Tri-City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everybody here on this warm July afternoon to Kingman City Council. This is the regularly scheduled Kingman City Council held at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, July 7, 2026. We'd like to turn some time over first to our city clerk, Annie Meredith, for a roll call.

Mayor Watkins.

Present.

Vice Mayor Samily. Here. Council Member Dykens.

Here.

Council Member Savage.

Here.

Council Member Staley. Present. Council Member Walker. Here. Council Member Ward.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you, Annie. Our invocation tonight will be given by Pastor Peter Ernst of Family Bible Church. I would like to invite those who would like to stand with us in this moment of prayer, after which I have asked Councilman Dikins to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Father God, we thank you for your benevolence to us. Nation under God, 250 years you have cared for us, watched over us. Your word says, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Your word also says that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Father God, thank you for freedom. The rest of the world looks with envy at this great land. And Lord, we can't take any credit for it. It all belongs to you. You are the high king of heaven, and we worship you. Thank you for this time tonight. We pray your blessing and wisdom over our mayor and each one of our city council members. Thank you, Lord, for our police department, fire department, and all the departments of this great city that make it such a great place to live. We pray your blessing now, and in Jesus' name, amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. The council may go into executive session for legal counsel in accordance with ARS 38-431.03 to discuss any agenda item. The following items may be discussed, considered, and decisions related thereto. Item number one, appointments. 1A, Economic Development Advisory Commission Partial Term Appointment. The Economic Development Advisory Commission currently has one vacancy due to the resignation of Commissioner Ben Leparn. this is a partial term appointment with a term starting july two thousand twenty six and ending december thirty first two thousand twenty eight staff has received eleven city resident applications from the following interest interested individuals carl stewart kathy gates christopher acres vicky zumal christopher cranny john molitor John Bennett, Daniel Christensen, Calvin Brostrom, Douglas Bach, and Darren Rasmussen. Staff has received three county resident applications from the following interested individuals. Jeremy Brunk, Mary Ann Salem, and John Berger. The code allows for two non-residents on the commission and there is currently only one non-resident. Residency and voter registration have been confirmed. Council discretion. And, of course, at the end of that, per ARS 38-431.0381, the City Council may enter into an executive session to review the commission applications. We have a number of these folks here. Council, I think most of you have had a chance to take a look at all the documentation that we have on it. Are there some of you that would like to get up and speak on your behalf? of the names that I have read. I see lots of hands, so that's great, and we appreciate you wanting to participate in government. So if you could come forward and please say your name clearly, and we'll go from there. You know, I don't really have a list. Let's start with the first one, I think. We'll just go down the list here. Carl Stewart. Okay. Kathy Gates. Christopher Akers. Vicky Zumwalt I know Vicky is online on Zoom so welcome Ms. Zumwalt. Whoops. Can you unmute her Annie.

Vicky you're muted.

Hi, is that better? We can hear you.

My name is Vicki Zumwalt and thank you very much for having me this evening, Mayor and Vice Mayor and Council Members. I'm unfortunately out of state. I'm coming back tomorrow, so I'm joining you via Zoom. I am very interested in the position and I hope you've had an opportunity to look at my resume and my letter of recommendation. As well as other documentation, if you have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Thank you Vicki council any questions for Vicki. Okay, thank you. Christopher cranny.

Christopher Craney, Bachelor of Science in Economics from ASU. I have over 19 years of real estate investment experience, both in Arizona and Colorado. Oh, also Pennsylvania and Maine. And then I have almost a decade of experience in the public sector. I would like to see a data center, electrical experiments, electromagnetic experiments and research, and experimental computers at the Kingman Industrial Air Park. And so I'm going to be able to attract and retain a data center company that is ethical. Meta was just in the news in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And their inner cooling loop at their data center unfortunately created a new type of deadly bacteria that found its way into the groundwater system in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And that's just horrifying. And I want to see data centers that are ethical, that do not negatively impact local residents. So I'm going to be aggressively trying to recruit and retain data center companies that are ethical.

Okay. Thank you Christopher. John Molitor. Hopefully I'm saying that last name right. Okay. John Bennett. I know he's not here tonight. Daniel Christiansen. Christian.

hello sorry about that no no not a problem i get it a lot so as you mentioned i'm daniel christian i moved here back in 2020 so i've been here a little over six years i've been a licensed attorney for well next month will be 15 years started my career out as high net worth estate planning attorney a tax attorney helping small businesses well not privately held businesses, some were quite large, grow and plan. And then the pandemic kind of switched things a little bit. I wanted to be employed, came out here. I stuck around. I liked Kingman. I like the people. I like what I do. I switched to criminal law. So I do work for the county. My education, while I didn't quite finish my bachelor's degree in economics, I think I'm three classes short, obviously I have a law degree. I also have a degree beyond a law degree from University of Washington Law School. It's an LLM, not a large language model, but it was in tax law. So I also worked with a lot of international clients because I took those courses as well. I do have graduate work, I think nine courses in business graduate work. I haven't finished my dissertation yet. But I like to try to be involved and help wherever I can be, kind of all over when it comes to professional services. But I like economics. I like understanding things. I like systems. And so I will fill in wherever needed and do whatever grunt work needs to be done or other things that need to be done. But thank you.

Thank you, Daniel. Calvin Brostrom.

Hi, I'm Cal Brostrom. My wife and I moved here nine years ago. And to be closer to our two oldest daughters and our grandchildren, I'd like to volunteer my analytical skills to help Kingman. I enjoy living here. This is a wonderful place to live and would like to participate in the process. Thank you. Thank you, Calvin.

Douglas Bach. Darren Rasmussen.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, Council Members. Thank you for having me. My name is Darren Rasmussen. I currently serve as the Chief Deputy Assessor for Mojave County. I believe you have my application in hand, so I won't go into great detail unless you have any further questions about my career. I can tell you this. I've been doing valuation, highest and best use. and what we call in the industry PEGS, which is, is it physically able? Is it economically able? Is it governmentally able? Is it socially available? I help navigate complex issues throughout that entire process. And I'm just, I'm really excited to be a part of help fostering some sustainable economic growth and everything that comes with it. So it looks like there's a lot of qualified people here in the audience. So I just appreciate your consideration. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Darren. And then we have Jeremy Brunk.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, city staff. It's an honor to be here, and thank you for having me. My name's Jeremy Brunk. I work for TWN Communications in Bullhead City. We're partners with Mojave Electric. My responsibility was to manage a project to bring fiber optics to everybody from basically Highway 68 down to Needles, California. We were able to accomplish that in five years, which is a huge accomplishment. During that time, I was having to manage budgets, timelines, crews, safety, all those kinds of things. But before moving to Kingman in 2005, I resided in Bullhead City, where I was actively involved in the civic life. Notably, I served as a president of the Boys and Girls Club for five years, where I oversaw and developed a 10,000 square foot gymnasium. I was also involved in creating some revenue resources for the Boys and Girls Club. Excuse me. And for the revenue sources, meaning that they were the thrift stores. The thrift stores were able to generate money to keep the Boys and Girls Club going. I've also been a proud member of the Bullhead City Chamber of Commerce since 2006. If appointed, I'll dedicate myself in advising, guiding, and monitoring economic development efforts, ensuring they align with our community's needs, our business interests, and the long-term economic goals. Thank you for having me, and I stand for any questions. Any questions?

Thank you. Thank you, Jeremy. Actually, I didn't. Council, please forgive me. I didn't ask if anybody else wanted to ask questions of any of the candidates, but no one spoke up, so I figured we're good. Okay, thank you. I know Mary Ann Salem is not here tonight. And then John, is it Berger or Berger? Is he here tonight? Okay, thank you. Okay, Council, what would your pleasure be?

I'd like to make a motion that we go into executive session, please.

We have a motion to go into executive session. Do we have a second? We have a second. Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We will be right back. And once again, appreciate you all and your patience of being here tonight. Well, we are back from an executive session, and we appreciate all of you staying around. And of course, all of you, especially those who are here tonight, made it difficult for this decision. We just want to let you know there's a lot of qualifications, and we could sense a lot of the passion that you have in wanting to serve in our city. But tonight, we have decided to ask Vicki Zumwalt to fill this a partial term appointment, which will start July 2026 this month and end in December 2028. And I'll make that motion. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Once again, though, we also want to reiterate the fact that we coming january twenty seven we have a number of commissions like this one in fact this one alone will have two vacancies coming up in january twenty seven and we have a number of other commissions that are everybody wants to be on certain commissions and we understand that and uh... please keep posted and watch the city website so that you can see the openings that will come available. And please resubmit your applications. And thanks again for being here tonight, all of you.

Mayor, if I may? Yes. We'll probably post that in November. So we'll probably get something out end of October, sometime in November of those vacancies that we'll be looking for. And then those decisions will be made December to take effect in January. OK.

Manager Walsh, thank you for that. Okay, once again, thanks to all of you for being here tonight.

Did you guys vote? We did. Sorry, I was daydreaming.

We did award it to Ms. Zumwalt. Carl, she's taking care of us. Okay. Item number two, call to the public comments from the public. Those wishing to address the council should fill out request forms in advance. Comments from the public will be restricted to items not on the agenda with the exception of those on the consent agenda. There will be no comments allowed that advertise for a particular person or group. Comments should be limited to no longer than three minutes. The council may not respond to speakers during the call to the public. The council may direct the city manager to study the matter or request that the matter be placed on a future agenda. First up, we have Mr. Dr. Rob Christensen, if you'd like to come forward.

Dr. Rob Christensen, I reside at 3951 Solenton Drive here in Kingman. I want to thank the Kingman City Council for providing me the opportunity to address two issues during this portion of the meeting. Those issues include CART and the right of individuals to seek government redrafts without censorship and viewpoint discrimination. First, I want to let the Kingman City Council know that I testified at the Mojave County Board of Supervisors meeting yesterday. Representing myself as a private citizen of Kingman and Mojave County, I communicated reasons pertaining to my initial opposition to the continuation of CART's yellow route, and I urged the Mojave County Board of Supervisors to work collaboratively with Kingman and provide financial support for CART's yellow route. I shared a copy of that testimony in a letter dated today addressed to the Kingman City Council, which you should have in front of you. Second, I want to thank the Kingman City Council for providing Kingman residents the opportunity to communicate their feelings and positions concerning issues facing Kingman without censoring or prematurely terminating their speaking time due to viewpoint discrimination or for other irrational reasons. Even though Mojave County taxpayers fund the operations of local governmental entities, it is unfortunate that not all Mojave County local governmental entities follow Kamen's example. A particular local governmental entity believes it can censor or prematurely terminate taxpayers' speaking time due to viewpoint discrimination or for other irrational reasons. Of course, this violates taxpayers' constitutional and statutory rights, but again, it appears that this local governmental entity does not care about taxpayers' rights. In closing, I want to thank the Kingman City Council for the opportunity to speak during this portion of the Kingman City Council meeting.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Christensen. Ms. Penny Holden?

