City Council - Regular Meeting

I show Mickey's big hand to me on the six, little hand to me on the four. So I'm going to call this meeting to order. City of Buckeye Council Workshop for September 1st, 2016. Can we have a roll call, please?

Council Member Yonker? Here. Council Member Ferry? Here. Council Member Hackestead? Is absent Council Member Beard? Here. Council Member Hustis? Here. Vice Mayor Goodman? Present. Mayor Orenthorne?

Is absent. Can I say thankfully or? So workshop items, presentation and discussion is by city staff. and consulting independent research to see the city council feedback regarding the arts and culture plan, a planning document that will guide future development around arts and culture in the city for the next 10 years and beyond. We have approximately one hour for this item. So who do I kick it to, Kelby?

or bob bob yes yeah guys arm wrestling we did we did okay well good afternoon vice mayor and council again bob weissner in the community services department with us today is kelby mirrors the director we also have iwana holden who's our arts and culture manager and we have alex king who is the managing principal for king independent research so i'm going to kick off this presentation and then we'll turn it over to alex and then i'll close at the very end So a few years ago, the city issued a full coast survey to Buckeye residents and we've continuously done that in 2024 and also in 2026. And what we found when we evaluated the survey results was that Buckeye has ranked lower than the national benchmarks as it relates to opportunities to attend cultural arts and music activities, but also the community support for the arts. And so you can see those percentages on the screen and where we compare between 2022 and 2026. And in 2022, we knew that we were ranking lower and so we onboarded Ilana as our arts and culture manager And since that time, she's made some investments in arts and culture in the city of Buckeye. We've added public art on the traffic boxes. We also installed a mural on the Burr-on-the-Well wall. We've also installed public art in some of the city facilities. So we've got a mural in the downtown library or senior center. At Sunnitz Reformation Center, we also installed a hanging mobile in Coyote Library. And so with some of those investments, you can see that we scored higher in 2026, the most recent survey that was issued. So between 2022 and 2026, for the opportunities to attend cultural arts and music activities, we went from 26% up to 38%. And then the same community support for the arts, we increased by 11 points from 26% to 37%. And so what that's telling us is that we've done a good job. been beginning an arts and culture program, but again, we're still lower than the national benchmark, so we have some ways to go. And so it became important for us to commission this arts and culture plan to give us direction on where do we need to take public art, where do we need to take art programming. And so this became a council strategic plan initiative to commission the arts and culture plan with the completion date of this calendar year, and we're well on our way. So again, we hire community-dependent research. We kicked off the planning process in January this past year. We were at Buckeye Days. We were at the Buckeye Airfare Spring Celebration. We had a survey that went out to Buckeye residents and also held stakeholder meetings with various community groups to give us direction again on where we need to grow arts and culture in the city. And so now I'm going to turn it over to Alex, and he's going to share more about the planning process. what we heard from residents, and then the strategic priorities that were informed based on the direction that we heard from residents.

