City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we're ready to get started. Today is Tuesday, June 9th, 2026. This is the City Council's work session. I'm calling this meeting to order. Can we have a roll call?

Mayor Daggett? Here. Vice Mayor Sweet?

Here.

Council Member Aslan?

Here.

Council Member Garcia?

It looks like his mic isn't working, but he says I'm here.

You should be okay. I see him there. Council Member Garcia, can you hear me? I'm here.

Thank you.

Council Member House?

Yes. I'm present online.

I am also here. Council Member Matthews? I'm also here. Council Member Spence?

Here. All right. Vice Mayor, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

It would be my honor. Please stand if able.

All right, Councilmember Aslan, would you read our mission statement?

The mission of the City of Flagstaff is to protect and enhance the quality of life for all.

Thank you. Councilmember House, would you read our land acknowledgement?

Thank you, Mayor. 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, and I don't have any comment cards. All right, then next up we have proclamations. We have a proclamation for Pride Month. So will you please join us at the dais? Come on in here, guys.

Whereas the city of Flagstaff strives to enhance, embrace, respect, and celebrate diversity in the countless affirmative ways in which people choose to self-identify, including in the lives of our two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and or questioning, intersex, and asexual two-spirit LGBTQIA plus community. And whereas the people of Flagstaff will continue to work to increase visibility, awareness, dignity, and equality, and promote the welfare of our 2SLGBTQIA plus neighbors, friends, and loved ones, And whereas every June, our nation unites to observe Pride Month with the raising of the rainbow flag to honor the history of the two-spirit LGBTQIA plus liberation movement, to support the rights of all United States residents and citizens, and to eliminate homophobia, fostering equality and freedom from discrimination. and whereas the city of Flagstaff takes pride in demonstrating that human, civil, and equal rights nurture a stronger community foundation leading to an inclusive community to be enjoyed by all while promoting an atmosphere that is welcoming, accepting, and respectful to two-spirit LGBTQIA plus residents and visitors. Now, therefore, I, on behalf of Mayor Becky Daggett, Mayor of the City of Flagstaff, Arizona, do hereby proclaim the month of June 2026 as Two-Spirit LGBTQIA Plus Pride Month.

Thank you Mayor Daggett and city council members for this. I want to invite the city of Flagstaff to our 30th annual Pride in the Pines that's happening on June 30th at Thorpe Park. Nope, June 20th. I'm sorry. Oh my goodness, that would have been horrible. June 20th at Thorpe Park Sporting Complex. This year we made the festival free. We're starting downtown at 10 a.m. with a pride parade which includes our Grand Marshal Anne-Marie Sischilli in the audience. And we also have Reverend Dr. Bernardine Lewis and Dylan Duvet, who are also Grand Marshals. This year, the festival is free, like I said, and there is a lot of things going on in town. So please come out, please support, not just us, but all Pride events that are happening in Flagstaff. So thank you all again, and I look forward to seeing everyone there. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, next up we have 2026 monsoon season preparations.

All right, good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, Ed Shanks, Stormwater Section Director. I've been a while since I've been up here. I have a handful of folks coming up here as well to kind of give you a quick update on our city and local partner preparations for the monsoon season coming up. And we're keeping this relatively lean. So as you well know, we have plenty of other sections and divisions within the city that support this. So just because we have a handful of people doesn't mean There's not a much, much larger team in the background that is helping out with this. So again, the objectives for tonight, quick agenda. We'll give a monsoon forecast from the National Weather Service. We have Megan Taylor here from the local office. Status of the stormwater drainage improvements, status of stormwater maintenance going into this season, and then some other monsoon preparations. Quick look back to 2025 and Megan also has a slide on this. Last year was a very weak monsoon season, but even with a weak monsoon season, we do see flooding pretty much every year in Flagstaff. So last year, July 2nd, there was a flood event in the Smoke Rise neighborhood where there was some homes that were impacted. We're working on a design moving forward for a capital improvement project in that area. And then the fall rains, which was not a monsoon, but if you remember, we had some long fall rains that did lead to some localized flooding in the south side, so mostly in the Phoenix and Cottage area. So we are working on getting a permit through BNSF to do some localized drainage projects there. With that I'll move it over to Megan to give a quick update on our monsoon season this year Hi, good afternoon everyone.

Thank you for having us My name is Megan Taylor and again, I'm with the National Weather Service in Flagstaff Now that Brian has retired you're stuck with me probably for a while I'll just spend a few minutes to give you an idea of where we're at weather wise and what we anticipate for the upcoming monsoon season As Ed alluded to, this is taking a look back at last year. So 2025, the graphic shows precipitation percent of average. So as you can see in the Flagstaff area and much of Coconino County, we saw below average precipitation, anywhere from about 50 to 75% of normal. Flagstaff typically sees about eight inches during monsoon season. That's about two thirds of our annual precipitation total. Last year we only saw five inches, so quite a bit below average for monsoon season. Where we stand with drought conditions, you can see a lot of the state is seeing worse off drought conditions than here in Flagstaff. We are currently in moderate drought conditions, which is the first category of drought, whereas areas to our surrounding, all of our surrounding areas to the northeast, south, and west are in more severe drought conditions. A lot of that was thanks to, like Ed also alluded to, the fall moisture that we had. Really carried us through a lot of the winter season. We did have some sporadic winter precipitation this year, which also helped, even continuing on into the spring. But unfortunately, our snowpack was very lacking. We only had about 30% of our average snowpack this year. So moisture-wise, we're doing okay. Snowpack was severely lacking. This is a look at precipitation during monsoon season for about the past 30 years or so. And the main point of showing you this is just to show you how variable it is from year to year. The green dotted line is showing our average precipitation of roughly seven and a half to eight inches. that we see in the Flagstaff area coming out of a low snowpack year that can be correlated with an earlier start and or a more robust monsoon season. Right now we are not seeing the indications for an early start despite some thunderstorm chances coming into the forecast later this week. We're not expecting a lot of moisture with those, more on the dry thunderstorm side of things. So really looking fairly dry for the next two weeks or so and expecting more of an average start late June or early July. So more typical start for the monsoon. Another reason for showing this graph is I did want to point out that if you look at the last three years, they were quite a bit below average. So we've had some some kind of non-soon years here the last few years. 21 and 22 were above average and we did have some pretty significant flooding after the pipeline fire in those years. And then prior to that, we had some of our driest on record. So really in the last 10 years, we've had five or six below average years. So the point in bringing that up is that if we have a normal or even above normal year this year, It might seem like more, since in recent memory we've had some pretty low monsoon seasons. So what is the outlook? This is from the Climate Prediction Center for temperatures during July, August, and September. Chances are leaning towards warmer than average temperatures for monsoon season across all of Arizona. This is the precipitation outlook. And the green colors do indicate that chances are leaning toward above normal precipitation. The greatest chances are actually centered over the Four Corners region, so areas north and east of Flagstaff. Right now there are signals in the models that are showing a tendency toward above normal precipitation for monsoon season. And you may have heard a lot about developing El Nino. So I wanted to touch a little bit on that as well. There's greater than 90% chance of El Nino developing here in the next couple of months. That doesn't necessarily impact the early part of monsoon season, but it can start to impact the later part of monsoon season. A lot of times during an El Nino, we can see enhanced tropical cyclone activity towards the end of the season. So right now we're seeing potential for increased precipitation and perhaps flooding in the August and September time period due to that El Nino influence. That is all I have for you, but I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any.

Council, any questions? Council Member Matthews.

I'm not sure if this is for you or maybe Ed or are we having more of the Monsoon conversation. Okay. I'll wait then. I'm pretty sure Ed will cover it. Thank you.

