Town Council - Regular Meeting

Alright. Well, good afternoon, everyone. The meeting is called to order. Would the clerk please call the roll? Mayor Stanton? Here. Vice mayor Andean Keller? Here. Council member Lebel? Here. Council member Liepman? Here. Council member Moore? Here. Council member Pace? Council member Thomason? Here. We have a quorum.

Thank you. 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 study session. 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 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 scheduled to begin shortly after 6PM. Public comment will also be invited when the agenda topic is placed on the future agenda for action. There are three items on the study session agenda today, and the first item is discussion of a zoning code update project presented by our community development director Chad Weaver. Mister Weaver, before we turn over, just let my colleagues know we've carved out about forty five minutes for this discussion. It's kind of a deep dive and I know that you may have some deep dive questions.

But today, we're looking at it being a more of an overview and a general direction, not a necessarily a deep dive. Keep in mind that we're gonna have several other study sessions and public meetings on this discussion and won't be voting on it until June. So today, they're looking for top line and not necessarily a deep dive. But, thank you for your, consideration of that, and I would, turn over to the town manager or

mister Weaver. We'll just go straight here. Thank you, mayor, council members. As the mayor said, and I and I will further clarify, so we are at at some point going to be getting into the actual code change piece of this. Obviously, we've been to you, in in in work studies previously to ask you about the things you might like to see or like us to consider. What we have here today is not that. There's not really any proposed code change in here at all. So, the the consultant team here, we have Matthew Matthew Clazico. I

almost got it.

Right? And Rob Yaron. They're gonna go through the presentation in a moment, but really at this point and and and they'll be clear about how that works. This is the front end. We're we're doing a reorg of the document, and that's all the all the things you see is mostly about that reorg. The language that's there is staying there. It just might be moving, and they'll explain why that is and how that works. There are some next steps there where it talks about some potential changes, but those are just potential changes. We don't even have draft language. It's just like we this this element may need to change for clarity or effectiveness, but we're not proposing anything to you today. Certainly, we'll take any feedback you have, but I think the deep dive the mayor referenced would be on some of those specific issues where we're now we're gonna do something differently going forward. So with that, I'll turn it over to the team.

Thank you, Chad. Good afternoon, mayor and council. As Chad stated, my name is Robbie Aaron. I work for Michael Baker International. This is my, colleague, Matthew Klyzico, and we're here before you, this afternoon to provide an update and get some feedback and direction on the, town zoning code update.

So just quickly wanna provide some a quick insight of the agenda. So we're gonna go over why we're updating the zoning code. We did do an analysis of the zoning code last September, so we'll go over what we found and what, we will be working on moving forward. We are going to go over what we are currently working on, and then we do have a question of what public outreach should look like. So we'll ask, for a little bit of direction on public outreach and how that how we should go about that at the last part of the presentation.

So why, update the zoning code? First, the last update was completed in 2005. As I stated, we did a comprehensive assessment of the existing code in 2000 which was completed in September 2024. What we found is the code has been updated incrementally over time. So there might have been legislative changes that happened that required the code to be updated or revisions because something, didn't necessarily make sense.

And so all those kinds of things happening, over time have resulted in little bit of language inconsistencies, and may limit the ability for the code to address the town's needs, or just overall confusion, when somebody comes, to the counter with the development. They might not understand something and things might not jive. So we'll be looking at, refining some of those things, moving forward to bring a better code that is easier to understand. Leading into that, so that was our key goal. So identifying existing inconsistencies, conflicts, duplications, duplications, and working to clean them up, addressing potential development trends that will impact the town.

So things, that we're seeing now coming in or things that may come down the road, that we're starting to see as trends or even things that came a few years ago that are trends that maybe the code doesn't fully address, so addressing some of those things. Making the code overall more user friendly. So ultimately, making it so that the end user has an easy time navigating the code and isn't necessarily having to come to the counter, you know, multiple times trying to figure out what they can and can't do on their property. And lastly, ensuring that, the code language as it stands is compliant with ARS, Arizona Veri statutes, and any federal laws that have changed over time. As we know, those happen those updates happen sometimes on a yearly basis so we just need to go back and make sure that we've caught everything and and update that language.

So things we found. Primary findings, as I stated before, successive updates since 2005 introduced, variations in clarity across the code, that underscoring a need for a Meric assistant and cohesive framework. So the reason for that being that, you know, different people update the code and they have different ways of writing code, and so the language, is just inherently the the way it's written can be different. And so when you are looking at it comprehensively, you're maybe just looking at a section. Your section sounds great, but maybe it doesn't jive with the way the other sections are written.

So we found some need to update that. Refinements to development standards such as height and area, walls and fences, outdoor lighting, those things we're gonna take a look at a little more in-depth as we go on. We wanna make sure that those things are in line with keeping with the town's long term vision for a semi rural character. And then as I stated, enhancing the code's overall usability by improving the formatting, and allowing for, more efficient interpretation and application of the code. So I'm gonna just jump into the primary updates.

I'm gonna go through the things we just talked about and what it is we're working on and what we are going to be looking at, down the road. The biggest thing that you'll see, down the road when the code comes back to you is a new format and a new organization. So we'll be restructuring the document. And in your packet, there was a annotated outline of what that will look like. So we restructured the document for improved usability. We'll be grouping related sections together. There are instances where some sections are kind of buried in another section where it doesn't necessarily make sense. And so if somebody's going through the code, they're like, wait. Where is outdoor lighting? Well, currently outdoor lighting is in the section for height.

And so bringing that to a more easier place to find is something that we'll be look at doing. But also incorporating a more comprehensive and nuanced numbering system that is similar to the town code. So a lot of people, you know, are familiar with the town codes. If we have a numbering system that is the same as the town code, that will also start to jive together for people that use both of them. This is the current, format, the existing organization of the, code.

So these are all of the articles that are in there. So it is a lot, and you'll also see that some numbers are skipped. There is no eighteen, nineteen, 20, 21, and 22. So part of the reorganization is to kind of, fix that. Those might say reserved or they were supposed to be for something or they were had something that got repealed, but it never, got rid of that article number and we left other articles in the same place for continuity.

This is what the updated organization will go to. So on the right is the updated organization. It will become nine articles. On the left is the existing organization. And I know this is hard to read and I know this is very chaotic.

I think that's kind of what we were trying to get at is kind of show where in a current code the way it's we, see best practices formatting things, how the existing organization would then fit in there, and how the colors are all kind of all over the place. The other idea with the organization is that we do this in what we consider like a step by step process. So if I am coming in, and I have a single family development that I would like to do, how do I go about this code, go through this code, define what zoning district I can have my single family home in? Okay. I figured that out.

Now what standards do I need to go by? What additional regulations do I need to go by? And then how do I get there? Like, do I need to rezone? Do I need to go get a use permit for this or a use permit for that?

So those types of things, that kind of walk you through and then ultimately at the end is enforcement, nonconformities, and definitions. Kind of the more boring stuff, we tend to put at the end, but it's also necessary, to be in the code. These are some other, specific sections that need relocation. I mentioned one earlier being outdoor lighting and illumination that currently is under the height chapter, but these are a few other things that are actually also in, article 10 that also will be pulled out and put in other places, accessory buildings and structure regulations, parking of vehicles and trailers, prohibition of timeshare projects, and then specific types of medical marijuana facilities. So those are things that are kind of tucked in a place that people may not necessarily look to right now, so we're hoping to bring those out so that they're a little more easy to find.

The next step we would go through, and we haven't quite gotten to this step yet, is making sure that we are compliant legally. So we'll go through and make sure that any sections that are outdated or legally noncompliant are brought into compliance. We're also going through, ARS and other legislation, that's come out recently for over the past few years and making sure that everything that applies to Paradise Valley, we have accounted for in the code. So one example is the state legislatures recently said every municipality in the state needs to regulate backyard foul. Well, that's not currently something that is in the code.

We do talk about having horses and those kinds of things, but now the state says you have to have something, regarding chickens essentially in your code. So making sure that those are in there, those kinds of things. And then there's a couple other examples of rezoning protests. Those that language has recently changed, over the past few years and so just ensuring that the language that's currently in the code jives with what a r what the legislation legislature has passed, sorry, over the past few years. Additionally, any federal laws that have been updated, those generally relate to, like, wireless telecommunication facilities, radio antennas, those types of things, also are up to date.

We'll also be looking at refinements and clarifications. So these will be surgical. These won't be wholesale. We're going to go through and make sure that we when we update, we're updating it so that it makes the code better. It makes it easier to use, not just to update, just or because we liked this language over here from this municipality or somebody came in and said, I don't like this language.

That's not what we're looking to do. We're looking to make this more user friendly. And so doing surgical updates and looking at refinements and clarifications that can help the overall usability of the code is really what we're going for. Here are a few examples of things that, we generally and in the past and other municipalities that we work in have come across where people struggle. The codifying of an interpretation of how to calculate 50% on nonconforming structures.

So interpretations happen regularly. This particular interpretation provided a nice graphic that shows how nonconforming structure is calculated and when you have to bring that structure into compliance. So we would just look to codify that graphic so that somebody doesn't have to then go find it and understand it. It's just right there in front of them in the nonconforming section. Rear yard definition is another, one that comes up quite a bit.

You can see the graphic there on the right of how you determine where your rear yard is. So just making sure that overall that's easy to understand. FAR and lot coverage are something that people get, confused on, and then, again, updating certain graphics and tables to assist in proving the overall clarity and usability of the code. So what are we working on, right now? So the format.

The format has been reformatted and reorganized. We provided the annotated outline in the packet for you today. We're currently, as I stated, going through and making sure that updates to existing co language align with recent legislation. So right now, we're going through the legislation, everything over the past three to five years and just making sure everything was caught. That is a task, just, trying to figure out what applies and what doesn't apply.

A lot of this stuff, know, has some of it has a population limit that came with it and so that doesn't apply where some things are all just a wholesale change for everybody. Sure. Yeah. And then last will be the refinements. We're working on the refinements of list of permanent uses.

So Matt just wanted me to explain why we start with the format. So we start with the formatting and the reorganization because if we do all of the changes first and then we get all of our different cross references done and everything and then we're oh, by the way, we wanna reformat this and now we move everything. Well, then we start to break stuff and then we start to miss stuff. So we do all of that, all of the reformatting and come up with that annotated outline. And then what we've started to do is bring the code language from the existing code to where it will live in the new code.

And once we get all that done, that's when we start going in and changing code and updating the language. So we're really in the thick of getting everything into the new format. And then once we have that done, we'll start to dive into those surgical changes that I talked about and making sure we're legally compliant, updating graphics and doing all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And then that will then be updated in mini code once we're all said and done and this overall formatting will just jive with mini code a lot better.

Thanks, Matt. So as I stated, one question we had, for counsel and just want some direction on is what outreach should look like. So as you know, there's a million ways we could do outreach. When generally, when we do outreach, there are two primary ways to do it. We could solicit public comments in conjunction with periodic council check ins like today or, another more formal meeting or solicit public input at dedicated project meetings.

Those are the two kind of ways that we generally do that when we do zoning code updates. Our recommendation would be a hybrid of sorts. We would have one dedicated informational meeting, to present this stuff similar to what we're presenting to you, all today and then get additional input received, from when we hear doing more updates in conjunction with other council check ins. That would be a hybrid recommendation. However, we're open to, other recommendations or other thoughts that council may have on how, you think that outreach should be, done and, we will take those we can take those now or we can, have questions at the end as well. So

Why don't you continue with the presentation, then we'll come back with questions. Sounds great.

So timing and outcomes. As the mayor stated, when in his opening comments, the zoning code update is scheduled to be completed in June 2026. You will get an update in modern code that's compliant with all recent changes to state and federal law. And ultimately, it will be more user friendly with updated language and other clarifications based on not just public user experience, but staff user experience too. I mean, the staff is the people in the code every day of the week, and so we wanna make sure that they also have a good user experience with the code.

And then, as I stated before, part of that user experience is making sure that this jives with your guys' move to muni code, and so that will we will make sure that that is good too and that municode has all the references we need because one of the nice things about municode is you can click a cross reference. It'll take you to where you need to go. So just making sure all those things are are there so that when somebody goes into it, whether it's staff or the public, they have a nice, user experience. With that, thank you for your time today. We appreciate it. We're here to take any questions you may have and feedback on the outreach. Thank you.

Thank you. A lot of work, and I know you're just at the outset of it, so thank you for giving us that high level overview. And as I mentioned, we'll give you some high level feedback, not necessarily diving into the deep dive that we know is coming, and rightfully so. With that, I'd open it up to my colleagues if there's any questions or comments that you'd like to offer. Councilmember Leipman.

Thank you, mayor, and thank you for all this work. I'm delighted this code is being updated and reorganized. Before this, I was on the planning commission for four years, two of them as chair, and I I worked with your team on the, general plan. So I'm I'm delighted you're helping us on this. My question is with respect to outreach and counsel check ins.

I have gone through the code in excruciating detail for a number of reasons. And once I did it together with council member Thomason and we found a number of questions and issues. And I would like to know at what point will the council have the ability to look at your proposed work and add input. I can give an example, but I would I would request that before you go to community outreach, you give the council time. It doesn't have to be a huge amount of time to go through and actually look at this and and make sure we're comfortable.

And is that built into the schedule? And I can give you an example, and the example is signs. I I I learned that the zoning section on signs has nothing to do with the construction section on signs, and they are absolutely inconsistent. And not only that, but things are being enforced creatively. And I didn't see that on any of your lists. And so that is when do we give you that input? It's a long question, but thank you.