Thank you, Bob. All right, well, once again, Alex Key, Managing Principal at Key Independent Research. I've met some of this room, but not all of you, so I'm looking forward to having a conversation tonight. We are a national firm that does this work, and I'm just so proud to call Arizona my home. While working on this project, it's been really, really fun to actually have an opportunity to be in our backyard. I'm oftentimes spending hours and hours on airplanes. But in this case, I was spending about an hour and a half in the car driving from Phoenix into Buckeye in traffic today. So I'll take that over an airplane flight. But it's always great to get an opportunity to impact somewhere that is special to us. We have a great team, some of us are located in Arizona, many of us are located outside of Arizona. this work is so meaningful to us because arts and culture is just part of life, right? In the case of Buckeye, it's about quality of life, it's about opportunities for your residents, and then it's also about economic impact. And as we go through this conversation tonight, I think we're gonna kind of touch on both of those and really kind of establish that where are you today when it comes to arts and culture and where are you going as you continue to rapidly expand into a major city in this region? So first we're going to talk about process. So Bob mentioned that we started in January. And really, our first few months of this project were fact-finding, looking at what your existing plans were, everything that you had already done, looking at your existing arts and cultural inventory of assets, both physical and also the organizations that participate in arts and culture. And then we started a really strong, robust public input process. Questionnaires, interviews, we did a significant amount of that and that really led us into the spring. And from there, this is really, the goal of a plan like this is to be built on all of the different feedback mechanisms that we that we were able to receive, and we'll talk more about that. But this was a particularly strong one because of the local presence that we had. You get into spring and summer, and we were developing the draft plans, getting, I think we had 400 comments, 500 comments, somewhere in there from staff, so we really, really appreciate the significant amount of involvement that the city staff gave us as part of this. to several of your different commissions, receive their feedback as well. And looking forward to the chat tonight so you can give us additional feedback as part of this process. So the ultimate goal is we're doing this workshop tonight. We'll receive any additional feedback and comments. If there's anything we need to do some tweaks, we'll do them. And then the goal right now is to get a vote for adoption in October. So a little bit of time. the major tasks of the project included the public input that we've been talking about looking at those city plans doing a significant amount of market analysis so that we could sort of benchmark buckeye against other communities and then also understand sort of what are the demographic characteristics of this community then we went into benchmarking and looked at peer cities in the region across the country then we started developing strategic priorities so that's the high level you know planning guiding principles that help organize a very detailed plan like this and then finally developing implementation plans so really a robust tool for staff to be able to actually use the plan to its fullest and execute the vision of the plan once adopted so really But I will say one of the things that was really unique about this project was Buckeye really pushed us. You all really challenged us to continue to think bigger and more deeply about the work. So just diving in a little bit more into the public input and engagement, we did sort of targeted interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders, including city staff, arts and cultural practitioners in the region, and other city leaders. That was amazing. That was just an absolutely great time to get really diverse feedback from folks that might be interested in arts and culture and some folks that might be. We'll get them in the end. They're going to get there. We had 387 participants in our community events that included several different engagements. a couple of different festivals and events. And we went to a farmer's market, too. I think it was a farmer's market, yeah. So in each of these different engagements, we had activity stations, so where folks could come in and interact and talk about sort of the findings of those activity stations, as well as just having great conversations with folks coming up and discussing their interest in agriculture. And then finally, we had a public input questionnaire that was spread widely throughout the community via social media. We also did direct engagement to different groups that might represent communities that we were already attracting as part of that engagement effort. So we had 650 responses, 84% of those folks were Buckeye residents. So just diving into our findings here, we did some mapping of your existing assets, so that was everything from your types of art pieces, murals, museums and galleries, sculptures, parks, some sort of more studio space, different types of arts and cultural spaces, and some of your functional art, which may or may not be things like your utility boxes or benches, that type of thing. And I think overall what we saw here was you have several, right? investing in it, but as you continue to grow, there's going to be opportunity to add even more. And you're going to see how we look at that in these next two heat maps. So this first heat map here you see on the left is a map of your existing areas of public art investment. So this is really focusing on public art. So everything kind of the blue-teal color there. Let's see if we'll use the cool function. There we go. Okay, I had to at least once. That's where you have already spent money, invested, created public art. And then, so we actually have boards out, and we're asking folks, where do you think there should be more public art? And folks can put, you know, stick her up on a map. We did this at several events. And the, back to the blue, no, maybe. Oh, see, it worked once. Okay, it worked exactly once. where folks were asking for more public art was essentially everywhere, right? They were anywhere that there was a population base, they were asking for more public art. This is all over Buckeye. And we do want to note here that folks that live in Festival, they didn't necessarily have an opportunity to participate in this, but we understand that the finding here is everywhere. We'd like to see more public art throughout our community. Then we asked folks, we looked at your existing arts and cultural venues and events. So where do you have either a venue where arts and culture can happen? So that might be a stage or an art creation space. We looked at where your event programming is, where your different kind of existing events are. So that's in the bluish teal there. And then we asked folks, where would you like to see more arts and cultural venues and events? And once again, it was everywhere. So what this tells us is there's a good focus in both on historic Buckeye as an area of concentration. We also see that central Buckeye is an area of concentration. And the way that this is organized is coming out of your library master plan in your library in Parks and Rec, right? So like maybe these titles of the different neighborhoods aren't exactly right but for the sake of kind of organizing this historic Buckeye area of concentration central Buckeye area concentration and what we recognize in the work here is This is a really, really big town geographically. You have a lot of square miles to cover. And so you're probably not going to be able to do everything everywhere. So even though the community is saying we want it all, we're recommending more of like areas of excellence. You might have an area that's focusing on performing arts. You might have an area that's focusing more on visual arts. You might have an area closer to the highway where someday you invest in a larger amphitheater, for example. You're probably not going to have an amphitheater in nine locations. You're probably going to pick one location to have a larger capital investment. So overall, over time, you're going to kind of figure out where does it make sense to put certain assets. But ultimately, the community does recognize that historic Buckeye and central Buckeye are two places that definitely deserve significant amount of attention. So that was great to see. in our public input questionnaire we asked folks what makes buckeye unique so bigger words mean more people use use the words in the survey and i think just not surprisingly with everything we've learned community was a top word people move here because they want they want that sense of community they want to kind of feel like they know their neighbors and you know have a better understanding of kind of how you know everything works and they say small town which is funny because it's also a massive town this is geographic Everybody knows somebody, right? So if I don't know you, I probably know somebody that knows you. Those are really, really common words when we look at communities like this. History, the history of Buckeye rose to the top. Farming, friendly, western, growing. Growing, growth, let's see, that's said a few times. So this kind of tension between this farming heritage, this western heritage with We're growing. We're getting bigger. And so we really do believe that arts and culture can help maintain that small town feel and community and really bring those connections together. And that was great to see. So we asked folks for their perceptions of the city's and businesses' rural arts and culture. I assume that was going to paint. Something's wrong with the slide. All of these are blank. We have a loading issue on the deck. Can we escape out real quick? Who's got the? I'll take it. It's like a SharePoint issue? Oh, yeah. I see a little X there. If there's some, do we have a, I can plug in.

We're all muted. Is that when you run a direct connection?

It was on a roll. Good.

you just need to start over now i've already done this presentation a few times i can't poke into theories

I'm just holding my screen in here. Since this is an arts and culture, can Bob mine the rest of it? You don't want to sing it, by the way.

I haven't heard any professional performing arts. I'll sing it. I don't want to sing it either.

