City Council - workshop

Work session of June 15th, 2026 to order and ask everyone to again put your cell phones on silence. Roll call. Here.

Present. Here. Here.

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Present.

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Presentation discussion on contract renewal with GPEC Ryan All right, good evening mayor and council Ryan Kaupp economic development director I will provide a Brief introduction of Chris Mackey in a moment, but first I'd like to go through a few bullet points of the GPAC annual contract. So Apache Junction and 21 other communities throughout the region partner with GPAC. The city of Apache Junction has been working with GPAC for the last 18 years. The contract is set up on a per capita residential basis, so about 49 cents per person. is the annual contract, which comes out to $22,000 per year. To give you some context on how we are competing on these projects in some of the areas where we have some momentum, but where we definitely have some work to do, is had some numbers to run through with you on just the industrial inventory, comparing us to the rest of the East Valley. So right now, Apache Junction has about a little over 500,000 square feet of industrial space. That compares to next lowest on the list is Queen Creek at 2.3 million, Gilbert at 10 million square feet, Chandler 32 million, and Mesa at 43 million. So we definitely have a lot of work to do as a city to continue adding on the industrial inventory, which will give us a better chance at landing these projects. Most of the projects are looking for existing space. But with that being said, The great opportunity here in Apache Junction, as we all know, is the available land. So we also have the most land, most number of acres in the East Valley moving forward for these projects. So I would say I'm really pleased with the momentum that we've seen over the last couple years. The residential growth is bringing us more of that workforce that we need, that the companies are looking for. And then on the industrial side, again, you guys know these companies and some of these numbers, but W.W. Clyde last year was the first new industrial building in 15 years. And then that was quickly followed by Sunt Breaking Ground, which will be our largest industrial building and is only phase one. And then we also have a 25,000 square foot speculative industrial space building that's under construction just south of the Safeway. So this item is anticipated to be on the consent agenda for July 7th. And then let me provide a brief introduction of Chris Mackey. One of the very unique things for her recently taking over the GPEC CEO role is she's worked for cities nearly her entire career. So she's been on the other side of the table and has worked as a city economic developer with GPEC. The last 11 years she was with the city of Phoenix. Before that, 16 years with the city of Chandler. And it's fair to say that she is one of, if not the most accomplished economic developers in Arizona, maybe ever, with some of the projects she's landed. So we're really lucky as a region to have her as the CEO. She's been in that role less than a year. Chris has a deck to go through to provide a status update. on GPAC, she'll go through some of her initial goals for the organization in the region moving forward, and then she can also talk about what she sees as some of the opportunities for Apache Junction. So unless there's any questions for me right now, I will pass it over to Chris Mackey. CHRIS MACKEY No, don't see anyone.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. I'm very honored to be here with you this evening and talk about what's going on in the region. What I thought I would do first is, your viewers, your citizens, while we all know what the Greater Phoenix Economic Council is, I thought I'd take a moment just to explain who we are. So we are an organization that was founded in 1989 by our city's private sector investors, following an article that was in Barron Magazine called Boomtown Gone Bust. And it basically said after the Resolution Trust Corporation days that we were an economy built on growth, and we couldn't survive, and we were never going to be anything ever again except an economy built on growth. And our cities and our private sector investors came together and said, that's not our greater Phoenix. We are going to make a difference. And they founded GPEC. And GPEC, since that time, has landed approximately 1,100 companies into the region, creating nearly 200,000 jobs worth $76 billion of capital investment. And I think if we look, I grew up here, been here my whole life, and I think if we look at where it was at in the 1980s compared to today, I think the private sector, the investors, our cities have done an incredible job in positioning Greater Phoenix, each of our individual cities, where we want them to be. As we look at GPEC services that we provide, it's in site location. site location assistance. We work with site selectors. We work with decision makers. We do outreach all over the globe looking for new companies to come back into the region to bring good quality jobs for all of our citizens. It's not just in high tech. It is in a broad spectrum. As I've said my entire career, all of our citizens deserve a good job, not just because you're an engineer or because you're an accountant or something, but everyone needs a good job. We provide contract assistance. We can do demographic research for you. We can run comparative analysis. If they're looking at Apache Junction and they're looking at Austin, Texas, we can run a financial model and show them why Apache Junction is a better place from the bottom line to locate them where they're looking with connectivity to key resources, whether you need connections into air quality permits or environmental companies or engineering companies, anything that you might need. but also for your citizens. They like an economic impact analysis when you're working with a company and landing a company. I know the citizens for the two cities I've worked with, they want to know what does it mean to the city? How is it going to make a difference to them and their family lives? And we can kind of help with that activity as well. When we look at the Greater Phoenix Economic Council and our partnership with Apache Junction, we, as Director Kopp had just mentioned, Our rate is, it rounds to 49 cents per capita. It's what all of our communities and counties are charged for GPEC services. We've not raised our rate since 2017, so they've been in place that time. The increase that you see is simply because the population for Apache Junction has increased, and it's a charge per capita. Our analysis shows that for every dollar that Apache Junction is spending for the GPEC contract, Over the last five running year average, you've received $28 in return for every dollar you've spent. And while you see the 682 jobs there, Apache Junction has not landed a direct locate. You're just coming into that maturation, as Director Kopp talked about. You're just getting your industrial development and things moving forward. And I've shared with him and City Manager Powell, when I was out here, I would kill to be a younger economic developer with the incredible opportunities that Apache Junction has here in front of it for the future. I had the privilege of working in Chandler when it was farm country and I got to start on Price Corridor in the air park area and creating a lot, working with a team that did