I'll take a stab at that one, mayor council member. So we have not really worked with them at all on, as I said before, the code changes. They're aware that we sought some input from the council on those, and and they're kind of living off to the side in the parking lot for now. So at some point, we will come back to you once we start working on those. I suspect probably there there are gonna be some drafting that we get to use so you can see how all of this work has shaken out so you can go back in and again and become comfortable raising the issues.

I mean, yours is pretty simple in terms of what you're looking for, so we don't necessarily have to locate it in the code in in the reorganized version. But sometime in one of those future council check ins, we will come back to you, with a menu of options like we often do with code changes for you to consider, related to the issues that you identified to us previously during the summer.

Thank you. What about those issues that may not be on the list? Like, I did not see signs on the list of issues.

We we I don't think this this presentation didn't have those are random samples there. There are other things. You know, pickleball was is somewhere. I'm not sure

if it appeared in here.

Oh, no. That's that

We've got a list of things going. So

That list is if I may, I I saw a list in the staff report that was the same list that we saw earlier. And it I don't think it has been updated since then. So

But we'll we'll we'll work with the town manager and see how we do that. I know so so the particular sign issue was not one that came up, I don't think, until after. We actually were with you folks doing a study session, so we may just have to double back in here real quick, clarify, quantify, get any extra things that we add to that list. We might do that without the consultant team, but I'm aware of that issue, but it it was subsequent to the last meeting. So I'll work with Andrew, and we'll make sure that we, cycle back again.

Wonderful. Thank you so much.

And I'll just add that the, direction that, the consultant is looking for can include timing, of the process, which can include saying before you have that larger public meeting that we would, you know, have a draft ready for counsel to look at as you know, and give comment back at a study session so that what we give to the public is informed by council's edits first. We can certainly do that. And if that's a consensus of council today, would be direction that would be very helpful to the consultants. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Labelle.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for that, overview on what you guys are working on. I realize this is just a preliminary reorganization of the format, and I appreciate that. Sounds to me like one of the goals here is, you know, efficiency, making things user friendly for both residents and and builders and our, stakeholders and our and our staff. Mhmm. And I can see where we're going down to nine articles would hopefully do that and hopefully it makes sense. I look forward to kind of deep diving on seeing where all

that Yeah.

Is going. So if I'm hearing you correctly, one of the goals here would be to, like, mitigate traffic at the counter. Right? People coming in because they're not sure they need clarification and they weren't able to get through on the phone for whatever reason. And I imagine that takes up a lot of staff time. So I'm I think that sounds great. I'm kind of in favor of that. I'm wondering how closely, you guys are working with tech on and and forgive me if you already do this. I don't if you do or not. Alternative communication tools such as maybe a live chat or a chatbot or something where these things can go into the queue and now, you know, staff isn't constantly interrupted with phone calls or questions and they can, you know, circle back to that in a more efficient manner. Is that something that you guys are looking at?

So I think that's for us. So, no, at this point, we've not contemplated any kind of chat function for user questions. It's phone, email, and in person. I think that would probably be a separate discussion maybe with James in the room Yeah. Because I'm not aware of how that would look. So I'm Without a dedicated person to do that, I'm not sure it actually saves our staff any because they would have to go man that thing. But it's I frankly, it's not something we've considered. Okay.

And I might jump in and maybe even legal might jump in. But hit in recent conversations on other codes we've worked on, the notion of kind of that chatbot for the zoning code has been something that we may want to roll out a little slower in terms of if it starts giving direction or suggestion to a resident or applicant about what they can and can't do and isn't exactly right in terms of interpreting the code Right. We can get into, you know, some challenges. So that might be something that we just maybe want technology to catch up just a little before we get out ahead of ourselves.

And maybe not the bot, but just live chat. I guess my thought process was if you guys are going for user friendly efficiency, is there another, option you guys are looking at as far as just interrupting the workflow of staff? If that's off topic and it has nothing to do with what you're doing here, then that's fine too. It was just a

thought that you're not work for that. So Thank you. Absolutely.

And I do believe the town attorney had a comment. Yeah.

Okay. No bots. Just a lot.

Yeah. Mister mayor, council member, we're we, in light of the Hammer Holmes case, we're pretty sensitive to any kinds of answers being given other than ones that have a really big disclaimer on them. If you haven't seen an email from our staff, email Chad sometime and get a response back and get the giant orange box that's there because of it. I don't think we could do that in the chatbot realm very well.

Okay. Well, I'm all about the efficiency. How's that? So

Thank you. Other, I think councilmember Thomason.

Thank you, mayor. Page 11 where you list the categorization of the perspective new articles. Article two references zoning districts.

Mhmm.

We don't have zoning districts, and I'm concerned that that would be confusing to our residents, perhaps just zoning, some kind of renaming. I I would just invite you to consider a different title for that section.

Okay.

Secondly, I'm just idly curious how you are using AI in your development of this work. It's none of our business, but I'm just curious.

You take that? I I guess from a zoning code standpoint, there's not a lot of I would I don't wanna value in terms of using AI to craft regulations because it's so nuanced. So I think what we would typically do though is we often will find benchmark communities and bring those examples because we have found communities like to at least consider where code language may have already been applied or utilized to make sure that, you know, sometimes when you craft something fresh, you know, you don't have the historical, application of it. And so, in this instance, I would expect we would bring forward to you, examples of other communities comparable to Paradise Valley and allow you to have that framework. But AI, in terms of crafting, the code language itself isn't very efficient or helpful, we might, you know, use it to refine a memo or a a summary of something, but we wouldn't really have a place for it in terms of crafting the specific language.

Yeah. And I would just add the other way that we might use it is to say, hey. Can you find some communities similar to Paradise Valley? Time saving rather than typing it into Google and then scrolling. They'll provide resources and things like that, but otherwise.

Thank you. And my final comment has to do with the community outreach. However much community outreach we think we might need now, I would just encourage us to think about doubling that. And the reason I say that, two things. And when we get to resident input, I think specific, very granular specific examples of an impact of any change is going to be important.

I'm sure you've worked with us before, but I can't stress enough how many genuinely engaged, experienced, and very smart residents we have. So when we come to residents, we need to be very prepared and very clear so we can help them understand the issues so that they can properly opine on them. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Pace.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for your work to start this. A question. Have you guys gone back and watched the general plan videos that are online or read the general plan yet before starting this outline?

I can jump on that one. I actually was the PM that prepared the general plan. So, yes, we're very intimately familiar.

Okay. And you remember when we started that, I remember when you came, I had noted, and it's really easy to make these mistakes, that one of the things you guys had talked about doing with the general plan was to note the public hiking trails, which we have known in PV

Right.

And things like that. I remember remember I was the one that caught that. Yeah. We had a big discussion with So I just want to make sure, number one, you guys are really familiar with the general plan. And number two, if there's any changes to our code, not just reorganizing, that is definitely highlighted, redlined, and brought to us because things that may seem okay in other municipalities may not be here.

That's all. It's just, you know, when you start putting a general overlay. So when I look at the updated organization, the proposal up there, and I look at, page one of your annotated outline, there was a couple things that I wasn't a I had a couple comments. First, I do think that when you do the updated example for the organization, it's a little too generic. So when you look at the left, all those articles that are there, whether it says certificates of occupancy or signs or walls and fences, it's a little easier to find.

Now if you have it broken out and we have a full text word search, less of a problem. So I just bring that up because when I look up like administration, I'm not sure that tells me it's these things that were on the left. Even though I agree this needs revamping, definitely. This has been a problem for everybody and that's why we've had our builders come in and it's who knows who and then there's a side agreement with some staff person and then there's some interpretation over here. It's been hard on our staff too.

And I think with the Hammer Homes case that our town attorney brought up, it's even more of a reason to make this easier for everyone to understand including our staff and everybody can read it. We're not hiding anything and it's it's not interpretive. It's there. But I just worry that it's a little too generic. And the mention about the zoning districts, when I look at your page one and two, it broke it down with some definitions and then I went back to that moment of public hiking conversation.

So it talks about commercial districts will be combined with commercial permitted uses where we don't really have commercial districts. I wasn't really sure what the cluster plan meant. I know we have some guidelines about that. The open space preserve District. I'm not really sure what we're meaning by these because, you know, we're mostly residential.

We're 90% residential. We do have SCPs. We do have some stakeholders with some, you know, houses of worship and schools and resorts, but we don't have anything else. And so I don't know if that there were things you probably read of why you did that on the bottom page one and two of that annotated outline, but I'm not sure, they fit here. You know, and I know you're gonna look at it, but I just we don't need to make we don't want expanded business use in PV, and we don't want to start adding a section that seems like we're doing that. We're not. It's residential. It's residential. It's residential. So, I get a little nervous about too much on that there.

If we have exceptions, it might be the whole thing is residential, but then there's the exception for an SUP or there's an exception for something like that. So just a thought on that because that part I read and it was a little bit everything else I kinda got, but that was a little bit reminding me of public hiking trails. That's all. A little comment on that. The other thing on on outreach, I think, one thing, I agree with Councilmember Thompson's comment. We do like a lot of outreach. But we do have the building committee that started back up again. We used to have that. And Chad Weaver just had that, what, a month ago, Chad, when you had the builders in maybe three weeks, four weeks ago? Something like that.

Two months maybe.

Two months maybe. I'm sorry. Time goes by so fast. Two months ago. And we used to have that all the time in PV. It's a great program. And it allows the plan development director and his team to give communications to builders and stuff. And then they get to ask questions. And that would be one meeting I'd like to see built in that there is at least one meeting with them, if not two, but one for sure. And if we flesh out even more and change things, a second meeting. Because they have different comments that they're going to read when they're actually applying reading and trying to understand it that we're not going to think about around the table necessarily. So that's one thing. I don't know if it affects the utilities committee. Those used to happen all the time here too. But those are a little bit different I think.

But at least the builders. There's a lot of good outreach that we can send to different groups that might be interested in and come back and have comments and questions. So, I think community meetings here in the room people come and ask. You you put up the boards and you have the information. They'll come and ask questions. So I think we ought do at least two community conversations and then maybe, an article up to three, maybe at least planned in the PV independent to have you guys or staff, you know, Chad, you guys are reaching out. Here's some of the things we're thinking of. Anyone comment? Here's the website. Here's the here's, you know, where you can send your comments, yeah, on electronic or email or whatever.

So I think that's all. And then just build them in that we have the public comment here. I'm always big on public comments. So that gives people a chance to say, and then we look into it, and we try not to we all help each other when you're reorganizing something this major, not miss something. So that's it. I yield. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you, council member. I'd, turn to council member Moore.

Thanks, mayor. Yeah. I just appreciate the, clarification from, the presentation today. I I was, had the conversation of, looking for more clarity, asking that during the week, so I'm glad we got that. I generally support updating the code format for a better experience, so, I think that's a good thing to do. But I also think it's important for our staff to bring forward to us where we have conflict conflicting text or missing or noncompliance code, inconsistencies with the county, state, and federal, that

you know, just that kind

of stuff. Just make sure you bring that forward to us, and it's and it's clear what what it is that the ask is from our staff on how they want to, alter or change the code and and for clarification. So I'm glad that you're gonna be bringing this forward with more detail and, through the process. I I do agree with some of the earlier comments about the the signage. We've had those conversations, Chad, you and I, and Andrew and the inconsistency.

So, I'm in that same, supportive group to bring that forward with more clarity and and to, and more consistency with that. So, I just think we need to be clear that any changes that we do due to the code, it's it's you know, you include the, the history and and reasons for the change before the council discussions, and then, we we can provide you with the majority of council decision on on how that goes forward. So I look forward also to having the public input on it, but I I don't think it's quite ready for that at this point. I I think it's, still the 35,000 square foot look at this. And when we drill down on specifics, I think at that point, once we get through council discussions, then open it up to public input is absolutely important to do.

So, yeah, I just look forward to for the process and and how that moves forward. So thank you.

Thank you, council member and vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. Did did you have something?

I was just gonna ask a point of clarification on outreach, but I can wait till the end.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Thank you

for the presentation and the clarification about, the presentation. I too felt like the, categories were a little, too generic and would like to see a little

bit more detail as far as the different articles because I could see people getting confused on where to look. I I think one thing, member, is the benefit of the town going with municode. That is one thing that it will allow that that kind of accordion, if you will, breakout of these articles. So I think this graphic, would agree with all the comments of it might be oversimplifying it. We will have that benefit of, a user being able to click on this and see or even have it already broken out of the subsections under these primary articles, then the table of contents in a static hard copy document would actually be more robust and have the subsections under that.

But I I just wanted to give that comfort, but the comment is not lost on us. We completely understand, the preference to have that, clarity. So thank you for the, the suggestions.

And then my other question was, in response to the muni code on the back end when we have this completed, when we have to do more zoning updates as they come along, is it going to be a simpler process to update the zoning code, or are we gonna be back in the same position we were in before in now?

Well, so mayor, council member, any individual change is essentially the same mechanics. So it has to go through the code prescribed meetings to you for adoption. In terms of the technology, I guess I would look look to Duncan to to get it on online. Right? But all the things to get it to you and approved are the same.

I guess my question was, it was referenced that people write things differently. And so are we going to be back in that sort of are we gonna be back at the same place we're at now after we complete this? I mean, I I think something could be

Yeah.

Technologically helpful in updating the code as it comes along when the council approves something if there are variations in how someone communicates, that kind of thing. That's just And my

I maybe I could offer like, one example often that we see is as different authors touch a code, they they might reference a lot as a parcel or a lot, and the definitions are different, right, in the back of the code. And so, our ability is gonna be able to go into this, make everything consistent, right, that if you, if you reference something a particular way that it's consistently referenced that way. Then moving forward, now that, as council member Pace mentioned, now that we have municode, it will allow for search functions. And, hopefully, we can, use that tool to make sure that consistency is maintained from there, that, when edits are made that they're, aware of how terminology is used in the updated code. But that would be a maintenance type of attention to detail, I guess.