While we're waiting for some support here, I will just, this is pretty easy. So we did a public input questionnaire. We have a variety of questions. You're going to see kind of Green was positive, orange was negative. And so I'll read you the questions and just give you kind of a verbal description of each of them. So the first question was the city of Buckeye, the government, is supportive of local arts and cultural offerings. And that question ranked sort of 50% were net positive in some way, and then you had 9% were net negative. So we like to use net promoter scores if anybody's familiar with that. That's like, take all the positives and the negatives, and it's just addition or subtraction. And so that one was at a net 41. Buckeye private businesses have a key role in supporting arts and cultural offerings. That was a net 72. And I'm a supporter of the city of Buckeye allocating funds for arts and cultural programs, festivals, and venues. That was a net positive of 83. So the way I read this is generally people understand that you all are supportive of arts and culture already. You're supporting festivals, events, public art. But you're not, what people are saying is, This is, you're on your way, right? We appreciate it, and we're supportive of it, and there may be opportunity over time to get this number up, right? To see even more understanding of the support that you're putting into arts and culture. And then the next question was perceptions of arts and culture at Buckeye. Buckeye has a dynamic art scene. So that one was a net negative 27. So if you all decide that it makes sense for Buckeye to have a dynamic art scene, this is a question that we should ask regularly over time with the goal of increasing that net promoter score into the positive. If arts and culture is part of the brand, part of the values, part of the strategy here, that one, we have a ways to go. That's actually, in a way, it's exciting for me because you're starting from a place where improvement can be very easily measured. Buckeye is a destination for arts and culture. Now it's a negative 34. So folks are not perceiving right now that Buckeye is a place that you could go to for arts and cultural offerings. So these are two that, next time you do a survey, next time you do a community survey, I would ask these two questions. And C, if you've invested in us as a consulting firm, if you adopt the arts and cultural plan, you made a bunch of investment. Now let's keep measuring that as a key performance indicator moving forward. The next one here is arts and culture add to Buckeyes appeal. That was a net 59. So folks see arts and culture as actually having value to Buckeyes and community. And finally on this page, I enjoy Buckeyes special events and festivals. That was a net 79. So I'm not going to ask you to do festivals. Events are awesome. There's so much fun to go to. So overall, the story that this tells is, Folks appreciate what the city's already investing in, and there's an interest in more, right, from the folks that participated in the survey. Okay, I vamped it up. How are we doing?

They're gonna bring it up.

Oh, good, okay. See, this is analog. I'm just gonna go analog. Let's see, I have a couple more here. Okay, these are all greens. I'm just gonna keep walking around. You just tell me if it's really annoying. Next couple of questions. I would like to see more public art, such as murals, sculptures, and Buckeye. Very highly rated. I would like to see more public art in Buckeye. Very highly rated. I'd like to see more public art that highlights Buckeye's history and heritage. Very highly rated. And finally, I'd like to see more art exhibits in Buckeye. Very highly rated. So this is again, we want more. And then finally, the last four categories. Arts and culture are important to me. Very highly rated. I'm interested in attending a live performance of Buckeye. Highly rated. I'm interested in arts and cultural events that highlight local performers, local arts, versus national touring, right? So we want to, like, develop our arts and cultural folks highlighted, and I'd like to see more theater events highlighted. So I'm going to give a caveat to this. We did not, you know, make everybody in the city of Buckeye take this survey, right? This was a self-selected group. Generally, people that take arts and cultural surveys might be a little more interested in arts and culture. But we do this work all over the country. So I see very similar questions asked all over the country. And these are high numbers. So these are numbers that are definitely indicating to me that the community is appreciative of the arts and cultural investment that you've already made and those continuing opportunities to do that.

But that's saying that they also want more.