Penny Holden, Kingman. I was here at the coffee with the mayor and we talked about Kingman Crossing and I asked you how Kingman Crossing was gonna be funded and you said you were gonna try, you guys said you were gonna try to get the development people to fund it and I asked you about KRMC and their 20 million to 50 million dollar donation. You said that they backed out of that contract So yesterday at the Board of Supervisors, Travis Lingenfelter told everybody that they have donated $55 million to Kingman Crossing. So I've been asked by several of members in the public to come down here and speak and ask for clarification because the city's saying they ain't donating. And the county is saying they are donating. So I would like to get clarification and get a public FOIA request to find out if they are contracted with you, if they're not, and how much they're contracting to do that crossing. Because I think the money that the hospital has should be better spent bringing doctors into the area than it should be to put a crossing in. And that's just my personal opinion. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Holden. Ryan Reeve? Did I say that last name right, Ryan?

You did, thank you. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members, city manager, and members of our community. My name is Ryan Reif, and I have the privilege of serving as the director of provider recruitment at Kingman Regional Medical Center. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. More importantly, thank you for the partnership that you've built with CareMC. and for the time that you've invested in welcoming our physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and resident physicians. I truly appreciate your willingness to meet with our candidates and share your vision for Kingman. I want you to know that your efforts make a real difference. Every week, I have conversations with physicians across the country. They can choose to practice anywhere. While they certainly ask about the hospital, what they're really trying to determine is whether Kingman feels like home. They ask about our schools, neighborhoods, parks, outdoor recreation, opportunities for their spouses, and whether this is a community where they can build a meaningful life. Those questions cannot be answered with a brochure, a website, or even a hospital tour. They're answered by the people in this room. When our candidates visit, they don't just tour KMC. They have an opportunity to visit with city leadership, hear about the exciting growth taking place throughout Kingman, and experience something that can't be manufactured, authentic pride in this community. They see people who care about the future, who work together, and who are committed to making Kingman an exceptional place to call home. That partnership has become one of the reasons physicians choose Kingman. They leave with the confidence that this isn't just a place to practice medicine. It's a place where they can build a career, raise a family, and become part of a community that genuinely welcomes them. Every provider that we recruit represents far more than filling an open position. It means improved access to healthcare, shorter wait times, expanded specialty care, and better care for our patients. It also means new families moving into our neighborhoods, children enrolling in our schools, spouses contributing to our workforce, and investments that strengthen our local economy. Provider recruitment is a community development. I'm especially excited about our resident physicians. They are choosing Kingman as a place to begin their careers. Many of them will build lasting relationships here, establish practices here, and care for our families for years to come. The way we welcome them today helps shape, am I good on time?

Go ahead and finish.

OK, thank you. Help shape the future of health care in our community. As Kingman continues to grow, health care must grow alongside of it. Recruiting exceptional providers isn't just about meeting today's needs. It's about ensuring that 5, 10, and 20 years from now, our families continue to have access to outstanding health care close to home. Healthcare, economic development, education, housing, recreation, and quality of life are all connected. When one succeeds, we all succeed. That's why the partnership between KRMC and the city has become such an important part of our recruitment efforts. Together, we're showing candidates that Kingman isn't just a place to practice medicine, it's a place to build a life. Your vision, your pride in this community, and your commitment to its future has made a lasting impression on the people that we recruit. I truly believe Kingman is entering an exciting chapter. We have momentum, we have opportunity. Most importantly, we have people who care deeply about this community and are willing to work together to make it even stronger. Thank you for your partnership, your leadership, and for helping us to build not just a healthier hospital, but a healthier, stronger Kingman. I can't wait to see what we accomplish together. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Reeve. That is all that we have from call to the public. Item number three, consent agenda. All matters listed here are considered to be routine by the city council and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items. If discussion is desired, that item will be removed from the consent agenda and will be considered separately. Council, we have items A through J. Is there any item that needs to be pulled for discussion?

I'd like to pull aye, please.

Vice mayor, okay. Anything else? And we have a motion then approving our consent agenda, items A through J, with the exception of I.

So moved. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Item 3J, approval of resolution number 5623, authorization to submit an application to Arizona's Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, DEMA. and authorize the mayor as the applicant authorized representative. On June 22nd, 2026, the United States Department of Homeland Security issued a notice of funding opportunity for their fiscal year 2026 pre-disaster mitigation, PDM. funding to the city's Bull Mountain Channel improvements project. Resolution number 5623 is to approve the city's submission of the fiscal year 2026 pre-disaster mitigation. Congressionally directed spending grant program application to complete the Bull Mountain Channel improvements and designate the mayor as the applicant authorized representative. Staff recommends approval. Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. I pulled this because I just wanted to talk briefly about our trip to DC. We hear from the public all the time about why are you going back to DC? Why are you spending taxpayer dollars? you know, is anything coming of it? And I really wanted to bring the attention to this item because this is an example of what can happen when you sit across the table from your delegation back in DC. So I want to thank Senators Kelly and Gallego for listening to us, for taking our meetings. I want to thank staff. I want to thank Ms. Moline and City Manager Walsh for explaining the projects. We go there with a stack of projects and an ask of money that's a mile long. We talk to them about these projects, and we talk to them about how expensive it is, and we talk to them about our funding sources, and they really do listen. This time, we got to come back with a suitcase full of money. We got a half a million dollars that is going to help with our drainage and help mitigate that drainage up Stockton Hills. I really want the public to understand that these trips are important. These relationships that we foster are important and they do hear us all the way back in DC and it's important. So with that, I would like to make a motion to approve.

Can I say one thing? When I read that, of course, you chose the longest one to read. Thank you.

You're welcome.

But I did skip over that one sentence. It said, congressionally directed spending grant program, which included $493,000 in grant money. I mean, we... We see all these grants that are directed to the city that are possibilities that we can apply for. But by us going back there in person, it really puts more emphasis on where we need the money. And so I appreciate all that you've said about that. But yes, Vice Mayor, would you like to make a motion on item 3i?

So moved. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Motion carries. Action items number 4A, agreement for professional services for area traffic study at intersection of Wallapai Mountain Road, Stockton Hill Road, Annie Devine Avenue. The intersection of Wallapine Mountain Road, Stockton Hill Road, and Annie Devine Avenue experiences significant delays during the peak hours in multiple directions. Kim Lee Horn submitted a proposal in the amount of $99,775 to identify near-term, low-cost solutions to address safety and congestion. This project was approved in the fiscal year 2026-27, adopted budget, and the five-year capital improvement plan. Staff recommends approval. Manager Walsh, do you want to step on this or? Oh. We've got the city engineer here.

Almost immediately when I came here, there were numerous discussions about ways to improve traffic flow at this intersection. I had some ideas. Jack had some ideas. Our new project manager or civil engineer had ideas. We thought that it would be a good idea to hire Kimley Horn who has done a lot of traffic studies around Kingman to take a fresh look and not just analyze the usual solutions, but to just really take a wide open view of it. Jack had suggested, for instance, a direct connection ramp to basically bypass the intersection from northbound to eastbound. I came up with some bizarre ideas of jug handles and things like this from back east. So basically this study is to analyze a whole range of possibilities. One of the things that's gonna be included is the the pork chop opposite the post office, which has been mentioned several times by several individuals. So we're taking a big view of that whole area and just seeing what we can do to hopefully permanently solve some of the problems that are there right now. And it may be as simple as revising signal timing, maybe some physical improvements, kind of the classical thing, add another lane, and then also look at some of these kind of more innovative or off-the-wall solutions. So that's the purpose of this study.

Thank you, Robert. Any questions for Robert? I just have a comment.

I am really appreciative that you put the blurb in there because that intersection of Hall and Stockton Hill Road is an extremely dangerous intersection. And I think it's just a matter of time before something happens there. Catastrophic. There's several accidents that happen there on the multiple. So I just wanted to clarify that that intersection is going to be included in the remedy for what's happening on Stockton Hill and Andy.

Yeah, really, it's probably going to cover within a quarter mile, maybe even up to a half mile radius of the intersection itself. So there's a lot of things that are going to be looked at.

Okay, great. I appreciate that. Thank you so much, sir.

Any other questions? I do have one. Yes, Councillor Savage.

I'm glad this is on the agenda, because I actually had the question posed to me yesterday. And granted, they were a little out of skew about the amount for the study. And their comment was, why do you got to spend money on a study? You know it's messed up. Well, thank you for clarifying why we need to study. You take the money to know and accomplish something and do it right. And this is one of those situations that's really got to be done right. So I appreciate you bringing that to us.

I think that... we need to look beyond just the usual, because there's been several things that have been done there and really hasn't totally addressed the problem. So looking at a whole range of possibilities, a lot of them are kind of off the wall and probably won't pan out, but it needs to be analyzed to find something that we can do within a reasonable amount of money, but really make an impact there. Any other?

Yes, counselor. I don't have a question. I have a comment. In the letter from Kimberly Horn, one of the things that is written is it's recognized that the opening of I-40 Flying Fortress Parkway traffic interchange, which is under construction and slated for completion in summer of 2026, is expected to shift traffic patterns in Southeast Kingman as drivers will have a more direct route to I-40. Personally, I'm not in favor of doing this study right yet. I don't think we need to be spending $100,000 at this point. I think it needs to be put off for several months. My opinion is we should let the interchange open. Let's see if this problem self-corrects. If not, after a few months, then we can move forward. But at this point, I think we need to at least let's see if the problem self-corrects as they even state in that letter.

Councilman Dykens, you bring up a valid point. I had a citizen also bring that to my attention, that why don't we wait until, as Kimley Horne mentioned, why don't we wait until after Flying Fortress Parkway opens, because it's gonna take a lot of traffic off the south bench there, southeast bench of our city. and move it, it should help alleviate some of these problems. So as you mentioned, maybe do the study a couple months after that opens and see how, I think we would get better data then. So you bring up a valid point. So.