Okay. Correct. And and who now is do we have, like, a certain person that is dedicated to going in and being able to edit our zoning code? Who I'm assuming it's you, Duncan.

Mister mayor, vice mayor Andy Keller. The process is different. Once the council adopts into ordinance, I ship that off to municode and they are the ones who actually do the updates.

Okay. Great.

They'll incorporate it into their software.

So this is we're talking about things in the past where the author is different?

Yeah.

Okay.

A long time in the past.

There's a certain amount of unavoidability of discrete changes over time with different councils, different staffs, But it's gonna be coming upon us going forward to try and to minimize those. But in twenty more years, I I have no doubt that some other group of people will probably be here doing something.

Right.

But

That's what I think we have within the future is is another council gonna have to go through the same thing? How do we make it so that they don't have to go through another whole rewrite now? I mean, that I I think that cuts down on costs as well if you ask me.

I I think part of that is this organization methodology because it's it's more typical. It's simpler. That should remove some of the potential pitfalls going forward.

Okay.

As far as the public comment, I agree with, councilmember Pace and Thomas. I agree with a lot of the comments today, and and, the more, the better. I like public public comment, but I would like to see it first, the council before the public. So thank you for your all your help.

Thank you, vice mayor. And, kind of wrapping up, I think you've gotten a good direction from my colleagues about some of the granularity that we're looking at. And I appreciate that this is early in the process and we're gonna see some detail, and I agree with many of my colleagues and the even the nuance of the districts. It can be confusing and I applaud that that type of attention to what this is and how we move forward. So I think you've got pretty good feedback so far.

In addition, I would I would add on to the idea about public outreach. That begins with the process. That begins actually now when we talk of both moving forward, how we use the town manager's newsletter, how we use our engagement with the with the media, how and when we schedule public input. As I I think council member Thomason said, a few others, you can't do too much of that. I mean, frankly, if we have a public meeting and nobody shows, okay.

But we've had a public meeting. We've encouraged the residents to be there and, gives that much more, confidence that the that the, elected body is trying to incorporate those thoughts. Along those lines with the process, I do think, sort of a timeline of sort of maybe expectations of where things are gonna be because the last thing we wanna do is have any residents feel surprised or that we didn't have a, oh, I didn't know or I didn't see or I And I think we can, as elected partners and, of course, our staff, continue to reinforce what this schedule may look like and how those those elements may come. Because even though as I began the meeting, six months, you know, until we we we vote on this, it may as well be tomorrow morning because you know how fast that's gonna go. So so the more we do as we go through this process to clarify the process and make sure that the the residents are up to speed.

I know your company does phenomenal work and we'll see it again in this process and obviously staff is looking forward to to upgrading the experience for not only for the staff but the residents and I also agree that subcategories of audiences like the builders, like our planning commission, like some of those others are all critical to this process. So I think you've gotten a lot of feedback, but I would reinforce the fact that no surprises, if it's there in front of us, we know what's coming and we wanna have feedback, the better than we are. And know that you can't take anything for granted. Right? It may be something you've seen in another municipality, but but we need to feel special and we need to feel that we're getting the attention and that and that and you're doing that.

So I applaud that. Thank you for coming in today unless there's other comments or you have other thoughts or

If if the I could, mayor, just one quick point of clarification based on that outreach comments that, were provided and very helpful. One of the things that's maybe a nuance when we go through the general plan, right, we're we're creating policy and we have great conversations with residents and we we inform them, but we're also able to ask them, you know, what are their values and and what issues are there. Zoning's a little different. Right? It's technical.

And so one of the nuances of crafting the zoning code language is that I would imagine we'll have those opening meetings with public to inform them about what we're doing, why we're doing it similar to this but even more graphically rich. However, the nuance that I'm maybe looking for your feedback would be often we craft language and let them react to it as opposed to having meetings with them and trying to craft the language with them because not to say they can't, but it just becomes a very labor intensive effort where they tend to be more reactionary and the development community likes that too. They're busy off doing things. They don't want want to write the code for us. They wanna say, hey, show me what you're thinking and I'll tell you how it's wrong.

So I just wanted to make sure if that's acceptable. I see head nodding.

Yeah. There's a lot of head nodding, so I think you've got that. In fact, spot on.

Mister mayor, think

what I

heard, mayor, and I wanna make sure that staff and and Michael Baker understands as well is that when we are at a point where we have a working draft, that we would come back to this body first

for

edits and comments first before we go out and and get the reactions from

Yes.

Go not

just the the larger dedicated informational meeting, but also potentially any sub meetings

Yeah.

With specific groups. We heard builders. There may be others.

Correct. I heard that as well.

Great. Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Alright. Well, if there's no other comments, I wanna say thank you again. Go out and do great work as you always do, and I appreciate that. Thanks again for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, director Weaver. Alright, next on our schedule for study session is item twenty five two ninety, an update on short term rental ordinance and this is thirty minutes scheduled for a discussion being led by our colleague Chad Weaver, director of community development.

Thank you, mayor council. I'm just looking for all the attention this evening. I am waiting for some backup though, so I got one moment. I gotta switch gears. I'm gonna have Christy Hilbert joining me who is our short term rental expert.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. We got it.

Wait for folks to be receded. The presentation is short. There may be long discussion, but I think we can stay on schedule fairly well.

No. I think we're good. I think

I think we're good. Alright.

Yeah. I think go go ahead.

Vice mayor is coming back in

a minute.

As long

as you're ready,

mayor.

This was go ahead.

Good. Okay.

So we're we're here tonight based on council request, have an update on, short term rentals. Just in the way of history, how we got here, 02/1617, the state of Arizona started delving into this topic and, seeking to prevent towns and cities as they occasionally do, from from regulating them in in certain ways. Town reacted accordingly. In 2022, there was another flurry of activity. The town again worked to codify some things that would, pretty severely limit their use in town.

That year alone, I think I saw two or three different rewrites of the code, and that the attorney general had eyes on one particular draft of our code as I understand it. Maybe, went a little too far in their eyes. So in, October, town council adopted and then it became effective in November as you see here, and that is the ordinance that is in effect still today. So throughout those iterations in 2022, especially lots of code rewriting to be specifically restrictive as the state would allow us to essentially. Essentially.

So what that, ordinance says, the 2022 version that is still alive today, all the short term rentals, the STRs must register for a license that cost $250. They pay that yearly to maintain their license. There are violations described in there. The town can deny or suspend the license for up to a year for those violations. Most of those categories of violations that we might see, it requires three in one year to achieve that goal of of suspension unless it is some type of particular violent issue, then then some of those are severe enough that one may may satisfy that requirement.

There can be fines levied for owners for violations. We do get background checks now. Some of the online venues do those, but both property owners and the guests must go through that process. And if they do have a special event and there's a whole list of what that is, entails, those are, required to be issued through our typical special event permit process before any of those can be hosted in a STR. So I've got some refinements even in the last month to this presentation.

So I I know that a lot of the town's work in 2022 and before was a concern, rightful, that these would just overtake the town and we would have hundreds of them. And some towns in the state have that problem. We fortunately have not to that degree. We had a high of just under a 150 as you can see. Actually, that number of 99 is now settled closer to about 90.

We have a few undecided, eight undecided, so we may end up lower yet. And 28 of those are inactive and haven't actually been on any of the sites and been rented in, all of those for six months. So we're we're hovering well under a 100 in terms of active STRs right now, which, I, you know, I don't know necessarily has to do with the code, although the the guardrails that the council has set up have been successful. I think the economy has changed and the number of these that are available in the area, proliferated so much that I think the demand has probably waned somewhat from what we might have had or feared in 2022. So, Christy, and you can certainly ask her a very specific question.

She has all the answers that I don't, which is to say most of them. She is in regular contact with these folks. They know her. She knows them. In many cases, you know, with with an address in mind, she knows who to reach out to, and those folks are very responsive.

We just had, last month, her kind of yearly email reminder to them of what the rules are and how to follow them and and, that their license fee is due if they want to maintain that license for the next year. That's where some of those refined numbers that I gave you, that lowered that '99 have come from. So and as was mentioned, we did kind of provide the hard data. You know, we're we're very general here about not having a lot of issues in, in terms of problems. So this document that was emailed out by Duncan earlier today, I apologize that we didn't provide that, sooner.

It really shows that the effort we under underwent in 2022 and today with Christie's work has really been highly successful. We've essentially had one problem that went beyond verbal warning per year. We had one citation in '23, one written warning in '24, and one citation this year. So I I I think the the the story is that we've really achieved kind of the best we could possibly do given the fact that the state says you're gonna have these things. We've kept them limited. We've kept them in line. They aren't causing terrible problems. In terms of the calls, a lot of them are noise and parties. You can see on that chart, there's 25 of them so far this year. We have a 120 for just regular homes.

So just folks living in their houses. They're the police are going out on those often. So these are not an unusual issue, really. Most folks are well behaved and the owners are are good owners. And some of those calls a couple of those calls actually come from the owners who are watching, listening, and they say, hey. Our our guests are getting a little out of hand. You might wanna be aware of that. So maybe it'd be better if they contacted them and not using our PD, but my my point is that the owners are are very aware of the rules and they wanna maintain their licenses. So they're doing a diligent job of trying to make sure that these are not a problem for the neighborhood. So with that, I'll open it up to questions.

So obviously, topic has been very, very important to this council, previous councils, our residents, and in the quality of life and and grateful for the overview. Christy, I'd ask if you'd like to kinda give a update from your chair. I know you participated in the HOA forum and gave a wonderful presentation there along with all of the whole staff, but, you're you're in the trenches on this and I applaud you for the work you do and continue to do, but I'd like to hear a few things from you before we go open to questions. So

I think overall, it's going very well. It like you said, there is a large drop off. I just got off the phone actually with an owner who called me regarding legislation that Sedona is trying to bring forth and wanted to know how that will impact Paradise Valley. That pertains to the cap that they wanna put. They have a real problem.

We're looking at about 68 active STRs in the town. So we don't have the same problems or issues that Sedona has and towns like them. So I let them know and let him know that I'm sure that we do have, support for Sedona, but that we don't have the same issues as Sedona. So there's not really much to talk about. I'm I try to send out some sort of reminder and update for this the owners and managers in about this time frame because this is when our rentals pick up due to the cooler weather, the upcoming spring training, that type of thing.

But I'm available to them at least during work hours and the police department twenty four hours. So so we seem to be handling it very well. I don't think we're gonna be handling it a whole lot longer, though, because the numbers are significantly dropping. And even the owner that I just spoke to on the phone before this meeting said that he hasn't had hardly any renters. So it is

Awesome. I'm gonna open up for, comments or questions. I would say, again, thanks to the previous councils and mayor Ben Wilner and this and the short term rental, tactical goal group that came together, the community volunteers that got involved, spent time at the capital, worked so well with the elected the mayor, mayor Ben Wilner, the council and law enforcement and our PVPD. This is a statewide issue and I concur, you know, we're we don't have the same issues as some other municipalities, but we do stand shoulder to shoulder on the issue that that this is an issue and I again applaud you you and and the team for keeping this as a priority. And with that, I'd open it up for comments or questions. Councilmember Pace.

Thank you, mayor, and thank you, Christy, and thank you, Chad, and all these things. A couple of questions, and thank you for getting this updated data. The calls for service I saw came from police department. Do they keep that record, not you?

So we collaborate. I don't have the same record. The only other call for service that I would add is a lighting issue that I've had Okay. On Saguaro.

Okay. So they actually keep the data more than

They keep the data as far as their calls for service.

Yes. And then on the the citations that were issued, and and did those get settled? Did they get paid? Do we know what the

numbers are? I called and requested disclosure on the final for that, and it was actually not that long ago that he pled Okay. To a noise violation and paid the fee. But that is what he said in the call for service. He said he was a pro basketball player

Yeah.

And he wanted to play his music and he would just pay the fine. So he said that in the call for service.

Okay. That's fine. Okay. But we keep track of who's actually paying and it's actually a consequence. Alright. So there's you're not doing these statistics, but you do those. Police department's doing these. Okay. How many did you find did not register with the town but was disclosed by someone or you found it yourself of these short term rentals?

So I've never kept those numbers, but I was telling Chad, I would say if I did 10 if I registered ten, two of them were contacted by me.

Okay. And is there a way you can start keeping metrics for

I could keep metrics.

I think metrics are critical for this team. We like them. And we need to know how busy you are and how not busy you are. If it's slowing down, what else you're doing? Is there a way to read what's going on? And then we can look for trends too. So it helps us. I think statistics are critical in this area. And then so we had two that didn't register. The one thing we did different that I always voted against and disagreed with is in the statute that we did work to get approved at the legislature and worked very hard for.

We did not adopt in Paradise Valley what other cities did and what Scottsdale adopted, which is notification to the residents when a short term rental moves in. And I know we just had one move in in our neighborhood and so no notice. So the question is why are we not doing that? Would that be helpful? How many that's why I'm asking you how many people have had to be discovered on purposes of they didn't register, and it was the neighbors and others. Right? Or you found them on your own when you searched. Checked that. Yeah. I know you checked.

I research it every week.

I know. I remember. You do that. But what Chad, you wanna I was just curious.

Yeah. So mayor council, I mean, if if we didn't adopt that, we don't pursue it. So if if the council wants to change the ordinance to say that notification happens, then the council would do that. We would facilitate it.

Right. No. I understand that part, but I'm trying to find out how many people are we finding out after the fact because it makes a difference on the notice. So so you think it's about 10, you said?

