City Council - workshop

Work session of May 4th, 2026 to order. I'm going to ask everyone again to put their cell phones on silent. Roll call.

Mayor Wilson.

Here.

Vice Mayor Schroeder. Council Member Cross.

Here.

Council Member Heck.

Here.

Council Member Johnson.

Here.

Council Member Nesser. Present. Council Member Soller. You have a quorum, Your Honor.

Thank you. Presentation discussion on First Amendment to the Community Maintenance Agreement. Liz.

Good evening, Mayor Wilson, members of council, Liz Langenbach, Parks and Recreation Director. Tonight I am just sharing an introductory of this topic that we'll be bringing back in a couple of weeks, just to make sure that everybody understands. So we have a community maintenance agreement with Blossom Rock, the HOA, the Alliance, as well as Brookfield. And in your package, you received a copy of the executed agreement that we did back in 2023. Tonight we are going to talk a little bit about the updated parcels and the updated spaces that have to be added to that agreement. So every time we add new spaces or a new phase is done, we will have to do an amendment to the current executed agreement because it lists the parcels that our maintenance agreement is talking about. So a couple of quick agreement key takeaways. Community Alliance, they are kind of like the HOA, so think about it that way. They maintain any private streets and sidewalks, all the median landscaping, and then other specialty features that are adjacent to a lot of the roadways at their own cost. They also maintain private parks and recreational facilities at their own cost. So for example, the Dutch at Blossom Rock that's near Painted Sky, that's a private facility. It's only available to their private residents, and they pay for things like that, as well as many other pocket parks throughout the park. And you'll see a couple of examples of that here in a second. Additionally, they maintain public parks and open space that we share costs with. So for example, Painted Sky Park, Ironwood Linear Park, we're going to show those. Anything that was a public entity, currently right now, they maintain it. So we have one common landscaper and one common maintenance crew, and then we pay our proportionate share, which is what the agreement called for in 2023. We pay up to a max per acre, and everything is agreed on based on the rates that we would normally have. So the nice thing about that is it makes a common look throughout the entire area. It also helped us tremendously as we are growing to not have to purchase trucks and gators and add additional people in this very first round of public parks in that space. We can gradually grow into that as we decide the areas that we're gonna take over personally to maintain. Additionally, the city maintains the major roadways as well as all the other public streets that are within the development. And so again, we'll get to that here in a second. And then this agreement is amended every time there's future areas that are developed. Not like every individual little tiny road change, We try to do it as plats are finalized, as different plans are approved in the development services department. We would be bringing back like that next phase of things that have to be amended. The only two things that we are looking at amending to this agreement is exhibit B and exhibit C in your packets. It's the list of the amenities or the roadways and different parcels. And then the second page is the, or the exhibit C is the, is the map of all of the public open and private open spaces. I wanted just to draw your attention really quickly to this image right here. So this is our original, kind of in general, the plan for how the Blossom Rock side of things would be developed. Each of these little sections here is a phase of that development. Phase one is this area right here. And this is our first district park, so in the south side. So Painted Sky Park is right about here. They've already started on phase two. And so this kind of little spine is what we refer to as Ridgeline Linear Park. It follows Blossom Rock Trail, the roadway. And this is also where the, so this is the other side of Painted Sky Park where the dog park exists. They are just now, we are now getting ready to add Ironwood Linear Park. And like I said, I'll show this to you on a more specific map here in a minute. But I just want to give you a reference point. So Ironwood Linear Park is along Ironwood Road. You can see that if you drive by, that's all the landscaping and all of the, there's all kinds of sidewalks and a great space for people to be able to ride bikes, walk their dogs, all of that. And that is public. Ridgeline Linear Park is also a public park. So like I said, it's where the dog park starts and then all of that greenway that's along this fine road right here. One of the things that we will be adding into here, so this beak that they like to call it, this is one of the developed areas for the Blossom Rock section. And we will be adding the roadway that was into this into this next section as well. So I just want to kind of share a quick recap of what's happening in each phase that is new compared to when we first established this agreement. Phase one, so again, that was the very first part that we did. We already had the Ironwood Linear Park in here and a portion of