Vice Mayor. Go ahead. Okay. I'm in favor of waiting, but I just think that I would imagine that staff has the wherewithal that this will be timed about that time to where we will be able to mitigate that traffic. I can't imagine we're spending $100,000 prematurely before. So can you speak to the timeline on that?

Actually, this item originally was going to come to council back spring, if I remember right, and it got delayed until now. But even back then, Kimley Horn said that they would not only do traffic counts now, but wait until after Flying Fortress interchange opened and then go back and see how much that changed. So the plan was always to basically wait until that traffic diversion or whatever takes place. And at this point, by the time we actually get a contract and everything, it's gonna be pretty close to September. So we can pretty much control, just tell them to hold off for a couple months before they start or not execute the contract.

I like the pre and post. We have some baseline pre-construction, post-construction. We can see in the numbers what the traffic's going to do.

Yeah, that's exactly what we're trying to do is to get some counts before it opens and then see how much it changes afterwards. Because there's a lot of debate. Some people think it'll make a huge difference. Other people don't really think it's going to be a major difference. So, you know, we can do anything that you want. But that was the original approach was to get a pre-Flying Fortress counts and then post flying fortress counts and Obviously we can you know draw whatever conclusions we wanted I mean the study can say whatever it wants to what the city will be the one that selects What's going to be done?

Mayor, if I might interject. Yes, Manager Walsh. As a city engineer mentioned, we have, we selected Kimley Horn due to their experience with City of Kingman. They've participated in our overall master plan for our traffic study. Jack was involved in a lot of that. I think he can speak to the model that they used and some of the basically anticipating Flying Fortress anticipating Kingman crossing and and inputting those so I'll let director I

Sure. Thank you, Manager Walsh. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council. As Manager Walsh indicated, Kimley Horn was partially selected because of the fact they had done our transportation master plan. As part of that, we had traffic counts. We had a lot of traffic information we pulled, including from some AI sources and things, to build a traffic model that covers the city network as a whole. And then as part of that, we anticipated growth in particular areas based on subdivisions Commercial growth we knew it was occurring or anticipating to occur in those timelines and so to answer your question vice mayor we're gonna do both as as as Robert had indicated we can start some of this process gathering information and the counts and things pre Opening of Flying Fortress Parkway and then finalize the report after and that actually helps us in two ways one we don't we don't use money where we shouldn't we're not preemptive and then secondly what it'll actually do is it'll help us calibrate our model even tighter because in that model we predicted or ran scenarios uh if neither flying fortress or kingman crossing existed and if either one existed and then if both of those existed so We already have some anticipation of what those traffic demands are going to be at the intersection and this would be warranted either way But this will help us refine that and refine what those improvements may look like Thank You Jake councilman Ward and then councilman Dykens I think you both had comments or smiley where they answered kelvin Dykens I I still

I still believe we need to wait a few months. In their letter, they stated, and maybe it's because it was written at the end of 2025, but they stated in their letter that under this contract, they will have the majority of the results of the entire survey done before Flying Fortress opens, which number one, I don't see that it's possible. But number two, if we're talking about spending $100,000 or almost $100,000, I don't see a problem with postponing it a few months. If you've sat in that intersection, you know how bad it is. And I sit in it quite frequently because I'm not smart enough to remember what time it is and then I'm stuck in it. I'm not in favor of pursuing this at this point. I think we need to wait and give it the opportunity to see if it self-corrects. Mayor?

Oh, yes. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interject, but if I could, Mayor and Councilman Dikens, we can absolutely delay that portion of Stockton Hill for a period of time to make sure that we have everything in line, that we're not going to do anything preemptive. But keep in mind there is a secondary part of this, which was the Hall-Johnson intersection as well. So we can start on that portion and I hope don't I hope I don't stick my speak on behalf of Robert inappropriately, but we have other work that we can do in this contract and wait before we do the final counts and everything for the intersection. What I can tell you is in the traffic model, we ran scenarios out to horizon of 2045. And even with both of the intersections in place because of the nature of way downtown is, you're still going to have a significant amount of traffic. And it was a lower level of service, which would still warrant some type of improvement, which we've done everything we can with the signal with the exception of right now, we're working on a upgrade to the cabinet and some, some cameras to help with some better detection, but otherwise timing, uh, we're, we're out of anything we can do signal wise. It's going to take physical improvements to the intersection to make it more efficient.

Okay. Any more questions for Jack this time?

I just wanted to say, you made the point that I was going to make to Councillor Dikens. If Hall and Johnson, they're not going to correct themselves. So if we can work on that first and get some counts and some things, It's just a matter of time, and I don't want to sit up here having to have this discussion because we waited any more time. It's been well over years that I've brought this to the attention of city managers that that intersection is very dangerous.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Smiley? I have a question.

Jack, during any of that, have they looked at a roundabout?

No, I'm serious. We did not in that intersection because of the volume of traffic. Roundabouts do have their function in certain areas. That is not one that would work well, especially because of the right of way that's needed. And that's one of the restricting issues we have there currently is there's not a lot of right-of-way to add additional lanes. And that's part of what this DCR would do is identify the right-of-way that would be needed to implement certain improvements and what those improvements would make as far as traffic efficiency or safety. So the short answer is no, we did not consider a roundabout there.

Councillor Saley. We do have, also too, we do have a couple of citizens that would like to share some comments. But Councillor Saley.

So you're saying no roundabout? Because I read on the internet today that we are just dying to put a roundabout in there, so.

Yeah, I'm not sure where they got it from, but not in that location at the very least.

I'm glad we clarified that.

Thank you for that clarification.

So my question, kind of going back to your comments about waiting, don't you feel that part of this problem is also due to the interchange down here on Beale, our new interchange downtown, as well as Clax Canyon being closed?

I would say there's some. It's clear there is some impact, but I don't know if that's the greatest majority because if you watch the intersection, the peaks are 7, 7.30 in the morning when everybody's coming down Wallapai Mountain Road and filtering either up Stockton Hill or downtown. The left turn is the one that queues up the hardest because it's a single left turn lane, has the shortest protected time to make that movement. And so we had actually stepped back a year and a half or so ago. We actually had a traffic engineer look at it to see if we could do anything timing-wise to the intersection. We had made the, that's a split phase, so if you're on Andy Devine, you get one movement at a time, which includes the turn lanes and the through. And we had looked at trying to do that around the intersection. It lowers the level of service. So we've done everything we can to that intersection. Most of the driving traffic or the traffic generation, especially for the haul issue, is those existing businesses. That won't go away. No matter how they go, they're gonna have to get to those locations. And so that will always exist unless the post office and some of those businesses relocate. then the other direction is people going up Andy Devine and depending on where you're going yes Rancho will make a difference but the model would show also you're not going to get on Stockton or I'm sorry on i-40 go past all the way to Rancho Santa Fe, come back down Louise and filter into those homes. So the impact for the downtown area is likely going to be less with the Kingman Crossing interchange than it will be with Kingman Crossing just because of the vicinity to people's homes.

OK. My other question is, because I have a little bit of heartburn about spending this much money on a study as well. Can you explain to us, I know Robert touched on this, but why we couldn't make those changes to Hall and Johnson and add another turn lane or whatever we need without the study. Can you talk about why you really feel like this is a worthwhile use of taxpayer dollars?

Sure. One of the first things that we look at is bringing in expertise. We have great engineers. But when you're looking at the traffic world and the planning world, that is a different environment. It's different software and tools that they use. And so bringing that technology and that expertise to the table is pretty important. That's what we did with the traffic master plan which keep in mind the master plan is an umbrella over the whole city and really kind of regionally because we did look at projects that connect through the county and and Because you know our transportation system is blended You may have a city county line, but nobody knows that as they're driving and And so bringing in that technology, now we're zooming that into a particular spot. And again, technology, experience, and then if you have a design that comes through, part of the world of using that is also some of the liability piece. We bring those people in that have that expertise, look at it, and say, hey, here, based on traffic modeling, based on demand, based on future growth predictions, whatever it is, these are the appropriate improvements. So we don't make an improvement now and regret it five years down the road.

Okay, thank you.

Councillor Dikins.

Question for the city manager. If we approve this tonight, are we then basically under contract for all $99,775? And my reasoning for asking this is, okay, I understand and totally agree that we have those problems by the post office and stuff. But if we approve this spending tonight, are we locked into having to fulfill this total agreement and not just work on that little part? Aren't we going to be under contract basically to do the whole thing?

Give me one second.

It would be for the total cost.

So looking at the contract, it does, it says fees and expenses, it's a lump sum fee for the $99,000. So there is... There is the ability, if it were approved tonight, to go back, go to Kimley Horn, schedule out the project, and work a deduction change order. There's no guarantee that they would have to agree to that. Right now, this contract, as it's written, is basically that $99,000 to do the whole project. we could if it were approved we could go back do a deduction change order say or just schedule the work with them so we want to do this portion of the work um the rest of it we want to wait until the the interchange gets done and then bring that online later so there are options there and kimley horn's been great we we do a lot of work with them i would suspect that they would be open to a change order if there was a portion of the the work that we were not going to do i would expect that they would be open to a change order to reduce that amount, but as the contract's written, it's a lump sum contract.

Okay, Council. Jack, stay close. We might need you again. Thank you. We'd like to have Dr. Rob Christensen from the public come up and comment.

Dr. Rob Christensen, I reside at 3951 Swanson Drive. I'M HAPPY TO OBSERVE THAT THE KINGDOM CITY COUNCIL IS ADDRESSING THE TRAFFIC CONGESTION AT THIS INTERSECTION. I'VE DRIVEN THROUGH THIS INTERSECTION NUMEROUS TIMES DURING PEAK TRAFFIC HOURS AND IT'S TAKEN ME MULTIPLE SIGNAL CYCLES TO NAVIGATE THROUGH THIS INTERSECTION. THE NORMAL NAVIGATION THROUGH THIS INTERSECTION IS ONE CONCERN, BUT THERE IS A GREATER CONCERN THAT IMPACTS RESIDENTS THAT LIVE SOUTH OF THIS INTERSECTION. With limited routes to exit the southern part of Kingman, traffic congestion at this intersection can adversely impact resident evacuations or first responders entering or exiting the area during emergency situations. Therefore, I support any reasonable action that Kingman can take to relieve traffic congestion at this intersection. But I hope that the Kingman City Council will continue to address traffic congestion in other parts of Kingman. Other areas include the traffic congestion and intersection design issues on Stockton Hill Road between Airway Avenue and Detroit Avenue, especially the Beverly Avenue, Stockton Hill Avenue, and the I-40 westbound Stockton Hill Avenue intersections. Also, I want to go off my script and just say a couple things I've heard this evening as a libertarian minded Republican. I don't like the city spending money So I understand that but I think there's a remedy to your concerns I think that you could probably change you know put wording in the contract where you're collecting pre post data at that intersection and pre post data would be probably Sufficient and actually good to know how the the new intersection impacts traffic so i'm not a lawyer i just have a lowly phd and two master's degrees um but i'm sure your city manager city manager and city attorney can probably work some language out that spells doing pre and post measures at the intersection for the amount that's stated you know on the agenda and if not then you know maybe you need to say enough right now but thank you for the time to speak on this issue Thank you, Dr Christensen. Ms Penny Holden.

