City Council - Regular Meeting

an intervention. Great. Right. So, we're should be good. I can fix something back here. Yes, please. Sound check. Susie, are you able to confirm that you can hear us? I can hear you. Fine. Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Yep. All right. Today is Thursday, April 23rd, 2026. This is the city council's budget retreat. Calling this meeting to order and giving notice to the council and the public that at this meeting the uh council may vote to go into executive session, which will not be open to the public for discussion and consultation with the city's attorneys for legal advice on any item listed on the following agenda. Can we have roll call? Mayor Daget, here. Vice Mayoru here. Council member Alen here. Council member Garcia here. Council member House here. Council member Matthews here. Council member Spence

here. Let's close. Would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance?

United States of America for God and justice for all. Thanks, Mayor. Would you uh read our mission statement? The mission of the city of Flagstaff is to protect and enhance the quality of life for all. Matthews, yes. Could you um read our land acknowledgement?

That city council humbly acknowledges the ancestral homelands of this area's indigenous nations and original stewards. These lands still inhabited by native descendants border mountains sacred to indigenous peoples. We honor them, their legacies, their traditions, and their continu continued contributions. We celebrate their past, present, and future generations who will forever know this place as home. Thank you. All right, everyone. Welcome to our budget retreat and let's go. Morning, everybody. Morning.

Happy uh I think it's a Thursday, one of those weeks. Um but I don't know what day it is. Um just really excited to be here today with with all of start the city council budget retreat today. Um we have an excellent day schedule the presentation. Um we're going to start Heidi's going to give you kind of an today and then also the the process the timeline of the process and then we're going to kind of get into the budget today. I think just a few things just to start. Um, as you all know, this is um this new brand new city manager's first budget to be presented to council. Um, it's been a bit of a whirlwind and I think what I what I will say is that um this has certainly been six months of transition. Just really want to thank the team that worked on this budget. Um, as you all know, kind of in the middle of that process, we we changed some things up with um how divisions were presenting their budgets. We also um disbanded our our traditional budget team that was in place and put together a smaller team. We we changed the um division review timeline. So kind of a lot of changes in schedule but um I just want to thank uh Derryberry, Rick Tatter, Shannon Anderson, Kevin Fencil um we were the part of the core group meeting with divisions. I also want to um thank the budget section as well for all of their help. Um but I think what you will see today is that this is a budget that's it's creative. um we went into this process with um very little um ongoing and one-time revenue. So, it forced us to to look at things a little differently. And I think what you'll see

is that we any new positions the majority of the new positions funded um we found offsets um we're going to talk about some new initiatives where um some things in house but also um using our external partners as well to deliver services. Um, and then we are looking at um our ongoing revenue and particularly our public safety um costs and moving some of those items that were funded one time to ongoing and and we'll talk about all of that today. I'm not going to steal anybody's thunder. Um, but I just want to say thank you to that team. Um, it was a really fun process and I felt like um I feel really good about this budget that we're presenting. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Heidi and we'll get the started.

Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. Heidi Dairberry, the city's budget director. Um, I know that Joanne mentioned as the city manager, it was her first budget process as the new director of the budget section, it was my first process as well as my team. So, again, I'd like to mirror the thanks to the budget section um for helping. It was a little rough at times, but I think it'll get better as we go and we meld and learn is not working. I'm up first. Okay, let's go.

All right. So, just a quick overview of what we're going to talk about today. Um, like mentioned, I'm going to talk just briefly about the timeline to finish out this process. We're on the home stretch, it feels like. Um Rick's going to talk a little bit about our fund health. Um and then we're going to have some time where myself and Ryan will be talking a little bit about investing in employees be presenting this morning. And then we have a section a little different. We're going to talk about some of our new initiatives that Joanne just mentioned, how we're shifting some things and um doing some things differently. And then I will come back and talk about new budget appropriations. Um, and then we'll talk about our budget requests and some of the limitations and how we focused on preparing the city manager recommended budget. And then this afternoon we'll have some time to talk about the capital improvement program and some of the big projects there because as you know we didn't have a specific capital retreat this year. So we wanted to spend a little bit of time on that. And then at the end of the day and not just the end of the day throughout the day if there's questions or comments or things we need to address, we're happy to hear from the from the council as we go. Um, but we do have some dedicated time at the end of the day just to make sure that everything is covered. As I mentioned, we're kind of getting to the home stretch. So, our first retreat this year was back in December. Um, we met with council again in February and then today we're here with the city manager's recommended budget. Um after today um depending on the results of today um we will be back or I should say I will be back in June before council for the tentative budget adoption. Um and then June 16th um we will have the property tax levy hearing. Um the first read of the property tax adoption and then the final budget adoption. Um and then the last time that you'll see me hopefully for a little while is July 7th where we will do the second read of the property tax adoption. Um and then July