Painted Sky. The two things that are different on here right now, we added a little bit of green space here that was originally private. It's basically that green space that's on the other side of the... of the lake, just because it's easier for all of that grassy space that is near the Ramada and all that to stay public. And so we added that into our space. And then this area down here is actually an easement that is privately maintained, but it's accessible to the public, but it is not a public park. So that feels a little confusing, but think about it like landscaping and sidewalks that the public can walk through, that they have the ability to be through. It's just a public easement. It is not part of our park. It's not one of our parks, though. It's not going to be something that we will be programming or having amenities at. We did not agree to take that on. And they will continue to maintain it at their cost of the alliance. So that's phase one. And I'm sorry. It might be a little clearer on your screen when we blow this up, but the legend will kind of show what is private, and that means that it's only for their private residence, and it's maintained by the alliance. That's the really dark, colored-in area. The public space, I know it's a little difficult to tell the difference between two of these here, but when it's blown up, it's pretty clear. But the public space, all of this right here in Phase 2 is the Ridgeline Linear Park. This is where the dog park is. This is where that basketball court and some of those other amenities you can see when you're down in that area. This linear park will continue for multiple phases throughout the project. Additionally here, there are a few minor, so again, they take care of the median and all that landscaping that's next to the road. Public Works does not maintain any of those types of things. All they are responsible for is the roadway itself. The Alliance handles all of the roadway landscape and medians. Here in phase two, in addition to the roadway expansion, and the main roadway expansion on this side is that we added Idaho Road to this side, and we continued Ray Road. So Ray Road originally ended at Blossom Rock Trail. It's now been finished all the way to Idaho. So those are added. And then everything in here, that all the rest of the streets are also maintained by the city, except for, and we're going to make this a little clear on the next visit I come to share with you, the streets in these types of housing communities, so these are what's called the green courts and the auto courts, they actually maintain those streets because they are private, private. People enter into this little area and they access their homes in these different, types of models and the alliance will be maintaining the streets within those that connect those little homes that are all attached, either by a wall or whatever. So we're gonna try to make that a little more clear on your next exhibit. For phase three, they have just completed, we just did our punch walk today for the rest of Ironwood Linear Park from Radiance Road all the way to Warner. And so you'll be able to see all of that sidewalk connectivity. You'll now be able to walk a mile from Ray Road all the way to Warner on really nice sidewalks. It'll be shaded trees. It'll be a great amenity for everybody in our community to be able to utilize. Additionally here, the roadway expansions that were completed are the rest of Ironwood. So this section of Ironwood Drive, Warner Avenue, so this entire section of Warner Avenue, and then Blossom Rock Trail. So that's again this spine road that comes here through the middle of the development. And then there are some areas that, again, are public easements where people can walk. They can be near that landscaping on the sidewalks. But we don't maintain it. We don't pay for it. But the public can use it. And so those are all identified on here for you. The other item that I do not have a slide for you is that phase is considered phase 8. It was that beak that I referred to in the original part. That, right now, the only thing that is you know, part of our maintenance agreement is the roadway. So again, Warner has been completed all throughout that beak all the way to the Radiant side. And so that has to be added to this agreement. So our next steps right now, we are working on just updating these exhibits a little bit more, trying to clarify them so that everybody understands what has been added into this. So we'll be clarifying those and finalizing the agreement in your packet. All I have shared is the draft of our amendment. So the executed agreement is we are not changing anything about it. We're not changing the dollar amount. We're not changing who's responsible for what. We're simply updating the two exhibits so that way we can incorporate these newly completed or close to being complete parcels. I will be bringing back those in two weeks for discussion and for your consideration, and we'll be able to talk about it then. But if there's anything that I can clarify or that could make it a little bit more clear, I'm happy to do that before that next meeting. And with that, I will take any questions.

Yes. Liz? On that walkway along Ironwood and stuff, where's the public parking for, say, like if I wanted to go down there and go for a two-mile walk up and back?

