City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay.

Good afternoon and welcome. I call to order the Lake Havasu City Council regular meeting on Tuesday, July 14th, 2026 at 530 PM. If you'd please join me in a moment of silence, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance led by George Perdoza from the VFW Post 9401. Thank you. And Mr. Pedroza, if you'd like to lead us in the pledge.

Veterans, ten hut and salute. 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.

Two.

At the VFW, I brought sheets. We offer free assistance to veterans with claims against the VA, which is quite common. We also lobby Congress for health benefits for veterans. We support the local community as the honor guard. And we also honor, we also offer financial support to veterans that are in need. And the honor guard, we do final services for veterans. But we also do other things like flag presentations for golf tournaments, auto shows. We've honored veterans on their birthdays when they turn 100. We do a flag folding at retirement homes for Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Flag Day, where we go up and salute the veterans. And we do a flag folding. And then I describe what each fold means. That's about it. Keep it short. I tried.

Thank you so much. I think you're being very humble for what the VFW does. Yes. Thank you for your service to our community. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. All right. The next item on the agenda is our roll call. Ms. Davis, if you'd please call the roll.

Council Member Nancy Campbell. Here. Council Member Jenny Koch.

Here.

Jim Dolan.

Here.

Cameron Moses.

Here.

Michelle Lin. Vice Mayor David Diaz.

Here.

Mayor Kel Sheehy.

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you. Item five is our consent agenda. Would any of the council members like to remove any of the items for separate discussion?

Mayor.

Council Member Koch.

Motion. Please. Move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Second. We have a motion from Council Member Koch. We have a second from Council Member Moses. We are ready to vote.

Motion carried, six to zero.

Thank you. Item six is our correspondence, our communications, petitions, announcements, and the city manager report. Item 6.1 is to announce vacancies on Lake Havasu City Boards, Committees, and Commissions. Ms. Davis?

Thank you, Mayor and Council. There are several current vacancies on Lake Havasu City Boards, Committees, and Commission.

The following is a list of those vacancies.

Board of Adjustment, two regular members, three alternate members, Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, one student regular member. If anyone is interested in applying, they could pick up an application at City Hall, and they are also available on the city's website at lhcaz.gov. Thank you.

Item 6.2 is our City Manager's Report. Good evening, Mr. Knudson.

Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, members of our City Council. I'd like to start, we'll wait for that to appear on the screen. One second. It's going to take a little bit of doing. We'll ask for everyone's patience here for just a minute as Mr. Steve Blake helps us. Thank you, sir. Mr. Steve Blake to the rescue once again. He does a lot for us.

Yay.

Wonderful. First, I'd like to wish everybody a happy new fiscal year. July 1st marks the start of our new chapter in the budget. A new fiscal year means new opportunities, fresh priorities, and another chance to make a positive impact in our community. Here's to a year of collaboration, innovation, and continued success. So let's make it a great one in fiscal year 27. On July 1st, Lake Havasu City kicked off Independence Day holiday by celebrating America's 250th birthday with a community event at the Aquatic Center. The celebration featured open swim, the splash pad, pizza, cake, crafts, floor booth, and family-friendly activities. We had more than 430 residents that joined us for the event that day. Mayor Shee, you proclaimed a proclamation recognizing Lake Havasu City America 250 day commemorating the historic milestone. I'd like to thank the many city employees who worked very, very hard and coordinated effortlessly to make the event a great success. And everyone who joined us to celebrate the nation's birthday, thanks for being there. On July 4th, the community gathered at the London Bridge for the reading of the Declaration of Independence. The celebration began with Mayor Sheehy presenting an America 250 day proclamation. again recognizing the significance of our nation's 250th anniversary. Mayor Sheehy and Councilmember Michelle Lynn then participated in the reading, commemorating our nation's founding and honoring the principles of freedom and democracy. I'd like to thank Mr. Bob Barrett and Joe Nolette for coordinating a successful event, and to everyone who joined in celebrating our Independence Day this year. Last week, we celebrated the groundbreaking of Fire Station Number 7. Long awaited. It took place at the corner of McCulloch Boulevard and Sloop Drive. It was great to see so many community members. There's so many people came out for that event. It was wonderful to see. We had our project partners, elected officials, and staff as we all officially kicked off construction of this very, very important public safety project. Fire Station 7 will reduce response times, not just in that area, but throughout the community for our growing community and serve like Havasu City residents for many, many years to come. And we look forward to celebrating its completion and ribbon cutting as it comes in under budget and at the appropriate time. They're telling us a 12 month construction time period. Mayor Sheehy, you and Vice Mayor David Diaz and Assistant City Manager Anthony Kozlowski joined Parks and Recreation staff as the Mayor officially proclaimed July as Parks and Recreation Month in Lake Havasu City. I'd like to recognize and thank our Parks Recreation and aquatic staff with dedication to providing outstanding programs events and recreational opportunities while maintaining our parks playground sports fields aquatic facilities and public spaces Their hard work helps make Lake Havasu City a great place to live to play and enjoy the wonderful opportunities that we have outdoors This Thursday, July 16th, marks the final day of another successful summer camp season. Throughout the summer, our Parks and Recreation Aquatic staff provided local youth with a safe, engaging, and memorable experience filled with fun, learning, and adventure. Campers enjoyed arts and crafts, cookie decorating, glow-in-the-dark activities, aquatic center visits, and field trips to Havasu Riviera Beach, where they learned the basics of sailing from Sea Scouts. Campers also received free life jackets through the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, Lifejacket giveaway program, helping promote water safety both at camp and at home. A special thank you to our partners, organizations, and sponsors who generously help make this year's summer camp programs another unforgettable experience for our youth in Lake Havasu City. Some great pictures there. We're very, very grateful to our community sponsors for helping provide free open swim opportunities at the Aquatic Center this summer. I thank you to Abundant Grace for sponsoring June 28th. Lynn's Little China for sponsoring July 5th, and Habasys for sponsoring July 12th. This generosity provided families with the opportunity to enjoy a fun-filled day at the pool at no cost to them, creating lasting summer memories for many in our community. We're very grateful for our community partners who help support and make recreational opportunities accessible to residents of all ages, again, free of cost, thanks to our sponsors. Lake Havasu City Attorney's Office would like to thank forensic scientist and DPS crime lab manager Jonathan Noble for his almost 30 years of service. Jonathan has provided valuable services to our city prosecution division and police department, along with many other agencies around the state. Mr. Noble's career included blood alcohol testing, controlled substances, crime scene, clandestine lab crime scenes, and serial number restoration. along with 18-plus years of crime lab management services. We thank Jonathan for helping keep our community safe and providing valuable insight and testimony in the many cases he worked over the years. Thank you, sir. And lastly, the public is invited to join us as we celebrate the grand opening of the Dr. Thielak Fernando Water Quality Laboratory. It'll take place in two days, on Thursday, July 16th, and will start at 9 a.m., and that'll be located at 360 Cypress Drive. adjacent to our wastewater treatment plant. The community is invited to attend the special ribbon-cutting ceremony as we recognize this important investment in Lake Havasu City's water infrastructure and honor the legacy of Dr. Thielek Fernando for his outstanding contributions to our community over the years. And we hope everybody joins us for this very, very special day. And with that, Mayor and Council, that concludes my report for this evening.

Thank you, Mr. Knudson. Move on to item seven, which is our public hearings. During each of the next 11 items, there will be a public hearing portion. When we open up the public hearing, we encourage to engage in the conversation at that time if you're here for one of those items. We will also have a call to the public after the public hearing items, and I'll go over those guidelines when we get to that portion of the meeting. We'll start with item 7.1, which is a series 12 restaurant liquor license for Waters Edge Winery, Lake Havasu, 2200 Mesquite Avenue, Ms. Davis.

Mayor and Council, Beverly Hawkinson has applied for a Series 12 restaurant liquor license for Waters Edge Winery, Lake Havasu, located at 2200 Mesquite Avenue. All posting requirements have been met, all fees been paid, and no objections were received. This location is properly zoned for a Series 12 liquor license. I'm happy to answer any questions, and the applicant is also in attendance in case you have any questions for her. Thank you. Thank you.

Are there any questions from members of the council for Ms. Davis or the applicant? All right, this is a public hearing. Would anyone like to address the city council on this item? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to council for discussion or possible motion. Motion. Yeah, Vice Mayor Diaz.

I move to recommend that the Arizona Department of Liquor License and Control approve a series number 12 restaurant liquor license for Water's Edge Winery, Lake Havasu, 2200 Mesquite Avenue. Second. Second.

We have a motion from Vice Mayor Diaz, a second from Council Member Campbell. Is there any additional discussion? Hearing none, we're ready to vote.

Motion carried six to zero.

Thank you. Thank you. Item 7.2 is a series 13 farm winery liquor license for Waters Edge Winery, Lake Havasu, 2200 Mesquite Avenue. Ms. Davis?

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Beverly Hawkinson has applied for a Series 13 farm winery liquor license for Waters Edge Winery, Lake Havasu, located at 2200 Mesquite Avenue. All posting requirements have been met, all fees have been paid, no objections were received, and the location is properly zoned for a Series 13 liquor license. I'm happy to answer any questions, and again, the applicant is in attendance for any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any questions from members of the council? Mr. Mayor? Yeah, Council Member Dolan?

If they're here, can they tell us what a farm winery liquor license is? That's one I haven't heard of, so maybe you can come up and explain to us.

Yeah, Collin, if you could make your way to the microphones for folks at home. Yeah, thank you, yes.

Thank you.

A farm license would be for production of the product itself. So not really growing of anything, but just being able to produce the product itself.

Perfect, thanks so much.

Are there any other questions from members of the council? All right, this is a public hearing. Would anyone like to address the city council on this item? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to council. Mayor? Yeah, Council Member Dolan.

Motion?

Please. I move to recommend that the Arizona Department of Liquor License and Control approve a Series 13 Farm Winery Liquor License for Waters Edge Winery, Lake Havasu, 2200 Mesquite Avenue.

Second. We have a motion from Council Member Dolan, a second from Council Member Moses. Is there any additional discussion? Seeing none, we're ready to vote.

Motion carried six to zero. Thank you.

All right, item 7.3 is resolution number 26-3931, levying 6.6718 cents per upon the assessed valuation of the property within Lake Havasu City, subject to taxation upon each $100,000 valuation, sufficient to raise the amount of estimated to be required in the annual budget, less the amount estimated to be received from fines, licenses, and other sources of revenue, which is an additional levy in the amount of $318,000. $12 excluding new construction due to the increase in assessed valuation. Providing for a general fund for the general municipal expenses for fiscal year ending June 30th, 2027. Ms. Olsen, I might have gave your whole presentation by reading that.