1st is really when the new budget goes into effect. So know it's a long road every year, but it's a very important process. So thanks for hanging with us for that. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Rick to talk about fund health.

Morning, mayor, vice mayor, city council members. Uh Rick Tedar, management services director and city treasurer. Uh welcome to another uh April budget retreat. Uh good to see you all. As far as fund health go, I'm going to go over kind of general fund revenue uh updates. Uh talk a little bit about a property tax uh shift that we're going to be talking about as well as our upcoming user fees, rate studies, and those types of things to uh strengthen our health of our funds. I'm going to start with the general fund sales tax. Um, since February, there's been a positive movement in our sales tax revenues. Uh, February retreat was based on those November returns. December tax returns, November activity. So, we've moved up a couple couple months since then. Um, January returns, which is for December activity, saw about a 6% growth in our tax revenues uh over the prior year. uh it was flat in February and then about a 2% decline in March. So it's a little bit of mix but some positive move movement there. Uh overall it gave us about 184,000 in new revenue projections for our budget conversation what we are proposing in the budget. And I just want to make a note that you know while you're I'm saying there's tax revenue increase that's not a measure of the economy businesses. uh this is really just tax rese uh changes over the last few months. Uh first is our our restaurant bars and our lodging tax revenues. uh these saw positive tax growth in the first

quarter. About $99,000 gain over what our previous February estimates were. So positive uh notes there. Still some mixture as far as the restaurant, bars, and lodging and how those are reacting this year. We'll talk a little bit more about that when we talk about BBB funds. Retail um saw good growth in the local retail and as well as marketplace over the last uh quarter. About a 7% in retail or local uh revenue growth over prior year and about a 10% over prior year for marketplace growth. We continue to see declines in a couple areas. Uh construction contracting, uh the build the tax on building facilities and so forth as well as our personal property tax rentals. Um these have continued to decline over the the last year. Most notably is a personal property personal property rental uh revenues. uh we have not seen a positive year-over-year growth in this category for the whole fiscal year. Uh a lot of this is tending to you know vehicle rentals and that is impacted by tourism activity in our community. So you'll see on housing side or hotel restaurant hotel motel sites we're down in those categories and this is kind of correlating to the same kind of consideration. That's just a a big picture on sales tax revenues. Next is a a quick conversation about our state share sales tax and some other general fund revenues. Uh state shared sales taxes. Um after the adjustment we went through with Santan Valley and we learned what those impacts are going to be for our shared revenues. uh this category of state shared sales tax continue to see growth over having a reduction related to Santan Valley.

Overall, we're still looking at about a 3% increase year-over-year with those impacts. So, we have moved some upward projections in here once we knew more of the impacts that occurred on the state shared income taxes. You'll see that's unchanged. Uh those are generally known numbers. Uh we understand that the Santan Valley is not going to impact this year's next year's uh tax revenues. Um but it will impact us in 2028. Uh so that's when tax conformity and timing of collections and then city's distributions are impacted within our projections in our five-year plan. So you won't see it in this current year budget. In our five-year plan, we built in the full tax conformity. We don't know where legislator and the governor are going to negotiate as far as tax conformity. Really haven't heard much as far as either side giving way or or having a good conversation about the budget about those impacts. Um but what they do for tax informing on their end will impact their budget negatively. So they're kind of weighing those kind of impacts also. But we're we're kind of planning for the worst case scenario making sure that we're positioned properly uh as we learn more about uh tax conformity autoloo tax or vehicle registration taxes which come back to cities a portion uh they continue to meet budget even after the Santan Valley impact. So uh that has a little bit of growth shown here. Uh but overall in our state shared revenues uh we expect to meet or exceed our our budget projections that we had uh going into this year. So very very good news on that that side of things. The lower part is some other tax or other general fund revenues that look at some larger revenues. Uh primary property tax. We reviewed those