a lot. And that's what's in front of Apache Junction is the council really guiding the city where you and the citizens want it to go. And it's going to be an incredible ride and great to be a part of. And as you look at those 682 jobs, those are surrounding cities who've received locates But through AmeriCorp Association of Government, you know, the trip generation that you fill out each year if you were an employer worth more than 50, and the census information, they have an algorithm that shows us where the employees most likely live that work for those companies. So of the ones that we've located over the last five years, 682 a third-party economist does numbers for us and shows that they most likely live in Apache Junction, which is $3.2 million in direct revenue over the last five years, and it's a running count over five years into Apache Junction. So our... Vice Mayor and I spoke about it. We're definitely going to get Apache Junction. It's very on locates in the very near future with your great land availability, your state land availability, and now some industrial space that's here and available. If we look at the community benefits report, we'll just extrapolate it out a little bit further in front of you, and I won't read all of the information that's in front of you, but we're comparing fiscal year 26, which we're just wrapping up on June 30th, with fiscal year 25 and the five-year running total. We have added a number of other jobs and capital investment here in June. We don't close out our books until June 30th, so there's always a scramble, as there is with everything, to get everything you can booked in that fiscal year. But you'll see some of those companies, those in closest proximity to you, of course, LG Energy in Queen Creek, just very close to Apache Junction, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in North Phoenix, Republic Services, and many others. But you'll see the capital investment in 45 million over the last five-year running average of projects that have been supported in this area. If we look at our partnership, kind of that competitive intelligence that I was talking to you about, we do comprehensive demographics research, we do competitive analysis research, we can tell companies why these are best areas for you to locate based on the amount of power that they use, based on their property taxes that they would pay. I had never competed against Idaho before. And most recently for a corporate headquarters, I competed against Idaho. And I thought, oh my gosh, for a Greater Phoenix in Idaho, if your Idaho is going to absolutely clean Greater Phoenix's clock in in cost comparative analysis. It was really interesting when we ran the in-depth analysis, because of their personal property tax costs, they were significantly higher than Greater Phoenix. Even the company was surprised. They were absolutely certain that Idaho was going to win that competition. They haven't announced yet, but they have selected Greater Phoenix. in which to locate because of that comparative analysis that we were able to do. When we look at, as I said, we run impact model analysis. We have a robust social media following. We have lots of public relations that we can work on. We work on policy very closely with our 22 cities through our GPAC board so that as things are moving forward at the state legislature that you're challenged with or or other things that you'd like to see happen, we come in and work with the GPEC board and the 22 cities as their partner. As we look at moving forward, we are in the middle of, we're just completing year one of our three-year strategic plan, and that three-year strategic plan is put together by our private sector businesses, our economic development director's team, our mayors and councils that participate on the board and our entire board, but really making sure that we stay on the leading edge of new companies and new activity and new things that are happening in the region that we can be working towards marketing for. And as you see in our strategic plan for 26 through 28, you'll see goal number one is to build an internationally recognizable regional brand and positioning the market uniquely to attract these globally recognized companies all over the region. Right now, we see, depending on the month, anywhere between 25 and 35 percent of our book of businesses from international companies coming into the market. You won't see us working if somebody's trying to, if there's a company in Phoenix and they're looking at Tempe or Apache Junction or Queen Creek, GPAC doesn't really get involved in those projects. We're working on bringing companies from outside the state and outside the region back into the community. Goal number two is to advance the region through investments in infrastructure, robust support for our startup ecosystem, best in world class support for our expanding and relocating firms. So it's always, we always say that the really exciting stuff people always think are new companies coming into the market. It appears on the front page of the Arizona Republic and everybody celebrates. But about 80% of the new jobs come from our existing companies. So our work is also is to help those existing companies gain everything that they can so they stay here. Because if you don't think that you've got 20 economic developers from other cities and states out in the region right now trying to steal our companies away from you, you have another thing coming because I'm doing it on a regular basis to other cities when I travel. And then goal three is to really ensure that GPAC remains nimble, that we are able to respond to what's important to our partners, to our cities, to Apache Junction. How can we help make a difference? As you're changing your goals and objectives each year, we can shift and make sure that we follow what you're looking for as we're working with site selectors, as we're working with corporate decision makers as they move forward. But I also think it's important to note, as Ryan mentioned, my background is in city economic development. I had the pleasure of working for two cities for about 28 years of my life. So making connections to Developers, I know I'll embarrass myself right now. I live in Chandler but worked for the city of Phoenix for quite some time. I hadn't been to Apache Junction in a very long, other than to come to a couple restaurants that are out here. I hadn't been out here looking at it through a business lens until Director Kopp invited me out to meet with the city manager and others and we did a great presentation on what Apache Junction was important to Apache Junction. I was stunned. where Apache Junction is moving towards and all of the opportunities that are available and what you as a mayor and council have done in this beautiful community. And you're, as I mentioned, you're, I get excited. And so when I talk to the development community now, I always tell them about sites that you have here in Apache Junction, like, no, you shouldn't, West Valley is great, but you should see this site in Apache Junction. It's amazing. If I were looking, you're going to regret if you don't listen to me and reach out to the economic development director and take a look at it. So we'll also be your champions, especially me in what's important to the council and making sure that the development community gets a good look for what's important to you as well. So mayor, I thank you for your time this evening. And with that, I'd be happy to take any questions you might have.