Yes. Any questions? Yes. Thank you so much, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor and Council. This is the final step in the FY27 budget adoption. Council held the public hearing for the truth and taxation requirements on June 23rd last month. So this is the adoption of those taxes. Once you've adopted the tax, we send the resolutions and the forms to the county who then actually will adopt them themselves and assess the taxes. So as we've discussed before, the tax rate is not going up, it's not going down. The tax rate is staying the same. So no proposed increases to tax rates. However, with the assessed valuation increasing on the properties with the information provided by the county, there will be an increase in revenue that the city receives. The assessment is 0.6718 for $100 of assessed value. And that will generate in total $442,342 additional funds. $124,000 of that is attributable to new construction. And just as an additional bit of information, for each $100,000 property assessment, assessed valuation, there's an increase. The increase on that property would be $2.84 per year, so for each 100,000. So if your property has an assessed value of 400,000, then the 284, you take that times three, if it's 300,000, four if it's 400,000, and that would tell you your annual tax increase. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Ms. Olsen. Are there questions from members of the council for Ms. Olsen? All right, this is a public hearing. Would anyone like to address the city council on this item?

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, city council members. My name is Bob Barrett, Lake Havasu City. I wanted to address a couple things. I don't think it'll change at this point, but if you could, can the other slide be put back up so folks can follow along?

Sure. Steve, could you put Ms. Olson's presentation back up? Thank you. And then go, I don't know who would, is Ms. Davis going to move it?

So the property tax levy is the middle, and as Ms. Olson mentioned, there is a tax increase involved in that, $318,000 from existing taxpayers. That middle area is based on two things, the assessed value that comes from the county and the tax rate that comes from the city. So if your goal as a city council is to keep the tax rate flat, you did your job. IF YOUR GOAL IS TO KEEP THE PROPERTY TAX LEVY ON EXISTING TAXPAYERS FLAT, THEN YOU HAVE A LITTLE BIT MORE WORK TO DO BECAUSE THE PROPERTY TAX LEVY IS INCREASING AS IT INCREASES EVERY YEAR. I'M POINTING THAT OUT FOR ONE PARTICULAR REASON. YOU HEAR, WE HEAR THE RATE IS STAYING THE SAME. Property owners don't care about the rate. They care about their property taxes. And they care whether that number goes up, down, or stays the same. That's the middle number. And that's going up. And I'm here today just to point out to the public, because it's been on my mind for many months now, that our levy is going up, as it has for many years in a row. Didn't used to. There were a few years in the past where that property tax rate actually decreased, causing the levy, what we pay, to stay the same or go down. If you chose to keep the property tax levy the same, then your rate would be about 0.6329. I did the math for you. So if that were a choice you wanted to make, then that would be great. But just wanted to say that our property taxes are going up for existing households in addition to new construction, which gets you up to about 400 and some thousand dollars in additional revenue to the city.

That's all.

Thank you.

Mr. Barrett, thank you for pointing that out. That's why we did the Truth in Taxation hearing last meeting, pointing out those specific points. But thank you for bringing it forward today. Anyone else like to address the City Council on this item?

Good evening, Mayor.

Bonnie Toy. I just have a really odd question because he did point out that the issue of the tax rate not being the levy, whatever it is, he just financially pointed out that I don't quite understand. You said that the meeting last time was one of those places where that could have been or should have been addressed, but this is the meeting of the final adoption, if it hasn't been adopted as of this moment, can't you still address that?

Yeah, so we're here to do the final property tax levy. That conversation starts at the very beginning process of the budget where we talk about what the revenues are going to be. And so everything that is in the budget that was adopted by council at our last meeting is predicated on the property tax levy that we'll be receiving. So today is the final step of the budget process.

And why do you have to have a final meeting if you've already had the final meeting last time?

State statute. Yeah, so state law tells us this. So we're following state law on how we adopt these items.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Would anyone else like to address the City Council on this item? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing. We're going to get back to Council for any discussion or a motion.

Councillor Campbell, just a quick question. Yes. We've already approved the budget. So obviously, we already planned on this tax levy going into place. Is it was it like this in the past that we had approved the budget, and then approve the tax levy? Or is this better policy to approve the tax prior to because obviously, we approved the budget and this included the budget seems a little backwards to me.

Sure. Yeah, that's just how it's dictated in state law. And Miss Olsen, if you have anything to add to that.

Yes, we start bringing it up as staff to council when we often mention it starting with the April meeting, that work session. And then we mentioned it again in May just to make sure it's clear to everyone that the rate is being proposed to stay the same, which would increase the levy amount, the revenue. So we've tried to repeat it as often as possible so that it's not a surprise. We've acknowledged from the very beginning that the revenues would go up. But state law does require that you have the truth and taxation hearing, and then at least 14 days must elapse until you can then adopt the property tax. So when we have the truth and taxation hearing on the night that we adopt the budget, we have to wait at least 14 days before adopting the levy.

Thank you for the clarification.

So what you're saying, thank you for that explanation. So if prior to May and before the truth and taxation hearing, if we as a council decide to have a discussion and then lower the rate so the actual levy stays the same, that's when we do it?

Absolutely, yes.

Thank you.

Yes, Councilmember Dolan.

Motion. Please. I move to adopt resolution number 26-3931, adopting the Lake Havasu City property tax levy rate of 0.6718 per $100 assessed value for fiscal year 2026-27. Second.

We have a motion from Councilmember Dolan, a second from Councilmember Koch. Is there any additional discussion? Seeing none, we're ready to vote. Item 7.4 is resolution number 26-3932, adopting the property tax levy and certifying the annual financial requirements of Lake Havasu City Improvement District number two, the London Bridge Plaza for fiscal year 26-27. Ms. Olson.

Thank you. Again, this has been part of the process as well. The improvement district number two, London Bridge Plaza, is a self-imposed tax. The property owners in that district have requested to tax themselves so that those funds could be attributable to that specific area. It includes the maintenance and operation of the parking lot, the electricity for the lights, water service, and the landscaping in that area. We did mention in the budget work sessions that there is a fund balance in ID2 right now, or as of July 1st, that's about a little over $15,000. The district is running, it's about breaking even between the revenues they're generating and the expenditures. It's pretty tight, but we feel with the additional fund balance that's in place, there was no need to even request an additional or an increase in the tax rate. Because the fund balance could actually cover any additional costs, anything not over $15,000. So it's a close margin, but with that fund balance, we don't see a need to increase that. The property owners have not requested an increase as well. And with that, I'll be happy to answer questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions for Ms. Olsen, for members of the council? Question. Council Member Campbell?

Did you say that the parking lot preservation is part of that assessment?

it's just the maintenance and operation of the parking lot to what extent that is i do not have the details okay because it's in dire need and i don't know if that's going to be back on the city or is that the property owners and i know that we own a big portion of that right in the middle correct the city does where the swap meet is is that correct yes that's the area in that area i don't know the boundaries i don't have that information with me but but we do own some but we have a contract with them to operate and maintain the area

I HOPE WE LOOK AT THAT HERE IN THE NEAR FUTURE ON HOW WE CAN IMPROVE THAT, BECAUSE IT'S IN PRETTY BAD SHAPE. THANK YOU.

ANY ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FROM MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL?

ALL RIGHT, THIS IS THE PUBLIC HEARING. WOULD ANYONE LIKE TO ADDRESS THE CITY COUNCIL ON THIS ITEM?

Mayor, Council, I have an odd question. This says that this is a tax specific to the owners in that certain area. If other people in certain areas wanted a tax specific for their area, could they do that and how would that process work?

So that's a loaded question. The answer is yes, there is an opportunity to do that, but there's lots of different components that have to come into play for doing a special taxing district, and it's all prescribed by state law. But the opportunity is there, yes.

Thank you.

Anyone else like to address the city council on this item? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to council for any discussion or possible motion. Council Member Koch, please.

I move to adopt resolution number 26-3932, adopting the Lake Havasu City Improvement District number two, London Bridge Plaza, property tax levy rate at .7370 per $100 assessed value for fiscal year 2026-27. Second.

We have a motion from Council Member Koch, a second from Council Member Dolan. Is there any additional discussion? Seeing none, we're ready to vote. Next item is item 7.5, ordinance number 26-1381, extending and increasing the corporate limits of Lake Havasu City, Mojave County, Arizona, in accordance with Arizona revised statutes, Title IX, Chapter IV, Article VII, by annexing certain territory, 3500 Highway 95, contiguous to the existing Lake Havasu City limits. Mr. Gilbert.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, members of council, and the general public. This is the second of two Arizona statute required public hearings before action can be taken to annex a single Mojave County owned parcel. Formerly the Sheriff's Department building at 3500 Highway 95 north into the city to manage its future reuse and evaluates potential as an economic development opportunity. The former Mojave County Sheriff's Office property totals 1.13 acres, is located at 3500 Highway 95 North, just north of the tractor supply retail store, which is itself inside the city limits. This part of Lake Havasu City just outside the city limits is shown as CMU commercial mixed use in the current general plan future land use map, and there appears to be no need to alter this designation based upon its location on the major highway. The property is currently located in the county under their zoning scheme, but the logical zoning designation to apply if the property is annexed would be C2 general commercial to match the existing zoning on the adjacent tractor supply company property. This slide and the following slide, which I'll get to in a minute, show the property from up close. AND FURTHER AWAY TO GIVE A SENSE OF THE CONDITION OF THE PROPERTY AND THE SURROUNDING USES. THE PROPERTY IS LOCATED WITHIN THE EPICORE WATER DISTRICT ZONE OF SERVICE AND IS SERVED BY A COUNTY APPROVED SEPTIC TANK. ON JANUARY 27, 2026, THE CITY COUNCIL GAVE STAFF DIRECTION TO PROCEED WITH THIS PROCESS AT THE STATUTORILY REQUIRED PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER WHETHER OR NOT TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THE PROCESS. THE NUMEROUS STEPS TO GET TO THIS STAGE OF THE PROCESS AS REQUIRED BY ARIZONA STATUTE HAVE ALREADY BEEN COMPLETED. as noted in great detail in the staff report in your packets, including the Mojave County Board of Supervisors approving and signing the petition. This public hearing is part of the final steps in the process with about two to three months worth of required actions to follow should the City Council ultimately approve an ordinance. Mayor, this concludes my staff report. Available to answer any questions you or the City Council may have.

Thank you, Mr. Gilbert. Are there any questions from members of the Council for Mr. Gilbert on this item? Yeah.

So just to get the answer out in the open there. So we're going to annex this area and then we take ownership of the building also, correct?

That is not correct. The county will still own the property. We will have jurisdiction over it and our laws will apply to it, even though the county owns the piece.

Gotcha. I knew the answer that I just wanted to get it out there. And so whoever buys the building, they'll be buying it or leases it from the county. We get all the tax revenue for whatever business goes in there.

That is correct. Any use that goes in there or buyer would be paying taxes to the city instead of to the county. And as part of the process, we did notify the local fire district, which will lose the revenue from the property. Okay, thank you.

Are there any other questions before we open the public hearing? This is a public hearing. Would anyone like to address the city council on this item? Seeing no, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to council for any discussion or possible motion. Mayor? Councillor Dolan?

Motion. Please. Move to adopt ordinance number 26-1381 to annex into the Lake Havasu City limits a single parcel of property addressed as 3500 Highway 95 North. Second.