collections and receipts and we made a slight adjustment upward to our year-end estimate in our general fund plan about 75,000 or so upward and in the uh building permits uh we had some good returns in January February year-over-year uh so more permits being pulled over the previous uh fiscal year. Uh with this, we do anticipate that we will exceed budget now uh with our building permits uh throughout the rest of the year, but of note, we're not meeting last year's numbers. Last year's numbers was about 2.8 million. The previous was 3 million. So, we're seeing a little bit of a a slowdown in our building permit revenues over the last couple years. Franchise fees in the first quarter were slightly adjusted downwards as we saw returns for the first quarter. uh but still anticipating being very close to our budget uh that we have adopted. So overall in general fund revenues the picture is that in the last three months as we went through our budget discussions uh with the city manager uh we were able to add about 400 a little over 400,000 in ongoing revenues that we used for our conversations as well as about 700,000 one-time revenues. You'll see this numbers uh in Heidi slides later today. uh of our capacities and and how that uh lands. Next, I'm going to talk about three other uh areas. Um EBB tax revenues. Uh when we met back in uh February, uh we we really saw that this one was being impacted by our hotels and lodging areas. Uh they have been behind uh for most of the year. Uh we see that uh international market is is not coming to

Flagstaff as well as it used to in the past. Uh but we do have our discover uh Flagstaff team out there trying to get other local markets or other regional markets to Flagstaff. Um but here uh as we saw over the last quarter and we have pro revised projections in the general fund those impact the BB funds when I talked about those two categories. Uh so now we are actually trending closer to budget. But there's two stories related to those categories. Our restaurants and bar uh tax revenues are up 4%. While our hotels, motel, short-term rentals, lodging stuff is down 4%. So you see it's it's a mix. In balance, we're going to probably meet those budget estimates at year end. On our transportation taxes, uh those tend to mirror the general fund. It's pretty much the same categories but at a different rate. For transportation like the general fund, we are still projecting this category uh which is your loan tree overpass, your road repair safety, transit and the uh street and ped improvements to be just slightly below budget 0.5 uh percent. So not too bad of a news uh with that tax category.

Yes. Um so is there any um focus if you will? You say that restaurant and bars um has increased a little bit and that's mainly due to cost uh food and the labor costs and everything. We've seen more and more vacancies um you know in our town. So are is there any are we keeping any radar on that that increase isn't saying that business is good, business is more expensive. So are we looking at all um risk of losing um more and more bars and restaurants because of the cost of labor and food costs and everything or do we not focus down on that?

I generally do not get into that data. I don't know where to find specifically, you know, how that interacts and changes the business model from an economist side of things. Um, we just kind of see how things are trending over time. But the 4% growth is is not good news necessarily. It's not like, oh, they're just really filling up their restaurants and bars and having more service. It's taxed on the the ticket item. Yeah, I can't speak to how the business is going, but right tax revenues are okay, but I recognize the business side may not.

The hotel hotel side is really tracked very well by a discover flag staff team. They do a lot of metrics related to that. Uh, so we do look at those trends and see how they react to our returns occasionally, but I was just going to make a comment. It also gives me an opportunity to also say thank you to Heidi Hansen for her help during the budget process as well. Um, but we track that through Heidi's uh area and economic vitality um as far as business health and when businesses are leaving town, etc.

