that our community is aware of that change. And again, as I mentioned, there is a budget escalation due to the increase in the fireworks cost. So this is sort of the three options we have in front of us. You'll note that the staff-- based on all of this information, the staff is recommending moving forward with the July 1st option in order to procure those fireworks as part of the event. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Do we have any questions? Discussion? Yes, Councilwoman? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Thank you, Rachael. If option C is selected, is it a lot more money? DIRECTOR GOODWIN: It's an increase of roughly$10,000. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Okay. Thank you. So you already have it Page 8 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 9 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING budgeted, basically? DIRECTOR GOODWIN: So we know that our fireworks budget is traditionally $20,000. The quote that we have is about -- is roughly $28,000. So anticipating any other changes. MANAGER MILLER: We'd be able to make the transfer to cover it. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: All right. Thank you. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: Yes, Vice Mayor? VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Could we still do C and the first, which is to light up the fountain on the 4th? DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Absolutely. We can do C and then still light the fountain on 4th of July that evening. Absolutely. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Well, that's -- that's the direction I'm leaning. So input. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Okay. Great. We just wanted to make sure everyone understood that this wasn't a choice that, you know, we made to not have fireworks on the 4th. That this is a large-scale impact to a lot of communities in the Valley. MAYOR DICKEY: So you said we would have to, you know, get the word out. Either way, we will if we're not doing anything on the 4th, right? DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Yes. No matter what, we'll need to do that. Absolutely. But given that we're already in May, 4th of July tends to sneak up on us pretty quick, so we wanted to have enough time to create those, you know, create that marking effort and get that out there before -- essentially by Memorial Day. So the end of the month. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. MANAGER MILLER: It's a shame because some of us that are traditionalists always think, you know, you celebrate Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving, you celebrate Independence Day on Independence Day, but things are -- the world's really messed up right now, and we can't get the fireworks when we want the fireworks. But I think the fireworks are an essential part, and I do like the idea that having the fountain at least lit that night, special colors, to commemorate Independence Day. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Absolutely. MANAGER MILLER: We're wanting to bring this before you tonight, because Page 9 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 10 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING obviously, we were waiting to see if maybe our fireworks vendor that, as you can see, does all the other fireworks presentations throughout the entire state, was going to be able to come through, but they just haven't been able to. We want to act fast because we want to lock in the date and be able to procure the fireworks. So that's something we can do administratively. The amount is within my signature authority, so we wanted to get you to weigh in and make sure that there was consensus for the staff-recommended option here. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: If you guys recommend C, I totally support that. But my only question is marketing. It's going to take some extra dollars probably, over above and beyond what you actually already spend on marketing. Do you have any idea what that would be,just so we would have an idea? DIRECTOR GOODWIN: You know, that's a great question. We have not put together a marketing plan on this yet. Kind of-- it was kind of hinging on tonight's decision. Obviously, we will -- we would leverage all of our social media partners. And I think we can probably work with Bo to hopefully get the awareness out through some of our-- whether it's the news outlets and whatnot to make sure that we're on those lists of what's happening, you know, on Independence Day weekend. Because I haven't -- it's not just us that our moving off of this date, so I think there's going to be a lot of effort to make sure that residents in and around the Valley are aware of all the things going on. So we'll want to make sure that we're on those lists, whether it's in the Arizona Republic, or you know, ABC 15, or wherever they are. So we'll work with our partners that way. If we do find that we need to take out more ad space or have more paid representation, I think we can certainly look into that. We have not put that plan together yet, though. MAYOR DICKEY: I'll just put it out there that I understand what Grady was talking about, too, and I mean, if we wanted to do something on the 4th and had lights and music and that such, I'd be okay with that. If you end up -- that ending up being, like, too expensive to go with this, or you know, the vendor doesn't seem quite right, or whatever. I mean, I think the 4th of July is the 4th of July, too, and you have fun, and you have music. You know, we could have patriotic music and such. So I'm fine if that's what it ends up being, too. Page 10 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 11 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Great. MAYOR DICKEY: So we're not voting or anything like that. We're just giving you the impressions. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Yep. Just getting some feedback. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Thank you. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Awesome. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Sorry I forgot you. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: That's okay. MAYOR DICKEY: I printed out the old agenda. That's -- DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Quite okay. MAYOR DICKEY: I wanted to mention that on one of the items on the agenda, 8-E, is not going to be heard tonight. I don't know if Aaron, you want to kind of expand on that. TOWN ATTORNEY ARNSON: Sure. Mayor and Council, thank you. Yesterday, the Town Manager, Development Services Director Wesley, and I had an informal meeting with the developer and their representative. And they had some last-minute changes that they wanted to see in the contract that we weren't aware of. So at this point, there aren't -- there obviously isn't adequate time to make those and make sure that we're back with the contractor to make sure that the vendor is okay with it. So we'll have to pull it and consider it for the meeting on the 17th. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Mayor? MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Yes, Councilman? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Aaron, are those changes things that we should be aware of as a Council, or they're just -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: They're more --they're more technical changes in nature. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Thank you. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Specifically, to make it referenced in greater detail the Development Agreement. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Because we were prepared to move ahead with that tonight, but we cannot? ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yes, correct, Mayor. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. All right. The next item is Call to the Public. Again, do we Page 11 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 12 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING have any speaker cards? Try again. CLERK KLEIN: Ed Stizza? MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I'll just remind you when you come up,please let us know what city or town you're from, but not your actual address. Thanks. STIZZA: Good evening, Madame Mayor, Staff, Council, and Residents of Fountain Hills. So I apologize, I was still writing some of this back there. But can anybody confirm what, who, where caused the blasting last week? And there seems to be some confusion, and without legitimate answers, at least any that I've heard. I mean, everybody assumes that-- STIZZA: -- everybody assumed that it was in Adero Canyon. So the Communications Director confirmed that, supposedly, or at least the Town of Fountain Hills on the website or on social media. So is there anybody that can answer that question, specifically? MANAGER MILLER: This really isn't on the agenda, but I just will let you know that we have not been able to confirm on where the source of that was. We do not believe it occurred in town; we believe it was in one of the neighborhood communities, like at a quarry. STIZZA: So that damage has caused -- or I mean, that -- in those blasting incidences has caused damage to several residences here, so it would certainly be nice to know where it came from. So hopefully somebody can get on that and answer it. You know, so seems to be a legitimate concern. Even Mayor Dickey had posted something on there, so I'm sure everybody read it and I won't repeat it. But if you can answer that for the members of the community, that would be great. So thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you very much. We have our consent agenda, unless you want to take something off. Can I get a motion, please? COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Move to approve. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Second. MAYOR DICKEY: All in favor, say aye. ALL: Aye. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Our first item is our consideration and possible action on our budget. Grady? MANAGER MILLER: Thank you, Mayor and Council and the public who are here Page 12 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 13 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING tonight. One of the most important actions that the Council takes each year is the consideration and adoption of its annual budget and Capital Improvement Program. Before you is a budget that started basically last fall with the Department directors submitting their requests, plus considerable review on the part of the Finance Director and myself of those requests. And then, we also had our Council retreat where there was quite a bit of input that was received from the Mayor and Council on their strategic priorities for the next fiscal year. And so we started back in February with the Council, and we've had a number of meetings with the Council, and then we also had a public open house that we had prior to the Council having their budget workshop just before this meeting last -- it was earlier in the month, correct? So basically, budgeting is basically a spending plan that the Council puts together that identifies the top priorities and strategic issues that they're trying to address over the next 12 months. And that's what you're going to see tonight. We have condensed it to be able to get through it in a little bit less time than what we've done in the past. With that, I'll turn it over to our Finance Director, David DIRECTOR POCK, who will be giving you a presentation on it. DIRECTOR DIRECTOR POCK: Great. Thank you, Mayor and Council. As Grady said, we're adopting the tentative budget tonight. This is all information that you'd seen before, except for these first couple slides. So hopefully we'll be able to get through them a little quicker. Let me know if you have any questions along the way. So first of all,just an update on our TPT collections for the current fiscal year. We're doing very well. We've collected $12.8 million in TPT so far. That's through the end of March. We don't have the April numbers yet. We had 12.1 budgeted, so as you can see, we're about$700,000 above what we had thought we were going to have. Each of the categories below is broken down. You can see construction is a little bit lower than what we anticipated. Same with real estate, but real estate is very, very close. The two that I want to point out -- I think I pointed them out last time -- is the restaurant and bars and the services category. Done very well. We owe a lot to our town businesses and residents that patronize those business. So any questions on the TPT? MAYOR DICKEY: That first total, that's also to date, right? DIRECTOR POCK: Correct. Page 13 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 14 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. So the 12.8 -- DIRECTOR POCK: Well -- MAYOR DICKEY: -- the 12.1 is not for the whole year; it's through March? DIRECTOR POCK: Just through--just the first three quarters, correct. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. DIRECTOR POCK: All right. So then, the last time, as the Town Manager mentioned, that we spoke about the budget was a proposed budget at the budget workshop. I just put together this slide to show you changes that have been made to that proposed budget so that you didn't have to go through and try and find each thing that had changed along the way. The first bullet point is a mistake that I made. It was something that I should have called out during the proposed budget. The amounts for the proposed four percent increase -- cost of living increase -- was shown in each of the departments as far as the totals. I just didn't call it out specifically as far as what was included there. So I wanted everybody to be aware of that. The next bullet point is --was quite a surprise at the budget workshop. I had mentioned that we hadn't received the League estimates yet. Received them that Thursday, and they were quite a bit higher than what I was expecting. The State shared sales tax and the State shared income tax were quite a bit higher; made up a majority of that $1.2 million that you see there. Most of it was from the income tax that was collected in 2020 -- so calendar year 2020. If you remember the COVID pandemic, DOR and the IRS had extended deadlines for filing. So that year, there were actually two different dates that they collected taxes. A lot of that rolled into that estimate that you see there. Also, we increased the contingency in the Special Revenue Fund. That's basically because of the infrastructure bill and the possibility that the Town could received some grants from that-- from that bill. In case we do, we need the budget authority to use it. Obviously, if it's not received, it doesn't get used. And that's in the Special Revenues Fund, so it doesn't affect our General Fund. However, with those last two bullet items, it did increase the overall budget number by $5.4 million. As you know, we had increased revenues -- the $1.2 million. We had to Page 14 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 15 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING AUMIMIIIMMNF offset that in the General Fund by increasing our contingency numbers. We also have a carryover from this year's CIP that we're going to carry over into next year, with your approval. That's $100,000 for the Shae Boulevard widening. That's design doesn't look like they're going to have that completely finished by the end of this year, and some of that will have to move over into next year. That doesn't increase the budget for the Capital Fund, it will just reduce the contingency that we had planned for that Fund. And also, during the proposed budget, I had shown that the Safe Routes to Schools in the Capital Projects Fund, a little bit more thought about that. We moved it out of the Capital Projects Fund and into the Streets, because those specific items don't have projects. They're studies to see what projects could be done, and without having a project to tie it to, it shouldn't really be in the Capital Projects Fund. Any questions on those items? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah, maybe I'm getting confused. How much do we have total for Streets? DIRECTOR POCK: Streets, as far as the Fund balance for Streets, or how much? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah, Fund balance. DIRECTOR POCK: I believe we are right -- I'm going to call a friend. Hold on one second. MANAGER MILLER: David, you actually have -- you have the Street Fund, I thought, in this later in. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, it's probably in his presentation. DIRECTOR POCK: Not the Fund balance, though. MANAGER MILLER: Not the Fund balance? Okay. DIRECTOR POCK: I just have the (indiscernible) amounts, so. MAGAZINE: That's all right. DIRECTOR POCK: Yeah. It's not going to be a large Fund balance at the end of this fiscal year, because a lot of that does get used each year. So I can get that for you, though. Any other questions? All right. I promise I'm not going to ask for questions after each slide,because now we're going to go a lot faster. All of these bullet items you've seen before, so. Again, the Tentative Budget Book is available on the Town's website. I checked the link. It does work. It does go to the book this time. Page 15 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 16 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Again, budget authority is not the same as Fund balance. If we don't meet our revenue projections, then we must reduce contingency and expenditures to maintain our Fund balance. The absolute maximum for the Town for next year is recommended at $46.1 million total budget across all funds. The final budget that will be adopted on June 7th can go below that number, depending if there's recommended changes, but it can't go above that number. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: How does that compare with last year? DIRECTOR POCK: I thought I had that summary in here, and it will be in the General Fund. So if you give me a couple slides -- COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: That's fine. DIRECTOR POCK: All right. So as far as revenue assumptions, again, all the same bullet points. How we come up with our revenue estimates, remaining conservative, we don't include things that aren't finished yet and then, our state-shared revenue. All right. So as far as the General Fund-- General Operating Fund for the Town, this -- you can see this year compared to next year. We did have a 9.4 percent increase from this year to next year. A lot of that, again, is contingency, however, so it's not operating budget per se. It's just the contingency to maintain balance funds. So you can see the big difference in this one, the Intergovernmental Revenue, that's where all the State-shared revenues reside. You can see that it had quite a bit of an increase. The licenses and permits was down. We discussed this at the proposed budget meeting, mainly due to construction activity. So this year, we had 22.7 percent in the General Fund for budget and next year, we have 24.8. I do break it down just a little bit here, too, as far as that contingency number. Obviously, with the inflation that we're experiencing right now, we might be spending some more than what we're anticipating, and that could cause us to use contingency if we're receiving revenues as were expected. Contingencies included in the General Government Department within the General Fund provides budget authority for increased operating costs and/or unforeseen expenditures only if expected revenues are received. And as far as next year, that contingency number is $4.4 million. So if you take the contingency numbers out of this year and next year you can see we have about $700,000 increase this year or going into next year. MAYOR DICKEY: I appreciate you pointing that out -- Page 16 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 17 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING DIRECTOR POCK: No problem MAYOR DICKEY: -- because the-- you know, with all the CARES money, the relief money, and such, we're -- it looks like a jump, but in reality, this is the real number right here. And then contingencies are just that. And also, again, what we approve as the top is the top. So it doesn't mean we have to do every project, or do everything, or spend everything that's here. It just is sort of a cushion going forward, correct? DIRECTOR POCK: Correct. Absolutely. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Mayor? MAYOR DICKEY: Yes, Councilman? Vice Mayor? VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: To that point, I'm just wondering, we've got a lot of projects in here we may or may not do. Are we spending a lot of time by our employees and cost by passing a budget that we don't think are essential items that may not be done? I'm just making a point here. I don't know that all these things should be passed in this budget, necessarily, if we're not going to do them. And then, it was mentioned once before that we could always just cancel a contract. When you get that far down the line, though, a lot of time, and effort, and money has been spent to get a contract. And then if we do cancel a contract, we've wasted some effort behind that. So I just want to make that point and say, hey, is it something that we should consider bringing something back midyear and seeing where we are with the cost of inflation, supply chain, and other issues that are going to affect this budget? MAYOR DICKEY: Absolutely. We talked about this, and Grady can explain. MANAGER MILLER: Right, so Vice Mayor, you bring up a really good point and this had been discussed both at a staff level, and then the Mayor had asked me about it as well. And so what I would suggest, because you're right, there's a lot of time and involvement in trying to get these solicitations or requests for proposals out, and also there's costs and expense on the part of the businesses that have to prepare and submit those. So what I would suggest is when we get to the actual Capital or if you have tonight, if there's any items, any projects that there were some concerns about, what we could do is we could come back before you, before we actually go and do an RFP just to check in with you on those ones that you identify tonight. And we'll keep track of those and when it's time to check in with the Council and get direction from you, we'll do that Page 17 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 18 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING before we go through the effort of trying to develop an RFP. Does that make sense? VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Fair enough, yes. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. DIRECTOR POCK: All right. Well, then just to take a look at the supplements that were presented. These remain the same from the proposed budget. I wanted to go through the slides real quick, ask if there were any questions about any of them. MAYOR DICKEY: Alan? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Probably not related to this slide, but how much have we put aside -- we've gone through this -- put aside for the liner, and how much are we putting aside this year for the liner? DIRECTOR POCK: So right now, as of our discussions last year at this time, we transferred in$1 million specifically for the liner-- or to be held for the liner in the Facilities Reserve Fund. It's -- it was transferred this year. It's sitting there; it's waiting. Next year-- or not next year-- next month, when we come to do the final budget, I'll also have a slide on suggested transfers for approval for next fiscal year. And at this point, and at the time of the proposed budget, I had recommended that another million dollars be put into the Facilities Reserve Fund for that purpose. Doesn't mean that it absolutely has to stay for that purpose; that would be up to Council direction. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: It won't surprise you, I 've made it clear in the past that we don't know when we're going to need a liner. We may need to go to a bond for a liner. DIRECTOR POCK: Absolutely. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: I'd rather have $2 million added to the -- to take out of that fund for roads, which is what we really need, especially neighborhood roads. DIRECTOR POCK: Right. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: I just want to keep that -- DIRECTOR POCK: I'm sorry. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: No, go ahead. DIRECTOR POCK: I will say that this current year, we did transfer $2 million to the General Fund Savings from the CARES Act at that point, into the Streets Fund for pavement maintenance. There will be another recommended$2 million this -- for fiscal Page 18 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 19 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING year'23 from the ARPA savings, as well. But that absolutely can be -- COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Will that give us $4 million? DIRECTOR POCK: A total of just about 4.6, I believe. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: That's pretty good. It's gone up. Yeah. Thank you. DIRECTOR POCK: It's a big chunk. It gives Director DIRECTOR WELDY quite a bit of work to do. MAYOR DICKEY: It was an extra $2 million, then most of the $4 million. And then next year, when we get the other$4 million, too. But also, the liner money, that's all part of our-- at least I understand -- of our Facilities or the set aside, so it doesn't have to go for the liner. DIRECTOR POCK: Right. Right. MAYOR DICKEY: It's just -- so when you say, we wanted to put $1 million towards that, that is it, and then another$500,000 in addition. Thank you. Grady? MANAGER MILLER: I'm sorry. I was just going to echo what you just said. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Wait, before we slide away from that slide. I just want to make sure and get it on the record. I've talked to Grady, but I watched the October 6th Fountain Hills Unified School District board meeting, where they specifically talk about the inspection of their facilities, one of which is the Four Peaks Elementary School. I watched it, I took really good notes, and I also read the meetings of the notes. I just wanted to make it official on record that I am very concerned about how much money this building is going to cost to keep it up. Grady, I'll let you speak to that. MANAGER MILLER: Sure. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: But the words used were, end of life, and major gut renovation requirements kind of thing. MANAGER MILLER: Right. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: So don't get me wrong. I love the BIZ HUB. MANAGER MILLER: Um-hum. Page 19 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 20 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: I am a part of their Advisory Board. I'm very pro it,but my concern is getting stuck with a lemon. MANAGER MILLER: Right. So I had a very good discussion with the school superintendent, and the understanding is if the Town Council were to give authorization to have the Town enter into a lease agreement with the school district for the operation of the BIZ HUB, the school district would be on the hook for all the major maintenance, the roof, the AC units, all that. The Town would have minor costs and we'd have a threshold of between 50 and $75,000 that we would not have to exceed each year on any maintenance costs. We are having an internal meeting next Monday, and we're going to be discussing some of those costs. Right now, there's been some recent activities related to that-- to the BIZ HUB that I'm kind of questioning in my mind. And so anyways, if the Council were to adopt this budget tonight and the BIZ HUB is in there, and then there's a recommendation not to go forward with the BIZ HUB, the dollars that are here will just not be utilized or expended. And so I don't want to get into too much detail, but you bring up a really good point. Now, when the school district is talking about with its Facilities Reserve Study and how much has to go back into the building, they're looking at school standards and what is required under State law of what they have to do in order to maintain a building. Totally different requirement than what it would be used for what it's being used today. I will be the first to agree with you, though, that the condition is not a very good condition of a building. The school superintendent would also agree with that. So those are all being taken into consideration before a formal recommendation will be coming back to the Council. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you, Madame Mayor. To piggyback off of Councilman Grzybowski -- Councilperson Grzybowski's comments, I've been told that there's a comprehensive engineering report and an inspection report about all the things that are wrong with the school and everything. I have not seen a copy of that report. That report hasn't been-- to the best of my knowledge --been made available to the Council, so if that report does exist, I would like that report so that I could personally review it. And I think the Councilmembers should also get the same copy. MANAGER MILLER: We'll be bringing that forward to the Council on a decision, but Page 20 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 21 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING we'll be happy to forward that on to you. It is a public record, and we'll forward that on to you, Councilmember. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I know that we've talked about this and about what the usage of that building could be. I look at-- you know, we did the Business Advisors Business Hub for many, many years and supported them, and didn't have to do with the building. So I think both of those things can exist, where we may not need the building in order to continue to support that idea of the incubator. So there's a lot of discussion to be had. But I guess just, almost like everything else here, if it's in here, if it's something we've expressed anything about, you know, the shade structure or whatever, that those will be things that before we moved forward, we'd have a lot more information. Thank you. DIRECTOR POCK: All right. So the total for non-personnel ongoing supplements -- the previous page, plus this one -- counting the offsets, $259,000. As far as one-time nonpersonnel supplements, another 416,000. And then the personnel supplements, which we discussed as well last time, are 222,000. So you can see just with the supplements alone, that makes up a larger number than our$700,000 increase that we're talking about. That's because other expenses were reduced as well. So we had a net change of $700,000. All right. As far as General Fund expenditures, these numbers should -- the bottom line numbers should look very similar to what you saw on the revenue side. That's because we have to have a balanced budget in the General Fund. Everything's got to match. So they are. All right. And then we're going to take a quick look at the other major funds. First, the Streets Fund. The overall summary, you can see that the current fiscal year's revenues and expenditures are a lot more even. That is because for next year, we haven't decided on a transfer yet from the General Fund. And that will make up for that $2,000,000 difference there you see. As far as revenues, you can see the different breakdown. Again, the transfer is not shown at this point in fiscal year'23. If the Council decided to do another transfer of$2,000,000, then that -- obviously, that budgeted amount would increase to six million. I will add, though, real quick,just before I confuse anybody. We don't budget for transfers. The Council basically approves the transfers. That's because Page 21 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 22 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING we don't want to double count expenditures. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Question. DIRECTOR POCK: Yes? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: David, the investment earnings is based on what? DIRECTOR POCK: Hope, at this point. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: I mean, interest rates are about to skyrocket. DIRECTOR POCK: They will get better. Unfortunately, as far as bond markets, when interest rates rise in a bond market, what you're holding at lower interest rates tend to lose a little value along the way. Nobody's wanting to buy low interest stuff. We're -- it's rough. We don't have a lot of interest -- investment earnings for the current fiscal year, and that's -- obviously we're just hopeful figures at this point. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Now, is that based on the bond market? Where do we have the money parked? DIRECTOR POCK: So right now we have about $19,000,000 with the Arizona treasurer. That's basically slightly better than a money market or leaving it parked at the bank. We're not making tons of money there, but it is liquid money, and we are able to get that when we need it. There's another$13,000,000 that we have invested with PFM investment managers. And that's a lot of government bonds and that sort of thing, some commercial paper. That, we do earn a little bit more, but it's tied up and not quite as easily accessible. It's kind of stair-stepped, as far as maturities and that sort of thing. Obviously, the things that they're buying now are at the higher interest rate. So we'll make a little bit more. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: What -- DIRECTOR POCK: They're about to go up. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah. What I'm reading is -- DIRECTOR POCK: (Indiscernible) well. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: -- likely have two half-point increases over the next couple months. So -- DIRECTOR POCK: Absolute--well, from what I'm seeing is they're still planning on trying to get a total of ten interest rate hikes in this calendar year. They've already had a few. Tomorrow, our expectation is it'll be raised a half a point, which hasn't happened }+'>.a.F3iaaM1S01i4iM '"`i:6n:: n. =.n'h,:.'e ♦ .. .. ..'