Penny Holden, Kingman. We all know why the intersection there is bad. I mean, the growth didn't, the infrastructure didn't keep up with the growth. But I want to thank Mr. Deichen, because he brought up exactly what I wanted to bring up. Why can't you do two separate contracts? Because I know that place over by the post office is a disaster right now, and I agree with you on that. But why don't you make two separate contracts? and do the post office area because it does need to be done and then wait until the Flying Fortress opens up and then do that second part and have two separate contracts. I don't understand why we want to spend $100,000 when we don't even know what Flying Fortress is going to do to that intersection because we know it's going to change. So I just don't understand why you want to spend $100,000 when it's going to open up in September a few months down the road subject why can't you just sit down and do two separate contracts and then you can start the post office one and then c and add to it i mean you can always add you just can't take away and once the contract sign you know that that they're going to get paid a hundred thousand dollars whether you do it or not they're gonna get the $100,000. And I think as a taxpayer, I would rather see you take a little bit of time, see what Flying Fortress does, agree to do the post office one, because we all know, I mean, everybody's gonna agree to that one and stuff, but the Flying Fortress one, you don't know what that's gonna bring. And y'all kept promoting it and promoting it to the people, oh, we opened Flying Fortress and we're going to cut the traffic because they're going to get on 40 and it's going to cut the traffic on Stockton Hill. Well, stand behind what you're telling the people to get them to agree to Flying Fortress to begin with because that's what you told us. So my thing is, let's save $100,000 and either split the contract in two or wait until Flying Fortress comes and then make that decision. But stand behind what you sold to the public here, that Flying Fortress was going to take traffic off of Stockton Hill. Stand behind that. we want to see how much it changes and if it was true or did you lie and say oh it's going to do this but we had we knew it weren't going to do it because that's what people's going to see and it's not going to look good on none of you so i'm just telling you if it was me that's what i would do thank you thank you miss holden okay council what are your thoughts i have a question mayor um

Manager Walsh, do we have pre completion data for Flying Fortress? So I want to know if we have that data already, because to miss Holden's point, if we don't know what we're comparing to, how do we know what the improvement is going to be? So I'm trying to get there with you, but I want to know. I think it's important. I think it's important that we know what we have now so that we have a benchmark to compare to once it's open so that if there is improvement, there is improvement.

Yeah, Vice Mayor, didn't mean to jump in front of Manager Walsh, but that really brings us back to the transportation master plan and the traffic model that was built for that project. To answer your question, yes, we do have anticipated changes if we do nothing. If we build either of the interchanges or if we build both interchanges, what that will look like. And even if we were to build both those interchanges, yes, it will relieve traffic, but it's not going to solve all the traffic wall of pie. You can see the amount of congestion it has currently, even if we took 15, 20% of that off and put it down one of the interchanges currently. You're still going to have a congestion issue there. If you do the same thing with the next TI, it's going to improve the level of service. But based on the traffic master plan and the model that was used to predict the traffic and anticipate what changes to the network would make as far as changes to individual intersections or the overall network, that project is still, and I should have went and looked but i did not do that i don't have it at the moment i could tell you what ranking this area had inside that transportation master plan but we do know it's currently an issue and yes there will be changes that will occur as a result of uh rent or flying fortress i keep saying rancho i can't get that on my head front flying fortress there will be changes but because of the driving factors that are around that intersection you will still have congestion there so based on the modeling if

When Flying Fortress opens, we are still going to have an issue.

Correct.

Months down the road. I'm in favor, don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of splitting the contract. You want to split the contract. So we're going to spend the, I mean, it's going, he's telling us that it's going to be an issue. There is no getting around it, even when the interchange opens. So to Ms. Holden's point, yes, we're going to see some relief. Is it going to solve the problem? According to the modeling, absolutely not. It's still going to be an issue. So we're still going to have a contract that we're still going to need to do a study. And if we split it up, do our costs increase? Because they're doing now two separate contracts with two separate studies, and we got to bring them in twice. That is where that's what I'm having heartburn with. I completely agree with you. I agree with Ms. Holden. I just don't know. What is your experience with Kimberly Horn? If we split this contract, are our costs going to go up on both?

I think there's a good chance of that. You know, once you have two separate contracts, two sets of, you know, two different trips out here and all of those, I think it could increase the cost for sure.

Is there some language? So I just want to ask an additional question. Is there some language, Carl, that we could put into this contract that gives it a phased approach that says, you know, we're going to start with the hall, Johnson, and then you know, in five months, that triggers the second phase and the second money's due. So we still keep it in one, but we're phasing it into where we get that cost break.

there can be either language we can address or could just be negotiation as we move forward saying this just needs to be done in a staged order because that's kind of what makes sense and that's sort of what Jack was alluding to was already going to happen.

I don't know, Mr. Dickens, do you support that as a trigger for the remainder of the funds to be done post-opening of Flying Fortress so we can keep this as a whole project and we don't have to risk increasing costs?

I think if we agree with this, we're committed. i don't see we're still going to be committed even if we do it in phase if we do the first phase and then flying fortress opens and it relieves it we're still going to be obligated for the rest of of this project but to jack's point it's going to get some relief but it's not going to solve the problem so we're still we're kicking the can down the road and we're going to be looking at this as another issue just five months from now

So if I can just throw a couple of things with this. With this contract, we hold the driver's seat. So we issue a notice to proceed. As part of that notice to proceed, we tell them how we want to move forward with this contract. I think the point of having in there that language that they recognize that Flying fortress is coming and that will change that that gives us even more leverage to say, hey, this is coming in. We want to make sure that we account for all of this. So I think there is that that opportunity. There is also in the contract. It allows for. changes it you know it says if the city wants to make changes the city for may from time to time request changes in the scope of services of the engineer such changes including an increase or decrease in the amount of engineer compensation which are mutually agreed upon so there is that ability if we change the scope as part of this we can work with them on changing that scope to decrease it or increase the cost of that contract I would say I have a little bit of concern just with the overall intersection. I have a little bit of concern separating Hall Street out from it because if you look at the overall holistic approach of this intersection, Hall Street plays a big role on this. If we change patterns on Hall Street, that will inevitably affect the patterns at the intersection. If we restrict certain movements at Hall Street, they're going to have to come down to that intersection, increasing that. So I'd have some concern splitting it up too much, but we can definitely, we run this contract. We have this contract with them. We can direct them on how it moves forward and which ones we want to start with and that, and we have the ability to change the contract and have those change orders as well. So just wanted to kind of share those thoughts as well.

I've got a question or comment. Didn't we at the very first discussion, wasn't it said that there was pre and post modeling included in this contract to begin with? So in this... I thought I heard that.

In the contract... So the reason we selected Kimley Horn is because they've done the master traffic plan for the city. So they've done modeling for the overall city. So they have that existing model in place, as Jack had mentioned, with both the interchanges, without the interchanges, do nothing, all of those different scenarios. And as Jack mentioned, we... even with those interchanges, it will help, but it doesn't get it to the level of service that it needs to be at. So the interchanges will help, but it still needs improvements at the intersection, so.

Okay. Thank you, city manager. Any other, Questions? Mayor Watkins?

Yes. If I may, sorry to interject there again. I just wanted to take a moment to address Dr. Christensen's concern regarding Stockton Hill. We actually did get funded through the Safe Streets for All grant program that's going to complete a DCR on Stockton Hill. So that's actually happening as well. We're working through the release of funding right now, but we were awarded. So that is another project that we're actually looking at. And it's one of the projects that That the city has been trying to chase down some other grant funding sources to help build that because it'll be expensive in itself So I just want to make sure we addressed everybody's concern in here as well as dr. Christensen, so thank you No, thank you Jack for bringing that forward and letting our citizens and writing us that that is something that's already gone out So that's in the works.

Thank you Council what do we want to do?

I would like to make a motion that we approve this item with the direction to negotiate staff, with staff to negotiate based off of the feedback and comments that we provided you.

Okay. I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, thank you. Item 4B, and thanks for all the public comment on that, too. We appreciate that. Item 4B, Kingman Police Department recruitment, retention, strategy, and proposed recruitment incentives. In order to attract qualified officers, the police department has prepared a recruitment, retention strategy, and workforce development plan. The purpose of the plan is to attract, recruit, and retain highly qualified police officers. The plan proposes improvements across all aspects of the hiring process, including marketing, applicant engagement, community outreach, competitive wages, and additional incentives. Staff recommends approval. Chief Cooper, welcome.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, I appreciate the opportunity to present this to you. I'm excited to present it to you this evening. In your package, you also received a copy of this presentation and a copy of my recruitment retention and workforce development strategy. So tonight, I'm going to provide an overview of the Kingman Police Department's recruitment, retention, and workforce development strategy. Like agencies across Arizona and the nation, we're competing for a limited number of qualified police officer candidates, making recruitment more challenging than ever. This presentation is going to outline the current hiring environment, what we're currently doing, the initiatives that are already underway, and recommendations designed to strengthen our ability to recruit and retain qualified officers while maintaining staffing needs to serve the Kingman community. There we go. Thank you. Aaron, if you're helping me, I appreciate it. Today's recruitment environment is very different than it was just a few years ago. We're no longer competing only with neighboring agencies. We're competing statewide and nationally for the same candidates. Staffing shortages affect more than just our current vacancies. They impact our patrol staffing, specialty assignments, training, employee workload, and succession planning. Recruitment and retention have become operational priorities that directly influence the level of service that we provide to our community. Our goal is pretty straightforward. We want to attract, recruit, and retain highly qualified police officers by positioning the department as an employer of choice. Success requires more than competitive pay. Candidates also evaluate career opportunities, organizational culture, and the hiring experience and department reputation. And this strategy combines marketing, process improvements, outreach, competitive compensation, and targeted incentives to make it our total recruitment efforts more comprehensive. Our objectives are to increase qualified applicants, reduce vacancies, maintain authorized staffing, and improve the applicant experience. We also want to strengthen awareness of the department's culture, our values, and career opportunities while streamlining the hiring process. And in today's market, delays and poor communication can easily result in losing qualified applicants to other agencies. The department's already implemented several recruitment initiatives. These include updated recruitment materials. Very soon, you should be seeing vehicle graphics with QR codes linking directly to our recruitment page on our website. Enhanced digital advertising, expanded recruitment focus, social media, and greater participation in community outreach events. And these efforts increase our visibility and help prospective applicants better understand the opportunities that are available with our department. And recruitment doesn't end when someone applies. We must also keep qualified applicants engaged throughout our hiring process. To improve the applicant experience, we've assigned a recruitment representative to guide candidates through the testing and background investigation, establish communication standards, and continue evaluating our hiring process to reduce any delays. A faster, more responsive process helps us remain competitive and improves our ability to hire qualified applicants. Did it skip? Yeah, it did. Recruitment today requires a team effort. And we've expanded our recruitment responsibilities to include personnel focused on applicant outreach, social media, and community engagement. This allows us to maintain consistent messaging while building awareness of the department's professionalism, culture, and career opportunities. And there are many members of our recruitment team that are here tonight. And I asked them to be here. And I want to also take this opportunity to publicly thank them because they all volunteered to be part of this. They all share the vision and the passion and the need of recruiting. And our recruitment team consists of brand new officers to experienced officers, professional staff, and part of my command staff as well. So I wanted to again tell them thank you for that.