Yeah, be real honest. Uh, mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members Heidi Hansen, um, you're spot on, Council Member Matthews, the 4% increase is kind of smoking mirrors because quite honestly, they've had to deal with the minimum wage increases and so it's kind of a balancing act for them. So, if I were to really uh take those numbers and dissect them, I would say they're not really having increases. And um John Van Landingham's in the room as well, and so is Hunter from DBA. And I think they probably um have a lot to say on that subject as well. Lodging is spot on. Um I'm surprised it's not more than 4% down because our international travel is horrible right now. And they are relying on those conferences. they're relying on those um tours that come in in great masses, the bus tours. Um so they are all struggling in that category right now as well. But you're you're right, it's not really an increase. It is definitely um the fact that the minimum wage has increased and they've had to increase the rates.

Is that answer you? Yeah.

Right. The last category on the screen is our highway user revenue uh revenues which is our gas tax a portion we received back from the state. Uh this one has been very interesting to track and watch this year. It's been up and down monthto monthth uh as we move through this uh current fiscal year. Um but we've definitely seen impacts uh to several things on these revenues. Uh the government shutdown last fall had impacts. The Santan Valley adjustments are now in our projections and so forth as well as increasing gas prices. Increasing gas prices, people may not drive as much, not as much tax collection. So, um we're still going to be watching these revenues, but we're continue to project that will be about $100,000 under our budget uh for this uh year-end projection. So those are a few of the big revenue upgrades. Uh the next discussion is related to uh property taxes. So property tax is one of our uh revenues for our general fund which is primary property tax and secondary property tax which goes for general obligation bond uh payments. Uh first talking about a recap of primary property taxes as we talked about in uh February. uh the rates for uh primary property tax is adopted by US city council within state statutes and requirements which imposes a levy or revenues that the city brings in on an annual basis. Uh last year's well current year fiscal year tax levy is about $7.2 million or is about 4.7% of our general fund revenues.

uh the state provides a restriction that your levy could not increase more than 2% a year, but you don't lose that 2% if you don't use it. It just compounds and is added to future years. So, as we've been in a flat levy except for new construction u policy over the last five years, we now have a capacity about 14 million 14% not million uh 14% or about $1 million under a maximum allowed levy. Not recommended we jump that fast or what have you, but that's kind of the picture that we're seeing right now. Should the council increase the levia mark the current flat levy without new construction. There is going to be additional requirements. Uh first, we have published the 60-day notice uh a few weeks ago. Uh that's part of the uh rate notice that is required by the state. But in addition uh if you give us direction today to pursue an increase in levy we will go through additional process called uh truth and taxation which includes a newspaper notice posting that for the public and your meetings in June will have those conversations. Primary property tax is really an unrestricted revenue that is used in our general fund for services that we would like to deliver. Here I stand on slice. Our other property tax is our secondary property tax. Uh this is one that can only be used to pay back our general obligation bond debt. Uh further we can only authorize general obligation bond debt if the voters approve us in a ballot measure in any November election. The city levies a secondary property tax to pay our debt service uh as we schedule the outy years uh for debt that we've issued and the rate is readjusted

and calculated each year to to show the state that we are maintaining a rate that is sufficient to pay that debt. And we have a property tax oversight committee that reviews our calculations confirms yes you were allowed to charge that rate based on your um your schedule. So there's a process for that, but these are truly a restricted revenue source uh that we can't just move to a general fund or other purposes. They're restricted for use. So as we had a conversation in February, we talked about a couple considerations for the property primary property tax this year. Uh one was an option to consider just increasing this levy. let's start using some of levy capacity because we were low on resources and uh available for this tax year or budget year. Uh the other one was to increase our primary tax levy with a decrease in our secondary property tax levy, also called a tax shift is what I'm kind of calling it. Um through our conversations with the city manager and a team that she had looking for the budget presentation, uh we are presenting a property tax shift scenario. Not just a tax levy for primary primary to increase but a tax rate shift uh like we talked about in um February. So here is the narrative around what we are proposing and impacts of this uh shift of 0.04 is where we landed after analyzing several things. What how does this impact uh our future bonding capacity as well as how does this gain revenues for our unrestricted general fund. So with that uh consideration uh we worked with our partner Steifel to make sure we had the bond numbers right and we have identified that the proposed shift would mean we go from a primary

property tax rate which would have been flat levy of 0.5807 and increase by to point4 to 6207. So, a increase in the rate uh which then gives us a total increase in primary property tax lever for the current year future of about $537,000 which is unrestricted for general fund use. Uh this does include the new construction portion and as part of a city manager's budget process and proposed budget, we are applying all those gains and revenues that we are looking for primary property taxes toward public safety, strengthening up their budget with ongoing resources in the coming budget proposal. So uh that was very important for us to to make that uh move.

