Town Council - Regular Meeting

I think we got the good afternoon. I think it's good to have everybody together. Meeting's called order. Would the clerk please call the roll?

Mayor Stanton? Here. Vice mayor LaBelle?

Here.

Council member Andean Keller? Here. Council member Liebman? Here. Council member Moore?

Here. Council

member Pace? Here. Council member Thomason? Here. We have a quorum.

Thank you, mister Town Clerk. As a reminder, this meeting is being streamed live on the Internet and will be archived on the town's website for future viewing. The first item on the agenda is a study session and these items are scheduled for discussion among the council staff and their designees. Votes will not be taken on any of these items at this time but may be scheduled for a final action later in the meeting or at a future meeting. Members of the public are asked to hold their comments until call to the public that's scheduled for shortly after 6PM.

Public comments will also be invited when the agenda topic is placed on a future agenda for action. There is only one study session item today regarding the fiscal year 2027 CIP bond financing and expenditure limitation elections And it will be presented by our chief financial officer, Leslie Duresh. I know it's a lot of moving parts on this one. So thank you for the diligence to bring this forward and the detail that you've got. And I will turn the floor to you.

Alright, thank you. So as we are heading into our budget season, we need to discuss the different options we have to address our expenditure limitation. We have discussed some of these items before in previous sessions, but we just wanted to go into more detail and hopefully get some counsel direction on how you would like to proceed. I would like to mention that these are not you can choose to move forward with any of these options or any combination of these options. They all have different benefits, pros and cons.

But it's really up to you what you feel will be best for the town moving forward. So I'm just going to talk about each of these individually. And then we can open it up for more discussion. And you can ask questions. We have enough time to meet again if we need to. And a lot of this will be based on what we want to do with our capital projects. We do have a tentative capital project list that was given to you tonight, but we are also scheduled to talk about CIDP in-depth on March 12. But if you we may be able to get more information to you prior to that time, but I just want you to keep that in mind as we're going through this. Okay. So the first one we're gonna talk about is our permanent base adjustment.

And there are other ways you could do home rule, but we have done permanent base adjustments in the past. We've done them several times, and that is an option that will increase our expenditure limitation one time. It's permanent. And if this will have to go to vote or to election, and if it does, we will need council direction relatively quickly to do this. The last we've done it three times in the past.

The last time was for $14,000,000 in current dollars. It is based on a formula. The expenditure limitation is based on a formula that's partial growth and partial GDP inflator. Now the reason why this particular formula doesn't work for us and it doesn't work for most people, most people have something in place for most entities have something in place for this is because we don't really grow very much, if at all. And so right now, just got a tentative number from the economics commission.

And our expenditure limitation is going up maybe $1,400,000 this year, which is very little. So depending on what kind of inflation factors you're looking at, it certainly doesn't mean inflation. So it's about a 2.1% increase and inflation is running more like 3% and it's been higher in in recent years. So actual inflation is definitely outpacing the expenditure limitation increases that we receive. Okay.

So increasing the permanent base will give us more flexibility for the things that we would like to do and that we have done in the past, which include, paying extra payments towards our p s p PSPRS unfunded liability. And it also and it's more it can be used more for operational items as well as capital items. We have contractual obligations in the fire service payments and those are set by contract and we have to pay them regardless. And so those have been increasing higher than inflation as well. And then there are other operation if we have any significant operational changes that we would have to pay for, the permanent base adjustment will address those.

It'll address inflation and operations and any kind of contractual obligations that we want to do. In addition, how we've been using it in the or when we want to spend more, it has been reducing our contingency amount. And so if we want to keep a a level contingency or a higher contingency amount, this will allow us to do that. And so I did put in numbers for a $15,000,000 increase if that as a starting point to discuss. That is the same almost the same amount of increase that we requested ten years ago.

So here's how it would look as far as the $19.79 $80 and the current dollar based on the formulas. Okay. So in order if we want to move forward with this, we would need council direction. We'd have to do a resolution and by February 26 and it would in order to make a summer election. And if it passes, it would not be effective until fiscal year twenty seven, twenty eight.

So I'm you have any questions or wanted to start some discussion on on what this will look like.

Thank you, Leslie. Councilmember Leitman.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you. I have two questions. The first is this two this 2.1% increase, which is 1,400,000.0 about. How firm is that? Can we rely on that? No.

Don't think it's changed much in the past from preliminary to final, but it absolutely can change. But it's just a starting point for discussion. So based on our population, which went down a little bit according to their estimates, and then their current inflation factor, that's what it is.

Can we negotiate that higher?

No. It's not negotiable.

It's just set in formula. Okay. Thank you. And my second question is why did you pick 15,000,000? I see that the earlier one was what you said before we did how much? 14,000,000. Why ten years later are you pegging it at 15,000,000? That's actually a lower percentage. It is. I'm assuming that's without inflation factor.

So 14,000,000 would be just a flat increase in current dollars to our expenditure limitation. I believe $14,000,000 will give us enough flexibility You

mean 15?

$15,000,000 will give us enough flexibility to last five or ten years without another increase in case we want to do any kind of increased spending in capital projects or if we have pension items that we want to pay. However, I also think we may be looking at a capital accumulation fund and maybe bond financing. So those would kind of offset the need for a higher expenditure limitation increase.

Is there any reason why we could not say look at a 20,000,000 understanding clearly that we don't need to use it and all it would mean is that we have more flexibility if we need it if inflation changes tremendously because I'm concerned that we're gonna run up against this problem depending on unfunded mandates and other things that happen or inflation going increasing tremendously. I'm afraid that doing the same thing we did ten years ago, 1,000,000 different might be a little low. So I would request that maybe we look at 20,000,000 as well.

Yeah. And we absolutely can do that. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Other questions or comments? Council member Moore?

No. Thanks. No questions, mayor. Not yet.

Okay. No problem. Council member Pace.

Thank you, mayor. And thanks for your comments and presentation and the work on this. I know we've been talking about it for a little while, but it helps to get some substance behind it and and what it is. How much in in looking at the numbers and to councilman or Leitman's point, how much of if we had some unfunded mandates like photo radar went into effect and was eliminated in our town, What is the estimate of cost that we need to actually put in place the staffing that would require with the people power?

So that kind of varies. We looked at if we wanted to have I think two patrol units. Yeah. We looked at that maybe putting in two patrol units might increase our expenditures by, $3,000,000 That was about a year ago we were looking at those numbers, so it's probably even higher now. And last year, our contingency was just 3,500,000.0. So that definitely would have pushed us right up. Okay.

So that's what I was so that's what's pushing, you know, that we need to do an expenditure limitation now for a vote for the people because we want this voting be effective till '28. And you want it higher. Yeah. We want so there's a couple of things. Yeah.

Is whatever we get to the voters now would be in the July election, 07/28/2026. And it will not be effective for us to utilize until February 2028. So we're already two years out from that. And then if it goes through this year with no photo radar, we would need at least $3.03, 4,000,000 for the excess resources they're gonna need to take over the 23,000,000 cars that go back and forth between as passed through between Scottsdale and Phoenix. So we already would be not be able to make our budget at this point. We would have to

look at other options. Yes.

And with contingency fee funds for our city, the last five years, what have we tried to do as a good best practice? Or do you have a recommendation as what's a good best practice for a town of our size?

So we should have? Yeah. So for the contingency, we've been running anywhere from very high years of 20,000,000 down to a very low years of like 3,000,000, which was last year 3,500,000.0. I think 10,000,000 is a good number for that. And that's when I looked at the $15,000,000 I was thinking that would allow us to keep a $10,000,000 contingency. Right.

And the $3,500,000 last year was only we only did that because of the Mockingbird project and we didn't have enough money.

It was a combination of the Mockingbird project and a short term increased expenditure for pavement preservation.

No. No, that's fine. But before that, had we ever been as low as $3,500,000 I thought we always kept much Yes, higher than

back in like 2015 through '20 During recessions. Yeah, a long time ago. Not

with the business council the last ten years. Yeah, I'd say we don't go that low. So for the last ten years we haven't gone that low except last year. That was the capital improvement project of Mockingbird that kind of pushed us into that situation, correct?

Yes.

Okay. All right. No, that's very helpful. I mean, think, you know, my thoughts I've said it before. Being responsible and for the benefit of our community, we can't get ourselves in a situation where we don't have money to access if we need it. It doesn't mean we have to spend it every year, but we're a little bit, to me, behind. We should have probably done this the last cycle on the expenditure limitation, not this one. We're late. We're very late because we don't even touch this till February 28. I mean, that's scary because we may be short staffing, police staffing, all kinds of things. And we wanna do some CIP projects. So on top of things, that's a whole another part of the equation. So I think we need to do it. I think we need to figure out the right number. I'm open to numbers as council member Leitman brought up some things.

I I'd rather not have to have I'd rather not tie the hands of future councils if we need that money now and they can just wait to spend it if they need it. If they never need it, great. It just sits there and we don't use it. It's not like we have to spend it. We start over with our budgets every year anyway. That's normal. So I would rather for going out do it for the right reasons and explain it to our residents and get it going. So I'm open to the amount. I don't want to go too short where we're just right again having to go do another expenditure limitation and increase too too soon. Know, ten years is about the right time.

It seems like we've been doing them. So, you know, I'm open to both of those. But I think it's the responsible thing to do. As a fiscal conservative Republican, you just cannot sit around and let things fall apart and that's not what we do. We have to plan for it, and we our residents do not like us to put things aside and just hope for the best.

And we're sitting here with all this money that we can't access, the $140,000,000, which probably is not the smartest and best thing for us when we have all these needs right now. I think in the last storm events, the two in it was September, October, we had 80 issues with water in public space and roads in September and I think it was 30 in October. I mean, we've got to start touching these projects. It's been ten years. So we need to get money in two different ways and we can't touch the money sitting in reserve. So we're taking care of for years to come. So we have three years contingency right there for our our monies if we lost everything. So anyway, I support it. I think we need to get going on it. We are definitely late.

We should have done this in the last cycle, but open to anything else everyone wants to talk about. Thanks.

Thank you, council member. Council member Andy Keller, did you have a question or comment?

No. I I support this as well and council member Pace kind of said everything that I was gonna say. I do also think that it would be helpful to to our con you know, our constituents if if when we go through the budget process that we're really going through our departments and seeing where there may be some money spent that doesn't need to be spent or could be upgraded to new technology that could cut costs, things like that to to help us be more streamlined and and yeah. Just I think if we're talking about an expenditure limitation and raising our budget, I think we also should look at each individual department's costs and where are they that they could streamline things that could potentially benefit us. You know, we want the we don't want the employees or staff serving the system.

We want the system to serve the staff. So I think that, you know, with all the tech out there now that we really could, you know, streamline a whole bunch of stuff and cut costs. That's just me.

And that's certainly a direction we can give when we out to the directors to take a look at that and come back when they're they do the department presentations.

Yeah. Okay. Very good. Thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you, council member council member Thomason.

I have questions about the potential increased cost if we lose photo enforcement and we increase some motorcycle patrols. As I understood, the cost for an entirely new squad was around $500,000 a year with the addition of three new officers and some equipment. I think it was 500,000 is the number that we put into contingency in the event that we had to draw on that this budget cycle. So I'm not understanding the difference between a $500,000 increased cost for losing Florida enforcement versus a 2 or $3,000,000 cost.