Okay Thank you Okay, thank you Megan great having the National Weather Service right down the street That's a huge huge support for both the city and county so getting into the city monsoon season preparations This is our annual safety messaging. You'll probably saw this in the Arizona Daily Sun if you got the The paper version, we do have that emergency preparation section, which we've also included in there. One of the biggest ones in there is Turn Around, Don't Drown. That's kind of used nationwide. Some of the largest group of fatalities that we see during flooding are people that think they can drive through or walk through a low-water area. low lying area and then get stuck. If you do see street flooding concerns during the monsoon season, please call Public Works. If you have drainages on your property, make sure those are clean and clear. That is the responsibility of the private property owner. And then if you have drainage concerns at any time, it doesn't have to be during monsoon seasons, feel free to give us a call over in Water Services at that 2400 number. Sandbag guidance and resources. We've removed, this is great news, removed a lot of sandbags out of the post-wildfire areas. So Coconino Estates a couple years ago and Sunnyside and Grandview this year. So that's been a huge plus. But for those people who do still need sandbags, our long-term location at Thorpe Park, still exists and we still maintain that. So it's a self-fill station located at the end of Aztec Street near Francis Short Pond. You can see here some of those inverted traffic cones which you can kind of put your sandbag in there and then fill it with the cinders. The last I checked, we also had a couple pallets of pre-created sandbags that are there. I don't know if those are still in place or if they've been used up, but we'll try to maintain that through the flood season for anybody who is in a low-lying area or an area that still needs mitigation. Very quickly, I'm just going to run through some of our capital improvements that are going on this year. Meat and lane drainage improvement, that is actually out to bid right now with our job order contractors. We're expecting that to close today, and we will start that project this fall. Santa Fe Avenue drain lateral, which is just out behind Capitol Hill. or behind Capitol Hill, behind City Hall here, sorry. We're not Capitol Hill, behind City Hall here. That's moving forward through design. It'll be probably built in the same timeline as downtown mile. Fanning wash channel improvements. So we have a number of fanning wash projects, and that's kind of the new suite of projects now that Spruce Wash is completed. The channel improvements, which is along Linda Vista, that is finishing up in the next couple weeks. All the grading is complete, all the rip-rap is in place, and they're placing the erosion mat right now. Fanning wash diversion is under design, so this is actually diverting water so that we don't flood areas like Siler Homes, Thomas Elementary School, and Bushmaster, and we push that water underground to the Casper detention basin near the bus barn. And then we have a number of spot improvements for local drainage concerns. And we've also been doing some capital renewal projects, including cleaning out the Schultz basins. Those are ready for any flood water that we see. So we did remove 2,300 cubic yards of sediment using city operators in April of this year. Just a real quick photo. Like I said, I'm going to try to keep it short. This is Fannie Walsh channel improvement. So on the right or on the left is kind of removing some of that sediment. On the right is getting it close to completion. You can see the riprap. The riprap's on the levee side. And then we will have some coconut matting to allow grass to grow everywhere else where you see kind of exposed soil right now. So that will grow back as grass. Increasing that capacity of the channel from roughly 250 cubic feet per second to over 500 cubic feet per second. This will keep the water in the wash and keep it from going down through green law. Flood warning network, we do have maintenance on our 27 early alert rain and stream gauges. So J.E. Fuller is our contractor. That is wrapping up this month. They're doing a great job of working through our annual maintenance of those gauges, making sure they all work. both the precip version, so the rain side of it, as well as the stream, so the water level side. There is real-time access, so you can actually get to it from our city server, from our city website, one of the most used websites during monsoon season in the city. If you see that it goes a little slow, it's because there's a lot of people trying to use it, that does not mean the server is slow, it just means that the public facing side is slow. So on our side, the reaction side, we are still getting those live updates of where there might be flooding concerns. You can also sign up on that webpage for individual alerts. So if you live in an area of town that has a flood gauge, or even if you don't, you can sign up for one of those gauges and get a text alert when it starts to see some flow or when it starts to see really high amounts of rain. We are transitioning this year from an older radio frequency, what's called Alert 1, which is from the 1970s, to a newer protocol, and this is to allow us to enhance our alert capabilities, so it won't be one-way. Right now, it's a one-way communication, so the gauges send a radio signal up to Devil's Head, up on Mount Eldon, and then we get it here at City Hall. With the new Alert 2, we are going to be able to talk back to the gauges, so if we need more information, we can actually provide that. So if we see a long time where we're not seeing a lot of activity on the gauge and we're seeing a lot of activity on the radar, for example, we can actually ping the gauge and say, hey, what's going on? Why haven't we heard from you? And hopefully it talks back. With that, I'll let Daniel speak to emergency management.

Thank you, Ed. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, Daniel Kelly, Flagstaff Emergency Manager, So the museum sirens, the four sirens that we have been in place for a couple years now. We tested them a couple weeks. We've had some issues dating back for since last monsoon season, but they are operational. But we like to remind everybody the museum sirens are just a supplemental way to alert everybody that danger is possibly on the way. Ed just got done talking about the flood alert network. We highly encourage everybody to, if you're an audience, to scan the QR code up there. Make sure you sign up for the emergency notification system that the county E.M. Operates make sure you're signed up make sure your loved ones are signed up make sure that you are Paying attention not just on waiting for the from the alert from authorities that tell you when to act we're asking individuals to take individual preparedness seriously and take ownership of that so we're really pushing this year to for everybody to make sure they're signed up multiple different ways stay engaged if there's weather in the area tune in to your favorite local news network also the National Weather Service excellent resource it's right here in Belmont and the flags after excellent on send out alerts they have a few of social media follow them on social media The gist I'm trying to say here is there's multiple opportunities for people to stay engaged on what is happening. Do not rely on just one network to reach you. Don't rely on just the city. Don't rely on just the county. Have multiple different avenues of getting information. And then take action. If you get alerts or you hear the sirens go off, we ask people, don't freeze. Don't panic. Just do what's asked. Seek high ground. Turn around. Don't drown. Stay out of the area. Make sure you have all your kids, your loved ones accounted for. Take personal action. And again, stay connected. Stay connected with the authorities. Stay connected with your neighbors, right? Because they may not have registered or they may not have seen the alerts. Maybe they weren't around their phones, but you see them going out to do something. Just like, hey, just want to make sure you saw that we have some weather heading our way. So just keep that community that we have here in Flagstaff, rely on it, and take personal action. With that, I'll hand it back over to Ed.

All right, so we talked about capital projects and then went into the alert systems. Now we'll talk a little bit about the maintenance. So both the above ground, so open channel maintenance, as well as our closed maintenance or what we call underground. So for 2025 calendar year, we did 147 inspections of the streams and washes with 49 work orders of surface water, another 141 underground. And we did quite a bit of meaningful work, mostly based on that 2023 rate adjustment that we had. One really cool thing that we do, not just in water services, the other divisions have it as well, but I'll just say that water services have prettier dashboards. But we all have dashboards, and these are all really great because they are adjustable. They're not static. It's obviously static here in the PowerPoint. But we can look at different areas that need work, that have completed work. We can see who did it, what type of work it was, how much it cost, and really kind of drill down into accountability as well as areas that need to be addressed. So this is one example. This is for our open channel. You can see what we've done in the last year. On the top right, you can see the time period. So that was the calendar year 2025, how much money was spent, in what kind of categories, and where in the community. And if you have the actual dashboard in front of you, you can kind of zoom in, zoom out, kind of look at the different metrics within it. So quick pictures. So here's some vegetation removal so that the channel would work as needed, won't collect, you know, mattresses and shopping carts and other debris. So this is over near Malpi Lane. Here's another large area that we did a lot of work, the reason why it was $750,000 last year, was we addressed some areas that haven't seen maintenance in a really long time. And I have to say thank you for your patience because I know you've had some complaints on a few of these. And I can't compare it to like going to the dentist. If you don't go to the dentist for 10 years and then you go for the first time, that first time is going to be very rough and it's going to be rather jarring. Same with maintenance, same with deferred maintenance. So in this case, we were able to get back into the Cheshire neighborhood and dredge the channel that was built in 1977. and had not seen maintenance since then. And then we were also able to dredge the pond behind the Cheshire Dam. This is behind the Museum of Northern Arizona. That dam was built in 1952 by C.C. Cheshire. So with both of those, they've gone a very long time without any sort of maintenance. We were able to come in, we were able to remove quite a bit of mud, muck, silt, whatever you want to call it. So 3,300 cubic yards in the channel and another 1,200 cubic yards behind the dam. So we've really increased the capacity there, brought it back to what it was designed for, brought it back to FEMA standards. And then hopefully as we get these monsoon rains, the seeds that we put in there, the hydro seeding will take place and we'll be able to see, you know, the grasses come back and the wildflowers. Underground, we'll keep it short here. We also do it all for the pipes, culverts, underground detention, etc. So again, another dashboard of areas that we track for the type of work that we're doing there and a lot of great work going on with our four operators and supervisor over at the east side utility shop. I won't spend a whole lot of time on this other than to say we also take the dashboard information and we can put it out into different tables and different graphs. All of this is available either through us directly or you can actually find it online. So that website at the very bottom will have our most recent calendar year report. So we have those going back for six years now. So the 2025 report is up on the website so people can take a look at that. Another thing, so Daniel mentioned, you know, stay informed. There's different ways to stay informed. On the other side of it, I'll also say if you want to protect yourself, another way to do that is purchase flood insurance. So flood insurance is really the only way to make yourself whole if you see a flood on your property. There's a lot of different ways to do it now that's kind of relatively new in the last few years. It used to be all through the National Flood Insurance Program, NFIP. Now there is a private marketplace as well. definitely shop around with your homeowners insurance or whoever you use for insurance coverage. The homeowners insurance that you get by default does not include flood insurance, so you need to add that rider to your homeowners insurance. If you use NFIP, you do get a 25% discount automatically applied, and that is because as the city, we go above and beyond with our codes, regulations, maintenance, and capital programs. So because we go above and beyond, FEMA recognizes that and does give a 25% discount to anybody within city limits. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Sam for talking about the flood prevention grants.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. Sam Wiley with the Sustainability Office. And I'm here this afternoon to talk about our Flood Prevention Assistance Program. So through this program, residents are eligible to apply for a free dam-easy flood barrier. So that's the barrier that Albert is demonstrating here. These are a barrier that can quickly be deployed into a doorway or a window even to prevent water from entering the home. And these are available to both property owners and renters. And folks can either apply online at flagstaff.az.gov slash floodproof, or they can stop by the sustainability office in person and fill out an application there. These applications are processed on a first-come, first-served basis, so we will continue to distribute these flood barriers for as long as materials are available. I'll give it back to you, Eddie.