No. No. No. I said out of every 10, I've probably contacted two.

So about 20% of every 10?

I would say more or less. I've never found one that was actively renting or had rented. So I've never found one that wasn't registered that was already renting, just that their advertisement had gone up, dates had not been set, but I find the advert because like I said, I check it every Friday. So advertisement goes up, I'm contacting them. And once the advertisement goes up, we've given plenty of notice. I only give them seventy two hours to get registered.

That's perfect. No. That's perfect. And then noise devices, are you seeing them using the noise devices?

Yes. That's what we were talking about on the calls for service. I talked to Andrea Ford, and she said that, several of those calls for service came from the property managers or owners because they noticed an uptick in noise. So they wanted to get police out there before neighbors were affected.

No, it's good. I like them that they're using the devices. I'm using the cameras too because they can tell when so many people come. And I've been checking their their notices. They're they're limiting and things like that. Why do you think the drop off? Either one of you. What what's the drop off that so many are

Well, I it's just speculation strictly. You know, I think there's there there's economic factors probably. There's, like I said, proliferation. There's a lot of these units available in other places. The the types of units we have in this town are obviously very different than many others. So, you know, there just may not be a market for STR of this this size. There's mostly economic factors, I'm sure, and demand in the economy.

So There was also an article put out. I think it was the New York time. It might have been the Washington I don't know. It's one of those. But they stated that Airbnb had spoken about that Mhmm. That there's a drop off because people are just going back to the hotels. It's easier. You don't have to. So hotels are actually advertising on Airbnb, on Booking, on v v VRBO, their unit, their rooms. And people are just booking them because they don't realize it's a hotel. Yeah. And so that's kind of dropping the private home ownership off.

And how many have maybe there's a Chad question, and Christy wouldn't know yet. But how many are coming in to rebuild or remodel houses more for the mega parties and wedding settings and pickleball and multiple, multiple things that are set up? And we hear the residents write to us, which we forward you guys, about those happening. But how many would you say we're getting each year that are designing it for that purpose?

Well, you might know actually as they come in as new builds and register.

We've only had the one so we have one house that was remodeled to accommodate more. Right? Right. But they didn't lose the home residential look or or they didn't modify it to where it's a motel or a hotel or brothel or any of those things. So it's still residential.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. I yield.

Thank you, council member. Other comments? Council member Thomason.

Thank you, mayor. First of all, Christy, I can never thank you enough for your engagement on this issue. I've watched you from the minute you were hired, and you not only have good process and organization about how you handle it, but you genuinely take this issue personally. And every time I ask you a question about a home, you know the person's name, their cat's name, their history of violations, and what color the driveway is. And so a great process is one thing, but your personal engagement really makes a difference.

So thank you for your work. You're really making a difference. The one thing I hear from neighbors about short term rentals, not too much about the noise, but the multiple trash cans and sometimes the overflowing trash really bothers people. I know that would go to code enforcement, rather than PD. Are you hearing much about that and how are you handling that?

So we were we were hearing a lot about that. When I told them as a town employee, I cannot suggest a company, a different company than they were using, but I sent articles reference a company that they that was pretty popular. What happened was this company had gotten so big that they couldn't handle the amount of traffic that they were Okay.

So

so when I started telling them to research other companies, that dropped off tremendously. We haven't had a trash, call call in several months now, so we we we haven't had any issues lately. Thank you. Yeah.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, mayor.

Absolutely. More comments or questions? Councilmember Labelle.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Christy. Mhmm. And, you know, I know firsthand this short term rental situation, we we had a lot of that going on in our neighborhood at at one time. So I really appreciate all the work, that you've done to do public outreach, reach out to the owners, and educate them and inform them at, you know, what the expectations would be.

Some of the questions I would have, while I'm glad to see the numbers going down, the ratios of call to service still seem a little higher versus what we have now. We're one forty six and ninety nine and then we still are having 25 calls to service and some violations. I mean, that's people are probably just more cognizant and aware. I I don't, at this point, see a huge problem with that unless you have a comment on that.

I do. Yeah. So, again, that's for the year. The beginning of the year, we were almost at our peak. Okay. This is the current numbers that have dropped off. So this following year, you might see those calls for service go down hopefully, right?

So let's hope. Yeah. Thank you for that clarification. That makes a huge difference. I have a question and a suggestion. Okay. So the question would be what platforms do you regularly check aside from Airbnb, VRBO? There are a million of them out there now that are in real estate. I know there's a lot of property management companies, luxury property management companies. Some of them only manage two or three very high end properties that work with sports and entertainment.

Right. How do you get the information on those? And if they don't go through a public platform like Airbnb and VRBO who are doing the background checking and the vetting, how do we be sure that they are being background checked? Do the does our police department do that? Is there a way we can do it in house? What are your thoughts on that?

So that's a great question. However, the background check is a state law that they are required to do.

Mhmm.

They are also required to keep a file on each person that they have done the background check and those results for twelve months. The only way that we are going to know whether or not they are doing that is if something occurs. I don't have a right to request those files for any other reason. So if something occurs and they don't have those files on hand, something will come out of that. And that could be a charge and or revocation of the short term rental permit.

Okay. So we have no way to vet it right now. Like, they're they're required to do this and if something They're required by state law.

There's nothing that goes above and

beyond that as far as that. And thank you for that. And then the other suggestion I might have or maybe a question would be when you are sending out informational packets to them every November whenever you're doing, you know, this is what the expectation is. Be sure to reregister. Here's what your home has to look.

Here's the code. You know, everything has to be up to date. Do you and if you don't, I would ask that we could consider, in one of the reminder bullet points to check the local CCNRs. While I know we don't enforce CCNRs Right. As a good neighbor, if they could check that because I know three specific subdivisions that went through a lot of work to make sure their CCNRs were amended to disallow anything under ninety days or under And thirty I have had people in clients or neighbors that have had to send a cease and desist individually which is fine with their own attorney.

But if they would before they're going to purchase a property like that or if they would just do their check, maybe even it's a courtesy to them. Hey. Make sure you're checking, your CC and Rs locally so there's no problems down the road for you or for the residents. I mean, that something you think we could

add? Well, I will refer to Chad on that and then I

guess he's gonna refresh. As

a county employee, I'm not sure that I'm

Sure. Allowed. I think that's just a recommendation but, or suggestion.

Yeah. Mister mayor, council member LaBelle, we tried to stay as far away from individual CC and RS as we can just because it's it's a contract between Mhmm. The private property owners. And and, to me, anything any mention of CC and RS in other code provisions we've dealt with has been a slippery slope to folks wanting us to enforce their CCNRs. And because there's been some recent case law on, whether or not they can amend their CCNRs for a purpose like this, we wanna stay outside of this arena.

Okay. Just to remind them,

one for two for two with our town attorney. Yeah. Sorry about that. Sorry. Alright. Well, thank you for everything you do, and it was a suggestion. It's, just a courtesy, but, I'll defer to our town attorney once again.

Thank you, mayor and councilor.

I think we have a couple more comments or questions. Councilmember Bleepman.

Thank you, mayor, and thank you. Mhmm. I have this is my first go round in dealing with the short term rentals. So I have a few questions and then a suggestion. Let me begin by saying I do hear residents still complaining kind of generically about, oh, I've got a STR near me and they're noisy and I don't like it.

Mhmm. And I understand that the League of Arizona Cities and Towns is looking at recommending that the state legislature allow more restriction or maybe even outright banning of short term rentals. And I think we need to look forward and, revisit this after the legislative session because I hear a number of small amendments that need to be made or might need to be made such as notice to residents. I certainly would wanna put a license fee escalator in there. So I would like to request that we put this or schedule it at the end of the legislative session because even though things may be going well, I'm not sure that we would, as a town, continue with this current regulation if we were allowed to be more restrictive.

Right. And that's just me. Yes,

sir. Matt attorney? Of the one of the things that we are currently engaged in, the league has been asked to to write an amicus brief. I'm on the amicus committee for our our organization. On the Sedona case, Sedona just lost at the trial court level on whether or not a trailer park, each trailer within the park could be used as short term rental.

That case is will probably run its course throughout this next session, may also then impact legislation that happens during the session. And so we might want to, understand the way that sessions have gone lately. After session generally means summer anyway. So it's probably a good topic for us to take up around then. Maybe we'll have at least the court

of

appeals ruling at that point, and we'll know, if there's anything more preemptive coming our way, because we we do have from the league perspective a lot of things that are are desirable. We've also been hearing, that there may be more preemption coming our way. So it's it there it could go either way in this legislative session.

Thank you. Now I just have two little background questions. One is I think I would love to see a copy of the letter that you send to registered SDR. That would be great. I don't assume I'm Okay. Thank you.

We'll make sure that everyone gets a copy of it.

Yep. And my other question is this is just I have no idea and I didn't see it in the report. Maybe I missed it. Is what is it that the attorney general didn't like about our initial code?

E session. Attorney? Mister mayor, members of the council, that that's more of an esession topic to, go back to that, but probably more efficiently. Be happy to just chat with you about it offline, and that way you can, from that point, decide what more discussion you wanna have.

I will withdraw that question. Thank you, counsel. And that's all. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Moore.

Thanks, mayor. And, Christy, thanks for all the being on top of this as always. Just when you were talking about the the noise violation, don't we have a a provision that if on if they are, if they get a second violation that they have they're at risk of even losing their short term rental license? Or is there some what

do we

have in

the code that There's a big misconception about that. It says third conviction. Third conviction within twelve months. So if I get three convictions within twelve months, we have to look at suspending their license for up to a year. One major could also suspend that license, but it's three convictions in a year. That three citations. Correct.

Okay. So and so far, the guy that was willing to pay the fines, he's only got one

Correct.

In a calendar year?

Okay. Mhmm.

Well, yeah, I just think it's good that, you know, those type of provisions we and I appreciate the mayor mentioning the hard work that our former mayor, Ben Wilner, did on all of this and that, how important it is for us to just stay up on top of it as well with current legislation and what other municipalities are doing. So frequent check ins on on that. Mister McGuire would certainly be welcomed, I think, because things kind of what the council's saying as well. I'll leave that to the mayor on his interpretation, but that's kind of what I'm hearing. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Christy. Great presentation, and thank you for the additional data. I just have one question because everybody's asked a whole bunch of questions. I know we've ended the short term rental task force, but I know there was a time where the the owners of some of the short term rentals were coming in and meeting with town staff and with the chief. Is that still happening?

So the reason that that hasn't happened is because the last time, the last meeting that I called, we had, I don't know, it was something like close to a 100 RSVPs. Yes. We'll be there. And three people showed up. So it's been more effective to just send emails, calls, those type of things. People just are not wanting to meet in person very often anymore. So

Okay. Alright. Very good. Thank you, Christie. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you, vice mayor. And I think you got a lot of good feedback. And I think most importantly, how top of mind this is and how we're continually looking at, what this means to our residents, our quality of life. I commend the the league working hard as you may or may not know. Doug Cole and High Ground represent and lobby for the league, and so we get a lot of good feedback from from them as well as the league itself. And Christy, to my colleague's point, thank you. And Chad, thank you for making this and keeping this a priority. And as something that hasn't really been called out and that is the intelligence gathering that you do. And I know we talked about platforms. Thank you council member LaBelle for bringing that up.

You are constantly going NCIS on what's going on out there and applaud you for that and looking for new places that we need to pay attention to. And even though we don't have the same challenges as other municipalities, you look at best practices and you look at other municipalities and I think collectively you get good feedback and input. But I commend you for those intelligence gathering and I am supportive of my colleagues in the thought that, there are ways that we could tweak as we move forward some things to think about. And I think those are in discussion and we'll continue to look at that. And I do concur that when we get through this, legislative session, we may see some changes.

Hopefully, they'll be in the favor of municipalities. That's what we'll keep our our ambition for and encouragement of. So with that, is there any other comment that, Christy, you or Chad would like to make?

Thank you.

Great presentation. Thanks, guys. Alright. Next up is item twenty five two eighty seven, discussion of community services funding process and I'm very excited to say that this will be presented by Aaron Sweeney from the town manager's office and very much looking forward to an update.

Mister mayor, if you don't mind, I'll go ahead and and kick things off, and I'll turn it over to Aaron. So as you know, Duncan Miller, our our town clerk, has been kind of spearheading over the last quite a few years, the process of bringing to you the community services funding recommendations. And we have some of that information in the slideshow, so I'm I'm not gonna spoil it too much. But the the the question was asked, and we we brought this forward for the purpose of asking the question, is council or does council have an interest in looking at some alternative ways of distributing these dollars? And so that was the task that was given to Erin, who, like you said, mister mayor is here, has been with us since August as a first year master's of public administration student at ASU.

She just finished up her first semester, but she's continuing to work with us through, the break, which we're glad because she's here to do this presentation tonight. And I know she put a lot of time and effort in this, and I'm, eager to hear what she has to say. But we're here also to answer questions along the way as well, so including myself and and mister Miller. So thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, Erin.

Mister mayor, members of council, thank you for your time tonight. I can get this started. So right now, staff is looking for direction regarding the 2026 community services funding policies. There are a couple of options that I will lay out for you throughout the course of this presentation about how we want to manage the, I believe the final total is $260,000 that we have allocated in the fiscal year twenty twenty six budget for community services funding. Our recommendation is to, go with option number two, which is why we bolded it, but we will I'll explain all of the options throughout the presentation as well.

And then we're also looking for direction on the scope of services for the RFP. So broadly speaking, which programmatic areas you'd like us to focus on when we solicit applications if we choose to solicit applications or if there are any that, are not present on that list that you would like to consider, like us to consider adding. So a little bit of historical background. The town has been supporting different community services agencies since 1985. Roughly 40 different agencies have received funding over that time span.