Yes. The reason for that is we started off to just start the program with a very small, just three motor pool officers. But the idea is that you would have a couple and I think the chief could speak to this better But you would have a couple sets of motor pools so they could run twenty four hours. And so that was just to get our foot in the door with training and starting a program so that we weren't caught completely off guard. But to have a full motor pool team, you would need many more officers than three. Thank you.

Alright. Any other questions or comments? I'd go back to council member Moore.

No questions right now, mayor.

Thank you. And to the vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. I'm I'm gonna try and stay super focused today on the funding mechanisms and strategy and and I know we'll be addressing the the line items and the things in the budget further along. Not that it can't be brought up today but there's so much information. So as far as the permanent base adjustment, I'm definitely in favor of sending that out to a vote. My question is I see that the years it's been sent to the public was 2000, 2006, 2016. Here we are at 2026. Seems to be running every ten years. That's not by design. That's just how actually as how we hit. Right? It's just working that way.

Yes, it works that way because we are constantly behind inflation basically.

And to go off that point, I would say that I am in support of what Councilmember Leitman and Councilmember Pace were saying that $15,000,000 if we did $14,000,000 ten years ago and that ran us ten years, I don't really think the next council is gonna wanna look at this again in another five years. So I would say that asking

for

a larger amount doesn't presume we need to spend it and we haven't even gotten yet to capital accumulation fund and bonding which I know we're gonna get to a little bit further. So hopefully with some sort of a hybrid version of all of these things, we'll have a lot of options. At the end of the day, depending on where we end up with all this, you know, my goal is to give us options. You know, I I think that council and staff will be good fiscal stewards as as we always have been. And so, you know, I'm not here to rein anybody in on that.

I'm here to to give the town some options is is where I'm heading. So I just wanted to get some clarity on that 10. We seem to be going in this ten year cycle. And just for clarification for the residents, it has passed every ten years. This is not we're not reinventing the wheel. This is nothing new. This is something that the town has done every ten years and many municipalities do.

Actually I think all municipalities except for four have implemented either home rule or permit base increases. Right.

And at some point you'll be, just for the general public again for our residents, explaining for, you know, public clarity what the expenditure limitation is, why it restricts funding spending artificially, you know, keeping that in the dialogue would be also very helpful, I think. So thank you, I yield.

Thank you, vice mayor. Fending anything further from council member Moore, I would would chime in and I'm supportive of this. I think this is the right direction to go in. I concur with my colleagues that that we don't I don't wanna tie the hands of future councils and I think that I concur that if we ask for more, then I believe it doesn't mandate that we're gonna use it which is important. That's an important variable.

But it will be helping extend the life of what what we're looking for. And so I'm supportive of it. I do think the sooner the better that we get this out and start educating the community. I know there's a lot of discussion that residents are asking and they're very thrilled by the way that we're gonna have the open houses and talking about the budgeting process, which I think is a great step forward. But I think this is confusing and if you're not really following this or part of it, it it kind of there's a little bit of a what?

And I think that that is the responsibility of of the the town to make sure we educate properly and try to get ahead again. We we can't go back in time and do this a year ago or two years ago, but we can do it now. So I'm I am supportive of of the idea of moving forward. I don't know if there's other comments come. Council member Leitman.

Thank you, mayor. I just have one clarification question. People are talking about doing this in the July primaries. Isn't it true we have an option to do it either at the primary election or the November election? I'm curious as to why we're talking about July or what the differences are in impact or getting it passed?

Thank you. Start and then Duncan can can add a correct to have the conversation today about July, that's the first election temporarily. Right? That's would be in July. The it's because in order to get it on the ballot, we'd have to have a quicker decision. So we had to kinda lead with that as because if we said, you know, or suggested that we could wait, then those timelines could slip and then the July would no longer be a viable option. So we wanna put that out there. But I wanna assure you that, you know, in terms of the staff, either way, yes, you're absolutely correct, council member Leibman. It can be either in the July election or in the general in November. Those are different timelines.

It would be a little bit later in in the year when it would have to be called, but either one is a viable option.

Thank you. I I would ask that the town clerk has anything to add about that.

Mister Rand, the only thing that I would add is that in our our September discussion on this topic, we did talk about the the the advantages and disadvantages of doing them in the in the summer versus the the November election. It is true that we don't be on a tight turnaround to get it on the the the summer election, but one consideration in the summer is that, you know, 90% of the voters in Paradise Valley are on the the early voter list and a huge percentage of that 90% are independent, no party designated, so they would not automatically get a ballot. So they so our our turnout is is lower in the in the summer election. But in the November election, you're competing with now now all the other state ballot measures and, you know, school district elections and kind of lost in in that that list of things to vote on.

Thank you. Council Member Pace.

Thank you, mayor. And thanks for the good question that Council Member Leitman asked in the in the comments. But yeah, I agree. What we find, I found in city elections and maybe Andrew Chen can speak to that is if you have specific things for cities, we used to lose them in Mesa too. People, if you're in November cycle, it's too many pages and they don't keep turning. We can't even get the judges reappointed by enough votes because people don't turn the page to vote for them. And sometimes ours will get pushed away where people know July is a or July, August, but it's July this year is a PV vote. I mean PV, it's the town vote. Everyone needs to vote. They need to vote for mayor.

They need to vote for council. They need to vote for these items like this that are put on there or any other initiatives that come. So I think it's better to do it, my opinion, in July 28. Is that the date? And then I think we have to do a good job of education to independent voters to get their vote. I think that's the message along with educating about everything. So that's what I'd rather push forward. Thanks.

Thank you. Other comments or questions right now? Council member Moore, anything at this point?

Mayor, I thought we were talking about the three items, and then right now you're ask you were asking for questions, but we turn that into comments. My comment is I'd like to hear the other two options before I make comments.

That's fine. That's fine. Then, Leslie, please continue.

Yeah. And just so you know, I did pick 15,000,000 as kind of a minimum as a placeholder for discussion. I actually agree with you that I think 20 would give us more flexibility and ensure that we can get ten years. Let's move on to capital accumulation fund. So a capital accumulation fund will be different than the expenditure limitation, and it can only be used for capital projects.

And what this will allow us to do is take any fund balance increases at the end of the year and allow us to use that for capital projects and be excluded from the expenditure limitation. So we did have a capital accumulation fund previously, but we put an expiration on it and it expired. An expiration date is not required and I actually don't recommend an expiration date on it because you can control what goes into the capital accumulation funds on an annual basis by just saying, yes, let's move 5,000,000 over to capital accumulation if we have that in increase in fund balance. So I do recommend that we do a capital accumulation fund. This will allow us to move some of those expenditures that are currently bumping up against the expenditure limitation and take them out of there so they're not counted.

Again, with the capital accumulation fund, it will all to make the summer election, we would also need council action by February 26. And again, if it's passed, it would be effective for the fiscal year twenty seven-twenty eight.

I think we have a question. Go ahead, councilor.

Yeah, quick question. Do you know could you tell why they ever did it with an expiration date? That sounded shouldn't have done that. I was curious from a business planning standpoint.

Yeah. Mr. Mayor, anecdotally, talking to some of our our residents who were here in 1993, it was it was strictly a a check on future councils. They the the issue was and I I don't mean to be flippant, but the the comment I read was, well we'll have all the utility lines undergrounded within ten years. Councils don't need to spend money after that. So

Yeah. Except for fire and police Yeah. And I know. It wasn't That's too bad. Yeah. That's why we don't wanna do that. I would rather not hamstring future councils and have to go back and spend time for our residents and staff to start all over to do these things. We should do things to plan for the future and have a living option there. So I wouldn't want an expiration on it. They don't have to use it if they don't want to do If they use it and people don't like it, they can vote them out. I mean, it's there's a check and balance there already.

Thank you. Council member Leipen.

Thank you, mayor. I have, again, two questions to start with. The first is I'm questioning how this initially gets funded or how it gets funded. You said if there's money left over in the fund balance. So that means just what fund is that, first of all. And second of all, can we use any of our very large reserves to at least seed or fund the capital account or does this not or the capital accumulation fund or does this not allow us to reduce our reserves? That's my first question.

Okay. So once it becomes effective, any fund balance increases from that date forward can be used for the capital.

What is a fund balance increase?

So it's a revenue over expenditure. It's like the profit of the town. So if we have, so we have a a fund balance at the beginning of the year. We collect revenues, expenditures. If our revenues exceed our expenditures, it goes into the fund balance. You can think of it as like our savings account account for future years. We have a significant fund balance right now that is invested. So no, we could not touch any of the current fund balances. It would have to be from the date that goes into place forward. So it would take time to accumulate that.

So I do have some history here of, our increases to, the fund balances. And some years, it's as much as $20,000,000 that it's increased, and, sometimes it's less than that. So it will take some time to seed the capital accumulation fund.

Thank you. So to further understand this, if we have at the end of the year after this goes into effect, let's say, million dollars. Do would all of that go into the capital accumulation fund or would a certain percentage?

So I believe you could say a percentage or you could say a flat amount or you could direct however much you wanted to it. It's just eligible to be put into the capital accumulation fund.

So the decision would be made at the time? Okay. Second question guess my second question under my second question is when would this money wouldn't would there actually be enough money in here say 10 or 20,000,000 to do anything? If we approve it in July Mhmm. It will be coming in July 2016.

It will come into effect at the June or July 2017. And then the first time we would actually be able to use the fund balance, would that be 2017, June 30, or twenty eighteen June thirtieth?

2020 '27, '28. 2017?

Yeah. I mean, sorry. 2020 sorry. I'm off ten years. I think

so if it goes into effect in July 2627, actually 2728 would be the first we would be able to use a fund balance.

So the first time it would actually be funded would be like 06/30/2017 or 2018?

2027.

2027.

Yeah.

Okay. 2027. Sorry.

Yeah. That's okay. I I think

The one that ends in 7 or the one that ends in 8?

The one that ends in 7 because I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Leslie, but if it passes, if this goes on the ballot and passes, the fund would be established but it wouldn't go into effect until twenty twenty seven, twenty eight. But there'd be an accumulation potentially that were to to Leslie's point if if our revenues exceed our expenditures at the end of fiscal year twenty twenty seven, that accumulation would be eligible to be placed in the fund and potentially spent if the budget is passed in the 2027 for the fiscal twenty eight cycle that could then fund something. So it really depends on a lot of variables. One, you know, would there be enough? What projects would there be that the council at that time would want to fund?

And would there be sufficient revenues that would outpace expenditures understanding that it only accumulates from that point and doesn't talk about previous money. I think that's correct.

Thank you.

I I would like to say that I am definitely in favor of starting this up again. I am concerned that it will take so long for us to accumulate anything or a significant that is usable and I'm concerned about the gap that we have. We're a little behind the eight ball here. And also my third concern is general is it is not helping us draw down the reserves that we have. So but it will help us keep them to the extent that we're still successful in revenues. It will keep that reserve from continuing to grow and not be available for our use. I understand correctly. So thank you.

Thank you. I think council member Andean Keller.

Thank you, mayor. I support this. I think it's a we should have I agree with you. We we're behind the eight ball on this and it should have had it a long time ago. I do wanna ask in the prior council that approved the capital accumulation fund, did they have set a policy for inflows and outflows through this fund, or how did they manage that?

I don't believe so. I believe they just said it could be used for a certain type of projects up until this time.

Great. Thank you for

the question. So that would become part of your budget policy just like you have a contingency policy. You would have a you would just add a policy to your your policy document. Okay. Very good.