All right, thanks, Sam. And one last slide, just to kind of keep this high level. We're doing a lot of really great science in the community. And by we, I mean NAU, Northern Arizona University, the Arizona Geological Survey, the county folks, city folks. There's a lot going on. And it's pretty interesting. There's a lot going with it. And just two examples are up here on the slides. Don't want to get too deep into the weeds. One on the right was an article that came out back in 2024 that's showing that we are, with the gauges that we have that go back to the 1970s with some of the USGS gauges, we're seeing more frequent floods in the summer, and they're more intense. And I think that kind of shows similar to what the science is showing throughout the American West, whereas we're getting drier, we're also getting more floods, which is kind of an interesting combo. It's getting drier, it's getting hotter, but when we see the water, it's more intense and it's more violent. And that's kind of something Megan was talking to. We've had two, three years now of complacency just because we haven't seen much. At some point, those monsoons will come back and it will be a little bit of a wake-up call, unfortunately, for some of us. The graph on the left is another fun article. This one came out just this last year. Some of our J.E. Fuller colleagues, as well as myself, were looking at long-term watershed trends with post-wildfire. And really what it's showing is immediately after the fire, obviously we see quite a bit of an impact, but then we still see that impact for a long, long time. So the radio fire, which was 1977, we still see that impact on the east side of Flagstaff, and that's hence why we are doing those fanning wash projects. So fanning wash was probably appropriately sized before the radio fire. It's not anymore. So we do see those impacts of spruce wash, pipeline fire, Schultz Creek. Those will continue to see large flows in the future. Maybe not as bad as day one after the fire, but we will be seeing large flows there. So we will see that infrastructure tested going through time. And with that, again, trying to keep it somewhat short. I know your time is valuable. If you have any questions for myself or anybody else here, we're happy to take them now or in the future.

Thank you, Ed. Council Member Matthews. Council Member House.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ed and everyone for the presentation. Just two quick questions. For the emergency alerts, so I think this might be for you, Daniel. I feel like I recall seeing that there was an auto prompt every six months or so to update information. Is that a requirement for people or is that just a recommendation to update information? So if I'm signed up but haven't updated for a while, am I still gonna get those alerts?

Council Member House, great question. That is just a reminder. It doesn't delete your system. It doesn't delete your information. It's just a reminder to go in and make sure things change. Your household, maybe somebody moved out, maybe somebody moved in, or maybe you changed addresses. Just go in and make sure you're up to date. Make sure if you need help with evacuations or anything like that, you can put that information in there. That's just a reminder.

Great. Thank you very much. Um, and then Ed, I think the second one's for you, uh, in terms of the slide and information on flood insurance, have we seen any movement on costs when that comes to, I know we have the discount available, but, uh, over the past several years, we've heard people saying that it's costing more and more and falling out of range of affordability. Have we seen any shifts in that as we've worked through some of our mitigation efforts?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the reasons we're seeing an increase in costs is something called Risk 2.0, and it's something FEMA put in place about five years ago when they were deep in the red, and they're still in the red, but when they were deep in the red and they decided at the executive level that they needed to recoup more costs. So they went from a static table to an actuary table. So it functions a lot more like a typical insurance program now than it did in the past, which was very formulaic, where if you're in the floodway, you pay a certain thing. If you're in the floodplain, you pay this extra. less and if you're outside then you pay this this minimal amount so unfortunately the rates went up for most of everybody under risk 2.0 now there is the private market that's kind of a new you know curveball if you will in the last few years I call it a curveball because sometimes that private market is cheaper I say oftentimes it's cheaper than FIP but it's also more opaque of what they're going to cover. So I don't think we've seen much here within Flagstaff, but I know when I go to conferences, I have heard some stories of other communities, mostly hurricane ones, where the coverage may be less than ideal with some of those private vendors. So there is sort of this kind of Wild West mentality right now of, because with the current administration in D.C., they're pushing very hard for privatization of flood insurance. So they're kind of working FEMA to reduce their coverage for NFIP. So there's a lot of moving parts on it. I don't know if I'm really answering your question. The cost is high. I think everybody knows the cost is high. There are cheaper options, but I just worry that if you go with a cheaper option, you may also not get the coverage that you need.

Thanks very much.

Ice Bear. Thank you, and thank you for the information. I don't know who to ask this to. I think we do a great job with all of our outreach, but I am wondering, with all the visitors that come through Flagstaff, how are we reaching those folks that may not know even what a monsoon is, and all of a sudden they're stuck in one?

I'm going to let Daniel take this one, because I can try, but I think Daniel will have a much better answer.

Vice Mayor, again, great question. So it's very much a team effort. Water services puts out information, emergency management at the city, county level. Also, economic vitality. They've been a great avenue for pushing messages for emergencies and non-emergencies. But if you're trying to capture those for emergency alerts, is that what you're trying to get to? We would use the emergency notification system, so through RAVE, the geofence, the IPAWS.

Thank you. I'm glad to hear that we're trying to reach everybody, including those from out of town. Thanks.

It's very hard.

All right, no additional questions, Council. I'm going to take public comment. Andy Fernandez.

Okay, Andy Fernandez, native son of a place that born and raised here. U.S. Army Corps engineers. I did other scenarios of the Army Corps that... with the Army in different categories. Now here I also ran for mayor in 1996 and acquired 47% of the vote. I ran for Congress in 2002. I was number three out of 16 candidates for the Judge Pro Tempore position for Prescott Page, Arizona. And a few other scenarios that I've done here with four-street overpass, the recycling scenario I facilitated. And anyways, here regarding this scenario here, We are listening to a scenario which has been a manipulated scenario that stipulates certain specifics, purposely manipulated to facilitate the ends to the means. The scenario actually, if you actually look back from 1948 to 1952 up to 1991, the city of Flagstaff was averaging a snowpack of 198 to 208 inches every year. After 1992 to 2003, that dropped significantly by 38 inches, and then from the next, From that period to 2019, it dropped again another 74%, I mean inches. So we've had a significant 38 and a half, 39 year drought in which we've only had eight and a half, nine years of decent precipitation. So that's the scenario that we have to address and an issue is because of over expanding and increasing housing and population. here in Flagstaff and statewide, when we add 6.3 million people to the population scrolls, which I said from the beginning, we need to go back to 1980 and do a 10% growth within 50 years. I facilitated 5%, 25, two and a half, for every 12 and a half years, and so on. You can break it down one level further. But the scenario is, these are all being manipulated scenarios. Back in 1993, 1999, Solier, right here in Flagstaff. The issue is that we have municipalities that are manipulating scenarios with the planning and zoning because they're all about greed, about building. That's why we've increased in such dramatic fashions. Like I said, 22 million people in 24 years. That's appalling. Now, again, Solier, great example. They had a flood. The neighbor next door, they were building, and yet you guys in the planning zone only allowed them to build again and build. They had a flood. So we went through this big old scenario. And then, like idiots, get the insurance and build again. But they didn't learn. And if you did it three times, three times strikes, you're out. You guys have been dropping the ball left and right on a lot of scenarios, especially affordable housing.

Thank you. All right, next up we have presentation on the 26-27 implementation plan for the housing plan.