I'll tell you exactly what we do is we'll park at the park, at Painted Sky Park. So now at Oro, you can walk all the way from Painted Sky onto Ray Road, and then you can turn that corner and walk straight down – all the way down the Iron and Linear Park. So ultimately, let me just go back really quickly if I can.

Let's see.

Ultimately, a person could walk this entire section. And so we will have district parks all along the way. So those would be the ideal location for somebody to park because there is not enough parking on any of these sections. But if somebody wanted to walk or to bike, they could easily park at one of these linear parks. And then there is plenty of public access that would get them to these links right here.

Thank you. This is kind of new to Apache Junction, like the community alliance and private and public and everything. Is there going to be any issues of, like, those who live up here going down there, and then people down there saying, you get out of here because this is a private area and you're not allowed in here. Are they marked anyway? How would we know?

So that's a great question. We are already dealing with some of that, and we work very closely with Blossom Rock Alliance. So they do a lot of communication out to their residents through a lot of their avenues. There are areas that will say that this is for residents only. So once you... walk it up to the dutch if it's not a big public event there's a sign that tells people this is for residents only the parks are all identified right out of the parking lot with our signage so our city of apache junction common rules and regulations signage um pretty much so i don't know if you've been in other or lived in other communities where there is a master plan community There's nobody that's going to stop someone from walking any of these roads or walking into these areas. Technically, from walking from one parking lot over to another, there's a ton of parks out there. So there's really nobody out there saying you can't do that. You're not supposed to. We try to make sure that we are having these great public spaces as it is. But we do have issues right now that are minor, I would call them, of individuals at the dog park thinking that, You know, this is our dog park, not anybody else's. And individuals either, you know, say that they're wrong or they'll have a park. Park rangers are there very frequently. And so park rangers answer questions all the time. The residents do bring these issues up at their regular meetings with the Alliance and with Brookfield. And we really have been working through those all together to make sure that we can all understand that we're all part of City of Apache Junction. And there are sections that they pay for. that are theirs, but all of those public areas are absolutely paid for by city tax dollars. So everybody in our community is paying towards the maintenance of our public parks and those linear parks. And so they are available to everybody.

Does that answer your question somewhat?

Generally.

It was just kind of things I've been seeing on Facebook and stuff. A lot of the people that live down there, they don't really even know what's theirs or what's not. And they're kind of feeling their way. And it's like here I can just see, oh, well, instead of going to Prospector Park, let's go down there and have 50 or 100 people go down to one of the remodels and have a barbecue, you know.

They are available for reservation, so if somebody can reserve those. We are having those types of things that can happen, and we've just been really working hard to educate everybody that that's the way that it's designed and that we're all helping to pay in different ways to make that amenity available for the whole city. We do speak at a lot of their different engagements. I will be attending their leadership meetings class that's coming up here in May, and so it'll be a good opportunity just to continue to educate and help people to understand that we're all kind of on the same team and enjoying these amenities together.

Well, we are just one city, but, you know, right now it's probably, well, that's ours, not yours. Right, right. We don't need that.

Any other questions? All right, I'll be bringing this back for discussion in a couple of weeks.

Liz, one quick clarifying question. Is this coming back to consent in two weeks?

It's gonna actually come to discussion because we don't have the final draft We don't have the final signed agreement today. Okay, and so and we do have to add all of a couple of extra Items so I will be bringing it back to work session. All right.

Thank you Mr. Mayor and there's the council in 2001

The ADOT, with some assistance of federal funds, started a study and some engineering on a optic system in the Phoenix region for transportation services. That was the intent of the money. And it also went down to MAG. So one good thing about being a member of MAG, which the city is, and there's 18 members, is that the intent is to connect all members to this system for transportation services. Mesa has a system in association with MAG that set this up some years ago. And Apache Junction is one of the cities they do want to add one of the members of MAG And so what you have before you is resolution 2624, which authorizes the city of Apache Junction to enter into this intergovernmental agreement. And it'd be two strands that we will be using, and it's free. I mean, it costs money for Doug's crew and also contractors to get into it. However, there's no fee from the city of Mesa whatsoever. And that's part of your relationship, your association with MAG. So this is a very good deal, and the type of data that would be allowed to be crossing on the lines would be live traffic camera feeds for traffic management and associated information, travel information. And staff has worked very hard on this in the past year or so, and we would ask that you approve Resolution 26-24.