Anyone got any questions for, yes. Um, do

You only concentrate on industrial, or do you also promote commercial and hospitality?

Mayor, Councilmember Cross, it's a great question. So, GPAC's base mission is in jobs generating. So, it's industrial, it's tech, it's office. It's in hospitals, healthcare, those type of things. But because of my experience, I've been able to help some of our cities in making introductions to retailers that they're looking to connect with and helping attract, making connections to commercial developers and others that are there. So while it's not GPEC's mission and it's not part of our contract, you absolutely have my word that we'll be working with your economic development director at your guidance of what you'd like to see.

Another follow-up with that. Director Kopp said that we had roughly 500,000 square feet of industrial. That's one small warehouse in today's standards. When, you know, on the west side, they're putting in a million, million and a quarter square foot industrial. What's the answer? Do we annex from here all the way to Florence Junction and aggressively go after rezoning or placing specific zoning areas that would accommodate million square foot plus buildings.

Mayor, Council Member Cross, I think it is the West Valley sees a bit of a different tenant than I think that you'll see here in Apache Junction and East Valley. Now you do see some of those big million square foot warehouses around Mesa Gateway and around the airport and in that area. But as you look at those big million square footers in the West Valley, they're close to the Inland Empire, they're close to the ports. They kind of make that connection between the ports and the West Valley. They kind of make that first stop. What I think that you're gonna see here, while you're 500,000 square feet, We all had to start somewhere. When I started in Chandler, there was a million, million and a half square feet of industrial other than build-a-suits that had tenants already with their ownership buildings. And I think what you're gonna see here is that Activity begets activity. So the development community had not seen previously Apache Junction as kind of this jobs generating future market where things are going. And that's changed by bringing with the new developer coming in and building the new industrial space that you have with Sunt building the space that they have here. Activity begets activity, and the development community is taking notice of what's building there. But I think you'll start smaller. I don't think you'll see somebody come in with a million square foot, or I think you're going to see some 200,000s, 100,000, 250s, 500s. You're going to see more of those high-tech manufacturing, bioscience, med device. Those type of tenants will be more attracted to the area, kind of like you saw, well, LG is a very big build because it's a It's a tech battery company on a build-to-suit. Their supply chain is something that we're after significantly now. So far, in my role in Phoenix, while I was there, we landed three of their suppliers, and they weren't all in these big half-million-square-foot buildings. One was, but the rest were in smaller buildings. So I think what you're going to see a lot here in the beginning is the supply chain to some of those major manufacturers.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

I'm going to ask you to be a fortune teller. Yes. Put on that hat and get out your magic globe with what you said about that you hadn't been out here and now that you have and seeing what is changed from the maybe misconceptions that this is no longer a one-horse town. With your experience and what you've done every place, what is the one thing that you, if you could do anything, what's the one big thing that we should concentrate on here to try to do? to benefit us the most? I mean, anything, would it be for, because of the views we have and everything, should we try to bring in some kind of a resort or whatever? What do you think would really make an impact?

Mayor, Councilmember Ness, ASKING ME TO PICK ONE OF A BUNCH OF THINGS THAT I'VE SEEN OUT HERE THAT I THINK YOU HAVE TREMENDOUS OPPORTUNITY WITH. SO MAYBE I COULD GIVE YOU A COUPLE? IF THAT'S OKAY, GIVE THEM REALLY QUICKLY SO I DON'T HOLD THE COUNCIL UP. I do think that your views in your wedding venue is incredible. And when I first learned that you have a two-year wait at your wedding venue, I thought, that's just so okay. Nothing I thought of. Went back to the office, told them about it. Our vice president over marketing and research had to make her wedding two years later because she wanted to get married at your wedding venue. And so she's getting married in September, but she's been waiting two years for it. So a hotel... you know, getting a nice hotel that would be in complement. And Economic Development Director Kopp and I have been talking about that, making some connections for some hotel developers that I've done deals with that he's having conversations with now. I think getting that activity, I think as you're looking at those big things, I think you're all the new residential that you're getting, the new people that are coming in are a great workforce moving forward. I think keeping your eye keenly on workforce training and a partnership with the community college to work to ensure that you've got really nimble workforce training programs that aren't necessarily a four-year degree but are a certification program for the companies, having that in place before the companies start to come is critical because the first question they're going to ask you, I mean, when I started doing this, The three questions I got asked all the time were, where am I going to find cheaper real estate? How close am I to my transportation corridor? And how much money are you going to pay me to move to your city? So go back to the 1990s, top three questions. My top three questions today are, where's my workforce? Who's my workforce? And how much training does my workforce need? So being ready with those workforce training programs with your community college, they've got a lot of them just making sure that you're well trained Educated on those programs is big especially for your citizens as they're they don't want to make the drive to other places They'd much rather be employed here in Apache Junction The other thing I would tell you is infrastructure the thing that keeps me up at night is infrastructure and the thing that is the hardest thing to figure out ways to overcome is infrastructure and I'm not saying that as the city that you should figure out ways to bond and pay for tons of infrastructure There are creative ways to get your infrastructure done with companies and with the development community as they come in, where they front all the money for that infrastructure. But then others, it's like you seed these certain areas of the city, which is what we had done. And then others are like, oh, I can tap onto that infrastructure. Oh, there's infrastructure there. Oh, that's the thing. Those would be my three biggest things to do. And of course, as Director Kopp said, is that 90% of our prospects go into existing buildings and working diligently to get some additional office and industrial developers out in this area. But pick a couple of things that you're really, really good at and focus on those things. And then activity just starts to drive itself. Okay, and we'll be here to we'll be here to support you on research and marketing and intelligence of not sure how much intelligence I have I've just been doing it a really long time Thank you.

Thank you ma'am Okay, well, thank you This this contract will be on in two weeks I believe is that right on your consent agenda in two weeks for your consideration. Okay. Thank you Thank you.

Thank you for your time

Presentation, discussion of public works, capital improvement, and street maintenance plan.

Shane.

Good evening, Mayor, council members, and staff. My name, Shane Kiso, Public Works Deputy Director. So I'm happy to, proud to be here tonight again to talk to you about a topic that many of you have talked with in the past. So this is the opportunity to share with you about this topic, to present and also discuss our fiscal year 27 capital improvement and street maintenance plan. So that's starting July 1st, going through the rest of this calendar year into 27, June 30th, 27 and so. So I thought this topic is very timely tonight. We just saw the final approval of the budget, so this is our opportunity to say, Public Works, hey, we're raring to go. We've got a lot of projects lined up for this next year, so we're happy to discuss with you some of those projects here tonight. And what that does is it also begins with talking about the current inventory of our streets. Of course, our streets are our largest fiscal investment, just like most cities. The streets are our largest fiscal investment. That means the fiscal responsibility in managing that investment, very important. We take that very seriously. This last two and a half years, we've increased our street inventory by 10%. And that is just the new development that is occurring through the city down south. 10% doesn't sound big, but when you look at the previous 10 years, we're looking at about 6% over a decade, and we've doubled that in the last two and a half years for our street inventory that we have. So that'll play a factor in some of the key performance metrics, key performance indicators here that I'll show you in a minute. So again, I'll give you the health update of our streets, then we'll start getting into some of those fun, what we expect for projects this next fiscal year and those timeframes.