In May 2014, resolution 13 o four codified the community services funding policy and offered two methods for determining who receives that funding, an application based process and a staff needs assessment. So you can see from fiscal years fifteen to 2035 to 2020, we were going with the application based process. And then in fiscal year twenty one, we moved to the staff needs assessment, which we have done up until last year. Here's, some examples of the last five years of funding recipients. The amounts vary both in the total amount that was budgeted and the amounts, given to each agency.

We have records going all the way back to I believe 1985 but I was only able to fit five years on the slide so I can we can send you more information if you'd like to see the historical records. So an outline of the potential process that we've drafted for how we would go about utilizing an application based model. This is based on the way that the application based model ran previously, vis a vis Duncan telling me how that process went. So today, counsel will provide direction about programmatic areas for funding. Hope if we, you know, receive a go ahead to do this application based model, our notice of funding opportunity request for proposals is pretty much ready to go out right away.

So we would be looking at January for that application to be released. We plan to release it on the website, post about it on our social medias. It will go in the town manager's public weekly newsletter, and we will personally reach out to past awardees and invite them to apply this year rather than the needs assessment. We're planning on a timeline of four to six weeks between this going public and the application closing. Then the applications will be reviewed and scored by town manager's advisory committee on community services funding.

The scoring application process is outlined in that resolution 13 o four which was part of your agenda packets. It has the criteria that we would be using. So it's all very it's very official. And then finally, we would present our recommendations for funding recipients to counsel at another meeting. And then if that's all approved, the funds would be dispersed, and we would require quarterly program updates to make sure that the funding is being spent in accordance with what their application the purposes that their application stated and just to do a progress check and make sure that it is going well considering that we would be, you know, supporting these organizations.

We wanna make sure that it's that our money is being put to good use. We included the total application in your agenda packet. This is just the first two pages. We would be posting this likely to the website. Taylor from IT made the application, and I think it looks very good. It's based almost entirely word for word on the application that was last used in fiscal year twenty twenty. So it has been used before. We just updated some of the language. This would be kind of the proposed timeline that I talked about on the process slide. So we would be likely looking at April for the final disbursement of funding to the awardees.

Then I did some work with the list of past awardees just to try to figure out what programmatic areas we would be looking at prioritizing considering that this program is kind of supposed to make up for the fact that our government doesn't provide certain services that other municipalities do provide such as a health and human services department or a parks department. This is kind of our answer to offering some of those services through third party organizations. And based on the list of past awardees, I was able to come up with this list of, programmatic areas to prioritize. All of these are just based on organizations that have received funding in the past. So we have children, youth, and family services.

These would be organizations that provide direct services for foster children, housing specifically for families with children, school support services, things like that. Senior services provide in or out of home services to seniors, senior specific transportation services, so transporting people to appointments or other kinds of in home services for seniors in our community. Human services transportation is more broadly transportation that is has a specific purpose. This wouldn't be something like subsidizing Ubers or Waymo's or anything. It has a specific purpose to get people to, help them receive public services in some way.

Homelessness services, so this would be money for shelters, transitional housing services, case management, substance abuse treatment programs, or outreach programs, things like that. Health services, so research organizations doing specific health focused research here in the valley, substance abuse treatment programs, and then I put suicide awareness and prevention on there as well. It's more of a mental health service but I think that that was the best place for it to fall. Veteran services, pretty straightforward. Provide aid or direct services to veterans or families of veterans.

Parks and environmental services, so anti litter or anti graffiti initiatives, any parks and recreation organizations, any sustainability projects, public safety, so services for first responders or families of first responders, crisis response and prevention, emergency management, anything that would fall under that umbrella. And then lastly, organizations that promote arts and culture or provide access to arts and culture. And this is all just based on previous, recipients of funding. And so lastly, what we're kind of looking for today is your thoughts on how we go about distributing this funding. Do we go with the application based model that I've kind of laid out for you here?

We could also continue to do the staff needs assessment. If council identifies a program or project that you would like us to focus the, you know, the entirety of our budgeted allocation on, we could do that as well. And then, of course, the fourth option is to not expend the budgeted funds here and to put them somewhere else. And then depending on what you would like to, which option you'd like to go with, we can also discuss the programmatic areas and if you have any edits or additions you'd like to make to that list. Thank you.

Thank you, Erin. And, before we open it up, great presentation. Thank you. Thank you for being as thorough and focused as we would expect. And I wanna thank the staff that works on this and Duncan, you in particular, for making this program successful. I, for one, am very supportive of the program and grateful for the work you continue to do as well as Erin and the team. So thank you for that. I'd open it up for comments or questions from my colleagues leading off with council member Pace.

Thank you, mayor. I'll echo the mayor's comments. Great presentation, Erin, and thank you for all you're doing. Many things you've improved and helped with at the town, so it's great to see you do that. A couple questions. On that application, which I don't remember what page it's on, I think it was back a couple pages. Yes. I don't have an May 6, but it's not on my it doesn't have a number. In the past, we always ask people a question to tie into how they tie to Paradise Valley and how many people and contacts or service they give. Do we have extra questions on here somewhere else?

Yeah. This is only the first two pages. I just wanted to include

Sorry if I missed that. Did you already send us the application?

It was in your agenda packet.

I missed the second pages. I didn't cover it. I didn't copy it all.

Okay. No worries. Excellent.

I just want to make sure because it's really a tie in

to It's pretty much identical as the past.

The ones that we have We in the went through all the folders. Okay. That's that's all I wanna make sure because that was a really good you learned a lot more about what people applied for and how they were tied into PV that we didn't even know about. And it was a very helpful tool. The number you said the town manager's advisory committee on community service funding. Who is on that committee? There wasn't anything I don't remember the names. I don't remember who's don't I believe

the town manager's advisory committee you could probably answer this better than I could. I believe

I'm on it.

Yeah. Okay. There's town manager

I at

least one. Right. That's actually covered in the the resolution. Yeah. It's the town manager or his designee. Designee. The mayor then designates two council members. And so if we do

We're going decide go back to that, that model. That's what you're proposing. Mean, that's what I

saw now. I just want to make sure.

So the

first decision point is are you going to accept applications and have this committee? And then I think the mayor would probably ask for volunteers and then two designations.

So we're going back to what we used to do is really the proposal.

That that's the staff recommendation. Yes.

Okay. Staff recommendation.

Why is that? We had we I'm just curious. We did it for all those years, then there was a big hullabaloo with mayor being willing to change it. And then that happened in 2021, and then we didn't do it, staffed it at all, and now we're suggesting going back. So I'm just curious what is driving that. I mean, I'm I don't I'm disagreeing. I'm just trying to understand where where did it come from. This mayor or the manager, or just you got tired of the way it was going, or what what happened?

Honestly, the just bringing in a fresh set of eyes. I mean, we've we've done it one way for for a number of years, we wanted to give the council an opportunity to to do something differently.

Do a do a hybrid.

There's What was causing it?

It it I guess I to to answer your question, council member Pace, this was this was staff initiated. There was not any other separate discussions.

No. I just wondered. It was it was it was I liked it the other way. It changed. Either way works, but I I just wanna and the 260,000 we're talking about, we had been funding and working with MAG on the homeless shelters and supporting that. And I think with council member LaBelle's focus, she'd asked that it be also, used for addiction to try to keep people out of recycling in that same life. Are we not doing that anymore? Are we I mean, what what what's happening in that program? Because we've done it for a couple years to support the homeless shelters and had a commitment with MAG. Is that kinda ended or what is this?

Mister mayor, council member Bates, that has not ended. That that remember, this is the first fiscal year where we've combined the two funding sources. So we used to have a separate pot of money, the $200,000 for homelessness and the $65,000 for communities. We've combined that pot of money and we've incorporated the homelessness services in in this this, RFP if we choose to do that. So that will be one of the program areas that, Aaron talked about.

Got it. So you will expect them to do an RFP and then it will be considered by the committee instead of the way we've been doing. Is that right? Okay. That's what I wanna understand. Okay. Thank you.

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

Thank you, mayor. Have we done any retrospective analysis on the dollars spent relative to PV residents, PV visitors, or PV staff that have been affected? I'm trying to document the nexus between our dollars and the town.

The only we we do have data that we get specifically from the the MAG RFP process for homelessness services that we get a report on on how many customers were served that were transported from 85253 and we do get data from, you're familiar with the Duet, the Partners in Health, and we we do get reports every year on the number of vehicle trips. So we do have some of that data. We don't have that, for you tonight.

Thank you. I would just encourage as much data gathering and analysis as we can. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Leipman.

Thank you, mayor. My biggest question was already answered and asked which is why is the switch from needs assessment to application based? What is prompting that? And I I'm because, frankly, I liked the needs assessment, but I don't have the history that the rest of you do. I also like having a committee that includes council members.

I'm wondering if we can do some sort of hybrid with a needs assessment and then an evaluation by the town manager's committee. I I'm not convinced that we need to switch the way it's been working for the past few years unless I don't know what my other council members think. Thank you.

Thank you. Other questions or comments? Councilmember Labelle.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for putting this together. It's great. I like the historical awareness. I I do have some questions about in in if you could clarify, in fiscal year '21, where I don't see a homeless shelter situation in there as far as a designee of the funds. Is and you said that the MAG homeless was kept separate. It did that only just start in 2022? Just trying to, like

Council member

came in right around there.

I don't

really remember.

Yes. Mister mayor, council member LaBelle. Yes. We we have the town has contributed to Central Arizona shelter services since 1985, but that's been part of that that initial or that that sum of money that the council is is budgeted since 1984. So And then beginning in f y twenty two, there was a a a special separate allocation appropriation of money for homelessness services at $200,000 and that that is only, like, three years old. Okay. So that was a new process.

And one of

the reasons I'm asking that is because I'm trying to do the math and I'm if I'm leaving that out because it's a separate pile, I don't wanna misunderstand. But it looks as if from 2021 to 2025, it there's been a tenfold increase in dollars going out for for charitable organizations or only which is fine if if that's what everybody agrees to. I'm just trying to understand. Am I missing that some of it was in a different pile then or am I correct in under

mayor, council member Lobel, you are not you are correct that there was a significant increase in the amount of money that we we provided to community services. I think the town attorney or the town manager would love to have a conversation with you about why we specifically increased the amount of money we provided for homelessness services.

Okay. No. And I do recall all that. I'm not against that whatsoever. I'm just trying to clarify if I'm missing some pile that was there because I don't want to say it's a tenfold increase if it wasn't.

And then the other question would be have we ever thought about or is it necessary to somehow standardize what percentage of our budget or another metric that these numbers would be tied to to just keep us accountable of, you know, this is what our charitable giving is going to be every year. It's going to have these criteria. There's going to be, you know, either Paradise Valley residents are going to benefit or Paradise Valley residents are going to be part of the the volunteers or the organizational structure, whatever our metrics are. I'd like to just explore having some. I think this is a great first step.

I I like to see all the choices that, you know, we did actually it was on the, I'm sorry, page eight, the areas for funding. I'd love to see that open up to, you know, all organizations that would be something that would benefit the town. I like the idea of the arts. I like the idea of public safety, parks, and environmental services. I mean, there's a if we're gonna have that big pot of money, I'd like to see it distributed like in a pie chart in some sort of a, you know?

And I, do support staff's recommendation just, like, take it and figure it out and we'll a couple council members wanna wait and that's great too. So I I like the idea of it sort of, being more going back to this process. NIU.

Thank you, councilmember. Councilmember Moore.

Thanks, mayor. I I support what staff wants to do if they wanna invite applications. I think it's it's it's fine to go take another look at this. I I do. If with that, I I also support if staff goes through and does a needs assessment on the applications that come in and that, they kind of meet what, our our typical requirements are and, you know, kind of have a good understanding on on whether how much of the money that they receive goes towards the charity or how much of it goes towards the, overhead and organization.

I think those are important things to understand as well. But I'm I'm supportive of what staff wants to do there. Thanks.

Thank you, council member. Vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. I'm still trying to figure out how he went from 25,000 to 265,000 in five years. That's that's a lot to me, and I know I didn't support it, this past year, and I know it's been all tied together. And by the way, Erin, was this your first presentation to a council? Great job. Yeah. We're so lucky to have you here. Yeah. I am not a big fan of this funding process. Not the process, the the amount of money that we're giving now.

I think that if we didn't use this much money, we could probably use it in a CIP fund and something like that to benefit our residents. I do support sending money to CAS as I always have, but I definitely don't see myself supporting 265,000 or 260,000 going out the door without any more data or anything like that. I just think it's way too much, and we have a lot of bloating in our financials, and we need to look at that. So, yeah, CAS is my is what I think or homelessness, but and I think that's what CAS is. So I will pass from there.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. So you got a lot of input here, Aaron and team, about thoughts. I think generally supportive of the program. I think there are some there's always room for improvement. There's always room for evaluating and looking forward.

I concur with my colleagues that many of them said that the previous process, I didn't see anything wrong with that either. I'm not I I would not want to abandon the needs assessment from staff. I'm not a big fan of of augmenting the committee with council members because I would think that collectively would be able to evaluate what what the staff assessment is. And if you choose to move forward with the with the actual grant request, that's fine too. I think that's that's just a a more of a checks and balances.

I do concur also with the data. How are we seeing things happen and what's from that? I know over the years, we've seen that in different phases, and I applaud that. I think the more we can say, well, this is what we did to make an impact. I do feel as a personally, as as, my role on council as mayors, I think it's a good program because we're helping the better community and obviously focusing on needs assessment of those that can impact positively the residents of Paradise Valley.