Competitive pay is only part of the, I'm sorry.

While effective marketing and outreach help attract applicants, competitive compensation is often what determines where they ultimately choose to work. Our current officer pay plan provides competitive starting salaries, predictable step progression, and long-term earning potential. Today's applicants routinely compare salaries, benefits, incentives, and career opportunities before deciding where to work, making competitive compensation an essential part of recruitment. But competitive pay is only part of the equation. How we recognize an officer's previous experience is equally important. One of the strongest recruitment tools for experienced officers is lateral step placement. Verified prior law enforcement experience is recognized by placing lateral officers at the appropriate step within our current pay plan. This provides immediate financial value. It acknowledges their prior service and helps us compete more effectively with surrounding agencies. Even with competitive wages and lateral step placement, today's market often requires agencies to offer additional incentives to remain competitive. Lateral officers provide significant value because they require less training, they enter service more quickly, reduce many of the costs associated with hiring and training new recruit officers. Currently, it takes about 18 months and costs about $90,000 to hire, train, and complete probation for a new police recruit. The proposed incentives and relocation assistance are designed to strengthen our competitiveness and attract experienced officers from outside our city limits and outside of our region. Just as important as the incentives themselves is how they're structured. Payments would be made upon hire, successful completion of field training, and completion of the introductory probationary period. A repayment agreement would also be required to continue for the service for a minimum of 36 months, which is three years. This approach helps attract qualified candidates while protecting the city's investment by encouraging long-term retention. And then the question becomes, why is this investment worthwhile? These recommendations are about maintaining operational readiness. Experienced lateral officers can be integrated more quickly and at a lower overall cost than entry-level recruits. Relocation assistance helps remove financial barriers for qualified candidates requiring to move to Kingman. Ultimately, these investments strengthen our staffing, our stability, improve continuity of service, and enhance our ability to provide professional police services. While compensation helps attract applicants, long-term retention depends on quality of the workplace that we provide. We're gonna continue highlighting the many advantages of working with the police department in Kingman, including our family friendly schedule, take home vehicle program, specialty assignments, leadership development, training opportunities, onsite fitness center and comprehensive wellness program. And by investing in our employees and fostering a positive workplace culture, we improve both recruitment and long term retention. Taken together, these initiatives form a comprehensive strategy to strengthen both recruitment and long-term retention. The Kingman Police Department has earned a strong reputation for professionalism, leadership, community trust, and that reputation remains one of our greatest recruitment assets. Today's hiring environment requires us to remain proactive and competitive, By improving our recruitment process, offering competitive compensation, and implementing targeted hiring incentives, we will be better positioned to attract and retain the highly qualified officers our community expects and deserves. And investing in our workforce is an investment in the long-term safety and quality of service that we provide to the citizens. So the recommendations before you tonight are simply just additional expenses, but they are strategic investments intended to reduce vacancies, improve staffing stability, and ultimately lower the long-term costs associated with recruiting and training new officers. We have these broken out into Set set ways of providing this hiring incentive if an officer has less than five years what we're proposing before you is they would receive a $5,000 hiring incentive and it would be broken up into a certain amount of money offered to them when they're hired a certain amount would be provided at completion of their field training and then the final remainder would be completed at the end of their probationary status and The officers, lateral officers, with more than five years, we're suggesting the $7,500 hiring incentive, so it's just incrementally a little higher, but it will be paid out in the same way. We also have contract that is going to be in place. We have a policy how that's going to be done, and they're agreeing to the requirements of receiving that, and there's also what we call a clawback period. If they weren't to meet the full 36 months, then we would have things in place to get that money returned to us. We're also offering a to recruit new recruits and lateral officers up to $2,000 relocation assistance, and it's broken up into increments, mileage increments. If they're over 50 miles from us, it's $300. If they're up to 250 miles, it just incrementally steps up to nothing more than $2,000. So I'd be happy to answer any questions before you right now, but you have before you what I am asking for your approval, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Chief. Council? Councilor Savage?

Well, thank you, Chief Cooper. It was an interesting time we had going through the budgets, and I'm glad that we took some of our ideas and put them out there. Knowing how competitive the actual salaries are, and now we're going to go into this level, which I'm totally behind. How competitive do you think other cities may get with this type of incentive? Is it going to cause another pay war, so to speak?

So thank you for that question, Councilman Savage.

I'll just put it out there.

There is a dance to this, because everybody's doing the same thing and trying to be creative. So as I chair during our interesting budget sessions, and I did. Thank you for your suggestions. Our recruitment team had suggestions as well. If there's a commitment and there's an appetite from council to stay within the 50th percentile, I feel like we will always be competitive. With our current step plan, 10 years for officers, seven years for sergeants, five years for lieutenants, they know where they're gonna be. They're gonna top out at that grade. That is very helpful. So everything that we've done and that we're proposing to do today puts us in a very, very good position. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Savage. Any other, yes, Councillor Dikens and Councillor Saley.

I appreciate all the officers that did come into this meeting tonight, appreciate showing enforce. I guess that might be the way of putting it. I kind of was worried when I first saw everybody coming in, what is so controversial on our agenda? But no, I'm very pleased with all the hard work that everybody has done to get to this point. I do completely support this. I was thrilled when I was going through the packet and went through the presentation. Everything that we were hoping for has come before us, and thank you very much. Thank you, you're welcome. Councillor Seeley?

Yeah, I have a few questions. I'm sure you're not surprised. Can you tell me how many openings you currently have for police officers?

Yes, thank you, Councilwoman Staley. We have currently six.

Six?

Yep.

That's better than at the budget, right? Six, okay. And I wanted to make sure that the incentive and the relocation assistance, that policy is going to be for every applicant. If you're a lateral officer with five years, you're going to be offered that incentive. It's not just going to be applied when you think that you need to compete right no it's a it would be a policy that would just be part of our recruitment protocol so it's standard it'll be standard for all laterals and anybody moving from out of town okay that's very good um and then i also wanted to um I think this is a really good plan. I'm curious to see as we roll it out how it makes an impact. One of the reasons why I asked for this is because my goal really would be to see these six positions filled within this fiscal year. And I've talked to the city manager about this and he feels confident that we can do this with this plan. And that way we can start addressing new positions in the next budget to start meeting that demand of the newly annexed areas and the growth of the town overall. So what I'd like to see is in six months to come back and look to see, you know, are we making progress? Is this working as well as we had hoped? And if not, to start making adjustments mid-year instead of waiting until the next budget just to make additional tweaks. Because I really want to see us get all these positions filled this year. So if we could do that. And then I've also asked that we get a monthly report just kind of celebrating those wins of any, Any recruitment efforts that have happened that have had a positive outcome, how many openings we have, and how many we have in the Pike to fill those spots?

We'd definitely be happy to do that. Thank you. And I do think it's beyond reasonable expectation to say we'd be fully staffed within the next fiscal year.

That is really good news. I'm excited to hear that. And thank you to everybody who's helped work on this plan. I think we're on the right path. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Saley. Vice Mayor?

I great presentation I I have some additional questions and maybe some clarification I just want to make sure when you're offering these incentives do you have the autonomy to offer these and they do not have to go through HR you will be able to make these offers and decide how this money is distributed thank you vice mayor I appreciate that as we've been putting this together it isn't just me putting ideas out I had a structure and thoughts but we've been meeting with our HR person

as well as the city manager and Ms. Moline as well, working out all the subtleties and coming up with what issues there might be. So HR is gonna have a piece of this as far as when they actually, we bring them on board is when the HR is gonna have them sign the contract and make it clear to them. But we have the ability, I've already told people this is most likely gonna happen, I can't promise you, because there are people that are interested and they've already spoken to me personally as well as members of our team that they're interested. So yes. HR is involved, but we can say it. We're going to post it. I'm actually, if we get approval, I don't want to take it for granted that that's going to happen, but I want to be posting things and get it out there midnight tonight, which most likely is going to be sometime tomorrow.

I want you to have the ability to spend the money, because you're going to be the one sitting in front of that recruit. You're going to be the one that's going to know what's going to bring them in. You know your business, and I want Chief to have the opportunity to dole out this money as you see fit. So I appreciate that HR is involved, but I want you to have that authority.

Can I speak to that? There's no subjectivity in this at all. It's very much going to be... Across the board. Broken out at those three points of the hiring process up until they're off probation.

Perfect, perfect. I was happy to see the clawback because I think that's very important. We want them to stay, hopefully past the 36 months, but we want them to stay. A couple of things I wanted clarification on. When you talk about specialty assignment opportunities, can you speak to what that means to you?