So when we start talking about street condition assessment,

We use an RSL, remaining service life. On the left picture there, you'll see an RSL of zero, so that means the street's in pretty bad shape. This is actually a picture of Cactus, Cactus Road from baseline up to Auto Center. We recently paved it as part of this last fiscal year plan. You'll see in this presentation, I'll have some pictures that are actually pictures of projects that we just did this last fiscal year. I believe it's important to sort of show you the results of what we have projects from what we talked about last year at this time. Hopefully do the same, show you some of the results of the projects that we have. On the right side, you'll see Cactus after we paved it. Again, that RSL will go back up to 20. Zero to 20 doesn't mean necessarily that's the life of a street when it comes to an overlay when you're paving Such as cactus here. We didn't overlay so we have new asphalt above some old asphalt and existing base Asphalt life or overlay is about 15 years So I think we'll definitely get an additional 15 years out of this if if this was a new reconstruction of all the pavement to the base and That RSL is 20, but more than likely a new road, if you do the proper maintenance, could last 30 to 40 years, about twice that RSL of 20. So I just want to make sure you got that clarification that RSL 20 doesn't necessarily mean that we will expect a road to last 20 years. So I mentioned to you about the inventory, increase in inventory. That actually helped us, I believe, a lot with our key performance metrics. So there's three key performance indicators we use for our streets. Goal number one is to keep our average RSL inventory of our roads. So that's the average RSL of all of our inventory at around 12 to 14. This year we're at about 13.6, and that is down from a little bit from last year, but we're still well within that 12-14 goal range that we have found out over the years is very important. If we get below that, that's where I start getting complaints, all the work starts getting complaints, you guys start getting a lot more complaints. So that's why that indicator is very important to keep our streets above that.

Also, indicator number two is very important too.

This goal is to keep 5% of the street inventory that's in poor condition below that 5%, so meaning less than 5% of our streets in poor condition. And currently we're at four. We made significant strides with that from last year where we're at 7%. And as I mentioned, we gained a lot of inventory from down south or some of the new development. Those streets are very good condition. So this is what's really helped some of these indicators. Also, what we've done is we've done a lot overlay in the last year. You guys saw that on urban portions of Broadway and the urban portions of Superstition Boulevard. So we have a lot of square yards that we have touched in the last couple of years through slurry seals as well as overlays that have helped these metrics. Also, that last goal is keep the inventory 70% or more of the inventory in that good or excellent condition. And you can see we also met that goal, 72% of 70. And I've been here 20 years. This is the first time we've actually met all those goals. So, hey, great Apache Junction. We've done it. I think this is a great indicator of what our street sales tax monies also do with helping us keep up with these metrics for keeping our streets safe. Our streets are very valuable when it comes to economic development, tourism. That's oftentimes what the first people see as they drive into the city. So we believe it's very important to keep our roads in good condition as well as open for emergency responders when it comes to their duties, important duties that they do for the city. That last picture there, again, from this last year. So that picture is from Broadway Avenue, paving the overlay that happened, I think, late end of last calendar year. And also, as I mentioned, we did a good portion of Superstition Boulevard from Meridian all the way past City Hall here to SR 88. We'll be looking to continue some more of that overlay in here, and we'll talk to you about that in a minute. In the packet or in the agenda items for this presentation, I did include map documents, so council members should have those maps available. From this map, you can't really see specific street names, but you do have that digital document available to you in case you want to print it or zoom in and be able to see street names.

My purpose of showing this each year is to show color.

It's very important that we show color on our maps. That means we're doing street maintenance. Our life of our streets really depends on how much maintenance we do, how much square yards we touch per year. Those colors give you an idea. For example, in the Y area, you see a lot of that yellow. Again, we do a lot of chip seal in-house. That's been our Our meat and potatoes, gravy and potatoes here for the last many, many, many years for those rural areas with that preservation maintenance that we do in-house. You also see a lot of purple for the fog seals that we do for streets that we paved just within the last couple years. And also you'll see green there to the south, a lot of slurry seal projects that we do too on those streets that are about mid-ages when you start seeing the slurry seal. can sort of see that pink and those are some of the new projects and we'll talk about some of those newer capital improvement or CIP projects we call it when it comes to improvements to existing streets or capacity improvements for the streets that we have. So again that's a map you have we've supplied you additional maps so feel free to use that map. Also want you to remember again my disclaimer these are just this is a plan we do have things that impact our plan, such as weather, impacts the timing of these projects. Also, we have unforeseens. Public Works has a lot of unforeseens when you start dealing with utilities, conflicts of utilities that are underground. Sometimes those are the conflicts that you have that you might see some of these projects sliding back, for example, not happening this year, but moving into the following year. Public Works, we try our best as we establish our work plans for the year to get these projects done. And that's why I'm here early on, because we need all the time we could get within a fiscal year to get the projects done that we plan to get.

And we've added, I think this year, our first year, I added a southern map because the map, we're growing.

So this year we have a north map and now I have a southern map. And you can see, even though those roads down south, good maintenance starts with keeping good streets good. So you can see a lot of the fog sealing that we've done this last year down there, which will continue into this next year, as well as the overlay on a portion of Ironwood Drive there.

Can you shoot back one slide? Yep. down here to the South. This is Tomahawk road 60 up Southern. Can you explain that to me? Was that not just redone by the County where we're going back and redoing it?

Yeah. So this is the CIP project, which we'll talk about in a minute, which is a widening and a storm drain improvement. Uh, canal County does maintain that street, which we have been in conversation with them about this project. We actually just had a coordination meeting with them about two weeks ago, and they said, yeah, they probably shouldn't have done that project with this project coming. However, I think they had some stake in saying that they did the work just to hold the street together until we get to this project here that's going to be happening.

So whose responsibility is Tomahawk Road then?

It is a good portion of that is Pinal Counties. Right by the gas station, we have the full cross section right there of Tomahawk. They have that portion that's along those two subdivision and that mobile home park on the east side up to Southern. And then we actually share a portion of Southern.