Yes. Um, and we had this discussion in our meeting, but I just wanted to bring it up here. Um, and I know you you're not finished with the property shift um, presentation, but I will want to have a discussion on how we ensure somehow that the shift and the additional revenues to uh, the general fund through primary property tax is going to public safety and not reallocated to the next favorite thing that future councils might come up with. So, I know there's things we cannot do, but I just wanted to say it out loud so council and staff can think about maybe a policy in place for some type of security that we know that this shift is actually going to the deficit that we have right now in public safety.

Press that. Now, we're um so we've talked about that internally. Um really what we do is a base budget uh process annually. Once we move monies from monies into a base budget of any department that's their starting point. We don't cut that with start of next fiscal year. We maintain that base budget. So that's part of our practice we've had for

I'm not going to say how many years I've been doing this but uh so that sets the tone. Should a future council, it would actually be a conversation about cutting police based budgets or firebased budgets. Um, that would be a a conversation for future council to have. As far as budget practice, we maintain that as an ongoing commitment. Uh, and I'm sure your city manager agrees that's a commitment to provide these funds. Thank you.

All right. with with the uh shift in rate and adding uh unrestricted revenues to general fund uh we used about 7% of that 14% capacity leaving about 7% for future consideration. uh Joanne's team is going to look at how do we look at the future of this tax revenue source over a a two three fiveyear period and starting to um use these tax levies for our operations for needs of the city uh and the general fund. So, we're going to have a conversation about those in the in the off season and and build something for next budget cycle uh to help with the uh increase in rates of the primary property tax. Secondary property tax rate goes from a 08 rate to a point 76 rate. Uh what this does is actually decrease the levies or the revenues uh on the property tax bills about 502,000 uh less levy or revenues bring it in to pay debt. Uh adding that 502 plus new construction, that's that 537 uh that we're using for public safety. As we crunch the numbers and look at what the impact of general obligation bonds because we heard that concern, we are looking to maintain about $95 million in capacity for future general obligation bonds for the next uh 20 years. Uh of note, there is uh the public safety ballot measure uh team that is looking at a potential ballot measure about $40 million uh of this capacity of potential being used. they haven't finished their deliberation but that is one thing that is uh being considered uh compared to February the previous February number was about 98 million so it only adjusted a little bit because we looked at our projections better and looked at timing of issuing debt to to make it uh still have a good capacity

then our overall tax rate uh based on our current policy of flat levy flat rate will stay at the 0.1 one 1.3807 uh which is slightly lower than the current tax rate this fiscal year. Uh the reason it's lower is because as you increase your net assessed valuations, you adjust your rates downward to um a rate to collect a similar revenue uh in your projections. So that's the narrative side of what we are are proposing uh in the upcoming budget. The next slide is kind of the the visual the tabular tabular side of what this means uh for these changes over this next u considered proposal. So here is a this table has two two parts of it. The top part is the tax rate and what the impact would be uh from current year to base level to the tax shift. The bottom part is about the levy, the revenues that we anticipate bringing in. We show our two taxing authorities that we talked about. Primary property tax which is an unrestricted resource and secondary property tax restricted for debt payments. So you can see in the current tax year um we are looking at a total rate of the 1.445. That's what our baseline is for this year. So based on next year had we kept our same keeping our same policies a flat rate flat levy we show that the rate for primary property tax uh would have declined slightly uh because those assessed valuations and the secondary property tax remain at the 08 in total that rate would be that 1.387 that I showed on the previous slide. So that's that blue section in the middle there. Now when you talk about a