Hello, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. I'm Adriana Fisher, Housing Program Manager for the Housing Division. And as with every other year since the approval of the 10-year housing plan, I'm here to give you an update on the 2026-2027 implementation plan for the 10-year housing plan. The implementation plan is included in your agenda packet. Following this overview, Sarah Dar has decided to join me, her housing director, and she will provide brief updates on the city-owned land identified for housing. As a reminder, implementation plans outline the work that staff will undertake during the upcoming fiscal year, while annual reports document the progress made toward the actions identified in the corresponding implementation plan. I'll be back in September to give you an overview of the 2025-2026 implementation plan and how that went. Okay. So today's presentation will begin with a brief overview of the housing plan's background, framework, and progress to date before turning to the 2026-2027 implementation plan. As mentioned, Sarah will be here then to provide an update on the city-owned land identified for housing. I'll start with a brief refresher on the housing plan since I know we have new staff too. Today's presentation, let's see. Okay, so the housing plan began with a citizen petition in October of 2020, which prompted you, council, to declare a housing emergency. In 2021, city staff worked closely with stakeholders and community members to develop a framework to address the community's housing needs. That work culminated in the development and adoption of the housing plan in early 2022. Today, the housing plan serves as the foundation for the city's housing programs, funding priorities, and policy decisions. This slide introduces a new housing plan progress graphic. You'll remember this used to be all blue. In addition to tracking progress for the plan's goals, it now includes strategy progress data, a QR code, and a link to the 10-year housing plan. The data shown reflects progress from the plan's adoption in February of 2022 through March 31, 2026. At a high level, the plan's goal is to reduce the community's housing, affordable housing need by half over the next 10 years. Staff tracks progress through two key elements, which you will see on your screen. Element one focuses on serving residents. To date, 3,649 low- to moderate-income residents have been assisted through programs such as down payment assistance, brand-new Section 8 vouchers, and eviction prevention, to name a few programs. This represents nearly 40% of the 10-year plan's goal. Element two focuses on housing units. Since the plan's adoption, 2,100 market rate units and 574 affordable units have been added to the community's housing stock. An additional 585 affordable units have been committed by developers, but are not shown on this graphic yet. Recent additions to that number have been two ownership units at Woodshire, 103 residential units at the Lantern, 29 units at Western Hills, and 10 new habitat starter homes, just to name a few. Finally, the plan is supported by 58 strategies. Although graphic has not yet been updated to reflect the recent ratification of the regional plan, because it's updated on a quarterly basis. Strategy progress now stands at 17 completed strategies, 19 in progress, 19 ongoing, and just three not yet started. Thanks to Sara Dechter for spearheading the regional plan updates so gracefully and strategically. All right, after reviewing progress to date and recognizing that many strategies remain underway, No new strategies are being added to the 2026-2027 fiscal year. Instead, staff will continue advancing the 29 strategies carried forward from previous plans, including 14 in progress and 15 ongoing. The focus of this year is on maintaining momentum and advancing these efforts toward completion. As a reminder, with 58 strategies in the housing plan, there must be a way that we prioritize this. So to inform those decisions, the city evaluates several factors shown on your screen, including funding availability, staffing capacity, public, and council support in the degree of interdependence among strategies. These considerations guided the selection of the strategies carried forward into the 2026-2027 implementation plan. So let's give you an overview of what's on the implementation plan. There are two categories that you will see. The first one is project-based strategies. They have an end date and obviously a start date. And then ongoing strategies are strategies that will go on for the duration of the housing plan. So starting with project-based strategies, several focus on updates to the city's incentive policy for affordable housing, also known as IPA. These include updating IPA to better align with housing plan goals and incorporating those updates into city code, exploring additional incentives such as reduced fees, waivers, and expedited review, and considering in lieu alternatives to providing affordable units. Because Arizona law, you'll remember, does not allow municipalities to require affordable housing, IPPA remains one of the city's primary tools for encouraging affordable housing development through incentives. This approach has been supporting new housing development, projects like Sierra on 66, there's a picture on your screen, and villas on Lake Mary move forward under the current policy bringing a collective 297 units to Flagstaff. Let's see. And then, Council, you did approve a minor amendment to IPAA in 2025 to allow water and sewer fee reimbursements, but a full update will follow the completion of the Land Availability and Suitability Study and Code Analysis Project, also known as LSCAP. All right. The Resource Protection Overlay, or RPO, plays an important role in balancing housing development with the preservation of natural resources. These strategies build on ongoing efforts to refine RPO standards in ways that support both housing production and resource protection. The first strategy focuses on ensuring that minimum densities can be achieved on most sites, including better alignment between residential and commercial requirements. This work is already underway, and will be implemented over time through a series of code amendments. The second strategy focuses on applying RPO standards more consistently across zones and providing greater flexibility and maximum densities where appropriate. To support this effort, planning and development services staff launched a pilot program and the early results indicate that additional housing units can be achieved while preserving key resources and maintaining safety standards. For those interested in learning more about the resource protection overlay, I've placed a link to a video tour on this slide. I brought this picture to you last year and I'm bringing it again because funding remains a critical tool in addressing Flagstaff's housing emergency. These strategies focus on strengthening the city's ability to invest in housing as opportunities arise. One strategy is to establish a housing fund to support the acquisition of land and housing units. To support this effort, the Housing Division is evaluating feasible recurring revenue sources that can provide ongoing funding for the program. Staff is also working to identify and expand funding opportunities for households experiencing homelessness, those at risk of becoming homeless, and first time home buyers. Voter approved funding through Proposition 442 is helping to create both rental and home ownership opportunities currently.

Okay.

And these strategies focus on expanding development opportunities and improving how the city uses both city-owned and private land to increase affordable housing. First, the city is evaluating alternative engineering and fire requirements to reduce development costs while maintaining fire and life safety standards. This work is informed by ongoing updates to the International Wildland Urban Interface Code, as well as resource protection and landscaping standards. The city is also exploring community land trusts and public private partnerships to support the development of affordable home ownership opportunities, the Habitat Starter Home, Project shown on your screen is a current example of this approach, but other methods may be considered in future development solicitations. Next, the city is prioritizing the development of city-owned land for affordable and mixed housing. A land inventory has been completed and staff are moving forward with competitive solicitations for parcels at Schultz and Lone Tree and potentially a third property. In addition, the city is working to redevelop housing authority-owned properties with the goal of at least doubling the city's affordable housing stock. Sarah is actually here to provide additional information on these efforts later in the presentation. And finally, the city continues to pursue, when feasible, the acquisition and rehabilitation of existing properties in partnership with private development partners. A strong example of this work is Western Hills Apartments, housing solutions as the bottom picture on your screen a Successful rehabilitation project that received approximately 1.2 million through the adaptive reuse bond program to convert a motel into 29 affordable units for residents earning up to 80% of the area median income Okay This final strategy for this group focuses on expanding housing access by incentivizing landlords who rent to individuals facing barriers, including those using housing vouchers or with challenges such as credit history or past justice involvement. This work is being led through the city's housing authority with outreach planned for Housing America Month in 2026, focused on reducing stigma and increasing landlord engagement. Staff is also exploring the creation of a landlord and property management stakeholder group to identify barriers and develop practical solutions for expanding rental opportunities. We'll now move into ongoing strategies. Like I said, two groups. This is the part where the ongoing strategies are not like project-based. These do not have defined start or end dates and will continue throughout the life of the housing plan. These strategies are organized into several key focus groups that support housing production, preservation, equity, and community engagement. The first group of ongoing strategies focuses on supporting housing production through incentives and innovation. The city continues to refine zoning tools and ensure density incentives for affordable housing remain effective over time. Staff is also exploring employer-assisted housing programs to encourage private sector participation in addressing housing needs. And lastly, staff continues to support the development of net zero and energy efficient affordable housing when funding is available and encourages private developers to do the same. Villas on Lake Mary, again, pictured on your screen, added 76 units to the community with assistance from the incentive policy for affordable housing and other zoning code incentives. The next group focuses on improving housing access and advancing equity across systems and policies. Staff continues to support coordinated entry systems that connect individuals and families to housing, health care, and behavioral health services. City staff also continues to evaluate housing policies through an equity lens and encourages regional partners, including those receiving community development block grant funds and the continuum of care to integrate equity into their programs. In addition, staff is expanding community education around housing and financing opportunities to reduce disparities and increase access across the housing continuum. These efforts also include raising awareness of housing stability as a key social determinant of health and encouraging housing and neighborhood designs that promote overall well-being. The photo on your screen shows Romy. from Housing Solutions tabling at the first of two April Housing Resource Fairs, which were a collaboration between the Housing Department and the library in celebration of Fair Housing Month and Library Week. Through these two events alone, local housing providers shared resources with over 170 community members. This group focuses on preserving and improving the existing housing stock. The city is continuing to explore financing tools such as tax credit programs to support the acquisition and rehabilitation of affordable housing. City staff also maintain and expand rehabilitation programs for both homeowners and renters, ensuring that housing remains safe, stable, and sustainable over time. The Lantern by Flagstaff Shelter Services is a recent example of a rehab project that turned a hotel into 103 affordable units with 1.1 million in assistance from the adaptive reuse bond program. And the final group of ongoing strategies focuses on policy, advocacy, and long-term housing protection. Staff is appreciative of your efforts, council, at the state and local level, to advocate for policies that strengthen the preservation and creation of affordable housing, including greater local control of vacation rentals and second homes. City staff continues to support efforts to expand housing diversity across neighborhoods, recognizing that inclusive housing options are essential to long-term community wellbeing. Finally, staff is engaging the community through outreach and education to build understanding of the importance of affordable housing and to strengthen public support for these efforts. The photo on your screen, I'm sure he's horrified right now, Aiden Rutledge, Administrative Specialist, is on your screen, whose role has supported both virtual and in-person outreach efforts and increased staff capacity like the April Fair Housing resource or housing resource pairs. Whoa. So that includes my portion of the presentation. I will now turn it over to Sarah for her portion, which will supplement my piece. Thank you.