So Southern is a scalloped road where they- Yeah, so according to that, virtually what's highlighted is basically all Pinal County.

A good majority of it. And we do have a grant for the project. They went into the grant with us for the project. So it is a grant-funded project through MAG. Of course, we'll have additional benefits with traffic flow. We have plans that this corridor... Tomahawk to the southern to serve as a relieving corridor for the 60, you know, to get it widened for when the city closes down to have a good flow area for traffic to bypass.

So we go through and widen Tomahawk, and then after that project's done, does the county then keep it up, or do we go back and keep it up?

I think the plans right now is they will be keeping it up, and maybe Mike will talk about that when he talks more specifically, but right now I don't think it includes any right-of-way projects

share swap to us once the project is done.

I think this is a neat example of coordination between two local governments, county and city, but also working with MAG, who is our connection to federal funds. So if we coordinate it well at this local level and have some, I assume it's like 5% of our own money we put in or something to that degree, we leverage.

This would be the new coordination because there wasn't any before.

Well, we jointly went in on this grant, but what they did is they didn't stop their own maintenance efforts because maybe promises they made to their constituents or whatever it was. But yes, ultimately you're right. But we did have to coordinate to plan for this grant to apply for it, and they just chose to still do that project.

All right, thank you for... for the question. I think it was just on this slide down south. So I think I was just mentioning too, you could see that blue overlay. So again, one of the projects this next fiscal year is continue with some of our overlay. We have the northbound portions of Ironwood here in poor shape.

So we really need to do some work on this road to keep it together.

Again, with the amount of traffic that we have in Ironwood, we see a lot of those volumes increasing, so we need to do that. I do want to point out Old West Highway. Old West Highway 2 is getting to be in poorer conditions, so we're turning our sites with our repaving, our overlay, just like what we did on Broadway and Superstition. We're turning our sites on to Old West Highway this next year. So that first phase would be Idaho to Tomahawk, and we do plan then the next phase from Tomahawk probably all the way to the 60s. right away the next following fiscal year. All right, talking about preservation maintenance, one thing that you'll see in the budget that's not on this list is our recycling of asphalt. So we do have some large piles of asphalt at our yard, and that has become more important over the last half a dozen years or more because we're recycling more and more of the asphalt waste that we are taking off of our streets. So in the budget, you'll see monies that we'll have a contractor come in and do some crushing, which will include screening. And oftentimes when I say screening, that means screening the aggregate waste the sand that we need for the slurry seal projects that I just pointed out, as well as aggregate for our chip seal program. We were one of the first cities back eight or nine years ago actually using recycled asphalt in our slurry seals and have had great success since then, as well as other cities since then, since we started doing it. And also in the last two or three years, we've done quite a bit with our chip seal, with recycling that asphalt. We use a lot of our asphalt too when we crush it as a substitute for virgin AB or gravel. We have so many rural roads. We're up by the mountain, so we get significant erosion on our shoulders on these rural roads. We use a lot of that recycle to mend the shoulders of our rural roads after each storm, for example, is when we get the most erosion on our streets. So by us recycling the asphalt, it is estimated about half a million dollars that we save each year just by the recycling of the aggregate from the waste asphalt we do have. So that's one project I just want to point out that's important as part of this because that supports, as I just mentioned, a lot of the aggregate for the slurry seals that are upcoming as well as the chip seals that are upcoming. You can see the time frames that we have on there. Crack seal is probably one of the longest ones because our crews do that in-house, and they do a lot of the prep work. for the slurry seal, fog seals, chip seals. All those roads need to have actually cracked seal before you do those preservation treatments on. And you can see a lot of those pavement preservation projects we have in the spring. And then you'll notice here on the next side, the rehabilitation or overlay projects, Old West Highway, as I mentioned, and that South Ironwood. We have a little earlier in the fall versus the preservation treatments being in the spring. So again, we try to be sensitive to our winter visitors, try to spread that work out. We recognize that traffic volumes increase a lot in the wintertime. We try to work around that, try to work around the proximity of projects with each other too so one work zone doesn't impact other work zones, et cetera. So that is the rehabilitation projects we have coming up here. Again, continuance of what we started here this last year with Broadway and Superstition. I'm going to pause there for a minute. It's been definitely a pleasure talking with you tonight. If you have any more questions with maintenance at this time, I'm going to invite the public works director Mike up and he's going to walk us through the CIP and talk about some of the newer projects. But if you have any maintenance projects.

On the street maintenance map, it shows what apparently is very little full reconstruction projects planned. Does that mean that we just don't have that many roads out there that require that, or is it just that's all you've budgeted for this year?

Yeah, reconstruction, and I've talked a lot in the past about Maintenance, you're paying $5 a square yard. So if you're doing some of that fog seal, some of that slurry seal early on, you're paying $5 a square yard. Your money goes a lot further. That's why it's really important with the philosophy of pavement maintenance to do that pavement preservation up front so you have less reconstruction. So I think the reconstruction shows the indicator of us doing that maintenance over the years. However, I can't really speak to Lost Dutchman, because that's been on this map before you for the last three years, but we've had right away delays with that. So we are optimistic. We're going to get that last phase four reconstruction of Lost Dutchman done this next year as we approach August, I understand, when we have that right away. I think we're going to be looking to purchase Is there other roads that are in need of reconstruction? Yes. So even though I showed you those metrics, we still have a percentage of our inventory that are in poor condition. So yes, we still have some areas that definitely need to be reconstruction and we'll see that in future plans. But again, part of putting this plan together is balancing those high cost reconstruction, but making sure we do that maintenance as we move forward.

Yes. On your green here, on this map, 12th and 13th dead end. 13th's a cul-de-sac, 12th just dead ends. They're both pretty bad. I live on 13th. They're getting a lot of big cracks, stuff like that. You're doing slurry seal right here. Why wouldn't you just do those two small streets?

Yes, Council Member Soller, that's a good point. And sometimes with our map, we're still fine-tuning some of those small little segments. So I know just recently we added some more on there, so we will definitely take a look at that. I know one of those dead ends is actually a private street, but you mentioned one that is not.