shift of that rate, you'll see it's just moving it from secondary up to primary uh property tax. So again, primary property tax now increases slightly and the secondary property tax incre decreases by the 0.04 same overall tax rate proposed in the city manager's budget. The bottom part now talks about the revenues collected for these two different categories. Um in the current year we're we're estimating just under 17 million in total tax collections. Based on our current policies and you'll see our total tax collection would be about 17 a little over 17 million uh shifting above 17 million. The allocation based on rates is about 7 million toward our general fund and 10 million toward debt. Total increase is about 475,000 primarily related to secondary property net assessed valuation increases. Moving on to the shift conversation. This just demonstrates that here's where we're going to shift the rate up and change the revenue resources to primary property tax. Here you can see our primary property tax revenues go up to 7.8 8 million giving us that 537,000 we've been talking about uh for unrestricted capacity in a general fund and our secondary property tax actually declines over prior year by about 61,000 uh overall 500,000 compared to base baseline budget. So that demonstrates how we're going to maintain tax rate and tax levy within current uh practices that we've had. No questions on those. I will move on to uh we wanted to provide some examples of impacts uh that are uh property owners would have uh based on these

considerations uh next tax year. So sure I've got the right page here. Um, so on this table again, we are we're looking at residential. We pulled out a certain class of of residential. There's many classes. What we want to look at is the average class 3.01 within within the tax rule. This is really your single family locally owned properties. Um so starting this current tax year um the assessed valuations is an average of 3 333,000 uh for a average class 301. the total taxes collected there. You see the tax rate and total tax collection estimate about $460,000 $460 per year. Going to our policy practice that we've had already. Uh you can see how as we apply those rates that I showed on the previous slides, uh the rate change uh for primary and and secondary remaining flat rate. you'll see the impact uh would have been about a $15 increase to a primary property tax bill at this average. Uh that's about uh 4.47 per $100,000 of a residential value. So that was our baseline to start with. And then with a property tax shift, moving the rates around, you'll see that the um primary residential property pay a little more on the primary side, a little bit less on the secondary side, but still adding to that $15 uh tax bill increase for next uh tax year. Um

that's the residential side impact of what our proposals are uh for this year. Next is a picture of the commercial property impacts. Um, for this one, we didn't really have an average value of commercial property, so we we used a $1 million property and then increased it by 5% assessed valuation increase uh that is potential on a a commercial property. This one's a little bit different story uh than the residential tax rate because of what the state has a assessment ratio. Uh in the state statute there is actually going to be a declining assessment ratio for commercial properties meaning uh their assessment ratio is 16% current year next year will be 15.5%. So they take the total assessed valuations times the uh ratio the percentage to get what they're actually going to be taxed on um their net assessed valuation. So they're going to actually see a nice adjustment related to those calculations. So here you can see on our baseline proposal would have been really flat as far as um tax levies on our uh commercial properties around that million dollars. Actually a slight decrease is what we're anticipating for those averages uh of one that would increase by 5%. Uh about 11 cents lower um don't spend in one place but uh a slight decline which is good news. um and it's part of the practice. Next year it'll also be increased by a 0.5%. So overall you can see the tax shift to point4 again just showing that overall total revenues total uh tax bill should remain about the same overall just switching where it's collected for. So those are the impact

commercial and

are you still talking about this or can I make a Okay, I'll let you finish that. All right. Then one more slide on the property tax shift consideration. So this is a slide I kind of showed you in the February treats as far as what our our policy has been with a levy consideration versus our available 2% per year increases. Uh you can see since since uh fiscal year 19 and 20 we were even maximum allowable and then we've kind of started growing capacity. So anything above the blue is to the orange is our capacity uh to increase levy. Um so this year we started out um with a flat levy consideration but in FY what we're proposing for FY27 is to use half that capacity. So uh really kind of splitting the the 4% adding on future decisions. Here's here's what flat levy would mean. Keeping not doing the 2% per year, but next year uh this is where city manager is going to work with are how do we close this gap? How do we apply uh future levy uh decisions to maybe close that gap or adjust. So this is just the visuals of of what we were looking for today in the future.