Super exciting stuff Doug and his team had been working a long time with City Mesa to get this going and I want to say thanks to him And we're gonna be able to do some really neat things with it It seems very straightforward. That's true.

Mm-hmm and They you know if there's future needs they Language in there allows for future connections still free of charge so still free

Okay, thank you. Presentation, discussion, approval for procurement of OpenGov Citywide Asset Management System. Doug.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. I'm Doug Worthgen, the IT Director of the City of Apache Junction. So I'm going to present to you today Asset Management System and what does that system do for us. Well, it's a single map-based view of all infrastructure, whether that's roads, facilities, or water, or assets throughout the city. It tracks assets, conditions, maintenance, history, and lifecycle costs. It prioritizes and repairs scheduled preventive maintenance, manages work orders, and addresses issues early and avoid unexpected costly repairs. Helps with budgeting and capital planning. An asset management center is about what we own, the condition it's in, what it will cost over time, and when to fix or replace it to spend money in a more proactive versus a reactive. In the current state, we currently manage assets through fragmented department-specific systems Lacking direct integration with our city enterprise GIS. JC is actually here in the audience today as he was part of the process of us selecting this product as well and can speak if needed. Resulting in redundant data and high maintenance overhead. So that was our current state. And staff recommends purchasing OpenGov, which was formerly known as CardiGraph. And this is through their authorized vendor at Kerasoft, who provided a multi-year subscription and professional services quote. So term one, or phase one as I call it, is for that amount of money, $62,000. And term two and phase two, which is $55,000. And term one does facilities, transportation, parks and recreation, and traffic signals. And term two, or phase two, does four domains, which are walkability, stormwater, water distribution, and water treatment. And I'll break that down a little bit in this next screen. So as you can see in term one, transportation, pavement signs, bridges, markings, and guardrails, those are all assets that we need to track. We need to have lifecycle maintenance on. And then same with parks and rec facilities and signal lights. And then phase two, we do water distribution, water treatment plant. Their assets, their walkability, which includes sidewalks, ADA ramps, and those things. and then storm waters. So we have about five despair systems right now. We'd like to bring those into one system. These are the different cities, sister cities that have that. And we also met with the city of Safford, who had City Works, which we compared to, which is now Trimble, because everybody buys everything out in IT. And then also we went to the town of Queen Creek, who has OpenGov, and we selected it based on mobility and those type of things. If there's any questions.

Our intent is to bring it back in two weeks for your consideration and approval on consent agenda. Or no, do we have to bring it back? We do, right?

For approval, right? Yeah, we plan to bring it back on Tuesday the 19th. Matt, can we explain for the public the different systems? We spend money on those, right? And we spend a lot of energy not connecting. And then when we bring this together, why does this help our efficiency and manage risk? better for the city and in general reduce our costs and efficiency.

I think on the first slide it helps explain that a little bit more in detail you know when you have disparate systems in place it takes a lot more man hours and then you have to come together and explain it to each other and kind of cross pollinate your system but if you're all inputting in the same system and it's all the same type of data It can all be spit out.

So can it help us avoid issues where we do public works projects and time it better if we ever were to mess up?

Yeah. For example, if we had a road project that also needed to have some watered lines done underneath at the same time, this helps that coordination happen faster up front than waiting until too late.

So these are ERP systems, enterprise resource planning systems. We did management document system a couple years ago. We did a financial system five years ago. And then utility building as well. So these large systems that cross over the entire city and not just departments and break them down like that. They glue them together, if you will. And it's more about lifecycle maintenance and knowing when an asset needs to have an air conditioning replaced and things like that, just like you do at your home.

Yes.

