City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we are ready to get started. Today is Tuesday, March 24th, 2026, and this is the city council's work session. I am calling this meeting to order and giving notice to the public and to the city council that at this work session we may vote to go into executive session which will not be open to the public for discussion and consultation with the city's attorneys for legal advice on any item listed on the following agenda. Can we have roll call? Mayor Dagot here. Vice Mayor here.

Council member Alen here. Council member Garcia here. Council member House here. Council member Matthews here. Council member Spence here. Council member Alam, would you lead us in the pledge of

allegiance? Council member Matthews, could you read our mission statement? I'd love to. The mission of the city of Flagstaff is to protect and enhance the quality of life for all.

Council member Spence, do you have our land acknowledgement handy? The Flagstaff City Council humbly acknowledges the ancestral homelands of this area's indigenous nations and original stewards. These lands still inhabited by native descendants, border mountains sacred to indigenous peoples. We honor them, their legacies, their traditions, and their continued contributions. We celebrate their past, present, and future generations who will forever know this place as home. Thank you. Next up, we have open call to the public, which enables the public to speak on any item that is not on today's prepared agenda. And there is a timer right here in front. And we have CJ Perry here with it looks like um an entire robotics team. Would you like them all to come down with you?

Down.

All right. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Um you all know me in my role here as CIO, but tonight I'm stepping out of that role. and here on behalf of our Flagstaff robotics community. Um, I'm grateful for a few minutes to share something I believe reflects the very best of what's happening in this city. So, tonight I want to tell you about three Flagstaff student robotics teams that are heading to worldclass competitions and how their success is part of a larger story about Flagstaff becoming a recognized leader in STEM education. So, first off, the Coconuts are uh Cookanino High School's first robotics competition team, the largest and most advanced level of the first competition where high school students design and build full-scale robots. I invited Christine and Dave to join us tonight, but as we sit here, the team is actually in route to Boise, Idaho for their next regional competition. as the um Arizona North Regional or at the Arizona North Regional at NAU Skydome. The Coconuts placed third out of 55 teams. They were captains of the second seated alliance and advanced all the way to the semifinals. So after Boise, they compete in Denver and then they head to the first world championship in Houston, Texas as part of the prestigious first hall of fame after taking first place at the World Championship two years ago. Next, I've got the Flagstaff uh Warrior Bots, and I've got a couple students here from the the Warrior Bots who compete in the First Tech Challenge, a division uh designed for smaller schools uh but every bit as much skill, strategy, and heart. This season, they competed in three regional tournaments and qualified for the Arizona State Championship. In FTC, teams are judged in two ways. The robot game itself and their STEM advocacy. uh how they've given back and inspired their community. While winning in one category often qualify you qualifies you for the world's championship, the Warrior Bots won in both categories. They received the Inspire Award, which is the highest

recognition a team can earn for their work in supporting STEM in our community. And on the field, they were uh first seated and went to completely undefeated through the playoffs to be on the winning alliance for the robot game. Their final score across all categories was 130 points. And for context, second place got 80 points. So they did extremely well at the Arizona State competition. So similarly to the Coconuts, the Warrior Bots will represent Flagstaff at First World Championship in Houston at the end of April, competing against the best teams in the world. Over 50,000 students from 66 countries will be there. Next up, we've got the Quantum Warriors. Got this team right here. Uh that's the the team that I have had the privilege of coaching personally. First Lego League is an entry- level first program. Younger students, but the same values of teamwork, innovation, and impact. At the state competition, the Quantum Warriors placed second in their innovation project. That results uh qualified them for the first Lego League International Invitational in Atlanta, Georgia in June, where they'll go head-to-head with teams from 20 different countries. What makes this even more meaningful is the trajectory we're on. Just two years ago, Flagstaff didn't have a single first Tech Challenge team. Today, we have three from Flagstaff Christian School here, Basis, and Sona Middle School. All three represented Flagstaff at the state championship. Just to show the high level of of uh competition we have in First Lego League. The program I run has grown to six teams, the most we've ever had. Three of those teams competed at state, and the Quantum Warriors are heading to that international competition. Flagstaff is becoming genuinely worldrenowned in STEM and robotics. That's not an overstatement. That's what these results show. Part of what makes that possible is collaboration. The Warrior Bots, Basis, and Sonawa have formed the Flagstaff Robot Robotics Alliance to support each other's growth. And I've personally been working with the

Coconuts, FUSD, NAU, and Tinkertopia to find funding facilities and mentors to keep expanding what we can offer to Flag Staff students. I should also note that NA will be hosting some STEM camps for students this summer regarding robotics, video game design, semiconductors, and civil engineering. So, if anyone has students that are interested, let me know and I can get you some information on that. Now, none of this is possible without the people who show up for these kids. I want to take a moment to recognize a few of them. First, your own city staff. Matt Morales with the Landfill came out and mentored a team working on a project around uh trash. Paul Roosevel who's formerly with our GIS department uh for uh provided LAR mentorship for two teams and he's since taken on a role running a drone program for a major uh firm which tells you something about the level of expertise our kids got to learn from and Nate C our own uh service desk supervisor stepped up and coached one of our youngest Lego teams. I also want to thank uh parts of the community and the private sector. Wecom sent a staff to uh mentor a team focused on fiber and communication technology. And I want to give a very special heartfelt thank you to Tim Kenny with Kenny Construction and Genta Enterprises. Genta manages an office complex and Tim graciously offered us a vacant office to use as a home base uh for our programs. Without that space, we simply could not have run the Warriorbots FTC program or expanded to six Lego uh league teams. his generos generosity has had a direct impact on the lives of dozens of young people in this city and we wanted to thank him. So all three teams now are actively fundraising. Uh the Coconuts need about $20,000 to compete in their world championship and and each of our FTC andLL teams need around 10,000. So if you know anyone who'd like to invest in Flagstaff students, we'd love to connect. Now, I know this is public comment, so I want to recognize that the rules don't uh mean council can't respond or inter interact directly with the students, as I'm sure you all want

to do right now. But I am working with the city clerk to uh schedule a formal agenda formal agenda item for June where the students themselves will come before council and share their experiences firsthand. We are so excited to bring them here. So, thank you for the time and for your continued support of education and community in Flagstaff. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations you all. All right. Next up we have Billy Gilmore.

Yes. Good afternoon council. Um my name is Billy Gilmore. I live on West Putnham Drive here in Flagstaff in the Crest View community and I'm here today um just to um give compliments and concerns. My compliments first are for the new uh community land trust homes that were being that have been built in the Timber Sky community out in West Route 66. Um, I I as a person who's benefiting from the CLT program, I appreciate seeing others having that same opportunity. Another compliment, um, I have um, recently understood that the council approved last month the construction of a temporary signal, traffic signal at the junction of West Route 66 and Woody Mountain Road. And um thank you Councilwoman um Matthews for supporting that and also for a unanimous approval um from the council on that. Thank you. Again, as a resident on in that particular area of town in the Crestview neighborhood, my concern is um that with the addition of the uh new construction that's going in on the south side of Route 66, um we have numerous new um developments out there, including the Sierra on 66 apartments, the new um the new Timber Sky um development that keeps expanding. Also, the new uh live sky cottages um that are be under construction and the additional residences within that development. All of this new housing is definitely

increasing the volume of inbound traffic on West Route 66 into Flagstaff. From Woody Mountain Road to Railroad Springs Boulevard, there are residents on the north side of 66 that are having difficulty entering eastbound traffic because of the volume of traffic that's headed east. So, um I again I was very happy to see that that temporary traffic signal is being put up and hopefully that um the mega planning I uh that's metro planning that's working on this project will consider putting in a permanent traffic signal. Uh even though roundabouts have a purpose and sometimes a benefit, I think it's necessary to stop traffic intermittently. so that uh residents from the north side do have that opening to come into eastbound traffic. So again, that's my concern. Um again, thank you and I compliment you for your activity on transportation and housing in Flagstaff. Thank you.

Thank you. And city manager, today we have a water capital update. Do we have a transportation capital update planned soon? Um, mayor and council, we will have a um, capital update uh, during the budget retreat on April 23rd, likely the afternoon on the Thursday. We're planning on dedicating a couple of hours. Um, and we'll add this project to the list as well.

That would be great. Thank you. All right, we're moving down now to review of draft agenda for the April 7th city council meeting. Council, any concerns, thoughts? All right, then we will move on to March work anniversaries. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Shannon Anderson, your assistant city manager. Um, we've got lots of people to celebrate this month. So, we'll dive right in. Uh, thanks again to Tiffany um for the creativity that she demonstrates in putting these presentations together. I'm really enjoying the format. I hope you are as well. Um, we'll start with our first year anniversaries. Um quite a few here um with our police department, our airport, um the court, uh as well as uh information technology, human resources, the library, pros, water services, um we've got folks across the organization um that are celebrating uh their first year with the city. And so congratulations to this group of employees. For our fifth uh year anniversaries, we'll start with Terrell Bagley. Uh he's one of our maintenance technicians within our facilities team, part of public works. We also have Derek Sausman, uh one of our fire engineers within the fire department. Um we'll have a couple of his peers as well here next. Um David Ortiz, a firefighter paramedic. Um then we'll move on to our 10year anniversaries. Um, Christina, I'm sure you all recognize her as part of our city attorney's office. Congratulations

to Christina. Uh, and then our last one uh today is Officer Pat Condan. He was going to join us um but he's been uh pulled away um to a meeting with some of his um fellow officers who work um on narcotics. So, uh we appreciate that work that he does on behalf of our community. Um, but I'd love to tell you a little bit um about Pat. Um, he has served uh with the police department since 2006. He has built an exceptional career marked by leadership, courage, and unwavering dedication to our community. From his early days on patrol and as an original member of the King Squad um to earning multiple accommodations and officer of the year awards, he has consistently exemplified professionalism and compassion. His service includes vital roles in Metro Narcotics, the US Marshals Task Force, the Honor, the Honor Guard, excuse me, and the SWAT team as a master operator. He has also revitalized the department's recruitment team. Officer Condan has also dedicated 15 years to the Arizona Narcotics Officers Association, now serving as its president, and helped establish the Flagstaff Law Enforcement Association. There's appreciation here extended for Officer Condan's uh service, his 20 years of outstanding service to the Flagstaff community. Um, so that's what we have for you today. um and love to just congratulate all those celebrating this month in March. So, thank you to everyone. We'll see you again next month.

Thank you. All right, we are moving down to water capital update. Mayor, while we have the team walking up to get their presentation set up, um I just did want to just give council, mayor and council, just an update on kind of the plans with um with the capital updates. Um if you recall, we we um I think for several years did a kind of an all day capital retreat. Um and the thought is to to give these capital updates during um council meetings and then also, you know, put a few within the um the budget retreats. But just to make sure we have more of an opportunity to update you and update the community uh throughout the year on capital projects. So with that, Lee, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, city manager, and good afternoon, uh mayor, vice mayor, and council. I'm here to uh maybe I just need to talk closer to it. All right. Uh thank you Lee Williams, water services director here to give our water services capital update and I have uh my team behind me who are going to give their sections of it. Um I'll start with an introduction. Um so water services has a whole lot going on and I would like to thank you for approving the rate increase. Um we have used that money wise I hope wisely um to move these bigger projects forward. Some of these projects that you see today have been uh on the books since 2015. So for over a decade. So um between the rate increase uh some nudging from Shannon Jones, previous water services director and city manager's office, we've identified projects that are critical to the working of our system. So if it's necessary for growth, capacity, security, uh not having a moratorium on development, these are how we've identified the most important projects and isolated those and move some funding around to keep them moving and get them built. So with that being said, um I'm going to allow our project managers to come up and tell you what they've been up to. Um we'll start with we're not in Let me get into the right mode here. Here we go. Our Wildcat interceptor. So Jackson Salazar is going to come up and tell us a little bit about the new sewer line. Um, good afternoon everyone. Um, I'll run through my three projects here. Uh, starting with the Wildcat Interceptor. Um, so as you may know, the Wildcat Interceptor project replaces about a mile of sewer. Um, that's currently a 33in sewer and it's going to be upsized to a 48 inch sewer. and that's taking place um from the south side of I40 um up to the Wildcat Hill uh water reclamation facility. Um we're currently in construction um and we've completed

1,700 ft of the total about 5,450 ft um of the project. Uh we got a couple pictures up here. Um now the first one's uh just a pipe in the in the trench on one of our first sections. Uh we got me standing there with one of the manholes that um is so heavy they have to use a a crane to lower it into the the trench every time. Um and then third one's kind of after we finish the trench and everything. Uh kind of cleaning up the the project site there. Um yeah, that's that's that one. Um and I'll give some time for questions after I run through these three projects. So if you have any questions, let me know. Okay. So, my next project is the the Rio solids handling facility. Um, this project's at our our Rio de Flag uh treatment plant. Um, and the project is going to provide a new solids handling facility at the at the Rio plant. Um, and it's going to use a low temperature dryers to process solids um into a very light material that will then be hauled off to the landfill. Um, so I've got a couple pictures on this project here. Um, this one's kind of our conceptual design. Uh, this this uh is a satellite shot of the Rio plant. And then down here in this kind of southwest corner um will be where the a new pre-engineered metal building would go. Um and that's going to house the dryers that are going to look something like this. And then kind of some conveyance systems to get them to dump into a a hauloff dumpster. Um and I'll move on a little more. Oh, sorry. I forgot to mention uh design's

currently at 60% on that project and we're moving towards 100% plans here. And then my other project's a Switzer phase 5 water line. Um this is the last phase of a five a fivephase project that replaces uh aging infrastructure up to our north reservoir plant. Um, this is also about a a mile of uh it's a dual pipeline. So, two new pipes going in uh paralleling each other. And it it's going to connect basically the end of phase 4, which is um just north of the Elks Lodge and then up to the North Reservoir plant. Um, we're currently working on 90% plans um and and legal legal descriptions for property acquisition. So, any questions on any of those?

Council member Matthews, then council member Garcia. So, um I've been out um viewing the Wildcat interceptors. It was really fun. And I just want to put a plug in there. I missed the blasting because I had to travel. So, if there's more Please let me know because I can't wait to get my finger on that button. Um, and the Rio de Flag solids handling. Um, I also toured that. We had a a tester out there, a new concept where they were drawing the solids and stuff. So, is that the concept that we're going to be using in this uh solids drying?