Yeah. And just to just to jump in, I think when we started this budget process, um it was pretty clear that we needed to look at more ongoing loading. And I think from a new city manager perspective, just looking at that 14% that he hadn't touched in years, um it was an opportunity to to talk with Rick and say, "Hey, how can we increase our primary, but are there some things that we can do to not have an impact on the taxpayer?" Um, and you can see that, you know, it'll be a minimal impact on residential, an actual decrease on commercial. So, I think um you know, from my perspective, I just want to thank Rick and his work with Stefold just to to put this proposal together. It's it's creative. It sets us up for uh more ongoing revenue in the future. And as Rick mentioned, we're going to be working kind of in the off season on some proposals um to utilize the rest of that capacity.

Talk about this one or last slide. Yes. Council member Matthews has a question. I just want to make sure um I'm understanding um conversations about property and secondary. We need to go to the voters if we increase secondary

we need to go to the voters. We don't need to go to authorized debt. Authorized debt. Okay.

That's that's where I was using myself. So we can make these adjustments um at the council level but to to add more bonds goes so it's it's not changing the rate of I was confusing the two and then know we're talking in general um more ongoing funds in the general fund but my interest is specifically because this all highlighted for me with the public safety tax conversations off the top of your head and and you may not and get it later. Do you know what the number is? What we're currently deficit in our ongoing funds to fund our public safety for operational aspects? How much are we running in a deficit to where if we could shift that over to ongoing funds, what would it need? Half a million a year, two million a year. I think that's a that's a hard question to answer as far as what do you mean by deficit? Uh right now we have uh some of their funding with ongoing one-time revenues. We do have that pot of money. We're not quite fully in the base budget of of their operations,

but onetime money. They do have other needs and other requests that are above today's baseline. Um but I can't say that to get them fully funded to the full needs. I don't know how to get to that. outside of what they future needs. Right now we're funding a lot of what they need with going one time. So it's not set in the budget as this is your budget. Correct. Um can you give me a number on what that is just to get us whole today? Who are you looking at? I'm looking at Heidi here. I know she's digging up that number but I do not have that off the top of my head. need to bring that back.

Yeah, we can bring it back when when Heidi comes up to talk about that. Um, but yeah, the the the secondary property tax rate is set by council based on our debt obligations, right? So, I am very confident we'll maintain that 76 in the years in future. But if we take a ballot measure to the public that we want to actually increase the rate, we can tell the voters approve this, but we're going to have a higher rate. So that's when we have those conversation about what rate we want to set. But in the end, council approves both these tax rates. See chair. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions on the property tax portion? Good. Good. Just for the public's benefit, um, we have been giving an opportunity for council members to to hear more details on this who have, you know, had a more in-depth conversation on this ID. So, this is not the first time you're you're hearing about it today. clarify.

The last slide related to future fund health is, you know, things we want to make sure we're considering in the upcoming uh year as we're looking at uh to help improve our health of some some of our funds. uh as you took to earlier this calendar year uh we talked about adopting a cost recovery policy and set schedules for reviewing rates and fees uh for several areas. Uh so in the general fund we actually have u a few of those areas that we're going to look to structure and recover uh the correct revenue amounts uh for several areas. Uh community and civic engagement fees. We're going to take a look at those. Rec open space events fees are two of the ones that were in the cost recovery report. There are two other things to help our general fund that we are are still working on. Our short-term rental license fee will be coming to council soon. uh that one in we're looking to increase it to the maximum allowed state level of two $250 uh license per year. Uh so we did that analysis and we posted a 60-day notice and I think you'll hear that very shortly. Um that did help us fund uh a position uh in the general fund uh with that resource next year. um EBB administration or cost allocation. Um it's been a direction and practice over the last several years that we don't charge an overhead or cost allocation. What cost allocation is we look at our general fund activities for our support services, uh city managers, finance, purchasing and so forth, attorneys, and we calculate what each fund is responsible for. there's been a