Mayor, vice mayor, city council, Sarah, our housing director. It's not often I get an opportunity to recognize the growth of staff in front of both council and public. But I think you have observed the growth I have observed on the presentation skills of Adriana. And so I want to take a second and say, great job. The growth is evident and it's super, super exciting. So thank you for letting me do that. I'm here to provide you some quick updates on work that often appears hidden and People are always wondering like well, what are you guys? What are you doing? So before break and there's a couple things we wanted to update you on the first one is city-owned land for housing This is a follow-up on the presentation from September 9th where council provided direction on this topic and So two main updates for you at 180 and Schultz Pass, the RFP for this property prioritizing development of housing units for local workforce was issued. We received five responses. Those responses have been evaluated and we have entered into negotiations with one firm. There's details to work out before we come forward to you, which we are planning on doing after break. We were hopeful that we would be able to when this was published to be back to you before break However, the highest ranking proposal requires some additional work before we bring it to you the second one is that you issued direction on to move forward this year is the piece by sawmill between Eldon Lone Tree and Butler the work on this RFP has already started it will be issued before the end of the year and And your direction, of course, was to prioritize ongoing funding for housing programs via a public-private partnership. This will be issued seeking commercial responses for this property. We're saying before the end of the year so that we have a goal that's attainable. I'm really hoping that we are under-promising, over-delivering on this one. My hope is that it's out before then. We'll see what falls out of the sky between now and then. Second update is redevelopment of city-owned land, also known as RAD. You know how I feel about the name RAD. So the progress on this that is invisible to council and the public is that in January you approved a contract with Nan McCain Associates to assist staff with a necessary analysis including financial prior to the full application being made to HUD. We've been working very closely with this consultant group. I'm smiling because the meetings often are fun as we figure out all the different details and directions to go. The capital needs assessment on all properties, both sites and all of the scattered site properties is complete. Appraisals have been ordered for scattered site as well as title reports. have not been ordered. We were thinking about it today. Title reports will be ordered this week for all properties. And we do have an architect working on some initial preliminary design ideas. And that wording is really, really, really intentional because I kept saying we're looking at concepts. Well, concepts when you're talking about developing housing and talking about Planning and development services that type of thing concept is a different meaning and so really its initial preliminary design ideas for council and the public residents of public housing to respond to so that we're not just staring at a blank wall going imagine if you will what this could be and So I'm kind of calling it blob planning They're not finished architectural drawings that are colorized with cars and people on balconies that type of thing but more or less an overview of of what the properties could look like with different densities, et cetera. And so different housing types, different densities, where do the community centers go, that type of thing. So that when we enter into the public involvement this summer, we have some things for people to look at and think about and respond to. By no means will these designs be the final designs. They are initial preliminary design ideas are not concept plans. We are working on an RFP to identify development partner. We are working very closely with a consultant, our legal counsel, as well as procurement in order to put this RFP out. It has been highly recommended that Seiler Homes be our first foray into this for a number of reasons. We're continuing to coordinate with HUD and we will be coming to you in September for an informational presentation and also a resolution approving the application to be turned into HUD to formally initiate the process. And with that, Adriana and I are both available to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Sarah and Adriana. We have a question from Council Member House.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Sarah and Adriana. Adriana, I think this is for you. So you had mentioned the work that the team does to support coordinated entry. I'm wondering how expansive that is or if you can speak to that at all and share who's leading that coordinated entry and if it includes recovery housing.

I can tell you for a fact that We're not specifically involved in recovery housing at this point. I do know and I'm aware about your efforts on recovery housing, and it's not beyond the scope of this strategy. We have been participating in the... First of all, when coordinated entry, we've been funding some of that through CDBG, and I have my notes. I'm happy to get back to you on that a little bit later with more information.

That's perfect. Thank you.

Okay. Council Member Matthews.

Thank you, Mayor. Adriana, thank you for the presentation. You did do a great job. Just for clarification, you mentioned in kind of our housing stock and stuff, the lantern thing. And I just wanted to clarify, because I was under the impression that the Lantern, when you were talking about alternative housing, was transitional, and they're not charging, so it's not low. I forgot how you positioned it, but affordable rents. So I think for the next couple of years, they're not paying any program fees. So here comes Sarah.

Here comes Sarah.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Member Matthews, that's a detailed, nuanced answer. And you said Lantern. Yes, okay. I was like, wait, hold on, did I hear it right? Which one? The Lantern will transition to transitional-based housing at the point of 18 months, 24 months after it opened. So it has a funding source commitment to fulfill to that point in time when it will transfer to full transitional, which includes leases and rents.

And so when it's transitional housing, then because, and maybe my brain just hiccuped, because we have JoJo's Place and some others. So I didn't know if we were including all of those housing units and why we were just talking about the lantern, because that is a definite needed source in Flagstaff to have that stepping stone. So I was just looking for clarification.

It will ultimately end up being permanent housing. Once its other funding commitments are fulfilled, it will transition it. will transition from transitional into permanent.

Okay. So that's where I was confused. So in the 18 months, will it go to permanent or it's a stepping stone?

I would have to look at those dates. I do know that the rental, the adaptive reuse bond money has a date in it that they will meet in order to be eligible for that funding. I believe that the policy approved said within 24 months of funding that it must be within that model and they are set to meet that deadline.

Great. So they'll convert to permanent. Yes. Wonderful.

Thank you. No additional questions. I'm going to take public comment. Andy Fernandez.

Okay, Andy Fernandez. Again, a lot of the elder population in this region, they know that I'm a fair and honorable man, just like Celia Baritz. And the scenario here is, I'VE BEEN INVOLVED WITH THIS INVOLVED IN THE CITY COUNCIL. I'VE BEEN A POLITICAL ACTIVIST FOR OVER AND ALL OVER 35 YEARS OR 30 PLUS YEARS, 35 YEARS PLUS. AND MRS. HENSON WAS THE OTHER COORDINATOR FOR THE HOUSING AUTHORITY PRIOR AND THEN THE OTHER ONE. THAT'S WHY I'VE SEEN HIM COME AND GO. AND THE SCENARIO IS IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME BECAUSE I TOLD HIM I TOLD HIM WHAT THE ISSUES WERE. The greed and vanity of man, the seven gluttonous sins of the Bible is coming to the forefront, the greedy, evil devil. Now the scenario is, We have a system here. We have the nepotism oligarchs, which consists mainly of the Republican Party, but there are some Democrats in collusion with, well, they own the majority of the mainstream media, not just here, but down in the Arizona Republic, the Arizona Daily Sun here locally. And when I was... When I was running for mayor and there was some manipulated lies by the Arizona Daily Sun and Randy Wilson, the editor, I told him I needed a regress and I wanted him to state an apology on the front page and make the corrections. They told me to call St. Louis Pulitzer, which owned... 186 media outlets Everything for my scenarios what I'm getting to is this scenario is my time to talk so I was Interrupting me Mr. Fernandez, please stick to the topic we're discussing. We have the scenario the friends of flex-tap future I went to the meeting that was discussing these issues and a lot of these scenarios they said earlier this morning when they first started the meeting about we want to be cultural and efficient and And it's respectful, but that's a lie. We have a race, especially in the F-Cube. I have stipulated a lot of these scenarios, and they regurgitated it. And then they had a scenario here where I actually endorsed Mr. Donaldson. I campaigned for him because the country club... Mr. Rothschild asked me to.

Do you have comments on the housing plan?