12th is and 13th is a cul-de-sac. That's where I live. But they're getting big cracks in them, and I mentioned it a year or so ago to Brian and Now that I see you're doing it right there, it's like, why don't we just do that little section and get that done? If it's a private street, that's one thing. I thought 12th part of that was city, and then it dead ends into private. But, yeah, I mean, you're there. It might make sense to just do it all. And that's why we present, just because you guys see some things that we don't see.

So appreciate that. We'll take a look at those two cul-de-sacs.

Mayor? Yes, I do have another. I have a question, too. Cortez, I believe it was Cortez last year, was chip sealed. And there was a section that got missed and brought it up last year. And we were told that it would be on the front end of the list this year to get that last little section. I don't see anything on Cortez Merck.

Council Member Cross, that was done just a couple months ago in April. Very good. A section along Cortez as well as there's a gap on Star 2 that actually did hit. Thank you.

Mayor?

Yes.

Shane, I have a question for you. Curiosity question. Back on, I think, the second screen. Second slide. I can't remember what the name of it. No, not that. Come on. No. This one here. Okay. I'm just curious. This is great, these numbers, these statistics. They jump great, you know, put us looking good. And I don't want to be sounding negative. But have these been improved and become better percentages because of all the growth south of the 60 that has brand new roads that have been added into all of the roads, which just makes all of our roads look better, the percentage because of that, that if the new roads weren't there, these stats wouldn't be this good?

Yes, Council Member Renessery, you are correct. And I mentioned that, and that's why I mentioned that, that our Percentage inventory has increased 10% so those better roads that we've accepted and acquired inventory definitely does impact those numbers.

I wasn't sure, but I just wanted to clarify that.

And our goal is going to be to maintain those good roads and balance that with some of these older condition roads here as we move forward.

Thank you.

I wanted to ask the red circles on that. Are they improvements for intersections?

Yes, so Mike will speak to those, improvement to those intersections here next. So you are absolutely correct. Sometimes we've used circles in the past for drainage projects, but those are for intersection improvements.

Okay.

All right, and I'll pass it over to Mike, and I'll be here too yet for any additional questions that you may have at the end.

Perfect. Mayor and Council, Mike Loggins, Public Works Director. Just a few projects we have on the board for these next fiscal year. Delaware and Southern, a new traffic signal. We put stop signs in there roughly a couple years ago. We're looking at improving that location to add a traffic signal and warranted that. We did a study last year. So we designed it this year, and we'll be moving forward with a traffic signal installation at that location. We're also looking at enhancing Ironwind Baseline. It's one of the top 10 in Pinal County, worst intersections for traffic incidents. There's a lot of traffic that goes through that intersection. So we'll be looking at approving that. We also filed for a grant in that same location. This may be just slight improvement, but we have a large grant that we're going after also at the same time to do major improvements to that intersection too. We're also looking at Southern Avenue and Tomahawk. We have some developers in that area. The city has some things that they need to do there. So we're Still designing that drainage improvement project and working alongside that developer to see what we can come up with a final solution to take care of the water that we promised them 20 years ago. So we're working through that project also as part of that, but that'll be mostly designed this year. We're also looking at some Idaho here in Superstition along the detention basin here we have. We never finished some sidewalks along Highway 88, so we're looking at finishing those sidewalks off with curb and gutter so that it finishes that loop off reaching out to Havenly so people can actually walk to Fry's along the sidewalk or actually get to the downtown area where they need to go in the future. We're also doing some sidewalks in Apache Villas and then Meridian and Southern Avenue drainage channel improvements. So we're working through that. That's also part of that project there. So I had two flipped around. So that one is the one I was mentioning earlier. Southern Tomahawk was the one that Vice Mayor Schroeder was asking about we're going to be doing the storm drain in that location, then widening that road, making it a better entry point to the city. We do understand that it's part of Pinal County. Pinal County is a partner of ours with MAG. I believe the grant we have approval from council already to spend $850,000 on. It's roughly about a $6 million improvement project for the storm drain and all the road infrastructure and sidewalks that are going to go with that project. So it's not all funded by city tax dollars. It's going to be through grants from MAG. And then also we have our traffic signal fiber optics. We just finished up getting all 22 traffic signals on the city via fiber or radios so that the police department can see those intersections. We'll be finishing up that project and continuing more throughout the city so we can tie other cities into the fiber as we go forward with some of these new traffic signals. So we can get traffic counts through these signals. We can see speed limits through the signals. We can see all kinds of additional information kind of make us a smart city as we move forward. Talking about Weeks Wash Regional Detention Basin, we've been working on this for many years. It's at EPA right now. We're working on our NEPA approval. We're looking probably another six to eight months to get approval on that, and we'll give you guys a presentation probably about a month or two ago on that project, so we're still continuing to move forward with that. Tomahawk Road improvements, Southern Old West Highway, So on this location, we're looking to design the rest moving north from southern, a continuation of the existing project that will be starting in the fall. This will continue from southern all the way up to Old West Highway on Tomahawk, looking at expanding that road, continuing some new storm drain to the north there. That's a continuation of that other project we had going on. As you guys are aware, we're working on the public works and water expansion to complete design and start construction of a public works building. As we move forward, we'll be moving forward with that. And then we're looking at completing our engineer standards and update that was approved this past fiscal year and completing those updates. We do have a stormwater master plan in our budget this year. We haven't updated it since 2006. So again, looking at some of the stormwaters that come through, we've had some major projects that we finished with Superstition Basin, looking at Weeks Wash. We're doing on the CAC Basin also. So continuing improvements, we just want to see how that affects the entire drainage throughout the city and what other improvements we can do as part of that. So we want to update that plan. Any questions on those projects that we have for next fiscal year?

Go ahead.

I've got a question on Ironwood. Ironwood has a double turn lane to go onto the freeway when you're heading north.

Yes, sir.