Second. All right, we have a motion from Councilmember Dolan, and we had a double second, but it looks like Vice Mayor Diaz made it to the screen first. So any additional discussion from members of the council? All right, we're ready to vote. Item 7.6 is ordinance number 26-1383, amending Lake Havasu City Code sections 14.02.04, letter D, and 14.02.05, letter G, mixed-use Channel Riverwalk District and Island Body Beach District to preserve shoreline public access. Mr. Gilbert.

Thank you, Mayor. This item is being presented to you and the Council tonight as a result of the General Plan Steering Committee's stated strong desire in their meetings with staff and the consultant team developing the general plan to ensure that the undeveloped Lake Havasu City shoreline is protected for future public use. This is the culmination of months of efforts working with the Arizona State Land Department, which is the owner of the vast majority of the undeveloped land on the island and body beach on the mainland side to achieve an acceptable balance between the city shoreline preservation desire and the state's mandate to demand fair market value for the property under their stewardship. The text amendments presented here have been reviewed and approved by the state land department. For context, the island body beach district only requires a 15 foot buffer for new development by code currently. Thus, this is a five times increase in public access along the undeveloped shoreline area, almost all of which is owned by the state of Arizona or the city. Upon the screens is a list of the primary changes proposed to the code sections for the mixed use channel Riverwalk in the island body Beach districts. A 75 foot shoreline access area measured from the 450 foot elevation shoreline and parallel to it will be dedicated to the city. A 25 foot building setback from the edge of the shoreline access area will be required and that's from any development that occurs from parcels that are sold in the future. Access routes to the shoreline that are perpendicular to it and inland from nearby right of ways will be required. And I have a slide here to show that. To provide access corridors to the shoreline from major streets. The shoreline access areas and routes that are to be dedicated to the city. will be permitted to count towards the open space and landscape requirements pursuant to entering into an agreement with the city. And that would apply to any future developers that purchase the state land. City has worked with the Arizona State Land Department that owns most remaining undeveloped land impacted by these proposed amendments. And go back to that slide right here. This is a GIS rendering of what the 75-foot shoreline buffer, or I'm sorry, that was the slide. My apologies. This map is a GIS rendering of what the 75-foot shoreline buffer and the parallel access routes to shoreline might look like at a point in the future when the state lands are sold and developed. The Planning Commission reviewed the proposed amendments on June 17, 2026 at public hearing and unanimously recommended approval. Mayor, this concludes my staff report. Available to answer any questions you or the City Council may have.

Thank you, Mr. Gilbert. This is months and months of work and continued commitment to shoreline preservation that we have all been talking about on the Council. It's a great win for Lake Havasu City to have certainty for the first time that we're going to have preserved shoreline in our area, which is really fantastic and goes with some of the work we've done on the mainland side as well. Thank you for coordinating those efforts for us. Are there questions from members of the council or comments? Is that a comment?

Yeah, Vice Mayor Diaz. Just for the public to know, so we really went to bat for this. In the proposed general plan originally, we had 200 feet. So you always ask for more when you're negotiating. And after review, the state trust land came back and said, no, we'll give you 50 feet. And we said, well, we'll take 100 feet, and we settled on 75. So it is, as the mayor said, it's a good win for us to get this actually codified, for lack of a better term. And it's just a good win on just protecting that shoreline access. So they only wanted to give us 50 originally, and before that, I think it was only 15. So we got a good win here for the citizens to protect that shoreline access.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? All right, this is a public hearing. Would anyone like to address the City Council on this item? Right there.

Council members, Mayor. My name's Jackson Rod. I'm a citizen involved in the jet ski racing community here in Lake Havasu. Really invested in maintaining body beach and what that means for our community, the millions of dollars that are represented in homes, travel expenses, just investment into our community based off of PWC racing involved in Lake Havasu. While I see the efforts of you guys maintaining our shoreline access as a recreational boat enthusiast as well, member of the Lake Havasu Marine Association, that's an absolute win for us. However, I'm curious about what the future of Body Beach looks like with this proposed 75-foot shore allotment and what the city council is involved in trying to maintain that access. And State Land obviously has control of that right now, but I believe that there's another interest that has a lease on that. Falcon Eye, I want to say, is what I was looking at earlier. What is the city council doing in that regard to try to maintain Body Beach and the recreational dollars that do come into town as a result of that?

It's a great question. So there is not a conversation that goes by with state land department that we don't tell them how important body beaches to our community and that we need to open and preserve for our water users that use that area. As you mentioned, it is an Arizona State Trust land property. This is just one step in making sure that we secure a future. So the action tonight will give us 75 feet immediately on that area to ensure preservation. The lease that you mentioned on the GIS with Arizona State Trust land, I think was a mistake and it's been corrected now. I noticed that as well and called the commissioner and then asked. the same questions you're asking, like how did this happen and what's going on? It's been corrected. Those are the folks that purchased the waterfront property, which was the former golf course over on the island. So I think that when they were putting it in on the map, that it just was incorrect. So that's since been corrected. But we have a commitment to keep Body Beach open and usable for generations to come. And that's what, this is one step towards that for us. We understand how important the Jessica community is and the body beaches to not only the sport, but just our residents that enjoy that area every single day. So this is one step towards protecting that for the future.

As a citizen, what can we get involved in doing to maintain that access and get that going forward? Is there any motions or anything that we can get in place to try to maintain that area? Sure. Obviously, you said that you've spoken with the state trust every time it comes up.

every conversation I have with them. So if I might be talking about another piece of land and I make sure they know about it, which is important too. So yeah, anytime we have coalitions, it's a fantastic thing. Maybe I call my office after this meeting and we'll schedule something and we can talk about ideas and how you and the community can advocate for the use of that. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Anyone else like to address the city council on this item?

Hi, guys. I'm Lance Kramer, long-time resident. Grew up here my whole life. My son's been a jet ski racer for a long time. We've used Body Beach Recreational forever. It sounds like the problems with Body Beach and a bit of the misunderstandings hopefully corrected. Not having Falcon, I have that. THAT LEASE IN PLACE AND HOPEFULLY IT STILL SAYS NULL. I CHECKED IT TODAY AND IT STILL SAID FALCON ISOL. I'M A BIT CONCERNED ABOUT THAT A LITTLE BIT, TO BE HONEST, BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE DEVELOPED. BUT I GUESS, ASIDE FROM THAT ALSO, WHICH IS VERY IMPORTANT TO US, I UNDERSTAND LIKE HAVESTY CITY IS SURROUNDED BY STATE TRUST LAND. That's developable to the north, east, but not the shoreline, not the island. In my opinion, as a city, even the land that got sold off in an article probably should have been looked at by us as a city to try to keep that as open space and parks and recreation and things like that. And it sounds to me like the Arizona State Land Department probably would work with the city trying to secure that instead of sell it to a developer. Even the land that's, the other pieces adjacent WOULD BE WEST OF OR SOUTH OF BODY BEACH THAT CROSSES THE HIGHWAY AND GOES ON TO LAKE HOUSTON AVENUE I'D LIKE TO SEE THE CITY ACTUALLY SECURE THAT ALSO BECAUSE THAT'S PART OF OUR CITY THAT'S IN OUR CITY AREA SAME WITH THE THE STATE TRUST LAND THAT'S ON THE ISLAND ALSO I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THAT SOMETHING DONE WITH THAT ALSO THE STUFF THAT'S AROUND THE PERIMETER OF THE CITY I UNDERSTAND THAT WOULD BE EASIER TO DEVELOP AND PROBABLY YOU KNOW MORE AFFORDABLE HOUSING THAN PRIME YOU KNOW Island land lakefront property, which we probably should as a community being that we're Lake Havasu keep that secured for citizens and the future residents and the people that live here instead of see it just all mowed down for houses and everything like that to be able to go and with your family and a pickup truck back down to the to the water and enjoy and let your dog run or whatever you do or launch a jet ski or put up an easy up and have a barbecue. That's a very rare thing, especially in a city like ours and as special as ours. I'd like to see that preserved.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kramer. Yes. So the state trust process is anyone can petition the state to purchase the property and it goes to auction and the city has the same weight as anyone else that is in auction there. So it does pose some issues, but Mr. Kramer, the comments you made, we hear from other folks too, and it's important to all of us. And again, this is just one small step in preserving some of that shoreline. Would anyone else like to address the city council on this item? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to council for any discussion or possible motion.

Mayor? Yeah, Councillor Moses. One more question just while I was looking at his picture.

Can you bring up that picture for me, Chris?

Steve, please put the presentation back on the screen.

Yeah, we need him back up on the screen. There we go. Not this one, right? The other one?

The 75 feet that we've negotiated, where's the starting point on the 75 feet? That's this one here. Is it the line or is it the 850 watermark?

So our GIS technician put this together and it starts at the north end at the edge of the condominiums and circles around all the way to- So it's at the 450 mark, Council Member?

Yes, 450 mark.

And it's reflected by the pink line.

But it'll, I mean, it'll come in. If the water comes in, the mark, the line comes in, is what I'm saying. Yes. All right, thank you.

Yeah, Vice Mayor Moses, or Vice Mayor, yes. I move to adopt Ordinance Number 26-1383, amending Lake Havasu City Code Sections 14.02.04D and 14.02.05G, Mixed Use Channel Riverwalk District and Island Body Beach District to preserve shoreline public access. Second.

We have a motion from Vice Mayor Diaz, a second from Council Member Moses. Before we vote, I just would like to again thank the General Plan Steering Committee, who's done a lot of work on ensuring our general plan has these protections and preservations put in place. To the Planning and Zoning Commission that heard this item, and of course to my colleagues here on the council, this is a big win for Lake Havasu City that's happening right now. So thank you for all of your efforts on that. We do have a motion again from Vice Mayor Diaz, a second from Council Member Moses. Is there any additional discussion? All right, we're ready to vote.

Motion carried six to zero. Thank you.

The next item is item 7.7, resolution number 26-3933, approving amendment to right-of-way agreement number 16-110362-00 with the Arizona State Land Department to adjust the roadway alignment for the second bridge and roadway improvement project. Good evening, Mr. Hart.