Yes, that's why I'm discussing it. You're wasting my time. So then Becky the Dagger came in, and they manipulated these lies, and they had a consultant here to come in, and I said, well, who paid you? Because since I'm running for Canada for office, I have the staff reports, but it doesn't say anything. That's why they manipulated that little scenario where I was asked to leave. The scenario is, how can you have... From 1999 to 2006 and six and a half years, an increase of $72,000 every year. There's no affordable housing because you guys have been manipulating, all corrupt manipulation with the Chamber of Commerce, all the media outlets, and the Northern Arizona Home Builders, which keep on changing their name.

All right, we are moving down to future agenda item requests. A citizen's petition titled Renaming of Columbus Avenue.

Yes, thank you, council and mayor and vice mayor for allowing me to bring this to you. I am the owner of four of the addresses on Columbus, 112, 114, 116, and 120. It's been in my family since they were built in the 40s. And we received absolutely no notification of the potential name change and realized that there will be some expense on our part for it to go through of changing insurance and registrations and stuff like that. And I just wanted to question why there was no notification. My tenants, all four of them, received a notice on the Saturday before the council meeting. It was mailed on the 13th, and they received on Saturday for the council meeting of the 19th, which is really only one day's notice with Monday. on that. As an owner, I was never notified, and I was stated by the city staff that the owners were not notified just by the letter that went out. There's quite expenses involved with that that, you know, I question... because Switzer Canyon goes north and south, and Columbus goes east and west. So you're going to 951 Switzer Canyon, then you go to number one Columbus. It's West Columbus, or that'd be East Columbus. We were on West Columbus. It's a three block street. And from the understanding that I got on the things that it was named after Christopher Columbus, but what I'm finding, by looking at some old maps and stuff, the Knights of Columbus for the work they had done in the city is what it was named for. I don't think there was any notification for us. And I question why if it started in January 27th at a council work session or meeting, why we were not notified as owners and the property renters weren't even notified until the Saturday before, which I don't think is adequate notice. five generations of my family have lived in that house, and I consider it. I enjoy the Columbus, the Knights of Columbus. I had heard years ago from my grandparents that that's what it's named for, because my grandparents originally did it. And so I just want to encourage you guys to reevaluate this and give us a chance to also give our view of why it should not be changed. Because I noticed that there was several people that said That spoke in favor of the naming changing that how can we vote against it or speak against it if we don't know it? and so I appreciate your consideration of allowing me to just Bring this to the council to reconsider Thank you so council what we're looking for is is

Three thumbs up to move this forward for discussion. So we're not here to discuss it tonight, just to decide whether we want to move it forward. So are there three thumbs up to move it forward? All right, seeing none, we will not move this forward for discussion.

Just to clarify, to change the name to Columbus?

To stop the changing of it from Columbus to Switzer Canyon. Gotcha. All right, so we are moving on to item number nine, emergency management, Coconino County's multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan discussion.

All right. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, good to see you again. Daniel Kelly, Flagstaff Mercy Manager. Tonight, the presentation will be conducted by the county, Coconino County Mercy Management, Tim Carter. I just want to introduce him here for a second, but also to... Make sure it's clear you guys received the final draft of the plan like two hours ago. So we're just here to present the draft to you guys to make sure we're not doing resolution or adopting it tonight. We'll come back at a later date. That is July 7th. It's on the agenda for adoption via resolution. So tonight, Tim Carter's gonna walk you through the plan, walk you through how we got here. It's kind of a unique process, this one. It was due to turbulence in the project at the state level, the federal level, the FEMA funding. We're going through alternate resources. Normally the draft plan goes to FEMA first and then comes back down for adoption due to time scale, which Tim will explain. We're going through this method. So with that, I'll hand it off to Tim Carter.