But I also look at CAS and other groups that we can't we can't forget that we're part of a bigger community and that we should be part of a of a solution driven space. So I applaud that very, much. So with that, I would I would I don't I hope you've got clarity on some the way we collectively there's some different opinions. But if there's not, maybe

Yeah.

Town manager, you wanna

I'm gonna give it a shot. Okay. So I I think what I'm hearing, again, the consensus is both the needs assessment in the last five years, I think, had its its benefits, but also the RFP process as well. There was a suggestion perhaps to to take a stab at at combining the two. My thought in being through this process now for, three cycles and similar processes processes in my past is that to a certain extent, the needs assessment in an RFP process will be determined by who applies and whether or not they're scored well.

In other words, if we if we are comfortable, we collectively counsel is comfortable with slide number eight, the one that's up here right now that provides you the programmatic areas that if we were to advertise it, if we got, you know, a number of applications under, let's say, children, youth, and family services and none under veterans, that's your kind of your your market based needs assessment in a sense. That being said, you know, in the in the work that I've done with mister Miller in doing our needs assessment, you know, we bring in staff, we talk about things that the police are seeing, you know, thoughts, and we end up, you know, sort of ranking potential applicants based upon that. You know, we we've we've we've had the opportunity to fund those who have been funded before. Right? I think if you look at the the historic funding over the last five years, you'll see that, for instance, you know, DUET has been funded every single year for the past five years.

Part of the reason that's true is because DUET has a pretty significant nexus between people in town who need their services and the fact that they receive that services, albeit at a very small level because we're talking about one or two people. So it's you know, the the the dollars that you see to them seems to be tailored to the need, which is a small need, but definitely a need that scores high in council's desire to see programming that actually meets the needs of people in the community. Right? So homelessness is a little different, of course, as you know, because people who experience homelessness who find themselves in the town are not necessarily residents of the town other than the fact that they happen to be nearby or within and might be in need of services or other assistance. So that's why we've historically done that as well as sort of supporting the larger regional efforts because homelessness is not a political boundary problem, but it's a larger regional problem.

So all of that needs in terms of what we would do, I I would suggest that that we as staff take your feedback. We look at our our our recommendation, which was number two, inviting applications, but we also use it as an opportunity to see how we can kind of combine numbers two and three potentially to to weave in a needs assessment as part of an RFP process. And if we can do that in the next few weeks, we'll be able to, I think, stay within our our timeline because we again, these numbers are are are subject to slide a little bit. As long as we disperse the funds prior to the end of the fiscal year, I think we're good. We built in a little bit of play in the chain and that we have a fund disbursed in April.

But if that's May, that's quite alright, I think. I hope you agree that we're still gonna be dispersing it timely, especially since we came here with a new proposal and, you know, your feedback has been valuable and it helps us to this is not set in stone is what I'm saying.

So I add one Yeah. Additional comment on the the needs assessment part of this, and it goes back to a a previous question that was asked by at least two council members on why the change. I think one of the reasons for the change was, as couple council members might remember, when we did the RFP process in the past, we would get applications from, you know, the Phoenix Zoo or, you know, some some, you know, Boy Scouts of America and some. It was more difficult to find a a clear nexus between town funds and benefit to the town of Paradise Valley. So I think today, it it we've staff asking for direction if we do go to through the RFP process, narrowing of the the scope of of who would be eligible for these funds.

So needs assessment, you know, where we where we slot in the needs assessment like the town manager was just just discussing might mitigate some of the the applications that we get from organizations where we would not be able to find a clear nexus, which is what the council resolution requires, a clear nexus between the the funds and benefit to the residents of the town of Paradise Valley. So we need to figure out the right step in the process for the needs assessment if we if we come up with a hybrid.

And I see a lot of heads nodding, that's a good sign. And, thank you for the clarification, mister Miller. I I is there any other comments, questions from council? Councilmember Pace?

Thank you, mayor. And I think if you go back and look past earlier than 2021, that's why I was looking. We did have, as surprisingly, like the YWCA. I remember that was one of my years that I had to be I was on the committee to go through all these. And there's a lot of applications and a lot of work on it. But we didn't know. I mean, David Scherff and I served because he was so opposed to these. Remember this? And so they put they usually the mayor would put two people together, one that was open minded, one that was exposed. And then we go in with the town manager and read it all and figure it out.

And surprisingly, and he was surprised too, we had they had a lot of PV kids go in there. And we were really surprised. And so he ended up agreeing to fund some money for $5 or something. So I mean, I like making them turn in paperwork to you. I like having them express the need and tell us and show metrics as to who's in PV and who's really connected.

I don't like giving money outside of PV or things that are not connected to PB. But I I do like the application process because if they don't apply I think sometimes in the last five years what I saw, we were tapping on shoulders for some of these people to give them money, but they weren't really as engaged. And I'm not sure, we looked at the metrics of cost to benefit. But, anyway, I think that'll be helpful. The one thing about MAG, with that extra $200,000 is in here because we made that commitment for three years.

Is it three years in a row? And I guess I have some hesitancy. If they're not asking for that homeless initiative for how we were doing it before, I'm not sure I'm fully in on 200,000 unless we I mean, we always we always fought around 25 to just so you guys weren't there. '25 to '50 was hard to get from this council to be giving money. We had to ask every year for another 10 and could I have another five?

And there are people when we came out of those meetings, we didn't wanna not give them money. And so we're begging our council peers to add five more or 10. The 200,000 added in right now is really for the mad commitment that we were making as a as a a town for multiple reasons legally and and for values for social support. So I'm not really sure I like I'm not sure how I feel about bundling two sixty and then starting to divide it all out into a pie shape. Mean, if homeless is here and we're saying 200 and we're doing a MAG thing, that's a council and supportive staff. That's one thing. 60,000 is over here for the rest of it. That's one thing. But I get a little uncomfortable that when we come in with a pot of money, we're going to feel like we're going to divide it out more and maybe not make the difference. And one of the groups that we always funded was Save the Family because they always do their events here in PV and they're very connected in PV.

And their domestic shelter for single parents, you know, they're beat up with kids and they put them they do an amazing job. And we kind of lost them once we went to the needs assessment. It was always there for years on our council driven numbers. So they probably apply again. I mean, it's something to think about because we don't really have our domestic on here. So anyway, those are the only things. I support doing it. I do like having I think I agree with the mayor. I like the you guys doing it and then giving it back to us as a group to talk about. I I think that was better. And then we can flush it from there. But I would like to see I'm gonna echo what council member Thomas has said, what I said, and I hope everyone else joined us and as our peers. But I wanna see metrics from this. I'm not getting anything. I mean, I'd like to see how many people used these programs, which pick each one.

I'd like to see for five years what did they do. When we did them before, people were applying and saying we used it this way the year before, and we got to hear it. We did ask for the MAG homeless initiative. We were very specific. We got it for like one quarter. They gave you those reports at one time. And then you were chasing it and they weren't really giving it to you. So I think that needs to be clear to them that they need to give us a report. Even if it's annual, we're not trying to ask for a lot of extra work, but we need to see the money really did something and we're not just, you know, throwing it out there for overhead. So, anyway, that's my only comments.

Thank you, council member. And I think that gives you a lot of good quality feedback with head nodding. I would be reticent to say let's go dig deep into what we've done in the past. I think this is a data driven request moving forward with these programs. And so, if there's things there that we can look at and possibly incorporate in the request document or have some sort of commitment from those that are applying that we will receive that, that sort of data.

I think that helps everybody as you move forward and we evaluate the program. Again, this program has been around since 1985 and I know it's grown and morphed and changed and I think there's always room for improvement and it's clearly that today. But I in the sake of time and thanking staff, I appreciate the feedback and the input. And we will expect that this will come back in the first part of January with some feedback of how the council has directed and staff's recommendations moving forward. I guess we have one more comment from council member Leitman.

Thank you, mayor. I just want to clarify something. I'm not sure I understood it. The slide eight, programmatic areas for funding is there's two of these on here, the veteran services and the arts that I from the information I received, it doesn't look like we have funded in the past. Are you asking as part of this that we approve all of these? And we looks to me like we're actually expanding our program, and I'm not sure we want to do that. And frankly, even though I'm all for veterans services and arts, why are how did those get on there, and is there any consensus as to what areas we should be funding?

Yeah, absolutely I can answer that. So when I made this list I drew from the last forty years of organizations that were funded. So starting in 1985 onward several of those organizations don't exist anymore like Relief Fund for Victims of nine eleven and a, starting up the two one one line, the information telephone services line. So that's why there might be some areas on there that aren't represented in that five year slide because they may have been from the nineteen nineties or the early two thousands. But when I went through and codified this list, I was thinking about the, idea of the staff needs assessment.

And I figured since we had been doing a needs assessment for several years and it seems like before we started doing the application process in fiscal year twenty fifteen, I don't know what the process looked like before that. I don't know if there was a needs assessment element or if it was an application or if it was something else altogether. But looking back at the since we were going to do we were thinking of doing an invitation for open applications, it might be a good idea to also include some specific areas that had been approved for funding in the past just based on the organizations we had funded. And that was kind of my reasoning for making this list at all, was the thought that, you know, if we were going to step away from the staff needs assessment, we should still offer some guidance on what kinds of organizations we would like to we would like to apply. So if there are items on the list that you would like to be taken off the list for consideration, if you don't think that any of these that, you know, if you think that arts or parks or veteran services, you know, there's not a lot of need for that in Paradise Valley.

We don't need to fund that. I would be happy to take consideration on that as well to get consensus on which items we would like to keep, but, that can also come back in January, since I know we're running short on time.

Good question. And I think, that would be a good thing if there's independently, if the council wants to direct their thoughts to, the town manager, I think that would be more than appropriate. And again, Aaron, thank you for a wonderful presentation. Thank you for putting your thought into how this could move forward and and bringing that to the council today. Appreciate that.

Alright. Well, that will conclude the study session. And the next up is the executive session, which is not open to the public. So those that may be playing in the home edition, we would let you know that we're gonna conclude, suspend the video portion of this meeting at this point and then we will reactivate the live feed at 6PM for the business meeting and greatly appreciate those that are watching. And with that, I'd ask my council members if there is a motion to go into executive session to discuss 25.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded by council member Pace. Thank you, vice mayor. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Alright. We'll now move into executive session.

Alright. Well, thank you all

for joining us this evening. We greatly appreciate you coming to town council. I'd like to convene the town council meeting for 12/11/2025 is now called

to order. Would the clerk please call the roll. Mayor Stanton? Here. Vice mayor Andean Keller? Here. Council member Lebel? Here. Council member Leipman?

Here.

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

Thank you, mister Downclerk. So the next element on our agenda is the pledge of allegiance, and we've got some very, very special guests this evening to lead us in the pledge. Last last winter, early spring, I was contacted by Sanya Dua Duavedi, and she's a junior at PCDS school, and she contacted us and was interested in organizing a youth group and connecting Paradise Valley youth to to the town and giving them the chance to learn about municipal government and, be engaged in the town and, in different ways and and also connecting youth. And a lot of municipalities have have done that. We're, so I talked to council member LaBelle who had expressed interest last year in creating and establishing this type of program.

And so we got together with Sanaya and our town manager, and we had a great conversation that led to another great conversation, which led to a bigger conversation with several of her high school colleagues. And so this is not the this is the first time we will hear from them, but by no means the last. This group is already helped out with the veterans car show, has volunteered. They just took a tour of the the police department and really had a great experience with that. And and to introduce them, I'd like to ask ask council member LaBelle to to serve as the liaison to help this group connect with the town and turn it over to council member of the Bell.

Thank you guys for coming, and you're gonna be leading us in the pledge of allegiance. So the youth group members that are here today, they're gonna be helping out are Sanaia, Mustafa, Ali, Umid, and Mia or Claire? Claire. Claire. Okay. And there's a few more on the way, and they may come in after and join us. But if you would lead us in the pledge of allegiance, please. Thank you.

Come on up, guys. I've got a pledge pins for you. Thank you. Thanks very much.

And I do believe they have some finals, so they're gonna stick around as long as they can, but it's finals week. So I just wanted to lay it on. Achieving kids. Yeah. Just some more comments.

Some folks coming. No. That's fine.

Okay. Alright. Thank

you. Everyone stays good. Well,

a big hand for the youth group that's coming together in Paradise Valley. Thank you, Sanaya and company, for pulling this together. We're excited to see how it all evolves. Next up is our our presentations, and we have four presentations tonight. The first of which is the annual Paradise Valley Veterans Appreciation Vengeance Car Show, a great community event where residents can share their love of cars, socialize with neighbors, and honor the nation's veterans. At this time, I would like to ask former mayor and chair of the PV Veterans Appreciation Vintage Car Show Committee, mister Ed Winkler, and representatives from the Military Assistance Mission and the sentinels of freedom to come forward.

Mister mayor, council, it's always a pleasure to be here. This is like old home every time I walk in here. It's a it's a wonderful feeling. For me, this evening is bittersweet. I hate to talk with people behind me. I'm just gonna talk loud and turn around so you all can hear. I have worked with Diane Whalen for twenty years. We've put on 20 car shows. Now those who don't know about the car shows, say car show big deal. When you're giving away dollars to veterans organizations who need dollars, it is a big deal.

But Diane has worked with us to put this on. As you know, Ron Clark, hello Ron, started this. He and I started this some twenty years ago. We hope the council will allow us to go on to a twenty first year. Diane has been wonderful, but likewise, Christy has stepped forward, Christy Hilabert, and she has shadowed Diane this year and has done a wonderful job and we feel very, very confident that she's gonna pick this up and run with the ball, and if you guys let, and ladies let her.

And I'm really looking forward to working with her next year. Interestingly enough, we're the mayor was there, and I think five council members. Hopefully, Duncan had a had not this head. We always used to worry about open meeting laws. I'm sure you had that handled.