Yeah, it's very similar to that. So that that kind of pilot program that we did at the Wildcat plant. The it had kind of the similar dryer setup, but it was in like a shipping container type of thing. This will be like a full-on like metal building that'll house two bigger versions of that one that we saw out at the Wildcat. So yeah, it's it's very similar same technology. Did I do I remember correctly that the the dried solids that came out of that um that pilot program um they were saying that they could be used for different fertilizer and stuff and you mentioned that we're going to just take these out to the landfill. So yeah, I think that's the

which I'm would fine with not using dry solids or fertilizer but I was just curious. Yeah, I think there's a lot of different uses for for bioolids. Um, I think fertilizer is one. There's like biochar where you can, I think, burn it and produce energy with it. Um, but the current plan is is to take it to the landfill. But I think those other there's other opportunities for for things to do with it. Thank you so much. Yeah, Council Member Garcia. Thank you so much, Madame Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. Good work. I was curious on your first slide there um about the pipe. Yeah.

Yeah. I was I was wondering um if there was like an equation uh when you're going from 36 to 48 or whatever the number was as to like you know population growth or anything like that per inch of pipe or how do we figure that this is going to be the pipe that's not going to have to be replaced just because we have you know more people coming in.

Um yeah that's a great question. So, so basically for both water and sewer, we do like a master planning effort um pretty much like every five years or so. And so, yeah, we have like a buildout um kind of population and and that's what this one is designed to serve. Um it's pretty much like roughly like double the population of Flagstaff now. Um because yeah, once you get to you don't have to double the like the diameter of the pipe to get a double the flow amount. Um just going up that I guess like 15 inches in diameter actually doubles the flow.

Nice. That makes sense. And and it paints a good picture for me um to understand that we won't have to go back in mess with the pipe until the pipe is kind of lived its life. Yep. So I appreciate that. Then if we can move two slides up. This one was an on the spot question that I didn't think of until now and it's just a curiosity of mine and um I was curious how the reservoir gets fed.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So these um these reservoirs and there's like a filtration plant there um are fed by the inner basin. Um, so all the all the water that comes down like waterline road from the inner basin ends up here and then is treated there and then pushed out to to Flagstaff. Excellent. So I yeah, I've been up there on the tours and and and have seen the work that has been done on the inner base and and um this kind of connects the the the dots. So the all the inner base and flow gets treated at this point. Yep. Excellent. Thank you for that information.

Yeah, no problem. I've got a question about the biochar that's been on our um list of congressionally directed spending for a couple of years. How does uh that fit in um with uh the projects that you've talked about? Um I think I'll call on uh my help here.

Thank you for the question, mayor. Uh the way it fits in is water services has a bioolids issue. We need to get rid of bioolids. So our main our main goal is to process those so that we can dispose of them. Um I am currently working with Nicole Antonopoulos from sustainability on um the congressionally directed spending um funding which would be a separate project which we could then take the bioolids from our plants. We could take bow waste or biomass from the forest. The the thinning of the forests, combine those two and produce biochar out of those two basically waste products to turn it into something that could be a fertilizer or a soil amendment or just much lighter to ship around so you can dispose of it more easily. Thank you. You're welcome.

I don't see any additional questions. Thank you for that. Thank you guys. Good afternoon, mayor and council. My name is Justin Emmerch and I'm a project manager with water services and I have a few projects as well. If I can figure out how to advance.

Oh, down. So, this is the Lake Mary sedimentation basins rehabilitation project. And this is uh based on a 2016 uh study by Brown and Caldwell condition assessment. Um we targeted the sedimentation basins for rehabilitation based on the importance of this infrastructure for producing our drinking water. Uh we we studied the mechanical, structural, electrical, instrumentation and control systems at the Lake Mary plant which is all based off of about a 1965 era of equipment and concrete. Um let's see Brown and Caldwell was hired uh to uh produce a set of plans for this rehabilit rehabilitation project and recently uh PCL construction was selected through a RSOQ process uh as the most qualified candidate to provide construction services to rehabilitate both of these 1 million gallon sedimentation basins. Uh GMP number one for construction is $13.6 6 million and that was approved by council uh late last year 10:21 of 2025. If you have questions, please please stop me and ask. Uh let's see. As you see here on this photo, those that's one of the empty basins. That's the western basin. Um we can run the plant in two halves. So we can take one of those basins down for inspection and uh and repair and things like that. So this project uh with PCL is going to replace a lot of the old concrete that dates back to that time frame. And we've had two concrete condition assessments in the last few years on the condition of of those basins. And as you can see there, there's a lot of equipment and stuff that goes along with these basins. And all of that's going to get replaced and rehabilitated. We're going to pour

back a lot of new concrete in those basins and replace a lot of the mixers and some of the equipment that you see in those basins there. Uh this next project is the Lake Mary raw waterline pipeline replacement project. And this project uh will replace five miles of 27 inch concrete reinforced bar wrapped steel cylinder pipe if I got the acronym correct. And this pipe uh also dates back to the early 1960s, 1963. And there's five miles of it that connect the Lake Mary raw water pump station to the Lake Mary water treatment plant that runs sort of in the forest north of Lake Mary road for for pretty much the entire run of that pipeline. This pipeline has been subject to a lot of failures based on corrosion. And as you can see in the photo there where we uh affected one of these repairs, you can see how rocky the the conditions are out there. And that's sort of leads to why this pipe ultimately failed in the first place was that they used some of that native material to rebed the uh the pipe when they installed it. And that pipe uh that that uh pipe will ultimately be subject to corrosion and and abrasion from some of that material that you see in the trench there. And that pipe that you see on the right is actually um one of the pipes that failed. You can kind of see a hole in the side of it there. And that's where just that that phenomena happened. rock sort of wiggled its way through that concrete and allowed corrosion to take place on this the very thin steel cylinder of the pipe leading to its failure. So we have an RSOQ process and we selected our Dura Engineers as the most qualified firm to produce a design for the replacement of this pipe project. Um so right now we actually just received the PO for Ardura today. So,

we're going to start uh with a kickoff meeting in the next couple weeks. Pretty exciting. Oh, I should mention that when we replace that pipeline, we're going to do it in sort of a parallel sort of fashion so that we can keep the existing pipeline in service to sort of limit our downtime uh when it comes time to uh replace this pipe. So, we'll keep the original pipe active and we'll just move a little bit a few feet to the west of it. We'll stick in our new pipe and uh when we get out to the plant, we'll just switch it and tie it over and tie it over on both ends and then we can transition to the new pipe. So that will limit the amount of downtime on the production of the water treatment plant. Fort Toddill uh well number two project. Let's see. We uh we drilled uh well number two at Fort Tutill back in 2021 and for 100 days we drilled down to 2500 ft to put in well number two. And here's some of the drill bits that we used to actually do that. And there's actually a picture of the drill rig in the center there drilling. So, this uh this new well um we test pumped it out to about 400 gallons per minute, which is about um 600,000 gallons a day uh into our water portfolio. So, that's pretty exciting. We uh worked with um a number of designers on this project with Atlas Corporation and now we're working with Corollo uh to design a rehabilitation of the existing pump house to accommodate this second uh groundwater source. Uh as you know, we have a Fort Toothill pump uh well number one out there, which is actually one of our best wells, one of our best producing wells. So, we're just going to um upsize the building just a little bit to accommodate this second water source. Very exciting project. We hope to advertise that project pretty

soon. So, we'll get that started for construction hopefully this this fall. This next project is the reclaimed water bottleneck. And this is what we lovingly refer to as our bottleneck in our reclaimed distribution system. This is again, this is treated wastewater. And we're going to replace about 1.2 2 miles worth of 8 in PVC pipe that goes from Buffalo Tank down to North Ellen Street. If you're not familiar where North Ellen Street is, it's one street west of Fourth Street, just south of Cedar Avenue. So that 1.2 miles worth of pipe runs all the way through the neighborhood there through Dora and over to Isabelle and up Isabel around the high school and then eventually up to the tank. And that piece of uh pipe there actually restricts our uh throughput from Wildcat to push water up to the tank to about 800 gallons per minute or about 1.1 million gallons per day. So the plan was to replace this 8 in restriction with 20-in ductal iron pipe so that we can actually increase our throughput and allow Wildcat to meet an entire day's worth of demand of the reclaim system. So that's another pretty exciting project. Ardura helped us with that design with uh based off of uh Turner Engineering's original design. And what we've done is we've uh um spoken with CJ and CJ's actually wanted us to put conduit uh along the this the entirety of this pipeline project. So we went back to Ardura and we had them redesign in conduit that parallels this pipe replacement project all the way through from the tank all the way over to uh to North Allen Street. So that's pretty exciting. That'll help CJ with his connectivity through with the IT system throughout our fiber system throughout the city.

This next project is the Lake Mary water meter replacement project. Uh this project uh has been a long time in the making. uh Corollo engineers design. We finally just got started on this with Kier Civil and we're actually replacing the final effluent meter of the Lake Mary water treatment plant so that we can more accurately measure uh the water that's actually being produced by the plant and by the Lake Mary wellfield. And what you see there is the meter with a a same size bypass so that if we ever needed to replace that meter, we could actually switch to the bypass. And uh that's another pretty exciting project. This next project is another one of our annual meter and vault replacement projects. Uh this took place uh just this last fall. This is the uh NA large meter project. This is the largest single meter serving NA all campus. This is a 10-in meter that meets all of NA's fire flows. And this uh meter has been on our radar for many years. and we just now got around to replacing it because of funding. This was one of our most expensive meter and vault replacement projects. What we also did with this project is we ended up replacing about 650 ft of uh distribution line that runs all the way up uh the street all the way up to Milton. If you're familiar with where Rearen and Rearen meet, uh I'm trying to think of what's near there. Uh that gas station on Milton that goes right down Rear and goes into campus. Uh we replaced that whole 10-in 1949 cast iron line. Uh and we also installed a bunch of new fire hydrants and a bunch of new control valves. So we we actually took care of a lot of uh a lot of wants with this one meter vault replacement project. And that that's the meter in the vault that you see right there. That's that 10 inch with a bypass. And that uh picture there on the

lower right is the finished vault. And we set it just above grade, just about a foot, so that we could actually keep storm water out because that was always a problem at this particular intersection. We always had a lot of snow melt and rain water that collected and then filled up this vault and made it nearly impossible to work on. So, we had him set the vault just a little bit above grade for this. That's actually a very exciting project for us. We're happy to get that one in. uh the Spruce Wash Water and Sewer Replacement Project. Uh this project also was designed by Ardura and it um replaced about 240 ft of sewer line and water line, old cast iron uh sewer line, 12-in sewer line that ran underneath this historic trestle that you see right there. Are you familiar where the Speedway gas station is on Milton right at First A First Street? This is the water and sewer line that that uh goes right underneath that trestle where the train tracks used to run. And so that was an old line that was subject to leaks. And this this channel here is a storm water channel. So what we did is we actually buried the sewer line and the water lines a lot deeper so that we could get below that scour depth of the channel and stay away from the same thing that plagued the uh the original water and sewer lines. That was another pretty exciting project. And that was constructed by Summit Construction. Those guys did a great job for us and they banged out really quickly on time and within budget. It was awesome project. I think that might be it. Any questions on any of those projects?

Council member Matthews. Yes. And these are all exciting projects. Thank you so much. Um were are all these projects um just to be clear um funded through the water rates increase that we approved a year or so ago? Is that where the fund most of the funding is coming from besides some grant money? Here comes Mac.

Thank you. That's a good question. I some of these projects I think predated uh that that funding increase. Some of them had been on on the books for a while but uh things changed around COVID. we needed additional funding to sort of carry out some of these projects because uh materials and everything skyrocketed. So I think the rate increase actually helped to actually bring a lot of these projects to fruition.

Great. Um the Lake Mary raw water pipeline replacement does was does that water then go down and get treated at the at that treatment plant that we saw? Um I walk my dogs right behind there off JW Pal and so you guys been really noisy. I was asking Lee about it earlier. So that project of the construction is that coming to an end soon or

Well, the construction that I think you're talking about is not uh part of the pipeline replacement project. We haven't started construction on that yet. We've just entered into a contract for design of replacement of our Lake Mary rail water line. And yes, to back up, you're you're right. uh that does take all of the lake water and another line takes some of the well water from the Lake Mary wellfield and it brings those two sources of water to the Lake Mary water treatment plant uh for treatment and then for ultimate distribution into the distribution system. So currently the construction the noise that's going on there it's not bothersome to me it's just that might be the meter and I was just going to say the vault meter I think that's the meter and vault project at the Lake Mary water treatment plant.

Yeah. And uh you might hear us banging on some rock trying to make room for that big vault that we had to stick in the ground. Yes. So um when you think it'd be most interesting. I've been wanting to tour that um site for a while. So if you keep me in mind when you're at a point where it might be the most um informative um especially since it's down the street from where I live and stuff. I'd really like to see what's been done and what's happening down there. Sure. Anytime you'd like to please just give me a holler. I'd love to coordinate where we could all come out and have a look at some of these projects. I'd love to share these with you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, Council Member Spence.

Thank you, Mayor. on your excuse me on the Fort Tutill well number two. Um what is the proximity of number two to uh well number one and what are the comparative depths that those wells pump from?

That's a great question. So they're both drilled to a depth of 2500 ft and they're 1697 feet apart. So they are deeper. They are closer than they are deep. So, and I think I understand your question to be that is one well going to influence the other well ultimately when we start pumping both of them at the same time resulting in more of a draw down and so far we just don't have data on that because we haven't produced any water out of well number two just yet. But uh when we test pump the well and we watch the draw down we have great data on what those draw down numbers are based on varying flow rates of test pumping. We test pumped it for 5 days and we got up to 1,000 gallons a minute. We went as low as 300 gallons per minute. And we watch that recovery of that well. And from that, we get a good idea of what that specific capacity is of that particular well. And based on that data, we can actually make inferences about what the connectivity might be between the wershed between the two the two uh wells. And so far, it it it doesn't look like we have any effect. Although, as I said, we haven't actually pumped it to production yet.

Thank you. Thank you. Any additional questions? Thank you. And your enthusiasm for these projects is infectious.