Thank you, council member. Council member Pace.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. To follow-up and piggyback on the good comments of my peers and to follow-up on council member Leitman's point, and I agree with both of you. I support this. I think I wish we should have done this a long time ago. I wish it had been part of retreats. I wish we would have been discussing things for two or three years. We're here now. Thank you, mayor. And we're here now, team, to get this done. But my question is, I thought we had one more thing on the table we talked about in the fall that I was interested in. And one of it was to seed this following a piggybacking on council member Levin's point. I thought we could also put on the ballot if we wanted to take $20,000,000 from the reserve fund and a voter approved and move 20,000,000 to cede this or no? Was I misunderstood? Is there any way to do that at all or no?

That's okay. Look at me like I'm crazy I if you guys were

don't remember that discussion.

I thought we could do some kind of a vote on that by the residents. I don't

think that's an option for us. But we have

other options. Maybe I asked and it was knocked down then too, but nothing. Okay. So there's no way to attach any money from the voters that we can do right now with anything we have in enterprise funds or anything. We just can't do it.

No. But the expenditure limitation increase Yes.

That does. Actually does Same thing.

It'll be the same So that will actually that's what's going to let us reach into our current fund balance. And you can certainly use that for capital projects as well.

Okay. No, that's good. Clarified. Thanks.

Any other comments, questions? Councilman Moore.

Thanks, Mayor. Leslie, question for you. Last year, what was our revenue that we took in, and then how much was did did we spend, and what was the reserve?

I don't have the revenue in the reserve. I believe we increased our reserve by 20,000,000 last year. But I think I actually do not have that right in front of me. And I'd have So

in theory, under the capital accumulation fund for CIP projects, we could have put $20,000,000 in. Is that what you're saying?

That is correct.

And as far as the projects that we can put on there, absent any information in here about statutory requirements and such since we don't have that in our packet for discussion, do we know if it if if we can just put it in there as I'm I'm I wasn't clear by what the discussion that we've had. Are we allowed to use that for any CIP project that we wanna put forward as long as we put a policy to assess so?

Well, the language the ballot I'll let Andrew talk to this a little bit too, but the language in the ballot sometimes says it can be used for street projects, police. You can designate what type of capital projects, and then, any and then it would still go to counsel or be in policy to say, yes, we wanna use this for x.

And if that money goes into the capital accumulation fund and we don't use it there, what's the process for what's what's the process for moving it around? Is it is it mobile, or does it stay there until we use it for what was it was designated for?

I think once you move it into there, it stays there, but it could be used for future capital projects. As they say, capital project didn't realize, then you could leave it there and use it for something else instead of moving more money over there.

So this is a very viable cushion, for when we have when we run up against our expenditure limitation limit if we were to have a fund in place like this for CIP projects that, don't hit within the fiscal year that they were supposed to, we could at least, basically, it sounds like we could still have a placeholder putting that money into this fund and be able to use it in a delayed, action for a for a project that we had slated that hasn't come forward because of, it it just hasn't been coming hasn't come forward on our agenda at that point. Is that correct?

That is correct.

No more questions. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Moore. Other comments or questions? Council member Thomason.

Just a confirming comment to follow-up on council member Moore's comments. So if we are so fortunate as to have excess revenues over expenses of $20,000,000, that would be a $20,000,000 annual contribution to a capital accumulation fund. Our annual capital budget spend over the last four or five years, if my memory serves me correctly, has not exceeded $20,000,000 per year over the last five years.

It has not.

Do you have the data to tell us what the average capital project spend has been?

I have the capital budget here and it ranges from, you know, in the last ten years anywhere between 10 to $22,000,000. But I would say it's more around the 10 to $12,000,000, especially on the general fund. But that's also assisted with grants and other things that are not included.

Understand. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Councilwoman Pace.

Sorry. I keep thinking of things. Thank you, mayor. And following up on the comments from councilor Thomason and Moore. So on our I mean, what I recall serving ten years now, we keep punting and pushing back. So this is going to Chad in a minute, so heads up. So we keep hunting our CIP projects or maybe Shar over and over and over again. We keep bringing them forward. We keep talking about it. We never have enough money to do them. That's what happened with the Mockingbird project and we didn't have enough to do it. So we don't get them started because we don't have enough in the budget that year. And we don't wanna tie other councils hands so much. And we wanna try to be able to have enough money to pay for it if we authorize. Isn't that been our trend? That's what we've been doing. And we never we didn't have enough money this year.

Correct? In the last budget, we took the mockingbird and spread it over more years and pushed it out because we did not have enough money to do it in that budget year.

Right. But how many CIP projects did we have from the engineering and planning department that we wanted to do for residents residents that were really needed and have been prioritized? Isn't there like 10? I don't know, Shar. I'm looking over there quietly. Yeah, I have it but I didn't bring it. 17 CIP projects that benefit a variety of our communities and they have different dollar amounts associated. Some are like I think 1,000,000 or less. Some are 2,000,000. Some are 5. Some are 20. Right? Is that about right Shar, like a range or can you help me?

Shar, you wanna come on up to the table, please?

Ranging from probably less than 1,000,000, at least over a $100,000 is the threshold and up to whatever mockingbird is, like 20,000,000. Yeah.

And so last thank you, Shar. And so last year, we made a choice not to do those other projects to try to get the Mockingbird started. Right? We got our former mayor pushing and he needs it and it was a good project and it needs to be done for that neighborhood for our former area. But we keep punting all these other projects for other parts of this community that we really shouldn't do.

So we're taking one project that goes over three or four years and all these other 16 keep getting pushed and some are only under $1,000,000. We don't have enough money to get them started because then we're tying other councils to say we're locking them in for years to come. So when we talk about why we have monies that keep going in the reserves sitting around the table every time, we didn't have enough money to do any of them and we kept pushing it and that's why we're putting a 140,000,000 in a short amount of time in a reserve we can't touch. And yet we have all these needs that have been identified for more than ten years and that we've approved and we can do. And I don't see how it gets any better.

If even if we do Mockingbird this year and next year, that's $2,227,000,000 dollars. How do we get to the million dollar project for that one neighborhood that only needs 1,000,000 and another neighborhood that needs 3,000,000? So I don't believe that the person who screams loudest gets the project. I think we need to balance it for the whole community and that's why we need to get to this money. And the one thing we keep doing and I know council member and Dean and I did last year when we the year before was the $5,000,000 we had left over.

We dumped it again into the pension paid fund just by at the very end, we keep doing this in June which is fine, but we never get to a CIP project. So the reason I'm interested in supporting a capital accumulation fund and supporting an expenditure limitation is so we finally do these 17 projects and we get things going in this town. We committed to these residents ten years ago when I started that once we got that pension fund in order, would actually move to that. And we've kind of dropped the ball in a big way and not ready yet. And this is our moment in time to make a difference in this town for decades to come and get these things going and save safety issues and everything else that come with it.

So when we talk about putting money back in the into the reserve, that does no good to talk about because you have to look at the equation of what did we say no to over and over again that had safety concerns and was supposed to be done and we couldn't do. So anyway, this is the problem we have. We have to make real decisions. We're at this time. We haven't had a lot to do the last five years. We need to do it and get it done and protect people in this town. So I support them.

Thank you, council member. Vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. Good comments from everybody here. I would say that I will hop on the there's a lot of deferred projects bandwagon. I think that if historically maybe ten to twelve million dollars a year has what we've been doing where we need from what I'm looking at, we've got a lot more projects that are deferred than that. If I'm and and if I'm reading it wrong, please correct me.

The preliminary five year capital improvement, I know we haven't gotten there yet. I'm looking at numbers of 65 to $70,000,000. Over five years, But do they have to go over five years? Can we, you know, it's so even then at 10 or 12 a year, that's the full five years. So do we want to continue to defer?

Because these are not the only things that are going come up. There's going to be more. It's not just going to stop in dead in its tracks and now all we have is this. So I as we've witnessed in the past with some of the public works catch up we had to do, good governance for future councils would be let's clean up what we have to clean up now with as many tools as we have to clean up and, you know, move forward. As far as a supportive cap capital accumulation fund, I'm in support of it not as a solo tool.

It it it's to me, it's gotta be paired with permanent base adjustment and possibly what we're gonna be talking about next. So it's too limiting. I love the idea of it. I noticed on the publicity pamphlet for Gilbert, they had both on and I think that that's it's it's gonna work best in unison with some with all the tools we have. Again, I trust our counsel and I trust our staff.

I think we all are fiscally aware. And one more question I did have as far as the capital accumulation fund. You said that excess funds that we put in there would be eligible to use on the so if if you could clear that up a little bit because I think there's been confusion about once it goes into the fund can we get it back out or reuse it but we deal with that during budget?

So yeah, any excess funds that we have over the year are eligible to be put into the capital accumulation fund. We don't have to put it all into there. We choose how much we want to move over to cover capital projects.

Right.

But once we pull the trigger on that and put it

in Once it's in capital projects, it will stay in capital projects.

Yes. But if we felt like we had enough resources and other places, we could put it into the pension fund or we could do we can invest it. So it doesn't, you know, it ties our hands once we decide but we still have options up until we make to that point.

Exactly.

Okay. Thank you. I yield.

Thank you, vice mayor. Councilmember Thomson.

I will be brief. Thank you, mayor. There's been a lot of conversation about the capital accumulation fund and I think some clarity, would be helpful not only to our residents but to me and perhaps some of my colleagues. I would like to see a very simple schedule that lists the last x number of capital improvement projects. Maybe it's go back five years. Maybe it's pick the number of 10 or 12. There's some reasonable list of capital projects. And I'd like to know three things. When was it prioritized? When did we approve the project?

And when did we sign the contract to move forward with it? Each capital project has a very long and complex process of due diligence and prioritization, due diligence in planning short term, and finally approving the contract. And I would like to see one schedule, one page that identifies those so that I have a true understanding of those. I can then take a look at those and compare it to funds available. My understanding is it is not for lack of funds available that some of these projects have not moved forward.

We've had a lot of iteration and design. We've had some missteps. We've had some confusion. So I just want to see that timeline. Again, I'm making a staff request. That's obviously with the with the, indulgence and concurrence of others. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you, council member. Council member Warren, anything else at this point?

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. I just wanna remind that what we haven't talked about is we have a by resolution and approved process of how CIP projects go forward. And when we talk about 17 projects ready to go, Shar, is that is that something that you support as well? Because I didn't know we had 17 projects that went through the written policy of how CIP projects come forward. Specifically, we look at our what's in our packet today regarding the preliminary five year capital improvement program, the top line item discusses a $12,500,000 storm drain improvement project projects.

I don't

know because we haven't seen anything on it. We've had conversations at a 35,000 square foot or 30,035 foot level on what these could potentially be, but we haven't seen anything go forward and certainly hasn't followed that written procedure of how we do CIP projects. So how did that get on there like that? And where are the other 16 projects that are supposedly ready to go? Are those in front of us?

So let me talk to the first part. The stormwater plan was approved, but not the individual projects. And I did ask Shar and Sam to give me some tentative preliminary numbers just so that we could see the possible scope of what we're looking at so that we can kind of understand what these different financing options could do and could help us for. So, yes, no particular stormwater project has gone through the complete process yet of approval, but that was just kind of a placeholder to show that, yes, we know that this is coming up. And again, there are other things like the training facility where we know there's going to be changes to it.