Mayor and city council, it's always an honor to come before you and talk to you about something that gets me really excited, which is capital improvement program project. So I'm here tonight to talk to you about the second bridge and roadway improvement project. Arizona lands right away agreement that the city currently has with them that needs to be amended to accompany our new project. THE PURPOSE OF THIS AGAIN IS TO APPROVE THE RESOLUTION NUMBER 263933 WHICH IS APPROVES THE AMENDMENT OF THE RIGHT-OF-WAY AGREEMENT NUMBER 16110362-00 WITH THE ARIZONA STATE LANDS DEPARTMENT TO ADJUST THE ROADWAY ALIGNMENT FOR THE SECOND BRIDGE AND IMPROVEMENT PROJECT AS A POINT OF CLARIFICATION WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THE LAND THAT IS ON THE ISLAND HERE TO YOUR LEFT OF THE SCREEN ON THE CHANNEL THAT IS THE ARIZONA state lands portion of the project located right there. And so this amendment deals with modifying the current right of way agreement to accommodate our new road. So just as a reminder, the Arizona lands original memorandum standing, the right of way agreement that we had was done many years ago and entailed a straight bridge that followed this pattern right here. The new road, if you recall, we came to you and shared some cost saving measures and rotating the structure. And that took us out of the existing right away and pushed us out into this new portion. And we've been working with Arizona lands has been great and very accommodating and to get authorization or to get them to agree to this which they have, which is why I am here today to amend that agreement. THIS IS THE ACTUAL AMENDMENT TO EXHIBIT B THAT YOU HAVE BEFORE YOU THAT SHOWS THE NEW AREA OF LAND THAT WE ARE GOING TO BE AMENDING THE AGREEMENT TO MATCH INTO. AND THIS IS AN EXCITING PART OF THE PROJECT IN MY MIND AS WE LOOK TO JUST FINALIZE THE RIGHT OF WAY ON THE ARIZONA STATE LAND SIDE. DO WANT TO TALK JUST BRIEFLY ABOUT THE TIMELINE GOING FORWARD SHOULD CITY COUNCIL APPROVE THIS AGREEMENT WITH THE RIGHT-OF-WAY ON THE ARIZONA LANDS AND THEN WE WILL BE COMING LATER ON WITH ANOTHER PORTION ON THE MAINLAND SIDE. 95% PLANS FOR THE PROJECT WERE RECEIVED TODAY, WHICH WE ARE VERY EXCITED ABOUT. A lot of work has gone into this project and getting it to this point. Great team effort by NV5, city staff, Ames, as well as other agencies we've been working with. The EA permit is set to gonna be issued by the US State Coast Guard in August of 2026. This is a huge step that's been a year in the works that we've been pursuing and working with the Coast Guard. So it's looking like it's really gonna come to fruition. Then we are going to be coming to the city council on August 25th, 2026 with the gross maximum price submittal and that GMP presentation looking for city council approval of that. And should city council approve that, yes, we'll also be receiving 100% plan submittals in August slash September. So I'm going to put that caveat in there. And then the bridge construction, should city council approve the GMP? We're looking to break ground in October of 2026, with construction phase expected to last 18 to 24 months. So we're excited about this project. We're excited about bringing this amendment to you, and I'll answer any questions that you may have.

Mr. Hart, are there questions from members of the council for Mr. Hart on this item? Yeah, Vice Mayor Diaz.

Mr. Hart, thank you for the presentation. Can you, for the benefit of the public, we've talked, they've heard 30% and 50% and 60%. Now we're at 95%. Tell them exactly what that means, like when you say 95% plans submittal, and then what's the other 5%? Because we get a lot of questions about that.

Yeah, that's a good question. So in our world of design and plan submittals, we do set mile markers for various stages of the project design. And 30% typically is kind of your core objects with alignments of the road and the bridge and some of the generalized base questions that we wanna deal with. Then we fine tune that based on comments on the 30% discussions with you. And we get to what we call the 60%, in which, yes, a lot of the main core things have been decided. But in terms of drafting and details and all the sheets that go along with that, they're not quite complete so that a contractor can take that out and build it, which we are currently now just received 95%. So we have approximately... 166 pages of bridge plans and road plans with lots of details and things like that with all of the drafting and text and all that stuff all pretty close to being done. So we have a little 5% now where we're gonna review the 95%, just make sure nothing was left out and make sure the nitty gritty details as you know that the devil's in the details. So we'll just go through the fine tooth comb and make sure that everything's covered there.

My last comment is, every little bit counts on a project like this when it comes to saving money and getting the biggest bang for a buck. Can you tell us how much money we are saving by doing that shift of the roadway, please?

Yes, if I recall right, back to the 30%, but I believe it was close to 3 million we were saving by doing that shift.

Is there any other questions or comments from members of the council on this item? All right, this is a public hearing. Would anyone like to address the City Council on this item?

Good evening, Mayor and City Council.

I did have a couple questions in regards to, one, where was it shifted? Well, it showed on the map where it was shifted from, and it only saved $3 million. I know $3 million is a lot in a $35 million bridge, but does it actually make it safer? And then... I was really curious what happens if there's an accident that blocks Beachcomber and McCulloch Boulevard right there at the Y section. If there's an accident that blocks that section for hours, how will people be able to access the second bridge or the London Bridge?

So when it comes to if there were an accident, our police department and first responders have mitigation strategies to ensure that people can move about in those situations. Obviously, it would depend on a lot of factors, a lot of details. when it came to the bridge that we were able to get the savings. So the alignment's pretty much the same. They just kind of shifted the alignment, and that's where we're gaining the ability to have these additional savings because the bridge now can be less in length. But what the action in front of us now is to adjust the right-of-way that we secured many years ago to meet that new alignment.

Also, how is the infrastructure underneath the section of McCulloch Boulevard and Beachcombe Boulevard? Because after seeing what has happened on Palo Verde and Lake Havasu Avenue, something similar happens there. Again, there could be issues with accessing the second bridge that you're building as an evacuation route.

I don't know that I, yeah, Mr. Hart, do you have an answer?

Yeah, sure. The infrastructure underneath the road is in great condition. As part of this new project, we are putting in additional lines that are going to cross underneath the bridge that we're calling redundant lines to help mitigate any type of break in the future if needed, though I don't visualize that. So there's really nothing at all in the fields, if you will. There is something in McCulloch, but it's in great condition, and we're going to be connecting new lines to that.

Okay. I just happen to think that right there at Beachcomber and McCulloch Boulevard at that stop sign, if there's ever an emergency situation that blocks that for several hours, you're not going to be able to access the second bridge.

If I might comment on that, it's a really wide section of road there, so at least three travel lanes with a turn bay in there.

Palo Verde, Lake Havasu Avenue.

The other end, I'm sorry, good point. It is still wide there, too, 50 feet, if I recall.

Anyone else like to address the council on this item?

Thank you, Mayor, City Council, Bob Barrett. Just two quick questions. So the data's moved up, that's great news. October of 2026, that's three months from now. Why was October picked, and then also what'll happen in October?

Yes. So as we looked towards potential construction, one of the issues we were dealing with or things that could potentially hold the project up was the US Coast Guard permit, which was a very, very important permit that we weren't sure of when that deadline or when that permit was gonna be given. So as we worked towards it in our own minds, we were thinking October. But being conservative, we were saying spring of 2027, just because we didn't know how that permit was gonna fall in place. However, great news, the permit looks like it's going to be blessed. And October was a logical date in terms of We should receive 100, while the GMP will present to city council at the end of August, which if they move forward and approve that, then we'll have a contract in place with just ready to get going. So hopefully that answers your question.

That was my first question, yeah. Question number two, what'll actually happen in October?

The bridge itself is going to, well, first we're gonna have a beautiful groundbreaking ceremony. So that'll be nice. But the goal would be, there'll be our prime, which is Ames, and then the sub, which is Comer construction. Ames is the one that's gonna be constructing the bridge structure itself, as well as some other components. But Comer will be structuring the roadway and improvements. So we're hoping to see both begin concurrent. So you'll start seeing excavation on the footings on the bridge, which actually most people won't see unless you're traveling through the channel. And then you'll start seeing grading occurring for the new roadways on both sides.

In October?

Yes.

Thank you.

It's a mobilization first. They gotta get their equipment there. But then, yeah.

Anyone else like to address the council on this item?

Pam Swenson. I just have a quick question. Who will actually have ownership of the bridge? Will it be like Havasu City completely? And I'm not familiar with the new access road and the new direction that's just been approved. Is it going over any state lands or the parks in the state park?

Yeah, so it's both of those.

Okay, so does it have to have ADOT approval? All the plan sheets, are they gonna be reviewed by ADOT?

We are having a plan so that they meet ADOT standards using ADOT bid items, working with them.

But they don't have to have ADOT stamp on them?

No.

Okay.

Coast Guard is the main agency with the bridge.

Okay, they're the main agency. However, the land is on state land. So that's why I was wondering.

So we have on the mainland side, it's on state parks land. So we have a right-of-way agreement with them. And then on the mainland, excuse me, on the island side, it's the agreement we're talking about tonight with Arizona State Trust land.

But I still had a question with regards to the plan sheets.

Sure. Was that answered now?

Yeah, I just don't understand why ADOT is not gonna stamp them, that's all. Because it is on state park property.

It is not an ADOT highway.

Okay.

That's why.

Okay, all right, thank you. Mm-hm.

Would anyone else like to address the council on this item? All right, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to the council for any questions, comments, or motion.

I have another question. I mean, it's kind of off topic, but it's not. So we have a lot of big event season coming up, Balloon Fest, all of that stuff coming that takes place right there. Will we be able to still protect their ability to conduct business and have the events and all that stuff while not slowing down the bridge and all that good stuff?

That's an excellent question, Councilman Moses. Yes, we've been working with Ames Construction, our CMAR for the project. In fact, we had a meeting this morning discussing some finer details on a few items. And one of them was that, that when we look at establishing calendar days, how long it's going to construct us, we want to make sure that they take an account for those special times when they will want them out of the way, in a sense. So, you know, we're talking about Desert Storm and Memorial Day, everything that we can think of we're going to want to have in that contract so that they're not in the way. So, yes, that is being talked about heavily.

Any other questions? I'll entertain a motion.

Mayor, motion.

Council Member Moses.

Move to adopt resolution number 26-3933, approving the amendment to right-of-way agreement with the Arizona State Land Department to adjust the roadway alignment for the second bridge and roadway improvement project.

Second.

We have a motion from Councilmember Moses, a second from Councilmember Koch. Is there any additional discussion? Seeing none, we'll write a vote.

Motion carried five to one.

Thank you. Thank you. Item 7.8, agreement for professional services design for the Kiowa Drain number six wash stabilization project with Kimley Horne and Associates. Mr. Wolf.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Here tonight, what you see in the presentation that I see This is a page right out of our wash management plan. Sets priorities, as you remember. This project, Kiowa Drain 6, is in for design schedule. It's located between the Sandwood Drain And Barranca Drive, I know you all know exactly where that is. But one of the reasons that you can see right away in the bottom part of the picture, you see some bank erosion happening there. So a little background, like I said, it's chosen from a priority in the 2025 Wash Management Plan we all adopted. The improvements are pretty standard for washes here. Improvements include the bank stabilization, channel scour, which I'll show you, and energy dissipation to slow the velocities coming out of the mountains through our city. As high as 18 feet per second, that moves more than just dirt and rock. It moves cars, and that's the velocity and the veracity that a wash can have. It's also providing some grade control and our maintenance accessibility to get maintenance down in there in the washes. And of course, it reduces risk for adjacent property damage. The top right slide, just a good aerial view of the slot cutting. Pretty narrow slot for this area of the wash and cutting about 8 to 10 foot deep. And when you get down in there, it's no getting out until one end or the other. So we like to take care of that not only for safety, but it controls this wash. It's got too high of a velocity. And then in the bottom, you'll see some embankment erosion occurring. We're actually losing, there's some loss of private property there in the, in that bank erosion that you see. We will be doing things like relocating that power pole that's down in the wash also as part of the project. The studies anticipated under this design, we do have a separate contract for taking a look at for our ALF surveys, our feathery friends that usually get in there. We're doing the HEC2 channel hydraulics, of course, and studying the sediment transport. We do a cost analysis in the preliminary design for any alternatives that we're looking at. And then pedestrian crossing is always coming up now for our washes. If there's something nearby even on one of the washes that contribute to this one, we'll be evaluating that during design too in case there's an improvement necessary. OUR TIMELINE. IT TAKES US THROUGH THE YEAR, THIS FISCAL, AND HOPING THROUGH CONSTRUCTION BY THIS TIME NEXT YEAR BE COMPLETE. THAT WOULD BE THE IDEA AND TIMELINE FOR THIS PROJECT. AND I'LL OPEN IT UP FOR ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE.