Yeah. It's like, we like what you're doing. More, please. I think that's a very fair outcome. really speaks to me is, I enjoy the Buckeye Special Events and Festivals is so highly rated, it's the highest rated question, right? That just tells me these are people that really understand what it is that you all are doing, and now they're just saying more and more and more, and that makes sense, especially for a growing community where you're always chasing more because you're constantly building and trying to keep up with all the great development. Okay, where's my jump drive? They only want me to do this on so many slides. You're doing great. Okay, so we had these voting boards. Did anybody come out and see any of this? Anybody on council or did you all see these? These boards were awesome. I think they were in the front here for like a month too. So we had a couple of different boards. We had those maps too. But these are the preferred events and activities. And we had these boards that had pictures of, actually, I think this slide, you can at least see the picture if you go in there. It's the next one. But it was preferred events and activities. So there were hands-on museum, family-friendly event, art museum, cultural festival, food festival, music festival, large music venue, arts, craft fairs, dance, theater, community events, and small music venues. I'm just blown away by this. Like you just, you never know what to expect. Hands-on museum was the highest rent by a significant margin. So that to me, like if I'm reading into that with hands-on museum is, you know, museum focused on families, children, a museum where you can actually go in and like practically learn something versus just looking at, you know, something above the wall. I love this one and I think that there's a real position particularly with how you all are oriented towards being a family-friendly community, to think about that for a long-term investment. Is there an opportunity? East Valley has a children's museum. Phoenix has a children's museum. There's not really the West Valley equivalent for a significant family-friendly museum where folks can go live and actually get out of the heat in the summer and learn something. So that was an exciting one. Family of friendly events, not surprisingly, rose to the top. And then art museums and cultural festivals were up there too, so that was great. We're almost there. This is good. OK, one more. We keep going. So another board. Preferred public art theme. This is another one, you just never know what to expect. So our categories are innovative art installation, western historical installation, interactive art, cultural art, cultural sculptures, desert murals, desert installations, lots of desert, agricultural installations, community murals, western historic murals, agricultural murals, and western historic sculpture. So if you think about your bias, right, like looking at Buckeye, there's this kind of, little bit of western flag right here, significant agricultural heritage and history. And there's no reason you shouldn't embrace that. But I'm so excited that the innovative art installation won the day here. And why that excites me is it kind of captures what you want it to capture. It could be something that celebrates the history and heritage of the community. It could be, if anybody's been downtown, ASU has that big jellyfish that sits over the park there. It could be that. folks were not, you know, a little bit of my, you know, my bias thinking, okay, it's like a new farming community. They're going to want a more farming-focused art. It's not to say they don't want that, but they are interested in it being part of something bigger, part of something more interactive, something more exciting. And I think that's a really cool place for Buckeye to be because it gives you a lot of opportunity for some, I think, bigger ideas when it comes to major public art installation. in this community. Now I'm going to be standing up, but I don't want to sit back down. I'm going to roll here. So just to put on the big screen, so these are the two boards. There's a hands-on museum rising to the top there, and the innovative art installation. Okay, so key themes that came out of the work. So the first one was expanding access and communication. This is a really common key finding in our work regarding communities saying, I just don't know what's going on here. And I bet you hear that all the time in just about every department, right? That folks are always asking for more communication coming out of the city. So we found that awareness of existing offerings is uneven across large geography and that there's a need for clear communications overall, and the city has a role in that. You all can really, really help. We love that you have a public art program. We'd love to see that continue to expand. And we heard directly from residents here that the recent public art additions that you've made have been recognized and appreciated. And back to those surveys, more, more, more. That's what's been asked for. And then finally, another key theme here is strengthening programming and activation for arts, culture, music, theater, and youth activities, as well as opportunities in downtown to increase foot traffic. So I talk about economic impact from the beginning here, particularly downtown when you're trying to continue to develop it and enhance it. Arts and culture is a great anchor for that. We'd like to see more partnership and funding models. This is not just on the city to do alone. There's opportunities for partners with businesses, schools, developers, and community organizers. And there's opportunities for additional funding coming from the city, outside grants, and sponsorships. So lots of different funding sources. Going back to the word cloud, this idea of clarifying and strengthening the city identity, you have, not only are you a big city, but you also have smaller communities that have their own kind of brands as well. And, you know, arts and culture is a way to tie it all together, we think, right? Buckeye is so expansive that sometimes people might just see Buckeye on their mail and not even think about what it is to be a Buckeye resident. And arts and culture is a really, really great way to help people feel that community identity. All these major events you do is a great example of that. And then finally, reflecting that city identity in public art. So having public art that tells the history of Buckeye, the story and the character of the community as well as sort of embracing the future. And then finally, as the community continues to grow, you're going to have a need for more staff, you're going to have a need for folks that are and continue to expand that public art program as well as festivals and event activation. And then you're going to need more infrastructure. Folks are going to be asking for more infrastructure, whether that's additional performing arts facilities, more arts and cultural creation spaces. Whether you like it or not, there are going to be people coming to these meetings saying, we need this. So we're recommending that you start to think about what you might need now and start to study that over the next 10 years so that you're prepared for that future where your population is just at a level where people have really, really high expectations for infrastructure. So as we go into the strategic priorities, we came up with six. The plan is built with six strategic priorities that help kind of organize the rest of the plan. So number one was expanding access to communications about arts and culture across the city. Number two, building a visible and cohesive public art program. Three, strengthening arts programming events and cultural activation. Four, enhancing partnerships and funding models. Five, clarifying and strengthening city identity, branding, and community pride through arts and culture. And six, building organizational capacity and long-term infrastructure. So when you start reading the very long plan, and you get to the section where we're talking about strategic priorities, you're going to see a high-level recommendation. It says strategic priority five, clarifying, strengthening, etc. And then you're going to see actions and tactics, very similar that you'd see in any other strategic plan. So the action will have more detail. So in this case, 5-2 is using public art programming to tell Buckeye's story. There'll be some narrative there, and then as you go over to that implementation snapshot, you'll see how it actually, we identify who the lead is, and it might be that there's a city department that's a lead, who are the core collaborators, and then what's the timeline. So, for example, prioritizing themes that reflect Buckeye, this action we have as a short-term timeline, so one to three years, versus incorporating storytelling-focused elements, that's a mid-term action, so it's four to seven years. And so the entire plan is built this way, and so we feel that it's very ready for staff to be able to dive in and get to work. So just a little bit more detail about priority when this is worked up. So we have five actions built under that first strategic priority. I'll tell you a little bit more about them. So The first one there, strengthening and promoting coordinated arts and cultural communication platforms and tools. So some of the ideas there of having an arts and cultural calendar for pre-approved city-led non-profit school and community partners. So the idea that community members have a one-stop shop for learning about arts and cultural offerings. And then creating a local artist directory. A lot of it's phone calls, hey, I need an artist for a project. And there's not a one-stop place for her to be able to share that information with businesses that might be interested in working with local artists, for example. 1-2 expanding outreach and marketing efforts to reflect community demographics. So that idea is really that kind of broader base of focus throughout the community. And that really leads into 1-3, delivering geographically distributed programming. So the idea of having kind of rotating pop-up events and travel and arts programs so that kind of the scale of this community is reflected. And it's not just one area that's getting all the kind of particular event level programming. Expanding upon partnerships with schools, HOAs, and community organizations to reach residents where they already gather. So really all these different coordination efforts. And then finally, We really, really like metrics so that these folks can report back to you how they're doing. So the idea of having kind of tracking throughout this process. And you'll see that as a key theme in all the different priorities.