. .: : r. ,. z, i.`::w.Fntt _•. ^..v'..o+.sM f ..:✓:v.':14:nSC",9P.ma6ill.�Y�W.!'itlf. Page 22 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 23 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING since-- I can't remember the year. Maybe 2007, something like that. Just before the housing market and that sort of thing took a dive. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: So you're not planning on spending the money yet? DIRECTOR POCK: It's -- no. No. No, and thank -- and this is actually-- these investment earnings projections are reduced from what we had for the current fiscal year. So luckily, it's not a number that's going to affect being able to do a street or something. So. All right. So as far as expenditures, as far the other expenses basically is -- as far as the Streets Fund is pavement maintenance. So we are expecting to do the same amount of work next year as we're doing this year. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: All right. DIRECTOR POCK: Yeah? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: The same amount of work, that's all maintenance, I presume? DIRECTOR POCK: Yes. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Is it all on arterials? Is any of it neighborhood streets? DIRECTOR POCK: That's a great question, and I'd have to look at the public -- MANAGER MILLER: I'll -- DIRECTOR POCK: -- work strategies -- MANAGER MILLER: I'll -- DIRECTOR POCK: -- for an answer. MANAGER MILLER: I'll go ahead and respond to it. It's a combination. So as you recall, we went through a pavement management analysis; I believe it was in 2018. And as part of that analysis, it did a ranking of our streets. And so basically, those that are failing-- that are, like, in really bad shape tend to be the ones that we let go to the point where we-- because of not having enough resources. And then we'll go ahead and redo those. So it is always -- each year, it's a combination. Obviously, the highest priority are the arterials. We're going to be going into doing some preservative treatments on our Shea and Saguaro, the most recent major arterial reconstruction projects that we've had. That's Page 23 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 24 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING probably going to be close to $1,000,000 or so just for that. And then we're going to -- based on this software that goes through and analyzes our streets and the conditions, we'll be able to bring forth a contract with the Council and you'll see what streets are going to be done. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: I know we've talked about this before, the coding of Saguaro and Shea. $1,000,000, do we have any idea how long that lasts? MANAGER MILLER: I'll let the Public Works Director come up and -- that's a technical question. Thank you. DIRECTOR WELDY: Madam Mayor, Councilmember. Ideally, the preservative seal based on weather conditions should push us out another five years. Oftentimes, it'll be slightly less. But we anticipate at least five years from this treatment. And in fact -- MANAGER MILLER: And that's not to say that the street will hold up another five years. It's just that the treatment will last for five years before you have to redo it. DIRECTOR WELDY: Both Shea and Saguaro are in relatively good condition as they are mostly new. So this crack-filling and preservative seal will prolong their longevity by an additional five years. But they have 25-plus years left in their life. MAYOR DICKEY: Justin, this just reminds me. I've been asked about pavement miles. And I know, you know, it's hard to put a finger on it because some of it is --we've been redoing. But also a lot of preservation and, you know, chip-sealing and all of those things. Is there any idea what miles this might translate to when it comes to 4.9 million? I mean, I know it's potholes and curbing and all these other things, too. So is there any sort of comparison? DIRECTOR WELDY: And it's an excellent question, Madam Mayor. We won't know the total distance or the lane miles we're able to accomplish until the projects have been established. And then we get pricing on that, either through bidding or through our existing contracts. If I can reference this year, this year we are going to accomplish about six lane miles, plus or minus, for locals and collectors. Obviously, this year, we are going to do Shea and Saguaro before the end of June. So there's -- I'm not going to do centerline miles because that one's a little bit more challenging. But about -- oh,just under seven lane miles is what will be accomplished with those two. Page 24 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 25 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MANAGER MILLER: And I just wanted to add, while these are general rules of thumb, a lot of it has to do with the streets that are being replaced. So for instance, pre- incorporation streets that were -- didn't have good base to begin with were -- it's going to cost those more per linear foot or more per linear mile than what you would see other streets. So the money doesn't go quite as far sometimes. DIRECTOR POCK: All right. So onto the capital projects fund, the final major fund. As you can see, for next year we have a total of 8.16 million budgeted overall. Our revenues, that green bar, obviously, is money coming in next year. We will have fund balance of about 7.7 is what I'm guessing at this point. I'll have a little bit more revised number next-- at the final budget. We're working on closing out projects at this point and seeing where we're going to end up. So as far as the cap -- I'm sorry. 4.4 million as far as ending fund balance for this year, with excess revenues over expenditures from the General Fund expected to be about 3.5. And then our TBT (ph.) sales tax of 1.1. Development fees, 275,000, making that 9.3 total available for projects next year. The recommended projects are the 7.7, and those are listed here. Again, we talked about these at -- during the budget workshop, as well as the CIP workshop that preceded it. Total of 4.9 for public works requests. And then as far as park requests, 2.7 million. Total 7.6 basically for projects, and then we have some contingencies as well and some funding that's going to be coming from the parks development fees. MANAGER MILLER: So Mayor, if I may, I just wanted to say this would be your opportunity if you wanted to identify the projects that we discussed before that you may want us to come back and check in with you before we proceed with RFPs. MAYOR DICKEY: I think just judging from our previous discussions, the overlook, the roundabout, the shade structure over at Centennial Circle were -- would all be ones that we would want to see back. Wayfinding signs. Everybody okay with that, pretty much? Yeah. Is there anything else that jumps out that you want to make sure that we would have more discussion before we went out for RFPs and such? MANAGER MILLER: Those do seem to be a good memory. Those were the ones that seemed to have the most discussion, I recall, from the Council. MAYOR DICKEY: Yes, Alan? Page 25 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 26 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Am I missing it? I don't think it's part of cabinet projects. Where is that shade structure? MAYOR DICKEY: It's in the parks. MANAGER MILLER: It's right here. DIRECTOR POCK: It's the last item. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Oh. DIRECTOR POCK: Centennial pavilion. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Oh, okay. Thank you. DIRECTOR POCK: I should've put Rachael's umbrella in (indiscernible). COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Picture of her next to it. MAYOR DICKEY: But yeah, I don't think there was too much else. But again, you would make sure that we wouldn't-- MANAGER MILLER: That's correct. MAYOR DICKEY: -- step out too far on any of those. MANAGER MILLER: So what we'll do is we'll check in with you and definitely get the Council, if need be, to vote on those before going forward on a solicitation for a request for proposal. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: I guess I don't understand the process. Why would we wait? Why would we wait? MANAGER: Well, you didn't vote on these when we were -- when we had the Council budget workshop on the capital. And it was not clear from the staff perspective if there was a majority that had a feeling one way or the other. So if you wanted to deny it, you can actually vote on these individually. But I was trying to keep it simple. And when you say, why would I wait, I would wait when we are into the new fiscal year. And when we are getting close to wanting to go ahead and start doing the paperwork and get ready on an RFP, we come to you before we do that. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Well -- MANAGER MILLER: It would save effort is what I'm trying to get at. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Okay. I'm willing to wait, but you know how I feel about the shade structure and the engine -- the design of the roundabout. We can do it whenever you want. Page 26 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 27 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MANAGER MILLER: Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: Let me just put a little bit -- what Grady was talking about is we don't-- there's some things we don't know yet. There's billions of dollars coming to Arizona in infrastructure bill. Once that starts to kind of trickle down, we could get --we could apply and we are applying for projects for that. I also wanted to mention, and I know that we talk about the overlook, that I'm going to be-- I've had some input from some businesses, and we're going to be having a meeting soon. And I would just like the opportunity to hear what their thoughts are that are downtown, if they think it's worthwhile, if there would be some support for it. And then as far as the roundabout goes, if that's looked at as a safety infrastructure project, that could be something that we could get paid for, too. So I -- that's why if we-- you know, there's no harm in keeping it now. Then maybe later we'll have more knowledge and we'll know whether to take it off. Thank you. MANAGER MILLER: And just for clarification, if the projects don't go forward, the money stays in the capital fund, and it's there, available for use, you know, for future projects. DIRECTOR POCK: All right. Now I made it to my questions slide. So that's it. Congratulations, you've survived your last -- MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. DIRECTOR POCK: -- tentative budget, Council. MAYOR DICKEY: : All right. Do we have any speaker cards on the budget? Any questions? More discussion? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Good work. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. The motion is on 96. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: So would you move to approve resolution 2022-18; is that it? MAYOR DICKEY: Yep. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Okay. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Second. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. All in favor, please say aye. TOWN COUNCIL: Aye—in unison. Page 27 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 28 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Thanks a lot. Thanks for all your work. Next item, Grady. MANAGER MILLER: Thank you, Mayor. Mayor and Council, Development Services Director John Wesley is going to be giving a staff presentation on considerations regarding amendments to the group home regulations. With that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Wesley. MAYOR DICKEY: I just want to remind you two, this was the hearing so I don't have to start the hearing again because we continued it. But then when we're done and we have the public input again, we will close the hearing and then move on. Thanks. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Okay. Mayor and Council, good evening. I'll try to move through this quickly because we have discussed quite a bit of this before. But I'll give you an update on where we are and some of the questions that you still had from our last meeting. So again, the planning zoning commission, after extensive review, did make a recommendation to the Town Council with regard to amendments to our group home regulations. You hold a hearing and begin that hearing on April the 5th. At that meeting you were able to give staff some direction on quite a number of the items. I think we had 16, 17 items on the list, and 11 or 12 of them you were able to give us direction on. So we were able to amend the ordinance based on that direction -- that amended ordinance with a strikethrough, so you can see those differences was in the packet. So if there were anything we got incorrect from that previous discussion, please let me know. But I went back and relistened to the discussion, so hopefully we got it all correct there. So what I found after that was that there were five items that the Council wanted to discuss further and have a little bit further information on. Those are listed on this page. And we'll discuss each one individually as we go forward here. So I've ordered these in what I think may be the easier ones to the harder ones. But I know they're all hard ones. So we'll go with this order that I have. So what I'm going to have to do is the unannounced inspections. Section 15, 5.13(b). There's some items. So that would be part of the registration. Number 2 on that list includes a statement that the applicant would agree to allow town officials to enter the premises on unannounced inspections to inspect for land use violations, including the Page 28 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 29 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING number of occupants. This type of inspection is not required for any other land use that we do. And so we find that a little bit difficult. I reviewed a number of other jurisdictions for their ordinances to see if anybody else is requiring this. The closest I found was at Apache Junction. Ordinance does include an option for an annual inspection, but don't know that they do that on a regular basis, and it wasn't an unannounced inspection. It was just to check against a checklist from the state. And then Tempe does do an annual fire inspection. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. So we do a fire inspection, right? DIRECTOR WESLEY: Right, annual fire inspection. MAYOR DICKEY: Our-- we do that. And does not include the option for an annual inspection. The state can do unannounced annual -- any inspection, correct? DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. That's my understanding. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. And they are the licensing body? DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. With the Towns, that is really just a registration of that license. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Just want to put a little finer point on it. Only the state can do that, correct? DIRECTOR WESLEY: Only the state can do the unannounced inspection, yes. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Thank you. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Any other discussion or comment with that one? If not, we can-- MAYOR DICKEY: I do just have a question about the process. So as far as what you already wrote up, did you -- like, let me get to the point where we're actually amending it or not amending it and passing something. Would this be something that would have to be removed? Is that in the ordinance right now? DIRECTOR WESLEY: They are -- no. What is in your packet is an ordinance that it just includes the changes from the last meeting. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. DIRECTOR WESLEY: But I think if you're -- this is a distinct sentence in that section. So it'd be very easy for the Council to say, you know, we approve the ordinance with the deletion of that sentence, if that's what you want to do. Or you don't, if you want to keep Page 29 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 30 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING it. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. And Aaron -- DIRECTOR WESLEY: Something to be very easily-- MAYOR DICKEY: Aaron is nodding, so. DIRECTOR WESLEY: -- moved forward this evening unless we, you know, really change things around a lot. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. DIRECTOR WESLEY: But I'll just come back at handling these, each one in the motion. MAYOR DICKEY: Got it, thanks. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Okay. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh? ATTORNEY ARNSON: Mayor, Council, I was just going to add that it may well be that after we discuss whatever number of changes the Council wishes to see or needs to take place, we might take a couple of minutes to just make sure that our strikethroughs all look good and then reconvene for the Council to hopefully adopt the ordinance. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yep. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Item two on the list was insurance. So again, Section 5.13(b), listing the items to be provided. Registration number 5 on the list, I won't read the whole thing this time, but it requires the amounts of liability insurance and the waiver of subrogation for the Town. As we've discussed this in the past, we've pointed out that, you know, it could be necessary for the Town to receive this to make sure these businesses are being run properly and then, if so, are these amounts appropriate and is the waiver necessary. So some of the previous discussion, it was pointed out from some of the public that Prescott, Phoenix, and Mesa have insurance requirements. In investigating those, it was discovered that was based on their ordinances when they were licensing structured sober- living homes and applied just to those. And that was prior to the state passing their legislation in 2019. And the jurisdictions of the provisions sunset based on the state legislation or they've actually repealed them. So they don't have those requirements actively in their ordinances today. As I looked through the other ordinances, I did not see Page 30 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 31 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING any within their group home, assisted living provisions that any were requiring insurance. We also have a concern that if we had this, if it would actually be enforced or not. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Any further discussion? Just to be clear, any city that had it before the state law changed has either repealed it or sunset it? DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Separation distance. Section 5.13(a) lists the basic requirements for homes, and that includes a separation distance as recommended by the PNC (ph.). They put in a half mile or 2,640 feet. This is -- distance is measured, straight line, property to property. The overall goal of the code is to allow for these homes, but not create an overconcentration. And so that's what we're looking for, is what distance would achieve that goal. Currently in our existing ordinance that's in effect today, our separation distance is 1,200 feet. In the jurisdictions that I looked at, the greatest distance separation that I found was 1,320, or a quarter mile. You can see the communities that have that. Next is the number of jurisdictions, similar to Fountain Hills, that have the 1,200. And then some that were smaller, Oro Valley, Prescott, Cave Creek. And then a couple that had no separation requirements in Flagstaff and Sedona that I could find. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Just want to emphasize. So of all the jurisdictions you looked at, 1,320 was the most; is that correct? DIRECTOR WESLEY: That's the greatest distance I could find in any Arizona jurisdiction. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Thank you. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Any other questions or comments with that? (Indiscernible) another slide on-- I guess I do have one more slide. And so again,just some of the things we've looked at before. We looked at where we change 100 block designation in town. It's approximately over 600 to 700 feet. We did a review of all the block lengths in town, measured every block length, then divided that by the number of blocks and came up with an average length of 560 feet, approximately. So if you use those as kind of some guides for separation, I think that might be helpful. There's been some concern about some of the environmental impacts you get from Page 31 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 32 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING some -- the way people have experienced some of these homes. Some of those environmental impacts could be addressed by addressing those specific codes rather than addressing it this way. And then at the last meeting, there was some talk about -- well, the current distance is 1,200. PNC had recommended the 2,460. Maybe we cut that in half. So I'll just provide that number as another point of reference. 1,830 would be that number if Council wanted to go that way. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: I just want to, I think, emphasize based upon my knowledge of this that 1,320 is the most for any jurisdiction. DIRECTOR WESLEY: That's the most I've found. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: And this, it says 1,830. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: And I know some people have said, go to court, don't worry about it. But I think this may be a red flag. So I think we have to be careful. MAYOR DICKEY: Just to make it clear. The distance is between property lines? DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. Property line to property line is where we do it. MAYOR DICKEY: So, you know, we were discussing the canyon aspect and such. And this would stop anything from being, like, back to back or anything like that. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Yeah, that's correct. MAYOR DICKEY: There would be -- DIRECTOR WESLEY: Because it's a-- MAYOR DICKEY: -- definitely be buffers. DIRECTOR WESLEY: -- that circle around. So most canyons aren't that way-- MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, yeah. Like -- DIRECTOR WESLEY: -- and if they were, then it probably would take care of it. It's just that the contrast is in Prescott, where they do measure theirs along the street. And by doing that, you could have something back to back because they can go around the block and be there. So that's not what we're talking about. That's not the way it is today. Moving on. The next item is the number of residents. Section 1.12, the zoning ordinance provides definitions. Here in this section, we are amending what we've -- it used to be four in terms of having a group home designation -- definition and change it to Page 32 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 33 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING community residences. And then subdividing that into two types, family residences and traditional -- transitional residences, excuse me. The recommendation from the PNC is that the family residences would be a maximum of eight, including staff, and that the transitional would be six, including staff. Currently, our ordinance is ten not including staff So all of the existing homes out there have that potential to be that size. Get us a look at the other jurisdictions. Found -- excuse me. Found one or two cities here where I did not see any cap to the number. Prescott has 12. You can see the number there of ten, excluding staff. And then a few of ten, including staff. And there are three jurisdictions that do set a limit at five. All those are caveat with Gilbert. Both Chandler and Tempe do set theirs at five. They do have their waiver procedures that can allow for more than that, but that's what their standard is. Gilbert is five, a limit when it is not licensed to the state. But if they are licensed to the state, then it can go up to 10. Any questions on that one? MAYOR DICKEY: I'm more comfortable seeing that there's a couple with six. And then as long as transitional can be treated differently from what we called more permanent, then the eight and the six seems like something that would be totally allowable. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Yes, Mayor. As we have looked at that and thought about that, when we're talking about the transitional homes, those are the people staying there typically for a shorter period of time. So there's more turnover. And so there's maybe a little bit more impact on the neighborhood, less stability for the neighborhood, so forth with the transitional. So I think there is justification there for some consideration of a difference. So the last item, then, would be waivers. The terminology here has been a bit confusing and so tried to address that by just calling it a waiver. There might be some other terms to use, modification or adjustment. We believe it is important to have that option spelled out in the code for a waiver or a deviation,just like we do variances for other parts of the code, so we can consider unique situations and address them specifically. The ordinance, as provided to the Planning and Zoning Commission, did include a section on those. There's some concerns about how that was worded, how it might be implemented. And so they took that provision out of the ordinance that was recommended to you. Page 33 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 34 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING As I've looked at, again, the other codes, I found that most jurisdictions do provide for some type of waiver. And so we would suggest that we put something back in, but with some changes from what went to the PNC. We're suggesting some kind of waiver committee. This is one option that's on here. Town manager, (indiscernible) service director, member of one of our boards. We could change that in any number of ways. One staff person and two board members could be another way that could be done. Another citizen might be appointed. But we think something like a three-member board of some kind so it's not just one person, but we don't want to get unwieldy by having too many. So a three-person. And then there's the potential, if we wanted to, to have an appeal from there. It doesn't have to have one. But put that out there as a possibility. And then compared to what we provided to the Planning and Zoning Commission, beefed up the language a little bit in terms of the standards, to make it clear that you can't just come in and say I want it because I want it. We need real information and documentation to justify that these people we look at and review in order to grant a waiver to the standards. MAYOR DICKEY: The list there, the bullets is going to depend on what they were asking-- DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. Right. Because something might not fly. MAYOR DICKEY: -- what the waiver is for, but having it defined as much as possible, and I think having the three-person committee available -- we talked a little bit about that in the past. Do you have anything to --thank you, David. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I personally would like to see the town manager dropped from this process. I believe it should be the Development Service director, a representative from the Board of Adjustments, and a representative for Planning &Zoning, since they have intimate knowledge of planning and zoning in the Town. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. So that would be still three people. So that's good. And then probably the appeal to Town Council might not be necessary because there's going to be a natural progression to this, anyway. So we'd have the Board of Appeals chair, P&Z chair. Does it have to be chair? Kind of makes sense, but I guess it doesn't have to be. And then development director, and then that would be it. And then afterwards, Page 34 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 35 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING whichever way it went, then they would -- then they're -- where would they go after that? They could either just accept it -- I mean, if it was -- COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: -- accepted, then that would be the end of it, right? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Right. If the combination were granted, that would be the end. And I suppose the language could be really whatever we want it to be for that group of three, but either the chair, or his or her designee, or simply a member. However we want to do it. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: So then if the chair is not available, you're not bound, you know, to have to do it by-- MAYOR DICKEY: Alan? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: If an individual were to buy a home, and get State certification, but they said, you know, we can't get the return on investment we need. We need to allow more people. Is that appealable for a waiver? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: So the simple answer is yes. If they feel like they need more than -- whether it's the eight or the six, depending on which type of home it is -- yes, they can request a waiver to that. But they would need more justification than well, this just isn't working out for us financially. They have to -- again, there's -- I'll just summarize it here, but there's the five criteria that would be looked at carefully by the three-member committee, to ensure they really have a justification, and not just a desire -- COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Just a financial justification. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: -- financial -- right. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Thank you. COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: And I thought we were going to reconsider the appeal to the Town Council, maybe delete that. I mean Aaron, do we need to include the appeal to judicial type? Do we name that? Or just don't do anything, or -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah. I mean, we certainly could. But a denial of an accommodation would be something that a person could take for a judicial remedy anyway. Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: And to Alan's point, too, as far as somebody buying a house, and Page 35 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 36 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING starting something new, they would know these rules were in place, which brings up the idea of grandfathering, and-- do we have -- are we going to talk about that? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Mayor, I did not include that in the presentation. It was in the staff report, since it wasn't actually an ordinance proposal at the time. So it's not here. So there are specific provisions in the ordinance that this would fall under on how we treat any time we change a code, and have a legally approved use going on, or a property, and we allow it to continue as long as it doesn't change within certain parameters. So that's would we had to anticipate here. There have been some questions about well, what if somebody owns a home, a group home of some kind, and then they're tired of it so they sell that to somebody else. And then the new operator comes in. That new operator is going to need to get a new license. And when they get a new license, they have to register that license. And so that new license would need to then follow the new code. And so as we've talked about that a little bit, it may be helpful to add a paragraph in the code, to make sure that's clear. And we can sure do that. It's one of the things that we can get back to Council, if you want to do that here. As the attorney talked about, if we take a break, we can get that language put together-- MAYOR DICKEY: And I would also add that -- so you called this in the past, and we talked about places where the zoning got changed around them. It's called legal nonconforming use. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: And just to point out, it's not legal to reduce those uses for people that are there already. So we kind of solved a little bit about that, and we talked about parking, and some of these other items over the years, where they had a certain kind of zoning. So we changed the zoning, but we can't change the value or the use of the property, as long as it's that same person, and they don't change it a lot. So this would just be something that we already have in place for a town? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. David? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just as a point of clarification, and the town attorney can jump in, I've received numerous emails from residents who are like, don't worry about getting sued. You know, pass it, let's see what Page 36 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 37 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING happens down the road. I think as a point of clarification, it's important to note that someone who seeks remedy or a waiver, first has to come to the Town and request the waiver, and then be denied the waiver in order for them to legally go into court and take it from there. So I think it's important to note that you can't skip that process -- if I'm talking out of turn, Aaron -- you can't skip that process of coming to the Town for a waiver and go directly to court, because if you go to court, the first thing the court's going to ask is did you seek a remedy within the Town. And -- they're not going to ask that? ATTORNEY ARNSON: No, absolutely. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Oh, you're shaking your head no. ATTORNEY ARNSON: No, that's going to be the first -- Mayor and Council, that will be the first thing they say is, you know, if the Town finds itself in that situation, the defense is well, we don't know whether they would have gotten an accommodation or not because they never asked. Right? And so the court is going to send that back to work through the administrative process. It's called exhaustion of administrative remedies, and you stated that very well. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Okay. Just for everybody out there, we can't just jump right to well, I'm going to sue. You first have to seek a remedy within the Town, then if you don't like what you hear, then you can escalate it from there. But there's no jumping the system. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: And Mayor and Councilmember, I'm glad you brought that up,because that is one of the main reasons to have this in the code, because if we don't have it in the code, then they are jumping straight to the courts. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: In addition, under Section B, Application Requirements, number 8, it says "the applicant shall attest that they will provide all evidence permissible by code and authority, having jurisdiction necessary in response to a code enforcement inquiry". And I would like to ask that in particular, occupancy logs be omitted because we don't require occupancy logs, and I don't think we're allowed that information. Correct, Aaron? ATTORNEY ARNSON: So Mayor and Council, I want to make sure that I am looking at the right section. It looks like it's page 5. Page 37 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 38 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Yep. ARNSON: Okay, we're talking about Section 3? Okay. 8, "the applicant shall" -- I see where you are. I see where you are. And you take --Councilwoman, you take issue with the language, in particular occupancy logs? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Urn-hum. ARNSON: Yeah. I will say that leaving it or removing it probably doesn't make a material difference, so I'd be fine with removing that last phrase, because we're still requiring an attestation that the applicant will provide all evidence permissible-- COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Hm. ATTORNEY ARNSON: -- that we can get ahold of. So there's not necessarily a reason to make anything specific unless John sees a different basis for it. DIRECTOR WESLEY: You're fine either way. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Okay. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Because I agree, that first phrase covers it. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Um-hum. DIRECTOR WESLEY: I thought we weren't allowed, you know, the last time we hadn't talked about it. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Oh. That may well be. I've lost track of where we've -- in part of where we've been. So thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: I'm glad you brought up code enforcement, because that is still something that you can do with anything going on in town, where our code enforcement can go. If it's litter or noise or call MCSO, if there's something else going on that needs attention. So since the State is the licensing body, and they're the ones that can do inspections, and they require the license, they can -- so basically, they're in charge of some of the enforcement that, I think, concerns some people. And then there are some things that we can do, and which we're doing now with these changes in our ordinance that are within the law. I wanted to also mention that some of the discussion we heard, and when-- David, when you were just mentioning going and getting sued and such, that we are part of a risk pool, we are, and risk pools we have the deductible and such, but it's not the same as any-- I mean it is the same. Like, you have health insurance, you have all kinds of insurance, and then there's all kinds of stipulations to that if you do Page 38 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 39 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING something. If you enact something that's just blatantly not lawful, then the risk pool isn't going to necessarily defend you, or -- depending on who's doing charges against you. So it's just not as simple as saying it couldn't be any more than $10,000. And then some cases, if it's a land use issue, there's a cap of$1 million. So if it was more than $1 million-- so it's as simple and cut and dry as it might seem when you just kind of look stuff up, which I can understand doing, and we appreciate that because the information that we got from folks had us looking into things a little bit more, and feeling like we have a lot more clarity about all this. So I want to thank you for that. Should I go with-- MANAGER MILLER: Mayor, again? MAYOR DICKEY: Oh. Go ahead. MANAGER MILLER: No, I just wanted to thank you for clarifying those issues, and the other point. I know, Aaron, you talked about in the past, as far as if we were to lose a suit, a lot of times the biggest bill in such a thing is attorneys' fees, and those aren't typically reimbursed in that kind of scenario by the risk pool. You want to clarify? ATTORNEYARNSON: They may be, they may not, depending on how the pool kind of interprets the policy. Right? So I just-- to the Mayor's point, and to your question, Councilman, without getting into the details, I can't get into them, but I just recently resolved a case for another municipal client. And that one happened to be one where the pool defended under, they call it under a reservation of rights, which means that they later determine that there was something amiss for which they shouldn't have provided coverage, that there will be sort of an indemnity obligation, right? And the pool in this instance very well may, and I believe will exercise that right. So to both of your points, it's not as straightforward. Insurance issues never are, as I think anyone who's ever tried to use insurance can appreciate. MAYOR DICKEY: Do we want to go to call the public now? Are y'all ready for that? Okay. I think we'll do that. And then -- well, I don't close the hearing until after they speak, right? Okay. So if we have call to the public, and then we can close the hearing and vote. Speaker cards? CLERK KLEIN: First one is Marianne Sampson. MARIANNE SAMPSON: Thank you everyone for giving me a chance to speak tonight. I must admit public speaking is not for me, and standing before you takes me completely Page 39 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 40 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING out of my comfort zone. But this is so important, that I felt that everyone needed to hear what I have to say. Most people don't believe in love at first sight. But I know it exists because I experienced it four times in my life. When I met my husband, when I first laid eyes on my two children, and the fourth time when I crossed a mountain range from Scottsdale into Fountain Hills. The beauty of this town totally took my breath away. We bought a house here, and after living in more locations than I can count, I felt that I finally had come home. That was 25 years ago. Due to job opportunities elsewhere, we had to leave a few times. But we held onto our home because we knew if we worked hard, and saved our pennies, we would one day return. That day finally happened two months ago when we retired. After 15 years in New York, we were so excited to finally come back. But to our disappointment, it feels so different now. And I'm so, so sad to say that our beautiful house no longer feels like home. A home to me is a place where you feel totally at ease, where you feel comfortable, and where you feel safe. But due to lack of regulation for commercial businesses operating in residential neighborhoods, I no longer have any of those feelings. See, I happen to live right next door to one of these rehab "homes". "Homes" in quotes because they don't even come close to resembling a home. Next door to me is a revolving door of different men all the time, spending their time watching my coming and going and every move, and it's very unnerving. I can no longer enjoy sitting outside without being watched and pestered with smoke and vaping from ten grown men next door to me. And let's say I want to sell my home and move. Who would want to buy it? Who would want to live in a commercial zone, because that is what my neighborhood has become. So I beg you, when you vote, please consider how it is living in my shoes next to one of these businesses. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] CLERK KLEIN: Ron Sampson. RON SAMPSON: Dear Madam Mayor. Fellow Councilmembers. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you our perspective on what my wife Maryanne and I consider to be a defining issue for our town and its residents. My comments today follow an email letter that we sent to each of you on April 6th after attending last month's Town Council meeting. We'd like to acknowledge and thank yourself, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Page 40 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 41 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Councilmember Grzybowski, for your thoughtful replies and your feedback, and I look forward to hearing perspectives from the rest of you. As my wife just described to you, living once again here in Fountain Hills now feels very different. Next door, vans with smoke-tinted windows arrive and depart frequently, almost clandestinely, multiple times a day. Each evening, we see several men, often not the same, out on the deck overlooking our house. Seeing them makes me uncomfortable. I can't imagine how it makes my wife and daughter feel. We now live next door, as she said, to one of those sober living homes. A commercial, for-profit business, and no longer a residential neighborhood. And because drug and alcohol abuse are linked with higher probability to commit a crime, quite frankly, we don't feel safe in our home. When I speak of recovering addicts, I recognize the overwhelming majority of these men are good people who have had a bad break. And we fully support the concept of providing them an opportunity to get their life back on track. I also know that statistically, and with the constant turnover next door, we are now at a substantially higher risk of encountering someone who is going to commit a crime against us. So it is critically important to us that you, the town leadership, move forward to regulate these businesses, beginning with the adoption of Ordinance 2101. I cannot stress enough how important it is that the capacity limits proposed by Planning and Zoning are adopted as part of this ordinance. With no grandfather clause associated with this limit for these detox rehab center pop-ups. And couple that with the ability to inspect them, without notice, as an aid for law enforcement. Simply allowing these commercial businesses to operate in our residential neighborhoods is already more than a reasonable accommodation. Because of the increased crime risk associated with recovering drug and alcohol addicts, it also is essential that these businesses carry additional liability insurance. It's not a typical business. Please adopt the proposal put forward by Planning and Zoning. Madam Mayor, Councilmembers, it is imperative that you come together and correct this situation by enacting Ordinance 2101, and approving a version that restores the essence of our community. Thank you for listening. [APPLAUSE] MAYOR DICKEY: Please. Please refrain from applause. I'm asking you,please. Next? Page 41 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 42 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING CLERK KLEIN: Natalie Marston-Salem. MARSTON-SALEM: Good evening Mayor, Council, and staff. I will start by introducing myself again for those who may not remember. My name is Natalie Marston-Salem. My husband, John Salem, and I are the owners of Fountain Hills Recovery. At last month's Council meeting, I spoke about how our facility came to fruition because of the loss of my father, Maurice, a dedicated fire captain for nearly 30 years. Tonight I would like to take the time to address the rumors, gossip, and misconceptions, specifically about our facility, and our two sober living homes within the Town. We first opened and began serving our clients in late 2016. For many years, a lot of you probably didn't even know we existed in Fountain Hills because of the fact that the issues being raised are simply not accurate. Our two sober living homes are both licensed by the Arizona Department of Health, as well as AZRHA, the Arizona Recovery Housing Association. Our inpatient and outpatient facilities are also licensed by the Arizona Department of Health, and accredited by the Joint Commission, an organization that accredits health care organizations and programs, holding them to the highest standard of care. This is not a requirement, but something we feel is a necessity in order to provide the highest level of quality care for our clients. I would like to stress that our homes are not detox homes, as I have frequently seen them referred to on community social media pages. There are no detox services being offered or provided to clients. In order to be residents in our homes, clients are currently receiving therapeutic services daily in our clinical program at our facility overlooking the fountain. Our homes are staffed 24/7, and clients do not have access to their cell phones, nor do they have access to come and go in their personal vehicles. They are all in the care of our well-trained staff at all times. Our sober homes have not been the subject of any identifiable or substantiated criminal concerns. There have been no arrests, no property crimes, no graffiti, no destruction on public property, no noise ordinance complaints, no drug arrests, no public intoxication incidents, and no petty crimes associated with the sober living homes operated by Fountain Hills Recovery. In fact, there has not been any police interactions or code enforcement issues relating to such homes. Furthermore, none of our homes have been shut down by the State agency, as claimed by one member of the community. Page 42 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 43 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING The claims from residents that drug paraphernalia found in the Town belongs to our clients is absolutely false and unsubstantiated. Sadly, these are outright lies and falsehoods aimed at shedding a negative light on addiction treatment, sober living homes, and specifically our facility. I find it very disheartening and sad that there are those in this community to go out of their way to rally against a facility that has done nothing but good for the community and changed people's lives -- actually saved people's lives. I want to make it abundantly clear that this is not just a business to us. We are passionate about what we do, and how we are able to help others change their lives and overcome their addiction. My husband and I are both at the facility every single day overseeing the quality of care our clients receive, and always looking for ways to improve and serve our clients to the best of our ability. I hope and pray for those of you who have been so openly against individuals seeking treatment in sober living homes in Fountain Hills, that you never have to experience having a loved on struggle with addiction. MAYOR DICKEY: If you please -- MARSTON-SALEM: I am hopeful and optimistic these types of open conversations will allow us to have an open mind and some compassion to help those who are in need. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. MARSTON-SALEM: Thank you. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Ma'am, excuse me. What town do you and your husband resign in? MARSTON-SALEM: I'm sorry? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: What town does (sic) you and your husband reside in? MARSTON-SALEM: We live in Scottsdale on 130th and Shea. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Lori Troller. TROLLER: Councilmen. Mayor. In front of you, there's a application from the State for a sober home. And that came from the Arizona State website. Highlighted for you in there is the fact that random alien individuals merely traveling through the United States can apply for a sober home. In case you're ignoring the fact that the United States borders are open, and that millions of illegals don't disintegrate when they walk into the Page 43 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 44 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING country, sober homes is one of the methods used to integrate illegals into the United States. So how can that be? And so let's look at the form. The only information required of an individual to apply for a sober home is their name, their physical and email address, and a phone number. That's it. The only form of identification required to apply for a sober home ranges from a driver's license to merely an I-94 form, which states an individual is traveling through the United States. And it's worth mentioning that up to 100 people can apply on one I-94 form. As an illegal who can't fill out this form, that's addressed in here, too. There's a section for somebody else to fill it out for them. So there you have it. Those are the State requirements to apply for sober home ownership in Arizona. A name, address, a phone number, and an email address. Oh, also, and a check to cover the licensing fee, which with little explanation can be waived, let alone it's not required for homes under five. So if keeping recovering people safe, and local residents supportive, wasn't enough reason for a strong ordinance that will pass an FDA inspection, I just gave you another one. Include insurance. Conversations with Planning and Zoning Commission, who's been at this for 21 years in Prescott, advises the single largest reason they were able to properly distribute a healthy number of sober homes in their town was the fact that they required insurance. Florida also has a tremendous problem, and insurance requirements is how they eliminated improper sober operations. So I'm going to change topics. Regarding verbiage of reasonable accommodation in the ordinance, a sober home applicant seeks a reasonable accommodation under FHA and ADA, not a waiver. The legal terminology for exceptions to any legal ordinance is a reasonable accommodation. FHA, ADA, FDA, even our schools refer to exceptions as reasonable accommodations. There's no ethical reason to change the verbiage. And finally, when you make your changes to the zoning ordinance, could you please explain to the townspeople how each of your decisions benefit the townspeople. And that's it. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Liz Gildersleeve. GILDERSLEEVE: Good evening. Once again, I am here tonight to ask those of you who have the privilege of sitting on this council to do the right thing by the vast majority of your neighbors, and approve the very reasonable Planning and Zoning Page 44 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 45 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING recommendations as written, not watered down, for sober homes in our community. Unfortunately, it now appears that Councilmembers Scharnow and Magazine, in particular, hold those of us who've been vocal about stronger regulations for sober homes with much disdain and contempt. My apologies to both of you for taking an active interest in local issues that directly impact our homes and neighborhoods. Given Mr. Magazine's own recent words several weeks ago, where he stated that he "goes 180 degrees in the opposite direction" when citizens get too, as he put it "demanding", and Mr. Scharnow's own words in last week's Times'unusually lengthy opinion piece, as well as his own involvement as the new director-- I assume it's a paid position-- for the Drug Coalition, not to mention his coalition possibly having received financial donations from the sober home and detox industries, how can the public be assured that Mr. Sharnow's and Mr. Magazine's decisions will be objective tonight? As I've said in the past, this is the most important and impactful issue right now for our town. Hence, the reason why you hear from many of us meeting after meeting. And I hope that I will leave tonight being completely surprised, and that each of you will do the right thing by putting residents first, and voting for the very reasonable P&Z recommendations, several of which are already in place today in cities around us. And something that is not often mentioned, the P&Z recommendations would also protect the vulnerable residents living in the sober homes. For example, with a smaller occupancy limit of five residents, longer distances between homes for better rehabilitation, and even more robust liability insurance requirements should anything tragic happen in a sober home or neighborhood -- and rest assured, it's bound to happen. If you are unable, tonight, to advocate aggressively for Fountain Hills residents and neighborhoods, then our local elections for a new mayor and new councilmembers cannot come soon enough. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] MAYOR DICKEY: If you want me to recess, and then we'll go on and on,please don't applaud. It's in the rules. It's ethics. Let's just be polite. Don't applaud. Give everybody a chance to have their say. Or I'll just recess, and we'll just start again in a half-hour. Please stop. CLERK KLEIN: Rita Brown. Page 45 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 46 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING BROWN: Good evening. Thank you for allowing me my opportunity to diatribe at you. I had to leave my glass house high up on the hill to address the invasion of a giant industry into my single family neighborhood. In the recent opinion piece in The Fountain Hills Times, words were used that were intended to shame me into silence, words such as bias, fear,paranoia, anger. But here's the thing: Every time I remain silent, I lose. It's clear members of my town Council believe I'm too biased and paranoid to remember that addicts have families. I must be caring of addicts' families after they have abandoned their own families. But I too have a family. And I choose to protect them first. I made the decision to live in a single family area as part of my plan for caring. While some council members may believe the fairy tale that people in recovery actually choose to go to recovery, the fact is that many are there against their wills. When the judge said,jail or rehab, they opted for a resort lifestyle over jail. Most are not from our town. Many are not even from our state. And some have arranged for drug drops before showing up. Those drug drops increase the presence of drug dealers on my street. For a second time, I interrupted a drug drop at the drug house on Nicklaus Drive. I went to the Sheriffs office and reported it. I've requested increased presence of the Sheriff on my street in the hours just before sundown, but that's just my paranoia showing again. The drug industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry. A single family neighborhood is no place for that billion-dollar industry. Our town lawyer is fearful we'll be sued. The federal government requires only that reasonable accommodation be made. As the taxpayer in this town, I consider it more than reasonable accommodation to allow members of that billion-dollar industry into a single family neighborhood. Just as we tightly regulate height, width, locks, every minute detail for swimming pool fences on private property, we need to have very stringent regulations for our local drug industry. Here's an inconvenient fact: Persons who complete an inpatient rehab program are not significantly more or less likely to succeed at staying clean than their intensive outpatient program counterparts. In other words, it is the intention of the addict that determines treatment outcome. Nothing I do -- my bias, paranoia, fear, and anger have no bearing on the outcome of the treatment. How many AA meetings are we hosting in the community center, in the library, and in the Town Hall? Thank you. Page 46 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 47 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Darla Jacobs. JACOBS: You're tough people to follow. And I think the first two people said it all. And a lot of replication. I understand that a lot of other people have sent several emails to some of the people in this room, and to no avail. After seeing this slide presentation and the proposal online, I realize that my concerns and the concerns of others have fallen on deaf ears. I also have to admit that the Town's building developments and ordinances are being influenced by the political ideology of many of the voting members before me. The key elements of protection for Fountain Hills' residents and for sober home living residents have been gutted from the Planning and Zoning Commission's ordinance. The P&Z ordinance strictly adhered to the State's land use perspective, which are the very land use governances that reside with our municipality. They may not be common to other towns, but they are in line with State governances. The P&Z effort also took the better part of a year with the assistance of a retired attorney and concerned residences to put those ordinances together. I'm speaking here tonight because I believe that the proposed ordinance changes lower the bar on the high standards Fountain Hills' residents expect from their elected officials, and raise the potential for bad actors looking to make large profits from high fees and Fountain Hills' weak ordinances. The topic I have chosen to discuss is the removal of the general liability insurance clause, which is one of four major changes to the Planning and Zoning ordinance. First, the State of Arizona does not require liability insurance. The State also does not prohibit municipalities from requiring it. It's the Town's choice, and it is in line with land-use governances. The two major operators of several sober living in Fountain Hills are for- profit businesses and should be treated as such. It's irresponsible for the governing body of our town not to require liability insurance for a business that has the potential for enormous risk. The risk is such that insurance companies specifically do not cover sober living homes under their standard homeowner or landlord policies. Standard homeowner coverage is not designed for the unique exposures of a recovery residence. And some states make it mandatory to have this insurance due to the litigious exposure. Are we so blind that we do not see the risks to sober living home residents and others? In addition, quoting Michael Scharnow's comments recently in The Fountain Hills Times, the municipal risk pool provided with a $10,000 deductible is much more complicated than Page 47 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 48 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING what's portrayed. It's not an automatic slam dunk. Now I'm really concerned. The town may not even have a backup insurance source. At approximately$20,000 or more for a month's stay in a sober living home, operators can well afford to pay for general liability insurance. They may not like it, but it should be the cost of doing business in Fountain Hills, especially when it provides protection for their vulnerable residents and themselves. Do what's right. Listen to your Planning & Commission, and put the general liability insurance clause back in the ordinance, perhaps without the subrogation, if necessary. MAYOR DICKEY: Richard Rutkowski. RUTKOWSKI: Mayor and Council, as many of you know, I'm a 20-plus-year resident of Fountain Hills. My comments are directed in part specifically to the Ordinance 22-01 regarding what is now being termed "community residences", which I, and I suspect many of those who are paying attention, consider a creative euphemism for what are more commonly referred to as sober homes. My comments also apply to a broader perspective of town government. First, a specific comment about Ordinance 22-01, the Planning and Zoning Commission has addressed this issue in a responsible, comprehensive manner, and in a way that recognizes the views and concerns of the residents of Fountain Hills, that it and you are obligated to represent and serve. The large numbers of attendees at many past meetings and tonight make the viewpoint of the Town's residents very clear. It is clear to me that a few of you on the Council, and we know who you are, actually listened to what the residents of Fountain Hills want and what we do not want. Sadly, the rest of you, and we know who you are, prefer to follow another agenda, and fail to listen to what the residents want, and what we do not want. Now, the broader perspective, we should have a representative government, a government that is responsive, responsible, and accountable. We should not have to fight a town government on so many issues, whether it be the lagoon, the primary property tax, daybreak, or this current issue of sober homes, community residences, whatever the title. I'll remind you that all those past ill-advised attempts by Council failed. And a few of them failed with a voter turnout that shattered Maricopa County records for voter turnout in a municipal election. We should not have to fight. But we did it before, and we can do it again. The point for tonight is that you have the opportunity to listen, to do what is Page 48 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 49 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING right, to do what the people want, to enact what P&Z has proposed, after listening to the people. You have that opportunity; I encourage you to please take advantage of it. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Cathi Marx. MARX: Thank you. Mayor Dickey, Council members, first, I just want to say, before I get formal, my heart breaks for this family who lives next door to the ten men, because I see them on their patios, with their shirts off, on their patio smoking. I can't imagine living next door with my daughter. It's also very different visiting a sober home during the day than living next door to one. I want to start with a sincere thank you to the P&Z Commission, who has taken the time to really listen to the residents regarding our concerns about the sober living homes in our residential communities. They understood the real world implications of what it's like to have a sober home, or two sober homes, or three sober homes in your immediate neighborhood. They understood when we brought in the drug waste, which I found and collected. And I resent the fact that it wasn't true, right, that we found near homes that prove that drug use was active. We explained our concerns for our families, children, grandchildren, pets, who may get exposed to the waste in our streets and front yards that may still have drug residue, or worse, fentanyl residue. They understood when we explained what it's like when there are fights between residents and the police are called in the middle of the night, or screams in the early morning because someone is still detoxing and is having a bad night and the ambulances are called. They understood when we explained that on holidays, ambulances are more common at these sober homes due to suicide attempts. Yes, all this can happen in any home, but take each home and multiply the probability by eight or ten. Add the talking too late at the night on the back patios or the nonstop smoking that goes into your bedroom window. Not even mentioning the large Mercedes vans that go up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down our streets. Then the constant honking when they arrive to let people know it's time to come in and load up. Councilman Magazine said, he wanted to rebrand Fountain Hills as a wellness destination. Does that rebranding start now with possibly a detox facility on top of it? Here's my commercial: Heroin addict, meth addict, alcoholic, no problem, come to Fountain Hills, Arizona, detox for 90 days in our beautiful, small town in the hills above Scottsdale. After your Page 49 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 50 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING stay, then spend another 90 days in a luxury mansion nestled within a residential community, as you try to remain sober. Don't worry if you relapse; you only have to drive another ten minutes back to the detox facility to start over. I thought we wanted to be known for the new International Dark Sky Discovery Center. Who is going to want to Fountain Hills with their family for a vacation when we are known for our drug addicts and detox centers? I'll answer that question for you: no one. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Crystal Cavanaugh. CAVANAUGH: Good evening, Fountain Hills residents. Do not water down this ordinance from either fear of litigation or other motivations. But first, I do want to thank you, Mr. Scharnow, for your good works with the youth in the drug prevention coalition. No one here is against drug prevention programs. In fact, youth programs actually have a higher success rate. But the councilman tried to confuse the issue by leveraging his good works and mixing them with this local zoning ordinance that protects our community. He stated as fact that losing in litigation was guaranteed. Why so quick to roll over? Where is the leadership? If towns only follow what others have done, we end up with a cookie-cutter ordinance with no one taking a stand for actual people or locations. Everyone runs scared when a recovery consultant says the word "discrimination". Even Mr. Scharnow accuses community bias in his article. There have been varying court opinions, and some of these issues have not even been litigated; they've simply been negotiated and accepted. No one denies that there are drug problems here, but I challenge these so-called sober homes to give specifics on the actual number of Fountain Hills residents in them. I say almost all are from elsewhere. And there are many drug programs available across the valley. Approving the key component, such as reduced occupancy to six, increased distance, and commercial liability insurance are non-negotiable, in my opinion. And adding that grandfather clause to allow the higher occupancy levels to continue in the current rented, not purchased, homes does absolutely nothing to change the status quo, and it's a total cop-out. Decreasing occupancy by their yearly renewal should be required at a minimum. And why fight so hard against the insurance requirement? Legitimate organizations operating properly have no problem obtaining such insurance. If you pass an insufficient ordinance without the key protections, I certainly hope the people of Page 50 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 51 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Fountain Hills realize you do not have our best interests at heart. And you are not listening, once again. Some of you actually seem to have a disdain for the residents who stand up to speak. You think we don't understand the issues of addiction, that we think it's a character flaw or a simple matter of willpower. But in reality we do indeed understand, and as you said, we have all been touched by it. My very own brother hung himself after years in the cycle of addiction and in and out of treatment programs. Returning to substance abuse is a typical story. But the model requiring million-dollar homes in single family neighborhoods that house four times the average household is not about treatment; it is about money. And neighborhood residents should not have to pay the price. We are not discriminating against the recovery clients, but the residents of Fountain Hills would appreciate it if this Council would stop discriminating against us. CLERK KLEIN: Andy Bennett. BENNETT: Thank you all. Thank you for taking the time to allow me to speak this evening. This will be the fourth time I have come here to speak on behalf of the individuals receiving and seeking treatment for substance abuse in Fountain Hills. Addiction is a condition that carries a lot of baggage. It's very tough to recover from, and despite what the Prescott newspapers of 2017 would have you believe, there's a shortage of effective treatment for addiction. It's estimated that only 30 percent of drug treatment nationwide meets the minimum standard for care. The success rates are even lower and much harder to track. It's important, though, that we don't confuse the problem with the solution. I think most people can understand what the problem with addiction looks like: broken homes, death, incarceration, and institutionalization. Also in areas where there's high concentration of drug abuse, crime is a huge problem. We're blessed that that's not a problem in Fountain Hills. The solution for substance abuse is also well documented and well researched: therapy, psychiatry, and peer support. There's been a lot of talk about bad actors in the treatment industry as well. Well, there's bad actors in every industry and every institution worldwide, whether it's institutions such as schools or churches; we've all heard stories that have reverberated across the country. Bad actors do damage to well-intended individuals in all industries. The 2019 community views survey in Fountain Hills found that participants believed that drug and alcohol abuse was the top issue affecting youth in Page 51 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 52 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Fountain Hills, followed by anxiety and depression. This series of meetings feels largely in conflict with that poll, rather than a conversation around how to expand access to care, whether it's increasing the distance radius between homes or reducing the number of people that can reside in the homes. Nobody's talked about any flexibility in the newly proposed rules, such as we are going to restrict access in these locations, but increase access over here --there's absolutely none of that. Today's meeting is a continuation of the conversation on how to limit the access to treatment for drug addiction in the city of Fountain Hills and avoid litigation. Exactly how restrictive can we be? It's the same conversation that's been going on for the better part of a year. Lastly, because the City of Prescott is brought up so frequently in these meetings, I'd like to remind to everyone that the solution that was put into place to remedy the clustering of sober homes in Prescott are more lax than the zoning requirements already in place in Fountain Hills. Simultaneously, the State of Arizona has also started licensing and regulating sober living homes, which it has never done before. As I said in the last meeting, it feels like a solution in search of a problem. And it's my hope that the regulations on sober living stay as is. A couple off-topic comments, that I didn't write. MAYOR DICKEY: You're almost out of time here, sorry. BENNETT: Am I out of time? MAYOR DICKEY: Not, not yet, but almost. BENNETT: Okay. Liability insurance, everyone has it. If you want to advertise on Google, you have to have a liability insurance, so I think that you're going to see that's pretty common around. So if you guys require it, that's okay, but everyone has it in a sober living home. If you don't have it and you're operating in Fountain Hills, you can't operate in Fountain Hills. So --there's that. Thank you very much. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Mr. Bennett, where do you reside? BENNETT: I reside out of town,just like 90 percent of the other people who work here. CLERK KLEIN: Larry Meyers. MEYERS: Mayor, Council. Well, it's just about all been said, and I've been saying it since last year. But here's another three-minute diatribe. To explain something that is absolutely overlooked, and is absolutely pushed by the detoxification industry to confuse Page 52 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 53 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING the issue, what you're here to discuss tonight, this issue is about allowing a business or businesses to profiteer and bolster bottom lines at the expense of residential property owners,plain and simple. The Council, if you don't want to protect the residential property owners, you can ignore reality about this business or promote fallacies. So Councilman Scharnow was very excellent in pointing out all of the fallacies in his one- third-of-a-page opinion piece in the paper. Others have pointed it out. I'm not going to get into it. But I want to tell you my conversations with the State -- at the highest levels levels have told me that there are no sober homes in Fountain Hills. Okay? So let's get rid of that fallacy. These are residential detoxification facilities. I don't care what you heard; that's what the State says. While Councilman Scharnow now that we have problems here, I agree. He says we tend to have them at a lesser degree, and I say probably, because Fountain Hills is a great place. But I don't see the need for the Town to allow a business to take people who don't live here and expand to a point where --Councilman Scharnow brought up, he doesn't see them proliferating -- when I first spoke, there was one. As I speak, there may be six. That's a 500 percent increase in 15 months. I'd call that proliferation. And I'm going to point out that Mr. Bennett's business is in the business of growing this business. Check his website out. So now back to the real issue, land use. The Council continually hides behinds the State-- this comes from the State; the State is solely interested in the governance of the activity that occurs within the home from a clinical perspective. They have no desire or jurisdiction to address the use of a home for any purpose from a land-use perspective. All governances related to land use rest with the municipality. Thus, the word "preemption" gets thrown around a lot. The only real, valid use of the word "preemption" is that the State via the DHS inspects for functional use within the home. Local jurisdictions have not been preempted from land-use perspective, and while -- I would just like to finish so I can say, while I feel Councilman Scharnow's pain, because my son knows his family, I think that that's conflating the issue, and as I stated, I think the P&Z understood this, understood it best, and I'd like to see what they understood put into place. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Jane Bell. Page 53 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 54 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING BELL: Good evening, Council and Mayor. First, I want to thank the Mayor for taking my phone call. It's always good to talk to Ginny. I want to explain the information I used. Phoenix, I talked to Rachel Escalar(ph.). Page 5,paragraph 3, general liability required. Page 9, paragraph e, owner must maintain general liability insurance. Page 14, per the permit a law enforcement officer or agency to inspect Mesa's Ann Marie Fantasia. Page 5, license a-7 copy of operator's insurance policy. Page 8, g, liability insurance, one mill three two. Page 6, paragraph 6, inspection. Here is a stack of information that has taken us a year to put together. We sat and read case law up until midnight. Nobody has tried to give you any wrong information. If we did, it was not on purpose. Along with this stack of papers, we were lucky that had a Representative Kavanaugh that took us under right at the very beginning when we were trying to search out all of the different laws and where they've gone. Because of him, we met with their legal department, their code, their head of the DHS, and they really educated us. We are very fortunate, and we can contact him and get to their legal things to get the answers. Why all this information? Years ago, I was involved teaching drug education and savings kids' lives, before all of you were born, except maybe Magazine. [LAUGHTER] COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Jane, it's always pleasure. BELL: Remember the count of six in the house. It has gone to the Ninth Circuit Court. The U.S. Supreme Court, the Town may write any ordinance provisions necessary to protect the welfare, including the number of occupants, proving it does not over- discriminate. After talking to the Mayor, I realized we were on different roads, because these drug items didn't blow in. I hope you'll look at the Article 2, R9-12-210, the administration of the home. I gave you the State and I gave you papers out of the Phoenix ordinance that deals with that. Phoenix has 8 pages. I gave you the State to look at. We need people to be involved in our government -- three minutes you give is important, is democracy at work. We and the Council should be one team, wanting the same outcome. Please go back and look at that article on administrating the home. Be sure you have 24 hours management, they know CPR, and there's Narcon available in that home that can be given. You have to protect the addicts. The detox ordinance is coming next. I wonder where Fountain Hills is going to be. Page 54 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 55 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING We've had our property here for over 44 years. We love this town, but I am concerned about where it's going. Addicts can get well in a -- not a million-dollar home, or riding around in a Mercedes. We have to watch where we're going with it. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Representative Kavanagh. KAVANAGH: Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. State Representative John Kavanaugh, Fountain Hills. First, let me go on record as saying that I erroneously ascribed to staff at the last meeting that they had rewritten the ordinance that P&Z done. I had criticized them; however, I since realized that they were simply presenting alternatives to the thing, so that was not warranted, and I want to go on the record as saying that. However, I still do disagree with their recommendations, because I think they watered down an ordinance and lessen the protection that the people need. I spoke to the lawyers at the State capital, and they made it very clear to me that in areas of planning and zoning, the State has not, in the least, preempted the Town from doing regulation in this area. So when it comes to the number of people in the house and the distances, which is planning and zoning, there was no problem with State law. So you may ask, is there -- are there any other potential problems, and the answer is yes. Federal law, because this has to do with the Americans Disabilities Act. And you have to be able to give reasonable accommodation. So when you look at the recommendations and you look at the surveys, where this town has so many feet, this town has so many feet, nobody has the half mile, which we recommend. That doesn't mean you can't do that, because the State doesn't control that. It's federal law, and based upon what the federal government says. And as we learn that the thing the P&Z is needing, there are other states that have half miles. So the feds haven't cracked down on these half-mile regulations. So that would seem to suggest that we would be okay with the half mile. So I think that's a reasonable thing to do. The other problem has to do with fear of a lawsuit. If you are -- if you do a federal violation, or a claimed one, you don't go right to court and spend a fortune on lawyers. The first thing the federal government does is, is they call you in, they talk to you, they may do mediation or arbitration between the parties, or they may say, you can't do this. At any point, you can back out, and you have not racked up massive legal fees. So it's not like going down this road is necessarily prohibitive. I would also state that, I think Page 55 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 56 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING you can do inspections, because State law says that the State can contract with third parties that do inspections. So you could conceivably contract with the State to pick up that role, which you might want to do since they haven't got that much staffing in this area. And if it requires a tweak in the law, I'd be more than happy to do that. I think fire insurance and inspections are important. People with addictions have co- addictions, like smoking, a lot of smoking, People who can relapse and get stoned. There's a lot of fire problems there. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. Finally, let me say, be careful about your waiver language, because what I heard was suggested, you could drive a truck through. I think any waiver has to be based upon undue hardship; that is unique to that particular house. So you don't open up the doorway, everybody can claim, oh, this is not economically feasible and get their waiver. In closing, let me say, the people who spoke here tonight who live near these homes are clearly concerned about their quality of life, about their safety, and their peace of mind. Everybody else in this room, everybody else in this town, could potentially be in the exact same situation. Because these homes can open up next to any of our houses. So these people, the Town, even yourselves, right, should expect no more than to have your peace of mind, your safety, right, protected. And you should give no less. Thank you. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Representative Kavanaugh. Excuse me. I'm sorry. MAYOR DICKEY: Can he ask a question? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah, I have a question. I genuinely do feel sorry for the people who live next to these and see men looking in their windows, or whatever they're doing. I genuinely do, but I want to ask you, in your mind, based on State law or anything else, is there anything we can do about that? KAVANAGH: Yes. Madam Mayor, Councilman Magazine, I would adopt the P&Z's provisions. I would attempt to defend them as best I possibly could. Understand -- and I'm not saying this applies to every staff member at every occasion. But I was on this council for six years. I've been on the legislature for 16 years. And there's one thing I can tell you about staff: They're conservative in their recommendations. That they tread very gently. Because this is the bottom line, if a staff member says to you, you can do that,pass that, make it so many feet, and you wind up getting sued and losing, there's a staff member who's concerned about their job, and maybe with good justification. So if Page 56 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 57 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING the staff member says, you can't do that, don't do it, and you don't do it, that staff member never gets in trouble, because there's no lawsuit. But you have to say -- you have to say to yourself, did I shortchange my constituents by not giving them -- giving them enough protection. So I think P&Z's were reasonable, and I would stick by it and do the best, and if you have to back out, I would back out. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: I do hear you. But I'm not sure you've -- maybe I didn't make my question clear enough. KAVANAGH: Okay. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Let's assume that there's one of these one of these houses right next door to you and you don't like it; there are problems. Is there anything you can do about it? KAVANAUGH: Well, yeah, I could go to my town council and I could ask to have these restrictions put in. I could have aggressive code enforcement, doing -- inspecting -- COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: But you can't -- but you can't remove them? KAVANAUGH: No. You -- no, you can't. Because that's the federal law. But you can make them as least intrusive as possible. I had that with the party houses, the short-term rentals. I couldn't -- I voted against it from the day one. I was the only Senator-- I knew it was a disaster. I couldn't stop it, but I did come back the next year, and I banned exclusive party event houses. So you go as far as you can. You push the limits. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: And we appreciate that. KAVANAUGH: Okay. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: John, I do want to ask something, because when Larry was up here, he said something about that the State cares about what happens inside the house, but then he said somebody from the State told him that it's detoxing that's happening, not sober. So if they're the licensing -- what'd you say? MEYERS: I said that they said that their records show there were no sober homes in Fountain Hills. MAYOR DICKEY: So these -- MEYERS: I said, they are detoxification facilities in residential properties; the State did not say that. So I -- Page 57 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 58 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: The State said there are no sober living homes -- MEYERS: Quote. MAYOR DICKEY: --but that they are only responsible for what goes on inside, not the zoning stuff. So how can they license something that isn't really a sober living home? How is it existing? We have four and they're sober living homes, licensed by the State. So why would the State admit that there's no sober living homes? KAVANAUGH: Yeah. I guess it comes down to the definition. There's a medical definition. There's a legal definition. But the bottom line is, these people are in some stage of detox, because quite frankly, they wouldn't need all this treatment if they didn't have an addiction and they didn't need to kick that addiction. They're just in a later stage than if they have to be in a hospital. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, they're --they are not technically, because a detox couldn't happen in a residential area. It couldn't be licensed to happen in a residential area, correct? KAVANAUGH: From the -- Mayor, from the legal standpoint, but obviously these people still crave the drugs. It's not -- the craving's not out of their system, so I guess if detox is considered a medical, biological thing, then they're not detoxing. But in their minds, I think they're still going through a stage that's close enough for government. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. It just -- [LAUGHTER] CLERK KLEIN: Thanks. I give up. Barry McBride. MCBRIDE: Madam Mayor, Council. My business is right across the street. I own two buildings in Fountain Hills, but I'm sad to say I'm a resident of Scottsdale. Haven't been able to get my wife to move here yet. But I'm working on it. I would like to say I'm so impressed with the citizens. I'm inspired by the quivering voices, and I think that with the quivering voices that would help you look at things maybe from a different perspective. In this situation, serving along with the P&Z, there was research done beyond Arizona border, which was really impactful. And I think that was reflected very well in their-- in their recommendation. So we encourage you again to adopt P&Z's recommendation as given. We think that's very, very important. Mission number one of the Council, I would assume, to serve and protect the people. Page 58 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 59 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING And when we hear stories of people that are not being served and not being protected, it is very inspiring; it's very concerning. And it's the type of the story that would change the way that you think to look at things through the lens of leadership, as opposed to following other-- or other municipalities with undue restrictions. It's a very, very concerning thing. And the issue is is we now have commercial enterprises in residential zones that's causing the quivering voices of those that have come up and spoken, which is quite unfortunate, it really is. Interesting, I cannot run a commercial insurance agency in a residential area, but we can have detox facilities there. It's a real, real concern. I implore you to listen to the quivering voices, to consider what they're going through and living through. It's the lens of leadership. And I'll follow up with this. I serve on a committee at the Phoenix Zoo, and one thing that we do at the Phoenix Zoo is we are very, very considerate of where we place different species because of the amount of stress that it causes from one to the other. So said respectfully, said respectfully, because I will say that my cousin died of a heroin overdose. So I do care deeply for those in treatment. But his treatment was at a facility, not in a residence. But the key is is we have to make sure that we have commercial and residential, because otherwise the mixing of the two creates an undue stress that's unfair for residents. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: John Pio -- Peo ? I'm -- PIO: Pio. CLERK KLEIN: Pio, I'm sorry. I know I had it once before. And I couldn't remember how I pronounced it. PIO: Madam Mayor, Council, thank you. My wife and I have been residents of Fountain Hills for 19 years. Fountain Hills is blessed in many ways, and in particular relating to this agenda item, it's blessed to have a Planning and Zoning Commission that's willing to do all of the hard work necessary to generate the best possible recommendations that serve the interests of the Town and its residents. In particular, the Chairman, Peter Gray, is obviously highly competent, talented, and motivated to do the best possible job in supporting you all on the Council. My observations are that the recommendations developed by Chairman Gray, and the commission were based on extensive research, factual evidence, due sensitivity to legal issues, and consideration of what best serves this Page 59 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 60 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING community as well as the operators and especially the residents of the sober homes. I believe the recommendations should be adopted substantially as proposed and not be weakened because of supposed or speculated future litigation. We've all seen the disastrous results of weak ordinances in other locales, and we're feeling some of those consequences within our own community. And they're not rumors. And I think there's people here that would disagree that this is a solution in search of a problem. The adoption of strong but fair ordinances may carry some risk of litigation. But what possible legitimate consideration can come before protecting this town and its residents? Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Allen Skillicorn. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor, Council, staff, and also thank you for your time, your commitment, and, you know, evenings like this go late, and we want to respect your time. And thank you and I appreciate your time. My name is Allen Skillicorn, and I'm just here because I think people are more important than special interests. And when I look at that Planning and Zoning Ordinance that was unanimously approved, it just seems like it's very common sense to me. It seems reasonable. When I listen to my neighbors, they seem to agree with me too. They say-- I hear it over and over, common sense, reasonable. They seem to agree with me too. And I hear tonight, you know, whether it's the presentation and some of the questions and comments. It sounds like I heard the word "can't" a lot. And I'd really like to hear the word "can". And I'll give you an example of the differences. When we talk about, you know, the State does inspections, the Town can't do inspections, the State doesn't require insurance, the Town can't require insurance --when I -- when I hear this, it just-- can't, can't, can't. Well, I believe in the word "can". So we have a State legislator who's in the audience here, who lives in town here. If we need this change a State law, he can propose the legislation. It may not be immediate. It might take some time. It might take-- it might be next session that this happens. But we, the people, can change the law here in the State. This town also has a congressman that resides in the Town, and many of us have his cell phone number in our phones. If federal law, if ADA is a problem, we can approach him, and he can file legislation. And potentially, that could be changed; that could be changed long period of time, short period of time, but we can effect change. Page 60 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 61 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING And I want-- I just want to point that out. When I hear the proposed ordinance about the waiver, there was a couple objections there. One -- that -- didn't I hear of an objection is these, the commission, the three- person commission, for the waiver? Now, one issue I have with that is that this is an unelected commission. The people on there are not accountable to the public,because they're not elected. I do have a significant problem with that. I hear a complaint about, or, you know, a recommendation of lowering the distance. Still I think the people of this town deserve to have an opportunity to not have these in these clusters, considering the topography of our town and the -- and the washes, the half a mile does not seem unreasonable. Now, I did want-- a couple of other things. Like, if one of these facilities moved in next door to you, would you be okay that they weren't required by the Town to have liability insurance? Think about, if they were next door to you, would you be okay with that? If one moved next door to you, would you be okay if the Town did not come in and do inspections? Would you be okay with that? If one moved in right next to you, would you be okay with the limit of six versus ten? Would you be okay with that? And the reason I ask the question in such a way is because there are people in this -- in here that have these right next door to them. And they are not okay with the watering down of this ordinance. So I respectfully ask, if you feel uncomfortable with watering down any of these items, tonight is the night to speak up; tonight is the night -- the night to do so. And I don't know if you are guys are open-minded to keeping the Planning and Zoning, you know, recommendations. I hope you are, but if you have any feeling that you're uncomfortable with not having insurance, not having inspection, not having these limits, speak up tonight. The people of the Town want to hear you. Thank you so much. CLERK KLEIN: Ed Stizza. STIZZA: Good evening. And Mayor, Town Council, and staff. I'm a resident of Fountain Hills. I cannot say anything more other than, finally, you guys are going to be held accountable for your vote tonight. This is an important vote. You have heard from all the residents. You have heard from the Town. You have heard from everybody you possibly can, and if you can't make the right decision this time, then God help you. So -- thank you. Page 61 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 62 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you very much. Those were all the speaker cards. I think -- so right now, I just want to say a couple of things. So I understand that you would like us to follow exactly what the Planning and Zoning said, but I think you noticed even at the last meeting, some of the changes that we made were necessary, and no one objected to them on Planning and Zoning either. I think -- I know you want us to listen, and I believe that we have been listening and obviously care about this. Representative Kavanaugh knows about how I feel about the short-term rentals, and I feel like it's kind of the same, sort of intrusion, it can be, but we also -- we are preempted in a lot of ways. Part of me sees this State, as the licensing entity, that they should be responsible to make sure that they're not detox or there's no active treatment going on or that there's not 12 people living there or whatever-- whatever they're-- they made those accommodations to give them the license. Why are they not in charge of taking care of them? And if we don't like the fact that something has to happen that the State tells us to do, why isn't that -- and you did mention that, you know, going back to try and to change some of those laws. But when you talk about the insurance, it literally was the State law that made Phoenix, Mesa, and Prescott have to take that off their books. So I don't know how that translates into us being able to do that with the State. The other things that were talked about, I -- everybody goes through that at some -- at one point or another with a-- with a neighbor. Whether it's a dog or fighting people or the smoking, or you don't -- you don't have a smoking neighbor ever? You don't have fights ever? What I'm saying is that when Allen asked about what would you do about that, some of this stuff is a little -- you know, it's not cut and dry, and -- but I do ask since we do have some folks here in the industry, you know, sometimes you have to act like neighbors, like we have to ask a neighbor about a dog or about smoking or about fighting or partying or any of that kind of stuff. So we have to weigh a lot of different things as we move forward, including the law. So that's what -- that's what going through our minds. There's no -- there's no hubris here; there's no fun here. There's nobody trying to help somebody with some motivation or another. But we have been trying to make our way through this in the best way for all 25,000 people that live here. So anyway, what -- do I close the hearing, and do we -- can we continue to speak after that? ATTORNEY ARNSON: Mayor, you can go ahead and close the hearing, and then if the Page 62 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 63 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING council members have additional comments, by all means. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. So additional discussion? On what we went through? Gerry and Vice Mayor. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Mayor, tonight we heard a lot of people mention the insurance issue. So I'm just wondering if there's some kind of a model for a rated risk that we could take a look at across the board for all of our business community so that we're not singling out one sector of the business community. And I'm wondering if there's some model or something that we can take a look at to give us more information in that area. ATTORNEY ARNSON: I have a couple of thoughts and a response to that question, Councilman. The first is that, is there some sort of model -- I mean, sure there are model policies, right. Like, you know, the insurance industry has model policies all the time for commercial general liability, property owner's insurance. And it's just a question of what's the nature of the business and what's an appropriate limit. I'm not sure how we as a town go with every business and try to figure out what limits would be appropriate for every type of business. But assuming that it was possible, it's -- at least one of the things that sounded reasonable tonight is that -- and I don't -- you know, I'm kind of looking this direction toward Mr. Bennett. He made a representation that sounds as though the industry wouldn't have an issue with that sort of a provision. So I mean, I don't know if it needs -- maybe it doesn't even necessarily need to be an issue, right? If it -- I don't know, I'm sort of-- that was news to me. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: That's kind of where I was going -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: -- because when he made that statement, I'm thinking, there's got to be a way to work that out. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah, I mean, right. My point is is that, look, if it's something that the industry doesn't have an issue with, right, I still don't think it's something that under State regulations we can require of a specific industry, right? But on the other hand, if this is a sticking point and we mutually all recognize that it's a sticking point, that it's a distinction with that difference, then maybe we include it and move on, if some of the folks who have spoken here tonight in favor of reasonable regulations are okay with Page 63 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 64 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING that. But that I'm not going to put words in anyone's mouth, I'm just trying to come up with a reasonable solution here that sort of makes both parties mutually satisfied. MAYOR DICKEY: Can the State require insurance? ATTORNEY ARNSON: I'm sure the State could require insurance if it chose to. MAYOR DICKEY: Right, right, but the Town can't require somebody that buys a home to get homeowner insurance. The town -- we're talking about us being able -- having the ability to require insurance of one particular area, and that's the sticking point that the State-- these-- ATTORNEY ARNSON: The State is the licensing agency. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: The State can require it. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible) only have one thing to say is that from the all insurance companies that I looked at, every one of them has an extra package for sober homes. MAYOR DICKEY: I understand, sir. Thank you. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So there is a risk/reward -- they're all doing that because of risk/reward. MAYOR DICKEY: I understand. What -- I guess what we're trying to get to the bottom of is the authority of the Town to require insurance from a particular enterprise, business, home, whatever you want to call it. And we don't feel like we -- we don't have that authority. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I want to let him talk. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. I don't know what the -- you know, I don't know what the result of that is, because I came in here with the idea that we do not have the authority to require insurance. ATTORNEY ARNSON: And I still believe that's the case. MAYOR DICKEY: And you still believe that's the case. Okay, thank you. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Follow up, then say the State could do it. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Well, we have legislator Kavanaugh here, who perhaps can try to make that happen at the legislative level. I see him nodding in agreement that maybe that's possible. Page 64 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 65 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: The other thing that I think we might have had some discussion about was the distancing thing, so, you know, the 1320 was the quarter mile. So do you want to talk about that? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah, may I? Yeah, Aaron, it's my understanding that 1320 is the farthest distance between these homes, and any jurisdiction in Arizona; is that correct? ATTORNEY ARNSON: You're not doing me any favors tonight, Councilman. That is correct. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Okay. So 1320. ATTORNEYARSON: And that's in the --that's in an attachment to agenda 8B. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Right, right. So when it comes time for a motion, I would be happy to make the motion to have it set at 1320 as opposed to 1200. MAYOR DICKEY: Is there any other discussion on this item? Mike? COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: No. I -- you know, in my oft-quoted opinion piece from last week, I said I was willing to look at changes and compromises and such. And I too think 1320 is a good compromise from what was proposed when looking at other jurisdictions. So -- COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: I agree. I feel like we don't want to be the test of waters above the 1320. I think part of our job on Council is to our help protect from lawsuits, so I feel like there's, what, 3 at 1320, and there was 5 or 6 at 1200. So I feel like 1320 is probably a safe place to go. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: (Indiscernible) motion. Mayor, I'm going to move this along. I'm going to move that the separation requirement be set at 1320 feet. MAYOR DICKEY: Is this a motion? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah. I made a motion. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. Well, are we going to -- do you want to take these one at a time -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: So the -- I think-- I think the best option with-- respectfully, Councilman Magazine, I think the best option might to be -- to go through those five areas that Director Wesley said. And if we can make a motion all at once -- MAGAZINE: Sure. Page 65 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 66 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING _tea ATTORNEY ARNSON: -- that might really help. That might help us out. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Well -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Right, we still have to -- yeah, we still have to actually get the ordinance, right, kind of-- MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, so that we would take the break, so -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: -- so I'm good with the six and eight, if that's something anybody wants to talk about. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Six and eight, you mean for occupancy? Thank you, Mayor. COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: I mean, I'm willing to consider a lowering of where we're at. I just think going down to six and eight is too much. And I'm kind of surprised in terms of all this comment, this past year, I mean, knowing from the -- what are we calling them, the family community residences. No one from that industry has come forward to question us or give suggestions. I mean, this is going to impact them as well. And, you know, we're kind of separating the two subcategories. I understand that, but I think we're lowering the family one just to kind of give credence to lowering the other one. And then, I mean, this could impact future people who want to open, you know, these family community residences in the community. I mean, maybe the feeling is ten's enough, but on the other hand, it's like we don't hear complaints about these homes. So this industry is going to be impacted by this ordinance as well. I just want to point that out, but I just --to me, six and eight is too much. But most of the communities, the vast majority is are ten plus staff. And I'm not proposing that, but I just think what's on the table here is too much. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Thank you, Mayor. I'm good with six and eight. And what it boils down to for me is quality of care. I think it's important. I have several members of my family who are involved with drug and alcohol abuse. And I've seen it firsthand. So six and eight for me are good, because of the improved quality of care, and it's got to be number one with dealing with this. So I'm good with those numbers. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: While I agree with Councilman Scharnow that I kind of feel like ten is a better number, I would be okay with talking six and eight if we said that that does not include live-in staff. I do have a problem with six or eight people Page 66 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 67 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING if that includes live-in staff. MAYOR DICKEY: So we want to make sure we can come up with something that Aaron feels he can move forward with. So I don't think we're there right now. I think we probably need to hear from everybody else. David? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. As I stated before, a month ago, well over a month ago, that I would not budge from that number, I will continue to be steadfast and say that it's six and eight or I'm a no vote. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Alan? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Well, it's just a matter of getting it on the record. I agree with Councilwoman Grzybowski; six and eight, not including staff, makes sense to me. COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: Well, I'd go along with that. MAYOR DICKEY: Any other? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: (Indiscernible). MAYOR DICKEY: Six and eight with staff, including staff. Okay. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: With the community residence, six to eight with staff, and the (indiscernible). COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Can't hear you; your mic's not on. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: It is on. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, it's on. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Sony. I think that, with the community residence, up to six to eight with staff is appropriate. And the other one, the transient one, up to six with staff is appropriate. I think that, given what was said tonight, with the neighbor's concerns, that-- about how many people they see and things like this, I think this is a reasonable number. It's less than what was recommended, and it just seems like it would work. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: And I know that the idea of neighborhood, you know, how many people are in each house isn't something that they say is legitimate to use in a legal way, maybe. But I think it does reflect on neighborhoods, and just like with short-term rentals or anything else, trying as best as we can, under the constraints that we have to keep neighborhoods and the characters of neighborhoods as residential areas is important. So Page 67 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 68 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING there may be four for six and eight, with-- including staff? Did you see that? ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah, that's good. MAYOR DICKEY: Do you agree? MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. What was the other thing -- license, insurance -- the inspections. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: I move that we not require inspections, that it's the State licensing agency does the inspections; we can't do unannounced inspections. MAYOR DICKEY: I think we could maybe help with the efforts to the legislature, whether it's for funding or for whatever it takes so that inspections can be done regularly and can be relied on, they can be requested, but that also reminds me, though, that there's complaints online that --well, we just got some information today, and you touched briefly on it, that I think 94 complaints were made in the last year, and 91 resulted in citations. So I think it's a responsive mechanism that the State has in place. So I don't think that the Town has the jurisdiction or the ability to do these unannounced inspections. Like I said, we do do the fire inspections, and if there's code enforcement sort of stuff, litter, anything that you see on the outside, too many cars, working on a car, all those kind of things, we already have that ability for code inspection, but an interior inspection unannounced, we're --we don't have the authority to do that, but I'd be happy to help the State and advocate for funding or whatever it takes for the staff to be able to do that. And then they could do that for all their cities. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: I just wanted to reiterate when you said it 94 complaints that went in and 97 citations. That was based on the State, not on Fountain Hills'number. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, right. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Just wanted to make sure that we said that. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Mayor. MAYOR DICKEY: Yes. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: I'm wondering if the State outsources for those inspections, is that something that we can get hooked up with to do that in our own town, if the State is the one that is outsourcing that? Is that something we can on -- I don't know. ATTORNEY ARNSON: It's something we can check. I have no idea whether a H6TfRx cfr',55H5,'#T�'W.xitiS-T+w•a.y.,._.'+.F a..,st ri5:,..•. ., r...:n . ... Page 68 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 69 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING municipality serves as a third-party contractor. It would be unusual. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I just -- I don't know, yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: So basically it would be, like, they would hire somebody. And but we would have to have that staff to be able to do that -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah, right. MAYOR DICKEY: -- and such. ATTORNEY ARNSON: I mean, typically what you're going to see with any--with any government body is they're going to do a procurement for, you know, an outside agency to conduct their inspections, like how we do on-- like, for third-party inspections for certain projects. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, right. ATTORNEY ARNSON: So it -- I can't imagine it's that different. I just -- maybe there's like a workshare agreement or something like that. So it's possible; I just don't know the answer to the question. MAYOR DICKEY: Mike? COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: Yeah, Madam Mayor, thank you. Along the lines of, you know, changes needed at the State level -- I mean, one of the speakers talked about this initial application form and issues with, you know, aliens applying, that kind of thing, the very loosey-goosey restrictions. Well, again -- that -- when you talk to the State legislature and other folks at the State level, the changes form then. If it's inadequate or you think it's lacking, that's -- you know, that's -- again, this is not a Fountain Hills' forum, it's a State one, so take it up with the State. MAYOR DICKEY: Do you see, do you understand what's happening then here, right? ATTORNEY ARNSON: No. Maybe I can -- MAYOR DICKEY: Enough-- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Maybe I can summarize really quick, and the town manager gave a good suggestion about getting some consensus, whether through a vote or otherwise, before we go and try to figure something -- changing out language on the six and eight, whether it's including staff or not including staff. Include -- so-- include. I see four head nods. So that's -- so if someone wants to try to, you know -- but that's how we'll come back with it. Page 69 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 31 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING any within their group home, assisted living provisions that any were requiring insurance. We also have a concern that if we had this, if it would actually be enforced or not. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Any further discussion? Just to be clear, any city that had it before the state law changed has either repealed it or sunset it? DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Separation distance. Section 5.13(a) lists the basic requirements for homes, and that includes a separation distance as recommended by the PNC (ph.). They put in a half mile or 2,640 feet. This is -- distance is measured, straight line, property to property. The overall goal of the code is to allow for these homes, but not create an overconcentration. And so that's what we're looking for, is what distance would achieve that goal. Currently in our existing ordinance that's in effect today, our separation distance is 1,200 feet. In the jurisdictions that I looked at, the greatest distance separation that I found was 1,320, or a quarter mile. You can see the communities that have that. Next is the number of jurisdictions, similar to Fountain Hills, that have the 1,200. And then some that were smaller, Oro Valley, Prescott, Cave Creek. And then a couple that had no separation requirements in Flagstaff and Sedona that I could find. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Just want to emphasize. So of all the jurisdictions you looked at, 1,320 was the most; is that correct? DIRECTOR WESLEY: That's the greatest distance I could find in any Arizona jurisdiction. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Thank you. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Any other questions or comments with that? (Indiscernible) another slide on-- I guess I do have one more slide. And so again,just some of the things we've looked at before. We looked at where we change 100 block designation in town. It's approximately over 600 to 700 feet. We did a review of all the block lengths in town, measured every block length, then divided that by the number of blocks and came up with an average length of 560 feet, approximately. So if you use those as kind of some guides for separation, I think that might be helpful. There's been some concern about some of the environmental impacts you get from Page 31 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 32 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING some -- the way people have experienced some of these homes. Some of those environmental impacts could be addressed by addressing those specific codes rather than addressing it this way. And then at the last meeting, there was some talk about -- well, the current distance is 1,200. PNC had recommended the 2,460. Maybe we cut that in half. So I'll just provide that number as another point of reference. 1,830 would be that number if Council wanted to go that way. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: I just want to, I think, emphasize based upon my knowledge of this that 1,320 is the most for any jurisdiction. DIRECTOR WESLEY: That's the most I've found. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: And this, it says 1,830. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: And I know some people have said, go to court, don't worry about it. But I think this may be a red flag. So I think we have to be careful. MAYOR DICKEY: Just to make it clear. The distance is between property lines? DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. Property line to property line is where we do it. MAYOR DICKEY: So, you know, we were discussing the canyon aspect and such. And this would stop anything from being, like, back to back or anything like that. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Yeah, that's correct. MAYOR DICKEY: There would be -- DIRECTOR WESLEY: Because it's a-- MAYOR DICKEY: -- definitely be buffers. DIRECTOR WESLEY: -- that circle around. So most canyons aren't that way-- MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, yeah. Like -- DIRECTOR WESLEY: -- and if they were, then it probably would take care of it. It's just that the contrast is in Prescott, where they do measure theirs along the street. And by doing that, you could have something back to back because they can go around the block and be there. So that's not what we're talking about. That's not the way it is today. Moving on. The next item is the number of residents. Section 1.12, the zoning ordinance provides definitions. Here in this section, we are amending what we've -- it used to be four in terms of having a group home designation -- definition and change it to Page 32 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 33 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING community residences. And then subdividing that into two types, family residences and traditional -- transitional residences, excuse me. The recommendation from the PNC is that the family residences would be a maximum of eight, including staff, and that the transitional would be six, including staff. Currently, our ordinance is ten not including staff So all of the existing homes out there have that potential to be that size. Get us a look at the other jurisdictions. Found -- excuse me. Found one or two cities here where I did not see any cap to the number. Prescott has 12. You can see the number there of ten, excluding staff. And then a few of ten, including staff. And there are three jurisdictions that do set a limit at five. All those are caveat with Gilbert. Both Chandler and Tempe do set theirs at five. They do have their waiver procedures that can allow for more than that, but that's what their standard is. Gilbert is five, a limit when it is not licensed to the state. But if they are licensed to the state, then it can go up to 10. Any questions on that one? MAYOR DICKEY: I'm more comfortable seeing that there's a couple with six. And then as long as transitional can be treated differently from what we called more permanent, then the eight and the six seems like something that would be totally allowable. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Yes, Mayor. As we have looked at that and thought about that, when we're talking about the transitional homes, those are the people staying there typically for a shorter period of time. So there's more turnover. And so there's maybe a little bit more impact on the neighborhood, less stability for the neighborhood, so forth with the transitional. So I think there is justification there for some consideration of a difference. So the last item, then, would be waivers. The terminology here has been a bit confusing and so tried to address that by just calling it a waiver. There might be some other terms to use, modification or adjustment. We believe it is important to have that option spelled out in the code for a waiver or a deviation,just like we do variances for other parts of the code, so we can consider unique situations and address them specifically. The ordinance, as provided to the Planning and Zoning Commission, did include a section on those. There's some concerns about how that was worded, how it might be implemented. And so they took that provision out of the ordinance that was recommended to you. Page 33 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 34 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING As I've looked at, again, the other codes, I found that most jurisdictions do provide for some type of waiver. And so we would suggest that we put something back in, but with some changes from what went to the PNC. We're suggesting some kind of waiver committee. This is one option that's on here. Town manager, (indiscernible) service director, member of one of our boards. We could change that in any number of ways. One staff person and two board members could be another way that could be done. Another citizen might be appointed. But we think something like a three-member board of some kind so it's not just one person, but we don't want to get unwieldy by having too many. So a three-person. And then there's the potential, if we wanted to, to have an appeal from there. It doesn't have to have one. But put that out there as a possibility. And then compared to what we provided to the Planning and Zoning Commission, beefed up the language a little bit in terms of the standards, to make it clear that you can't just come in and say I want it because I want it. We need real information and documentation to justify that these people we look at and review in order to grant a waiver to the standards. MAYOR DICKEY: The list there, the bullets is going to depend on what they were asking-- DIRECTOR WESLEY: Correct. Right. Because something might not fly. MAYOR DICKEY: -- what the waiver is for, but having it defined as much as possible, and I think having the three-person committee available -- we talked a little bit about that in the past. Do you have anything to --thank you, David. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I personally would like to see the town manager dropped from this process. I believe it should be the Development Service director, a representative from the Board of Adjustments, and a representative for Planning &Zoning, since they have intimate knowledge of planning and zoning in the Town. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. So that would be still three people. So that's good. And then probably the appeal to Town Council might not be necessary because there's going to be a natural progression to this, anyway. So we'd have the Board of Appeals chair, P&Z chair. Does it have to be chair? Kind of makes sense, but I guess it doesn't have to be. And then development director, and then that would be it. And then afterwards, Page 34 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 35 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING whichever way it went, then they would -- then they're -- where would they go after that? They could either just accept it -- I mean, if it was -- COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: -- accepted, then that would be the end of it, right? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Right. If the combination were granted, that would be the end. And I suppose the language could be really whatever we want it to be for that group of three, but either the chair, or his or her designee, or simply a member. However we want to do it. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: So then if the chair is not available, you're not bound, you know, to have to do it by-- MAYOR DICKEY: Alan? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: If an individual were to buy a home, and get State certification, but they said, you know, we can't get the return on investment we need. We need to allow more people. Is that appealable for a waiver? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: So the simple answer is yes. If they feel like they need more than -- whether it's the eight or the six, depending on which type of home it is -- yes, they can request a waiver to that. But they would need more justification than well, this just isn't working out for us financially. They have to -- again, there's -- I'll just summarize it here, but there's the five criteria that would be looked at carefully by the three-member committee, to ensure they really have a justification, and not just a desire -- COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Just a financial justification. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: -- financial -- right. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Thank you. COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: And I thought we were going to reconsider the appeal to the Town Council, maybe delete that. I mean Aaron, do we need to include the appeal to judicial type? Do we name that? Or just don't do anything, or -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah. I mean, we certainly could. But a denial of an accommodation would be something that a person could take for a judicial remedy anyway. Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: And to Alan's point, too, as far as somebody buying a house, and Page 35 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 36 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING starting something new, they would know these rules were in place, which brings up the idea of grandfathering, and-- do we have -- are we going to talk about that? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Mayor, I did not include that in the presentation. It was in the staff report, since it wasn't actually an ordinance proposal at the time. So it's not here. So there are specific provisions in the ordinance that this would fall under on how we treat any time we change a code, and have a legally approved use going on, or a property, and we allow it to continue as long as it doesn't change within certain parameters. So that's would we had to anticipate here. There have been some questions about well, what if somebody owns a home, a group home of some kind, and then they're tired of it so they sell that to somebody else. And then the new operator comes in. That new operator is going to need to get a new license. And when they get a new license, they have to register that license. And so that new license would need to then follow the new code. And so as we've talked about that a little bit, it may be helpful to add a paragraph in the code, to make sure that's clear. And we can sure do that. It's one of the things that we can get back to Council, if you want to do that here. As the attorney talked about, if we take a break, we can get that language put together-- MAYOR DICKEY: And I would also add that -- so you called this in the past, and we talked about places where the zoning got changed around them. It's called legal nonconforming use. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: And just to point out, it's not legal to reduce those uses for people that are there already. So we kind of solved a little bit about that, and we talked about parking, and some of these other items over the years, where they had a certain kind of zoning. So we changed the zoning, but we can't change the value or the use of the property, as long as it's that same person, and they don't change it a lot. So this would just be something that we already have in place for a town? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Yes. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. David? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just as a point of clarification, and the town attorney can jump in, I've received numerous emails from residents who are like, don't worry about getting sued. You know, pass it, let's see what Page 36 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 37 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING happens down the road. I think as a point of clarification, it's important to note that someone who seeks remedy or a waiver, first has to come to the Town and request the waiver, and then be denied the waiver in order for them to legally go into court and take it from there. So I think it's important to note that you can't skip that process -- if I'm talking out of turn, Aaron -- you can't skip that process of coming to the Town for a waiver and go directly to court, because if you go to court, the first thing the court's going to ask is did you seek a remedy within the Town. And -- they're not going to ask that? ATTORNEY ARNSON: No, absolutely. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Oh, you're shaking your head no. ATTORNEY ARNSON: No, that's going to be the first -- Mayor and Council, that will be the first thing they say is, you know, if the Town finds itself in that situation, the defense is well, we don't know whether they would have gotten an accommodation or not because they never asked. Right? And so the court is going to send that back to work through the administrative process. It's called exhaustion of administrative remedies, and you stated that very well. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Okay. Just for everybody out there, we can't just jump right to well, I'm going to sue. You first have to seek a remedy within the Town, then if you don't like what you hear, then you can escalate it from there. But there's no jumping the system. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: And Mayor and Councilmember, I'm glad you brought that up,because that is one of the main reasons to have this in the code, because if we don't have it in the code, then they are jumping straight to the courts. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilwoman? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: In addition, under Section B, Application Requirements, number 8, it says "the applicant shall attest that they will provide all evidence permissible by code and authority, having jurisdiction necessary in response to a code enforcement inquiry". And I would like to ask that in particular, occupancy logs be omitted because we don't require occupancy logs, and I don't think we're allowed that information. Correct, Aaron? ATTORNEY ARNSON: So Mayor and Council, I want to make sure that I am looking at the right section. It looks like it's page 5. Page 37 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 38 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Yep. ARNSON: Okay, we're talking about Section 3? Okay. 8, "the applicant shall" -- I see where you are. I see where you are. And you take --Councilwoman, you take issue with the language, in particular occupancy logs? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Urn-hum. ARNSON: Yeah. I will say that leaving it or removing it probably doesn't make a material difference, so I'd be fine with removing that last phrase, because we're still requiring an attestation that the applicant will provide all evidence permissible-- COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Hm. ATTORNEY ARNSON: -- that we can get ahold of. So there's not necessarily a reason to make anything specific unless John sees a different basis for it. DIRECTOR WESLEY: You're fine either way. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Okay. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Because I agree, that first phrase covers it. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Um-hum. DIRECTOR WESLEY: I thought we weren't allowed, you know, the last time we hadn't talked about it. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Oh. That may well be. I've lost track of where we've -- in part of where we've been. So thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: I'm glad you brought up code enforcement, because that is still something that you can do with anything going on in town, where our code enforcement can go. If it's litter or noise or call MCSO, if there's something else going on that needs attention. So since the State is the licensing body, and they're the ones that can do inspections, and they require the license, they can -- so basically, they're in charge of some of the enforcement that, I think, concerns some people. And then there are some things that we can do, and which we're doing now with these changes in our ordinance that are within the law. I wanted to also mention that some of the discussion we heard, and when-- David, when you were just mentioning going and getting sued and such, that we are part of a risk pool, we are, and risk pools we have the deductible and such, but it's not the same as any-- I mean it is the same. Like, you have health insurance, you have all kinds of insurance, and then there's all kinds of stipulations to that if you do Page 38 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 39 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING something. If you enact something that's just blatantly not lawful, then the risk pool isn't going to necessarily defend you, or -- depending on who's doing charges against you. So it's just not as simple as saying it couldn't be any more than $10,000. And then some cases, if it's a land use issue, there's a cap of$1 million. So if it was more than $1 million-- so it's as simple and cut and dry as it might seem when you just kind of look stuff up, which I can understand doing, and we appreciate that because the information that we got from folks had us looking into things a little bit more, and feeling like we have a lot more clarity about all this. So I want to thank you for that. Should I go with-- MANAGER MILLER: Mayor, again? MAYOR DICKEY: Oh. Go ahead. MANAGER MILLER: No, I just wanted to thank you for clarifying those issues, and the other point. I know, Aaron, you talked about in the past, as far as if we were to lose a suit, a lot of times the biggest bill in such a thing is attorneys' fees, and those aren't typically reimbursed in that kind of scenario by the risk pool. You want to clarify? ATTORNEYARNSON: They may be, they may not, depending on how the pool kind of interprets the policy. Right? So I just-- to the Mayor's point, and to your question, Councilman, without getting into the details, I can't get into them, but I just recently resolved a case for another municipal client. And that one happened to be one where the pool defended under, they call it under a reservation of rights, which means that they later determine that there was something amiss for which they shouldn't have provided coverage, that there will be sort of an indemnity obligation, right? And the pool in this instance very well may, and I believe will exercise that right. So to both of your points, it's not as straightforward. Insurance issues never are, as I think anyone who's ever tried to use insurance can appreciate. MAYOR DICKEY: Do we want to go to call the public now? Are y'all ready for that? Okay. I think we'll do that. And then -- well, I don't close the hearing until after they speak, right? Okay. So if we have call to the public, and then we can close the hearing and vote. Speaker cards? CLERK KLEIN: First one is Marianne Sampson. MARIANNE SAMPSON: Thank you everyone for giving me a chance to speak tonight. I must admit public speaking is not for me, and standing before you takes me completely Page 39 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 40 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING out of my comfort zone. But this is so important, that I felt that everyone needed to hear what I have to say. Most people don't believe in love at first sight. But I know it exists because I experienced it four times in my life. When I met my husband, when I first laid eyes on my two children, and the fourth time when I crossed a mountain range from Scottsdale into Fountain Hills. The beauty of this town totally took my breath away. We bought a house here, and after living in more locations than I can count, I felt that I finally had come home. That was 25 years ago. Due to job opportunities elsewhere, we had to leave a few times. But we held onto our home because we knew if we worked hard, and saved our pennies, we would one day return. That day finally happened two months ago when we retired. After 15 years in New York, we were so excited to finally come back. But to our disappointment, it feels so different now. And I'm so, so sad to say that our beautiful house no longer feels like home. A home to me is a place where you feel totally at ease, where you feel comfortable, and where you feel safe. But due to lack of regulation for commercial businesses operating in residential neighborhoods, I no longer have any of those feelings. See, I happen to live right next door to one of these rehab "homes". "Homes" in quotes because they don't even come close to resembling a home. Next door to me is a revolving door of different men all the time, spending their time watching my coming and going and every move, and it's very unnerving. I can no longer enjoy sitting outside without being watched and pestered with smoke and vaping from ten grown men next door to me. And let's say I want to sell my home and move. Who would want to buy it? Who would want to live in a commercial zone, because that is what my neighborhood has become. So I beg you, when you vote, please consider how it is living in my shoes next to one of these businesses. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] CLERK KLEIN: Ron Sampson. RON SAMPSON: Dear Madam Mayor. Fellow Councilmembers. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you our perspective on what my wife Maryanne and I consider to be a defining issue for our town and its residents. My comments today follow an email letter that we sent to each of you on April 6th after attending last month's Town Council meeting. We'd like to acknowledge and thank yourself, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Page 40 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 41 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Councilmember Grzybowski, for your thoughtful replies and your feedback, and I look forward to hearing perspectives from the rest of you. As my wife just described to you, living once again here in Fountain Hills now feels very different. Next door, vans with smoke-tinted windows arrive and depart frequently, almost clandestinely, multiple times a day. Each evening, we see several men, often not the same, out on the deck overlooking our house. Seeing them makes me uncomfortable. I can't imagine how it makes my wife and daughter feel. We now live next door, as she said, to one of those sober living homes. A commercial, for-profit business, and no longer a residential neighborhood. And because drug and alcohol abuse are linked with higher probability to commit a crime, quite frankly, we don't feel safe in our home. When I speak of recovering addicts, I recognize the overwhelming majority of these men are good people who have had a bad break. And we fully support the concept of providing them an opportunity to get their life back on track. I also know that statistically, and with the constant turnover next door, we are now at a substantially higher risk of encountering someone who is going to commit a crime against us. So it is critically important to us that you, the town leadership, move forward to regulate these businesses, beginning with the adoption of Ordinance 2101. I cannot stress enough how important it is that the capacity limits proposed by Planning and Zoning are adopted as part of this ordinance. With no grandfather clause associated with this limit for these detox rehab center pop-ups. And couple that with the ability to inspect them, without notice, as an aid for law enforcement. Simply allowing these commercial businesses to operate in our residential neighborhoods is already more than a reasonable accommodation. Because of the increased crime risk associated with recovering drug and alcohol addicts, it also is essential that these businesses carry additional liability insurance. It's not a typical business. Please adopt the proposal put forward by Planning and Zoning. Madam Mayor, Councilmembers, it is imperative that you come together and correct this situation by enacting Ordinance 2101, and approving a version that restores the essence of our community. Thank you for listening. [APPLAUSE] MAYOR DICKEY: Please. Please refrain from applause. I'm asking you,please. Next? Page 41 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 42 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING CLERK KLEIN: Natalie Marston-Salem. MARSTON-SALEM: Good evening Mayor, Council, and staff. I will start by introducing myself again for those who may not remember. My name is Natalie Marston-Salem. My husband, John Salem, and I are the owners of Fountain Hills Recovery. At last month's Council meeting, I spoke about how our facility came to fruition because of the loss of my father, Maurice, a dedicated fire captain for nearly 30 years. Tonight I would like to take the time to address the rumors, gossip, and misconceptions, specifically about our facility, and our two sober living homes within the Town. We first opened and began serving our clients in late 2016. For many years, a lot of you probably didn't even know we existed in Fountain Hills because of the fact that the issues being raised are simply not accurate. Our two sober living homes are both licensed by the Arizona Department of Health, as well as AZRHA, the Arizona Recovery Housing Association. Our inpatient and outpatient facilities are also licensed by the Arizona Department of Health, and accredited by the Joint Commission, an organization that accredits health care organizations and programs, holding them to the highest standard of care. This is not a requirement, but something we feel is a necessity in order to provide the highest level of quality care for our clients. I would like to stress that our homes are not detox homes, as I have frequently seen them referred to on community social media pages. There are no detox services being offered or provided to clients. In order to be residents in our homes, clients are currently receiving therapeutic services daily in our clinical program at our facility overlooking the fountain. Our homes are staffed 24/7, and clients do not have access to their cell phones, nor do they have access to come and go in their personal vehicles. They are all in the care of our well-trained staff at all times. Our sober homes have not been the subject of any identifiable or substantiated criminal concerns. There have been no arrests, no property crimes, no graffiti, no destruction on public property, no noise ordinance complaints, no drug arrests, no public intoxication incidents, and no petty crimes associated with the sober living homes operated by Fountain Hills Recovery. In fact, there has not been any police interactions or code enforcement issues relating to such homes. Furthermore, none of our homes have been shut down by the State agency, as claimed by one member of the community. Page 42 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 43 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING The claims from residents that drug paraphernalia found in the Town belongs to our clients is absolutely false and unsubstantiated. Sadly, these are outright lies and falsehoods aimed at shedding a negative light on addiction treatment, sober living homes, and specifically our facility. I find it very disheartening and sad that there are those in this community to go out of their way to rally against a facility that has done nothing but good for the community and changed people's lives -- actually saved people's lives. I want to make it abundantly clear that this is not just a business to us. We are passionate about what we do, and how we are able to help others change their lives and overcome their addiction. My husband and I are both at the facility every single day overseeing the quality of care our clients receive, and always looking for ways to improve and serve our clients to the best of our ability. I hope and pray for those of you who have been so openly against individuals seeking treatment in sober living homes in Fountain Hills, that you never have to experience having a loved on struggle with addiction. MAYOR DICKEY: If you please -- MARSTON-SALEM: I am hopeful and optimistic these types of open conversations will allow us to have an open mind and some compassion to help those who are in need. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. MARSTON-SALEM: Thank you. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Ma'am, excuse me. What town do you and your husband resign in? MARSTON-SALEM: I'm sorry? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: What town does (sic) you and your husband reside in? MARSTON-SALEM: We live in Scottsdale on 130th and Shea. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Lori Troller. TROLLER: Councilmen. Mayor. In front of you, there's a application from the State for a sober home. And that came from the Arizona State website. Highlighted for you in there is the fact that random alien individuals merely traveling through the United States can apply for a sober home. In case you're ignoring the fact that the United States borders are open, and that millions of illegals don't disintegrate when they walk into the Page 43 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 44 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING country, sober homes is one of the methods used to integrate illegals into the United States. So how can that be? And so let's look at the form. The only information required of an individual to apply for a sober home is their name, their physical and email address, and a phone number. That's it. The only form of identification required to apply for a sober home ranges from a driver's license to merely an I-94 form, which states an individual is traveling through the United States. And it's worth mentioning that up to 100 people can apply on one I-94 form. As an illegal who can't fill out this form, that's addressed in here, too. There's a section for somebody else to fill it out for them. So there you have it. Those are the State requirements to apply for sober home ownership in Arizona. A name, address, a phone number, and an email address. Oh, also, and a check to cover the licensing fee, which with little explanation can be waived, let alone it's not required for homes under five. So if keeping recovering people safe, and local residents supportive, wasn't enough reason for a strong ordinance that will pass an FDA inspection, I just gave you another one. Include insurance. Conversations with Planning and Zoning Commission, who's been at this for 21 years in Prescott, advises the single largest reason they were able to properly distribute a healthy number of sober homes in their town was the fact that they required insurance. Florida also has a tremendous problem, and insurance requirements is how they eliminated improper sober operations. So I'm going to change topics. Regarding verbiage of reasonable accommodation in the ordinance, a sober home applicant seeks a reasonable accommodation under FHA and ADA, not a waiver. The legal terminology for exceptions to any legal ordinance is a reasonable accommodation. FHA, ADA, FDA, even our schools refer to exceptions as reasonable accommodations. There's no ethical reason to change the verbiage. And finally, when you make your changes to the zoning ordinance, could you please explain to the townspeople how each of your decisions benefit the townspeople. And that's it. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Liz Gildersleeve. GILDERSLEEVE: Good evening. Once again, I am here tonight to ask those of you who have the privilege of sitting on this council to do the right thing by the vast majority of your neighbors, and approve the very reasonable Planning and Zoning Page 44 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 45 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING recommendations as written, not watered down, for sober homes in our community. Unfortunately, it now appears that Councilmembers Scharnow and Magazine, in particular, hold those of us who've been vocal about stronger regulations for sober homes with much disdain and contempt. My apologies to both of you for taking an active interest in local issues that directly impact our homes and neighborhoods. Given Mr. Magazine's own recent words several weeks ago, where he stated that he "goes 180 degrees in the opposite direction" when citizens get too, as he put it "demanding", and Mr. Scharnow's own words in last week's Times'unusually lengthy opinion piece, as well as his own involvement as the new director-- I assume it's a paid position-- for the Drug Coalition, not to mention his coalition possibly having received financial donations from the sober home and detox industries, how can the public be assured that Mr. Sharnow's and Mr. Magazine's decisions will be objective tonight? As I've said in the past, this is the most important and impactful issue right now for our town. Hence, the reason why you hear from many of us meeting after meeting. And I hope that I will leave tonight being completely surprised, and that each of you will do the right thing by putting residents first, and voting for the very reasonable P&Z recommendations, several of which are already in place today in cities around us. And something that is not often mentioned, the P&Z recommendations would also protect the vulnerable residents living in the sober homes. For example, with a smaller occupancy limit of five residents, longer distances between homes for better rehabilitation, and even more robust liability insurance requirements should anything tragic happen in a sober home or neighborhood -- and rest assured, it's bound to happen. If you are unable, tonight, to advocate aggressively for Fountain Hills residents and neighborhoods, then our local elections for a new mayor and new councilmembers cannot come soon enough. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] MAYOR DICKEY: If you want me to recess, and then we'll go on and on,please don't applaud. It's in the rules. It's ethics. Let's just be polite. Don't applaud. Give everybody a chance to have their say. Or I'll just recess, and we'll just start again in a half-hour. Please stop. CLERK KLEIN: Rita Brown. Page 45 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 46 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING BROWN: Good evening. Thank you for allowing me my opportunity to diatribe at you. I had to leave my glass house high up on the hill to address the invasion of a giant industry into my single family neighborhood. In the recent opinion piece in The Fountain Hills Times, words were used that were intended to shame me into silence, words such as bias, fear,paranoia, anger. But here's the thing: Every time I remain silent, I lose. It's clear members of my town Council believe I'm too biased and paranoid to remember that addicts have families. I must be caring of addicts' families after they have abandoned their own families. But I too have a family. And I choose to protect them first. I made the decision to live in a single family area as part of my plan for caring. While some council members may believe the fairy tale that people in recovery actually choose to go to recovery, the fact is that many are there against their wills. When the judge said,jail or rehab, they opted for a resort lifestyle over jail. Most are not from our town. Many are not even from our state. And some have arranged for drug drops before showing up. Those drug drops increase the presence of drug dealers on my street. For a second time, I interrupted a drug drop at the drug house on Nicklaus Drive. I went to the Sheriffs office and reported it. I've requested increased presence of the Sheriff on my street in the hours just before sundown, but that's just my paranoia showing again. The drug industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry. A single family neighborhood is no place for that billion-dollar industry. Our town lawyer is fearful we'll be sued. The federal government requires only that reasonable accommodation be made. As the taxpayer in this town, I consider it more than reasonable accommodation to allow members of that billion-dollar industry into a single family neighborhood. Just as we tightly regulate height, width, locks, every minute detail for swimming pool fences on private property, we need to have very stringent regulations for our local drug industry. Here's an inconvenient fact: Persons who complete an inpatient rehab program are not significantly more or less likely to succeed at staying clean than their intensive outpatient program counterparts. In other words, it is the intention of the addict that determines treatment outcome. Nothing I do -- my bias, paranoia, fear, and anger have no bearing on the outcome of the treatment. How many AA meetings are we hosting in the community center, in the library, and in the Town Hall? Thank you. Page 46 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 47 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Darla Jacobs. JACOBS: You're tough people to follow. And I think the first two people said it all. And a lot of replication. I understand that a lot of other people have sent several emails to some of the people in this room, and to no avail. After seeing this slide presentation and the proposal online, I realize that my concerns and the concerns of others have fallen on deaf ears. I also have to admit that the Town's building developments and ordinances are being influenced by the political ideology of many of the voting members before me. The key elements of protection for Fountain Hills' residents and for sober home living residents have been gutted from the Planning and Zoning Commission's ordinance. The P&Z ordinance strictly adhered to the State's land use perspective, which are the very land use governances that reside with our municipality. They may not be common to other towns, but they are in line with State governances. The P&Z effort also took the better part of a year with the assistance of a retired attorney and concerned residences to put those ordinances together. I'm speaking here tonight because I believe that the proposed ordinance changes lower the bar on the high standards Fountain Hills' residents expect from their elected officials, and raise the potential for bad actors looking to make large profits from high fees and Fountain Hills' weak ordinances. The topic I have chosen to discuss is the removal of the general liability insurance clause, which is one of four major changes to the Planning and Zoning ordinance. First, the State of Arizona does not require liability insurance. The State also does not prohibit municipalities from requiring it. It's the Town's choice, and it is in line with land-use governances. The two major operators of several sober living in Fountain Hills are for- profit businesses and should be treated as such. It's irresponsible for the governing body of our town not to require liability insurance for a business that has the potential for enormous risk. The risk is such that insurance companies specifically do not cover sober living homes under their standard homeowner or landlord policies. Standard homeowner coverage is not designed for the unique exposures of a recovery residence. And some states make it mandatory to have this insurance due to the litigious exposure. Are we so blind that we do not see the risks to sober living home residents and others? In addition, quoting Michael Scharnow's comments recently in The Fountain Hills Times, the municipal risk pool provided with a $10,000 deductible is much more complicated than Page 47 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 48 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING what's portrayed. It's not an automatic slam dunk. Now I'm really concerned. The town may not even have a backup insurance source. At approximately$20,000 or more for a month's stay in a sober living home, operators can well afford to pay for general liability insurance. They may not like it, but it should be the cost of doing business in Fountain Hills, especially when it provides protection for their vulnerable residents and themselves. Do what's right. Listen to your Planning & Commission, and put the general liability insurance clause back in the ordinance, perhaps without the subrogation, if necessary. MAYOR DICKEY: Richard Rutkowski. RUTKOWSKI: Mayor and Council, as many of you know, I'm a 20-plus-year resident of Fountain Hills. My comments are directed in part specifically to the Ordinance 22-01 regarding what is now being termed "community residences", which I, and I suspect many of those who are paying attention, consider a creative euphemism for what are more commonly referred to as sober homes. My comments also apply to a broader perspective of town government. First, a specific comment about Ordinance 22-01, the Planning and Zoning Commission has addressed this issue in a responsible, comprehensive manner, and in a way that recognizes the views and concerns of the residents of Fountain Hills, that it and you are obligated to represent and serve. The large numbers of attendees at many past meetings and tonight make the viewpoint of the Town's residents very clear. It is clear to me that a few of you on the Council, and we know who you are, actually listened to what the residents of Fountain Hills want and what we do not want. Sadly, the rest of you, and we know who you are, prefer to follow another agenda, and fail to listen to what the residents want, and what we do not want. Now, the broader perspective, we should have a representative government, a government that is responsive, responsible, and accountable. We should not have to fight a town government on so many issues, whether it be the lagoon, the primary property tax, daybreak, or this current issue of sober homes, community residences, whatever the title. I'll remind you that all those past ill-advised attempts by Council failed. And a few of them failed with a voter turnout that shattered Maricopa County records for voter turnout in a municipal election. We should not have to fight. But we did it before, and we can do it again. The point for tonight is that you have the opportunity to listen, to do what is Page 48 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 49 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING right, to do what the people want, to enact what P&Z has proposed, after listening to the people. You have that opportunity; I encourage you to please take advantage of it. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Cathi Marx. MARX: Thank you. Mayor Dickey, Council members, first, I just want to say, before I get formal, my heart breaks for this family who lives next door to the ten men, because I see them on their patios, with their shirts off, on their patio smoking. I can't imagine living next door with my daughter. It's also very different visiting a sober home during the day than living next door to one. I want to start with a sincere thank you to the P&Z Commission, who has taken the time to really listen to the residents regarding our concerns about the sober living homes in our residential communities. They understood the real world implications of what it's like to have a sober home, or two sober homes, or three sober homes in your immediate neighborhood. They understood when we brought in the drug waste, which I found and collected. And I resent the fact that it wasn't true, right, that we found near homes that prove that drug use was active. We explained our concerns for our families, children, grandchildren, pets, who may get exposed to the waste in our streets and front yards that may still have drug residue, or worse, fentanyl residue. They understood when we explained what it's like when there are fights between residents and the police are called in the middle of the night, or screams in the early morning because someone is still detoxing and is having a bad night and the ambulances are called. They understood when we explained that on holidays, ambulances are more common at these sober homes due to suicide attempts. Yes, all this can happen in any home, but take each home and multiply the probability by eight or ten. Add the talking too late at the night on the back patios or the nonstop smoking that goes into your bedroom window. Not even mentioning the large Mercedes vans that go up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down our streets. Then the constant honking when they arrive to let people know it's time to come in and load up. Councilman Magazine said, he wanted to rebrand Fountain Hills as a wellness destination. Does that rebranding start now with possibly a detox facility on top of it? Here's my commercial: Heroin addict, meth addict, alcoholic, no problem, come to Fountain Hills, Arizona, detox for 90 days in our beautiful, small town in the hills above Scottsdale. After your Page 49 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 50 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING stay, then spend another 90 days in a luxury mansion nestled within a residential community, as you try to remain sober. Don't worry if you relapse; you only have to drive another ten minutes back to the detox facility to start over. I thought we wanted to be known for the new International Dark Sky Discovery Center. Who is going to want to Fountain Hills with their family for a vacation when we are known for our drug addicts and detox centers? I'll answer that question for you: no one. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Crystal Cavanaugh. CAVANAUGH: Good evening, Fountain Hills residents. Do not water down this ordinance from either fear of litigation or other motivations. But first, I do want to thank you, Mr. Scharnow, for your good works with the youth in the drug prevention coalition. No one here is against drug prevention programs. In fact, youth programs actually have a higher success rate. But the councilman tried to confuse the issue by leveraging his good works and mixing them with this local zoning ordinance that protects our community. He stated as fact that losing in litigation was guaranteed. Why so quick to roll over? Where is the leadership? If towns only follow what others have done, we end up with a cookie-cutter ordinance with no one taking a stand for actual people or locations. Everyone runs scared when a recovery consultant says the word "discrimination". Even Mr. Scharnow accuses community bias in his article. There have been varying court opinions, and some of these issues have not even been litigated; they've simply been negotiated and accepted. No one denies that there are drug problems here, but I challenge these so-called sober homes to give specifics on the actual number of Fountain Hills residents in them. I say almost all are from elsewhere. And there are many drug programs available across the valley. Approving the key component, such as reduced occupancy to six, increased distance, and commercial liability insurance are non-negotiable, in my opinion. And adding that grandfather clause to allow the higher occupancy levels to continue in the current rented, not purchased, homes does absolutely nothing to change the status quo, and it's a total cop-out. Decreasing occupancy by their yearly renewal should be required at a minimum. And why fight so hard against the insurance requirement? Legitimate organizations operating properly have no problem obtaining such insurance. If you pass an insufficient ordinance without the key protections, I certainly hope the people of Page 50 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 51 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Fountain Hills realize you do not have our best interests at heart. And you are not listening, once again. Some of you actually seem to have a disdain for the residents who stand up to speak. You think we don't understand the issues of addiction, that we think it's a character flaw or a simple matter of willpower. But in reality we do indeed understand, and as you said, we have all been touched by it. My very own brother hung himself after years in the cycle of addiction and in and out of treatment programs. Returning to substance abuse is a typical story. But the model requiring million-dollar homes in single family neighborhoods that house four times the average household is not about treatment; it is about money. And neighborhood residents should not have to pay the price. We are not discriminating against the recovery clients, but the residents of Fountain Hills would appreciate it if this Council would stop discriminating against us. CLERK KLEIN: Andy Bennett. BENNETT: Thank you all. Thank you for taking the time to allow me to speak this evening. This will be the fourth time I have come here to speak on behalf of the individuals receiving and seeking treatment for substance abuse in Fountain Hills. Addiction is a condition that carries a lot of baggage. It's very tough to recover from, and despite what the Prescott newspapers of 2017 would have you believe, there's a shortage of effective treatment for addiction. It's estimated that only 30 percent of drug treatment nationwide meets the minimum standard for care. The success rates are even lower and much harder to track. It's important, though, that we don't confuse the problem with the solution. I think most people can understand what the problem with addiction looks like: broken homes, death, incarceration, and institutionalization. Also in areas where there's high concentration of drug abuse, crime is a huge problem. We're blessed that that's not a problem in Fountain Hills. The solution for substance abuse is also well documented and well researched: therapy, psychiatry, and peer support. There's been a lot of talk about bad actors in the treatment industry as well. Well, there's bad actors in every industry and every institution worldwide, whether it's institutions such as schools or churches; we've all heard stories that have reverberated across the country. Bad actors do damage to well-intended individuals in all industries. The 2019 community views survey in Fountain Hills found that participants believed that drug and alcohol abuse was the top issue affecting youth in Page 51 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 52 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Fountain Hills, followed by anxiety and depression. This series of meetings feels largely in conflict with that poll, rather than a conversation around how to expand access to care, whether it's increasing the distance radius between homes or reducing the number of people that can reside in the homes. Nobody's talked about any flexibility in the newly proposed rules, such as we are going to restrict access in these locations, but increase access over here --there's absolutely none of that. Today's meeting is a continuation of the conversation on how to limit the access to treatment for drug addiction in the city of Fountain Hills and avoid litigation. Exactly how restrictive can we be? It's the same conversation that's been going on for the better part of a year. Lastly, because the City of Prescott is brought up so frequently in these meetings, I'd like to remind to everyone that the solution that was put into place to remedy the clustering of sober homes in Prescott are more lax than the zoning requirements already in place in Fountain Hills. Simultaneously, the State of Arizona has also started licensing and regulating sober living homes, which it has never done before. As I said in the last meeting, it feels like a solution in search of a problem. And it's my hope that the regulations on sober living stay as is. A couple off-topic comments, that I didn't write. MAYOR DICKEY: You're almost out of time here, sorry. BENNETT: Am I out of time? MAYOR DICKEY: Not, not yet, but almost. BENNETT: Okay. Liability insurance, everyone has it. If you want to advertise on Google, you have to have a liability insurance, so I think that you're going to see that's pretty common around. So if you guys require it, that's okay, but everyone has it in a sober living home. If you don't have it and you're operating in Fountain Hills, you can't operate in Fountain Hills. So --there's that. Thank you very much. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Mr. Bennett, where do you reside? BENNETT: I reside out of town,just like 90 percent of the other people who work here. CLERK KLEIN: Larry Meyers. MEYERS: Mayor, Council. Well, it's just about all been said, and I've been saying it since last year. But here's another three-minute diatribe. To explain something that is absolutely overlooked, and is absolutely pushed by the detoxification industry to confuse Page 52 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 53 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING the issue, what you're here to discuss tonight, this issue is about allowing a business or businesses to profiteer and bolster bottom lines at the expense of residential property owners,plain and simple. The Council, if you don't want to protect the residential property owners, you can ignore reality about this business or promote fallacies. So Councilman Scharnow was very excellent in pointing out all of the fallacies in his one- third-of-a-page opinion piece in the paper. Others have pointed it out. I'm not going to get into it. But I want to tell you my conversations with the State -- at the highest levels levels have told me that there are no sober homes in Fountain Hills. Okay? So let's get rid of that fallacy. These are residential detoxification facilities. I don't care what you heard; that's what the State says. While Councilman Scharnow now that we have problems here, I agree. He says we tend to have them at a lesser degree, and I say probably, because Fountain Hills is a great place. But I don't see the need for the Town to allow a business to take people who don't live here and expand to a point where --Councilman Scharnow brought up, he doesn't see them proliferating -- when I first spoke, there was one. As I speak, there may be six. That's a 500 percent increase in 15 months. I'd call that proliferation. And I'm going to point out that Mr. Bennett's business is in the business of growing this business. Check his website out. So now back to the real issue, land use. The Council continually hides behinds the State-- this comes from the State; the State is solely interested in the governance of the activity that occurs within the home from a clinical perspective. They have no desire or jurisdiction to address the use of a home for any purpose from a land-use perspective. All governances related to land use rest with the municipality. Thus, the word "preemption" gets thrown around a lot. The only real, valid use of the word "preemption" is that the State via the DHS inspects for functional use within the home. Local jurisdictions have not been preempted from land-use perspective, and while -- I would just like to finish so I can say, while I feel Councilman Scharnow's pain, because my son knows his family, I think that that's conflating the issue, and as I stated, I think the P&Z understood this, understood it best, and I'd like to see what they understood put into place. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Jane Bell. Page 53 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 54 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING BELL: Good evening, Council and Mayor. First, I want to thank the Mayor for taking my phone call. It's always good to talk to Ginny. I want to explain the information I used. Phoenix, I talked to Rachel Escalar(ph.). Page 5,paragraph 3, general liability required. Page 9, paragraph e, owner must maintain general liability insurance. Page 14, per the permit a law enforcement officer or agency to inspect Mesa's Ann Marie Fantasia. Page 5, license a-7 copy of operator's insurance policy. Page 8, g, liability insurance, one mill three two. Page 6, paragraph 6, inspection. Here is a stack of information that has taken us a year to put together. We sat and read case law up until midnight. Nobody has tried to give you any wrong information. If we did, it was not on purpose. Along with this stack of papers, we were lucky that had a Representative Kavanaugh that took us under right at the very beginning when we were trying to search out all of the different laws and where they've gone. Because of him, we met with their legal department, their code, their head of the DHS, and they really educated us. We are very fortunate, and we can contact him and get to their legal things to get the answers. Why all this information? Years ago, I was involved teaching drug education and savings kids' lives, before all of you were born, except maybe Magazine. [LAUGHTER] COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Jane, it's always pleasure. BELL: Remember the count of six in the house. It has gone to the Ninth Circuit Court. The U.S. Supreme Court, the Town may write any ordinance provisions necessary to protect the welfare, including the number of occupants, proving it does not over- discriminate. After talking to the Mayor, I realized we were on different roads, because these drug items didn't blow in. I hope you'll look at the Article 2, R9-12-210, the administration of the home. I gave you the State and I gave you papers out of the Phoenix ordinance that deals with that. Phoenix has 8 pages. I gave you the State to look at. We need people to be involved in our government -- three minutes you give is important, is democracy at work. We and the Council should be one team, wanting the same outcome. Please go back and look at that article on administrating the home. Be sure you have 24 hours management, they know CPR, and there's Narcon available in that home that can be given. You have to protect the addicts. The detox ordinance is coming next. I wonder where Fountain Hills is going to be. Page 54 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 55 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING We've had our property here for over 44 years. We love this town, but I am concerned about where it's going. Addicts can get well in a -- not a million-dollar home, or riding around in a Mercedes. We have to watch where we're going with it. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Representative Kavanagh. KAVANAGH: Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. State Representative John Kavanaugh, Fountain Hills. First, let me go on record as saying that I erroneously ascribed to staff at the last meeting that they had rewritten the ordinance that P&Z done. I had criticized them; however, I since realized that they were simply presenting alternatives to the thing, so that was not warranted, and I want to go on the record as saying that. However, I still do disagree with their recommendations, because I think they watered down an ordinance and lessen the protection that the people need. I spoke to the lawyers at the State capital, and they made it very clear to me that in areas of planning and zoning, the State has not, in the least, preempted the Town from doing regulation in this area. So when it comes to the number of people in the house and the distances, which is planning and zoning, there was no problem with State law. So you may ask, is there -- are there any other potential problems, and the answer is yes. Federal law, because this has to do with the Americans Disabilities Act. And you have to be able to give reasonable accommodation. So when you look at the recommendations and you look at the surveys, where this town has so many feet, this town has so many feet, nobody has the half mile, which we recommend. That doesn't mean you can't do that, because the State doesn't control that. It's federal law, and based upon what the federal government says. And as we learn that the thing the P&Z is needing, there are other states that have half miles. So the feds haven't cracked down on these half-mile regulations. So that would seem to suggest that we would be okay with the half mile. So I think that's a reasonable thing to do. The other problem has to do with fear of a lawsuit. If you are -- if you do a federal violation, or a claimed one, you don't go right to court and spend a fortune on lawyers. The first thing the federal government does is, is they call you in, they talk to you, they may do mediation or arbitration between the parties, or they may say, you can't do this. At any point, you can back out, and you have not racked up massive legal fees. So it's not like going down this road is necessarily prohibitive. I would also state that, I think Page 55 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 56 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING you can do inspections, because State law says that the State can contract with third parties that do inspections. So you could conceivably contract with the State to pick up that role, which you might want to do since they haven't got that much staffing in this area. And if it requires a tweak in the law, I'd be more than happy to do that. I think fire insurance and inspections are important. People with addictions have co- addictions, like smoking, a lot of smoking, People who can relapse and get stoned. There's a lot of fire problems there. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. Finally, let me say, be careful about your waiver language, because what I heard was suggested, you could drive a truck through. I think any waiver has to be based upon undue hardship; that is unique to that particular house. So you don't open up the doorway, everybody can claim, oh, this is not economically feasible and get their waiver. In closing, let me say, the people who spoke here tonight who live near these homes are clearly concerned about their quality of life, about their safety, and their peace of mind. Everybody else in this room, everybody else in this town, could potentially be in the exact same situation. Because these homes can open up next to any of our houses. So these people, the Town, even yourselves, right, should expect no more than to have your peace of mind, your safety, right, protected. And you should give no less. Thank you. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Representative Kavanaugh. Excuse me. I'm sorry. MAYOR DICKEY: Can he ask a question? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah, I have a question. I genuinely do feel sorry for the people who live next to these and see men looking in their windows, or whatever they're doing. I genuinely do, but I want to ask you, in your mind, based on State law or anything else, is there anything we can do about that? KAVANAGH: Yes. Madam Mayor, Councilman Magazine, I would adopt the P&Z's provisions. I would attempt to defend them as best I possibly could. Understand -- and I'm not saying this applies to every staff member at every occasion. But I was on this council for six years. I've been on the legislature for 16 years. And there's one thing I can tell you about staff: They're conservative in their recommendations. That they tread very gently. Because this is the bottom line, if a staff member says to you, you can do that,pass that, make it so many feet, and you wind up getting sued and losing, there's a staff member who's concerned about their job, and maybe with good justification. So if Page 56 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 57 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING the staff member says, you can't do that, don't do it, and you don't do it, that staff member never gets in trouble, because there's no lawsuit. But you have to say -- you have to say to yourself, did I shortchange my constituents by not giving them -- giving them enough protection. So I think P&Z's were reasonable, and I would stick by it and do the best, and if you have to back out, I would back out. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: I do hear you. But I'm not sure you've -- maybe I didn't make my question clear enough. KAVANAGH: Okay. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Let's assume that there's one of these one of these houses right next door to you and you don't like it; there are problems. Is there anything you can do about it? KAVANAUGH: Well, yeah, I could go to my town council and I could ask to have these restrictions put in. I could have aggressive code enforcement, doing -- inspecting -- COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: But you can't -- but you can't remove them? KAVANAUGH: No. You -- no, you can't. Because that's the federal law. But you can make them as least intrusive as possible. I had that with the party houses, the short-term rentals. I couldn't -- I voted against it from the day one. I was the only Senator-- I knew it was a disaster. I couldn't stop it, but I did come back the next year, and I banned exclusive party event houses. So you go as far as you can. You push the limits. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: And we appreciate that. KAVANAUGH: Okay. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: John, I do want to ask something, because when Larry was up here, he said something about that the State cares about what happens inside the house, but then he said somebody from the State told him that it's detoxing that's happening, not sober. So if they're the licensing -- what'd you say? MEYERS: I said that they said that their records show there were no sober homes in Fountain Hills. MAYOR DICKEY: So these -- MEYERS: I said, they are detoxification facilities in residential properties; the State did not say that. So I -- Page 57 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 58 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: The State said there are no sober living homes -- MEYERS: Quote. MAYOR DICKEY: --but that they are only responsible for what goes on inside, not the zoning stuff. So how can they license something that isn't really a sober living home? How is it existing? We have four and they're sober living homes, licensed by the State. So why would the State admit that there's no sober living homes? KAVANAUGH: Yeah. I guess it comes down to the definition. There's a medical definition. There's a legal definition. But the bottom line is, these people are in some stage of detox, because quite frankly, they wouldn't need all this treatment if they didn't have an addiction and they didn't need to kick that addiction. They're just in a later stage than if they have to be in a hospital. MAYOR DICKEY: Well, they're --they are not technically, because a detox couldn't happen in a residential area. It couldn't be licensed to happen in a residential area, correct? KAVANAUGH: From the -- Mayor, from the legal standpoint, but obviously these people still crave the drugs. It's not -- the craving's not out of their system, so I guess if detox is considered a medical, biological thing, then they're not detoxing. But in their minds, I think they're still going through a stage that's close enough for government. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. It just -- [LAUGHTER] CLERK KLEIN: Thanks. I give up. Barry McBride. MCBRIDE: Madam Mayor, Council. My business is right across the street. I own two buildings in Fountain Hills, but I'm sad to say I'm a resident of Scottsdale. Haven't been able to get my wife to move here yet. But I'm working on it. I would like to say I'm so impressed with the citizens. I'm inspired by the quivering voices, and I think that with the quivering voices that would help you look at things maybe from a different perspective. In this situation, serving along with the P&Z, there was research done beyond Arizona border, which was really impactful. And I think that was reflected very well in their-- in their recommendation. So we encourage you again to adopt P&Z's recommendation as given. We think that's very, very important. Mission number one of the Council, I would assume, to serve and protect the people. Page 58 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 59 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING And when we hear stories of people that are not being served and not being protected, it is very inspiring; it's very concerning. And it's the type of the story that would change the way that you think to look at things through the lens of leadership, as opposed to following other-- or other municipalities with undue restrictions. It's a very, very concerning thing. And the issue is is we now have commercial enterprises in residential zones that's causing the quivering voices of those that have come up and spoken, which is quite unfortunate, it really is. Interesting, I cannot run a commercial insurance agency in a residential area, but we can have detox facilities there. It's a real, real concern. I implore you to listen to the quivering voices, to consider what they're going through and living through. It's the lens of leadership. And I'll follow up with this. I serve on a committee at the Phoenix Zoo, and one thing that we do at the Phoenix Zoo is we are very, very considerate of where we place different species because of the amount of stress that it causes from one to the other. So said respectfully, said respectfully, because I will say that my cousin died of a heroin overdose. So I do care deeply for those in treatment. But his treatment was at a facility, not in a residence. But the key is is we have to make sure that we have commercial and residential, because otherwise the mixing of the two creates an undue stress that's unfair for residents. Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: John Pio -- Peo ? I'm -- PIO: Pio. CLERK KLEIN: Pio, I'm sorry. I know I had it once before. And I couldn't remember how I pronounced it. PIO: Madam Mayor, Council, thank you. My wife and I have been residents of Fountain Hills for 19 years. Fountain Hills is blessed in many ways, and in particular relating to this agenda item, it's blessed to have a Planning and Zoning Commission that's willing to do all of the hard work necessary to generate the best possible recommendations that serve the interests of the Town and its residents. In particular, the Chairman, Peter Gray, is obviously highly competent, talented, and motivated to do the best possible job in supporting you all on the Council. My observations are that the recommendations developed by Chairman Gray, and the commission were based on extensive research, factual evidence, due sensitivity to legal issues, and consideration of what best serves this Page 59 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 60 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING community as well as the operators and especially the residents of the sober homes. I believe the recommendations should be adopted substantially as proposed and not be weakened because of supposed or speculated future litigation. We've all seen the disastrous results of weak ordinances in other locales, and we're feeling some of those consequences within our own community. And they're not rumors. And I think there's people here that would disagree that this is a solution in search of a problem. The adoption of strong but fair ordinances may carry some risk of litigation. But what possible legitimate consideration can come before protecting this town and its residents? Thank you. CLERK KLEIN: Allen Skillicorn. SKILLICORN: Thank you, Mayor, Council, staff, and also thank you for your time, your commitment, and, you know, evenings like this go late, and we want to respect your time. And thank you and I appreciate your time. My name is Allen Skillicorn, and I'm just here because I think people are more important than special interests. And when I look at that Planning and Zoning Ordinance that was unanimously approved, it just seems like it's very common sense to me. It seems reasonable. When I listen to my neighbors, they seem to agree with me too. They say-- I hear it over and over, common sense, reasonable. They seem to agree with me too. And I hear tonight, you know, whether it's the presentation and some of the questions and comments. It sounds like I heard the word "can't" a lot. And I'd really like to hear the word "can". And I'll give you an example of the differences. When we talk about, you know, the State does inspections, the Town can't do inspections, the State doesn't require insurance, the Town can't require insurance --when I -- when I hear this, it just-- can't, can't, can't. Well, I believe in the word "can". So we have a State legislator who's in the audience here, who lives in town here. If we need this change a State law, he can propose the legislation. It may not be immediate. It might take some time. It might take-- it might be next session that this happens. But we, the people, can change the law here in the State. This town also has a congressman that resides in the Town, and many of us have his cell phone number in our phones. If federal law, if ADA is a problem, we can approach him, and he can file legislation. And potentially, that could be changed; that could be changed long period of time, short period of time, but we can effect change. Page 60 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 61 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING And I want-- I just want to point that out. When I hear the proposed ordinance about the waiver, there was a couple objections there. One -- that -- didn't I hear of an objection is these, the commission, the three- person commission, for the waiver? Now, one issue I have with that is that this is an unelected commission. The people on there are not accountable to the public,because they're not elected. I do have a significant problem with that. I hear a complaint about, or, you know, a recommendation of lowering the distance. Still I think the people of this town deserve to have an opportunity to not have these in these clusters, considering the topography of our town and the -- and the washes, the half a mile does not seem unreasonable. Now, I did want-- a couple of other things. Like, if one of these facilities moved in next door to you, would you be okay that they weren't required by the Town to have liability insurance? Think about, if they were next door to you, would you be okay with that? If one moved next door to you, would you be okay if the Town did not come in and do inspections? Would you be okay with that? If one moved in right next to you, would you be okay with the limit of six versus ten? Would you be okay with that? And the reason I ask the question in such a way is because there are people in this -- in here that have these right next door to them. And they are not okay with the watering down of this ordinance. So I respectfully ask, if you feel uncomfortable with watering down any of these items, tonight is the night to speak up; tonight is the night -- the night to do so. And I don't know if you are guys are open-minded to keeping the Planning and Zoning, you know, recommendations. I hope you are, but if you have any feeling that you're uncomfortable with not having insurance, not having inspection, not having these limits, speak up tonight. The people of the Town want to hear you. Thank you so much. CLERK KLEIN: Ed Stizza. STIZZA: Good evening. And Mayor, Town Council, and staff. I'm a resident of Fountain Hills. I cannot say anything more other than, finally, you guys are going to be held accountable for your vote tonight. This is an important vote. You have heard from all the residents. You have heard from the Town. You have heard from everybody you possibly can, and if you can't make the right decision this time, then God help you. So -- thank you. Page 61 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 62 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you very much. Those were all the speaker cards. I think -- so right now, I just want to say a couple of things. So I understand that you would like us to follow exactly what the Planning and Zoning said, but I think you noticed even at the last meeting, some of the changes that we made were necessary, and no one objected to them on Planning and Zoning either. I think -- I know you want us to listen, and I believe that we have been listening and obviously care about this. Representative Kavanaugh knows about how I feel about the short-term rentals, and I feel like it's kind of the same, sort of intrusion, it can be, but we also -- we are preempted in a lot of ways. Part of me sees this State, as the licensing entity, that they should be responsible to make sure that they're not detox or there's no active treatment going on or that there's not 12 people living there or whatever-- whatever they're-- they made those accommodations to give them the license. Why are they not in charge of taking care of them? And if we don't like the fact that something has to happen that the State tells us to do, why isn't that -- and you did mention that, you know, going back to try and to change some of those laws. But when you talk about the insurance, it literally was the State law that made Phoenix, Mesa, and Prescott have to take that off their books. So I don't know how that translates into us being able to do that with the State. The other things that were talked about, I -- everybody goes through that at some -- at one point or another with a-- with a neighbor. Whether it's a dog or fighting people or the smoking, or you don't -- you don't have a smoking neighbor ever? You don't have fights ever? What I'm saying is that when Allen asked about what would you do about that, some of this stuff is a little -- you know, it's not cut and dry, and -- but I do ask since we do have some folks here in the industry, you know, sometimes you have to act like neighbors, like we have to ask a neighbor about a dog or about smoking or about fighting or partying or any of that kind of stuff. So we have to weigh a lot of different things as we move forward, including the law. So that's what -- that's what going through our minds. There's no -- there's no hubris here; there's no fun here. There's nobody trying to help somebody with some motivation or another. But we have been trying to make our way through this in the best way for all 25,000 people that live here. So anyway, what -- do I close the hearing, and do we -- can we continue to speak after that? ATTORNEY ARNSON: Mayor, you can go ahead and close the hearing, and then if the Page 62 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 63 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING council members have additional comments, by all means. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. So additional discussion? On what we went through? Gerry and Vice Mayor. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Mayor, tonight we heard a lot of people mention the insurance issue. So I'm just wondering if there's some kind of a model for a rated risk that we could take a look at across the board for all of our business community so that we're not singling out one sector of the business community. And I'm wondering if there's some model or something that we can take a look at to give us more information in that area. ATTORNEY ARNSON: I have a couple of thoughts and a response to that question, Councilman. The first is that, is there some sort of model -- I mean, sure there are model policies, right. Like, you know, the insurance industry has model policies all the time for commercial general liability, property owner's insurance. And it's just a question of what's the nature of the business and what's an appropriate limit. I'm not sure how we as a town go with every business and try to figure out what limits would be appropriate for every type of business. But assuming that it was possible, it's -- at least one of the things that sounded reasonable tonight is that -- and I don't -- you know, I'm kind of looking this direction toward Mr. Bennett. He made a representation that sounds as though the industry wouldn't have an issue with that sort of a provision. So I mean, I don't know if it needs -- maybe it doesn't even necessarily need to be an issue, right? If it -- I don't know, I'm sort of-- that was news to me. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: That's kind of where I was going -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: -- because when he made that statement, I'm thinking, there's got to be a way to work that out. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah, I mean, right. My point is is that, look, if it's something that the industry doesn't have an issue with, right, I still don't think it's something that under State regulations we can require of a specific industry, right? But on the other hand, if this is a sticking point and we mutually all recognize that it's a sticking point, that it's a distinction with that difference, then maybe we include it and move on, if some of the folks who have spoken here tonight in favor of reasonable regulations are okay with Page 63 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 64 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING that. But that I'm not going to put words in anyone's mouth, I'm just trying to come up with a reasonable solution here that sort of makes both parties mutually satisfied. MAYOR DICKEY: Can the State require insurance? ATTORNEY ARNSON: I'm sure the State could require insurance if it chose to. MAYOR DICKEY: Right, right, but the Town can't require somebody that buys a home to get homeowner insurance. The town -- we're talking about us being able -- having the ability to require insurance of one particular area, and that's the sticking point that the State-- these-- ATTORNEY ARNSON: The State is the licensing agency. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: The State can require it. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Indiscernible) only have one thing to say is that from the all insurance companies that I looked at, every one of them has an extra package for sober homes. MAYOR DICKEY: I understand, sir. Thank you. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So there is a risk/reward -- they're all doing that because of risk/reward. MAYOR DICKEY: I understand. What -- I guess what we're trying to get to the bottom of is the authority of the Town to require insurance from a particular enterprise, business, home, whatever you want to call it. And we don't feel like we -- we don't have that authority. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I want to let him talk. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. I don't know what the -- you know, I don't know what the result of that is, because I came in here with the idea that we do not have the authority to require insurance. ATTORNEY ARNSON: And I still believe that's the case. MAYOR DICKEY: And you still believe that's the case. Okay, thank you. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Follow up, then say the State could do it. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Well, we have legislator Kavanaugh here, who perhaps can try to make that happen at the legislative level. I see him nodding in agreement that maybe that's possible. Page 64 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 65 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: The other thing that I think we might have had some discussion about was the distancing thing, so, you know, the 1320 was the quarter mile. So do you want to talk about that? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah, may I? Yeah, Aaron, it's my understanding that 1320 is the farthest distance between these homes, and any jurisdiction in Arizona; is that correct? ATTORNEY ARNSON: You're not doing me any favors tonight, Councilman. That is correct. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Okay. So 1320. ATTORNEYARSON: And that's in the --that's in an attachment to agenda 8B. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Right, right. So when it comes time for a motion, I would be happy to make the motion to have it set at 1320 as opposed to 1200. MAYOR DICKEY: Is there any other discussion on this item? Mike? COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: No. I -- you know, in my oft-quoted opinion piece from last week, I said I was willing to look at changes and compromises and such. And I too think 1320 is a good compromise from what was proposed when looking at other jurisdictions. So -- COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: I agree. I feel like we don't want to be the test of waters above the 1320. I think part of our job on Council is to our help protect from lawsuits, so I feel like there's, what, 3 at 1320, and there was 5 or 6 at 1200. So I feel like 1320 is probably a safe place to go. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: (Indiscernible) motion. Mayor, I'm going to move this along. I'm going to move that the separation requirement be set at 1320 feet. MAYOR DICKEY: Is this a motion? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Yeah. I made a motion. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah. Well, are we going to -- do you want to take these one at a time -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: So the -- I think-- I think the best option with-- respectfully, Councilman Magazine, I think the best option might to be -- to go through those five areas that Director Wesley said. And if we can make a motion all at once -- MAGAZINE: Sure. Page 65 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 66 of 80 MAY 3,2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING _tea ATTORNEY ARNSON: -- that might really help. That might help us out. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Well -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Right, we still have to -- yeah, we still have to actually get the ordinance, right, kind of-- MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, so that we would take the break, so -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: -- so I'm good with the six and eight, if that's something anybody wants to talk about. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Six and eight, you mean for occupancy? Thank you, Mayor. COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: I mean, I'm willing to consider a lowering of where we're at. I just think going down to six and eight is too much. And I'm kind of surprised in terms of all this comment, this past year, I mean, knowing from the -- what are we calling them, the family community residences. No one from that industry has come forward to question us or give suggestions. I mean, this is going to impact them as well. And, you know, we're kind of separating the two subcategories. I understand that, but I think we're lowering the family one just to kind of give credence to lowering the other one. And then, I mean, this could impact future people who want to open, you know, these family community residences in the community. I mean, maybe the feeling is ten's enough, but on the other hand, it's like we don't hear complaints about these homes. So this industry is going to be impacted by this ordinance as well. I just want to point that out, but I just --to me, six and eight is too much. But most of the communities, the vast majority is are ten plus staff. And I'm not proposing that, but I just think what's on the table here is too much. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Thank you, Mayor. I'm good with six and eight. And what it boils down to for me is quality of care. I think it's important. I have several members of my family who are involved with drug and alcohol abuse. And I've seen it firsthand. So six and eight for me are good, because of the improved quality of care, and it's got to be number one with dealing with this. So I'm good with those numbers. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: While I agree with Councilman Scharnow that I kind of feel like ten is a better number, I would be okay with talking six and eight if we said that that does not include live-in staff. I do have a problem with six or eight people Page 66 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 67 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING if that includes live-in staff. MAYOR DICKEY: So we want to make sure we can come up with something that Aaron feels he can move forward with. So I don't think we're there right now. I think we probably need to hear from everybody else. David? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. As I stated before, a month ago, well over a month ago, that I would not budge from that number, I will continue to be steadfast and say that it's six and eight or I'm a no vote. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. Alan? COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Well, it's just a matter of getting it on the record. I agree with Councilwoman Grzybowski; six and eight, not including staff, makes sense to me. COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: Well, I'd go along with that. MAYOR DICKEY: Any other? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: (Indiscernible). MAYOR DICKEY: Six and eight with staff, including staff. Okay. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: With the community residence, six to eight with staff, and the (indiscernible). COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Can't hear you; your mic's not on. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: It is on. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, it's on. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Sony. I think that, with the community residence, up to six to eight with staff is appropriate. And the other one, the transient one, up to six with staff is appropriate. I think that, given what was said tonight, with the neighbor's concerns, that-- about how many people they see and things like this, I think this is a reasonable number. It's less than what was recommended, and it just seems like it would work. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: And I know that the idea of neighborhood, you know, how many people are in each house isn't something that they say is legitimate to use in a legal way, maybe. But I think it does reflect on neighborhoods, and just like with short-term rentals or anything else, trying as best as we can, under the constraints that we have to keep neighborhoods and the characters of neighborhoods as residential areas is important. So Page 67 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 68 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING there may be four for six and eight, with-- including staff? Did you see that? ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah, that's good. MAYOR DICKEY: Do you agree? MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. What was the other thing -- license, insurance -- the inspections. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: I move that we not require inspections, that it's the State licensing agency does the inspections; we can't do unannounced inspections. MAYOR DICKEY: I think we could maybe help with the efforts to the legislature, whether it's for funding or for whatever it takes so that inspections can be done regularly and can be relied on, they can be requested, but that also reminds me, though, that there's complaints online that --well, we just got some information today, and you touched briefly on it, that I think 94 complaints were made in the last year, and 91 resulted in citations. So I think it's a responsive mechanism that the State has in place. So I don't think that the Town has the jurisdiction or the ability to do these unannounced inspections. Like I said, we do do the fire inspections, and if there's code enforcement sort of stuff, litter, anything that you see on the outside, too many cars, working on a car, all those kind of things, we already have that ability for code inspection, but an interior inspection unannounced, we're --we don't have the authority to do that, but I'd be happy to help the State and advocate for funding or whatever it takes for the staff to be able to do that. And then they could do that for all their cities. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: I just wanted to reiterate when you said it 94 complaints that went in and 97 citations. That was based on the State, not on Fountain Hills'number. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, right. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Just wanted to make sure that we said that. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Mayor. MAYOR DICKEY: Yes. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: I'm wondering if the State outsources for those inspections, is that something that we can get hooked up with to do that in our own town, if the State is the one that is outsourcing that? Is that something we can on -- I don't know. ATTORNEY ARNSON: It's something we can check. I have no idea whether a H6TfRx cfr',55H5,'#T�'W.xitiS-T+w•a.y.,._.'+.F a..,st ri5:,..•. ., r...:n . ... Page 68 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 69 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING municipality serves as a third-party contractor. It would be unusual. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I just -- I don't know, yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: So basically it would be, like, they would hire somebody. And but we would have to have that staff to be able to do that -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah, right. MAYOR DICKEY: -- and such. ATTORNEY ARNSON: I mean, typically what you're going to see with any--with any government body is they're going to do a procurement for, you know, an outside agency to conduct their inspections, like how we do on-- like, for third-party inspections for certain projects. MAYOR DICKEY: Oh, right. ATTORNEY ARNSON: So it -- I can't imagine it's that different. I just -- maybe there's like a workshare agreement or something like that. So it's possible; I just don't know the answer to the question. MAYOR DICKEY: Mike? COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: Yeah, Madam Mayor, thank you. Along the lines of, you know, changes needed at the State level -- I mean, one of the speakers talked about this initial application form and issues with, you know, aliens applying, that kind of thing, the very loosey-goosey restrictions. Well, again -- that -- when you talk to the State legislature and other folks at the State level, the changes form then. If it's inadequate or you think it's lacking, that's -- you know, that's -- again, this is not a Fountain Hills' forum, it's a State one, so take it up with the State. MAYOR DICKEY: Do you see, do you understand what's happening then here, right? ATTORNEY ARNSON: No. Maybe I can -- MAYOR DICKEY: Enough-- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Maybe I can summarize really quick, and the town manager gave a good suggestion about getting some consensus, whether through a vote or otherwise, before we go and try to figure something -- changing out language on the six and eight, whether it's including staff or not including staff. Include -- so-- include. I see four head nods. So that's -- so if someone wants to try to, you know -- but that's how we'll come back with it. Page 69 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 70 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: As long as we do the grandfather language and the appeal language. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah. Were you -- you were suggesting have a vote, so we can vote on ordinances -- MANAGER MILLER: Well, it's -- the suggested motion does say, the ordinance that they approved, the amended ordinance, with the -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Okay. MANAGER MILLER: -- amended -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: I think I understand what the Council's looking for. Do you want me to reiterate so that we're all on the same page? Okay. And then if I'm missing anything, maybe Director Wesley can help us out. Sounds like the consensus is for 1,320-foot distancing requirement; occupancy limits at six for transitional, eight for community residences. That would be including staff in both respects. We didn't discuss this, but something that does -- that staff is recommending need to be re-inserted is the waiver language. It sounds like we have a consensus about insurance requirements, about not including those insurance requirements. It sounds like we have consensus -- at least there was no objection to Councilwoman McMahon's request to remove the last clause of Section 3(B)(8), which doesn't have a material effect on the ordinance. We have a consensus about the inspection requirements, about removing those. And am I missing anything, John? DIRECTOR WESLEY: No. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yes. Am I -- and am I missing anything, John? And hopefully everyone heard what I just said so I don't have to -- MAYOR DICKEY: The membership of the appeal, the three-person, like, committee, which it's purposely not elected, I think, because I think we're trying to look at a way of getting it real straight, you know,just more of adjustment. It doesn't get straighter than that. ATTORNEY ARNSON: And Mayor, it looks like -- my guess we'll go ahead and include that in the way-- as a provision of the waiver language. MAYOR DICKEY: Is everybody-- was okay with P&Z -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: So -- is everyone okay with that? Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: -- or adjustment. Director? Page 70 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 71 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Right. That's what I thought it was. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: I think, correct me if I'm wrong. I think we said that it would either be the P&Z chair or, if he's not able to make it, a designee. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Yeah. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: And that would be same with the board of adjustments? ATTORNEY ARNSON: I would assume so, yes. Uh-huh. MAYOR DICKEY: Yes. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: And just another note. So we're going to do some follow-up on the insurance, whether-- and also the inspection with whether the State will allow -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Right. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: -- hire us to -- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Yeah. So it -- so it sounds like the consensus is for these requirements to either be modified or removed with the recognition that there's something that probably can and should happen at the State level. So hopefully we can have that as a legislative priority, you know, if that's something the Council chooses to do. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay, thank you. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Mayor, if I may,jump in. The one thing that we really haven't discussed much, but I did bring up it up in the -- it's my presentations. We talked about the legal nonconformities and the possibility of the transfer of a license, that we might add some language into the ordinance that deals with that to make sure that's clear what those rules are, so that would be another piece that we would add in here as we bring this back for your final consideration. If that's agreeable? MAYOR DICKEY: It's the nonconforming use -- the nonconforming-- ATTORNEY ARNSON: Existing facilities. DIRECTOR WESLEY: Yeah, and then to transfer the license. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: That the license of the owner would not be transferred -- not transferable? DIRECTOR WESLEY: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: And again, it's --we are bound to keep people that have --bought -- they bought their property or they're operating a business under certain zoning, and then iF.,: lsa`=...: ... . ,. „ ,. -.. N t:'s.." .... •.. -,..+.+r,.Au.*.4e�Wf 'F 2'titR!aM" .5r Page 71 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 72 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING if that zoning gets changed -- this is what happened with parking requirements over by McDonald's, because that was there before any of the zoning was. So that's a nonconforming use, and we are not able to change zoning out from under people that are there. But if a new one should pop up, or a new operator or a new residence, they will know, going forward, that this is the law. Yes, sir? VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: I have a question. So will the reasonable accommodation review, will that be a public process or will that be behind closed doors, or how is that going to be handled? ATTORNEY ARNSON: I can answer it. Yeah, I don't know that it's necessarily right to say "closed doors". But it's -- yeah, but it's intended to be an administrative process. Generally, as far as I know, I'm not aware of actually one that is a -- like a council process; maybe there is one and I'm not just aware of it. But they are -- generally are administrative processes at a staff level. And in this instance, we happen to be taking it in a hybrid approach, right, with the two Council appointees and then a member of staff that would be your zoning administrator, development services director. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: I don't have any issue with it being an administrative process, but by the same token, I think that that administrative process should be open to the-- you know, it should be made public. Not necessarily the hearing itself, but the results and the evidence presented and everything, that would be a matter of public record, correct? Because I'm vehemently opposed if this is done and the public does not know about it. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Right, right. So recognizing that there are certain restrictions on what we can release, on what a public body release, with respect to sober living homes. Like, for example, an address, it's not a matter of public record. I don't have an issue of-- necessarily an issue, if the fact of the proceedings and the outcome of a proceeding is a matter of public record; that's just -- that's just town business. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Right. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, do we have like a parallel on that, on if anybody ever asks for, like, say, anything that happens when they want to change zoning or the board of adjustment when --because they have that criteria, specific criteria, so would they be able to then say, yes, they met this, this, and this, without actually holding it in public? Okay. Page 72 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 73 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING ATTORNEY ARNSON: Okay. Uh-huh. Do we need to recess, John, to gather our thoughts for a second? Mayor, is that all right if we recess? MAYOR DICKEY: Yes. We'll do that, and then this way we can wrap it up and actually finish with it tonight. Thank you. (Recess) MAYOR DICKEY: I think we're ready to get rolling again. Before Aaron tells us what he came up with, does Council have any further discussion? Yes, Vice Mayor? VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: I just want to say that I know Planning and Zoning had looked for a half a mile distance between the two homes, and while I'm encouraged by that, and actually wanted to side with that, in an attempt to get this put to bed, and reach a unanimous decision by this Council, I'm willing to sacrifice that part of it, and go with the 1,320, so. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you, Vice Mayor. We appreciate that. I think there is a lot of give and take going on here, and we certainly appreciate that from everybody, and your understanding. So how do we want to proceed? ARNSON: So Mayor, the recommendation would be, if I can tell you what sections we're sort of planning to remove, based on the discussion, and what they relate to, and then what minor language we're adding, based on the discussion, and then any Councilmember who wishes to do so can simply say so moved. So you don't have to repeat everything. Does that work? Okay. All right. And by the way, so this is moving to adopt Ordinance Number 22-01, as proposed in the Staff Report, with the following modifications: In Section 5.13(A)(1), change 2,640 feet to 1,320 feet. In Section B(2), remove the last sentence after-- or remove the provision regarding inspections. Subsection B(5), remove Subsection B(5) regarding commercial general liability. And the companion change to that would be in Subsection C(5)(B), to remove that. MAYOR DICKEY: Councilman, you said C? ATTORNEY ARNSON: Uh-huh, C(5)(B). It's on page -- it's under the registration section. I said B, sorry. B, B, B. B, the insurance policy required by B(5), because there is no insurance policy required by B(5) anymore. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Sorry? Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, the changes suggested by Page 73 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 74 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Councilwoman McMahon. Yes. Thank you. Subsection D, in the registration section-- no, Subsection D would be a new section that we discussed regarding the transfer of ownership licenses. It will read any community residence that is in operation as of the adoption of this section shall be considered a legal, nonconforming use consistent with Section 4.01(b) of the zoning ordinance. Any new community residence or residence that is in operation but that transfers ownership shall be subject to the provisions of this section. MAYOR DICKEY: So it's citing existing ordinance? ATTORNEYARNSON: Yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: Perfect. ATTORNEY ARNSON: New Subsection E will be just incorporating the waiver language as proposed previously to P&Z. The only change to that will be to the last section that says the reasonable accommodation committee shall be composed of the town Development Services director, the chair of the Board of Adjustment, or his or her designee, and the chair of the Planning & Zoning Commission, or his or her designee. I want to make sure I didn't miss anything, if you'll give me a second. Oh, the occupancy limits will remain as written because that's as proposed. And then I believe there was, not as a part of the ordinance, but some direction to staff to pursue as a legislative priority or at a State level, some additional tools for either the state or municipalities to use to pursue insurance requirements, etc. And I think we remember that discussion. Is that a -- so that's my statement of what the proposed motion would be based on the discussion that we had. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: Aaron, could you include taking out the violation and penalty section, number 2(A), required insurance? That's in there? Okay. MAYOR DICKEY: I think he did. I think it was all in there. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Oh. COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: It's on page 4 -- it's on page 8. ATTORNEY ARNSON: That's actually an additional section, then. MAYOR DICKEY: Yeah, it's in two places. ATTORNEY ARNSON: Okay. We'll make that change administratively. Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. Any other discussion? Yes, David. Page 74 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 75 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I had a good sidebar on recess with State Representative Cavanaugh, who had a very good idea about us possibly approaching the State and entering into an agreement with them as a third party, that we would have their permission to possibly enter into an agreement that we would inspect the facilities on their behalf. So I think that that's definitely something that I would like to see Aaron follow up on with State Rep Cavanaugh on that. And you already stated the insurance thing. I, too, along with Vice Mayor Friedel, would like to have seen the distance to be a little greater than the 1,320, as proposed. I'm for the 1,850. But you know, everybody doesn't always get what they want. So I stuck firm for the fact that the six and the eight, which I believe is a little bit more important than the actual distance. I'm okay with the 1,320, but I'm happy that after having the conversation with the State rep, that I think there's some remedies that we can follow down the road that would help us. So as long as we're in collaboration with him and everything, I think it benefits the Town and the residents. MAYOR DICKEY: And I'm really glad to hear you say that, too, because one of the things that we did forget to mention was the 1,487. And so if we had taken action that any legislator objected to, you know, regardless of what the motivation was, they could also put this all back on State-shared revenue and things like that. So we try to comply with as much as we can, and still do the things that the communities would like us to do, and what we want to do, too. But that was just another risk that's there with pretty much anything we do. So to know that you're talking to John like that is great. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: And just to follow up, I cannot put into words how grateful I am for all the residents. I mean, you guys put in hundreds of hours in researching this, sending us emails, sending us case law. Hats off to the residents. I know it gets tiresome that you guys constantly have to fight with us. I didn't need Mr. Meyers to bring up Daybreak or permanent primary property tax or all of the other things that you guys have fought us on. And I just really appreciate the residents. I appreciate town staff for all the work. John Leslie (ph.), I know I mess with him a lot but he did put his heart and soul into this. Jane Bell herself said that she appreciated what he had did (sic). And we put a lot of thought into this. So I know everybody's not going to be happy. I'm expecting that. But I think it's the best of what we could accomplish this Page 75 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 76 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING evening. So thank you very much to the residents and the Town staff, and to you, Aaron, and thanks. MAYOR DICKEY: I appreciate that, David. A lot. And since we did bring up Daybreak, and those things were in the past, other councils, we all had different opinions on everything, so there's nothing aligning here. We're just doing the best we can to navigate this. Would somebody like to make a motion? COUNCILMEMBER MCMAHON: So move to adopt Ordinance 22-01, including the amendments as discussed with the council this evening. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Second. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? COUNCILMEMBER SCHARNOW: Nay. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. I think you got that, Liz. Okay. All right. Thank you very much, everyone. We'll move on to our next item, which is Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. MANAGER MILLER: Mayor and Council, due to the late hour, we'll be very brief on our remarks, but Community Services Director Rachael Goodwin will give a brief report on this item before you. GOODWIN: Yes, brief being the key word here. So as many of you know, we have an existing agreement with Maricopa County Animal Control to enforce and implement our needs in regards to animal care, whether that's stray dogs, whether that's assistance with officer needs in terms of MCSO, sick animals, stray animals, all of those types of things. So they are our provider. This is a quick look at what they provide for us. So this is just a quick, bulleted list of all of the different things that they do for us. They also are our shelter services, so when they have a stray dog or a dog submitted or a dog turned in and surrendered, they also serve as our shelter facility. The contract amount is just shy of $32,000. The previous contract was $30,318. This is a new formula that they've implemented, which is why we need to redo our IGA with them. I know there was some questions about what their enforcement has been over the last year or so. These stats are from our January 1st through March 31st quarterly bill. This gives you just an idea of the different things that they've assisted with here in Fountain Hills. Page 76 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 77 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Do they do anything with wild animals? DIRECTOR GOODWIN: They do not. They are not the resource for that. We either work with Game and Fish or other resources for wild animals. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. And I'm seeing the leash law thing, and just to say it out loud, you know, we have leash laws in town, and these are the folks that enforce it. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Correct. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Yes, sir? COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll make it quick, I know everybody wants to go. Rachael, how often are they here? Because January to March, I'm sorry, that activity isn't blowing me away. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Um-hum. So again, everything from trips out that we -- so we have them on an as-needed, called basis. So they only come when there is an issue that they are called out for. Most of that is what you're seeing here. We also have what we call -- ten scheduled sweeps that we schedule with them throughout the season. And that's when they come out and actively patrol in our parks for roughly six hours each sweep. So we have ten of those throughout the year, throughout the calendar year. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Okay. Would you keep the Council informed of their activity? DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Yeah. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Like I said, I was -- I have been preaching about wanting to know what code enforcement does. We've put a lot of money into code enforcement. Now we're putting $30,000 into this. I want the residents to know that the money that we're spending of their tax dollars is beneficial. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Absolutely. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Thank you. MAYOR DICKEY: Grady? MANAGER MILLER: I just wanted to just chime in. For many years, what you see before you was mostly just the shelter services. And then the council wanted us to step up the enforcement. And so the enforcement added additional costs. So -- but the base contract that we have is mostly for the shelter, and just the routine services that they come out. So it's the additional -- was it two years ago? Three years ago? --that we Page 77 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 78 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING started stepping up with the additional sweeps. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Correct, and then-- MANAGER MILLER: Because of complaints we had from residents. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Right. And they were unable to do those during COVID. They didn't have the resources and the means to do so. And then this past year, this past fiscal year, we stepped those up more actively again during our high seasons. They were, other than us just giving them some direction of which parks to, you know -- hit this park and this park, take a look over here, this is where we're getting the most complaints from our residents -- there's not a lot of activity. Originally they took a stance of trying to educate, and say hey, this is a warning, you need to make sure that you have your dogs on a leash. At the first of the year, we kind of said hey, we've had enough of the warning situation, we need to go ahead and start enforcement. So that's what you're seeing here. You can kind of see that they had 29 leash law violations out at our parks on these. So that was through that quarter. And that they've had ten fines paid and seven currently outstanding. MANAGER MILLER: And if I could just touch upon Councilmember Spelich's comment about the -- having more transparency on reports. I did meet with the Development Services director today, and he did show me a report that we're going to start sharing with the Council, showing activities for code enforcement. So I think this is a good suggestion, and we should probably do maybe a semiannual report on the animal control activity. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: Great. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. So the $31,000 includes all the shelters stuff. Okay, thanks. Any speaker cards? Like to make a motion? VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: I'm just curious how that breaks down by park. DIRECTOR GOODWIN: I don't have it by park. I could probably reach out to get that from them. Oh, yeah. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Could I get a motion? VICE MAYOR FRIEDEL: Move to adopt resolution 2022-11. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Second. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. All in favor,please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Page 78 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 79 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING Thank you very much. Our next item is about Maricopa County again, flood control. MANAGER MILLER: So I'll have Justin DIRECTOR WELDY, our Public Works director, give the presentation on this. DIRECTOR WELDY: Thank you. Madam Mayor, Councilmembers. We come before you tonight to ask for your consideration in approving an amendment to an IGA to move it out further. Brief story, this is directly related to the storm events in Golden Eagle Park in the impoundment area in 2018 and '19. A grant was received from Maricopa County Flood Control. Obviously we're not at the point where we can begin to spend the majority of their money. We're hoping to be there early next fiscal year. With that said, we need to amend this so we can continue to bill them for the services that are rendered related to the project. If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer. MAYOR DICKEY: Any questions? No? Speaker regards? Motion, page 218? COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: Move to adopt Resolution 2022-017. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Second. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you all. In favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you, Justin. DIRECTOR WELDY: You're welcome. MAYOR DICKEY: We skipped the next one because we put that off. And then the legislature-- Sharron, did you have anything to say about that? No? You were on the call. COUNCILMEMBER GRZYBOWSKI: I was on the call. MAYOR DICKEY: All right. Well, we have issues. MAYOR DICKEY: I know. Well,just one I want to mention because it's a new one, and the ADOT omnibus bill is being held up due to somebody, I'm not sure who, but they want to make it so that towns can't regulate truck traffic. So basically city-- or the Town, City of Litchfield Park -- they just implemented, it was supposed to go into effect two days ago, where they have an area of town where the big trucks can't go through. They now are being opposed with that, the Arizona Trucking Association, and also truckers. So it does -- cities would have to have a diagram that indicates that the truck could not use those roads safely. So I don't think it can just be about weight or you don't want a big concrete truck going in certain areas. Page 79 of 80 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 80 of 80 MAY 3, 2022 REGULAR TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MAYOR DICKEY: Well, yeah. So anyway, this is kind of one of the new things, and the City of Avondale provides police protection for Litchfield Park, and they were supposed to start doing that yesterday but it's all on hold. And there's a bunch of other things that aren't good. All right. COUNCILMEMBER SPELICH: Motion to adjourn. COUNCILMEMBER MAGAZINE: Second. MAYOR DICKEY: Okay. [LAUGHTER] MAYOR DICKEY: All those in favor. ALL: Aye. MAYOR DICKEY: Thank you. Good night. Page 80 of 80