THANK YOU, MR. WOOF. ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS FROM MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL FOR MR. WOOF ON THIS ITEM? ALL RIGHT. THIS IS A PUBLIC HEARING, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO ADDRESS THE CITY COUNCIL ON THIS ITEM.

Just random thought about that. Washes. Is it possible to make them safe for e-bikes? Like when they go through and do this, is there a way to start including safety measures for e-bikes and other people who ride bicycles through that area?

We have a pedestrian plan that is part of that that utilizes washes. It's a lot more intensive than what we're talking about here. This is more about stabilization of the bank, but it is certainly a conversation that is worthy of having. But this particular project would not do that other than what Mr. Wolf mentioned earlier on looking at pedestrian parts as part of the planning side.

Right, that's where streets cross Awash, and so we're keen on pedestrians getting across along the street. We actually want to discourage pedestrians in the washes as much as possible, unless, such as the Pima Wash Corridor, a great bike plan that was designed and made to get people up into the Main Street area, into the plaza. That's encouraging with the right washes. and the right improvements. But otherwise, we like to discourage citizens and residents from getting down in there, obviously, flash flood, some of these slot cuts that you see here are dangerous. So that's my input.

Great point.

Just the thought that if there was some way for people to get out to the mall safer and easier, if they were using the washes, that might be helpful. And when you're doing alignment or things like this, maybe that would help take less cost if you did it at this point versus a later point.

Thank you. Council Member Campbell?

I don't know if you remember, but when Kimberly Horn was in here, they also advised against using those washes due to, you can put in all that infrastructure and then we do have, it seems like we don't rain a lot, but when we do, it'll just destroy most of it. And so I know for a fact that we do try and discourage people out of, it's basically a flood zone and it's there for a reason. A lot of infrastructure would have to go in place that I know of, just like the Pima wash, to be able to secure that. So I know the conversation keeps popping up, but I know when the experts are up here saying not a good idea, there's a reason for it. Thank you.

Anyone else like to address the City Council on this item? Seeing no, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to Council for any discussion or possible motion.

Mayor.

Councilmember Dolan.

Motion. Please. I move to approve the professional service agreement for the Kiowa drain number six wash stabilization improvements project to Camille Horn and Associates Inc. in the amount of $121,570. Second.

We have a motion from Councilmember Dolan, a second from Councilmember Campbell. Is there any additional discussion? Seeing none, we're ready to vote.

Motion carried six to zero.

Thank you. The next item is item 7.9. It is the fiscal year 2026-27 cooperative purchase of 23 vehicles from various suppliers. Good evening, Mr. Young.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. It is that time of year again. Bringing to you tonight 23 vehicles of various kinds, both street legal and equipment. We're looking at several different cooperatives this year. We're bringing together 23 vehicles for a total of $1,858,500. These vehicles are rated on a 32-point system for replacement. This takes in the purchase price of the vehicle, the age, idle hours, the mileage, repairs that have been made throughout the history of the vehicle, and the condition it sits in. All the vehicles being replaced this year are at 32 points or over. With that, I'll take any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Young. Are there questions from members of the council for Mr. Young? All right, this is a public hearing. Would anyone like to address the City Council on this item? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council for discussion or possible motion. Make a motion. Vice Mayor Diaz.

I move to approve the cooperative purchase of 16 Ford vehicles from PFVT Motors, LLC, Peoria Ford. One Nissan from Midway Chevrolet Company, one dump truck from Freightliner of Arizona, One backhoe loader from Empire Southwest LLC doing business as Empire Machinery. One Polaris Ranger from Polaris Sales Inc. One grasshopper mower from Moorage Manufacturing Incorporated. One Bobcat compact tractor HST from Clark Equipment Company. A Doosan Bobcat North America Incorporated doing business as Bobcat Company. and one excellent godwin sd1 150m pump unit from excellent dewatering solutions that's a lot second we have a motion from vice mayor diaz we have a second from council member coke is there any additional discussion seeing them we're ready to vote

Motion carried six to zero.

Thank you. Next item is item 7.10, bid for the police department facility and jail rehab phase two of the project to Precise Builders Inc. Good evening, Mr. Porter.

All right, good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you. So I'm excited to be bringing you tonight the phase two of our police department renovation. This is to present a construction award to Precise Builders Inc. So a little bit of background, this project building was built in 1994 and we contracted years ago with Selberg back in 2021 to do an assessment of the building. to for building condition and they found some extensive scope and recommended quite a few items for improvement uh... so much that we ended up breaking it out into two phases partly for budget partly for keeping the police department in operation the whole time. And then tried to phase it with like contracts within that scope of work for phase one and phase two. So phase one we completed in 2025, and it pretty much consisted of renovation of the jail, new hardware, new locks, new paint, flooring. basically a complete rehab of the jail. It also, the biggest item, I guess, the biggest need for the PD at that time was the underground sewer lines. They were cast iron falling apart, so we went through, we descaled them, we cleaned them, we epoxy coated them, basically restoring them and hopefully for another, get us another 20 years of service out of them. So then after that, we continued with the architect to develop phase two. So that's what I'm bringing you tonight. So in phase two, we're gonna bring new air conditioning equipment, new HVAC equipment to all equipment that if I remember correctly was seven years and older. So there are a few things in the building that had been replaced. somewhat recently that are still in good serviceable condition, but anything older than that is nearing its service life or possibly going to start giving us issues. So while we've got the building torn apart, we're going to do water source heat pumps throughout the rest of the building, new cooling towers, pumps, etc. The other part of the project is a roof replacement, replacing it with a new TPO roof. The existing roof, they've been chasing leaks. We've had numerous issues, so get the roof done at this time. Another item that was on the report was the fire alarm system. So in the building, they're continually having Nuisance alarms things that nobody knows why they're why they're happening and it's just again 30 plus year old fire alarm system So it'll be a new fire alarm control panel new smoke sensors heat sensors Horns and strobes the whole the whole the whole the whole fire system Drywall drywall repairs first level and second level interior painting flooring replacement, renovation of locker rooms. And then there's a couple of older showers in the men's locker rooms, women's locker rooms. So it would be to bring an ADA accessible shower to both of the locker rooms. So here's just a couple pictures showing the aging equipment, the aging mechanical equipment. In the bottom right picture, it just shows a bunch of old obsolete equipment that used to be in the auxiliary building that houses the old gun range that was taken out of service years ago and converted into a gym. The other parts of that building have been used for other things at this time. So basically, most of that equipment on the roof is obsolete and just needs to be demoed. Here's another picture just showing some more items in the building. Bottom left is the fire alarm control panel. Middle picture is just some aging plumbing. Right picture just shows that some of the flooring has already been done by our facilities team. So in this particular picture, the flooring is going to stay, but still needs to be painted, updated. So project schedule on this is 180 days. We would anticipate completion in April of 2027. We went out to bid and had a good turnout on bids. We received seven bids, five of them complete, two incomplete. And we had, not knowing how the bids were going to come in, we went out and had some additive alternates in there so that we could kind of shop and pick and choose and make the best bang for our buck, if you will. Through that, we have chose to accept and bring forward additive alternate 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. And the bids came in with Precise Builders being the low bid at $3,753,866. And actually the bid just above them at just a couple thousand dollars more, that was TR Ore at $3,755,900. So very close bids, very competitive bid. So at this point, I'm recommending construction award, construction contract be awarded to precise builders in the amount of $3,753,886.32. If you've got any questions, I'd be happy to take them.

Thank you, Mr. Porter. Other questions from members of the council? I have a question. Can you go back to that previous slide?

So when, I know it's really tight, the number one and number two are $2,000 apart, but when you look at, do these people give, like, this is an important project, obviously, a lot of different things they're going to be working on. They'll be using some subcontractors. These guys are the general contractor? That's correct. Do we get references of other jobs that they've done to see the quality of the work to make sure we're getting the best bang for our buck and we're not having to do a bunch of repair work later on?

Yes, so they turn in past work history and we check up and make sure that the projects that they're putting on their past history were completed in good standards and that there weren't any complaints against them. We also checked with the Arizona ROC, make sure there's no complaints filed against them, no open claims, and precise builders had no claims, no faults that we could find. Okay, thank you.

Are there any additional questions from members of the council? This is a public hearing. Would anyone like to address the city council on this item? Yeah, please, just make your way to the podium. State your name for the record, please. Take your time.

Thank you for having me, everybody. My name is Mark McIver. E-Bike. It's the big caper of the day. It's a non-topic. Okay? Why is it that I have to register my Honda Mini Trail 50, my Honda CT70, have proof of insurance with plates if I drive them on the street? Why don't e-bikes have to do that? Okay, they're going down my street and I live in residential 30 to 35 miles per hour.

Mr. McIver, this item here is for the police rehab. This is not e-bikes, but- But point taken, state law does not have that in there. So we're working with a variety of folks to try and combat the e-bike situation. But there will be a call to the public where you can share your comments just in that one after our next item. You can come back up and share your comments. We can't have a two-way conversation, but we can listen. I'm sorry, I didn't know. Oh, yeah, no, we appreciate your feedback, Mr. MacGyver. Just a few more minutes. Would anyone like to address the council on this item? All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council for any discussion or possible motion.

Mayor?

Yeah, Councilmember Dolan?

Motion.

Please.

I move to award the base bid and additive alternatives one, two, three, four, and six for the PD facility and jail rehab phase two project to Precise Builders Inc. in the amount of $3,753,886.32. Second.

We have a motion from Councilmember Dolan, a second from Councilmember Moses. Is there any additional discussion?

One quick question.

Councilmember Campbell?

What was alternate number five? I mean, how did we decide to pull that one out?

So additive alternate five was that auxiliary building, the old gun range.

Okay.

During design, the mechanical engineer had thought it would be a wise move to put new rooftop air conditioning units on that building, but Recently, over the past several years, that building has been updated with many split units so they can climate zone cool different parts of that building. And it was just a matter of discussion with the police department and facilities. And it was an unnecessary update or upgrade, if you will.