Before you move on, can you go back one? Yes. On 1-1. I kind of like the word integrated rather than coordinated. Okay. That has a little stronger connotation than coordination. I like it. I think it's more direct.

I agree. Any other notes on this first slide? Thank you, Vice Mayor. All right. Priority two. build a visible and cohesive public art program. And to be clear, in this plan, sometimes it's going to say something implying you aren't already doing it. You are already building a visible and cohesive public art program. But we saw some areas of opportunity, especially when we do this work all over the country. And we see the challenges along the way. So everybody has an opinion on art. Sometimes those opinions can be very productive and sometimes they can kind of derail the process. So for example, we highly recommend formal public art policies that build structure around public art adoption. So for example, having kind of an artist selection process, clear project management guidelines, maintenance expectations. Many communities will actually have a project right now we're working on. They bought a lot of public art and then it was like a random city staff member who was interested in public arts job to maintain it and then that person retired and there was no plan. So public art maintenance, you don't want to have public art that doesn't look, the whole point is to have public art that's enhancing not subtracting from your community. And then having community engagement practices around public art acquisition where folks get a chance to weigh in before you get too far down the road. And then having a public art review process so that you don't end up owning an object or an installation that the community doesn't appreciate. 2-2 there, establishing clear definitions, goals, and design standards. I think 2-1 kind of leads into 2-2. It's really about understanding what you're trying to do there. Selection criteria. things that prioritize visibility, accessibility, safety, and durability. You don't want to buy a piece that, you know, creates kind of a hazard. 2-3, creating a prioritized list of locations where public art can be installed is tied to CIP, so the idea of, hey, where do we have some gaps already that we want to invest in, how do we prioritize that? 2-4 is expanding highly visible, high-impact projects that reinforce identity and placemaking. Expanding the mural and traffic box programs is a great first step. Invisible locations, that idea of interactive public art. I talk about postcard pieces a lot, like the idea of having, it may be that at some point you want to buy something, you want to install something that is expansive enough that it becomes part of the brand identity of Buckeye. That could be really cool. That kind of signature public art installation that just, everybody knows Buckeye, buy that piece. And then in the future, really looking to incorporate public art into new developments. So whether that's private development where you're really encouraging that or public development where you're helping to kind of guide that process. The 2-5, developing a public art maintenance plan, life cycle of funding strategy. Once again, you don't want public art that doesn't look good. You want to have, as part of your acquisition plan for public art, you need to make sure that it's being funded and maintained and that the life cycle of it is understood, and then you need to have a process for removing the art when it goes to end of life. So like a mural, for example, has an end of life. We generally paint over them at some point and start with a new mural. But a significant sculpture, for example, the goal might be that it lasts for a hundred years. It's going to need funding to be maintained at that level for a hundred years. And then finally, increasing opportunities for local artist participation. Your local artist group is going to grow and having more local artists actually participate in developing a public art program is amazing and creating those kind of new business opportunities for them is really great for them to jumpstart their art businesses. As I go into the next one, priority three, strengthening arts programming, events and cultural activation, So we have the first one being expanding recurring programming to create consistent activity. So this is, you already have great programming as an opportunity to do more with that and just have a really regular calendar for all of the great things that Buckeye's already doing. So more markets, festivals, seasonal events, leverage existing programming. They need to do something in multiple places. And then how can you take existing programming and add more arts and cultural elements to it? 3-2, focus on family friendly or developing a balance strategy for programming. So the idea is we ask all these questions. What type of things are you looking for from the community? Maybe looking for family friendly, youth focus, and programming that really focuses on your demographics. 3-3, activating downtown as a cultural hub through events, pop-ups, and public art engagement. We love your downtown. We think your downtown has so much opportunity It expanded downtown activities. There being an opportunity, you have that pilot project going on at the Sixth Street Plaza right now, which we love. I'm so glad I didn't have to give that recommendation. You just did it, right? You reduced the fees of being on the plaza, and now there's opportunity for pop-up events and different cool things to happen there. We'd like to see more and more of that. 3-4, increasing access to performing arts and creative spaces by leveraging existing facilities. We recommend you look at our cultural asset inventory, and so that's the idea of like, before you build anything new, make sure that everything that you have is operating at peak capacity, whether it's your libraries, your stages, other places, both public and private. We want to see those bursting at the seams with arts and culture. before you just start spending money on new assets. That's the smart thing to do. We always recommend that in our work. You want to maximize utilization. And then finally, 3-5, supporting community-led programming and providing micro grants and technical assistance. A little bit of money goes a long way with your arts and cultural groups. You'll be amazed with what a band can do with $3. It may be a rent abatement or something else that just allows more access. these sometimes very small dollars can have a real strong impact on the community so for example you know your special event application fee being reduced for the downtown could just be applied elsewhere that's an example of that sometimes a city can give a grant without actually spending money by just not collecting money priority for enhancing partnership and funding models so the first one here is establishing a dedicated predictable funding strategy so that could be some sort of grant-making program for specifically targeted arts and culture that could be developing a percent for arts program which are often used to help establish a expanded public art programs, but also used to fund maintenance of existing public art. This is very, very common for there being some kind of predictable funding strategy in a community, and many of your neighbors have some type of arts and culture focused funding strategy. 4-2, expanding public-private partnerships to co-fund and co-deliver programs. So we love that you have some really strong HOAs here. How can we work more with them to offer arts and cultural attractions? Encouraging your businesses and nonprofits to participate and support programming. And then bringing in sponsorships. So I was just in Orland Park, Illinois last week. I was there for four days. And we're talking to their Parks and Rec folks. And they're getting everything underrated by like 40 different sponsors. And it's like literally city staff making these phone calls. I'm not sure if it's even legal, who knows? But it's great. You might be able to work with outside nonprofits to do that as well, where the city really has the back of the program, and now there's opportunities for business sponsorship. And then we have the Leverage and Support Organization to Advance Fundraising Programming and Delivery. This could be an existing nonprofit such as the West Raleigh Arts Council, WHAM, or even Main Street to advance arts and culture priorities. So you may say, hey, we don't want to do this all ourselves. Let's work with our nonprofits to help elevate arts and culture. And then 4-4, increase private sector public growth support. You know, you could create a program where you have some public art guidelines for new development, not necessarily saying it has to happen, but hey, we'd love to see you do this as part of your new development, or incentivizing that process during the negotiation for new development to say, look guys, in Arts and Cultural City, we want to see public art investment in your new development.