It has not completed through the process, but it is in there as a placeholder. All of those projects will still go through our procedures to get approval through counsel. And as far as the number, I believe the number refers to the number of projects that have been on the CIP continuously for several years now. And correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes. That is absolutely correct. That's about estimated 17. That's not the exact number, but it's the same projects that have been in the CIP since I've been here for the five year CIP include plus the new ones that has not been through the process which are the storm water from the storm water master plan.

Right. And to be clear, those are the cumulative number of projects in the five year CIP. And so from a budgeting standpoint, this council only approves a budget year over year. So when you do a five year CIP, years two through five are not funded. They are listed because they are been identified as potential projects in the future.

So that number that Shar is referring to refers to both year one funded plus years two through five unfunded projects. And so to council member Moore's point, the resolution that was passed in in 2024 that guides staff and council as to how to provide get input, public input, and sort of robust public input and feedback about projects that affect the town and neighborhoods within the town would be triggered. I would I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, staff, by projects that would be in that year one funded but wouldn't move forward to be through contract unless and until we have, you know, gone through the process. So I think that, you know, that there's overlap between both, and I wanna just be very clear about what is actually funding, what would trigger the process. But yes.

And that's how I understand it, and thank you for the clarification, Andrew. That's, so we have we have projects that are moving through the pipeline and and, but they haven't been in front of us in in full detail for the public to and our residents to take a look at and, us on council to to properly vet. So, and I I don't remember seeing any of those in the in the past year, but, I look forward to whenever those do get forward. But I I think that the capital accumulation fund is an effective tool for funding projects that don't seem to hit the fiscal year that they were planned for in our five year CIP list and and, updates. So, anyways, that's all I have.

Thanks.

Thank you, council member. I would agree with the great comments. I think the capital accumulations accumulation fund is a tool. I concur that it it should not be a solo act. It should be in conjunction. I think it does give us, to council member Moore's earlier point, some cushion, and I think that's important. And I also support council member Thomason to look at a data sheet that may give us a little more reconnaissance on on the decision making. I think that makes sense to me. I think that would be I would support that. I don't know if our colleagues would support that as well, but I do.

And I think that I think this is a good tool. That's how it appears to me as long as it's in conjunction. But with that, I'd ask any other comments? Please, council member.

Thank you for everybody's comments. I think in following up, how much time would it take to do what council member Thomas is asking? Is that an easier lift so we can get that or is it a heavy expensive lift and time? What do you think it is? That's what it Yeah. For the request, we should always ask when we're asking staff to do something how much time it takes and how much and is there capacity to do it or is this is it a heavy lift to do that request that councilor Thomason was asking or is it Yeah. Manageable to Can you repeat your request?

Yeah. Thank you. My request is a simple schedule showing the capital projects that are on our list, when they were prioritized as identified here, when they have been approved, and when the contract was signed.

Of council member Thomas. That's

fine. So

some of that we we do not have for we don't we do not have for all the projects because all of them have not been to the point of a contract.

Right.

So I can get that for for you for the ones that we do have a contract for that's coming up the pipes coming through the pipes. And for the remaining ones, can give you just where we're at today.

That would certainly address my concern. I understand that a number of projects we have approved but we don't have contracts for yet. And so I'm just trying to understand where these projects are in the sequence.

Yes. So you're saying approved. I'm not sure if I understand what that means, but we do have the projects identified in the five year CIP. And like council member Moore said, they have to go through the process of capital improvement that has been approved through

Right. They go through the We put them on the priority list. This is my clarifying. We put them on the priority list and then we approve them as a con as a council to move forward.

Then we Budget them for the five year of CIP. Thanks.

That's what

I'm hearing.

We put them in the budget. So that's our mark of approval. Then staff works to get the bids, do everything they need to do, design the project, and then we sign a contract where we start spending

So to answer your question, we can get that to you very quickly. Okay. But the next week or so.

Yeah. Then I can support that too. I just wanted to make sure we weren't asking for something to clarify is good. And then the other part here, when we look at and and thank you for putting this in the packet today, which what is it called to make sure I give you guys the right name? In the packet today, item c, and that might help council member Moore too and everybody, There's a preliminary five year you've planned it for us today which was super helpful. All those items we already went through with pictures and drawings since 2000 let's see. They've been on here since 2018. I've been here ten years so they're they're within my range. And so every year during budget, the engineering department and plan development come up and they present these pictures and we go through them and then we agree to put them on there and that's how we got to this five year plan. So these have been going on since 2021.

You'll see the dates, let alone new stuff. So we've seen them not in detail like council member Moore saying like the plans when we get close to funding because we never get to the funding because we never have the money. So all we do is sit and talk about these pretty pictures and we placate the neighbors and the residents saying, oh, we got it here on a five year plan. And then it's, well, let's see, 2018 we're on a ten year plan. And then pretty soon here we are again, we have no money for at least if we do these projects at least two or three years. And then we gotta get going on them. So, I mean, we've seen these to a point, not the level that Councilman Moore digs in on and that's good. But we need to get to the point where we can actually approve and fund and contract. That's the whole point of we're missing that. So I support doing things.

I like having this on here. All these things are photographed. And maybe one thing that might help us is the worksheets Shar that you put together before that we've gone through on these projects. Maybe could we send a link to everybody on council again because they're all done I think, right? This isn't asking for more work. Is that fair? Okay. Yeah. Let's resend it to everybody so everybody can refresh what all these projects are for the last ten years that have been rolling. So thank you. I am real.

Council member Levin.

Thank you, mayor. I have a follow-up question. Some of these projects have been on here so long. I'm concerned about the effect of inflation. Are these numbers adjusted annually?

Are these the original estimates? And when we're looking at funding and what we put into different funds, I think it's really important to remember that the price may not be the price it is now because inflation has been fairly significant. And in future planning, I really feel strongly that we need to put that into our thinking because I remember recently how much construction costs went up. I think it was what 22% in in one year or a year or so ago. So I guess my my question is, are these numbers ever adjusted for inflation or are these the numbers that we've been using forever?

Because I think this might be very low if that's the case. And I'm looking specifically at the chart that's on the on the table here. I mean, on the on the screens here which is page 21 of our entire packet. Thank you.

To answer your question, council member Liebman, yes, we do apply a inflationary factor for not only construction as well as the engineering design, and we do that every year.

So these numbers next year will be higher on this chart that we're looking at now?

Based on inflation in place based on inflationary rate that we receive every January. So when we do before we do the budget, we make sure we understand what the inflation amount is for construction and as well as for the design.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And I would just add a quick caveat to that. I think our experience has also proved that these are estimates and we adjust according to inflation, but we oftentimes don't have we won't have a good number until it goes to bid. Until we actually receive bids from contractors, that has a significant potential effect on on the on the the project as well. So where's the numbers you see here are by and large, you know, estimates based upon our our understanding at the time, but is subject to that significant variable as well.

And I think So one

I'm sorry, mayor. Go ahead. One quick follow-up is when we look, for example, at the top line, which is storm drain projects, we have budgeted for 300,000 in fiscal year twenty twenty seven. And then in fiscal year twenty thirty one, we have a million 550,000. Is that 1,550,000 based on today's numbers, or is that based on 2031 numbers?

I believe it's based on today.

On today. So that will that will be much higher when we actually get there. I got it. So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Andy Keller.

Thank you, mayor. And Leslie, just a quick question. I'm on the CAFR for fiscal year twenty five and what?

ACFR.

Oh,

okay. You got what? So

we have a new name?

Akfir? Akfir. Akfir.

Okay. Okay.

Sorry. Was

just Alright.

So for for capital if to find out how much we've paid in CIP projects each year, it is under the capital outlay line item. Is that correct?

That is correct.

Yeah. So on page one twenty one, capital outlay, the last five years, '21, we paid 10,300,000.0. '22, we paid 916,000. '23 was 3,200,000.0, '24 was 2,000,000, and '25 was 3,600,000.0.

I have to look at the schedule you're looking at because if you look at the capital projects fund, it may be different. That could be considered I'd have to look at the schedule. It could

be Okay.

Changes in fund balance.

There's a

lot of different ways to slice and dice. Right.

Okay. So I would love to see that information if that's not the area where it's supposed where I'm supposed to get that information.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member. And if I'm looking around the room, I feel

Mayor, I have a clarifying point, if I may.

Yeah. That's fine, council member Moore. Please proceed.

Thank you. Since we have this chart up here, again, I'll go back to our our policy that was approved by resolution. We have not approved I have not approved everything that is on here. That's not how it works. There's a committee that actually prioritizes how these go on here.

Storm drain projects, storm water master plan that's on the top of the list. I'd like to know how that committee put that on the top of the list and how they expect to spend $300,000 when we have not made a decision and an action item to approve that to go forward like that. And that goes along with many of these other items that are on here. They're prioritized, and they may never get done because they may not ever get approved by the council that's in place. That that's not how the process goes.

Just because they make this list doesn't mean they're approved. And if if if I may, mayor, maybe in the next work study that we have here, why don't you put the, process in the agenda packet so everybody can get a and understand it that weren't here when it was approved.

If you don't mind. So I think what we're talking about when approval here is we're just talking about the CIP budget has been approved, which is different from the individual project and contract being approved. So there's different levels of approval. All we're saying here is, and this is not budget for fiscal year 2027 has not been approved yet. The five year capital plan has not been approved. This is just a placeholder. On the March 12, we will bring the full CIP to you and go over it in detail. And then at that point, you can, when you'll approve the budget not until May. And once that's done, then that budget is a placeholder, but the individual projects will go through that process that you're talking about separately.

We're saying the same thing, Leslie.

Thank you. Thank you, council member. Council member Thomason.

I just wanted to put a a bow on my comments and sentiments relative to the capital capital improvement program and capital accumulation fund. I am directionally in favor of that method of funding for funding our capital projects because it provides a level of specificity, accountability, and voter input that I think is very helpful to us as we identify these projects. To council member Moore's point, we have a lot of projects on this list that are placeholders but have not yet been approved. And I think bringing this to the voters and making a very specific fund will up the accountability. So I'm in favor. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. And I concur. I believe that this is all interrelated and it's there is some there's obviously frustration over getting some of these projects done and it's accumulated over years. I just wanna make sure that the deliverables are clear right now for staff that we've got a couple of different requests, I wanna make sure there's see if there's any other questions about what's been asked and maybe just a quick recap so we know what we'll be looking towards.

I'm sorry. Are you talking about in terms of what?

Char and council member Thomason's and even the discussion that council member Moore had as well.

You mean the deliverable back in terms of the schedule that you'd like to see? Yeah. I mean, I think what we need to do I think the only part that will take a little bit of time is going to be how long have certain projects been in year over year or five year budget because it's a rolling five years. So you can have something that was in year five in 2018 and it might still be in year five in 2025. So we have to sort of age the projects to say some things have languished quote unquote because they haven't scored as higher than prioritized by either staff or or council vote in approving the CIP in any given year.

So we'll do that. As far as approved, my understanding approved would be those that would actually be in the current year budget. Those are approved by approving the budget. And in terms of signing contracts, think we can do that because we know exactly how many contracts have been signed and and we moved on every project that we have either currently in this fiscal year or will be upcoming in the next couple months because we have a number that will be ready for council approval between now and April. So we can get you all that.

And I

That's I think that meets what I what I heard. If I'm missing Okay.

Two more things I heard.

Go ahead.