Okay, so when you went out for the scope of work, the bid, that was as an alternate, but you just decided after you got the bids, you decided to remove that, or did you remove that? Obviously, it was after the bids.

Correct. We received the bids. It was already involved in so many of the plan sheets that we went ahead and went out to bid with that item.

Okay, thank you much.

You're welcome. Are there any additional questions?

Again, we have a motion from Councilmember Dolan, a second from Councilmember Moses. We are ready to vote.

Motion carries six to zero.

Thank you.

All right, and our final public hearing of the evening is item 7.11. It's a presentation and update on Lake Havasu City water system and water main replacement program. Mr. Kellett?

Just thinking with the technical glitches tonight, I might not be able to do it from here. And when Shannon moved, it made me even more curious of whether I could move them from here. Can I move them from here or no? The slides? Okay. Tell you what, I'll move to your side then. Good evening, Mayor and Council. It is an honor to be here and talk about our Water division. So this is going to be an informational presentation specifically to the water division. We're going to be covering a lot of topics. So if you'll bear with me, we're going to go through quite a bit of this stuff tonight. And then of course, there'll be time for questions at the end as per our usual arrangement. I'm going to start with a map. This is a map of everything that's going on. The spaghetti noodles in blue, that's your water system. What we're showing at this resolution is basically the mains. We're not talking about service lines in this particular picture, although we do have them mapped as well. We're gonna see things such as the booster stations, where the wells are, where mains are. The point of this slide is to emphasize it is a large and complex system. We operate on basically seven pressure zones, but really we have almost 14 micro pressure zones. And while it's not a direct part of this presentation, pressure is another big issue that we are tackling currently through our water model and through some adaptive management strategies to manage pressure throughout the system as well. It's another very interesting part of this is when you're managing that and have one zone that goes from 65 PSI to 110 PSI and how do you make sure everybody gets the water that they need at the pressure they need. That's an ongoing operational thing that we're always looking at, and we're actually in a focused effort on our water model to do a better job of that as best we can. Moving ahead, the importance of your system is if you don't understand it, you can't do much with it. So we take quite a bit of time over the past couple of years developing performance measures and standards and stats so that we're actually tracking things that are happening within the system and not just saying, Hey, we feel good about it. We're kind of past the days of feel good about it. We're in the days of here's data and let's make a decision. In that regard, we're tracking multiple, multiple measures across various different areas around staffing, different levels of work orders, the amount of water we're producing per year. Big topic is always water loss. Right now we're tracking at about 8.9%. I'm going to caveat this a bit. The method of calculating it right now includes our consumptive use and our diversionary use. I know our meters aren't spot on. And we already are in a project to replace all of our older residential meters and commercial meters with advanced meter infrastructure. That's already happening. We're over 7,000 meters into this. I think there's probably another 3% to 4% on top of this that we're missing because of that. But we're already addressing that. But 8.9% is pretty decent. Industry target is to be less than 10%. So we're in that generic zone right now. The other big topic that comes up a lot that we are tracking is those main breaks. So we do keep track of both main and service breaks. In 2024, we were sitting at about 79, not about, but 79 breaks. That ends up being 15.8 breaks per 100 miles. 2025, 62, which ends up being 12.4 breaks per 100 miles. The industry staff for this, if you're gonna be in the top 25%, you're gonna have 6.1. And if you're gonna be in the 75th percentile, you're gonna have 21.2. So needless to say, we're a little past median, but we're working in the right direction, right? We're going the right way, we're making adjustments, and you'll see later where that's being focused efforts and main replacements. So again, this is the idea. We're paying attention to our system in a very different way. You're gonna see a lot of gaps there in the 2023 numbers, cuz these are things that as we realized we didn't have the data to make correct decisions, we started coming up ways to gather that data. And I want to give a better sense of what we're seeing in the field so that when we're talking about service lines and we're talking about breaks, I want to give you just a quick preview of what's going on with our operators in the field. This is wet ground to us. This is a scheduled event. We can get to it when it comes up on the schedule. It's important. Don't get me wrong. Every drop of water that's used somewhere is an important task and object for us to go after. This one can be scheduled. This would be a service line break. This is from the main and it's going to be a very small line. And it's something we can address in a timely manner. Puddling. Again, probably a service line. This is a really good video because it will also show what these big old marks are on the road when we do underground service alerts, trying to figure out what other utilities are in the area. This is, again, a scheduled event. So when the water staff receives a reported leak, we're going to see these things. We're going to start coordinating. Keep in mind that any time we dig in the ground, we have to turn in a dig alert. We've got two days to wait for those to come back. So what we've come up with in the interim is these little signs that you'll see a nice little picture here that it tells the customers in our case repairs are scheduled. We know this is happening. We're going to be on it probably within a week, but we do have to wait for those dig alerts to come back. We have to get all the other utilities are okay with this digging in the area, and if they're not, they've marked, as you can see with some of these, where we can and cannot dig or where we need to be careful for their infrastructure. Then we get to things like active water flow. This is gonna get us there in about 10 minutes, okay? We see these kinds of things, these are responded to immediately. These are not scheduled. These are the starting to look at more like a main break. These get active responses and immediate responses. And then to our least favorite type flooding. These get as quick as we can possibly be there. This is where we had calling things like emergency locates. And so those utilities that are marking the services in the areas we're gonna dig, they have two hours to respond. It's a very different scenario when we elevate it to this. And you have to keep in mind, when we're digging, we are telling other utilities, hey, stop what you're doing and come tell us what your stuff is because we need to do work in the area. So there is a coordination with other utilities. We already do that when Alla was in town. We would mark service lines. We would mark the laterals. We told them where stuff was. And it's kind of the same thing throughout the industry. Telecom, energy, we're all doing the same thing. And now you're getting a sense of when we're talking about our water mains, when we're talking about our service lines, and the various response strategies that we have. This is a picture of infrastructure. And as you can imagine, not good infrastructure. I'm gonna point out in this particular one, this is not old infrastructure. This is some of our four inch PVCs that we're having the largest problem with. This seems to be more of a manufacturing defect than anything else, cuz it is very common. Specifically in cul-de-sacs, we see a lot of this. So one of our target areas, which we'll show later in this presentation, has a lot to do with four inch lines because they seem to fail the most. It does seem to be this particular type of pipe though. Again, it's an issue we're aware of and are addressing fairly regularly right now in our plans. All right, we're getting some background. We're a little bit more into what we have going on. Nobody's fallen asleep yet. So now we're going to get into numbers. And I want to talk about the budget and how the budget works. Keeping in mind that the water division is, for all intents and purposes, a simple explanation, is a business the city owns. It means that it is not a taxpayer-funded part of the city. It is a ratepayer-funded part of the city. meaning the people who pay for it are the people who use it. So if you're not receiving Lake Havasu City water, you're not paying for it. That, I think, is a very critical thing when we're looking at the budget, because I'm going to actually go into the budget in a lot more detail right now. And keep in mind, the funds that we receive are a direct result of what the council has done in adopting rates and budgets for the division. Again, it's operating as its own business. It pays its way for things. it can't be any more important than that. We have to use the funds from our rate payers to do our work. I think that's a big way of saying that. We're not general funds in any way, shape, or form. Let's look at that budget breakdown. So let's just talk about this year coming up. Where is that money going? People always want to know, man, you guys have this. We heard a lot of talk about $300 million budgets in the budget meetings leading up to it. That's not the water budget. The water budget is about $40 million. That's what it is. That's what we have to do all of our wages, benefits, pay for the electricity, pay for the services that the city provides to us, as well as our capital improvement program. So in this breakdown, you're seeing where that money goes. We spend about 14% of our total budget on wages and benefits. About 10% goes to utilities. Utilities in this case is us paying our electric bill. This year's electric bill was $3.5 million. Just to give you a scope of what we're talking about, that's how much money we had to pay Unisource to move water through this town. Not a lot of money in vehicles, very small contingency for this particular one. 52% of our budget is the capital improvement program. So the majority of our money goes towards that program. But we have to think, what does that program trying to do? We saw a map earlier, we saw production elements, we saw treatment elements, and we saw distribution elements. We do not have a single piece of infrastructure that we can ignore. That is not an option. We must provide reliable water service to the entire community to the best of our abilities. That means we have to set priorities and our priorities come into, I'm gonna categorize them as six general topics. We have our water treatment plant, we have our well system, we have our booster stations, water tanks, metering right now cuz we are spending a good amount of time on metering right now. And then our water mains and service lines. We have to think about the entire system. So we can't just focus on one of these. We really have to take a wholesale approach of what does our system need to maintain its reliability into the future. when you look at that and you break up that 52 percent and right we're changing the pie now we're just talking about the cip budget which is around 19 million dollars these are the pieces that we're going to attack all year long the font's a little small so i'm going to point to a specific area right now that's the water main portion of this budget if it's not clear enough i'm going to put a nice little sticker on it as well 24 a quarter of the the dollars that we're putting towards our cip Project is going towards water main replacement and then right next to it is actually the metering infrastructure We're spending a million dollars on metering infrastructure. These are very important critical elements We need to collect the correct amount of revenue which is going to be seen through having more accurate meters And we need to not lose the water to the ground Everybody who's seen a monsoon in this town has seen an inch of water drop, and two hours later, you can't find it. It sucks up. Our soil will suck this stuff up. That means smaller water breaks or water leaks we may not see for years. We know that. That's why we have to address our system as proactively as we possibly can. But this is giving you a sense of where our direction is going into next year. I've talked a lot in previous meetings about our strategy for approaching water main replacement and how we are not going by the seat of our pants and we are using data. And I've mentioned in previous meetings our use of AI. This is an area of new technology, but not necessarily. We've been looking at how to do water main replacements in desktop exercises like this for years. Our water master plan has a version of this Already inside of it, but it's a desktop version where you run very few iterations. When you get to use the computer models, you get to run thousands and thousands and thousands of iterations to determine where truly is your problem. And to make it as kind of as simple as possible, our partnership with Voda, Voda is the name of the company that has our water break data, has the size of our pipes, has the age of the pipes, the pressures in those pipes. throughout the entire system, and it's able to put it into this computer model. And it's really a numeric guessing model, but they're fantastic at what they do because they can do so many scenarios for you so fast, you get to see a very good average approximation of what's gonna come out of your system. When you're looking at your system, you wanna determine two really important factors. What's the likelihood that it's gonna fail, and what's the consequence that it fails? These are two different things that are gonna get you to your overall risk of that pipeline. You can imagine the pipeline in front of the hospital has an incredibly high consequence of failure, right? We do not want the hospital to fail. We do not want our dialysis centers to fail. Schools actually have a fairly high consequence of failure. LIKELIHOOD OF FAILURE IS A COMBINATION OF FACTORS THAT INCLUDE THE AGE OF THE PIPE, THE NUMBER OF BREAKS THAT HAVE HAPPENED ON THE PIPE, THE PRESSURE IN THE AREA, THE GENERAL FLOW THROUGH THE AREA. SO IT'S TAKING IN A MULTITUDE OF DATA TO DETERMINE WHAT'S GOING ON. NOW, THIS EXERCISE IS AN EXAMPLE EXERCISE. I WENT INTO THE MODEL AND I SAID, HEY, TELL YOU WHAT, TELL ME WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO BREAK IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. WHAT'S MY TOP 1% IF I WERE TO TAKE A GUESSING STICK, WHAT WOULD BE MY BEST GUESS? These red lines on the left side of your screen are showing where those would be. Various sticks throughout. What you're going to notice a lot is they look like they're in cul-de-sacs. That's that four inch line that we keep telling everybody is that that's actually our bigger issue. It's a bunch of tiny little four inchers because they fail more often. We're replacing. We replaced two this weekend. That's what we're dealing with. So the model's telling us that same data. Model has a cool little trick too. It'll actually do planning for you. If you go in there and give it your scenario of, hey, I have X amount of dollars, I have X amount of years, it'll start telling you what projects you should be targeting. And we can combine this effort here of targeting what projects are appropriate for water mains with things like our street repair programs or if we're doing repaving projects. We can now look at this and go, hey, my map says over the next five, this example that I built in the model this time was over the next five years, if I had $18 million, where would you send me and for how long would it take? We do have the ability to manipulate the model as we see fit, meaning we can change the cost of pipe. If pipe goes up through the roof, we can change it inside of the model and say, instead of $200 a linear foot, it's $300 a linear foot. We can go in there and say, hey, we want the consequence of failure of any road that's been touched in the last five years to double. Now it's even more important that those don't break. We need to know that beforehand. And it'll give you a list of what the projects are and what their cost is and about how long they take. We set the parameter for how long we think we can do each one. So we can say we assume a thousand feet could be done in a month. And we put that into the model. It'll spit out what we can do. And to give you a better sense, I don't know if you guys can see project 20 there. It's kind of in the middle spot. I picked that one because inside of the project is the actual data that's driving why that project shows up. You get your LOF rank. So this particular piece of pipe ranks number 57. Of the thousand segments of pipe we put in there, this one happens to be ranked 57. Its consequence of failure is in the top 11%. So it's not that high. It doesn't have a huge consequence of failure, but it's pretty high. It has a huge risk because the combination of the risk and the likelihood of failure are combined to make this a much more uh... likely to fail and likely to cause problems pipe uh... in the case is in the other we know it's a four-inch we have an installation of nineteen seventy we know it's asbestos cut cement pipe or asbestos concrete pipe This is a good target. This is something that the model's now telling me something that my field data verifies. My field data says this should be something I should go after, and the model's giving me that information back. So what we've seen now is we've shown you guys essentially what kind of breaks we're dealing with in the system, where our budget's coming from, and how we're looking to the future to do these projects. And now you're saying, well, great, you guys have a lot of magic in numbers in front of you, but what are you doing with that? That's where I want to go to progress. One of the things that the council did was approve a five-year rate plan. And when you did that and it came into effect in November of 2023, we took action. So what you have on this graphic here in the orange line is the total CIP spending in the water division over the years going back to 2018. The blue line represents the CIP spending on mainline replacements, keeping in mind there are going to be segments that we replaced because they broke. So other pieces were getting fixed during this, but this is the planned work. And what you're seeing is essentially very little planned work being done. I won't speak to the priorities previous to me being with the department because that's not fair, right? I don't know what the polls were to do certain things. What I can tell you is that when the rates were approved, and the edict was given, make the system work and make it efficient, we immediately started doing that. So those rates go into effect in November of 2023. That meant that we had to ramp up the design, ramp up the construction, and that happened all in 2024. And that's why you're going to see this big spike in use in 25. Because of the way we had to pay for things, a lot of the payments from the 24 efforts ended up in 25. So really those two years kind of belong together. You're seeing that over $3 million being spent per year on water main replacement. So we've talked about now how the system is built, how we're looking going forward, and how that progress is already being made. And I hope with that information, we have a better understanding of not only how the water system operates, what we're currently doing, and what we plan with. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Collett. Great presentation on how the system works. Thank you for providing that for us. I'll open it up to questions from members of the council. Vice Mayor Diaz?