And we have a lot of people that come off that freeway and they're in the wrong lane, and they just cut across. And I don't know how many accidents we have down there. It just looks like it would be ripe for accidents because people are in the wrong lane, and they want to go straight. And it's only one lane going straight, two turn on back onto the freeway. Is there any way we can either get signs up or put those little strip barriers in there so people can't do that? Have we had a lot of accidents down there? I don't know. It just looks like, because people are always telling me people are cutting them off because they want to go straight, so they just cut people off.

Right. Unfortunately, that's not right away that we control. That's ADOT right away. It took us 10 years to get that second turn lane in, or probably more than that. We finally have it here, and guess what? They put the 24 in now, and it takes away half the traffic that goes through there. There's still a lot of traffic. Eventually, I would imagine that second turn lane would probably go away or we actually have another lane that goes straight through rather than the current setup.

It would be nice if they put those little barrier things up so people know that they have to go back on the freeway.

They originally didn't have any. They put those barriers up and they got ran over and taken out. We understand there's an issue there. Council has brought it up. Some other people from our community has brought that up to us. We're going to work through that and As we're working through ADOT on other projects, we'll bring that up to him and see what else we can do.

Okay, I just, people were telling me, and I'm like, I went down and looked at it, and I'm like, yeah, this looks like it could cause a lot of problems.

It does. It does.

Mike, we have an update from Rob, I think, specifically about that with ADOT.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Rob Whistler, Management Analyst for the City Manager's Office. So as part of the U.S. 60 Ironwood to Kings Ranch Road corridor study, this will be something that will be looked at, will be not just the main line for the U.S. 60, but also the access, like that Ironwood interchange. That's actually probably something that will be a We're looking at near-term, medium-term, and long-term solutions with that. That's something that will likely be a near-term solution, is looking at the striping and the issues that are going on on there. Thank you.

Your Honor.

Yes.

I have a question about that. So a freeway entrance, I'm assuming that's why it's ADOT, right? But so does that mean ADOT came and took half of Ironwood Road from us? Because that was two lanes going straight through, and it was a single-turn lane at the time. So that was Ironwood Road cutting north and south all the way through. So would ADOT just take over that section of our road?

No, that was never our road. Any intersections that are in ADOT interchanges, they have control of them. So there's a section of Ironwood. Correct. It's about 1,000 feet. Either side of the bridge, right? Correct. Belongs to ADOT. Yeah, so if you look typically on the road, ADOT roads still have concrete where they take over. And that traffic signals are ADOT, so they can control those. unless cities take them over and work out a deal with them. We have mentioned before, but that is not our right-of-way. That is actually ADOT's right-of-way.

So if there's an accident right there, AJ should not respond. It should be DPS. Technically, yes, but... Yeah, I know technically, because technically 24 and Signal Butte's theirs, but they make us take all the fatalities there. Right. Yeah. Okay. That was a great story, Brian. Thank you. Actually, ADOT doesn't...

Any other questions? I don't have a question, but I do have a request.

Yes.

Back when Tess brought up about the street inventory condition, and I know that everything that's down south is included in this. Is there, can you guys break something out and get it to the council as to where we are on apples to apples without them? Because, you know, if we were at 7% on under 5% in poor or worse, you took them out of the mix, are we still at 7% or are we at 8% or are we at 6%?

I think I could answer that very quickly. That metric, I think you saw that 70%, you know, that number three. that's where you're seeing all that newer 10% of streets right there. So I think we would be under 70 cents or around 70%. And number two?

Number two wouldn't be impacted by that new inventory.

Of course, number one's impacted a little bit, you know, with that 10%. But number three goal, I think, would be right on the margin of possibly not meeting with that.

I just like seeing numbers, apples to apples, not apples to oranges.

Yep, and I present on the whole inventory. Those streets are part of our inventory now, and that's why I said that at the start, that this includes a lot of inventory that, again, 10% of our inventory just in the last couple years, where the previous decade we only increased our inventory about 6%. Thank you. Yep. Okay.

Any other questions? We're good? Thank you.

Thank you.

Excuse me presentation discussion for on-call consulting services RFQ pw 26-0 to Emile good evening mayor Wilson vice mayor Schroeder council members Emile Schmidt City Engineer in the Public Works Department, and I'm here this evening to discuss with you the engineering on-call services request for qualifications that we recently advertised. The purpose for having on-call consultants is that we have a pre-selected, pre-approved group of engineering consultants that can provide civil engineering survey services and geotechnical or soil services for various tasks throughout the city. Having a group of this, of on-call consultants, will give staff flexibility to rotate tasks among various consultants. As the name suggests, on-call means that the consultants are available immediately. That helps us as a city to improve responsiveness in completion of various public works engineering services and tasks, like we saw on the previous presentation, some of the upcoming design tasks that we have. It also helps us to minimize delays in starting on those tasks. because we eliminate the need to come back to council every time for individual contracts for all these design or survey or geotechnical services that we have. We can initiate or get consultants moving right away. And how we do this is we send out a notice requesting statements of qualification. We send this out to the engineering and surveying industry in the valley, which we did earlier this year. Interested engineering firms or consulting firms will prepare and submit statements of qualifications or SOQs, which they did by April 30th of this year. We had a panel of city staff members that individually review and rank the statements of qualifications that we receive, and then we get together as a team. and discuss and evaluate and develop a short list of recommended consultants that we wish to move forward with, and we met two weeks ago today to do that. And these consulting firms are selected for a four-year term, and we are now presenting these to you for consideration and approval. This list here represents the three service areas that we have for our on-call consulting services. We have a service area one, general civil engineering, service area two, general survey, and service area three, geotechnical, and that's soils analysis and things of that nature or special inspections for structures. And the way that the city and the consultants accomplish this or coordinate all of these tasks and assignments is is through a professional services agreement. And I had a draft of the agreement that we will be using attached with the packet for this evening. And each firm will have its own services agreement with the city. And we are in the process of coordinating with these selected firms to get the signatures, the signed packets back from them. and we'll have that ready in about two weeks. We're coming back on the seventh on consent agenda for approval of this list of on-call consultants. Pretty short presentation. With that, staff respectfully request that Mayor and Council consider approving professional services agreements for The engineering on-call services project number, RFQ, which is request for qualifications. RFQ PW 26-02 for fiscal years 2027 through 2030. That's for a four-year span. And as I mentioned, this will be on the consent agenda two weeks from tomorrow evening at the regular meeting. I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any. Yes.