Thank you. They're all very exciting if if you didn't get that. Every single one was very exciting. Okay. So, uh Ed Shank, I'm the stormwater section director. I'll be going over some of the capital projects for the storm water utility. Uh here's the the list in no particular order because we're not going in that order. Um starting off with Spruce Wash suite of projects. You've heard a lot about this. Uh and we're going to actually have a whole agenda item with this later uh this spring. So as you know, Scott Overton, Trevor Henry, and Julie Le have been doing a great job as project managers uh moving this suite of projects forward. So about 10 projects total. Uh 26 million from Proposition 441. Uh and another additional 14 million. I can't stress this enough. This is a huge win for the city. Additional 14 million from grants and other city contributions. So we're getting money out of uh several different pots uh to get this completed and get it completed um under time. So, it's it's really a great project or series of projects um with a great story that goes with it. Uh slightly smaller project, the Santa Fe drainage lateral. So, this is a a project that's partially funded uh through a grant with the Army Corps environmental in infrastructure 595 program uh at the tune of 1.2 million. We've been uh consistently attempting to get additional funding um from that Kilip Inlet uh EI595 grant that we had to defer due to timing. Um so that's hopefully we'll have some more good news coming but if we don't we still have 1.2 coming out of Army Corps which is great. Uh we're at 100% design. Uh our objective is to convey the 100-year flood from essentially Mars Hill low observatory area down Santa Fe and into the new Rio to flag project once that comes online. Um Geneva Lanzetta with Capitol is our PM and she's been doing a great job

coordinating with the two other large projects that are associated with this one being downtown mile and then obviously the Riota flag project. So, uh, the coordination between the three, uh, makes it a little challenging, but but also exciting. I'm going to go with, uh, with Justin's. It's very exciting. Yeah. So, we're going with that. Uh, another grant project, midlane drainage project. This is in lower Cino Estates. Uh, so the objective here is to upsize the drainage. Right now, it's severely undersized. Has capacity for about five cubic feet per second, which is very low. Uh and then also while we're tearing into the street be a great time to do some other projects. We're also going to do a streets mill and overlay as well as replace aging water and wastewater uh infrastructure. So we're going to do a full suite of improvements from uh highway 180 to the Riota flag. This picture here is from that bridge uh on the Rio Flag looking towards Highway 180. So we are at 100% design with city funding from storm water, water, wastewater and streets and uh eventual funding from the FEMA HMGP programs. So hazard mitigation uh grant program.

So one of my constituents asked me about this and I was waiting for this presentation. Um, have we got the green light from FEMA on their their part of the funding because I know uh the neighborhood is really concerned about getting this done before um monsoons hit.

So, so there is some heartburn not just with the residents also internally and at the larger national level with um with the FEMA process at the moment. Um, so to give some background, the hazard mitigation grant program is a phenomenal program because what it does is it takes money out of FEMA and it gives it to the states to appropriate for state and federal disasters. And the reason why that's great is it's a much faster program than their previous programs that they had in the past. Um, the problem that we've run into is that Arizona got their appropriated amount back in 2021 that we're pulling this money from. Unfortunately, with the change uh in administration at the federal level and the change in administration at the Department of Homeland Security, which is over FEMA, there was a complete pause on HMGP last year, not only with the allocation of money to the states that was priorly awarded, including this amount, but also a pause as of March 12th of 12th of last year on any new HMGP awards. So areas that had state and federal disasters uh that governors put into FEMA for reimbursement usually in in the tune to billions of dollars uh were put on pause as of March 12th. So that has not opened up yet uh either the new stuff that's coming the new money to new disasters or the money that was already appropriated to previously awarded uh disasters at the state level. So our particular one for me lane we are actually pulling from the diamond fire if I remember correctly uh which was a fire down in the Phoenix area. So they didn't the communities that were to receive that uh deferred on their funds when that happens Arizona department of emergency and military affairs will then open up that pot of money to similar type projects throughout the state. So when we got

that notice uh of funding from Dimma we submitted for melane knowing there would be some funds available. So, I'm giving you a whole lot of backstory here. The short story, the shorter story of this, we are still very hopeful that that will open up. Uh the secretary of DHS has changed uh very recently. Uh and with that change, we've seen a little bit more communication from FEMA through DEMA. So, we don't directly communicate with FEMA on HMGP. So, at the DEMA level, um, and we're very hopeful that that that grant process, uh, will come back to what it used to be, um, prior to about this time last year.

So, just to finish that, um, it's 6 million pending. Is there any way we can I mean, we only have a few months, right?

Uh, the likelihood of this being constructed regardless, even if we went forward, I don't know if you want to speak to this, it by monsoon season would be very difficult. Yeah. Um, Mayor and Council Member Matthews, I think Ed just said exactly what I was going to say that at this at this time, we're not going to be able to get this project um done before monsoon season. We have had some internal discussions that if we do not get the go-ahad um on this grant by May 1st that we will be identifying other funding uh to fund this. Um it's really unfortunate. Um and just just know that it is a priority for the city.

Is it a possibility to be reimbursed if we find the monies?

I can speak to that if you wish. Um so for with most federal grants and FEMA in particular, uh you we are always reimbursed. We don't provide that funding ahead of time, but we have to be awarded the grant before we even qualify for that reimbursement. So, we have to put our grant provisions forward with our construction phase contractors. The grant provisions list out uh anything that comes from the federal level of what they need to comply with, which would be above and beyond ours. If we were to work this project tomorrow, one, we're still not going to make the monsoon season, but two, uh, none of it would be qualified for reimbursement because we'd be jumping the gun, if you will, unfortunately. Very unfortunate.

Thank you.

Any other questions on this one before we move forward? Okay. Uh, so next one, and these are these are very actually exciting in my opinion. The fing wash suite of projects. We have three distinct projects here to alleviate repetitive flooding on the east side of Flagstaff. Um so these three projects will work in concert somewhat similar to what we see in Spruce Wash uh to alleviate both the the FEMA special flood hazard area, what we call the flood plane, as well as what we uh see in reality in terms of flooding. So that that Prius that we saw on the on the news and made national news in 2021 that was floating down the street, that was actually in the Fanning Wash. uh watershed. So we have one project that's moving forward um today actually the fing wash channel improvement uh that is 100% designed. It's been bid out and awarded to Eagle Mountain construction. They're going to start construction April 1st uh with completion by July 1st. This will improve this existing channel from near Steve's Boulevard to Linda Vista uh taking it from a capacity of about 180 cubic feet per second to 514 cubic feet per second. Uh it will also provide uh a geotechnical u report well the report's already there but a geotechnical support for the existing burm so that when FEMA takes a look at this this will be a fully vetted burm right now when it was built in the 60s before current FEMA standards. Uh below that um really fun project fain wash diversion uh this is at 60% design. So, what this will be doing is we'll be diverting water off at that Linda Vista crossing and it's going to be taking a new tunnel underneath Linda Vista all the way out to that Casper detention basin. So, that really big hole in the ground that you see out near Flag Mall. And it'll allow us to pull off about 400 cubic feet per second um out of the existing channel and put it into that hole. And why that's exciting is they'll

really reduce flood potential down near Thomas Elementary School uh and especially down Bushmaster and Siler Homes. So silent homes we see flood impacts about every two or three years and it's because there is a 90 degree literally a 90 degree bend right at silurn homes for the channel um which water does not like doing hard left or right turns unfortunately uh usually blows out there. So this is a very exciting project Ivy cost with capital as a project manager. Um we're moving uh along very well with that with hopeful construction starting next fiscal year. Uh and then the last one is uh just upstream uh fanning wash at Ste's Boulevard. This will be replaced in a culvert um which is undersized. It has a capacity of about 100 cfs. Replace that with a 514 capa 514 cubic feet per second capacity. So we' match the channel that we're building downstream. Uh we're at 30% design moving towards 60s there. Uh and this is another one that we're hoping for FEMA HMGP funding. Um so this one it's good that it's about two three years out so we have some time to wait um from FEMA for I believe we put in for 1.5 million uh for this particular culvert. Uh the great thing about culvert crossings uh I had dinner the other day with the the ex lead for HMGP. They love them. Those are cut and paste. So the Cedar Avenue culvert without HMGP funded uh and spruce wash and those are very quick to move through. uh they're not as uh they're not reviewed as tightly as some of the uh non-standard projects for HMGP. Uh to give you a guy an idea of where these all are. So again, uh the one we're going to be working on starting next month is number two here. The numbering is a little bit wonky. Sorry. Number three is the Fanning Wash diversion will drain into this Casper basin. And number one is that Steve's Boulevard one. Uh the colors you see here, this is the current uh I don't want to go too much in the weeds, but

this is the current um FEMA special flood hazard area map. So everything in blue is your 100year flood planes. You can see the channel there, and then everything in orange is your 500year. So this would completely uh mitigate the the 500year. And again, not to get in the weeds too much, but it's actually going to mitigate the real 100year. Um because what we're seeing is the flows off this radio fire from 1977 are about three times higher the real flows than what FEMA has mapped. So we're actually solving I shouldn't say solving we're mitigating flood issues that aren't shown on the FEMA map including the area right here where the Prius went down the street. So um it will definitely have uh much needed benefits not just for flood insurance for these communities for the community but also in terms of real flood impacts. Uh I kind I think I walked through a lot of these already. Um spot improvements. Uh so yeah again this is a a relatively small pot of money but it's a fun one where we get to kind of work on small localized issues as they come up usually as drainage complaints. uh got we have roughly 350,000 each year right now which is an increase from what it used to be but quite a bit um of an increase which is great because it allows us to actually have some meaningful impacts for this current fiscal year. This includes uh we talked about this last week uh Sinclair Washoots culvert replacements as well as a bundle project for replacing scuppers. These are sidewalk scuppers uh they tend to be destroyed by snow plows every year. So, there's seven locations where we're going to replace those metal scuppers uh and allow for better access. Our plan for next year, and again, this is planned. I'll put a big caveat on that. Uh there is a puddle drain near the Phoenix Sunshine Mission as well as the BNSF uh maintenance offices um that we'd like to get that drained into the future Rio alignment. Um so, we have that out to bid right now with the JC's. Uh and then there's a a larger capital project

in the Smoke Rise neighborhood. It's actually scheduled for 2028. Uh but we did see some flooding in July of last year. Um so we're going to look at providing at least a temporary localized improvement there that will kind of dovetail into that 2028 larger capital project. Uh and I think that's all we have. Oh, oh flag. Don't worry about that. Small little project. It's 266 million. Christine's been doing a great job. We have an awesome project team for that. Uh I don't think we need to speak about it today. And if we do, um, it's probably probably not the right one, but obviously that's always on our on our brains and we'll really looking forward to seeing that kickoff. All right, hold on. We have a question. Don't leave.

Council member uh Matthews, I was trying to get out of here. Come on. Sorry about that. So, you know, I know a lot of these projects have always been and will continue to be um at least partially reliant on um government funding. Um but how many projects, capital improvement projects that was on that list when we uh approved the storm water rate increase is getting checked off um that list through the increase in the rates.

I would say all of these are fast I shouldn't say fasttracked. They're moving along faster with that 2022 rate increase than would have been possible before. So uh as you remember when we did that 2022 uh rate study and we came up here and and presented it we were we were really as a utility in the red. So the capacity to take on new capital projects uh was minimal and I would say u knowing what we know now for the Rio project I would say that capacity would have been zero because we would have had to save like crazy. we still are going to have crazy save like crazy to to match uh the army corps. But I would say I mean for example spa improvements uh before 2022 we were running at roughly and Rick might remember better than me but about 100,000 to 150,000. I think we were actually at 75,000 for for a number of years. We wouldn't have been able to do well any of those anything that's up on that board for 75,000. um maybe one of those for 150,000. So having a 350, we can actually provide some some improvements. And what I don't have on this on this list is last year's and we actually did a handful of really uh impactful uh both culvert and catch basin replacements that there's no way we've been able to do that without a rate increase. Uh the fan wash channel improvements exactly the same issue. So, if we're looking at this, um the one we're doing in April, maybe we could have gotten away with that. Um it's about $430,000 for the construction phase, another roughly $100,000 for the design. The reason why the design's so much is because it is a FEMA recognized channel. So, we do have to make sure that we are um going to be compliant when we come out of this that we're making it better, at least on the federal level. That would have been tough. 430 plus 100 in design, 500,000. that that would have been very tough to have done prior to the rate increase.

That fanning diversion would not have happened that there's there's we just don't have the money for that. That's going to be roughly 6 to 7 million. That would be on the deferred list forever. Um number one is partially hopefully HMGP funded, but again that's going to be probably 7525 match. That 25 match would have been the whole year for the projects. And I can kind of walk through all the rest of these too. I mean me lane same issue. Santa Fe drainage. Nah, we would have done it. Um, so without without the um that rate increase, uh, one one of our engineers always kind of laughed. He's like, I I I would have voted to been the capital improvements guy for storm water because it's really easy. You would sit there and you just save money for four years and you do one project. So, you only have to work every once every four years. So, we're moving along a lot better here. Um, we're definitely keeping track of it. very cognizant of the the cost to the rateayers. Um so we are not uh spending money on frivolous projects. These are all core projects and uh we are definitely keeping an eye to the future of you know what's that look like? How do we keep the rate steady or how do we keep it so we do not have to have a rate shock any anytime in the future. I really appreciate that and and it was a tough decision disc discussion, right? Um so it's really um good to hear that we are getting um results from that rate increase. I hear it on the street all the time uh knocking on doors. You know, people complain about their water and storm water rates increase. So, it's really great to see what we've got in return for it. So, thank you so much for that. And it it makes me feel good to know that we made a good decision and we're getting some really good projects done. So, thank you,

Council Member Garcia.

Uh, thank you, Madam Mayor. Ed, I just had a really brief uh comment on the Rio de Flag slide, and it really just pertains to consideration that uh Council Member Matthews, Mayor, and I um upcoming lobbying trip to DC in the next couple of weeks. Just wanted to let staff know that I'll be reaching out to y'all for personal meetings within with those involved in the Rio to flag floodplane project to get a sense of what your expectations as staff members are for our elected officials in DC um pertaining to favorable outcomes, questions and concerns that you have as folks that are, you know, kneede in the trenches in this partnership with the federal government. um and some aspects that I may not already be privy to because of um not meeting with staff for these particular reasons before. Just giving you all a heads up on that. Thank you for that.

Fantastic. And council member Garcia, just to jump in, we will actually be preparing a um a prep meeting for the mayor and the two council members who will be going to DC um with the staff to prepare for that trip. So, nothing you need to do. We're working on that and we have everybody's schedules and we'll get that set up. Excellent. Thank you very much, Vice Mayor.

Thank you. Just real quick, thank you for the update. I I'm hoping that when we get funding that we're waiting on, can you make sure that council knows? I'm thinking of the the melane project in particular, but anything else because we do get asked a lot to council member Matthews and um it would be good to just be able to update the community as as you know more. I think we will all be very excited when that grant comes through. We've been waiting on it for quite some time and it's definitely a project we have high on our minds. All right. Thank you, Ed.

Hey, and uh to follow up on your question, Vice Mayor, uh Shannon Anderson and I met this morning about getting a meet in the streets together and getting a email list together for that melane project. So, we'll be I'll be working with Ed on that in the very near future. All right. So, actually ended up with two slides in there that were doubled. Um, so that was our presentation on the water capital. Um, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out anytime. Um, like I said, I really appreciate the your approval of the rate increase. Um, many of these projects would not be moving. Like Justin said, the Lake Mary said basins has been on the books. It was underfunded back in 2019 2020. Uh, we're able to get that completed. Uh the raw water pipeline was kind of a pipe dream at that point to have a play on words there. Um and um I I don't know what else I have to finish it up with other than just thank you.