Sure, thank you. School resource officers, anything outside of patrol, what is the uniform patrol, we call it a specialty assignment. We currently have a vacancy in our traffic team. We currently have an unfilled position in our school resource team. We have an unfilled position in our street crimes unit, our detective unit. And we also, when we're fully staffed, we like to have an officer assigned to the academy as a recruit training officer. I don't think I've missed anything. So we're currently running short. We've been running short on those for close to six, at least six years, if not a few more. Because if I fill those, which are hardly, badly needed, then I'm taking an officer off the street. So until I can fill those six positions or get within a more comfortable ratio, we're going to start filling those as well.

then just one last thing and i may have missed it so please feel free to correct me i i'm looking for some enticement for people that want to go farther than detect they want to be a part of the task force they want to be you know how you go to the county and you're um i don't know what the formal grouping of that is. I want to see some canine opportunity. I know canine is expensive but I don't want people to leave the department because they can't get from us what they can get from somewhere else. That is the part that I think is that I would have liked to see more of that maybe you can take back to your team to say how can we incorporate these things because Like I said, I don't want somebody to get into a position with KPD and be like, man, if you only had a K9, you know, officer position, so I got to go here or I got to go there or I really want to join the, you know, bomb task force or whatever you call it. I don't want to give them a reason to leave, and I think that is an important part of the recruitment. So I would like to see a little bit more of that, or maybe I missed it. So please correct me.

You did not miss it. You did mention something I did mention. We do have a current opening on our task force that the officer rotated out as per policy, and we did not fill that position. So our task force, our magnet task force, which we are the primary fiduciary as far as running it, is one detective short. So that's another specialty assignment. I'm always looking at those things. Currently, I see this is what you have supported in our last budget session and what we're asking for right now is a significant investment. Those other things you're talking about are very much a significant investment. And so what I try to rationalize as I'm considering what I'm going to ask for, we definitely need more bodies at some point because we are growing. Is it, what is there a true function for say the canine? We did have that for a little while and it wasn't working to the potential that it was designed for. And a lot of that had to do with the staffing because we were short staffing. Then we had to take that canine officer that was scheduled to do like a power shift. We had to actually assign him to a normal shift and the dog wasn't being used to its fullest potential. Similar to a tactical team, huge expense with that. But we are growing and there is going to come a day where that's going to be needed, so we don't have to rely on other agencies to do that. As far as development and future growth, we have a very generous training budget. We send all of our officers, they have the opportunity to go to general instructor schools so they can teach other officers. We have supervisory schools that we send officers to every year just to develop them for future advancement. So there is a whole group of us that are eligible for retirement, and so we're also planning for that. And then we have more officers. We're going to have more people that are going to be shooting for those opportunities.

I just wanted to have some serious consideration. These are conversations I've had with officers that they want these things. So I understand the investment. And we'll see how this goes. But great presentation. And I support this wholeheartedly. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Any other questions or comments? Yes, Councillor Saley.

I appreciate you bringing up retention. My handwriting is so terrible, I missed it here on my list. I think retention is the most important thing. You already have these wonderful officers, we don't wanna lose them. And so I agree, I would like to see more of a plan for retaining. And I think we're giving you a nod that in the next budget, we're willing to support an investment into these special positions or units that we maybe previously had or that others have. That's a good investment to make, whether it's for retention or it's just to strengthen our police department. So I'd definitely like to see more focus on retention as well.

So to speak to that, Councilman Staley, once we fill those positions, those vacant specialty spots, we already know that we have the caseload and the investigative need to add to those as well. So as we're growing or we're adding to our growth, I want to say you offered some positions last go around, and I told you I can't because I can't promise I can fill those. I don't see that being a stumbling block. from this point forward at all. So we'll be able to fill those roles, function more like we should, and then next budget session, we'll be looking at how we might wanna consider implementing officers and increase and how that might look moving forward in the next five, 10 years.

Great questions and comments, Council. Appreciate that. Actually, Chief, when I walked in and I saw all the blue and I thought, oh my, we have a lot of personal bodyguards here today for all of us. But no, we appreciate all you do. Unfortunately, we live in a town, we don't have to worry about that. And we appreciate all that your force does for us. Um, question. I know this has come up in the past. Oftentimes we have, and maybe in the last five years it hasn't happened, but I know it has happened, where we have sent a new recruit, got them through all the training. What is it, a Nine-month program?

About six months.

Six months?

Just to get them out of the academy.

And they come back, and then within the year, another agency poaches them from us. Has that happened recently? Are we seeing that at all?

I want to say that's happened once. It was a ladder officer from California, but this was probably four or five years ago. Okay. I don't know if it was within a year, but it was pretty short. There's also some legislation that's been put into place where an agency or a municipality can ask to, if it's within so many years, get a return from that agency that took them or hired them. There's no enforcement clause in that, but it's something that's out there. So that'd be something for you and the mayor and the council. Do you want to get into that fight? Because then we might be on the receiving, we might be doing that, you know. So there's always that. And sometimes it might be worth whatever that cost is, because the same thing, you're getting them on the street right away. So I haven't heard of that happening. I just know it's an option that was put out there in the last couple years through legislation.

Well, I'm glad to hear that, too, because I know, you know, having been on council for eight years, I know that came up, I think, The first few years I was on the council that that had happened. And of course, it's a shame when it does. And of course, we understand it does happen for family reasons, other multitude of reasons. But I'm glad that legislation has been in place now, put in place to help offset the cost to the city for that.

It puts a little deterrent out there. But I can't imagine any agency that they're going to hire, they're going to want somebody, especially when they're qualified. I take a lot of pride in the people that we select and the training that we provide. They are highly qualified. And that's the reputation that we have in our area is they know if they're going to hire somebody from us, they're going to be quality. And then once in a while, there's a few that are probably better off somewhere else. I mean, that's just kind of the natural way of things. But overall, our recruitment team do an exceptional job picking the right person.

Well, we are proud of you. We are proud of our fire department. We're proud of. And I want to get a plug in for all of our city employees. And I know council shares this, is that we are proud of all our city employees. And it's a team that makes this city great. But at the inner workings of the day-to-day, business that happens as being part of the city and so once again we appreciate it oftentimes you and our fire department you're at the forefront you're our first responders but i do once again want to recognize all those who work for our city and thank them for it so thanks chief okay Can we have a motion then, approving item 4B? Mayor. Oh. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Annie. We do have a citizen who would like to speak up and share their opinion. Dr. Christensen.

Chief, you ought to hold close or? I will.

Annie can help me with this. Thank you, Annie, once again. Dr. Christensen.

Dr. Rob Christensen. I reside at 3951 Sorenson Drive. Originally, I wasn't going to speak on this topic, but I wanted to give support to the chief of police. As some of you are not aware, I think Mayor Watkins and Councilman Savage are aware, before I retired, I worked in a juvenile justice facility in Los Angeles County and dealt with some interesting individuals that the police department deals with. So I have some sympathy with how they interact. And so you need to recruit people that have the skills to deescalate and have other tactics that they're able to deter and restrain people to the least degree possible in terms of doing harm. Also, I want to share a story with you real quickly. This is about six months ago. I was driving down Andy Devine Avenue, and somebody sideswiped another car, and so I motioned the car that got sideswiped to pull over, and I called the Kingman police. I'm used 911 and an officer came out and was very professional and took a report and I helped that officer communicate with the individual that was driving the car that got sideswiped. She spoke broken English. She was from China. And that officer was just very, you know, professional, very compassionate. And I think you only get those type of officers when you attract high quality. Unfortunately, it takes money. And I don't know the specific data, but I'm assuming that there's um more of a demand than supply so if kingman wants to you know compete then you got to put your money where your mouth is so i hope that you vote to support this and continue to support the chief's efforts to recruit quality officers thank you very much thank you dr christensen

Okay. Council, any other comments or questions? Can we have a motion in approving item 4B, Kingman Police Department recruitment retention strategy and proposed recruitment incentives?

So moved.

I'll second that.

We have a motion and we have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Item 5, Department Reports. 5A, Report on Status of Flying Fortress Parkway Project. Robert.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, before I do my presentation, I just want to make a comment that I agreed with Councilman Dykens' observation about wondering what was so controversial on the agenda, and little did I know it turned out to be my little Kimley Horn contract. So hopefully this one won't be as controversial. Okay, this is a update on the status of the flying fortress project from basically the interchange where police left off up through airway intersection and west on their way to prospector What do we got here? Apparently they started the, this is a drone video that was taken by Bighorn, the construction management company. That was the end of the ADOT project. This is the beginning of our project. Looks like just dirt, but in reality, about 90% of it is now compacted subgrade, and a lot of it, about 50%, has already got the aggregate base in place. So this is about two weeks old, this video. This is the box culverts at Rattlesnake Wash. That's right. Look out below, we're coming through here. These box culverts are about 130, 140, even up to 150 feet long. This is now heading west on airway. This is the big box culvert rattlesnake wash. That excavation up there across the road is for one of the two remaining box culverts that still need to be constructed. If you were to go out there next weekend, not this coming weekend, but the next weekend, a half mile of airway will be paved, finished, from the prospect or intersection basically east to the park, the future city park. And one of the northbound lanes on Flying Fortress will be paved up to airway and concrete just two weeks from now. So the contractor is really moving. There's gonna be a huge difference between what's out there right now and what's out there a month from now. But one thing I'd like to say is that The contractor has been absolutely amazing, the amount of hours he's putting in, the pace that he's constructing. And this project started two months and 10 days ago. And in that time, we have all of the underground done, except for those remaining two box culverts. And that was kind of deliberate. And these box culverts come in eight-foot sections, so there's about 320 sections to be installed, and he's got about 260 of them already installed and is going to knock off the remaining ones in the next couple weeks. All of the corrugated metal pipes are there. All of the conduits are in place. Like I say, the subgrade is basically finished, except that those two remaining box culverts The aggregate base is there for everything that's going to be paved. And all that has been done in two months and 10 days. It's been absolutely amazing. And the other thing that I'd like to say is that the teamwork and the cooperation and coordination between my department of Bighorn Management, which is a construction management firm, and the contractor. I've been doing this for longer than some of you have been alive, okay? I've done somewhere between 150 and 200 projects. And out of all those projects, I would say there's a couple that may be on a par with this one, but I've never seen one that has functioned better. I mean, the cooperation and when a problem comes up, it's solved right there. And I mean, there have been a lot of problems that came up. So I just have to say that you know, the cooperation and, you know, everybody throws around the word team and everything else, but this has really been a real team. And it is really kind of amazing because when we first started out the project, you know, there was a little bit of controversy or, you know, not controversy, at least concern about how well, you know, the city's inspectors are going to work with the construction management firm and how our surveyors are going to work with the contractors, GPS system for the construction equipment, and it has just been absolutely amazing. The overall big picture is that barring any really, really major problems, say we have a super gully washer and it wipes out a lot of the work that's already there, Barring something like that, this project should definitely be ready in time for the opening. Let's see if we can get back to Annie, the rest of the presentation. Originally, the video was supposed to be the closing act, but.