If that's alright. You had that was part of the list. And then council member Moore asked that the policy be circulated for what we normally do. And then I asked that we circulate the pretty pictures we look at from CIP projects all the time for all these projects to remind us all what we've been looking at year after year after year after year.

Okay.

Groundhog Day. And so I think there was a little more to the request. Okay.

That's fine. That's fair. Alright. Yeah. I when you say the policy, are you talking about the resolution that was passed in 2024?

Yeah. I think that's what he wanted.

Yeah. We can we can recirculate that. That's that's fine. I know Duncan's taking notes, so he'll make sure that happens. And the fifth one I think is we always, in our CIP presentation, run through a slideshow of projects that for your consideration. I just need to know how many years back do you wanna go on that? Just currently I

was thinking since I was gonna ask. I was thinking it was from this page. The the the items that are listed on here.

I think all of those. The ones that on the slide

number I don't know what number you wanna call it. It's item c in our packet today. Yeah. Number one on item c.

Page 21. 21 of the packet.

Page 21 So whole take those and provide summaries that we have. Yeah. The summary sheets for each of those. Okay.

And that helps the that helps our residents too because then they can click and they can read and say, okay. Okay. Okay.

It helps staff tremendously to have that level of clarification before we leave the table. So I I thank everybody right now that we got that. Thank you.

Good. I appreciate all those comments and the updates and I concur with what's on the screen. Just wanna make sure we all know what the deliverables we're asking and what we would expect as we move forward. With that, Leslie, please continue.

Okay. Oops. Because both of the capital accumulation fund and the expenditure limitation increase will not take place or be effective, There is another option that will allow us to bridge that gap if we want to use it. We could use bond fine oops. Bond financing, certain capital projects.

I don't have a number on this. We could pull together if you're interested in financing some of these projects in that interim, we could certainly pull together a package and get something to you If you, you know, tell us that's the direction you would like to go to, we can have that ready for you in a couple weeks. And that is something that we can use which would be excluded from the expenditure limitation and would relieve that pressure for the next year or two.

I would open up for comments or discussion at this point. Do you want some feedback? I've got a council member. Pace, you have a question?

Yeah. And if that's thank you, mayor. So this is a more of this third option, the way you're describing it as a backup plan to help make sure we don't run out of money in the next two or three years while we wait for 2028 and 2029 funding to come in if we go ahead and move forward with expenditure limitation increase vote for our residents and the capital accumulation fund because we're not gonna be able to touch that for almost three years. So we already know we're bumping up short. And if we end up with some issue like the need for a lot of patrols because we lose the photo radar, we're not gonna have enough money to do our budgets in the next three years possibly in realistic risk. Right?

Right. So depending on what the council decides they want to move forward with capital projects, it may be that we're bumping up against that expenditure limitation. This is one way that we could still do the desired level of capital projects and still have a sufficient contingency and just kind of bridge us until we can get the capital accumulation fund and or the expenditure limitation increase in place.

And if we did so that almost takes us to think about and is this something we can approve? The bond financing is the council correct? Doesn't go to the voters so it speeds up. Okay. Thank you. And it's really saying over the next you know, there's a couple. Right? We have to do parallel tracks here. So one is assuming that we do the expansion limitation and the residents vote for it and assuming that the residents vote for this capital accumulation fund, we know we need some amount which is not a a lot to bridge three years. If they don't approve it, we may need a whole lot more to make our budgets.

So with that in mind, maybe we do parallel track to present to us of how much you think we need if everything goes well from our voters on expansion limitation approval and capital communication fund capital accumulation fund. And then we do the alternative if it goes bad, how much do we need? I mean, that's sort of right there there that's a big range.

We don't need to do more than we need. So bond financing works a little bit differently. So we would have to just take a look at the projects that we have approved and say these ones are eligible for bond funding and then create a package for that. And we would just do that for the current projects that we have. If we needed more in the future, we would come back and do another bond. Yeah. Yeah.

But the only You can't

just say if, you know, we're gonna ask for $40,000,000 to use for the next three years.

Right.

But the problem is we haven't been able to approve the capital improvement projects we want. So the only one we'd be doing is the one by our former mayor's house. So that's not really fair to the residents. I mean, I'm Okay with the package if we're going to do this. But I'm not Okay with a bond just for one project

that Right.

And I'm not talking

about just Mockingbird. We could get the

police train That's fine.

And then put the storm waters.

Mix. I want to do that project. It's on the list. But it can't be to the exclusion We can of

other

do a combination of projects.

Okay. Then that helps to hear. Well, I hate to how much time and money does it cost to put something like this together for us to consider? Is that are we better to focus our efforts on the two things and can we make it through three years? Or do we should we what do you recommend? Should So be doing

it's a little bit early to tell. Really, once we know what the capital projects are and we've gotten and we're all on the same page about what we want to do, then it would be really Okay. Then we can come back and say we can bond finance this and look at the costs associated

with that.

Well, I support if we're having to go down a bond path as a backup for the next three years because we are behind on our expansion limitation and on this capital accumulation fund is great. I wish we would have had it. We are behind. So we're catching up. I don't wanna see us sit as a council and to our residents and say we don't have money to make our budget and we don't have enough to pay the fire which goes up every year. We don't have enough to pay the police that we need on the street. So I'm okay about considering a package. I just don't want it to be one project. I want it to be a true package for things. I'm great about the police training center.

I'm great about and out of the 17, capital improvement projects, we've already promised the other Mockingbird residents we're gonna finish that one. So they keep asking and that got started and pushed aside to do the one. So we need to do more than one. That's all I'm saying. So I'm a little hesitant. I wish we didn't have to do bond financing. It it it pains me because if we just done this other stuff, we would have been fine. But I understand the need and I don't wanna see us short circuit police and safety and things we have to have.

Thank you, council member. Other comments at this point? Council member Leibman.

Thank you, mayor. I agree with prior comments. I am concerned about a possible shortfall in the next two or three years, and I am even more concerned what we would do if the residents did not approve one or both of a permanent base increase and a capital accumulation fund. I am loath to borrow money when we have so much money in reserves. However, one positive that would come out of issuing bonds is that they could be paid out of the reserves which would have the effect of reducing our really, I consider bloated reserves.

And this is one way we could get around the artificial cap that has imposed by the state which is the the budget cap. So I would prefer not to be in this position. I would prefer to be able to use our reserve funds directly to meet our budget. I want to be very careful though to say that this we can still be fiscally conservative and do all of these things. We do have to keep up with inflation.

We do have to provide services to the residents. We don't know what is coming in the future, and I really hate to be hogtied. I do think that our council's decisions on what's best for our budget are much better than allowing the state through their cap process to continue to hog tie us. So as much as I don't want to do this, I do think we need to do this. And my one question is assuming for some reason a permanent base increased and a capital accumulation fund are not approved by the voters, could we at that point, issue bonds and how quickly or or get bonds and how quickly could that be put in place?

Because I'm wondering if we do it now or if we for a 10 to 15,000,000 or if we wait till September and maybe do a larger number depending on what happens with this vote.

Well, first of all, we would only do it for the amount of capital projects that we have that are eligible for bond financing, which I believe is all of them at this point. And I think I I don't I have to look at that schedule again. So whatever gets approved by counsel, we could bond that. And whether we start I wouldn't wanna look at it until counsel decides this is the amount of capital projects we want, and then we could look at bonding it. Could we wait until the election? Yes, we could. Till after the election.

But you're saying that that we couldn't fund our shortfall, just our regular budget shortfall? No. No. With the bonds? Okay. That's an important point. So unfortunately, is probably what we need to do, in my opinion, in the short term to get through this budget cap concern as well as while we wait for the capital accumulation fund to go into effect. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Other questions or comments at this time? Council member Moore?

Thanks, mayor. Bond financing's, pretty standard, and and I'm a support of it. I think it's good for you can bond CIP projects if necessary, and and that frees up general funds in case there's an expenditure, emergency or something that comes up. I think it's an effective tool. I don't I don't know why we would not just keep it as open as an option. So I would be supportive as an looking at it as an option if it's necessary.

Thank you, council member. Other comments or questions? Vice mayor?

Thank you, mayor. Yeah. I'm I'm in agreement. I think bonding needs to remain on the table as like a bridge strategy, but also, you know, it's about timing and our flexibility and it's not about overspending. I mean it's it's, you know, we can as on what is that section on the sorry, the the d five and the presentation bond finance that we had from from Steve O'Better.

You know, we we don't you can invest the bonds at a higher interest rate. We can pay it off early. We have a lot of options. I'm I'm into having the options. So however many options we have and this is in the public report. Correct. So this is just re reading what I'm seeing in front of me here. It gives us options. I'm all about options. I would be in support of all three capital accumulation fund bonding and the permanent base adjustment. I think they're all tools that complement each other and quite honestly and frankly, it's it's what we need to do right now to to clean things up. So I yield.

Thank you, vice mayor. I will concur with that that thought. I do think these are all viable options. I do support the potential for bonding. I think it makes some sense that we should we should work towards that.

I would like to see when we revisit the bigger picture, the timeline, not an exhaustive list, but maybe if this, then that type of response that we can say, okay, we know that these are so we can have our game plan and and have a confidence that we're all seeing at the same time and we're gonna make decisions that are based on data that's been provided and a schedule that's that's reasonable. And I know our town clerk and the election schedule and we know there's potential of that election schedule moving around slightly, I am in favor of all three of these and concur with my colleagues.

Please continue.

So the only other thing I wanna talk about, the bond financing, is that if council decides to move forward and they have plans to bond finance any of our capital projects, we can before we spent actually issue the bond, we could put a memo in place saying that we know we're gonna bond and, that would allow us to start spending, and then reimburse when we get that bond issued. And if that's the direction, I would recommend doing that.

I'm seeing head nods. Council member Moore, any comment about that?

No other additional comments. Thanks.

The comments from the town manager or town attorney?

Miss mister mayor, members of the council, the the one thing that we would want to know in terms of reimbursement resolutions, what we generally call what Leslie's referring to, is municipalities go two different ways. One way is to authorize the manager to whenever there is a a time when an expenditure might come up that may at some point in the future want to be reimbursed by bonds, that the manager is authorized to to fill out that form and file it. The other way is for the resolution to be project specific. And it just all depends upon the philosophy of the the community. And so that's the only direction point I would wanna have is, are you in favor of a more generic version that authorizes your manager to make note of that?

Know, so whenever it happens. Because from the point at which you adopt that resolution forward, looking back only sixty days is what your window is. So sometimes it's not there's not a convenient time to do it and you might have an expenditure that falls outside of that range. So some municipalities like that flexibility to delegate that task to the manager, but others wanna maintain that as a project by project. So I just wanted to before we brought you one, to know which style would be preferable for the council.

I'd ask for feedback from my council colleagues. Councilmember Leipman.

Thank you, mayor. I seem to be speaking first a lot. I'm gonna shut up soon, but I definitely like the more flexible model that would allow us, hopefully, in the long run to get more of the projects that are ongoing now under the bond. So that would be my recommendation if I understood correctly. Thank you.

Other comments,

councilor Thomas? Favor of a project by project approach. I think we need the specific accountability.

Other feedback from my colleagues?

Yeah. I have I think it's a good point to raise. Thank you, Andrew Maguire. I have mixed feelings about it. I my inclination is I like specificity and accountability and project by project, but what does that really mean? I mean, can't we move quickly even in special meetings if we need to approve project by project within sixty days? I mean, we can always do that. Right? Or no? How does it help us understand the mechanics of it? Because I would feel more comfortable on we look at it. We're all hands on here. Town expects us to be hands on council members. We like to look at the project, kick the tires. Right? And that would make me more comfortable.