Thank you, Lee, and thank you staff. Um I especially appreciated the photos and the details of some of the smaller projects um because I wasn't aware of all of the finer details. I've just heard the names of the projects said. So, I really appreciate this update. And council, any final thoughts or questions? Council member Garcia.

Thank you. And thank you, Lee. I just wanted to kind of um throw this plug in there. I I often do when it comes to the water department and some of the flood mitigation projects on the east side of town. uh we often kind of uh sometimes cast shade on the speed of government because of all the the red tape you got to go through and and you know the different processes that happen. But um thanks to yourself and your predecessors and the team here team flag staff um those projects went rather swimmingly and uh and got caught up to speed and we're in a place now to where we're more safe than we've ever been. And along that route, um, it was it was my observation that, you know, you did we did as much as we can to make it as safe as we could, as quickly as we could, and then, you know, spread that out as, uh, we further downstream, um, into, uh, what is more important, you know, and and what and and set our priorities for that. So, as a council member, I really do appreciate the the thoughtfulness that the team has worked um, yourself and those before you and the manager department as well. Thanks so much.

You're very welcome. Yeah, I stand on shoulders. Great shoulders. So, thank you. All right, we are moving to public safety ballot measure update. Good afternoon, uh, Mayor and Council. Shannon Anderson, uh, your assistant city manager. Um, I am presenting this information today, but I think it's important to note you have an incredible team of city staff that is working on this. um not only all of our public safety working groups but your finance and budget experts as well. Um so just want to give that entire team a big shout out because I know it's taken a lot of time and dedication uh to pulling this information together and communicating uh with the committee. So we're going to start um with a little bit of background. Um, I think it's always important to tell our story, uh, where we've been and how we got to where we are today. That's what this slide attempts to do. Um, if we look all the way back to January 2025 during our budget retreat, um, staff heard from council, um, things that you wanted to

focus on was core services, public safety, and fire resources. um that seems like a long time ago, but these efforts take quite a bit of time to build the information and to to have the communication and build uh documents to be sharing with folks. And so um January of 2025 is when we started this journey. Uh it continued in our April 2025 budget retreat where we talked about public safety needs along with a couple of other initiatives such as um the downtown um and our ICC. Um council then supported um a public safety ballot measure for us to explore this ballot measure as well as begin our citizen committee. And this was in September of 25. Um we then went to work as far as inviting members to come and participate in the citizen committee. Um and we began those meetings in November of 2025 and have continued on almost weekly basis since then. And the goal is um to educate. So we've provided a lot of financial information um as well as information about our public uh safety uh services. So I think it's important to note that the information I'm going to share with you today is summary. It's highlights. I've tried to take months and months of information and put it together so that you have the benefit of having the same information, but it's not going to be to the exact same level of detail. We just don't have that amount of time um during this presentation. So, I share with you the connect flag staff site because that's where all of the detailed presentations as well as the recordings from these meetings are housed. Um also questions um that the committee has had. Uh we actually have a section on that site that has Q&A. Um so if there was a question they had there's documents um as well as the responses uh there to be looked at as well. Um so again in telling our story um

you'll recognize um this particular slide. Uh this is what we presented in April of 2025. Um you'll see emphasis on staffing, supplies, equipment, technology and facilities. And this is where we started to build what are the needs and then assigning costs with those needs. We also talked about some of the other municipal organizations within the state um that had implemented tax increases to help in public safety. These increases varied at least for these four that we're diving a little bit deeper into from 0.25% 25% to 0.95%. The next few slides are going to give you some details on how these tax increases actually helped these communities meet their public safety goals and objectives. So, we're going to start with Glendale. Glendale actually increased their tax by.70% and with this money, they were able to hire personnel and enhance their public safety operations. will transition to Mesa, Arizona. Mesa increased their tax by 0.25% which helped them build new fire stations, expand a real crime center, and implement twoperson fire department teams. Uh these individuals addressed lower level 911 calls, um so wound care, um as well as medication administration and other things that fire departments are now helping with. Um, but it doesn't necessarily take a big engine. Um, I'm gonna go one more down. I'm going to start with Phoenix. Um, because I like to go in the order in which we listed them on the original slide. Um, in Phoenix, Arizona, they increased by

050%. Um, and this assisted their budget shortfall as well as an investment in public safety. um their additional investment in public safety brought reductions in crime in certain areas of their community. It increased the community's safety perception and it provided more technology tools which allowed them to increase their ability to solve crime. We'd like to share a a short news story about what they anticipated the impacts of their public safety um tax would bring with the additional investment. So, I'm gonna hopefully this will work. It worked on my computer. Let's see if it works on this one.

I think taxes are something that makes all of us panic whether or not you want to admit it. being able to pass my taxes to a turbochar. Well, the city of Phoenix is increasing its sales tax by half a percent to help not only balance its budget, but give the Phoenix Fire Department resources that it desperately needs.

Yeah, that's uh something that public safety officials have said they really needed in the city. We've got 12 News journalist Troy Lynch following this story for us. He's live in studio this morning. And uh Troy, you spoke with Phoenix fire officials who feel like this is a big win for them. Yeah, I spoke with them before and after and just seeing the relief after this vote actually got approved to increase the sales tax. They just say this is a huge step in the right direction after Phoenix City Council voted to increase that sales tax 8 to1. Now, if the sales tax didn't increase, uh Phoenix's general fund budget was looking at around $39 million in a loss just next year and public safety is 64% of that general fund budget. Now, Phoenix Fire Department Union President Brian Willingham says the department is behind 15 to 20 years when it comes to resources. But because of the sales tax increase, the Phoenix Fire Department would get about $25 million a year for staffing, which could let them hire about sworn in 134 firefighters. But they're also using some of the excise tax to put in two more multi-comps and adding about 300 total more firefighters in the next few years. Willingham also said this tax increase, it's not going to perfectly solve their response time problems. Right now, they're averaging about eight minutes, which is well above the national standard of 5 minutes and 20 seconds. However, in the city council meeting, Phoenix fire officials say when they do get these additional resources, it will drop the response times down to around 4 minutes and 43 seconds. The next three years we'll have sustainability with our existing model. So we can't go backwards with that. And this provides the additional funding for the extra 300 plus bodies and those additional resources to staff the new stations that were approved for the bonds as well as the other stations that are going to be allocated through the budget that that Jeff Barton and Amber and those folks in budget and resource

were able to to work towards.

So Brian mentioned Jeff Barton. That's him right there. He's the Phoenix city manager and he said in Tuesday's meeting that balancing the city budget became more difficult because of the state's actions over the past year and a half. That includes getting rid of the residential tax then also making the state income tax flat. And now we've been covering this for uh for weeks now and uh Brian also mentioned that with this additional funding he just is so happy that the city and also community came together. They saw a need and they were able to find some sort of resolution. So, it's just good and they're very optimistic about the future. But we're live here in the studio, Troy Lynch, 12 News Today in a

Well, the city of Phoenix is increasing its sales tax by half a percent. Sorry, I didn't mean to restart that. We will go back to this slide. Um so again uh we chose this particular um news story because it's very similar to some of the points that are resonating here in our community. They talk about backlog. Um they talk about the lack of resources to be able to afford the things that are needed and also the impacts that are happening at the state level. Those are all things that impact the city, not necessarily the residential tax, but the flat tax portion for sure. Um so that's why we wanted to take a few moments and share that with you. Um and then just one more that I skipped by is Prescuit. Um Prescuit uh voters actually um included a 95% um increase um and their sales tax and this funded new fire stations, modernized police facilities and improved staffing levels to enhance emergency response capabilities. Um so again another similarity that we're seeing um between Phoenix and Prescuit is having um that additional capacity for response. Um, so to tell you a little bit more about our citizen committee, um, again, following that September decision by council, um, to move forward with considering a public safety ballot measure, um, we invited members to join the citizen committee and began sharing all the details that staff had been pulling together about their service delivery, changes they had experienced in the community, and the needs identified to meet today's demands. This information was presented from November through February. The last presentation was a financial discussion. In this discussion, we outlined general fund

revenues, budget expenditures, staffing, one-time and ongoing resources, and the 10-year costs for the needs they'd heard about from each presentation. Here are two slides that the city staff presented to create an understanding of the resources from the general fund that's dedicated towards public safety today. The first is looking at the overall general fund budget expenditures. Um the chart demonstrates the city dedicates about 40 excuse me 54 million towards police and fire or 46% of the general fund resources. There are some additional funding not included in this 46% such as the 8 million that's paid for pension fund debt, 436,000 budget for emergency management, 16 million for the airport, and 4 million for wildland fire management. So overall, the city expends $83 million per year in an investment in public safety operations. Public safety staffing in police, fire, aircraft rescue, and firefighting, and emergency management accounts for 311 of the 981 FTEES that you see on this slide. It's 32% of the general fund. Many on the committee and in the community have asked, with this investment, how did we get here? So, as city staff, we've been talking about this question, trying to look at the years and identify what's impacted the organization's ability to invest further in public safety services. And here's what we've outlined. Operating costs are outpacing our revenue growth.

And we have ongoing increases in personnel costs. And a big piece of this is the implementation of compensation and benefits to help us retain and attract quality staff. We also have aging infrastructure which costs us more to maintain. We've been investing in technology because we realize it makes us more efficient in the work that we're doing. It also allows us to be able to create more transparency and reporting to respond to the community. Capital costs have also grown significantly following the pandemic. Some of our items have gone up 60% um which impacts our ability to be able to afford them. And then lastly, the changes at the state and federal level. Some of those uh changes are the flat state tax rate, um which was referenced in that Phoenix video, recently the Santan annexation that we've talked about in our budget discussions, the federal budget bill, and lastly, tax conformity. This slide is a good depiction explaining the amount of time that it took the city to begin to fulfill the needs that existed back in 2008. That's your first bar is the 2008 2009 where we were prior to the recession. The Great Recession impacted the city's financial means, but did not experience a true decline in community expectations for service delivered. This means all existing capacity was spent trying to grow back losses of personnel and contracts and commodities necessary to do that work. Which means there's not enough additional capacity to address the growth that was occurring at the same time. The analysis of personnel needs for public safety services alone amounts to an additional $21 million per year in need. These needs in public safety also exist in other core services. within the organization and

also cannot be funded within our existing revenues. So most of the public safety services mentioned growth impact in their service delivery as they presented to the committee. So we pulled together on this slide a few metrics that outline the growth we've experienced within Flagstaff. from the changes that we see in the size of our community to the number of visitors we see at our local university um as well as those I'm sorry the number of visitors we see and then those that are living um at our university the NA onampus students uh we've also included the growth experienced within the general fund revenue um so you'll see that that goes from 49 million to 88 million between the years of 2008 so pre-recession to 2024 2025. This shows that revenue grows about 5% a year or 2.4 million. On the flip side, expenditures that 50 million to 85 million over the same time frame um shows again growth of just over 4% or $2.2 million per year. The continual growth between 2008 through today has led to the needs we began to communicate during the April 2025 council budget retreat. City staff continued to work with the city's finance and budget team to refine the 10-year cost of those identified needs. They also worked together to smooth out those needs over the 10 years, which reduced the 10-year total of $511 million to $47 million. Again, over a 10-year period. The needs have been prioritized by the public safety services teams into five tiers. I will share a summary of the needs that

have been presented to the committee over the past few months next along with the experiences within the service areas that has led to the identified needs. We're going to start with emergency management. Emergency management is in place to help Flag Staff mitigate or uh proactively plan for risk. Um, we know that this uh can be severe uh for our community, especially with wildfire and post-w wildfire flooding. Um, the presentation before us today has a couple of great examples of what we need to do for a longterm uh mitigation towards that post-w wildfire flooding. But we also can have severe winter storms. Um, we have critical transportation corridors with our rail, our highway, and our airport. um special events. We've talked about how the pine cone drop went from 15,000 people to 31,000 people this year. Significant increases. Um which provides for our seasonal tourism. Um a growing population that has an urban wildland interface. Um our public health and supply chain distributions that can happen with things like a pandemic. Um and then lastly, our increasing reliance on technology and making sure that we have cyber systems in place. So when emergency management looks at all of the components that they need to be ready to mitigate and to plan for, they've identified the following needs. um personnel, three FTEEs total, as well as equipment and infrastructure, technology and systems that would allow them to forecast and also improve their community notifications, emergency plans that include things like preparedness and evacuation, citywide training and exercises um for the entire region so that we're practic practicing

with our partners. oftentimes these events are of such large scale we're not doing it on our own. We have to rely on those within our community that we work with on a regular basis. And then lastly, that community education um on what they can do to be prepared for an emergency event and the resources that are available to them. So funding these needs actually impacts the community in these following ways. Um we have a faster, more coordinated emergency response. We're able to provide more reliable and clear public information and alerts. Um, we are better prepared across our entire organization and with our partners. We are able to reduce our long-term recovery costs after a disaster. We have stronger support for our businesses and our residents. And again, the goal in the end is to have a safer, more resilient flag staff. moving into our fire department. Um talking through some of the things that they've seen change over again that time from about 2008 to today. Um we've talked about the growth in our community and visitor also in the community size. Um but what's unique with the fire department is where their stations are and how those respond to emergencies throughout our community. Um, we also have been discussing the inability of line staff to manage programs because of the large call volume that they're responding to on a regular basis, the frequency and the intensity of our wildland fires, and keeping in mind that every single firefighter is one of our wildfire firefighters. So, they're taking care of whether it's the medical call or whether it's a wildland fire that breaks out near Little America. They're the same folks that are responding to both. National standards have continued to evolve for staffing

and response times. We've seen a very significant increase in our mid-rise facilities. So, the number of buildings that are two stories or more went from 316 to 665. It takes a different kind of response. Call volume has increased from 9,984 in 2008 to 18,051 in 2024. Our staff increases have been from 28 firefighters per shift to 30 per shift. We've seen a decrease in the number of applicants applying for the fire service. We've implemented a care unit over that time frame. We've implemented a water resource infrastructure protection fee to help have an ongoing funding source for our wildland fire management program. We've increased our home assessments, working with homeowners to help make sure that they're safe, their area is safe, and that it's creating more safe neighborhoods from wildland fire. We have seen a decline in public education and community presence along with business inspections because again if you only have a certain number of staff you have to do those things that are the highest priority. So not that these aren't important but you have to pick those most important tasks to dedicate your time. So when we look at the fire department needs um you'll see uh the first four lines are staff. So 75, we call that operational and wildland staff because again they're going to respond to the medical call as well as a wildland fire. Um we have one position in our wildland staff crew that's currently grant funded and so we would be looking to bring that on uh to the city's payroll so that it can be ongoing funded. 11 support staff and then four in community risk reduction staff. just to visit for a