I'm sorry to go back. Yeah, please. On 4-1. So when I was with the community college system, we had a line item in all our projects. It was 1% of the budget went to some kind of an art installation that was tied to that project. Yes. So is that... that part of this could be part of this mix where it's appropriate? Absolutely.

So the concept, were you a member of a community college? Yeah. Yeah, I worked at Scott Stella Mesa. I was at Estrella. Okay. Yeah, I don't know exactly how Maricopa Community Colleges has it in their plan, but you would say for public-facing CIP projects, for example, and I think the key word there is public-facing, not necessarily on every water tank behind a fence, but I don't know, I kind of want a mural on that fence. You could establish a policy to say, we're going to set aside funding with every public-facing CIP project to enhance the aesthetic of it through public art. So different than architecture, I've heard people kind of ask the question in the past like, well if we just have really nice architecture, does that capture it? You want nice architecture. But having a public art piece or a mural or a beautiful installation of some kind to help establish a broader level of public art above and beyond just what the building looks like, that's what that is. And very common in the community colleges, there's public art all through the community college campus.

Yeah, and I, you know, when want the pots on 51, for those who remember that.

Oh my gosh, that's a big deal for nothing.

Yeah, so, but again, we're appropriate, and if budgets allow for it, even a half a percent can go a long way on doing those kinds of things, but it needs to be tied into the overall plan, and you know, not just sticking some ceramic thing on the side of the building.

Yeah, and Vice Mayor Goodman, that's one of the last slides, is asking direction from you all. That's something we'd like staff to investigate and explore further.