All right. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council. As Daniel mentioned, my name is Tim Carter and I have the honor of serving as the Coconino County Director for Emergency Management. Thanks for having us. It's good to see you all again. We want to, and I'm going to say this once, it's the 2026 Coconino County Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan. We'll just call that the plan from now on. This is a culmination of the last little over a year's worth of work with all of our municipal partners, including teams here in the city of Flagstaff. So I really wanna start by saying thank you. The way that the plan's designed, And as Daniel mentioned, it is just hot off the presses, so I kind of want to walk you through that. You all have received a copy of this, so if you'll have a chance to review that before considering the resolution next month. But happy to answer any questions now or in the meantime after that. This multi-jurisdictional piece of the plan includes Coconino County and then all of our municipal partners throughout the county, including the city of Flagstaff. So to get the information for the plan, and we're going to talk about what that is shortly. Again, I want to say thank you. It was a lot of hard work from a lot of folks, specifically at the city. We had representation from engineering, the police department, fire department, water services, sustainability, planning and development, emergency management. public affairs really all came together to provide that local knowledge of the city as an organization but also the community as a whole. But then I also wanted to thank the community because there were a couple of different opportunities where we reached out to the public to get their feedback and their comments on what was important in terms of mitigating natural hazards throughout the Flagstaff area. So you can see that, again, I just want to reiterate that local feedback from the communities was invaluable for this to help us realize what hazards we do face, what does the community see as appropriate measures for mitigation, and then give us those strategies to mitigate those hazards moving forward. On this slide, along with some handsome people there, You'll see the agenda that we've got today. We're going to cover some topics, kind of go through just a high-level overview of the plan. So what really is a hazard mitigation plan? It's designed to be that high-level document that helps us identify what our hazards are, how bad those hazards can be, and what do we want to do to help mitigate how bad that can be. It is kind of in a nutshell what a hazard mitigation plan does. It's required by FEMA every five years. So any jurisdictions that seeks any kind of disaster federal mitigation funding, whether it be pre-disaster or some of the emergency mitigation funding immediately post-disaster, is required to have a valid FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plan. But most importantly, this helps us identify risks and mitigate the risk to provide a safer community for our residents. So again, why it matters? Money. And I will say this plan does not commit the city to spending any dollars. This just makes those decisions by you and city leadership easier to identify where to spend those limited dollars when they do come along. But we've seen research has shown that For every dollar we spend on mitigation, roughly we save $6 in response and recovery cost when a disaster happens. So Ed was up talking earlier about a lot of the mitigation work that we've done. here in town for flooding and especially the spruce wash that we're excited to see coming to a conclusion here later on this month. Those aren't inexpensive projects, but compared to not doing the work, it is fiscally responsible and money well spent to do those projects. So really, how does the plan help keep us safe? Even down at the homeowner and neighborhood levels, it allows us to kind of strengthen our infrastructure. This is almost preaching to the choir. We're able to see this right now, and the city has been great stewards of using mitigation dollars and programs to really strengthen the resiliency of our communities, especially some of our more vulnerable communities, specifically with spruce wash and then the Clay Avenue project recently done. It also helps us improve our emergency preparedness. So we look at how can we, through emergency management and public safety, largely how we can reach out to the community and help increase their level of preparedness. One of those projects has been my office working with sustainability, working with SAM through the resilience hubs, even despite the federal funding challenges that we've seen with there, but still partnering with them to really continue to meet with the community and the household levels to increase their level of preparedness in a way that's meaningful and impactful to them. So the plans are also gonna have a community profile. So it kinda tells very briefly about what is important to a community. A lot of the census demographics, you see here where our median incomes are, what the populations, racial makeups, ages. But then really what's important, what are we known for? Whether it be economy, with tourism, workforce, what our unemployment rates are. And then what are our development and social vulnerability goals that we have? Smart development, whether it be housing or what does a development look like through building codes and things like that? Some of the recent hazards that have kinda guided a lot of the information that has gone into these plans, specifically for 2026, we are all familiar with the 2021 flooding through the museum post-fire that really impacted from Paradise down to Grandview and down into Sunnyside and the devastation that that caused, as well as the Pipeline West flooding that impacted the Cheshire over Highway 180, Fort Valley Road, and those corridors. And I would say looking at the costs, both of those each over $6 million, we find different costs at different places, different sources. I think that while those may be a little low, You know, one of the things that we really can't put a price on is the cost to that human factor, you know, uprooting lives and the devastation that it cost each individual or homeowner. So how can we work together as a community with the residents, with the city, with the county to mitigate those costs as well? So on the screen here, it lists all of our hazards, and it lists what the score for Coconino County as a whole is. So we sat down and we conducted that community risk assessment. A four is as high as you can go. It goes all the way down to a zero. So no... No surprise there that wildfire scores a four across Coconino County. You see followed by floods, drought, and then some of our other hazards all working our way all the way down through winter storm, aviation accidents, earthquake, tornado high winds. But how does Flagstaff compare to those? So this is Flagstaff's, and if you look in the number in parentheses, that is the county score. So wildland fire, we're the same. Within the city limits, wildland fire is still the top hazard for the city of Flagstaff. You'll see that aviation accident for the city is a 3.6. Really, it's only a 2.4 for out in the county. We'll talk about that in a moment. We also have the same with climate change. Drought is relatively the same. But looking at dam failure is obviously one that's been successfully mitigated in past plans. But some of those key differences, you'll see extended power outage is higher in the city than it is in the county. Why is that? And what we have seen is, you know, there are largely there's communities out in the in the county that are off grid and they don't have a. A heavy reliance on power or, you know, folks that just live out in what we call out in the middle of nowhere out in the 40s. They're used to the lights going off and that's OK. Their their level of individual preparedness may be higher than those that we see in populated cities, which is common across the country. Aviation accidents is higher because Flagstaff Airport is in the city, right? That, you know, we would expect to see a higher number of aviation accidents just because of the amount of volume that coming in out of Flagstaff Airport. And I will say those were taken from FAA reports and things that they consider an accident don't necessarily include just planes falling from the sky. It's a lot of different factors, even just very minor mechanical things that go into that score. Seismic in earthquakes is a little bit higher, largely because of our older historic buildings around downtown Flagstaff, some of them being still unreinforced. So that raises that score a little bit here. Excessive heat was one that is a lot lower, largely because just the elevation. You know, we don't see the triple digit temperatures that we see maybe in Page or some of the lower elevations. But winter storms, surprisingly, were about even. So I'd be remiss if I didn't show you the exact same thing in pictures this time. So these are some kind of maps that you'll see. And I will also say on the county's website, we do have a, along with this plan, we do have an interactive dashboard where people can go in and actually plug in their address and it will show them what the hazard ratings are for their particular neighborhood, for their particular house. So these are some snapshots from there that show leading hazards in Flagstaff where flooding is most likely to occur, power outage, aviation accidents, Climate change, public health pandemics, that score is obviously extremely high due to the 2020 COVID impacts. Drought seems to cut the city right in half between moderate and abnormally dry, which I thought was interesting. Winter storms, earthquakes. Some of the excessive heat, tornadoes. But I really wanted to jump into now the hazard mitigation, these key priorities. So when we met with representatives from all the different city departments and also from the community, what are the key priorities that we need that were presented to the plan? The first one, and these are really no surprise to any of us, is water conservation and the importance of drought resilience. As mentioned earlier in presentations, we're getting warmer, we're getting drier. So how can we preserve our water supplies? Also reducing wildfire risk through vegetation management, some additional risk modeling, potential code updates. pursuing grant funding to support some of these future mitigation projects, and then building resilience to climate-related impacts and changing environmental conditions. So what have we done in the past for those? So one of the things in the plan, it details out from the 2021 plan that council approved then and said, here's what we want to do moving forward. It kind of gives us the opportunity to take a look and see what we were successful in, what is still ongoing, and are there any things that we need to go back and revisit. So just looking at that, I wanted really a couple of things for consideration from the 21 plan. There was an action item to plan and conduct forest treatments to reduce severity and impacts of unwanted wildland fire. That one is still listed as ongoing. I don't believe any community in Coconino County will ever be able to say that's completed, but I can say after working with Chief Gaylord and the Flagstaff Fire Department and seeing the work that they're doing, doing a really good job, and that's an ongoing work that is also listed in the 2026 plan to continue moving forward. Some other things that were completed, the council adopted updated building codes, which allows for safer resiliency and some firewise mitigation measures there. Fire prevention patrols, the woods watch campaigns that law enforcement and flag police does with volunteers and as well as being out in the woods around town. And then for aviation accidents was the ability to bring on armed sworn law enforcement officers at the TSA screening checkpoints. If you've ever been out there, you notice there's always going to be a Flagstaff police officer there anytime the TSA checkpoints are open to provide that additional security while we're screening passengers coming on to which will help us reduce those aviation accidents. Some of the ones moving forward, and again, I will reiterate, this does not commit council to any funding, but we ask people to really sit down and think, what's your Christmas wish list? What do we need to do? Because if it's in this plan, This gives us some justification when we go to To FEMA or to the state to ask for some mitigation dollars. We can say this was scored. It was vetted These are legitimate needs help us reduce this the impacts here some of those will continue to be some of the flood control measures. One is for the Magdalena drainage improvements, for example. There's some things going back to, Vice Mayor Sway, your comment on public messaging, how we can use the emergency notification systems to increase warning and alerting to residents and visitors. That is an ongoing item in to reduce those hazards. you know, advanced education programs in schools, working with flag stormwater, uh, just for normal drainages, working for code enforcement updates, whether it be a WUI code or just regular building code. So there's, uh, There's an ambitious list for the city that they've come up with. It's about two and a half pages, some mitigation action items that I think are pretty comprehensive. They are relevant to the community and were very well received when we took those to the community for the public feedback back in May. So as Daniel mentioned, I'm gonna wrap up very quickly with some next steps. What we are gonna do now is we're coming to all the jurisdictions this month and next to discuss the plan, get your feedback, get any questions, answer any questions you may have. And then on the meeting of the 7th, there'll be a resolution to adopt the plan by each jurisdiction. One of the things in that resolution, because we are going in the alternate FEMA-approved order of local adoption, then state approval, then federal, there will be a line in that resolution where U Council will designate City Emergency Management to work with me to incorporate any changes that the state or feds say this needs to go in. We will We'll incorporate those changes and then work with you to make sure that through Daniel that we're able to get those changes back to you so it doesn't really have to come back to be another resolution to pass. Very largely based on the checklist that we go through with our contractor that we hired for this, we have in all cases met and in some areas exceeded. what the FEMA requirements are for this plan. I don't anticipate any major changes. A lot of times they'll just say, hey, consider this, consider that. We'll be able to make sure we get you those updates after that. That process, unfortunately, as Daniel alluded to, with FEMA could take a little bit of time. The only thing certain in D.C. is uncertainty, so we may be looking at several months for that. The current plan, the 21 plan, expires in the third week of July, so we wanted to make sure that there was the opportunity for Council to approve a new plan. That way we're going to have one covered Covering the jurisdictions at all times. So some of our partners that you have, you say this is the county, all of our cities and towns. And EM partners came on board to help us craft this plan. I know they're working on some other plans for the city right now. So, you know, there are no strangers here. I believe they were the ones that also wrote the city's emergency operations plan. So we were fortunate to have them come on as folks that are familiar with the area and have some knowledge themselves. So with that, I would just turn it over and ask or answer any questions or.

Councilmember Aslan Thank You madam mayor, thank you for the presentation. I'm so glad that two of you are here together so I can tell you apart We get that a lot I'm the one with the gray Hey good things come in pairs I didn't see any, okay, so three ideas for you that I didn't see in here. And you can sort of riff off of this in any order you want to or just respond to it in any way that makes sense to you. You know, I'm worried about a potential train derailment. That's not discussed here at all. A uranium spill. I know those folks aren't supposed to be going through town, but we had a truck get hit in the past month. It wasn't here, but I think it's worth developing contingency for that we're all aware of. And then thirdly, and this might be the least relevant one, but it's still something that's on my mind and I'm looking for ways to integrate it, is invasive weed control.

Councilmember, great questions. Thank you for that. So both a train derailment, a uranium spill, anything like that would be covered under the hazmat hazard that is identified in the plan. And I will, at risk of everybody close your eyes, I don't want to make anyone...

Too nauseous.

We'll go back here. So you'll see up there in the very top right, a hazmat incident does score a 3.15. That is the kind of the FEMA catch-all for things like that that we were able to put that in. Now, how we respond to those are going to be captured in other response documents as opposed to the mitigation plan itself. Those would be captured under here. Are there things that we can do to mitigate that? There's always been talk for years about rerouting the railroad to bypass Flagstaff. Things like that would be a mitigation action item, while our other plans have the actual response piece in there.

If you could reroute BNSF, that would be great.

I don't think I can. Um, we control, uh, absolutely. Uh, I, I'm not sure really how, um, I mean, I know how I would do that in my yard and the fire department frowns on that, but, uh, you know, that, that is a hazard that, that we would have to look at. Um, you know, it's, it's not one that has really caused, uh, I would say not. you know, catastrophic damage such as a wildfire or flood. But is that something that, you know, a community could come in and actually write an annex to this plan that's just for you on how our policies are, how the city wants to address that? Absolutely. I mean, that could also possibly be in building codes. You know, what type of green can we plant around, you know, different types of trees, shrubs, grasses are available.

Yeah, you know, when I speak about invasives, I'm really referring to non-natives and just some sort of program that is continuously trying to weed out non-invasive or invasive weeds and replace them with xenoscaping and natural biota. I think that is healthier for the ecosystem. It's what it's evolved to handle and over time it would become easier and easier to control. I do have one other question for you. You may have to come back to me, Mayor, because it just left my mind.