moment what community risk reduction staff is is that's our fire inspection group um as well as um those that that manage and oversee that wildland um fire management group. So then we go into some of our facility needs. We've talked about station 7 that will be placed out at the JW POW corridor, an administrative facility, a training tower, a wildland fire management facility which we've received for a million from the state and we need um some money to finish out the construction of that project and also provide the equipment and supplies necessary, station maintenance, station equipment and supplies as well as well as cardiac monitor replacement. ment. Those are some of the things that we need for our ongoing day-to-day work. The home hardening as well as hazardous fuel reduction are specific to our wildland fire management team. Academy classroom and facilities, professional development, new staff vehicles and equipment, cancer screening, turnout replacement, radio replacement, digital dispatching, and heartsaver tones. Those are all the things that we need to bring in staff to train them and to make sure that they have the tools and supplies they need to do their job. So, how funding these needs impacts the community from a fire perspective is it assists in addressing the insurance premium. It's probably not going to solve the whole thing, but it's hopefully going to help. We know our community members are seeing double or triple dollar increases in the cost of their premium. Some are even experiencing an insurance company dropping coverage altogether. Um we also believe there's less severe wildfire and we have um demonstrated uh proof that when you have a wildfire in a treated or an engineered areas, it's

much less significant than a non-treated area. Staffing to address Flagstaff evolving risk and demands for firefighter safety. reducing the number of units needed to respond because we'll have the appropriate amount of firefighters on that unit to be able to send just one. Sustain and improve response times to have adequate resources to respond to largecale or multiple incidents. um the ability to maintain trained personnel to have the facilities for those people and the apparatus they need to do the work and then again support for those fire station operations. So moving into our airport um some of the things that they've seen change over this time frame is um larger aircraft uh utilizing our airport which increases the level of risk. We are now required to meet index B of Federal Aviation Administrative ARF index instead of index A which means more people. There's been a 22% increase in annual employments. I don't know about you, but when I hear the word employments, I wasn't exactly sure what that was, so I wanted to define it for all of us, which is the passengers boarding flights out of our airport. Um, this number is since 2018. Um, we are investing time and resources into securing a second airline. Um, this airport continues to be challenged with being self- sustaining. We've increased the number and complexity of federallymandated programs to respond to things that are changing at that government level. We've reduced grant funding support um because there are less available. We've expanded parking and developed paid parking um in order to help create again that self- sustaining airport. We've altered

terminal concessions for the same reason. Um we do have limited security coverage um that is available after the last daily departure. They have been able to move to 24-hour day aircraft rescue and firefighting. And the last piece really talks about um the the vacancy rate. Um they continue to see uh turnover here at the airport which means they're constantly hiring and they too are experiencing a shortage of qualified applicants. So when we talk about the needs at the airport um three ARF personnel and for those who might be less familiar with what ARF means it's aircraft aircraft rescue firefighting that's what that stands for. Um two security personnel which these individuals are provided as a police aid out of our police department but they provide that security um to meet the requirements at the airport equipment and supplies. Um and then the last component is the thought of combining our airport rescue firefighting with Flagstaff fire. And so it would mean that there would be a fire department full of staff located on the airport that would take care of that ARF responsibility. So again looking at how these funding um funding these needs impacts the community um it allows us to retain air service which brings $128.5 million um economic impact to our community. It creates $971 jobs and it generates $7.6 million in local and state tax revenue. So the loss of those components if we were unsuccessful in maintaining an airport are significant to our community. Um this information comes uh from the 2021 AOT aeronautics Arizona

aviation economic impact study. Um I have a link if folks have questions on it. I'd be happy to share it as the airport has shared it with me. Um the funding also allows us to have dedicated focus on public safety at the airport um to maintain and improve our emergency response. Um they respond if there's an aircraft that is having an emergency landing. They respond if there's an aircraft that has a fire, if they flip over. Um all of those things this team is responding to. It also would allow them to increase employee retention and then last provide that security presence. um whenever the terminal is open to the public. So, our last group that we're going to talk about today is the police department. And I realize this is a lot of information, so I appreciate you sticking with me. Um so, what the police department has seen change over time um is the expansion of an expansion of evidence with increased um technology. Um and so so what that means is as our technology evolves, as we get new cell phones, um as we get additional technology as individuals, that all then needs to become evidence as somebody's investigating a crime. And so they're needing specialized software and additional tools in order to do that criminal investigation work in order to extract data or other things that they might need in solving that case. Um they also have aging systems and integration challenges. What m makes it difficult to be able to report out when the community is looking for information about crime statistics or things that might be happening in a certain area of our town. A lot of that work is manual because of these integration challenges. There are growing community demands. Um they have limited space uh for the

growth that they need and the training space for those officers. Um there is increasing transparency expectations uh as well as a high volume of animal related calls. Um we've increased our size of community and the number of visitors as we've attested to already today. Um, and we continue to have a need for scenario-based training for officers so that they're able to be ready to address those incidents that might not have on a might not happen on a regular basis, but are of significant involvement. Um, and this takes space to be able to do some of that scenario-based training. Our police officers over this time has increased from 107 in 2006 to 119 in 2026. and our dispatchers over that same time have moved from 29 to 30. So when we look at our police department needs again you'll see the first three are staff. Um professional staff I I want to um talk a little bit about what that is because that's a question that we've received. Um this includes positions in evidence, in records, in animal control, police aids. Um so they are non-p patrol related positions. Um they are looking for police vehicles and incident command vehicle. Um looking at some building or facility improvements with the LEAF expansion, evidence warehouse expansion. Also looking for large vehicle storage. So those pieces of equipment that we spend large dollars on, whether they come through a grant or city funding, we want to protect them so they last longer. Also again a substation out at the JW PAL corridor. Um an integrated regional operations center to help um in indicating and finding crime. Uh patrol and

investigative equipment software and lastly radio replacement. So, I want to talk a little bit about um financially addressing um the needs and what we've been doing as a staff over time um to try and continue to increase uh what we provide from a public safety perspective. Um we've used a variety of financial tools such as one-time capacity within our general fund, the refinancing of the pension liability. We apply for grant opportunities every chance we get, whether it helps us with personnel costs or one-time capital investments, and we work regularly with our state and federal partners to lobby for available funding. And we're also looking for additional revenue sources that the council will hear more about as we look forward to the April retreat. So, the committee's been wrestling with the thought of increasing costs to address these needs and maintaining affordable living in Flagstaff. Some have expressed concern over the increases that have already taken place with the passing of the 2022 bond, the storm water fees, and the water, reclaimed water, and wastewater rates. But we've demonstrated today just with storm water, water reclaimed and wastewater those needs and the capital investment that are helping our infrastructure in that way. This is not much different, but the fact of the matter is is our community feels that and this committee is really trying to make sure that they're balancing trying to maintain as much of that affordability as possible and finding the different types of revenue sources that are available that could minimize the cost to the resident. Some of those public safety funding

considerations are one-time and some of those are ongoing. One-time resources through a geo bond and development impact fees can pay for capital expenses like a building or a vehicle. Ongoing resources such as the water resource infrastructure protection fee and a sales tax could pay for personnel, operations, and maintenance. They're then matching those revenue sources and what's available to the highest priorities identified in the tier tool. I provided a copy uh of tier one on this particular slide and I wanted to talk through how we're utilizing this particular tool. As I mentioned earlier in the presentation, our public safety services have gone through and prioritized all of their needs and there's five tiers. So this is the highest priority and how you read this particular document is you see in the green bar above that there'sund almost $45 million total that is a 10-year total and the reason it's important to look at it over 10 years is because there can be escalating costs. You have inflation that you're addressing as well as additional costs of personnel. You don't pay the same thing for a person year one as you do year 10. And so all of those costs have been built into these 10-year totals. But when you average that over the 10 years, it's about $14 million per year. Um, so that's all of the items here in tier 1. Then when you go down to the specific projects, so for instance, emergency management, current operations, this includes some personnel and some contracts and commodities. So the first set of numbers, um, the 3.2 2 million um is the 10-year total and then the 326,000 is a per year average.

When you look at then the description next to that, a P means personnel. So almost 1.3 million of that 3.2 is for people and contracts and commodities that the people will need to do the work is $413,000. I'm going to go down to one more example so I can show you where capital comes into this description. So you'll see the next one, emergency management, new positions. The 10-year total 1.5 million that breaks down to about $1.4 million for personnel, 7778,000 for contracts, commodities, and then this CA that you see, that's capital. So $80,000 and that capital expense is a vehicle. So that's how you read these numbers. And keep in mind the descriptions of the personnel, the contracts, commodities, and the capital. Those are all 10-year totals. So they're going to tie to the first number that you see in each particular line. This was how we organized the information because if you think about having all of the details that build up to these totals, this is a workbook that includes about 20 to 25 different sheets that link together in order to be able to tell these stories. Um but having that information allows us to have a tool so that as the uh committee decides you know what what happens if we um if we reduce airport police aids um by one person not going to say that we're doing that but I'm just using it as an example. We're able to go into that tool manipulate the data and come up with not only a new total for that line but a total for this tier as well. Um, so it just allows us to have an interactive dialogue with the committee as they start to winnow down the list based on not only the priorities based on what

they've heard, but what they get from the community survey and they're hearing from the community themselves. Which leads me into our next steps, which is my last slide. So then we'll be ready for any questions or comments that you might have as council. Um, we have paused these citizen committee meetings because we're in the process of creating a survey and launching that. They've decided they don't want to meet until after we have survey results come back. So, that will be our next meeting with them is to discuss those survey outcomes. Um, so they will be able to then talk about how does that either match or differ the things that they've been talking about as a committee. The public is also able to attend these meetings. So this is a reminder. The public is able to attend. If you can't attend, you again can access that connect Flagstaff site to stay up with the same materials that we're sharing. There will be an opportunity uh for community to share comments with the citizen committee here in the near future. And the committee then has these survey results, that public comment, as well as their own discussions to help them create their recommendation that will come back to city council in June. City council then determines if there will be a public safety ballot measure included in the November 2026 ballot and what the parameters of that measure might be. Um, so that's what we have as our next steps, but we wanted to take some time to really provide you the details that we've been talking about, not only as city staff, but also sharing with this committee. Again, I realize it was a lot of information, and I appreciate you sticking with me. What questions might you have that we can answer for you?

I think we have a couple. So, Council Member Matthews,

thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Shannon. That's really great information. I have been um following uh the public um committee, safety tax committee. Um just as an FYI to it, every time someone turns their head to speak to their neighbor, you can't hear the audio, so I miss about half of what's on the audio. Um but I will go back and read the transcripts. Um this was this process has not only been um just highly informative but um upsetting and um I I feel I have to say that I've I felt really um that I've let the community down because I had no idea um to the degree that we have not been addressing the ask every year with fire and PD. We're a community surrounded by fire kindling. Um if we don't have the appropriate assets and personnel, none of the other stuff we do um matters. We're all going to go up and smoke. We're in the middle of the 17 and the 40. If we do not equip our police department with the tools that they need and the resources and the staffing, you know, we're in real trouble. Um what what I did see and I didn't watch every um meeting but I thought wow this would have been so great for us as council to go through. I have a finance degree and background. I've consulted businesses. I've been frustrated and this is past tense. I'm very um I'm I'm very um encouraged by our city manager and the changes that she's making and I look forward to those changes. I've been frustrated with our budget process um since I've been on council and as

evidence last year I asked for us to have a special meeting for housing and sustainability because those were our two declared crisises and I think that myself along with a lot of the community just always assumed that all these other things that we talk about to fund were the other stuff that we want to fund because we are always taking care of core services. And when I saw some of the asked, especially in FIRE a couple years ago that asked for what I may be wrong a little bit on the number 13 FTE and they got zero, I I almost fell out of my chair. Um and and I've made probably um well, they have been um negative comments about the magic budget team that you know we go to these budget retreats and we hear what was already decided. Um, and not to say we're all equipped to make budget decisions, but it would have been helpful to really realize what we are passing up or not funding. Um, and that's just a a side commentary that I just wanted to put out there because I feel really bad that I didn't realize how bad I missed the boat on what we weren't doing for our public safety. Um, I'm conflicted with this because absolutely we need um we need these things that public safety is asking for. I'm conflicted because I also know the strain on our community with all the rate increases and taxes. Um, we're I think the seventh highest combined sales tax city out of the 90 cities in Arizona. Um, and you mentioned Prescuit is raising their sales tax in the city of Phoenix and they're about seven or eight, you know, ranked below us. So maybe that'll just bring them up

to close to what we are. So, I'm sensitive to that because our I hear it all the time about the cost, the the tax and and you know, the water rate and the storm water rate and this rate and that rate. Um, but at the same time, here we are once again to a breaking point and I know that we can't keep up. A lot of things happen that we've just our growth and our sales tax revenue and stuff has not kept up with the need and the cost and stuff. But I really um also feel that we need to take a hard revisit to um our budget and um I know that we can't squeeze blood out of a turnup and and the money is not there in our budget to do all this, but I think we owe it to our community to also say that we're also looking at what we've prioritized in the past and maybe taking a different approach to those things. Um I'm I'll look forward to um what the community surveys say. Um this is going to be hard um I think for our community, but so necessary. So it's really hard to say, yeah, we're going to have to do something. We're going to have to raise taxes. Maybe secondary property tax won't impact anyone. Um, and we've got about $40 million there that I think we can leverage on. But this ongoing need, we really need to make sure that when we're out in the community that we can say, "Yes, we've really reanalyzed everything and this is what we can do within our budget and general funds and these are the additional things that we have to find money for, whether it's through a primary tax, a sales tax, um, or other, um, taxes and stuff. So, um, it's it's it's been a real struggle listening to this and hearing the

community in those meetings saying, "What the heck is the city council been doing?" Like, "How come they've let it go this long?" And I'm I'm thinking, "Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing, right?" Um, so you know, I I I hate that once again it seems like this council and and the one just prior when we had to do the storm water and the water rate, you know, we're faced with making changes that just have been building since 2009. You mentioned I know that part of where maybe it started was city management back then did recession cuts 20% across the board on all departments and maybe a better plan in hindsight would have been but not public safety. Um and it just snowballed after that. So um this is going to be you know I hope that my colleagues you know watch those other meetings. It's very educational. um man, I learned so much and I you know my I have a master's degree in this stuff and I was like oh wow I didn't know we did this or we didn't do that. So I encourage everybody because we're going to have a tough decision in June and of course it's up to the voters at the end but um I want to make sure that we've really understood it correctly and I'm I'm not venting to you Shannon you've done a fantastic job and I really appreciate already before this came up what our city manager is doing. It's just frustrating where we are today and where the need is because my gosh, you know, we didn't have a very wet winter and we need all the fire resources we can get, right? We don't want to say, well, you know, maybe in a couple of years we can afford another um fire truck or or something. We we need this stuff now and it's our responsibility first and foremost as council to and as a city to take care of these core services. So, um I guess I'm happy and sad that we're having to tackle this monumental

task and ask, but I hope we fix it and whatever that solution is and come up with something and and heal, you know, our our public safety and get them up to where they need to be. So, thank you.