I didn't know that you had more than the video, so.

So this is the layout of the project. The area in yellow up on airway is the area that I was just talking about that next weekend will be paved. Of course, the green is the ADOT project. The orange is the, well, first of all, it shows all the box culvert locations and the corrugated metal pipe locations. All of that orange, with the exception of the east half of airway, the east half mile of airway, will be, well, has aggregate base there and will be under construction as far as paving by a week from this Friday. Actually, the paving on the concrete portion will start on the 13th, which is next Monday. So anybody that wants to go out and see the absolute first concrete ever poured on Flying Fortress just needs to be there at 2 o'clock in the morning. But basically, it'll just take one week for them to pave the northbound lanes, the next week to pave the southbound lanes, and then the remaining month or so will be taking up with hand pours, which obviously go a lot slower, the intersections and turn lanes and things like that. This is just kind of a detail, a blow up of the individual pieces of that previous slide. Paving by the school, as I say, is actually gonna take place on the 17th. Flying Fortress Concrete starts next Monday and runs for a month. And then the paving of the remaining portion of airway east of the park will be actually some of the last work that gets done on the whole project. I thought you'd like this one. This was made up before our meeting. Are there any questions? The ribbon cutting is October 5th. thank you robert council any questions for robert okay appreciate that report oh one last thing um at your next council meeting in august 4th i think it is we will have a change order on this project but it will be a zero cost change order

So I'm hoping that's... The best kind, Robert. The best kind.

That's what I was going to say. I know that last time you told me that change order was your least favorite two words in the English, and I'm hoping that no-cost change order are your four favorite.

Yes. You have heard me loud and clear. Okay. Thanks.

Thanks again, Robert. Appreciate that. Okay, item 5B, customer complaint process for water issues. Jack, good to see you again.

Thank you, Andy.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the Council, good evening. This was brought forth by a resident, so brought back a report. So Council has information and the resident has some information as well. I thought it would be best to go through the whole process holistically from the time we receive a call for a repair all the way until final asphalt patching. So this presentation will cover all those pieces. So how do we get leaks reported to us? We have a number of ways. Some of that's getting narrowed down with the app that the city picked up. And so go in here a little bit later through GoGov. But we receive them from there. They may call down to utility billing to Tina's team here. Sometimes we get them directly to Public Works. They'll call out there during normal hours or even after hours. We did change, which was one of the items that came up with Ms. Carlson, two problems she had. One, she was reaching out to Jamie when she was saying the, The person didn't call them back that was in charge of the waters because they were no longer here. And so we've corrected that on the website. We corrected that on the phone tree. And also we put a message in there that it's after hours to call the non-emergency line, which I'll touch on a little bit in here. um we do get after our call out we have people on standby and so we get calls through dispatch to non-emergency and they have a call out tree for those individuals that are on call and then we get them from random uh i ironically today i happen to be standing with our fleet manager dan and he got a call on his cell phone and it was somebody wanting to report a water leak some way through the phone tree they made his way to him and probably got to a point they didn't want to listen to it again and just selected a number and and that's where we landed so they're captured through several points from the community the big piece is trying to get those all into one place right now we do everything on excel and get those into a workbook that we work off of both for reporting to council city manager and to the community So I won't go through every step here in great detail. But first one, we get a report, especially during the busy time. We have more than we can do in a day most often. Right now we're tracking, well, we're done with the fiscal year. So for fiscal year 27, we did just over 3,000 water leak calls. So it's very busy. The hot months are our busiest time. And so we're in it right now. So when those leaks come in, they're evaluated, prioritized, and then there are some other actions we have to take. Part of that is utility locates. And I'll touch on it on the next slide. We have two tracks that that happens in. One may be something we can do right away or we need to do right away, and one might be a little while waiting for the utility companies to locate because we need two days for that typically. We make the repair. The crews, we have multiple crews that are out doing, you know, up to 10 repairs or more per day, at night, on the weekends, holidays, whatever. Once that repair is done, they document that. We actually have a, it's on paper right now. We're actually making some changes I'll talk about a little bit later. They put that on a list and the street guys grab it and they get it into another Excel sheet that we actually post on the website and I'll touch on that as well. so once that's done we allocate manpower to doing those repairs as we can we're obviously trying to fit in other work activities because the street crew does the asphalt repairs and so dirt roads asphalt maintenance when we're doing pavement preservation any of those our crews are allocated there and so We're constantly working on that and then they'll complete the patch and that closes that out unless we have a leak again Which does happen and so? we do complete the list or not complete we actually take the complete list of Completed patches and anything outstanding and we update that on the city website and so in here a little bit further I'll have a spot where the community can go look at and see those issues and So I talked two tracks for when we're doing repairs. One is an emergency and one is scheduled. I hate to say scheduled because they're not scheduled. They just happen. But if it's an emergency, those are public safety concerns. I don't know if you guys saw last week, we had a large, we had a significant leak on Keno just off of Stockton Hill, which was a main line. uh you know knocks out a significant portion of that neighborhood of water service it was about to flood businesses in the area causes travel issues right like it's a public safety issue so we have to take care of those right away we request emergency locate so the locators come out from the other utility providers in the area mark that and then we move on with that repair pretty much immediately. That happens all at the same time. The other side is we have a leak. We call them a seeper. They're running through. I know you guys have gotten calls on them. You've seen them. You know, it's a little bit running down the road, but it's not a geyser. It's nothing crazy. We want to get those done. They need to be done for the sake of the road, water conservation, just general system operation. And so with those, we need two days on a blue stake per the Arizona Blue Stake laws. We call that in. A lot of times we, again, we have more than we can actually complete with the crews we have at the moment. And so we're prioritizing those and they're grouping them up in neighborhoods and things, trying to do them as effectively and as efficiently as they can. And then, you know, sometimes you'll see those, they may sit there for a couple of days before we get a crew to them. That's because of the blue stake and also because of workload. Once that's completed, I mentioned it, it's actually put on a list for whether it's concrete, sometimes we have curb and sidewalk that comes out, sometimes it's asphalt, sometimes it's both. So that goes on a list that the crew works off of for repairs. I did want to touch on the statistics this year of the 3,000 plus water leaks that we corrected or repaired this year. 817 of those required asphalt cuts. It's actually a little more than that because we have over 200 repairs on a backlog right now. Big portion of that is because when we were in pavement preservation, most of our crew allocation was there and then managing the other things that popped up. Of that 817, 327 of those patches were completed by a contractor. We keep some money to the side and we use contractors periodically to help us catch up. There's some patches that are large enough that we need to bring in a lay down machine or other equipment, so we utilize that money for those as well. 490 of those which is about 60 percent were completed in-house by streets crew with our own equipment and so it costs us obviously the the time of the crew but also uh you know the cost of the material and so big part of that is not every patch is going to require a i'm sorry every repair is going to require asphalt or concrete patching it's trying to track those and prioritize them and then get them completed So I mentioned on our current patch status, we are a little over 200 patches right now pending. Again, there's a number of factors that go into that. Right now it's the hot months. Our crews oftentimes are doing 10 repairs plus per day, water line repairs for leaks. And so a big issue there. Staff resources, we just come out of a large chip seal. So we had about a month of time with a good chunk of our staff working on that. And so that put us a little behind. And then just general, because streets cover so much other stuff, weed abatement, dirt roads, shoulder grading, dirt alleys, whatever it might be. We're trying to balance keeping up with other work as well. So right now we are anticipating, we're actually working on a contract with a contractor to come in and help us get these caught up. So you guys should see us here in August with that. I wanted to bring up public information sources. I think this is one of the important ones. Again, we get reports to us, and it might go to multiple phones. I wanted to point out a single point of contact in public works that would be beneficial for the community to use, and that's for normal operating hours. And then we have the next one down is for after hours or weekends, especially if that has a public safety issue or a property damage potential. We want to know those right away. So they can call dispatch, and that's the non-emergency line right there that's included. They can also submit non-emergency reports through the GoGov app, which I included the QR code. And I apologize, I didn't have this out for the packet for everybody to see. But we have a lot of information on our website that they can go find. which is the next one is tracking those. So if they go to the city of Kingman, go to public works, go to streets, pothole and water patching, we actually have a dashboard right there that they can click on and see how many patches we've done, how many patches are outstanding. They can go in, it's listed by address and see if their address or the patch that they're worried about or seeing is on the list to make sure, because we do have them. We get calls and they say, hey, we have a patch out here. We go look at it and it's not on the list. For some reason, it didn't make it back there. And so it gives an opportunity for the community to see if it's on there. Coming improvements. This one I'm actually excited for currently. We talked about trying to track these and prioritize them and show the community, show our leadership what we're doing, what we have done, track costs on this work. We are actually implementing right now a module of an operations management system, an OMS. that will help us do that. So it'll be on a tablet or a mobile device. We can get a work order. The goal right now is actually to hopefully integrate. They were sister companies, the one we're looking at, with GoGov. And so it will hopefully be seamless that they can receive a request online from a customer. we convert that into a work order, it goes down to the crews, that communication on the work order status comes back up and updates the requesting individual when that comes along. And that way, our whole goal is to improve visibility for everybody, also to stop duplicative work, because right now we have work orders and we have Excel sheets and we have things coming from different directions and we're trying to get that all crammed into one location, one place to track, one place to manage, one place to report from. And then, uh, you know, also keep everybody better informed from staff to council, to the community. So we were funded this year. Uh, you guys approved in the budget and enterprise level system. So we're actually going to expand that beyond just the water issue and take that out across, uh, multiple divisions in public works for the same thing. So, uh, be it buildings, be it, um, you know, street stuff, all those things we can track and manage a lot of our assets. All this goes back to asset management. And so that's what we're focused on is trying to capture those, measure them, and then manage those assets. So with that, take any questions you may have.

Thank you, Jack, for that report. Council, any questions for Jack?

I have a couple.

Yes, Vice Mayor.