OK. And I love your comment about sticking ceramic thing on the side of the building. That all goes back to priority two, which is having a really formal process for this. Some communities, the art for that scale of project even comes at this level, having an opportunity for staff to present new options. So you all get to set the tone of how this would be done. It's not something that's going to be done and you're just going to find out about it later. But it's very, very common. It's a great way to fund public art and help continue to beautify the art. in the city, and it's hard when you don't have a percent part or something else that's a predictable funding strategy, because you're always kind of chasing the money versus just becoming part of the DNA. And I think when we do this work, we do an arts and cultural plan, we're really looking to embed arts and culture in the DNA of the city, and that's a great way to do it, one of many ways. Okay, any other questions on priority four? Okay, we'll move on to priority five. If you've been counting, we're almost done. Priority five, strengthening the city identity, branding, and community pride through arts and culture. So the first one, integrating arts and culture into branding, gateways, and place making elements to create a cohesive visual identity. So the description there is, coordinating also i'm going to say integrated because that's our better work integrating arts and culture with branding gateways streetscapes signage waving finding public gathering spaces and place making improvements to create a cohesive identity the whole point of this is especially since you're developing and growing right now there are communities where there's just random public art everywhere that doesn't really make sense like pots on 51. there you go the sins of the past it was chosen by somebody didn't really it wasn't part of the strategy you want someone to walk to drive in this community or walk in this community or bike in this community and they know they're in Buckeye one of the ways you can do that is having a cohesive arts and cultural strategy when it comes to public art and so that's something that you all get to set the tone with that once again versus letting it be set for you by You know, folks that just may want to, you know, their taste is different than everybody else's. We really like that one and you have a great opportunity to do that. Using public art and programming to tell Buckeye's story. So prioritizing themes that reflect your history, agriculture, desert landscapes. You can be, you can tell a lot of Buckeye's story in interesting ways. You can do things that are interactive, you can do things that are innovative, but ultimately they can still reflect back on your story. I love so much the imagery here is about the desert, about the mountains and everything else, and about the beautiful kind of agricultural position here. You don't have to walk away from that, but you can do it in a modern way where you're both telling the story and moving forward into the future. 5-3, clarifying distinct sub-area identities while maintaining a cohesive citywide brand. So the idea is identifying the kind of, yes, we have this citywide brand, but we can still be kind of You can have those pocket facts and unique cultural identity that might be special about them. And then six, last but not least. Building organizational capacity and long-term infrastructure. So that first one is defining and implementing clear organizational structure, including roles for recommendations and approvals for public art and programming. So this is back to the kind of roles and responsibilities for review and evaluation of public art and programming. So who has the ultimate say on things? 6-2 increasing staffing and operational capacity to support program growth, partnerships, and community engagement. So as the city grows, not surprisingly because you had to do this, you're going to need to continue to have additional capacity throughout the city to support your arts and cultural offerings. So that may be more staff, new technology, software, and then more kind of cross-departmental coordination to improve efficiency and communication. 6-3, conduct feasibility studies for additional cultural infrastructure. I talked about earlier, people will come in here and ask for a theater. The best theaters are ones that have a process to determine what is the need for that theater, who's going to use it, what's the market demand for it, is it too small, maybe it needs to be bigger, is it too big, maybe it needs to be smaller. And the ones that I get hired to go fix are the ones that didn't go through that process. And so I'm often, my role when we do these kinds of studies is to kind of get dropped into projects that are already made and then have to figure out how to kind of put an operational model into them that might better serve the community. So we recommend before diving right into a project, conduct a feasibility study for a new major infrastructure. That might be a new theater, a new amphitheater, a creative incubation space where you bring artists together, some sort of outdoor gathering space. Who knows? Things will rise to the top over time. But we do think that you're geographically really well positioned both to serve your community, but then also serve the greater region. So there may be more community benefit based reasons to build more infrastructure, and there may be more kind of economic impact reasons to build infrastructure, and there may be some overlap. But, for example, if you say you built a children's museum, there are different levels of that. You might build something very small that's just very community oriented, or build something more regional that could serve the entire West Valley. Who knows? I'm not implying that any of this is going to happen, but we highly recommend that you do feasibility study work before you dive right into the project. And then finally, I'm here to invest in cultural infrastructure across the city based on those findings from the feasibility study. So that kind of stats, right? Go study some things, build those studies into the next 10 years of your process, and then you know, find a couple of good projects that make a lot of sense and the funding model makes sense because you get to the size where it's very common to have them and there's going to be an expectation from your community as this community continues to grow and really start to embrace that it deserves really, really nice things, they're going to be asking for a lot. And so you have to prioritize what will be most advantageous for your community. So next steps.

Back to Bob. we'll wrap this up really quickly to give you time for some questions and feedback so progress today we have already presented to the planning and zoning commission and the community services advisory board package line received some feedback from them and then we've also sent the draft plan out to community and stakeholder review and the closing date for comments is on september 8th Next steps, we're here today for the council workshop, and then we plan to submit the updated plan that addresses comments from council today from some of the stakeholder and community review, incorporating that all and getting that out on September 18th for review and consideration by the Community Services Advisory Board of the New York City Commission. We plan to take the plan to them, to the Community Services Board on October 7th. for review and possible recommendation to council to approve the final plan. And then October 13th for the Planning and Zoning Commission for a similar recommendation from them to council to approve the plan. And we'll be back to council on October 20th for your consideration and possible as well. And with that, we're happy to answer any questions you may have. We have a couple of follow-up questions, too, for Council to get direction from you all. After you've heard this presentation, do you agree with the recommendations and the strategies that have been outlined this evening? And to Vice Mayor's point earlier, do you support allocating up to 1% for public art out of the CAP? And again, that could be tackled a variety of ways. It could be a percent for all projects. It could be for publicly visible projects. It could be for publicly accessible projects. And our conversations with Keene in some of the cities, they all do it a little bit differently, but that seems to be the standard is the 1%. So with that, we're happy to answer any questions you may have. Council? Questions?

Council Member Eustis? Is this budgeted for in our budget that we've just recently approved? So is this changes or additions or everything else? Is there money available for even anything we talked about today? Do we have money in the budget for it?

Yeah, so our past practice, since we've onboarded Ilana, is to budget public art expenditures out of our operating budget. It hasn't been any certain percent allocated out of projects or anything. It's been based pretty much on capacity and what projects that we know that we can accomplish, whether it's new traffic signals that are coming on board that we can add art to the traffic boxes, or again, looking at the various city facilities that we operate, is there an opportunity to add art in there? We haven't done anything formal besides request out of the operating budget for consideration.

Okay, so in other words, if we want to build an arts center or do anything like that, we don't have the money in the budget for it. Correct. So for the time being, we would have to work off of the current budget to do any increase or any additions or anything we're going to do.

Okay. Thank you, sir. So this is a 10-year plan, right? So this, a lot of these recommendations are three to five years out. But like a first-type scenario program, it would be something you need to study more, think about it, and then I think it would have long-term implications for capital projects.