Yeah, if I could just provide one comment to maybe hopefully um take that strain off of council. The reason I started this presentation with what we talked about in April is because we didn't necessarily know the details of all of these needs. The fire department, as you've indicated, has been asking for a number of positions that we haven't been able to fund, but that isn't the case with some of these other groups. Um, and so I I want to be clear that we had an idea of what we needed. um given that we were able to move forward with a potential ballot measure, we really spent a lot of time doing analysis that was able to get to this level of detail. So, I don't want to give you or the community an impression that we've been asking for $47 million over a 10-year period for years and you just haven't given it to us. That's certainly not the intent. A lot of this discovery has happened um more recently. You know, one of the things that we talked about with the budget team last year, knowing that this potentially was coming, was doing a staffing study within the police department. So, we funded that in order to prepare so we could have these numbers to present to you and to the community. Um, so I wanted to spend just a little bit of time telling a little bit more of that story um to help an understanding of how we got here today. You're welcome,

Council Member House. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Shannon. Um, just quickly, I wanted to talk about um some of the needs that you were addressing under particularly the fire department. Um, I know there was listed in there um the the desire that this would include um cancer screenings and that's something that I um brought up recently in a a conversation after having chatted with the fire department about um the need for uh cancer screenings because of some of the things that they are um uh faced with just by responding to any sort uh building fire and uh or structural fire. And um I know most of us have probably seen the news just out of Phoenix today of the unfortunate passing of uh a firefighter in their department due to occupational cancer. Um, so I my question is really just wanting to get to the heart of what um what are we looking to do to address some of those types of needs in the event that this uh uh ballot measure did not pass? are we looking at alternative ways to fund uh items such as the cancer screening or or some of the other items um as a alternative planning?

Um so council member house the cancer screenings had previously been funded um with one-time dollars and I believe we were scheduling onethird of the department so it took us three years to do a screening for all of the staff. Um, I will tell you during our April budget retreat coming up here in the next month, um, we are going to present to you an idea of how we think we can move this the initial screening as well as the screenings that continue to occur once somebody is diagnosed into an ongoing funding bucket. Um so so we believe that could be a backup for this particular item for if a public safety ballot measure was not to move forward that we could address at least that item. Thank you so much. And just in terms of the rest of the measure because there there is so much that's captured in this um and it's all critical and important to our community. Again, just thinking about what um what pathways we have or what options we have if the measure wasn't to pass with the public. Are there thoughts on what we can do to start building up our resources to meet some of these needs and alternative ways?

Um I think we've done pieces of that again that you'll see in the April budget retreat. Um, but honestly, uh, to be able to c come up with the significant I mean, just the $21 million a year for staffing and ongoing dollars, um, we typically in our revenue are seeing about $2.4 million growth. Um, so without some type of additional revenue source, I'm not sure how we close that gap. um if the ballot measure um was not uh to be successful, city staff are committed to continuing to work through our budget process and and trying to look at how we fund each of these items, even if it's only with a one-time dollar. That's far better than not funding it at all. Um you'll find that we are a little hesitant to do that with personnel um because you don't want to hire someone if you don't know that you're going to have the dollars to pay them again next year. um you just you have to go through a lot especially for the fire department to train them with the academy and the equipment that you're purchasing um to go along with that new hire. Um it just wouldn't necessarily be the best investment if you didn't know that you could do that in an ongoing basis. Um we've also been talking about grants, right? Um we know that they're not maybe as prevalent as they have been. Um and even if they do exist, they're not covering the same level. That doesn't mean we're not going to try to attain them. Just means we're trying not to count on them. So, how we've communicated about that at the committee level is similar to what we talked about with the 2022 bond. If we're able to get a grant, that just gives us more one-time capacity where maybe we can buy something else that was a need that we originally weren't going to be able to get to without the grant. But we're at least making sure that we have a dedicated uh source for that personnel because the grant only covers a portion of their salary and it only

covers it for about two to three years depending on which grant you're talking about. Does that answer your question? It does and thank you and also apologies for asking essentially the same question twice. I just I think it's a really important thing for the community to have that information as part of um not only the consideration of of this measure but also just in terms of what our public safety is facing overall. So I really wanted to just give you the opportunity to speak to that a little bit more and thank you very much for your um very thoughtful response. Thank you. Thank you Council Member

Council Member Garcia. Thank you so very much, Madame Mayor. Uh, so Shannon, thank you for the presentation. Good God, you guys have done so much work as staff on on this project and I'll speak more to that in my comment, but let me just start off with a question. I um I have so many questions which most of which I'll take off of line because they do dig into the details a little bit more but I was just um noticing that we didn't have a bullet point for PRSP on this and I was wondering if that's just because it's directly correlated with each staff member and if the retirement program for public safety um would be uh funded like with each new staff member would be funded in the same way through these um ballot initiatives if that's the route that we Um, so public safety at least the um addressing of the unfunded liability was the $8 million a year that we're paying. That's not included in the numbers that we've presented to you today. So, it's on top of I think it was 116 million that we spend out of the general fund. We also pay for that debt um financing to pay back that unfunded liability. Moving forward, when we plan for this staff, it includes all of their benefits. It includes their public safety costs. It includes their future um step pay plan increases. Um so that's why you see that the number gets bigger over that 10-year period of time.

Thank you for that clarification. And then after um being w you know witnessing the uh the PRSP um you getting caught up to speed back few years back that council went through that process. It uh makes me really happy that not only have we taken care of that in prior councils, but we're also currently looking to fund that fully through this process. Um my biggest goal is the longevity of our employees in some of these high sensitive areas um where it's it's difficult to you know they have a difficult job just to come to work. So u maintaining longevity I think it really benefits our community as far as that is concerned. So, I'm super excited about that. Now, um to my comment, I uh I ran my campaign as one of one of my main bullet points was to see what we could do about public safety um and getting them caught up to speed because I've I've known of their concerns from the past. And I was very s um pleasantly surprised and excited to hear that during our budget discussions last year that each and every one of the council members and mayor also shared that same drive to get this done. And as a consequence, which I'm sure there was much more details that had been done before I got on council looking at this, but as a consequence, we saw that the city manager stepped up to um figure out an avenue and a pathway for funding, which that's where we rested on um with the citizens committee. Um and I also watched much like um council member Matthews, I'm very interested in the details. So I have been um watching these meetings since November and I too heard those kind of concerns um and questions um about you know what is the city council doing and and in my um

estimation the what I explained up till then uh to this point is we we made our our um our grievance known to the manager. the manager figured out a plan for funding and then one of the next steps is to have that other touch point of citizen connectivity and that is the group that is meeting now um and you know having their discussions from there we take it on again at the at when that is done. So um I had a just a slightly different take in in saying that the process that is happening what city councils did was they came to the budget and said we want change and and as a consequence um we are now in the process of that change under the right circumstances with the right committee and um and that's I've said it before and I'll say it again that's what democracy looks like when it's done right. So, I am I am proud of the of the committee and all of their questions, learning so much from them. And I think that that's what this process brings to a city council is um it, like I said, it gives us that other touch point for the community to interact. And um I'm I'm I'm really content with the amount of work, the amount of questioning that is coming from this committee. Hats off to all of them um for for just the intentionality and the learning that they're going through. I'm watching them learn as well through the process of what can and can't be done. And that's um that it's good for all of the community. And I'm I was so happy that you ended the slideshow um by mentioning to the public that that this is now the time when it you can be involved with this process as well through these commission meetings as a public commenter and um the time is now for for the community that is concerned about

this to step up and offer their viewpoints. Through this commission, we have learned that um that a lot of the commissioners have reached out to their own communities and we've seen that feedback put into play in a way that's super beneficial. Um you have also highlighted a place that we can go and the citizens can go to catch up to speed on these things so that way um when we make this pro this this decision in the end we make it together as a community. And I just really want to um thank the the staff for answering all of those questions and the committee members for asking all of those questions and for the community for staying through um through the process. Um manager's office has done a wonderful job um setting this up for us. I think this is what we're supposed to be doing when we're getting these things solved and I am excited to move this forward um to address the concerns that have been ongoing for quite some time. U I don't think we were paying the community a disservice by not addressing them before. I think that we were running concurrent with the times, but now we're at a pivotal point where it's the time, the time is right to be moving forward with a funding apparatus that will make us more successful for the future. And with that, I'm done with my comment. Thank you,

Vice Mayor.

Thank you. And thank you for all of your work. Um, Shannon, and to the team. This was a very enlightening presentation. Um, and I too have been watching the meetings and I know how much everyone is working to get us to a point where we can at least understand what the needs are. Um, you know, public safety is one of our most fundamental responsibilities and I I think it's easy to forget that, but it it truly is like one of the reasons we're sitting up here. So, I'm definitely glad we're having this conversation. I think that there's a lot to this and I want to make sure that as we move along this process that we do make things very clear for the community and I'm I'm glad that we're doing that tonight. Um, and I I think that, you know, I I talk to our public safety team sometimes and I think they're just tired. You know, every year they're fighting for the basic needs to keep going on top of working a job that takes a lot and is imperative to our community. So, I just want to offer that I think we all acknowledge that and we have a great council up here that hopefully is understanding um those needs. I think we are and I'm glad we're having this conversation. Um, a couple of thoughts. I just want to make sure that as we move along, we're turning over all the rocks. I mean, I know this this discussion is very important, but you know, just keeping nimble in what other funding sources there are because maybe we we can, maybe we can't do exactly everything to get it done, but maybe there's some other options out there I want to keep ourselves open to and thinking on this. You know, I'm not always going to be sitting up here and neither are all of us. And I want to

make sure that in the future we are keeping our eye on our core services and our needs and making sure that we don't put future councils and city managers and community members in this position. And looking at the tiers, Shannon, just my one question, they're not all or nothing in each tier. Correct. So we could intermingle to come up with a good package that addresses needs in all of the tiers as we move along.

Yes, the tiers don't have to be all or nothing. Um uh when you even when you look at an item, right, the example I used earlier is a police aid. Um if there's, you know, 10 positions, we could talk about is there the can we have effectiveness if maybe we can only hire six of them? What does that look like? um because again um we are accustomed to living within our our revenues and and the money that we have available. So I'm confident that if we were able to say you know these are the amount of dollars that we think we'll have the teams can come back and say this is what we think will be the most impactful package that we can put together for you. Um if that's how they decide to have that conversation. Sometimes a committee will go through themselves and just make those recommendations. Um I'm uncertain at this time exactly how this committee will will go through that conversation. Um right now it's just been identifying what are some potential sources on the dollar amounts and how far will that get us on the list. Um that's really to the extent they've had thus far.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And you know, I'm looking forward to our budget retreat, which is something that I honestly have not I don't think I've said that before, but I am I am really looking forward to um a different approach. And thank you to our our city manager um for really listening to council and some of our frustrations and tackling it. And I really I appreciate it. I know it's not easy. So, thank you. Council member Aline.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. Thank you so much, Shannon, for this presentation and thank you to everybody who worked with you to bring it uh forward to council and all the background work that goes along with it. Couple quick questions. Uh some detailed ones here. Um you mentioned there was a high of 119 police officers as of right now. I'm wondering if that number was higher in the past or if that max also just happens to be the current high number. I believe that's the highest number because the 106 I think was prior to um yeah the 107 was in 2006. So that would have been prior to the recession. Um so that 119 would be the highest from an FTE perspective.

Great. Okay. I was just wondering if it got up to the 130s at some point between those two dates. Um but it looks like we're sort of at a pinnacle right now. We are. And I will tell you that um as a budget team and city management, they had authorized years ago for them to overhire by two. I believe we're now overhiring by four. The reason we do that is because of the amount of time it takes them to get through the background process to try and keep them fully staffed because we know that's a big benefit to our community.

And naturally, you'll lose some along the way. Um no matter how many you are able to recruit into the process before they get through the process. Um, and then you may have touched on this and somehow I just missed it. Uh, but maybe you could put a finer point on it. And for the community who hasn't been tuned into these meetings and seeing them, can you expand upon a a little detail of who's making up the public committee um, and who you might be targeting, who's missing from the table as we move forward?

Um, I do have a very comprehensive list that we shared back in September. Um I I can tell you some of the people that are on there regularly, but there are a lot of folks that maybe can't come all the time. And so I'll apologize in advance if I miss some.

Yeah. And I don't need names specifically, but but really just uh I want to get a sense of is 90% of the makeup uh people who are involved with public safety. Um, are there elements of the community that uh, you know, that are cons that are concerned about police that are also coming to the table in a collaborative manner to try to help solve these problems? Um, so if you can just categorize groups of folks a little bit, that's sufficient for my question.

I mean, I definitely think there are individuals on the committee that have a higher usage of public safety services. Um, some of them are social service providers. We've got members of NAU, um, members of Guardian. So, yeah, there are definitely partners at the table. Um, but we also try to have a good mix, right? Um, because sometimes our partners are going to know a lot more about our operations than somebody who might be from a different committee that isn't as familiar with those services. And we wanted to make sure that we had a very um dynamic and diverse group. Um, so yes, there's some of it, but I wouldn't say it's anywhere close to 90%.

Uh, just for example, do you know if there's anyone from Keep Flagstaff together that's been involved with these conversations? Uh, no. I don't believe that we have anyone from that particular group.