Need to thank town staff who worked very hard. The police department and the volunteer police, can't do it without them. Public works, if you don't have a pretty town and you have a thousand people coming to visit and see these cars, you want a pretty town. They did a wonderful job. The town was prepared, looked beautiful, and then they had the the job of cleaning up afterwards.

And I I should mention Bell Ford who always sponsors us. As most of you know, this is the biggest event that Paradise Valley puts on and we broke all the records this year. How about a thousand plus spectators? I'm sure they weren't all from PV. A 162 cars in the parking lot, and they weren't parked on top of each other.

I don't know how they got them all in, but they did. Public Works did that, and we came off with $17,547.85, which is, again, a record more money than we've ever raised. The interesting thing about that is $5,000 of that 17 plus is contribution over and above everything else. That's people who brought their cars, and then instead of just the $50 to enter the car, some of them put down $1,500 to bring their car or $250. It's automated now, so they do this online, and we ask we ask them right up front if they would like to donate some money.

They do. So $5,000 phone, yeah, for people who didn't have to spend that and just wanted to come, have a good time, and they know that these folks need the money. So I am unbelievably grateful. So with that, everybody who worked on the show, Christie, Diane, everyone who would chief, come on. You get up here too. With that with that, you'd we we don't get it done. We have members of council who were on the committee. Right, Ellen?

Absolutely. And council member Moore, who's online right now.

He's hey, Scott. How are you? I'm gonna give a couple checks over here to the main man. Because it doesn't happen without the mayor. There we go. The dude he's so good to give the money out. The two organizations is the medical medical I always wanna say medical. Military Assistance Mission and the Sentinels of Freedom. Sentinels of Freedom. By the way, these are local people and local organizations that are helping local veterans and active duty military community health. So mister mayor, I turn it over to you.

Mayor, thank you so very much. For you and your entire committee. I would just ask if we get a standing ovation for Diane and all the work she's doing. Check check one. We couldn't do it without you, and we're sad that we will. But, Christy, you're gonna do an awesome job. We're very excited. And great thanks to the committee members that really went above and beyond and all the staff that were out there in advance the day of. I mean, they were working tirelessly. And Paradise Valley, as usual, shined and did a great job, and it was a flawless event.

I had so much fun. Thank you for allowing me to come and help greet the folks. I learned more about the cars, and just had great great time meeting the those owners and having them there. So thank you, mayor. Very much appreciate that.

And I Might invite you back next week.

Okay. I'll be there. I'll be there. So I'd like to present this check, and then I'd like our council members to come on up, we'll do a a quick photo with the whole group here. The first one is going to the military assistance mission. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you.

You're important work, and we're great.

Thank you. And secondly is the Sentinels of Freedom scholarship.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

There you go. Alright. Let's gather round up here by the dais, and we'll do

a photo.

And and, mayor, just for for clarity here, Diane has promised to come back and help. She is not completely escaping us. Although it may just be day of help. I haven't been able to coax her into anything else. So we're we're sad to be losing her from our from the town attorney's office as well. So it is a it will be a very sad day for us, but we're very happy she's gonna be chasing the grandkids around and doing things that are a lot more fun.

Well, she's always got a home here. We know that.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Alright. Next presentation this evening is we're gonna recognize council member Leitman, who's going to speak on behalf of the the historical advisory committee and bring forth a couple of great properties that are gonna be considered and acted upon for historical risk recognition. Council member Liebman.

Thank you, mayor. Hi, everybody. I have the honor this year of serving as the liaison to the historic advisory committee, and it's been a lot of fun and fascinating. I've learned a tremendous amount even though I've lived here for thirty seven or thirty eight years. Anyway, the town council created the historic recognition program in 2018 to allow residents to apply to the historical advisory committee to have their homes recognized for their unique historical or architectural character.

A historic property must meet one of the following four criteria. Must be at least 50 years old or be an important part of the town's history or architecture. It must have retained enough original materials, features, characteristics to convey its significance, and it must show significance or importance of its historic context to illustrate a period of town development. Believe this will be the seventh and eighth tonight will be the seventh and eighth residences we have recognized with this honor. It's important to understand that this recognition does not impose any new regulations or future development restrictions on the recognized property.

So you can unlike a lot of other historic preservation programs, there are no prohibitions against tearing them down, building things, revitalizing them, or remodeling them in the future, but you do get a really pretty pretty plaque. Anyway, tonight, the historical committee will present their recommendations to recognize two properties. Mayor, I would like to introduce historical advisory committee chair, Catherine Kaufman, to present the committee recognitions.

Thank you,

council member Liepman, mayor Stanton, and the rest of the council and everyone else that's here. I will start. On 05/21/2025, Doug Jordan presented his home located at 6122 East Quartz Mountain Road to the historical advisory committee for consideration for the Historical Property Recognition Program. Back in 2018, it was Doug who proposed the idea of recognizing historical homes in the town. Thank you.

Doug and his wife, Mary, have lived in the town since the 1970s, and Doug served as the town attorney from 1978 to 1982. The Jordan home was built in 1962 by Ray Wise just after the incorporation of the town. The home sits on 1.2 acres and it's on the Northeast Side of Mummy Mountain. Much of the lot is undisturbed with natural vegetation and significant natural wash lies just north of the lot. The home was originally built with wood frame, slump block exterior, tar shingles on the roof, all of which are were typical materials used in the nineteen sixties.

The mid century home also features prominent window sills with exposed ceiling beams in the main living room. The home is situated on the lot to take advantage of the spectacular views of McDowell Mountain Mountains and the 4 Peaks. Junie Hart was the town inspector at the time and documented on a piece of wood frame the approval of the constructions for the home. Doug and Mary Jordan purchased their home in 2013 and are the fourth or fifth, we couldn't figure that one out, owners. Prior to purchasing the home, the interior was remodeled in 1991, and again in 1996, a breezeway was added in the ancillary to the ancillary buildings.

When the Jordans purchased the home, they remodeled the interior, enclosed the breezeway, and added a master closet. As chair of the town of the historical advisory committee, I would like to recommend to the Jordan's home located at 6122 East Quartz Mountain Road to the town council for recognition in our historic property program.

Thank you, chair Kaufman. And I would ask if there is unanimous consent to approve the Historical Advisory Commission's recommendation to recognize 6122 East Quartz Mountain Road as a historic property in the town of Paradise Valley.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Congratulations. And council member Levin, you wanna come forward with me and we'll present?

While we're waiting, I'll I'll just mention that the first house that I bought in Paradise Valley in 1979 was on two and a half acres. It was two bedrooms, one bath, 1,300 square feet, and built by one of the Frank Lloyd Wright apprentices at Doubletree And Scottsdale Road, and it was torn down only a few years ago. So but I have another one now. Well,

thank you, mister Jordan. Appreciate that very, much. And I have a proclamation that I'd to read, and then council member Alipman will present you with a plaque. Whereas by the issuance of this proclamation, town of Paradise Valley hereby recognizes the Jordan home at 6122 East Portsmouth Road as a Historic official historic property. And whereas, Congratulations.

Thank you very much.

If I may add one more thing. When I was putting the this process together in 2018, the one thing that I was focusing on was to make sure that it would not impose any restriction on the property owner's ability to do what they want with their property. And I thank the town for keeping that in there because I think that's very important.

Thank you. Okay. Here I go. Okay. On 03/05/2025, Tom Gates presented his home located at 5312 East Royal Palm Road to the Historical Advisory Committee for consideration to the historical property recognition program.

In 1961, Bill Peter Shields built the home in the mid century western branch style using slump block construction. Mister Shields designed designed this home with an entry sequence of a front door front circular driveway to the front door and a side driveway to the garage. Over overhangs were included in both the front and the back of the home to minimize the sun exposure. The roof was originally built with a shake shingles, but has since been replaced with a tile roof. Inside the home has built in hallway cabinets with pullout shelves.

In 1979, Tom Gates purchased this home from Paul Masser as its second owner. Mister Gates installed the stained glass window designed by Mary Ranieri next to the front door where it gets southern exposure to highlight the artwork. On the day Mr. Gates purchased the home, he added the vintage 1960 eagle weather vane he purchased from a service station on 44th Street and McDowell that was being torn down. Mr.

Gates also added a diving pool. Mister in mister Gates' interview on in October 2024, he noted that there were a deed restrictions on the property such as you can only have two cows and two horses, no pigs, no roosters, or things that make noise. The house was also restricted to be at least 1,600 acres. And this is where I'm gonna add my ad lib part because I forgot to include this, that mister Gates was instrumental in getting the APS utility lines underground, and he worked with Phyllis Sears, and I just learned from Doug Jordan, who just left, I think. He was the one that was at the front end of it, and Tom Gates and Phyllis Sears and the council at that time brought it over the finish line.

So when you don't look at your utility poles anymore, be thankful to him. So I just wanted to say that. As the town as the chair of the town's historical advisory committee, I would like to recommend the Gates home located at 5312 East Royal Palm Road to the town council for recognition to our historic property recognition program. Thank you.

Thank you. And I would ask if there is unanimous consent to approve the Historical Advisory Commission's recommendation to rec to recognize 5312 East Rail Palm Road as a historic property in the town of Paradise Valley. Aye. Congratulations. So whereas issuance of this proclamation, the town of Paradise Valley, hereby recognizes the gates home at 5312 East Royal Palm Road as an official historic property.

And we're historic advisory historical advisory commission. Was built in 1961 by Peter Shapleton in the mid century style using slump block and features a front circular driveway, a stained glass window designed by Mary Rand, and a vintage weather vane that salvaged salvaged from a local service station. And whereas this property exemplifies the beauty of the town and maintain the values of the town. Simplified since its founding in 1961. Hi there, former Mark Stanton, heir of the town of Paradigm Valley.

Hereby, property located 5312 East recognition program. Congratulations. I could, indulge to stay up here for just another minute. And, the Jordans, if you wanna come up too, I'd like to bring the council around, and we could do a group photo. Members, please come and join us.

Alright.

Okay.

Congratulations again. Outstanding. Alright. Our final presentation this evening is sort of keeping with the theme we started the meeting with, and that is recognizing youth and youth engagement. I'm so very proud that the council is inclusive of all of our residents no matter their age. And so we're very excited that we have a presentation, and our town manager will introduce the the subject matter of the results, the the plan, and the results of the Paradise Valley street sweeping naming contest.

Thank you, mister mayor, members of council. I am pinch hitting tonight for Amy Revenar, who unfortunately was not feeling well, but I do have the information. Just to refresh everyone's memory, we have, over the last two fiscal years, acquired two new street sweepers. And we acquired them using primarily regional dollars, congestion mitigation, and air quality dollars to to really kind of reduce the level of of of dust and dirt and pollution on our streets. They replaced two very old sweepers that we had had for, I think, over twenty years, I wanna say.

Yeah. They needed to go. No offense, but these new ones are great. And the staff that I've talked to that gets to use them are very, very proud of these of these two incredible machines and the just the sheer volume of what they pick up versus what the the older machines did. So they're they're they're new. They're more efficient, and they help keep the town beautiful. So that's all really important. And then the idea came to perhaps ask, as the mayor said, the youth of Paradise Valley to help us to name these street sweepers. Like the clipper ships of yore, our two street sweepers will be named. Perhaps, we won't break a bottle of champagne over them or anything like that, but their their naming will happen.

And, we do have winners. The the contest went out. We received nominated names from the fifth graders of Paradise Valley from a number of schools. I'll go ahead and as long as we're all here, I'll read the names that were the ones to be suggested in no particular order. Sarah, Jeremy, the dust eater three thousand, cupcake, one of my personal favorites, sweepy sweep a lot, Emmett, Meow, I don't know about that one, dust bucket, the sweepinator, street, Sweet Striper, Marjorie or Marge for short, Dust Devil, Cookie Monster, The Monster Cleaner, Road Runner, and then there were some duo names since we have two, Romeo and Juliet, PB and J, Cherokee and Encore, Beep Beep and Vroom Vroom, Vroom and Vroom, Lemon and Lime, and Mario and Luigi.

So those names, except for the ones that would have constituted trademark infringement, I think were were given to the voters and we do have winners. And they're right here in this envelope that I have guarded quite zealously since security detail under lock and So so it has not left my possession, mister mayor. And I'm gonna go ahead and hand this to you right now.

Okay? Okay. Alright. This is a big deal. This is a big deal. Thank you, mister town manager. And, again, thanks to all the the fifth grade kids that that sent in their suggestions. I know they really did a great job. You heard a good sampling of these recommendations. I'll tell you, it's a nail biter.

I mean, I've been I've been wondering about this all day and very excited. And I wanna thank all the residents that that voted on the general survey off the website and and just it was fun because past week or so, I've been getting calls from residents that have said, can I offer a name? Can I give you a name? And I said, sorry. That belongs to the fifth graders from the various schools, PCDS, Jones Gordon, Kiva, Cherokee, Tuftsallal. So here we go. Sealed. Sealed envelope. Let's see it. Hope it's a clean sweep.

Alright.

Yeah. I'll have a little fun. Holy cow. Alright. Here we go. The winners. The winners, the honorees of the Street Sweeper naming contest. Number one, Dust Bucket from Landon Tulk at PCDS. Congratulations, Landon. And Dust Bucket, welcome to the Paradise Valley family.

We're excited. And the second one will be named the Sweepinator, and that's submitted by Nora Holt, also at PCDS. Thank you, Nora. Both of you will be recognized with a visit from the respective sweep Street Sweepers when Dust Bucket and the Sweepinator receive their designation, which Isaac Sheavere and his team are gonna put on each of the Street Sweepers, and we'll bring them by and let Landon and Nora and the PCS fifth grade come out and meet and greet the street sweepers, enjoy a donut, and shake our hands. So thanks very much to all those and excellent choices.