Mister mayor and council member, it's it really is it's a matter of passing a resolution.

Okay. So

it's it is you know, the the form of the resolution is either going to have the details of one project. And you would do one project by project or it will be authorizing the manager. And really all it is is to put up, you know, a pin in the map Right. For the manager to be able to say, we believe this expenditure might be something for which we want to reimburse ourselves with bond proceeds. And so we're putting a pin in the map today to be sure of that. The opposite of that is you all pass a resolution as soon as the manager comes to that conclusion that, hey, we need one of these. And, you know, it may be that it's a short notice or not, but either way works fine. Just wanted to make sure I knew what philosophy we were working under before we brought you back somewhere.

As long as it I mean, I prefer the specificity and having us involved and project by project. If we can we'll just move quickly and do if we had to do special meetings, we do special meetings. I mean, it's not that big a deal. If it somehow falls in a window for financing, it's not a big deal for me. So I would go with the I think I think it's a good point that council member Leitman raises, but I do think we like to be hands on. We like to be involved. Could jump on and address a project and then approve it. And I think it's always better to have multiple eyes and ears on everything. It just you get a better project for the best interest of the town at the end of the day. So

Thank you, council member. Other comments? Council member Andy Keller.

I was just curious if the town manager had any words about have you had any working knowledge of either of those different plans? Or

In terms of excise tax bond funding, you know, I really, this conversation needs to be, I think, informed by knowing sort of the the scope and be getting into what will and won't be approved in next year's CIP. Right? So knowing the scope of that, knowing what our final expenditure limitation number is, knowing those things down the timeline, I think are really important. In May, with the passage of time and getting more specificity from staff and knowing the budget and knowing our numbers, you know, and how again, there are variables that get answered through every budget process. One is, you know, how much do we think we can we can have towards contingency?

Are you comfortable with that? That's sort of that that cushion. Contingency typically is the cushion for, you know, what what we spend and what what is the debt ceiling that we are excuse me, that the expenditure ceiling that we have. This year's was lower than usual. I know that that in and of itself caused concern enough to to want to sort of think about and continue to talk about some of these things that we've talked about, these tools that have been discussed up to this point.

My thought about this is that, you know, if you tell us you'd like to further explore, we'll bring back mister Reeder from Stifel. We'll have the opportunity to kind of develop. Remember last time he said, for instance, that at that time, the private placement was not as advantageous from an interest rate standpoint as publicly financed bonds. That might have changed. I don't know because we haven't talked to him in a few months.

So my thought without sounding too much like I'm just kicking it down the road is we ought to know is this what the consensus of counsel wants us to further explore. And it'll answer a lot of the questions in terms of the specificity point that was made by counsel Thomas, Catherine Thomas, and others that will, think, be driven by whatever's in our a, whatever the total amount of our bond or, excuse me, our our CIP is in year one that's actually gonna be funded. Knowing that number, knowing how much DAP would say we think that we can, you know, general fund fund fund general fund pay for a certain percentage. The rest of it would give you whatever the remaining projects are. Maybe it's half, maybe it's more, maybe it's less.

And those would be the ones that then would be the universe to then bond fund. And that would give you that specificity that I think you look for because it it would suss out through the the budget process. And that's, again, only a few months away. We're gonna start really kicking it off in earnest in first meeting in March. So we're right around the corner from that, if that makes sense. I hope that answers the question.

Thank you.

Sure. Do you

I was just gonna say the town manager is articulating, I think, a third form which is authorizing your manager to execute the treasury notice upon any of those projects that are in your approved CIP for that year. I mean, that that's kind of a middle ground of both because you've all been signed off on one of the CIP ones and it allows them to put the pin in the map. But we'll be back with versions so you can see them all. But that just occurred to me that there was now a third one on the table based upon that.

That's what I was thinking. Can I just

clarify what this actually does for because I've worked in bond compliance for a long time? All it really does is we're already spending the money. But it allows us to take when we finally issue the bond, say, Okay, months ago we spent design, da da da da. We can apply that bond money to that. And if we don't have that in place, then we can't.

We have

to start from day one, which means some expenditures could be excluded. And it makes a difference because there's a time limit on how quickly you have to have the bonds completely spent. And it's helpful in that case.

Okay. Thank you. I support the bridge loan. I think it's best for the long term health of our budget process and our our funding. And I'm gonna withhold my decision on the options one, two, or three for a later date.

Thank you, council member. Council member Moore, anything on this subject?

Yeah. I I tend to lean always towards transparency and having full discussions and clarity of everything we're looking at. I'm more interested in an individual, but I'm open minded to listening to some of the other. I think that it certainly has to have a each one of them has to have a stop gap that, the council can can, vote on and and say no to, every single time. So thank you.

Thank you, council member. Vice mayor.

Thank you. As far as the and good comments from everybody. The as far as the flexibility or project specificity and the third option, which I like too. You know, and and probably similar to the third option before mister McGuire brought it up. I was wondering if there was some sort of a hybrid model where, you know, autonomy was also kind of weighed against accountability sort of like how we have with the the new text the co text amendments where there's if three of if it comes to counsel and then within that seven day window if three of the seven of us decide, not so much.

Is that sort of what you're talking about or is that something also that we can discuss or could it apply here? Just keeping the options open as far as, you know, again balancing the the autonomy of of, you know, our administration who who, you know, should be making those decisions if we trust them here and also accountability to counsel. So I yield.

Mister mayor, vice mayor, I I think that's that's a a fair point that that fits in that third category more than anything else because the the test that Leslie and I are gonna be paying very close attention to is a reasonable expectations test. It's do we reasonably believe that these are going to be repaid with bond proceeds? Because otherwise what people would do is just say we're gonna we're gonna reimburse ourselves for everything we ever do. And so it has to it has to be tied a little bit to some specific things. And I'm I kinda like the, you know, the CIP guardrails as a delegation tool because then you have that.

You have somewhat of the things that you would do. You just have to pay attention every year to make sure that you're getting the things in there that you need to get and then your your manager and your staff could identify expenditures as they come along as things that they would wanna, you know, put the pin on the calendar on that date.

Alright. I would say I I concur with me and my colleagues about the specificity. That's important and I think that's something that I believe we owe to our our residents and that we know that from my stand, I think that's important. I am open to the idea that you brought forward, mister McGuire. I think that's a good approach and I would be more than open to look at how that would be executed. Any other comments? Alright. Leslie, anything else? Council member Pace has another question.

Just comment or a question too, but we ought to make sure with these three new tools we're talking about and then the subsets of the tools to plan ahead for whatever policies or checklists that need to be met for our audit, our annual audit because this is all gonna be new to our system for financing which we've got dialed in. So we should kind of make sure if Baker Tilley's the auditor, what are the things you're gonna look at for these three tools when they come in? And are there policies we need to adopt? And is there a is there a committee that has to be put together to vet and look at things from the town's perspective to sign off on? So I mean you're always you guys are always on the policy stuff but there must be things that go with this.

So I'm just thinking we need to package that in and not forget

it. Yes.

Is that all right? Yeah, thanks.

So we have Oh, go ahead.

Go ahead, please.

I just wanted to mention that the budget calendar is out and if you have any questions you can always send them to us early and we can try to address them and get them out to the entire council. Again, we're gonna go in the same order that we went last year. But I did hear that you want us to be looking for ways to save money and I will ask the department directors to look at their budgets for that and have that. We'll have the in-depth CIP with the little reports and the pictures and everything. So that's just coming right up in March.

So mister mayor, do we understand correctly that the council's desire is to try and schedule these permanent base and capital project accumulation in the summer election?

I think that's what I

is there

any I'm seeing heads nod. So

if that's the will of the council, we have two meetings left before we have to pull the trigger on that. And so decision points are particularly on the capital or on the permanent base adjustment to determine the number because that that number goes on the ballot. So that's a decision point that we'll have to make it, you know, within the next two meetings. And then the council will need to adopt a resolution for both of those ballot measures. And once the council adopts those resolutions, you're very limited in what you're allowed to say about those ballot measures.

So we need to have a discussion in the next two meetings about what happens once you've called an election election and what you're allowed to say and not allowed to say and and what the next steps are after that. So there are a couple board decision points you need to make very quickly in February. So

Actually, I think council member Thomason, did you have a question?

My question has to do with the publicity pamphlet. As I understand from the September conversation, there's some discussion around the town financing communications around the expenditure the base increase adjustment. Could you refresh us on that?

So if I understand the question correctly, municipalities are allowed to provide facts about ballot measures. You're not allowed to advocate. And so publicity pamphlet is is will have a required reports that are required as part of the the ballot measure statute. And then residents can submit pro con arguments in support or opposition to the ballot measure. Separately, in the past when we've done permanent base adjustments as part of the town reporter for the for the summer election, we've just had a simple fact sheet like a frequently asked questions, yes or no, What is the state expenditure limitation?

How does it affect the town? What is base expenditure election? You know, how how does that impact our budget? How does that impact taxes? And so we can do that. We just can't have

And council member, if I can add a little bit of color to that. The the thing that guides us when we determine what's advocacy or what's not is a footnote from a thirty year old case. And in that footnote, the court said, it's moot now because the city has removed it from the their materials. But had they left on the checkbox with a checkmark in it that said vote, that that would have been advocacy. Didn't say vote yes, didn't say vote no, just said vote.

So every time that we look at the materials and Duncan and I scrutinize everything that everybody wants to do, we'll be looking at it through that very narrow lens. Because the worst thing that can happen is get a yes vote, and then it gets thrown out because someone sues you that your materials were advocacy. So just so that when Duncan says advocacy, it's, you know, narrow version of that.

Thank you. A follow on question if I may. Please. Mayor. I have heard from the majority of council sentiment in favor of the permanent base adjustment. Obviously, we haven't voted yet. Duncan, in the past when we have gone forward to the voters with a request for this, has that ever been brought forward with a split council vote or has it always been unanimous?

It's a really good question. I am almost well, actually, I well, I think it's always been unanimous. I I I've been here for all of them. I have the resolutions in your packet, but I the resolutions don't have the vote. I'll I'll have to double check, but I think it was unanimous.

Thank you. Thank you, mayor.

Absolutely. Other comments? Council member Moore?

Mayor, no further comments. Thank you.

Council Member Pace. Thank you.

And then following up on the what we can do and can't do then in the short time period. And I know Duncan, you did a great job on educating us that one meeting and now I've kind of forgotten some of that. So we have two meetings to make the decision and once that comes that's when it changes a little bit for what we can advocate for as council members or as a town. Which is it?

Well, I guess both. So town cannot spend

Yeah. The town can't but what about council members?

Council members individually

Can do their thing.

Can exercise your First Amendment rights.

Okay. And then I think it's important it is unanimous by the way. I know your question is a good one, but I think it's very mixed messaging to go to voters and then not proceed unanimously on finance issues. When we can all get comfortable. I know everybody's not comfortable yet, when they're comfortable. I think it sends a wrong message to them if we can do that, if we can get there. But the second thing is during the next couple weeks before we make this decision, a thought to the mayor and everybody is we need to be doing those community conversations. I think you need to meet with former mayors, with maybe Leslie. I mean, I think there needs to be some things to help people understand why. I mean, started putting some articles to start getting in their head of, hey, we're talking about these words and like, what's those expenditure limitation?