Emil, I presume that we have these on-call services to save from having to hire a lot of employees more that we would have to have to get the same information that they provide. How much I mean, do we get that much from these? Do you utilize these on-call services that much?

Over the last four to five years, yes, we have been utilizing our on-call consultants a lot more. When I started here in 2008, we had on-call consultants. We had six service areas, environmental, we had architectural, we had some others, and We never used them. I mean, back in 2008, big downturn, a lot of cutbacks on funding, federal funding, and we were limited in doing anything, really. So we didn't utilize the on-call consultants. So we took the time to get on board and ready to go. So we would spend this effort to come up with a short list of consultants, and we'd end up not using them.

Three years later, same thing.

We'd go through the effort of selecting and recommending on-call consultants. ready to go just in case, but as we all know, that downturn lasted a lot longer than we were expecting or hoping, so we didn't utilize on-call consultants. And like I said, it wasn't until the last five years, really, that we started using on-call consultants. And then, if I may, going back to your comment about doing that in-house versus having a consultant, a lot of these firms have the staff and the specialties that we don't have. I'm kind of a general civil engineer, jack of all trades, master of none. And for me to be able to take the time and focus that these firms have and do so quickly, I just don't have that ability. In our current engineering staffing, we don't have that ability. So yeah, we will utilize these on-calls for their expertise and their ability to do so efficiently and quickly.

But right now, the city's growing enough and we're progressing that we need the service. We need that information.

Yeah, we need the help. We need these services. And, yeah, at some point down the road, it would be great to have additional staff. It would be fun to do some of these projects in-house locally, keep that with our own staff. But we're not quite there yet. But especially when... We're involving federal funds. That takes it to a different level. I said that before with our week's wash structure. You get the feds involved, and it takes it to a whole new level. Federal funding, there's a lot more I's, many more I's to dot and T's to cross, and a lot of these firms are well-versed in projects with federal funding.

Okay. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Thank you. Presentation, discussion, and agreement with Petroleum Traders Corporation. Mike.

Mayor and Council, we're back up to renew our sign a new bulk fuel contract. We've piggybacked on several other contracts in the past. This year we actually went out and bid out our bulk fuel. So I think our agreement comes to end here June 30th. So we're looking to get this on consent order for approval here. On May 11th, we received two responses back from our RFP. So kind of give you guys the results here. We use several different types of fuel here at the city. We have red dye, which is really for our equipment. We have our clear diesel. And then we have our unleaded gas. As you can see, a bulk of our fluids that we use is gasoline or unleaded, roughly about 100,000 gallons. Kind of give you an idea. Each vendor, as you can see, there's an OPUS rating, and this is what the cost is for the fuel for each of those. And then each vendor adds an additional cost for the delivery charges and their expertise to get it there. So as you can see, we have some different ones here. We have Petroleum Trader, which is roughly this 37 cents on top of their 451 or 25 here. If you add these all up, based on the number of gallons we have, we have Petroleum Traders roughly at about $738,000, and then we have Synergy at $748,000. Synergy is the past vendor that we used, so we're looking at changing vendors this year to save approximately about $40,000, or $10,000, sorry. Obviously, we've increased some of the numbers for fuel over the time. We have more vehicles here in the city. We do have more expenses, so these are a little bit increased from past years, as you guys will see here, but it does save us money between the two vendors. Again, looking at saving approximately annually $10,000 from our current contract. Staff is recommending a centering into a petroleum trader's corporation for the purchase of bulk fuel and a contract amount not to exceed $900,000 for initially one year term with four automatic one year renewal options. And what happens, I believe, each year we'll go back and we'll look at these costs, and we'll look at the OPUS amount, and we'll adjust that amount as we go through that. Obviously, fuel prices are higher today, and we'll be taking a look at that as we continue moving forward. Any questions on our proposal here?

Yes. Yeah, Mike, you may have just answered that question. Obviously, the global oil supply is in a state of flux right now, a lot of uncertainty. Is it conceivable that the cost for this fuel could go down and that we could see the benefit of that?

I believe so, yes, sir.

Okay. Hopefully we're going to all see the benefit of that.

Yes.

At some point in time.

Yes.

Mike, you just said you believe so.

That's not reassuring. I will double check, and I will make sure. What role do you?

I think the market does fluctuate as the market.

So the market fluctuates and I think that's in the contract.

But the war is over, so all the costs should go down, right? The Strait of Hormuz is open, right?

Councilmember Cross. We will verify and email you the answer.

I'm getting some nodding from back here from Shane that it does adjust. Shane says yes. It adjusts. As part of that contract.

Thank you, Shane. Mayor? Yes. I just want to say thanks for bringing this to us and not having us do an emergency extension.

That was irritating. That was last year. Yes. We got ahead of it this year so that we didn't have to do the same thing as we did last year. So we should be set for at least another four years.

Yeah.

Your Honor. Yes. This is just more of a curiosity question more than anything else. So if I were to drive up to the pump, I see price per gallon. Obviously, 50%, 60% of that is taxes on the gas. Does the city fall into the same sort of category as job queue public consumer, especially even with buying in the bulk?

I don't know the answer. I can get back to you on that.

It's really not that important because it is what it is, but I'm seeing comparable prices back and forth to what I would be paying at the pump right now. So I'm just curious why the city would be charged the same amount per gallon as your everyday.

You're asking about the taxes, additional charges that you see at the pump. I'm not really sure on that, but I'll take a look at that, and we will get back to you on that one. Thanks.

Yes.

I don't know if it's a necessary question, but the four-year, four one-year extension, automatic extensions, can that be dropped by either party?

Correct. Yeah, that's in the agreement.

Okay.

Okay. Anyone else? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And I will adjourn this meeting. Thank you.