Okay. I I would I would lift up that maybe that's one of the blind spots we could work to to fill as we move forward. We're going to need a um collaboration and a cooperation from almost every element of the community to to get this across the finish line to succeed. And so, uh, just thinking very creatively and broadly about who we bring to the table and who we start to get invested in this process and and for the outcome is just really strategically important and important to the bottom line of getting to uh the services uh that our community is is is wanting and demanding. Um, so thank you Shannon. I I will kind of move forward um with just a couple little comments here. You know, I'm very much behind this effort. I I think we've we've we've had fits and starts trying to get it going in the past and there are reasons and contextual landscape problems with why this hasn't gotten off the ground before. Um, and I think we're in a position to have a great deal of success for this. So, it's it's the right time to pounce and I I recognize that and I'm fully behind it. Um, you know, and I would just dare say that there's there's there's reasons for the community at large to to really be behind this and especially if uh there's, you know, particular issues with the way that public safety is being managed in Flagstaff. I don't have a lot of these concerns, but many in the community express these viewpoints. And I just think that if the Flagstaff community is demanding that their police force become more responsive, more transparent, and more accessible, and be better trained to deal with vulnerable populations. And if the community is demanding less strings attached to government funding and contracts and grants for important police related operational resources and capital expenses, then support for this bond is something that we should all get

behind. um full stop, you know, and I don't know that this needs to be hard on our community. As mentioned by Council Member Matthews, I get where she's coming from. No one likes to raise taxes or or or do anything along those lines, but you know, our community has proven its appetite for stepping up and putting its money where its mouth is um when it comes asking for the uh the city of Flagstaff to do things for it. FWPPP, the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project is one pertinent an example and there are many others. And then I kind of want to just uh linger on another point here for a moment. Um I really don't think we should short shrift the amount of work that has been accomplished by council uh over the last several years. Um you know, we're not asking Flagstaff to shoulder the burden of council leadership failures with this bond measure. Let's be very clear. We're asking them to bridge the gap so that we move forward with our feet fully underneath us. And you know, since I've been on council, we've solved the $100 million pension problem and unfunded liability problem creatively, I might add. Um, we've worked to up pay. We've gotten a second quid. We've worked to get more medics on units as requested. We've worked to alleviate the compression issue and raise retention. And we've started our own academy. Um so and let's not forget the care unit uh that is proving to be enormously successful and is doing a great deal of uh alleviating of pressure um from our frontline first responders. Uh and we uh are excited about that project growing as well as we move forward. I'm really proud of those accomplishments. uh even if there is always more need to address uh more problems and uh you know achieve better tightening of gaps

between what we have and what we need. Um we've done so much to write the ship since I came on board on in 2018 and we're in a position now to see these things to through to the finish line thanks to all the accomplishments that have been made along the way and thanks to the hard work of leadership and the city management. um at the at the direction of council. So, I think it's really important that we tell the story um that we've been very successful at getting things going and getting momentum behind us uh over these past few cycles so that uh because the voters want to feel brought in on getting across the finish line of something successful. They want to invest in things that are working and are likely to succeed. Um, and the narrative moving forward for this needs to be, you know, let's let's finish the job, but uh, we can only get so far on on council, and these are the reasons why, and this is going to be a huge help and a huge lift, um, to get us across the finish line.

Appreciate that, Council Member Alen. Council member Garcia,

thank you for coming back to me, Mayor. I uh had one more point that I kind of left off the table that I wanted to bring up. And um we you've mentioned the success of other cities taking on similar um voter initiatives and tax hikes that really helped their communities. Um but we didn't mention the the city of Tucson where it failed. And I want to make sure that we're um being very deliberate with our um educational outreach um because people might not understand. They might look at that number of, you know, 50 to 60 new police officers and think, "Oh no, now they're going to be pulling me over for cracked windshields or something, you know, like micro um uh prioritizing and um profiling and things like that." And they might be scared of that and that might make this fail. um when we you know in the way I see it is completely uh for what it is and that's we're adding some relief to these positions where people aren't required over time and can have a home life and can sustain balance within their work um life and family relationships. Um you know I think that that's more aligned with what we're trying to do here. But if without that educational part, um there might be some misconceptions on how this money is going to be distributed and what it's going to be used for. And if we can clarify that, I think we'll have a lot more success here. Um because I would hate to see what happened in Tucson happened here.

Appreciate that. Um even though we didn't list it, that is something that we're fully aware of. Um and and watched what they did to educate what they were asking for as well. um so that that we're cognizant of what could create a potential uh lack of support. Um, I also wanted to to share one story because I think it's a good opportunity um based on on some of your sharing. Um, and that's, you know, everyone's aware of um the recent incident that we had on the west side of town um where we had a shooter um that was in the community um and many of our officers responding. um that size of event um and the number of personnel that it that it pulls out of the department because they all wear multiple hats because we are a smaller department um made it to where we needed to rely on NAU the sheriff's office and other law enforcement agencies to help us run dayto-day after that because we had so many people involved in that one incident. So I I think it's a good example to really share like what is the benefit of having additional officers in that particular case. Maybe then we had the officers to do that work and then we still had the people to run the calls that were also happening at that time because the world doesn't stop just because we're all over in one area of the community. Um so thanks for letting me share that story. I want to echo my um gratitude to all of the residents who are serving on the committee and to the staff. I know it took countless hours of work to put together um just the stats and the plans for the future. So, this has been a tremendous amount of work in addition to

everything that you're already doing. So, thank you so much. And um I think that um the city does a pretty good job of balancing all of the needs and I don't necessarily consider them competing needs. Right? There are um core services as far as I'm concerned are also part of the quality of life and then we we think of things like parks and wreck as part of the quality of life but I also consider them part of public safety. I I I see how um all of this works together and I think we do we do a pretty good job. Seeing these needs just reinforces the need to keep a close eye as we're moving forward to try to stay as up to-date as we can um on everything which is challenging because budgets are challenging and um one thing I'll just to to underline what you said the city is facing ing more and more pressure because of state and federal government um backing off some of the help that we were receiving. We've seen grants be rescended. We've seen um grants become non-existent as as priorities shift. And that becomes challenging for us to to try to keep maintaining the service level that the residents of Flagstaff

deserve when um we're finding it harder to find those federal and state partners to help us provide um these services. And I appreciated you um showing the information about the other cities because I I think it's as has been said here, I think it's important to remember this isn't just a Flag Staff thing where we're we're um trying to catch up in some areas, but also trying to be very forwardthinking in other areas to make sure that we have the right balance And um I just I think it's it's a testament to the dedication of staff and this committee for getting us to this place where we are and I look forward to hearing what residents say in the um survey results and having further discussions about that. Um, I do have and I don't need to know details at this point, but one point that really stuck out to me was that we're seeing um declining rates of applicants for jobs and yet we have some pretty significant goals for adding new staff. And so I'm sure that there's a plan either in place or in development to overcome those um those declines that we've seen lately if we are able I'll say when we're able to fund all of these positions. Correct.

Appreciate that positivity, mayor. Um yes. So uh the fire department has already instituted um a concept called a green academy. um they've requested that funding I believe for the first time this year. What a green academy is is it's not an individual who has necessarily completed all their fire science and EMT requirements. They're individuals who are interested and have the capacity to do this kind of work and we help them obtain not only the educational credentials but also that on the job training that they already see today in the academy. So, we're hoping um that by instituting that type of academy that we will be able to attract a larger number of applicants. Um you do have a risk that some might not be uh successful. Um but we do believe that this will help us get a larger number of folks being able to apply. Excellent. I knew that there um I knew there had to be a plan. So, thank you. Um, council, any additional questions or comments? Seeing none, I will just say thank you again to everyone who had a hand in uh preparing us to be at the place that we are and I look forward to the next update.

Thanks again. All right, we are down to item number nine. Discussion regarding amendments to the city council rules of uh procedure. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm Stacy Saltzburg. I'm your communication and civic engagement director. Um I am here tonight to discuss your city council rules of procedure um and review some potential amendments. Um while I intend to review um these changes at a higher level, I do have the track changes document available to show um that might go into a little more detail if that's something that you all um would like or need. Um the track changes document was also included in your agenda packet. So you should have that available to you as well. All right. So the city council rules of procedure were developed and adopted by council to provide protocols on how meetings are conducted, how agendas are prepared along with other operational matters. The rules of procedure are living is a living document that can be reviewed and amended by council at any time. Um the council recently dis discussed uh possible edits at your retreat in January. Um so what is being presented to tonight is um an outcome of that discussion. So following your direction and input um what you'll see tonight is a result of that. So, a quick overview of the proposed

changes. We will be going into more detail on the rule changes that you see on the left side of the screen. Um, and I I'm I'm going to briefly cover the administrative cleanup items right now. Um, but I'm not going to go into to a lot of detail on them unless again it you've got questions. um they're pretty minor in um kind of the uh collective here and I think more of our our time is is going to be spent on the overall rule changes. Um so throughout this document um and the edits that are being made um I am suggesting that we move to more inclusive pronouns. So removing things like he and she uh replacing with they and their um and that would happen throughout the entirety of the document. Um rule 4.01 related to procedures for the preparation of council agendas um is going to just clarify expectations for agenda distribution. So right now it talks about contacting you on the phone, providing you with a solid paper packet. Um those are things that don't happen anymore. Um so cleaning that up and um also when that distribution would occur. So, I think the way that it's set up right now is that um you know those packets must be delivered um you know on the Thursday before um we usually get that stuff out a little bit sooner. So, um just adjusting that so that it mirrors our current practices. It also provides a little more flexibility um as your process changes a bit um that'll allow you know those packets to be distributed distributed as you would like. Um rule 7.03 03 decorum and order among citizen participants really is just rearranging the verbiage that's within the existing rules of procedure. Um it helps kind of imp improve the flow of

that section and and um provides for some additional clarity. Um it also will modernize the language that's included in that section. we no longer have a sergeant-at-arms that is present at our meeting other than the mayor. Um so again, cleaning up some of that and making that section reflect our our current operations. And then rule 10 um regarding uh rules governing motions by the council. Um there again are just some really minor clarifications in the language of some of those motions. um to better reflect our current practices um and make things a little bit more easier to understand. So, we'll move into the more substantive changes that are being pro per that are being considered. Um the first is with rule three um for council meetings. Um we are better defining um council's summer break. Um, this has always been one of those things that gets a little bit weird and and our procedures actually list out, you know, you're going to meet January, February, March. We got rid of all of that, made it very simple. You go on break after the first meeting in July, you come back um for that last week in August. So, again, just trying to provide some additional clarity. Um, we're also making some adjustments for the months that have five Tuesdays. um quite some time ago, we decided that we weren't going to hold council meetings on that fifth Tuesday. We kind of tested it out, kind of saw um what the effects of that were. Council seemed to appreciate that. Um so we're just codifying that uh within your rules. We're also going to be removing the review of the draft agenda from the work session. This is something that we discussed um at your retreat specifically. Um as you saw today, you

know, you have that portion on your agenda. It's not generating um the intent or the questions that I think it was really meant to provide um when it was first put into place. It's just kind of turned into a very routine check the box type of thing. So, we're going to pull that out of um your work session agendas. This is not going to eliminate the distribution of a draft agenda. You will continue to get that draft agenda ahead of time so that you have an opportunity to review and ask questions um through the city manager and staff. The other area is clarifying that um executive sessions can occur as needed on any Tuesday. Um and it it it also will remove the one:00 start time. So again, you're seeing quite consistently um there are some months that we have an executive session every week. They're not occurring on just the work session nights. Um and so instead of having a very rigid rule um that says that they occur on the second and fourth Tuesdays, we're really just saying they can happen at any time. They're called in cooperation with the city manager and our city attorney. Um again providing for that flexibility. Sometimes we start at one, sometimes we start at two, sometimes we start at 11. So, rules 4.02 and 4.03, future agenda item requests. This always seems to be um a good topic of conversation when we talk about our rules of procedure. And we did spend quite a bit of time on this at the January retreat and kind of talking about this process um and how to perhaps make it a bit more simplified, a bit more streamlined so that you're getting kind of the information and the presentations that you're looking to get in a more efficient manner. So um the changes that are being

presented really are going to pull back on the rigidity of the process that exists today and provide greater flexibility. So again, I'm not going to go through the revisions line by line as you see them in the track changes document. I'm going to kind of touch on the higher level um components of this. Um but essentially all fair items will be submitted directly to the city manager. The city manager will then determine what those next steps are going to be. And that could include a variety of different things. It may be that a meeting is set up with staff or um staff might provide a a council communication report that can give the information that you're looking for. Um she could also, you know, have some time to tell you that staff is already working on this. We're we're getting really close. We're going to be scheduling it to come back soon. You know, sit tight and wait and we'll get to it very very soon. Um or she just might say, "Yep, this is great. This is something we need to talk about. We're going to stick it on the agenda." um and that can just happen under her authority. There is also the ability that if it's something that um the city manager thinks might need some council consideration before a larger discussion happens um she can also place it on the agenda as a formal fair item which would then go through the typical process of looking to um council to see if there are three in support of having that discussion and then move forward from there. Again, this provides an opportunity for the city manager to act a bit more quickly in getting responses to your requests and um having that information to you. There is also some language that is added to this section um to clarify that during the formal fair process, there really should not be any discussions um about the item or explanations. It's

really only meant to be an indication of support or non-support um to place something on a future agenda. Um that larger discussion would happen um at that time and that's when we would be formally seeking some direction from council or some action. Excuse me. Sorry. All right. Rule number five related to our order of business. Um, these edits include changing public participation to open call to the public. Again, this is something we changed quite some time ago. Um, we're now at a place where we can codify that into um, your rules. It is also going to remove some of the agenda sections that no long we no longer use. Um, the city manager update, legislative updates, and again that review of the draft agenda if that's something that council is supportive of of removing, that also would come off. Um, additionally, we have um changed theformational items and reports to and from council and staff and future agenda item requests heading so that it now will read announcements and updates to and from council and city manager. Um, it is also adding a definition of what is expected during that announcement and updates portion of the agenda. um you know, the removal of that request for future agenda items is a reflection of what we just talked about in the last rule change. So, we're really hoping that that information will go through the city manager um who is responsible for setting the agenda and then um bringing those forward that way. Our next rule is 6.02 related to the temporary chair. Um this item um and

these changes would reflect the our current practice of how we select um a council member to chair a meeting should the mayor and vice mayor not be available. Um right now it requires me to call a meeting to order which I think if you know me I don't want to call meetings to order. Um but what we've done in the past is we have um defaulted to the council member who has received the second highest number of votes at that most recent general candidate election. So it's it's continuing that structure that we use for the selection of the vice mayor. So again just codifying our um current practice. Excuse me, Stacy. Council member Alen has a question. Oh, sure. Thanks.