What's those words? You know, they don't even know yet much about it. So, you know, it might be a good idea thinking out loud that the next before the next two meetings, we're out there talking to people to help them understand a little more however your form is, whatever you want to do. But like the former mayors probably ought to have a meeting with you and Leslie and Andrew Chang just say here's what's coming. Just an idea. Just throwing it out there.

No, that's fine. Everyone's got an

Education is the way to say it. Education and frequently asked questions. And they don't know all that we just went through and what we've been going through. So I think we can use it as an opportunity to have some meetings in the next couple of weeks here at the town hall with some presentations before we hit the cycle to talk about facts, frequently asked questions, what's been our budget problems, what are we gonna see. I mean there just needs to be we can all advocate too, but it just would be nice to get some of those conversations on finances and when people ask questions.

And then the other thing is, remind me Duncan, back on the way we had to do it is we had a companion committee from residents who co chaired to help us be the advocates. It's a citizen committee separate from the town, separate from the council. And so we have two leaders that go off and do it and they advocate and remind me, am I remembering this right? I'm remembering back.

So mister mayor, council member Pace, yeah, I just want to caution once an election has been called, there are campaign finance laws that that kick in. And so if more than one person gathers together to to support or oppose a ballot measure, that's a that's a political committee. And so you would have to register and track your, you know, expenses. I will say that in the twenty sixteen election, which I I remember off the top of my head, there weren't any packs that were that were created.

Did we have a wouldn't we have a resident committee though?

There might have been There was, I think. And I'm thinking I'm not I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying that there might have been a group

out there. Okay.

We did not have any packs.

I understand. So we need to be

But mister mayor Yeah. Got

it. The

expenditure of public funds to support or oppose a ballot measure or a candidate, the hard date is the resolution. But I am uncomfortable with any kind of town Okay. Activity prior to that because we really want to control the messaging.

Got

it. And we would not be able to control It's the too quick. In that context.

And so we can do individually education but we'll wait for the FAQ from the town to kind of hand that out. So, yeah, the group that did it the last time, I guess I guess I'm asking because we don't want to do it wrong.

Just to

be clear, the town can't have any connection to that group either.

No. But they're gonna come forward to ask somebody and is it our town? We gotta we have to where do they go? The town clerk to understand the rules? I mean, that's what we're gonna hear.

Great place to send them is to

the town clerk.

So we're only sending them to you, there's gonna be a committee who wants to help. So we'll send them that way. That's what we needed to know. Thank you. And then we know when it comes down to the the we paid for them before I did. You did your individual you know, we always do this. The individual little pros and cons. Are we allowed to do that in the booklet? Because if we have done that in the past, I have.

Yes. Absolutely. Mayor and council members can submit ballot or yeah. Procon statements.

And that's where we got a bunch of people to do yeah. For the names. Okay. Thank you.

And the the council's part of the resolution calling the election. You'll set the fee for ballot measure arguments. Statute says that there shall be a fee, but you can decide if it's a dollar, $25.300. In the past, it's been $25, but that that's a council decision. It's just the statute says there shall be a fee. Okay.

Other comments or questions? Councilmember Moore?

No. We seem to get way off topic, so I'll I'll no comments.

Vice mayor.

Thank you. Real briefly on the, publicity pamphlet since we have been all talking about it, I might as well just ask my question here. Providing facts for that is part of the facts the history of the passage in the

town? Yeah. Frequently asked question.

That's a fact. That or

would that probably would not be in the publicity pamphlet.

Okay.

And that's probably a a mister McGuire question which I have one more for

you too.

Yeah. Publicity pamphlet has a fairly stringent list of things that you should have including certain calculations and then a place for the the procon statements. So we generally leave those types of things for FAQs and other information that we provide and they're not usually in the pub pamphlet. Although I can say that there have been entities that have had much more informative pub pamphlets than others.

So

we try to be really cautious with that.

Okay.

The information will be somewhere. It just might not be in that pamphlet.

Right. Okay. Thank you. And then one more question and this might if I'm off track on the question, feel free to let me know. Advice for council members when we're having these legal advice. When we're having these public information meetings for the public, for our residents. It's an open meeting. We can all be there. Do you have any advice as far as I could or or even even Leslie, how would you prefer for us to show up so that you can do your job and and speak with the public without having too much noise but without getting in anyone's first amendment rights. Is there if there's no guidance here, that's fine. It's do you understand what I'm saying? If we all

yeah. Just to clarify, you're talking about public information?

No. For the budget.

Oh, the budget. Yeah. And I'm kind

of yeah. Sorry. I'm off track.

I'm glad you mentioned And added two council members

to point out that at some point.

Yeah. Sorry.

Because we have up on the screen it's being shared the proposed 2020 fiscal Yeah. Sorry about that. That's what I meant. No. It's good because what you'll notice is that we didn't yet program in to the calendar the public meetings that we had agreed that we were gonna do in this year's budget season. My inclination is that we would schedule those in between on the off weeks between meetings. Mhmm. Mhmm. And I think we would probably want to have all of them done prior to tentative adoption because tentative adoption locks in the budget quite a bit.

Mhmm.

So I'm thinking it wouldn't be any earlier than March 12 and it'd be no later than April 23. My guess is most of them would be between the twelfth and the ninth is when we probably have it. We'd have two. We'd probably hold them right here in town hall and it would be an open session for a presentation from budget staff. I'll be there and then any member of the public could come.

To your question, vice mayor, you know, I feel like, you know, obviously, if we had a quorum of counsel there, we'd have to do certain notices. But as far as asking questions or things like that, I mean, I think that's more of a of a matter of individual discretion, I think. You know, we you obviously have ample meetings that you that are geared and are required just for for you and your colleagues to have. And also members of the public can certainly come to any of those. Those are all also public meetings.

The the ones that are specifically residents, you know, I mean, you're all residents too. So we understand that. And as as mister Miller said, you all have first amendment rights and can come and participate as well. I would say, you know, it's more of a matter of individual discretion and as to the degree to which you want to to get involved in all of that. We'll just I think the runner's show would probably be we would run a budget presentation that would be similar to what we've given at the study sessions, and we'd leave time at the end for any q and a. Know I'd be there. I think we'd encourage departments to be there if there are department specific, questions as well.

Okay. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

So I need a little bit of a reality check. I know we went to a lot of different places, valuable information, good questions. But folks that are playing along on the home edition of study session are probably pretty confused. And there's a lot of variables that we've just discussed. And Leslie, great presentation. But I want to be respectful of the residents, obviously, and how we communicate. And I wanna ask, is it realistic based on where we're at and based on where we what we've discussed to make this happen in the next two meetings? And I'm asking staff based on your experience and based on all the variables that we've we've we've worked with today.

You mean to get the call to for election, the resolution ready before the deadline for the July election? I think the answer is yes. We can do that.

My only caveat is depending on when and if the state legislature passes that law to change the election date. If it's passed sometime in February, then the our week pushes back. I mean, so we might not make the February 26 if the bill goes into effect immediately because every deadline will push back one week. And so if that happens, we might need a special meeting.

Yeah. Can't we just plan that it's July 20 I mean, they're going to July. I mean, they've already told us. So can't we just kind of plan for that and then do special meetings as needed if we have to adjust? I They've already said they're doing it.

Understand that. He's a good civil servant. The law right now says that it's August 4.

So if I'm tracking along with where we're at here, appreciate the opinions and comments of all my colleagues. But you're saying, and Leslie, I saw you nodding along that we can can make this happen. And town manager, Andrew Chang, I saw him saying that that's doable. So if if that's what we're hearing, pending any of the variables Right. We can make this happen using the next two meetings and potentially a special meeting if required.

So mister mayor, so at the at the next the first meeting in February, would you be looking for a study session to to revisit the permanent base adjustment number, have a study session on that, get consensus, and then schedule it for approval in February 26 meeting?

Attorney? And and how about if we try to fashion a resolution for you to that extent so it would get your official two meetings worth if if we to to not just have a number to have an actual resolution for you to look

at? Yes.

Okay. I'm heads nod. And town manager, I would ask from a workflow standpoint, we've asked for some deliverables to come back, we know are in play in addition to moving forward with the will of

the council says that's what we should be doing. This all works? Right. We've we've got the information request as revised over the course of the meeting. You know, I'm sure mister Miller has been writing all that down. I have notes. Shar and Sam are here. I think we'll be able to get that information to counsel. I think we said we could get it fairly quickly, hopefully, before the next meeting. We do have an extra week because of the way the calendar work between this meeting and the next meeting. So, hopefully, that will give us even a little additional time. So we'll try to get the Town clerk.

Sorry, mister mayor. One more question. On the capital projects accumulation resolution, how specific is the direction on what projects to include? You saw an example from the 1993 capital projects accumulation fund that we did and you saw one from Gilbert. I I've heard consensus that you do not want a sunset provision, but how how specific do you want us to be in the language for what's included in that? The town attorney has comment.

Mister mayor, unless we heard otherwise, we were planning to bring you a Gilbert style one.

I'm seeing heads nod. Okay.

Although

without the things that you don't do.

Right. Right. I was just gonna say. But and Gilbert is a very conservative, well known, bright community business, fiscally conservative Republican town, so it's a good one to use.

Alright. Any other comments or questions at this point? Leslie, is that, is that complete?

That is complete. Yes.

Alright. If there's no other questions at this point, council member Moore, I wanna check-in before we move off of study.

No further questions. Thanks, mayor.

Thank you. And with that, Leslie, that completes all your notes, what we have for today on study session. Very complicated. Greatly appreciate your time and working with staff and working with my colleagues and myself. It is complicated but there's no more important decision and I think all my colleagues agree with than managing the budget process and managing the finances for the town. So applaud you for walking us through the options. A lot of variables, a lot of good thoughts. I compliment all my colleagues for thinking through making a plan and now we look towards executing that plan. So appreciate all that input. And if there's nothing else, town manager, then we would complete the study session.

Thanks. I think we have great direction. Thank you.

Alright. Well, that'll complete the study session. I will it's a little bit earlier. We've about an hour, think, till the business general business meeting. So we'll suspend the video right now as we take a break between now and the business meeting at six p.

M. Thanks everybody. Well, good evening, everybody. Good evening, and thank you for joining us for the town council meeting for 01/22/2026 is now called to order. Would the clerk please call the roll?

Mayor Stanton? Here. Vice mayor LaBelle?

Here.

Council member Andy Keller? Here. Council member Leipman? Here. Council member Moore? Here. Council member Pace?

Here.

Council member Thomason?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you, mister town clerk. And I would like like to have everybody join me in the pledge of allegiance. And if you could stand and I'm gonna welcome officer Ben Auer, newest officer in the Paradise Valley Police Department coming from eighteen years of service with DPS, Department of Public Safety. Welcome, sir. Thank you for joining Paradise Valley Police Department, and thank you for please leading us in the pledge of allegiance.

Thank you, sir. Alright. Next on the agenda, we have our presentations and there are no presentations this evening. So the next item is the call to the public. The call to the public is an opportunity for residents to address the council on matters not on the agenda, and in conformance with open meeting laws. The council may not discuss or take action on any of the matters raised. However, the council may respond to criticism after all public comments have been made. Ask staff to review the matter or ask it to be placed on a future agenda item. Speakers are asked to state if they're a town resident and also asked to limit their comments to three minutes. If you would like to address the council, please fill out a speaker request form.