Let's hear it for the dust bucket and the sweepinator. Awesome. Alright. Okay. Now we are moving on to the next item, and that is the call to the public. Call to the public is an opportunity for residents to address the council on matters not on the agenda. In conformance with open meeting laws, the council may not discuss or take action on any matters raised. However, the council may respond to criticism after all public comments have been made, asked after review the matter, or asked that it be placed on a future agenda. Speakers are asked to state if they are a town resident and also asked to limit their comments to three minutes. If you'd like to address the council, please fill out a speaker request form that you enter the council chambers.

Once completed, please hand them to our town clerk. Mister town clerk, do we have any request to speak? No, mister mayor. Seeing no request to speak, thank you. We'll move on to the next element of our agenda tonight, and that's the consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda are considered by the council to be routine and 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. On the consent agenda tonight, starting with item 25 dash two seven two, which is approval of the minutes of the town council meeting of number 11/13/2025. Item 25 dash two seven six, discussion and possible action to approve amendments to the town of Paradise Valley employee handbook. Twenty five dash two seven seven, discussion and possible action to approve an agreement with the Arizona Department of Administration for law enforcement records management system funding. 25Dash289 will be pulled.

Actually, I I wanted to let you know, mister mayor and vice mayor, members of council, that due to a request from staff, we're asking that that item be pulled from tonight's agenda. We'll bring it back at the earliest possible point. We still have some work to do on this one. K? So moving on, item 25 dash two seven eight, discussion and possible action to approve a linking agreement for cooperative purchase between the town of Paradise Valley and b two b direct sales Inc, DBA, the HVAC company for replacement of HVAC systems, components within town facilities.

Item 25 dash two eighty, discussion and possible action to approve a linking agreement for cooperative purchase of an articulating telescopic aerial device, also known as a bucket lift truck. Item 25 dash two eight two, discussion and possible action to approve settlement agreements in the city of Phoenix versus town of Paradise Valley et al matter relating to the settling the matter and attorney's fees. And last, 25 dash two eight four, discussion and possible action to approve amendment number three to the professional service agreement with Gus Rosenfeld plc for town attorney services. Thank you.

Thank you. Would any member of the council like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Alright. Not seeing any, would anyone from the audience like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Not seeing any, I'd ask if there is a motion to approve the consent agenda minus item 25 dash two eighty nine which was pulled.

May I move that we adopt the consent agenda as submitted except for item twenty five twenty eight two eight nine that's been pulled.

I second.

Second? Alright. Motion made by council member Pace, seconded by council member Leitman. I'd ask if there are all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Alright. Consent agenda passes. Next up, we would have public hearings, but there are none this evening. So we move on to action items. There are three action items tonight. The first is the presentation and acceptance of the fiscal year twenty twenty five annual comprehensive financial report conducted by our outside auditing firm, and we're very fortunate to have our chief financial officer, Leslie Duresh, who will provide an overview and introduce the representatives from our auditing firm.

Good evening, counsel. I have a very short presentation just to go over the results for this year's, ACFR and our financial, position. And then after I'm done, Brian Hammerle from our audit firm, Baker Tilly, will get up and also give a presentation. I'm trying to oh, there we go. So we just recently got our results from our audit, and we had a clean opinion on the comprehensive annual financial report.

We came in below our annual expenditure limitation by 3,700,000.0. Our general fund balance has increased again. Last year, it was at 115,000,000. This year, it's at 137,000,000, which is good news. Sales tax continues to be our primary source of revenues, and our percentage of revenues haven't changed much from the prior year, and sales tax is our biggest contributor to our revenues.

Our expenditures actually went down slightly in the general fund. Partially that is due to a smaller portion paid out to PSPRS in addition to other increases and decreases. The net is a little bit less than the prior year. Higher her for our highway user revenue funds increased more because we were able to complete more projects this year. And the rest of the funds really didn't have a lot of change in them.

Oops. Let me go back one more. So again, I want to bring to your attention our fire service fund. I'm gonna continue to bring this to your attention every year. It is not it is an enterprise fund, and enterprise funds are meant to be self sustaining, and it continues to be running at a loss where the general fund is contributing a significant portion to keep it afloat. And I just wanted to bring that to your attention. Again, we had a loss of $1,200,000 in that fund this year. And then I'll just take any questions you may have. And then when we're done, then Brian can come up and give his presentation.

Thank you for the presentation. Are there questions from the council at this point? Vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you. I always, like hearing from you and seeing you, at the dais. I sent you an email earlier this week, and it was about the 3.7 under the expenditure limitation. And it was if we had so we could have moved that into the contingency to boost up the contingency, correct?

So the 3.7, a lot of that is already contingency because we say we're gonna spend x amount, but our expenditure limit is above that. So anything above what we plan on spending goes into contingency. Okay. So when we have excess, that could be considered contingency that we didn't spend.

Okay. And so that would be the case where we could implement that capital appreciation fund that we've talked about during the bonding process to move that 3.7 into something like that so that it is not subject to the expenditure limitation of the CIP funds moving forward?

Yes, it's called a capital accumulation fund, if that is something that we move forward with, we could take increases in our fund balance and designate it to be to go to the capital accumulation fund. Yes. Absolutely.

Okay. And so that would fix partially fix our problem of not being able to fund some of these CIP projects for multiple years.

Yes, depending on how the language is worded and what is passed, that would definitely give us some room to have more in capital funding that wouldn't impact our expenditure limitation?

Correct. And this is all subject to if we don't make any additional PSPRS payments?

Or No, not really. I mean, if we have increase in fund balance, we could designate that to the capital improvement fund Okay. If we approve if that gets voter approved.

Okay. Yeah. Understood.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Other questions from council? Councilmember Thomason.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for your presentation, Leslie, as always. We have a somewhat unique situation in town with our fund balance, not our fund balance, our generous strategic reserve, which yields approximately $6,000,000 a year every year towards our operating funds, roughly 10% of our operating funds. Could you explain how the revenues that are generated from the strategic reserve is considered relative to the expenditure limitation?

I believe you're referring to any investment returns that we receive every year. Now, we have a very conservative investment plan. We have a very low risk trying to retain the principal, but because of interest rates in the economy, we have been getting excellent returns on our investments, and that money is excluded from the expenditure limitation. So that means we can spend that outside of in addition to what's in the expenditure limitation. Thank you.

Other questions from council? Councilmember Pace.

Thank you and thank you, Leslie. We always love having you here and we appreciate your professional expertise and your accessibility all the time. And thank you to Baker Tilly tonight for doing the audit. Thank you. It's always we love getting a clean bill of health. It's great. If we had some notes, we deal with it, but we're glad it's not. So a couple quick things on your sales tax. If you go back to that what page is it on? Sorry. I should have kept the pages better. You know best five. We are increasing a lot on sales tax. Are we is there any are we getting more from the Amazon delivery type sales tax? I mean, how where are we getting all our revenue from sales tax? Well, I

would say a portion of it is inflation. And I didn't actually break it down into categories to see which categories increase the most, but our biggest category is just retail sales. So I would assume that's where most of our increases are coming from.

Yeah. And retail sales changed a lot during COVID, and we've seen this huge it'd be fun one day when you're playing around to show us that because I think we've seen before that, we've seen very little. Then we started really getting revenue by the millions, and then it just kept going. That's why I was wondering if this is you know, if if that's really contributing as much and because we see the trucks everywhere in town.

So Yeah. If you're talking about, like, online Mhmm. Purchases and stuff,

that is

a significant part of the revenue. Yes.

Okay. Good. And then regarding your following up on Vice Mayor Andy Keller's comment about the capital accumulation fund. So for the 3.7 that's under, and we can we can designate that as a council or a vote, did you say?

So it's act I don't believe you actually have to have the difference between over and under on the expenditure limits. It's kind of outside of that. If you pass the if the voters pass it, we can put any kind of a fund balance that we earn into that. And the expenditure limitation and the cushion between that is just kind of separate from that. It just wouldn't impact that at all.

It wouldn't impact that at all. But the investment also, you're saying the investment return every year we could put into that? If we wanted to.

Yeah. We could just designate a certain amount of fund balance to go into that or earnings that we make every year.

Yeah. And then if we do bonds, if I know we're having these talks, if we do bonds, is that is that voted on by the council, if you know, or or if the town attorney

Because it's a revenue bond that would also be voted on by or approved by the council, and then that would also be excluded from the expenditure limitation.

Alright. And on the expenditure limitation, you had mentioned before that we're getting close in a if you project out the next couple years, how close are we to reaching that limit? So this year, fiscal year twenty six, we only had about a $3,000,000 cushion. So and part

of that is because we had a lot more capital planning than we had the prior year. So if we maintain the capital planning at what we're expecting or what we want, what I've seen so far in the five year plan, then we'd be pushing beyond that.

So we'll be maxing it fairly quickly to make our regular budget if we wanna keep pursuing CIP and storm water drainage projects particularly? Correct. Okay. And then on the the reserves, it's like you said a 137,000,000 is what we have now for the town's rainy day fund. Is that on there? Yes. Somewhere? Sorry.

There it is. Yep.

Yep. There it is. So we're at a 137,000,000, and that money we can't really access, correct, for the expenditure limitation. Limited by the

up to the expenditure limitation and then exclusions. Yes.

So that funds our town for what, three years now? If we didn't make any dollars tomorrow, we now can pay our bills for three full years.

Yes.

Okay. But for our residents to understand, we cannot access it to go do the CIP and storm water drainage projects. It sits there because it's outside outside of the expenditure limitation that were set by

the We are limited by the expenditure limitation, yes.

And one question that was asked by one of our residents Monday is, is it possible that if we wanted to take 37,000,000 to do expenditure I mean, to do CIP projects, can can the council vote that or can the residents vote for that out of that reserve fund? I don't know if you know or

Not beyond the expenditure limitation at

So, this we're still limited unless we do something completely different, bonds or capital accumulation fund. Okay. Nope. That helps a lot. Oh, and one other question. You've had how many years have you been a professional, a CFO in the municipal world and in in working in

that industry generally? My adult career. So twenty five years and in in local government here.

Good. And what is our rainy day fund look like to be able to fund our town for three full years with no money coming in compared to all the other cities and municipalities in the state of Arizona?

It's very good.

But how does it does anyone else have that?

Not that I'm aware of. I mean, it's possible. Not looking at everybody's spend balances. The places I've worked before, no. Yeah.

What's the what's the average that you see?

Well, think generally speaking, people like to have maybe a 30% reserve or definitely they try to keep a reserve of three months operating. So, that's kind of a goal to go towards.

Yeah. And that's what I understand. To clarify though, that's what a lot of cities and towns, I've always heard three months of revenue, we have three years. Yeah. Yeah. But we can't reach and access that money to help our residents.

Not all

of it. Yeah. We can't reach it. Yeah. Reach and access the money though to do some of these CIP and storm water because we don't have authority yet because the exponential limitation. Correct? Right. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Leipman. Thank

you, mayor. And thank you, Leslie. This is I always, excuse me, appreciate your coming and explaining things so clearly to those of us who weren't finance majors. I have had a number of residents ask me if the town can give the general fund or parts of it back to the residents, and I would love to hear your answer to that because there seems to be I've heard it from a number of people, and I I wanna make sure that I give the right answer. Thank you. I think that depends on how you plan on doing it. There are certain things you could do, and that would

be a council or management decision, but just to do like cash refunds, I don't think that's really an option. So if you wanted to, like, reduce fees or do something like that, possibly. Thank you. Yeah.

I I appreciate that. I was I have also heard that we should one suggestion from a resident was that we might want to increase how much the town pays for the fire service as a way. But my question there is if we increased what we paid for the fire service contract, could that come out of the general fund or would it have to come under the expense limitation?

Well, currently is coming under the expense, expenditure limitation. So it is part of our operating expenses because the fire service fund is part of the town, and currently the general fund is already funding that with 1,200,000.0 and residents fund it by another 3,300,000.0. So if the town wanted to take that over or do some kind of a combination or something, that's definitely something that could be considered. Thank you very much.

Other questions? Councilmember Labelle.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Leslie. Appreciate that. Also, thank you, councilmember Leitman, for bringing up the fire service fund because that was part of my question. It's a good a good entry, good segue. So couple of questions I have about the enterprise fund. I know this goes back to 2021. What year did we initiate the fund? I know if we'd switch from rural metro or maybe anybody, the town manager, if he knows somebody.

It was before.

Just generally.

Am not sure if twenty years were the ago, we

did it.

But yeah, I was thinking maybe 2015 or something. Okay.

And at that time, did our revenue and fees that we charged the the residents match? Yes. It did. Okay. So having been a member a resident of the town back when we had rural metro, we were billed directly from rural metro if I recall, and we would pay that bill. And whenever there was an increase, we would get an increase and we would pay for the year. And if we did not pay, we were fined. I remember some other things like that. So once it became an enterprise fund, the supposition, I would imagine, that time was that we would continue to match revenues to expenses. And for some reason that hasn't happened without judgment, just stating a fact, right?

So I would presume that because we're subsidizing it right now, which is basically a gift to the residents, are paying the fee that they would have normally paid themselves when we were under rural metro. Do you see that the expenses are going to continue to increase based on the rising costs from the Phoenix, the fire department and Absolutely.

Any costs that they inflation, any costs, employment, everything, all those costs get passed on to us. So yes, we see increases every year.

And do you know when the last time we raised that fee was?

We've never raised it.

Never raised it. Okay. Okay. And thank you. I just was wanting clarification on that. I appreciate it.