Thanks, Jack. Glad to see the improvement. I have a question because I don't, I mean, I get this all the time and I hear that it's a disconnect. When somebody uses the app, because we're really trying to drive traffic for reporting, whether it's non-emergency water leaks or, you know, asphalt patches, utility patches, potholes, things of that nature. I have heard that there is a disconnect between the app. When somebody submits something to the app, you guys are taking it on the other end out of it and it's closing the order. So are you telling me, or the complaint, are you telling me that this implementing the initial module that's going to take care of that disconnect to where people are getting notification that things have been repaired when they really haven't been repaired. You're just removing it from the app and putting it into a work order status.

It will not correct that. We have already done that piece. That's exactly what was happening. We'd receive a work order or a request, we'd put a note in there, add it to the list, anticipate a date, close it out. Not really how we wanted that to function. So now we actually hold those open when we get the, that goes down to whichever department or division rather is responsible for that particular item. Once it's completed, it'll come back to our admin staff and then they will close out that ticket. When we receive them, we do put in a message that says, Hey, we've received this. It'll be prioritized in. I don't know the exact language in it at the moment, but we give a message to the person that submits that ticket. And then once it's actually done, then we'll go in and close it and update that status. OK, perfect, because that's been implemented already.

OK, good, because it's important for the public to track the status of where their complaint is. Is it being addressed? It's been received. That's great. Is it scheduled to be repaired? That would be another communication that would be really great. And then obviously closing out would be the final step. So I appreciate that. The other question I have is when there is a water leak and there is a patch that's needed to be repaired. I understand the elements of weather, but what is a reasonable amount of time for somebody to expect that dirt patch to be wherever it is?

Good question. A lot of that has to do with what is going on. Quite honestly, we would like to have had a contractor on earlier. We were out of funds for the year and so we were trying to do what we could in-house, which the timing wasn't great because we were in the middle of, you know, a large pavement preservation project and so a lot of our staff resources were there. So we were patching on off days and days that the contractor was shut down for chip seal. And it slowed us. I don't have an exact date. We do put target dates on there. We'll go in and say, okay, on average, we can patch so many per day. We're anticipating this many days per week. And so we'll put anticipated dates and they're actually listed on the website. If you go in and click on those outstanding patch link, it has everything in that list and has an anticipated date. Generally, we make those dates. We're pretty good there unless we have, you know, which... knock on wood we haven't had a big issue with storms pavement preservation or large projects or other things that redirect our staff time away from patching

OK. And then lastly, I just want to say I appreciate you getting on, you know, hiring a contractor and getting caught up because I think that's the goal is you've got to get caught up because these people that have these patches, the dirt washes away, they become big huge potholes and then it's just such an issue. So whatever you can do to get that contractor, get us caught up and start from a zero baseline as close to zero as you possibly can get, that would be me on my wish list.

Absolutely and typically what we do is we take the outstanding square footage that we have and we'll add some to that because we know by the time we get through the procurement process we'll have more in there and that way it does help us get close to that balance and then we try to maintain that through the winter time and then when we start getting back into the hot months at the end of the fiscal year we have some funds sitting there to help us with that. So that is underway right now.

Great. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you.

Any other comments? Yes, Councilor Samy.

Sorry, you're not getting off that easy. So close. Thank you for this presentation. I know Smiley was saying he was going to ask for some information on this, and I was as well because I've noticed so many of these patches, or these needed patches, these big cuts in the road. And I know it goes without saying, but 200 outstanding is too many. It's unacceptable. And now that we have this dedicated... sales tax for street maintenance, the public is gonna expect to see improvement. Even though it's the same amount of money that we've been spending out of the reserves, they're gonna wanna see something. And it's my opinion that these cuts, are probably one of the biggest reasons why people are upset about the condition of our streets because we've made progress in the maintenance side that's a lot better but when you have these cuts and and like she said they they wash away or blow away and you have this deep hole that and you're hitting it every time you're going home or to the store or to work becomes this agitation for people and they're so upset about it so I would really like to see some innovative thinking on how we can not let the number get above 20 and that we make a commitment to the community that will we will have them repaired within so many days and that being less than two weeks or three weeks or four weeks that we're really and I know you're not there yet, but that's really what I'd like to see the goal be, whatever we have to do to get to a place where they're getting the service that they really are expecting.

That that's a great point. I would like to point out two items that I think are very important for this. The first one is the funding keep in mind with the exception of the streets personnel, all of the materials and contract and everything else, because this is related to a water. Issue are coming out of that enterprise fund. So they're not going to be funds that we're taking from payment preservation to do this work. I agree every patch we put a hole in our road actually degrades all the work that we're trying to do which leads me to the next point is we got to quit treating the symptom and we are working on that this year because that's what's happening when we go out we make a repair we make a mother repair we make a patch we might have to come back and patch it again we're treating a symptom we're not getting to the cause and there are some funds this year water uh... fun specific to help address that and identify what we have going on and come up with a plan to uh... you know move forward we've been working on trying to get grant when i say we collectively uh... teen in her team manager walsh uh... trying to get funds for water service replacements but you you're talking tens of millions of dollars so it's a significant issue as significant issue as our payment preservation ever was and uh... we agree we'd love to bring that number outstanding down a lot when you're talking having 20 outstanding at any time we're we're essentially cutting you know 10 holes in the road every day and so it would require a dedicated crew that does that non-stop all the time and that would be great but i'd rather back that up and and we may have to manage that as well as we can for a little while here when we try and go back and treat the actual cause of the water leaks and the asphalt patch that results as that

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions or comments for Jack?

I got a comment. I'm afraid you might say it.

No, go ahead. It's gonna be multiple. Go ahead, Councillor.

Nice reports. I'm happy to see we're getting our hands wrapped around this. We still got a ways to go, but at least we can see the work being done. But I would like to take this to say congratulations. It's nice to see someone move up through the ranks, and now you're the public works director. So congratulations, Jack.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that a lot. I'm actually very excited for the opportunity. Sounds weird, but these kind of problems that come up, these are perfect for an ADHD individual such as myself to grab a hold of and go chasing down and see what we can get into and solve. So I'm really excited to continue to serve the community, our council, and my division and, well, department, I guess, at this point. So thank you.

i concur i think public i think public works is in the best hands possible so congratulations thank you very much counselors thanks for all your comments appreciate that jack thank you and please tell your staff uh thank them for in public works everybody there we thank them for all they do i will absolutely pass that on thank you item number six announcements by mayor council members and city manager manager walsh thank you mayor nothing tonight okay Councillor Walker.

Nothing.

Councillor Savage. Nothing tonight. Councillor Ward. No. Councillor Saley. Councillor Dikins. Vice Mayor.

I do have something. I wanted to thank Ryan Reif from KRMC. I got the opportunity, because you happen to be out of town, so I appreciate the opportunity to get to speak to those 13 resident doctors and physicians that came to hear about the city. And it really made a difference. So I am so excited. I know we hear from the public all the time, what are you doing to bring doctors? What are you doing to bring these professionals? And that's exactly what we're doing. We're bringing them in and we're educating them on Kingman. We're educating them on the growth. We're showing our passion for our community. And one of the resident doctors that has been here almost at the end of his residency said, man, I wish I would have known about all of this and had this exposure in my first six months. I WANT TO THANK MIKE WITH PARKS AND REC WHO SPOKE ABOUT ALL THE GREAT AND WONDERFUL QUALITY OF LIFE THINGS THAT WE ARE DOING AS A COUNCIL. AND I WANT TO THANK MANAGER WALSH FOR TALKING ABOUT KINGMAN. SO WE ARE GOING TO DO THIS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL WE GET THOSE PEOPLE CONVINCED THAT KINGMAN IS THE PLACE TO BE TO MOVE. SO THANK YOU.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I appreciate that. And actually, I want to publicly thank all of Council and Vice Mayor for the different acts and representation that you do at different civic functions and helping to answer or at least get answers for our citizens. I appreciate all that's done. And Vice Mayor, thanks again for representing me. Because this last month, I've been out of town a lot. And you did a great job. And I appreciate that. I did also want to thank, we actually this last, on July 4, we had a parade. I thank Leah Stagg from the Mojave Council. Yeah, Historical Society. Thank you. I appreciate that, Annie. And it was actually for youth. It was for bicycles and our kids. And it started at the Harley Davidson shop and went over and ended up at Centennial Park. And they'd asked me to be the grand marshal. And what a fun time. And I want to thank our parks department. They decorated one of our golf carts to the nines with flags all over it. It was great. They did an amazing job. And it was fun to participate in that. Upcoming events we do have, we do have July 9th, and I mentioned it's the 48th annual Mighty Mud Mania, and of course it happens at Firefighters Memorial Park at 2001 Detroit Avenue, and it starts at 10 a.m. And this is a great event. It's divided into age divisions. I know I've had kids and grandkids that have participated in it. In fact, one of my granddaughters won in one of her divisions. So it's a fun time for the kids. That is this on July 9th at 10 a.m. And then just as a reminder, Kingman Unified School District starts next week. So please be alert. You know, we were talking about traffic on Alpine Mountain Road. We were going to see that again. Be patient and watch for our kids that are on the roads. And then also as a reminder, there will be no city council meeting on July 21st because it falls on primary election day. And our next meeting will be August 4th at 5 p.m. And then finally, and probably most important to me this day, this is my wife and I's 47th wedding anniversary. And I love her dearly, and I'm probably publicly embarrassing her at this point in time. But she is amazing and she puts up with a lot of stuff that, she keeps me in line, how's that, we'll say that. So I just wanted to recognize that. Okay, moving on, we have item number seven, council request for future reports and updates. Councilor, does that work?

Yes, I would like to see where we stand on a report on where we stand on controlling data centers. what it takes, where our zoning is, whether it's a CUP. I would like to see everything in one report so that we know what we need to do to control that.

Thank you, Councillor Ward. Anything else? Okay, council, thank you. Item number eight, executive session, 8A, discussion regarding Kingman Crossing. City staff request council go into executive session pursuant to ARS 38-431.03A3 to discuss Kingman Crossing. And of course, once again, we'd like to thank all of you who have been here and stuck it out tonight with us. And... Have a good, well, school starts next week. It's so incredible. I mean, it seems like when school starts, it seems like summer's over, but it's not. We're in the thick of it right now. But anyway, have a good evening and be safe going home.

I'll make that motion to go into executive session.

No, I'm second. I guess we should make a motion, huh? Yes. Thank you. Aye. I know, you guys keep me alive.

Aye.

Do we have a motion? Do we have, all those in favor say aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

Take a five-minute break for... Okay, well we are back from executive session and we have been just had some consultation with our attorneys and that's it. Have it all good evening and good night. We are done.