Jim, can you go back to that one slide that had that four-inch, that blue pipe with the smile? One that was smiling at us. It is smiling. I hadn't noticed that before. Thank you. I know. I know. What is that material? Oh, that's polyvinylcholine, PVC. Okay. So what do you guys think what's causing it? You said it's happening a lot, but this is newer pipe. What do you think is causing it? It was too thin, Walt. Too thin? Too thin, yes. Okay. Interesting. Okay. And then you said water – Loss that 8.9% is that just from all the from the leaks and the breaks that that's what the law that that's the main driver for that without it's it's the main driver.

Part of the thing that we have been doing implementation wise is we actually had really old meters on our wells to begin with, so that led to some of the inaccuracy. We've actually changed that every one of our well meters now are brand new and they're reading much more accurately. So we picked up some of the losses there. The meters really, we have many, many meters in town that are far over the 10 years that you would replace them at. There's some inaccuracy sitting inside of that as well. General leakage, yeah, I would attribute almost the entire 8.9% to the system kind of leaking. These breaks, though. That's probably going to be a 10 to 15,000 gallon leak that we're going to lose. And we try to estimate those as best we can. But you're guessing. You don't know how long it was broken for. You're trying to take the best guess you can. We are trying different technologies with pressure sensors to find these even earlier if we can. Because a lot of these, we don't see them. They happen in the middle of the night. We report as fast as we can. But it's an hour and a half before we can really have it turned off safely. keeping in mind for those who are not water operators, you can't just like turn it off. If you just turn off a system, it causes something called a water hammer and you end up breaking somewhere else in the system. So you can't just shut it off. You have to slowly turn these things off and otherwise you cause issues other than the system. That particular one, yeah, there's more weeping, little leaks all over town for sure. We're going to chase as many of the things as we can, but you'll never find all of them. No system ever has. That's why the industry standard is to be below that 10%.

So would you say, just objectively, so say 2020 to 2022 for those three years versus 2023 to 2026, are we having more? The perception is we're having water main breaks all over the place. Jason, would you think, is that true? Are we having more water main breaks than normal? So I would actually go with,

I can't answer that because the data really doesn't support that right now. The average number of breaks per year has stayed fairly consistent as far as the work order data is concerned. The problem I have with answering that more fully is we did not do a good job previous to 2022 of identifying service line breaks versus mainline breaks. And there is a vast, vast difference. Service line break is going to be a one-inch line. It's a far less amount of water. They're also much closer to the surface. So they break because people are just in the area of them. Main breaks, it looks like we're trending down now, but there was definitely an increase somewhere around 21, 22, where the four inches just really started popping on us.

And I'll go back to, I think we had the last meeting, last city council meeting, we had that paradigm flats we were talking about on Swanson. I think you made a comment that someone brought up, but why aren't we having the developer replace the water main there? Cuz there's gonna be a lot more pressure. If we add 68 units there, and you said that right now, the data shows that that line is okay.

Yeah, and it's the opposite. The pressure's gonna decrease, cuz you have more people taking off, so the pressure's gonna go down, not go up.

Okay. Okay, fair enough. And then what did you say that the annual water budget was? About $40 million. It's $42 million this year. And 24% of that, what was that, 24%?

So it's 24% of the CIP money. So the CIP is set at $19 million. 24% of that, $4.5 million, is going towards water main replacements. So if we're doing quick math, that would be about 12.5% of the total budget is going towards that.

All right, thank you, sir. Great presentation, by the way. You're welcome. Very good.

I know, like I said, is there a solution to these pipes? We know we're in cul-de-sacs. I mean, I know it's easier to pull up asphalt in there, fix them and put asphalt down because it's a lesser area. Is that the option or is it... I've seen it where they put the lining inside and they- Yeah. In a pipe. Is that something like this that we can use or is that not even a- No.

It just- Yeah, those linings that you see, those typically are in sewer pipes because you don't have a water quality issue. The liner inside of drinking water pipes is not something that is done.

Okay. So what is the, do we just wait for them to happen or can we get into the cul-de-sacs and fix them?

Yeah, fixing is replacing. Unfortunately, when it comes to water systems, it's replacing. So it's knowing where they are and replacing them.

Thanks. One more question.

Sorry.

If we've determined and it's proven that this is a manufacturing defect, do we have any recourse to the nothing at all?

No, because it's speculation on our part because it happens to be the same pipe that keeps breaking. There's nothing we could do to go back and say, hey, this thing that was installed 20 years ago, you guys now owe us four. We don't have a way to do that. All right.

Yes, I did have a question. I have seen this before, and I have seen this in brand new homes that I've built with pipes that are pretty equivalent to this. It's because the contractors are dumping very sharp and heavy rocks in there instead of putting proper soilage in there or pea gravel. And thank goodness we find it soon enough before the whole house is built. But I know for a fact when we didn't put base down before we put our roads, why you can find some streets have a lot of cracks all over them, others don't. And my husband says, if you take a blade over the top of some of our very, very sharp rocks in town, they flip right up and then you put asphalt on them. Where it's rocky, we can definitely tell you exactly why the asphalt is cracking more than other places that it's not as rocky. It's very easy to see and identifiable what happened. And so when I see this, Again, I don't see us being able to go back to a manufacturer. I wouldn't have been either. I'm sure if I was the manufacturer, I'd look at that and say, I'm curious about your install. What did you put in there? And then you're putting asphalt over it and compacting it. These are how these things crack. So are you noticing a certain area? Like, was there... change in our installation on some of these or are we being because I will tell you some parts in the city are super rocky and it makes a lot more work for us as well as graders and installers and stuff so Have you noticed that it's in rockier areas? And the way we can identify that, you can look around the neighborhood and see if you see a lot of stress cracks throughout, you know, crack seal, a lot of crack seal. That's what we're recognizing. Find the crack seal. You're almost going to be finding a lot of these breaks.

I think you brought up actually two very good points. One, bedding pipe correctly is so important. We have, with the streets department, actually really embarking on a new way of doing compaction testing to make sure that we're putting it back as best we possibly can when we do these things. We're trying to hold contractors to the same standards of compaction testing. It is incredibly important that you bed pipe correctly, otherwise it'll bend, it'll flex, and it'll break. As far as rockiness in certain areas, no, I can't speak to any, yeah, this area is worse than that. Our soil is fairly consistent in that it's inconsistent, right? You dig one area, you hit blow sand, and then you dig literally five feet over and you hit the biggest rock you've ever seen. We're oddly consistently inconsistent.

I agree. And it is frustrating for myself as well as when the subs are just taking, they're just going quickly in there and they end up throwing a bunch of rock in there. They really do not realize the long-term effect that they can have on people's showers and drains and so on and so forth. So that's the first thing I thought of when I saw this. I thought maybe possibly installation issues. But you're saying that you're noticing that the pipe seems just generally thinner than the newer pipe that you're buying in?