Can we go back a screen or two?

One more.

Oops. This one? Yeah. Okay. $62,000 and $55,000 for $117,000 is going to save us how much if we didn't and we stuck with what we've got right now with the city's enterprise GIS? Yes.

So it's really about maintaining your assets and knowing that you have to go in there. Because if you have to rebuild from start instead of maintaining life cycles, whether it be life cycles like I do in the IT world, whether it be server life cycles, desktop life cycles, we have building facilities. And I can ask Mike Loggins from Public Works to come up and Explain a little bit.

If he remembers the cost. Sometimes we also just use Excel spreadsheets. So it's not like we have these multiple systems, but we're maintaining these different databases, and then we're trying to work together. So let's put another one.

Go ahead, Mike. I'm here in council. Mike Loggins, public works director. What Doug's trying to explain to you is, and I like a pipeline that's out there. If we have an emergency, we put people out of water, right? Because we don't have a life cycle. cycle cost of that pipeline that's in the ground what this does is allows us to put it in the system as a water line saying it was installed in 1980 and we know this type of pipe lasts 30 years before it breaks and blows out the road and cost costs us a million dollars to fix that we can go and be proactive rather than reactive on that so instead of in its emergency now we're shutting down the road we can plan ahead of okay we can put up detour signs and do different things so it costs us less money because it's not an emergency or city hall When an air conditioner, in the middle of summer, we know they typically last 20 years in Arizona. Hey, we need to plan ahead and put dollars away so that when we know it's going to fail, we actually replace it before it does. So now we don't have people sitting in there where it's 120 degrees outside. We can replace it ahead of the time, just in that nick of time before it would expire. And now we're again, it's an emergency. costs us more money to get somebody out here to replace that when something happens like that. So this allows us to do all of our assets throughout the city. Again, between water lines, buildings, air conditioners, trees, anything that you can think of that's an asset to the city allows you to put it in one database so you can actually research it and understand the life cycles and replace it before they ultimately fail.

Are there any programs we'll be saying goodbye to as a result of purchasing this? Five total separate programs. And so I think We can get to Council Member Nester what the costs of those are. I think we don't know them right off the bat, but we can get those and share with the council. How much will it be saving?

This is a proactive system, and we're not worrying about the $117,000 cost because it's going to save lots more than if we didn't use it.

Correct. That's right. Okay. We also need to gather what all our assets are so we can track them.

Yeah. Okay. Yes.

So this system is only as good as the people that input the data. It's only as smart as what we tell it. And so, I mean, we're going to spend how many man hours uploading all this information into a computer database that chat GPT could you know, do for us as well. I mean, do we have to use this program or is there new AI programs out there that could maintain this for us?

I was all about the source data. So if the source data doesn't exist or it's disparate, you need to bring it into one source before AI can do anything with it. AI is a tool and it's only as good as what you put into it. So the implementation plan of phase one and phase two is about gathering that data from we have in these disparate systems, put them into one. Also, it gives you an opportunity to look at what is your bad data and good data and be able to clean it up and make sure you verify those things. And we have a plan of six months for phase one and six months for phase two. And we'll be able to implement these different programs that way. We have a system right now for facilities, which is under Public Works. They do work order systems too, so this has a mobile piece to it. So the field techs will be able to do that mobile-wise and stuff. OpenGov or CardiGraph was number one or number two, and CityWorks was the other one as well. And since we did this on a Mojave contract, we didn't have to compare to other systems, but those are the two systems we did compare it to as well. OK.

This is not going to eventually eliminate somebody's job because they're not out there inspecting the road and reporting back to staff on a weekly or monthly basis saying, hey, Ironwood Road needs repairs here, here, and here. This program's going to automatically spell out that, well, at such and such location, there's a pothole fixing to happen, and we've got to be proactive and get out there and fix it.

So the field technician that would see the pothole would be able to mobilely put it into the system for real time. It would then go into the populated database of the status of it and be able to be able to see that and make that part of your judgment process for that. It's not about jobs, it's more about your assets and ensuring that your assets can be there for the long term. Okay. Okay.