Okay. Council Member Beard? The 1% for the SEIP budget, what's the current budget right now? I think when we evaluated the five-year plan and the average amount for all projects, I believe it was around $50 to $60 million. So thinking about a 1%, you'd be at around $500,000 a year that would be allocated towards public art. Okay.

I think I would like to see that number a little bit higher. Which number? The percent? Yeah.

I don't know. A whole lot higher, but a 1.5, you know, 102%, I think.

Like a number?

Yeah. I agree with him. I mean, arts and cultures, let's be in a growing city. You want to give people an expectation, something to look forward to. When they come out of their house, you want to see something nice, drive down the road. Music venues where they say, look, we've got to do this this day, but they're in our own city. So, I mean, I'm not saying we're lacking behind, We just need to be forward thinking about bringing that to our city because why we want to travel to Goodyear or Glendale to see that when we can have it right here in our own city. So I think, like Curtis said, Councilman Beard said, I mean, step that number up a little bit. Basically, let's get moving.

I would agree with that process, too, that it's part of our growing pains, and if we plan for it now, it's not going to be as painful. With that number, I would agree with Chris with the number going up a little bit, just to make sure that things are impactful and continuous so that we have that before. The other thing too, anybody got anything else? One of the things that stuck out to me throughout your whole presentation was, you know, the word culture and like you look at the cloud diagram and the things that popped out on that. The idea that we have a responsibility to make sure that that heritage and that culture is continued and respected. But I also really do agree with having something that's got a little bit different flavor across the whole city. To be able to work about it, it's like building a menu. You don't go to a Chinese food restaurant and order a bean burrito. So you would just be consistent across the board. with it, but also we have the areas that you put on the diagram of Old Town Buckeye and Central and all of those things, and each one of them can have a little bit of their own flair, but being very particular about how we address the Old Town area and make sure that we protect that as moving forward, because I don't want to set something up to end up like what Wickenburg's doing now and completely going away from their heritage, which I think is a massive mistake. We have a bigger opportunity to have, because we have all the space that we're talking about, we can embrace those different and newer thoughts and processes in the areas that they belong, where the change is happening, where the growth is happening, which is another part of your cloud diagram. So being thoughtful about it, but having the same having the same menu across the board, but having a little bit different feel depending on where you're at. And make it so that you feel it when you go there. It's not just the old way. There's a sense of arrival at each individual one. I think we kind of went towards this when we talked about the right-ways over I-10 a couple years ago where each one of them will have like the airport off of Calgary Road will have a different feel, Miller will have a different feel. We can pivot off of that thought process to help build that part of the installation when you go into each individual area, whatever the main thoroughfare into that section would be, kind of start going in that direction. But being super protective of our history in Old Town is something that we can, it's more easily screwed up than it's done right.

I think that's a great point. Each exit can be a little different, but you still know you're in Pokai. Right. And that's the key. There's some nuance there. But I love that. It's really, really strong.

And we had done something to improve entryways. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Play off of that thought process that we've already put forward.

Are you done? Maybe. No, I think Council Member Beard has a great idea. Let's double that to, you know, not to exceed 2%. and say conditioned to throw on it, that that money's accrued. We don't spend it on a particular project. The money doesn't go away. We set it aside. It's just included that way. So if there is something we need to save our pennies for, that we have that permanent piece of funding that we can do that.

I agree. I agree with that wholeheartedly because then what can happen, we don't want to set it up in the future for it to become a different council slush fund back into the general fund. So they decide to not pay attention to harm so that money rolls back in for another purpose.

It gets back into the integration of this into what we do as a city. We have a set-aside and a SIP project, but it's not a force fit. They've got 2% of the budget to spend. Therefore, they're going to do something to spend that 2%. It's got to be a part of a bigger plan and have community buy-in. But if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And then we just take that money and put it toward the next project or something we can integrate into the future.

Vice Mayor, one other point there. With the criteria around spending on it, I would encourage you to also say maintenance is okay. Yeah, absolutely. Some of these, say, only new projects, that's tough, right? You've got to maintain it.

You don't want to hamstring yourself. Exactly.

Any other comments from council?

Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor, this is Patrick Hagerstedt. Speak up. Okay so this is Patrick Haggis. I am I'm a little bit leery of committing a certain percentage of the CIP budget for anything knowing all the different CIP projects. I think we have sometimes you know 40, 50 projects vying for the same dollars and to carve out 500,000 or whatever, or, you know, double that a million dollars a year for, for this process. I think I'd rather handle it through the normal budget process and say, okay, this year we're going to do this or this year we're going to do that and follow the same budget rules. And if, cause I don't think, I don't think you can, commit dollars for one year and have them roll over to the next year. I think the budgeting process, I think you got to redo it the next year anyway. So I'd rather handle it that way and have a good discussion amongst council about, you know, what a good number really is. Otherwise, I think great. Having a plan is good, but I'd rather handle it through the normal budgeting process every year. That's what I get to say. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Patrick. Any other comments from council? Good presentation, thank you very much. Nice job guys. I look forward to this moving through and hearing it again at a council meeting. I do have a suggestion for a first project. Can you make our flat cameras look like road runners? It might be a little more palatable to some. I might run them over otherwise. Anything else that would be good in the order? All right. With that, workshop is adjourned. We'll reconvene at 6 o'clock. Thank you. Thank you.