Yeah. Generally thinner, and the other thing that we believe there's a weakness somehow in the pipe is that we seem to get more during the summer because the heat seems to do something. So the rapid change in ground temperature seems to have an effect. Again, this is more anecdotal, us kind of noticing it. We don't get as many breaks during the winter. It's cooler, we've assumed. Water demand does obviously increase during the summer. It tends to be more irrigation-based, so it's in the middle of the morning, kind of like five, it's the middle of the morning, because that's when we're working. 5 a.m., 6 a.m., that's when the pressure fluctuation goes up. 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when actually it's not, the water usage kind of goes down.

And I would recommend... the heat of the hot of our have you ever turned on your tap water and see how hot it is in the middle of the summertime when it's hotter it actually expands and so who knows i'm not an expert i'm not an engineer but i do know a little bit about these pipes and you don't want you definitely got to be careful when you're installing them i appreciate your expertise every question that we ever ask up here you have a quick response you are highly educated i would love to know how you say this is not a capital issue, like we can't do capital influx into our water department. And I would like to ask why not occasionally, maybe to catch us up a little bit to give some relief. I'm sure we can actually, put funding into capital improvements to help this out. I understand that it's an enterprise fund and we want to, rate payers have to pay for it, but we've already identified some situations that were unexplained. Why is the pipe breaking sooner? Why did we fall behind when we did? It's really hard to expect in the next five years all the rate payers to catch up due to the possibility that maybe This is no fault of our own, other than proper supervision, because I wonder how many of those were broken based on not properly installed. I appreciate you being in this seat. I look forward to seeing all that you can do for our, and I appreciate you. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

Any other questions or comments before we open the public hearing? All right, this is a public hearing. Would anyone like to address the City Council on this item? Seeing now, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to council. So just a couple of comments from what I see. I appreciate your presentation, Mr. Kellett, but we're doing the right things now. So it seems like we didn't have the right funding mechanism prior to the right structure being adopted. But now that we have that, we're doing what we need to do. We're meeting industry standard or best practice benchmarks is what I saw. We're operating the system on data, which is fantastic. We are making data-informed decisions, and we will have, as a council, we will have to review rate strategies as we go forward to figure out how do we make those priorities and address them as we go through. All right, thank you for the presentation. All right, we'll move on to item eight on our agenda. That's the call to the public. This is where citizens have an opportunity to address the city council on items within the jurisdiction of Lake Havasu City that are not on the agenda. We can't have a two-way conversation, but we can listen intently to your comments. And if you would like to address the council during call to the public, please make your way to the podium and state your name for the record. We lost Mr. MacGyver on e-bike, so hopefully we can catch up with him at a different time. Is it green?

There you go. I think it may be. I think it might be. Thank you. You know, I've never actually had to push the button before, so. And yes, I just want to say thank you very much for the last few weeks of the budget meeting and how the splash pad became a really remarkable issue for everybody and that somehow someone decided at Parks and Rec Department to make the splash pad at the Aquatic Center free for everyone to use. the whole summer from july august and september all summer long and i just wanted to tell you that is a really amazing thing especially since i know you heard from so many mothers who were really concerned about that i don't know how often people have ever discussed with you how much they wanted dollar days at the aquatic center but i would like to say i think if During this year, you could have the splash pad, which always costs for people to use until this year. Perhaps you can implement dollar days next summer for summer vacation and again, just the public school summer vacation, not all 14 weeks of summer from July till September. I just wanted to suggest that once again because how passionate I am about making the Aquatic Center a fun place for families to go to and to brag about going there. Do you know Go Lake Havasu? Which you guys pay for tourism and advertising. Kids, children's social media accounts, especially the teenagers, as they go to the aquatic center and have fun, you would be getting free advertisement and it wouldn't cost you to have them paying for ads because their posts Social media would give you that complete Advertisement and let much cheaper cost then go Lake Havasu.

Thank you Anyone else like to address the City Council call the public

Good evening again, City Council Mayor. So I just want to quickly reiterate what Bonnie said about she's too humble, but she's been up here before asking for a dollar a day for the splash pad for kids in the summertime, and that has not been implemented. So I'll have a shout out for her idea for ongoing. If we can afford it this year free, which is great, we can afford it next year at free or a dollar a day. So I support her in that. But that's not why I'm here today. Just wanted to reiterate or talk about the celebratory reading in the Declaration of Independence that I put together this year. I put that together. I worked with Joe Nolet, who was dropping the flag over the London Bridge together. We had a lot of synergy. I want to thank the city. And I'm going to get her name right, Jerry Bracamonte. THANK YOU. SO I WANT TO AGAIN THANK HER. I STARTED THIS IN JANUARY. I HAD THE IDEA MANY YEARS AGO, BUT FINALLY IN JANUARY, NEW YEAR, I THOUGHT I'M GOING TO DO IT. Quite the process. She helped me work through it. Two different permits I had to fill out through the city. A million dollars in insurance. But it was all worth it. I don't know if you can put the photos up there. Probably not, but that's okay. We had six veterans read. We had three different readings of the Declaration of Independence asked. Six veterans came to read. It was amazing to watch people who have... Defended our freedom for many these people in particular, but throughout 250 years of our our country's Life we had 11 youth and we had nine adults including the mayor. Thank you. Mr. Mayor for reading and we had hundreds of attendees A minute 24 left. So two things I put together a four by eight Declaration of Independence four by eight foot with room on the bottom for people to sign. So I had been out there for two days. I bet I had hundreds of signatures on that thing. It's too big for a time capsule. Joke, no? No, okay. Thank you. But I think it probably has some enduring value. And if all of us collectively or individually can think about what we could do with a four by eight foot Declaration of Independence, since it's the 250th birthday, that might be a good thing. I don't happen to know. It's not going to stay in my garage forever. But anyway. And then another thing that was pretty cool is I got an email on my way home about 1 o'clock. I helped with the sound system at the lowering of the flag. So if you heard some bad sound, that was me going in between my phone. But there's a documentary filmmaker who was in town. She sent me a text at around 11 a.m. saying, hey, are you going to have another reading? I was like, no, I had one. But anyway, we got together, and she is doing a film on America 250, specifically the Colorado River. She started up at the Hoover Dam, spent a couple days up at the Hoover Dam. I went. She was at the cause having a coffee with her mom. I said, I'm three blocks away. I'm going to go over and meet. So long story short, she asked if I could recreate that. I didn't, but I did. I went out the next day and actually read the Declaration of Independence with two young girls. There could be a film about Lake Havasu in the next three years. It's a long-term project, and it might be. And she also went out during the evening. I helped her. I carried her camera, and she took photos of everyone on the channel, fireworks, all of that. So that might be a cool thing in the future. These things apparently take three years. I don't know. I'm not a filmmaker, but I look forward to that in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Barron. Thank you for organizing that event. It was a great event. Would anyone else like to address this to council during call to the public? All right, we'll go ahead and close the call to the public. Item nine on our agenda is current events. Are there any council committee reports? Vice Mayor Diaz?

Yeah, so we have a goal like it happens to board meeting tomorrow. I will not be able to attend, but I've already told their board why. And I'll get all the information and I'll report at the next meeting. But they are in the process of screening possible candidates. They have about 15 candidates for the new director position. And we've gone through, I think, two already that we've screened. And we have about 11 more, 11 to 12 more, and then they're gonna process of elimination, get it down to maybe the top five, and they'll come in for face to face interviews. But they're deep in the process of looking at hiring a new director. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Diaz. Council Member Campbell.

Mayor, I wanna thank Anthony Kowalski and Sarah from the MPO, and also our lobbyist, Nick, last name?

Zamanetta.

Zamanetta. Did I do that right? That's a good word. Okay, anyhow, we did a Zoom meeting. It was very good in regards to how Lake Havasu City can come on board, including the county, to have resolutions to support the ARTAC agenda, which was the federal agenda, two items. very important items that we are still lobbying against because this does sunset September 30th. It doesn't look like we're gonna meet the deadline that we'd hoped to do. But by Tom Doran, the lobbyist for our tech has already sent several letters. The point is this, you guys have heard me say it again and it's so dire that in 2009, we changed the way we did our federal funding. We took the original census of 2000 and and decided that we're just going to put a little bit of money year after year after year to that. High growth states like Arizona and Texas are very upset with the fact once we identified through the RTAC, which is Rural Transportation Advocacy Council, which I chair, and I truly appreciate chairing, we did identify by doing what they called modernization of our transportation funding in 2023 we did had mag do a data and said what would it look like pre-2009 what would our funding be in arizona for the closest data we could get was the 2020 census which we all agree we do a horrible job filling out our census in arizona i'd really hope moving forward that we can lobby for the next one that everybody pays attention how important this is to get our funding back but in 2023 um We lost $198 million in transportation funding just in one year in Arizona. To me, that is highly important, and we are talking about reaching out with you, Mayor, and the Tri-City Council to get a resolution to our legislators, the state of Arizona, all of our legislators, that we don't want to be a donor state any longer. We do not have much time, 2020. Like I said, September 30th is our deadline. The other thing that I found while digging through 1,005 page document is an item in there that was kind of brilliant. It was called the Protect Act. In the Protect Act, it had $800 million in it. Out of the $800 million, I understand $200 million went back to the federal government. In that Protect Act, it was supposed to include environments within extreme heat index. I haven't met an engineer yet that didn't tell me that Lake Havasu City doesn't partake in being an extreme heat index. So again, I appreciate the support from the city to come on board and to help myself and our tech and many other legislators including Cinemani and Biggs and the number is pretty big of us starting to say, hey, we want at least our fair share of funding back that we wanna take it back to pre 2009. And so anybody that can support us in this, I do appreciate that they did come to the table. We are starting to have the conversation. I hope it's not too late. But I think anybody that's in a fast growing state should be fighting alongside us. But there you go, it's exciting. I certainly hope something happens and we have changed some of the verbiage for the Protect Act to be stronger. The only problem with that is the current summary said that they used to be 50% to rural Arizona would go to all the grant funding was available with 50% would go to rural Arizona. The other 50% would go to Metropolitan. What we found out in the summary, they were sweeping it all into first come first serve, which generally means rural transportation is lost because we don't have the grant writers. But in this case, I hope that all of our grant writers and our staff are on board because if it goes into effect, it will be five years. And if there is anything to do with extreme heat index, that we can get federal funding to help us up with some of our roads and some of our infrastructure i certainly hope that we're all on board but thank you i know that was long-winded that's what i do but it's a lot of information in a short period of time thanks thank you councilman campbell is there any additional council committee reports

All right, item 10, our future meetings. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, July 28th, 2026 at 5.30 p.m. It will be a regular meeting. And then on Tuesday, August 11th, 2026 at 5.30 p.m., we will also have a regular meeting. Item 11, are there any future discussion items?

Mayor.

Council Member Campbell.

Any direction on that resolution that I had asked, went through your office to get?

In regards to the rodeo? Yes. Yes, I can get with you this week and we can have that discussion.

Okay, thank you. Yes.

All right, item 12, we are adjourned. Thank you for being here. Be kind. We'll see you next time.