They're located at the lectern at the entrance to the council chambers. And once completed, please hand it to our town clerk Duncan Miller at the far end of the dais here. So with that, I would ask if mister town clerk, do we have any call to the public request? Mister mayor,

we have two call to the public requests. The first is Paul Critchfield. Mister Critchfield?

So good evening, everyone. My name is Paul Critchfield, and I I do live in Paradise Valley, Arizona for quite some time. I I come before the council tonight with a heavy heart and also with hope for the future. All this week, my wife and I have been in prayer really for the families that have been involved in this really tragic accident, Desert Fairways Drive and those small streets there. And my messages tonight really for the town council, it's all about a future and safety for our visitors and for our homeowners in all areas, but especially, of course, where we are at the moment.

Really, it's There are so many people that use Desert Fairways for many, many different reasons, for jogging, for walking, dogging the dogs. The homeowners are here all the time walking there on the streets and getting jogging exercises and visiting guests from Camelback Inn use the road very frequently for biking and also for just walking, enjoying the beauty of the area. And at the same time, there's a lot of cyclists who use the the road very frequently and probably too too too quickly too quickly in their speeding down there and using the middle of the road too. So my message is really one of of a great thank you, first of all, to to the policemen who have tried very hardly to hard to visit with the club biking organizations and try to coax them to really slow down and be careful in all their in all their riding areas. And so we really wanna congratulate the police for for all their efforts already that they're doing.

I think my other messages tonight are all about our homeowner neighbors who must be so careful as they pull out of their driveways many times. Many times, the driveways are steep and you must look three or four times left and right before you come out. You might be you know, you don't wanna hit any bikers or you don't wanna hit any cars coming either. So so many of us are also aware that many of the cars are utilizing desert fairways. It's kind of a pass through coming from Tatum to Lincoln in all times during the day, and the reverse is also true.

So the reverse is, it's funny, you know, they're coming from Lincoln to Tatum and Tatum back to Lincoln many times for shortcuts instead of going through the light on Tatum and Lincoln. So it's very unusual there. So our desert fairways and adjoining areas are also used for this physical fitness areas because it's a beautiful area to walk and enjoy the calmness of after a hard day at work to kinda relax. My final message is really this, that we are all so lucky to live in this beautiful town and I believe this privilege really comes with a huge set of responsibilities as providing the best, safest solutions for everyone who utilizes our streets in in the cycling area and for walking and especially for obeying all the stop signs and all the street signs very carefully. We must use our bike lanes correctly, observe the speed limits on the roads, refrain from walking or riding our bikes in the middle of the roadways, and practicing some really good behaviors that will help us, I think, all be safer in the future.

I think the use of modestly built speed bumps perhaps or roundabouts in perhaps some areas that could be studied by the council can be additional kind of precautionary measures in the future for us to be more safe. I think you walked away.

Miss Grishfield, just a few more seconds, please,

because we're You bet.

We passed our

My hope is that the council will take some of these ideas at heart and maybe get to some action areas in the future. So thanks for having us.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

The next public speaker is Rich Rector.

Good evening. I'm here actually, I've been a PV resident now for fifty two years, believe it or not. And the reason people like me live here is for the quality of life here in the town and that includes clean air and quiet. So those clean that clean air and quiet is disturbed every day by leaf blowers, gas, electric, and battery powered ones. They create noise pollution.

I can't have a phone call outside in my backyard because of that. They create air pollution, gas exhaust, and dust. You know, we'll clean our our outdoor furniture and then then the next day after the blowers are there, we have to clean it again, you know, because of all the dust. So anyway, blowers don't get rid of debris. They just move it around from our neighbor's yard into our yard.

Blown under the plants, blown under the doorways in our home. We've asked our gardeners to stop blowing and use some unique things called brooms and rakes. And they actually get more exercise when they do that, which is helping them. Anyway, let's do what some other cities have done. Del Mar, California, Carmel, California, and Hidden Hills, California have banned all types of blowers in public areas and gas ones in private property gas ones on private property.

So I've provided those municipal codes to all of you here on the council And I hope that you will review them and see if the town can do something like this as well. And thank you to council member Karen Liepman and to vice mayor LaBelle for answering my emails. Appreciate that. So let's improve the quality here in Paradise Valley and ban the leaf blowers. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Any more calls to

the public, mister Towne Clerk? No, mister mayor.

Alright. Well, thank you. We'll move on to the next item on the agenda, and the next agenda item is the consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda are considered by the council to be routine and are normally enacted by a single motion. If a member of the council or the public would like to discuss any item, it will be removed from the consent agenda and considered separately. Would the town manager please summarize tonight's consent agenda?

Thank you, mister mayor, members of council. We have two items on the consent agenda tonight. First is item 26 dash zero one eight, approval of the minutes of the town council meeting of 01/08/2026. Second is item 26 dash zero twenty six, discussion and possible action to approve a contract extension for janitorial services at town municipal facilities.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Would a any council member like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Not seeing any, would anyone in the audience like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Alright. Not seeing any, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Mayor, I move we approve the adoption of the consent agenda as submitted.

Thank you. Second.

It has been moved by council member Thomason and seconded by vice mayor, Labelle. Is there is there a voice vote? All those in favor to approve the consent agenda?

Aye.

Aye.

Alright. Motion passes. Alright. Next up, we are going to move on to public hearings. Tonight, there are two public hearings. The first is consideration of an ordinance twenty twenty five dash zero four amending article 17 of the zoning ordinance related to assisted living homes. It will be presented by our planning manager, mister Paul Michaud.

Thank you. Good evening, members of council, and those attending this evening. So, yes, as you mentioned, this is your public hearing for a text amendment to our zoning ordinance regarding the assisted living home regulations. So the council directed for us to look at this text amendment back in September 2025 just to point out that these assisted living homes don't include any sort of sober living home or similar facilities. We have a whole separate process called reasonable accommodation, and that's not changing at all.

Also, the existing living assisted living homes that we do have in town, which there are twelve and one under construction, nothing would change to those. Those would fall under our nonconforming use regulations and allow to still have 10 residents. So when we do a text amendment to the zoning ordinance or any sort of legislative act, we look to the general plan. That's our our guiding document for its vision and goals and policies. And so when you look at our general plan, which I'm sure everyone is aware of, you know, we're we're a residential single family community.

It's also has some minor amount of non residential and those are very limited when you look at our zoning ordinance through our special use permit zoning, which we do kind of case by case site plan specific, and we very and we have very few of those types of uses as well. So the assisted living homes, much like our short term rentals and other some other items are we're required to do a lot of municipality municipalities through the state or federal legislation are required to accommodate these type of uses. There's certainly various options for living options when you talk about these facilities. Our town as we don't have a lot of different zoning types for say townhomes or different commercial types. We don't have most of the types of assisted living type of facilities except for the assisted living home.

When you look at our zoning ordinance and our definition of family, which is includes groups of not more than five people, the change of looking at from 10 to six aligns more with that definition of family as well. And of course, any modifications that someone would want, there's always the reasonable accommodation process. Again, that's not changing at all. So, when you look at the various sections of codes, there's sections of state statute and there's various sections in our town code. We're really talking about the section Article 17, which is the assisted living home section.

And again, this item before you is advertised for these three items that we're looking to change, not anything else. That's the scope of this request. So, when you look at our code provision, there's various requirements in there. There's a separation requirement, which is not being proposed be changed. The occupancy is being proposed to go from 10 to six.

No changes in the licenses required or account review process or the applicable codes that apply or that they need to be compatible with the surrounding area or community threat. And then the other change would be regarding parking right now. It's any of the employees if you will have to park on-site and the changes to have everything be parked on-site. And then the third change is really kind of a Scrivener sort of correction, which was regarding the title of our community development director. So looking at process, when we look at a text amendment to the zoning ordinance, we're required by our code to have a citizen review session, which is really just a neighborhood meeting that's held by our planning commission, which was done by our planning commission.

It was held on November 18. And then the planning commission needs to make a recommendation, and they did do that at their December 2 hearing. It was a recommendation to support this. It was four to three. And then the council study session which you had at your last meeting on the January 8. And then of course, we're here tonight with the action and then again public comment for the hearing as well. So went over the changes again. There's there's the three proposed changes to the the ordinance itself. As mentioned, council did discuss this at your January 8 meeting with some of the very similar comments are outlined here and in your report. And then as I mentioned, planning commission did recommend support of this.

And then certainly we certainly value why we do this and do a public comment as we value everyone's comments whether they're for or against or what they are. So just trying to summarize the comments that we've received when you look at the ones in support, those comments related to the business nature of an assisted living home that doesn't align with the vision and values of the general plan, the impact and lack of choice for existing residents, when one opens, that the six resident occupancy alliance with our definition of family as I mentioned, increased traffic due to visitors healthcare providers, and that the amendment still retains the non conforming use provisions in our reasonable accommodation process. Those who wanted to keep the the code provision the same or not in support of the change, that it's not a threat to the single family lifestyle, that it replaces older unkempt properties. There's benefits on the proximity to nearby family members, and we have an older population as we're aware so that creates a demand that the smaller 10 person home provides benefits to resident related activities and other factors. There were cost concerns related both to the operator as well as to the person or family who would have to pay for that.

And that the amendment could effectively cap the number. So those are just a summary of the comments you received. There were two emails that were provided after the packet went out. Those were individually sent to you. There was also a phone call that was just left on a message machine of someone who was a resident who is not in support of the change and his support is leaving it as well, just for FYI. And with that, the recommendation is for approval of the amendment to council, we can certainly address any questions you have.

Thank you, mister Michaud. I'll open up to the council if there are any questions to mister Michaud on the report. Council member Pace.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, mister Michaud. Know you worked really hard and thank you for all the public comments and summarizing and getting us everything. We always like to hear all sides, so that's been very helpful. One question when you said, I mean, grandfathers in the twelve thirteen group home or assisted living homes, that's for the grandfather for what we're changing, those specific items, not anything else. If there's other violations, that's different. It's just for the ten to six, the parking, those are the changes, correct?

Correct. Mayor Council Member Pace, yes, that is correct. It's just based on these changes.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Ayild. Well, I guess I should do one more thing. If what yeah. You probably should go through that. So could you I know you explained it to us before, but I think for the public, it'd be helpful to reclarify. So if someone who owns a group home right or assisted living home right now sells it, does this run with the land for them to still have the opportunity to have a 10 person assisted living facility?

Mayor, Council Member Hayes, that is correct. Our our nonconforming use regulations, I think it's article 22, I They clearly spell out. You just can't discontinue the use for more than a year. And, again, the use itself is allowed. It's really the the 10 to the six or the parking. It's the things that you were changing.

Perfect. Yeah. And then So,

I guess

it runs with the land, not not the With

the land. Right. And we also clarified. There was a lot of confusion in that first public meeting that caused a bunch of angst that we got a lot of calls. Thank you. And everybody was writing us that we're not removing any of the existing 10 residents to six in existing 13 homes. Correct?

That is correct.

Yeah. Okay.

Thank you. I yield.

Thank you. Other questions for mister Michaud from the council? Councilmember Moore?

No. Just no questions, mayor. Just comments as we begin to take the vote.

Alright. I'll ask if there's any more questions. If not, I would ask if there's a report from the Planning Commission. Chair Pamela Georgios is here. Is there any update that you'd like to provide the council?