Go ahead.

I would imagine that over time one of the biggest benefits of this is the fact that when you're looking at your budgets year by year in every single department, you have to know any place from five to ten years out where you're going to have to put capital money. Not only that, but taking that and putting it into an actual alert system because somebody is monitoring once we put in fresh data where we've taken a second look at things that probably have not been looked at for a while. when you're putting them in for those six months on each set, because you're going to be looking at all that and evaluating it, so it's really more up-to-date information going into the system, which you'll then be putting in the parameters following OpenGov. I went through their demonstration to see it, where you're going to be putting in what your parameters are, and they're assisting you by telling you you need to be checking this particular item at six-month intervals, and instead of you thinking about, well, I thought six months was, like, six months ago, geez, I guess it's here already, you'll already be alert and putting somebody in the truck to go look at those items to verify what really needs that and you can adjust there on. Is that what I'm pretty much looking at?

So yes, so when we get our O&M manuals, let's say it's a new treatment plant, a new air conditioner, a lot of the Your car tells you to change your oil every 5,000 miles. Well, rather than wait until that light is flashing at you on your dash, this will send out a work order saying, hey, you want to go to your nearest mechanic and get it changed before you're at that limit. So it does this for all different types of things we have throughout the city. So yeah, you can put that in there. It adds to all of your benefits there. This is kind of a great time for the city. We're growing. So rather than getting further and further behind, we're not keeping track of our assets. We can catch up now and continue as we grow, add these assets so we truly know what we have out there.

I imagine there's a lot of things that we didn't track when we first put them in when, way back when and just like, Corners of what? Superstition in Idaho. That maybe things like this will avoid in the future because you're going to be looking at what is the dating on a lot of different public facilities because they were put in long before we really started tracking. And this will force them into the system. Is that correct?

It is, and also the work we put in the last five years for mobility, ease of use, laptops, tablets for filled workers, those different types of things, they'll be able to put that data in right on the spot. I have to go back to the office and then get, you know.

And those work orders will be generated by the system without having to say, oh, we should go get a work order to go do this. It's already going to generate it and somebody in that department is going to get that work order and have it scheduled.

That is correct.

Thank you.

Yes. OK. So who is going to have a glorious responsibility of overseeing this?

As the IT director, I get that fortunate responsibility. I've done a few of these as well. the Presidio of San Francisco when I was there, we put a system in as well. So, yeah, and then also, that's why we have Kerasoft and also OpenGov coming in, and they're part of that implementation cost in that first $62,000 and the $55,000 for Term 2 has an implementation cost. And it's a cloud-based application, but it's also going to be a subscription-based on years three and four.

I'll just add that the responsibility also lies on each department. Like Council Member Cross's earlier point, the data is only as good as what you put in and who you have put it in. So the departments have to really work hard to get in their data. And they'll all be trained on it. So we're all doing it the same way. There'll be processes, all of that. It'll be really good.

So we had Liz with Parks and Rec, part of this process of selection. We had Mike Loggins as far as public works director, and then also JC with the GIS system. And that's where we evaluated this. And then we also met with the two different cities with the two different systems.

Yes. So the company I work for, we use what's called building reports for tracking assets of our customers. And when we first implemented it, it was a learning curve of, you know, the more detailed you can make it, the better the system works. So up front, we try to get our technicians to just be as thorough as they can when describing what that valve is, the manufacturer, what size it is, installation dates, et cetera, et cetera. The cool thing about it is now, as we're going back for our fourth or fifth year inspection is telling us what type of inspection is needed, whether it's a three year, whether it's a five year, whether it just needs an annual, whether the gauges are expired and need to be replaced, whether it needs a five year internal inspection. And so ultimately it saves the customer a good deal of money because they know upfront what's coming up, they can budget for it. And I can see this OpenGov Saving our taxpayers a lot of money because we can stay ahead of it and you know know that certain things have a life shelf life as Mike said and that we you know obviously should take care of it before it breaks Thank you Okay, thank you and I will adjourn