Yeah, I just want to point out a technicality. Um, we can have a meeting as long as there's four council members, right? Yes. So, there could be three council members missing, including the council member who received the second highest votes at the most recent general candidate election. Um, so I might just include in there uh sort of a progression of that. Uh, if that person is also absent, the third or whatever, you know,

so on and so forth. Thank you. I think that's a great suggestion. Okay, moving on to 9.01, non-public hearing discussions. Um, this section is going to add some language um to identify which agenda categories will not permit public comment. Um, this doesn't happen frequently, but there's been some conversations about whether or not it's appropriate to have public comment at some sections of our agenda. Um, and what we've what we've identified is that um, proclamations and recognitions, council liaison reports, and the announcements and updates portion of the meeting really should be um, confined to the the council. Um, and we we would not permit public comment during those items. So 9.01A is going to be a new section um within your rules of procedure. Um and this section is um intended to define what the open call to the public is. Um, it also will codify the 30 minute rule that we've put in place again some time ago that limits that first open call to the public to 30 minutes and then anything that um is remaining after that 30 minutes would be pushed to that second open call that occurs at the end of the meeting. So it it in it it puts that language into your rules of procedure and this is very similar to the language that's included on the agenda. So, it's it's mirroring um what we're sharing with the public as well. Section 9.02 um regarding public hearings. Um this section um we are proposing to soften

the language a bit to provide a bit more flexibility when we've got items that come in that have a very specific public hearing um structure. Um many of you may be aware there are oftentimes when we have presentations from staff that is followed by presentations from say a developer there's a rebuttal period those are limited to five minutes and the way that the rules are written right now there's a lot of shalls and musts and we're we're proposing to move to a more may situation. We're already not always following that very formal and rigid structure. Um so we don't but we don't want to take that away necessarily. I think by adding um those maze versus shells um provides that flexibility that if you want to um kind of have a more fluid process that's permitted but if the situation is you know requires something a bit more structured that also exists and is able to be used. All right and rule 11.0 07. This has to do with your lobbying meetings and trips. This was another area that we spent quite some time discussing at your retreat. Um, at that time we talked about um the fact that it's not uncommon for council members or the mayor to be approached uh by one of our representatives with a request to meet individually. This is something that comes to you personally. it doesn't necessarily come through um a formal request to the office. Um and so we're wanting to again recognize when those things happen and to provide some guidance um to how those meetings could um uh could better be um

transparent or shared with each other, right? It's we we see and it's not uncommon, right? Like you'll meet with somebody and then you'll share at a council meeting. I met with this representative, we talked about this and and it come sometimes can be a bit um uncomfortable for other members of council that may not have had that opportunity or feel like they're not getting the same information. Um so what this rule will do is to add a statement that and I'm just going to read it here because I think it um lays it out pretty pretty well. Um but if personally invited, a member of council may meet with state, federal, or tribal representatives. And if possible, we ask that you notify the city manager in advance of the meeting. The city manager can arrange for talking points or information on any underlying issues that may already be um happening. Uh she can share concerns with um the topics or um any work that's already in in progress, right? So there there might be things that representatives want to chat with you about um that the city's already working on in some way. And so being able to have access to that information to understand anything that we might have uh been doing up to that point could be very helpful for you in that meeting. Um then following the meeting, provide a follow-up to the city manager and to the mayor for visibility and the city manager may share that information with the council for awareness. Um and we also add that it's always a best practice to consider inviting the mayor or another member of council to join in on the meeting. We're not requiring that. We're just saying something to consider if maybe another one of your colleagues might be interested in in attending that meeting. So again, this this rule isn't intended to limit your interactions with our representatives. Um this is really just trying to provide um a space for that information to be shared and to give you the tools that you need um to be successful in those meetings.

All right. Um, thank you for the opportunity to present um, these items. Thank you for your discussions in January um, at your retreat that helped really lay the foundation for some of these amendments. Um, and I am ready to bring these amendments back to you as early as next week for adoption. But of course that's really dependent upon the discussion here tonight, any direction that you may be um giving to me and kind of depending on that we'll adjust um if necessary. So thank you.

Thank you and great job uh condensing everything that we talked about into coherent sentences. Council member House.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you Stacy. Agreed. Thank you for taking the time to get all of this into a a simple and easy to follow presentation and a lot of work on the document itself. Um I was following along in the um track changes version and just had a note on the 4.02 future agenda item requests item. Um, in the final paragraph on page five, it says um that if the city manager places the item on an agenda uh as a formal fair, the council member requesting the fair will present the topic to the council for consideration and then says this is not a time for discussion or explanations. And I just wonder if that's a little self-contradictory in saying that it's not time for I'm thinking maybe we just take out the word explanations. If the council member who put it forward is going to be explaining the topic to or presenting the topic to council for consideration, then that sort of seems to nullify their ability to do that. Unless I'm completely misreading what that meant. If I might comment, I think that was more in in in uh um the the purpose of that council member, house, mayor, and council. Thank you. Um I think that was more toward uh comments and explanations from other council members, not the council member who asked for the fair. Stacy, I'll I'll defer to you. I know we worked together on it, but that's what I recalled. Yes, I believe that that was the intent, but I certainly hear um what you're saying, Council Member House, and I think that there may be a way for us to um adjust the language a bit to better reflect that, you know, council member says, "Hey, I want to talk about this," but can't

provide any explanation as to why. Um so, I think there's a way that we can accomplish both. And that's something that I can bring back with those final um amendments for consideration if that works for you. Absolutely. Thank you. you and thank you, Sterling. You're welcome, Council Member Garcia.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, this is really just a comment to um City Manager Keane. Uh, when when you got the job for city manager, you had mentioned that you were going to hit the ground running and, um, this and other initiatives, I think, are great examples of that. So, I just really wanted to thank you and Vice uh City Manager Anderson because I know that you guys work in tandem on these type of things um for for really digging into the details and staying true to your word. This is exactly what we were hoping for um as an output. I know that there's a lot more to it and a lot more team behind it than just y'all, but thank you.

Thank you, council member. And yes, I would say that we have a great team working on this and I actually think this is one that has been really exciting to work on and bring these forward. So, you'll see more. Council, any additional questions or comments? Council member Spence.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, my question is about something that's not addressed in these amendments. Do our rules of procedure include um procedures for an emergency meeting either during the summer break or during the rest of the year on a on a particular uh day of the week that say we've had a meeting a regular meeting on Tuesday but an emergency issue comes up on Thursday. What are do we have other sections of our rules that provide for calling an emergency session?

Thank you for the question. Um yes, there are some areas within the rules of procedure that do address um emergency meetings. Um the first is under 3.02 which is our special meetings. There's a provision there that if an emergency requires an earlier meeting of council um than allowed by this rule um rule 3.5 per pertaining to emergency meetings shall be followed. So that kind of sets the stage and then we have a section that's dedicated um for those emergency meetings. Um this is also in line with state statute who ha that has some very um distinct rules as it applies to calling those emergency meetings. what qualifies as an emergency meeting and what then needs to happen if you can't meet like the 24-hour posting notice just because of that that type of emergency and what happens after that. So 3.02 and 3.05 will address um the need for any emergency sessions. I will also add that it's not unusual for things to come up during your summer break that are going to require the council to come together and have a meeting. at that time. Uh we work with the city manager and of course with the council to schedule those as needed. Um and we have that ability and we have used it frequently. Um so it's on an as needed basis.

Thank you. You're welcome. City attorney, the city clerk already addressed it. We have done it several times over the break. It has happened. So it's not only not unusual, it's guaranteed, especially in an election year. Okay. So, we are all in general agreement to these changes. So, you can bring them back um when you are able. Next week or when you're able. Next week is the fifth Tuesday. It is. So, it'll be April 7th. I misspoke already.

Okay. So, when you're able to bring them back, we look forward to seeing them. Thank you. I appreciate the discussion. I appreciate the feedback and I will incorporate Council Member House's comments into those edits and I'm excited to bring it back to you.

Thank you, Stacy. Okay, we're moving down to open call to the public. And I see no public wishing to speak. So then we're down toformational items two from mayor, council, and city manager and future agenda item requests. And I'm going to start down here with council member Spence. Uh nothing this evening that's brief, neutral, or non-controversial. Well, this could be your last chance to to include anything that doesn't fall into those categories.

I I will pass. Thank you,

Council Member House. Thank you, mayor. I'm going to come with the controversy. Uh, I'm just kidding. I am uh just sharing with the community that I am out of state this week um in Washington DC um uh doing advocacy not on behalf of the city but on behalf of actually the state when it comes to housing considerations. So, we'll be meeting with uh representatives on Capitol Hill tomorrow um to talk about some federal actions that are happening in terms of housing, particularly multifamily housing and uh looking at considerations that will have major impacts for the state of Arizona. So, looking forward to that and I will see you all not next week but the week after.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have a couple of exciting updates. Uh, Saturday I was honored to attend the 44th annual environmental excellence awards along with the mayor and some of our amazing staff and the downtown connection center was recognized with a CScadia award for sustainable built environment. And I do want to do a special thank you to everyone who attended, but also to Mountain Line and to the mayor for giving me the opportunity to give the acceptance speech. It was definitely a highlight of of I don't know my five years being on council. Um, so thank you. Last night I was on a panel discussion with women business leaders at CCC. We talked about how we got into doing our businesses and how we keep ourselves balanced between work and personal growth and that's always a good discussion to have. It was a great evening and I do want to thank CCC for hosting. Tomorrow I will be on a tour of the Pyina plant and I'm excited. I have not done that yet so should be good.

Council member Alen. Uh thank you. Not much. Uh, tonight I am very excited to announce that I'm going over to LOL um at 8:30 p.m. to sit in their Universe Theater, which has a giant LED screen that flat screen that wraps 110 degrees around 170 seats to watch The Empire Strikes Back. Thank you for reminding me because I have tickets to that and I had completely spaced that I was going. Thank you.

Well, I'll see you there. Uh, you can you can sit with my family. I have an extra ticket if anyone wants to go. Uh, Council Member Garcia.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I have a couple of things here. Um, I wanted to thank council for asking all the right questions at our productive and successful uh, city goals retreat this past week that I had to attend remotely as I was attending the Arizona Leagues and uh, the Arizona League of Towns and Cities Civic Craft Leadership Summit in Cottonwood. At this gathering of local elected officials for from every corner of our state, we had an impactful discussion covering local business development and retention, tourism, and water usage. It was super refreshing to hear other local leaders and how their councils work or don't necessarily always work together. And it always brings me solace as as to how remarkably functional we are here in Flagstaff as a council that um has civil discourse and can agree to disagree without being disagreeable. Shout out to former council member Deb Harris that that's um that's not always the case with every council and and it's these events where I am reme reminded that the mayor and vice mayor of Cottonwood send their best wishes to all of us especially you mayor and vice mayor. Also, I wanted to give a huge shout out to our water conservation specialist, Emily Melahorn, for all of her hard work uh she put that that she put into the World Water Day celebration at Slide Rock State Park this past Saturday. Emily Flagstaff Water Commissioner Ron Doba, I think he's a water commissioner. If I'm wrong, please set the record straight. Um, Sedona Council Member uh, Ferman and myself in concert with the Cookanino Plateau Watershed Advisory Council helped represent the Cookino Plateau Watershed Partnership efforts for water resilience and education here in Northern Arizona

at that event at Slide Rock. The turnout was impressive and Emily did a bangup job as always organizing the entire thing or her part in it. Um, I will be also putting on the hard hat tomorrow and I'll see you at Pyina vice mayor to uh, which is kind of super impactful for me. Um, as a child growing up, my my best friend was Raone Martinez and he is now the the uh, overall manager of the place. So, it'll be um nice to to see him again and rekindle that that friendship. Council member Matthews.

Thank you, Mayor. Uh yesterday um I attended our virtual meeting and the mayor was in attendance for our first uh steering committee meeting for the healing center which is the um um medically assisted uh detox um in bigger. Um and so we're just putting together uh where we take our next steps and uh we didn't get state funding this year but that was a long-term goal anyway. Uh we're still moving forward on what to do um as soon as this year. So I'm really looking forward to that. And we've got some tours of other facilities uh getting scheduled as well as a potential site um here in Flagstaff um over the next couple of weeks. Uh, also I'll be at the tour at Parina tomorrow. And Thursday, um, there's a mountain line meeting at, uh, the connection center as well as the sustainability showcase that highlights Flag Staff sustainability grant recipients at the Market of Dreams from 4:30 to 6:30. I'm looking forward to attending that as well. Thank you. Last week, last Thursday evening, I was uh very proud to attend the STEMIs, the Flagstaff STEM City um holds these every year and some great recipients were um were gifted these STEMI awards. Very excited to see council member Spence there with the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project, one of my favorite organizations. They won a STEMI. Uh student Davis Yei from Basis won a STEMI. Nestle Pyina Pet

Care was the business of the year, so you can congratulate them tomorrow. and Stephanie Wickham who is a teacher at Serest Elementary was the educator of the year and very special they uh created a lifetime achievement award this year and Chris Lugan was the recipient of that and as we all know Chris is the uh he probably I don't know if he likes being called the grandfather of dark skies um but he is he has been instrumental in Flagstaff becoming the first international dark sky city for the um drafting of our lighting codes and for so much more. He was so deserving of that. Um, then on I guess it was Friday, I testified before the Arizona Transportation Board on our Arizona Smart Grant for John Wesley Pal Boulevard and we were awarded that grant and um attended the environmental excellence awards as a um guest of the Flynn Foundation who also won an award. And on Thursday I So I am currently serving on the Arizona Commission on the Arts and we have a board meeting in the Verie Valley and a reception after that. So I'll be there um most of the day on Thursday and arts uh the arts commission staff will be in Heritage Square from 3:00 to 5:00 on Friday with all kinds of information about grant programs. So, if there's an organization that's thinking about applying for a grant or a um an individual artist who's thinking about

applying for a grant or just wants more information, you can meet with staff there. And um Council Member Alen, what time does the movie start? I think it starts at 8:30. If you want a good seat, you might want to get there earlier.

Yeah, it's first come, first serve. Um, once again, I have an extra ticket and that's all I have. City manager, uh, mayor, council, I have, uh, just one update and then, um, Heidi is going to provide some more, uh, details for the tour tomorrow. Um I did just want to recognize members of our team um specifically in um engineering development engineering in police and fire and code for quickly stepping and legal for quickly stepping in um with a situation dealing with the Town Place Suites Hotel. It's the hotel on 66 that has not um completed construction. Um, our team has acted pretty quickly and we actually today there's a fence going up that the city has been working on with a private company. Um, we're looking at our legal avenues and we'll likely be bringing it that back that back to council as well. But just want to recognize um Paul Mood, David Milis, um our fire and police chief, uh Shannon, Christina Rubiclava, Kevin Fencil, um Amy Trestler, and Kevin and Reggie and Code. It's been a big group effort. So, and not something that's pleasant to deal with in this community. So, just thanks to the team for dealing with that.

Hello, mayor, vice mayor, council members. Um, for Nessie Parina, it's from 2 to 4. Um, so if you show up at 2, you're late. I'm just kidding. 1:45 would be nice because you have to go to the guard gate and get a badge and then they're going to tell you where to go to the visitor parking area so that you can park. And then you, if you've ever been there, you have to kind of take a quite a walk to get into the main lobby. Once you're there, um, they're telling you what not to wear. So, I just thought you might want to know this because I was kind of shocked that, um, they want you to take off all jewelry, watches, and earrings. So, don't glam up tomorrow. Just glam down. Um, they do not want you to have a shirt with buttons. So, no shirts with buttons. I know that I'd be that person. Um, you can wear pants, jeans, they're fine. You have to have to uh closed toe shoes, so don't wear sandals. Um, and I love this one. If you have a hairet at home, please wear it. Um, if not, you will be given a hairet or you will be given a helmet to wear. So, I don't know. I guess I'll dig out that hairet. And, um, they will provide you with glasses, hearing protection, anything else that we might need for the tour. But um I just thought that you wouldn't want to be caught off guard and um then have to go back to the car and take you know items off. So I look forward to seeing you there.

I hope they have a hairet for my face.

All right. Thank you everyone. And we are adjourned.