Well, I will say on that, one thing that mitigation plans are useful for is helping communities with funding for building codes. And that doesn't have to be just the international building codes, but other codes and developments. So if there's something that the city wanted to add to their codes about landscaping specifically, if they needed funding to help kind of beef that part of their codes up or ordinance up, this could be used as justification for a grant funding opportunity for that.

remember Thank you for those answers two more things real fast one kind of probably wraps into what we just talked about blight or bark beetle a Sudden die-off of ponderosa all throughout the area is something that's of concern and more likely with drought and climate change and then finally a thinking about ways to fully fund Firewise programs and getting private backyards, trees removed and things like that, compensating for the cost of those, which are very expensive and most people aren't gonna do it. But if it was somehow covered, they would do it. I think that would be, again, we're talking about how to avoid hazards more than anything else, but just wanted to toss that in the mix.

Yeah, great question. And I think a lot of it now that we're seeing, you know, getting creative and thinking outside the box and specifically to helping private property clean up their yards. The county has a FEMA hazardous fuels mitigation grant, HMGP, that... We applied for several years ago, finally received, went through the process, received funding to do just that on about 20, 24 projects down in Munns Park to go in and actually help remove some of that. This is the first time, according to FEMA, that this grant has been used on private property. So we have kind of been the test case for that and found all the headaches and hurdles. But I think there would be an opportunity there for us to collaborate and continue to potentially look for additional funding requests for that, to do just that.

I have a quick question. The scoring, the risk assessment, is this a FEMA produced scale? So does FEMA provide the criteria for how different things get scored?

Yes, ma'am, generally. And they provide the framework for that scoring, which is laid out in the plan, but it also, part of that scoring takes in, we look at the number of historical events that have happened, so we'll take wildfire. How many wildfires have impacted the area? How severe were those? So we look at that actual data, but then we do public engagement to see You know, does the community feel this is a real threat as well? So it's kind of a culmination of several factors that go into the matrix that FEMA has created the framework for. Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. Council, any additional questions? Council Member House?

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much for the presentation. I just wanted to go back to what you were sharing about the current plan expiring in July. What's the, I guess, is there a risk associated if that expires before the new one is adopted, or is it just kind of a time gap?

That's the $10 million question. By the way that state statutes and policies by FEMA govern this are written, if a jurisdiction is not covered under a approved plan, and has not adopted an approved plan, they are not eligible to receive those pre-disaster mitigation dollars or in some cases those emergency mitigation dollars that come immediately after the emergency mitigation measure. We've seen sandbags, Jersey barriers, things like that. So there is a risk. There's also that human factor of, okay, I see you're in the adoption phase, you're okay. That's why we've decided to come back and meet with councils to get adoptions now. FEMA has said that will cover us because then while they're doing their review, and if you have already chosen to adopt and pass the resolution on the 7th, then you would still be covered under this new plan while FEMA does that review.

Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Next up, we have open call to the public. Andy Fernandez.

Okay, Andy Fernandez. I have an issue here with you guys violating the Constitution and the First Amendment. This bull crap about three-minute rule, three items. They call it the Andy Fernandez rule from 1998 because the Republican Party and a couple of Democrats that were sold out were manipulating scenarios. And I had staff reports, and I caught them in numerous lies. I had people come tell me, man, Andy, you were the first reality TV show. You catch them on their lies, you put it right in their face, and then they were, uh-uh, they didn't know what to say. So stop violating our constitutional right and let us speak. Give us back the rules that used to be prior to that came out with the Andy Fernandez rule, in which you were allowed to speak at every item. You didn't matter, as long as it was in reason. I mean, you're not going to get 20 minutes or half an hour, but give me 10 minutes. But to manipulate these scenarios for your benefit, then at 3 PM, you guys started manipulating that scenario here just 6, 7 years ago now. That's appalling. That's why you never see anybody here. The other scenario is how often do you get packed houses here to manipulate these time sequencing scenarios? Very rarely, less than 6% of the polling. Now regarding this other scenario here, we need to facilitate addressing the gray water, the piss and shit that's going to the snowball. I initiated the Save the Peaks in 1997. Now, the scenario here is I went to a meeting here just a few days ago, and it comes to my attention that 43 to 47% of this affluent water is on top of where the people are skiing on, up at the Snow Bowl. They're skiing on shit and piss. Give me a break. That's appalling. I mean, that's why we have these disease and the flu and other scenarios. That's a scenario that we need a stop because legally they signed a contract that disallows them from having the gray water on top. It's supposed to be underneath and the actual fresh real mother nature snow on top. Now, the other scenarios here is, again, back with the oligarchs with that organized crime with the city, state, and federal, and the inclusion with the Chambers of Commerce, the Northern Arizona Home Builders, and many other agencies. You know, usually the fire department and other agencies get involved in these scenarios. The G.O.P. parasitical scenario with the realtors came out to circumvent or manipulate the county assessors with bribes to manipulate cost of housing to allow them to increase. Like in 1999, 98, when you had houses of 73 to 83,000 here in Flagstaff, and within a six-and-a-half-year short time frame, boom. 480 to 585,000 that's ridiculous here you then you now allow the these Realtors to outsource to people from California or anywhere else like would pay three to five hundred six hundred thousand and screwed us locals and we came up with the Friends of like said future but there's a consultant and three times I told him who brought you in and he wouldn't tell me it wasn't on the staff report Joe Donaldson didn't allow me to speak and it turned out it was flat your time. I keep accurate and a Becky baggery the time is up Thank you

All right, moving on to announcements and updates, two from Council and City Manager. Council Member Spence.

Thank you, Mayor. I have two things to share this evening. This last week, there was a meeting of the Fourth Street Business Community and the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association meeting at the Market of Dreams. And city staff were there to show the Sunnyside businesses and neighborhood how to access city support for improvement. So it's an ongoing project. The second thing, is at a recent Coconino Community College board meeting, I met with Dean Mark Hartley, and he is developing a course or a seminar on civic engagement, and he'll be reaching out to elected officials to participate with him in a program for Coconino College community students. Thank you.

Councilmember house Just one thing from me tonight. I wanted to acknowledge that last week myself councilmember Matthews city manager And the assistant city manager were all in attendance at the Flagstaff Police Department promotion and awards ceremony It was a wonderful time to celebrate the work that they're doing in our community hear stories of their acts of service and heroism and just celebrate the promotions of several officers within the department. Thank you, Mayor.

Vice Mayor. Thank you, and I was very sad to miss that. It was a busy weekend, as I'm sure you all have heard, but I do have a special thank you that I wanted to do for our amazing team who helped put on the Centennial Route 66 celebration. Lori Pappas and Serena Beard, I hope they both are on vacation right now, because they put in a lot of hours, along with Trace and Ralph. And I'm sure there's a lot of amazing staff that are behind the scenes working to make that event such a huge success. We had Governor Hobbs here. The mayor and I got to take her around downtown, had her go into some shops. And it was just such an honor to show her my favorite places. And it was great. And also Heidi and Kinney Construction were involved in donating some signs throughout the downtown, helping us celebrate the centennial. So a great weekend all around, and everyone worked very hard, and I truly appreciate it. Thanks. Council Member Aslan.

Council Member Garcia.

I have nothing tonight, Mayor. Thank you.

Council Member Matthews.

Thank you, Mayor. Thursday at 11 o'clock is our monthly Indigenous Commission meeting. The public can click the link on our calendar and participate online if they would like to. And I have on my calendar that Friday we have the GFR Recruit Firefighters graduation at City Hall. I believe that's taking place. And just also want to say kudos to the Discover Flagstaff team. One of Governor Hobbs' staff members, Eli, came and wanted to make a specific comment about how great and organized our team was and how impressed he was. And he does a lot of events. And so he thought it was important to share that because of how much we stand out. So congratulations to the team.

Nothing for me city manager.

Um, mayor council, I just wanted to provide, um, just a quick update on the flags flying outside out front of city hall. Um, so if you recall, we do have a process where we bring, um, the list of flags to city council, city council approves you, um, add, delete, we have a discussion about it. In December 16th, 2025, we approved the, or council approved the flag display for the year. And during that time, there was a discussion about adding a Route 66 Centennial flag in June. As you know, we had our big event on Saturday. So the Route 66 Centennial flag is flying from June 1st to June 15th. and then the Pride flag will go up from June 16th through June 30th. And our policy actually states that we can't fly two flags at the same time, so that's why we split them up in the month. So I know we've had a few questions about when the Pride flag is going up. It's going to be June 16th, and just wanted to give an update. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, we're adjourned.