practice that we don't charge this to our BBB funds. Um, this year we are actually proposing that we start phasing in their cost to support the general fund uh and the administration of their program uh their needs and so forth. So that's one that gained revenues that we used in this upcoming budget process. We'll phase it over the next three to five years. We don't want to have negative impacts to these funds, but we feel that over growth, we can probably work together to get that um covered for the general fund. The airport uh is actively looking at what fees and and services they can bill for. uh they actually have a consultants that they're looking at uh uh to use for this uh to do a very overarching review of their fees at the airport as well as they're going to start looking at uh potential of development and commercial leases uh in the coming year. uh sustainability looking at their program and their fee which is on our utility municipal bill as well as solid waste we added to a rate study uh direction uh and we will continue that probably this uh calendar year. The other one that's still in the mix and we're working on is our development fee review. We have to do this every five years. Uh that one is is in the process of developing the infrastructure improvement plan which then develops into uh what you can charge for development fees uh for future uh construction. Uh we'll likely have that done uh here soon or in the summer uh with it coming back to council a couple times. We have to go through a 75day process a couple times. over the next uh six to nine months, we should have these back in front and adopted in the future. Uh these help those capital needs of our

public safety areas, police and fire, but we're also looking at uh other areas uh such as parks, libraries, and transportation, which is a a very hard conversation. We're trying to build that to for council consideration. Um and we'll see how those numbers come out. So those are some of the things that we're looking for fund health that u may provide resources in the future for for these areas and with that I am done with this section that council has any questions a quick question are we going to do deeper dives on the stuff I can understand for these monies we're not going to do a deeper dive today we've talked about how general fund is having to support because increasing cost of operations. Uh that's why we really want to look at their fees to help them be self-supportive. Um they're just not there and there's ways that we could adjust fees, maybe get them closer. But as we bring back rates and fees, we'll talk about that picture uh with you as as we go to airport commission and council. We'll talk about these considerations.

Welcome.

Okay. The next thing that we want to talk about is our investment in our employees. This area continues to be a very high priority for the city. Um, and while we were experiencing and are experiencing limited ongoing resources, um, the team that worked on the city manager's recommended budget does feel that we were able to continue with our commitment to our employees related to compensation and benefits. Um, with what we were presenting this morning, the first item that I just wanted to touch on briefly is that pay for performance and step increases continue to be funded in all of the five-year plans. So, while we're seeing um restricted ongoing resources, we have been working on ways that we can continue that commitment as an organization. Um, another area that we are needing to address once again, as many of you may know, we have tried to stay above the minimum wage as our starting wage here at the city to help with recruitment and retention. Um and with the creeping of minimum wage um it is estimated that likely in the next year we will um starting wage will be the same or below minimum wage. Um so we have as part of this proposed plan um recommended a new starting wage effective July 1st of 26 to move the city to 1948. Um this currently is um our starting wage of 10R um our range of 10R. Um additionally, as we've already mentioned, minimum wage continues to have impacts um to the city as well as this organization. Um we are above the the minimum wage with our starting wage currently which will help us this next year. Um, however, we do anticipate that with a 3% um, CPI potential adjustment um, that the minimum wage will start to

surpass our starting wage. So, we have built in a potential increase for the minimum wage adjustments um, this next year. And this is the first year we are actually separating our regular pay plan and our temp pay plan and recommending that our temp play pay plan stays um with the minimum wage as their starting wage versus our permanent city employees will move to the um regular pay plan. So currently um we have planned a like I said a 3% um CPI adjustment for our temp pay plan for minimum minimum wage. If on January 1st of 2027 that is not adequate we will make adjustments at that time obviously to stay with the legal requirements. Um another area for compensation we continue to have um we kind of call in those critical need positions throughout the year. So, we did set aside some money um in the general fund to address those if they come up. Um examples of this are hard to fill positions or um if you recall a couple years ago um the dispatch, we were at a critical vacancy level and we were trying to come up with ways to help with the retention and recruitment of those positions. Um, so this is kind of the set aside money um that we have made available in the general fund in case we have any of those um positions that we need to address over the next year. Um so those are compensation recommendations for the city manager recommended budget. Um moving on to the city manager recommended budget benefit recommendations. Um so we hear um often and over from EAC and others that they would like um the city to continue um at least maintaining our cost share um ratios for our employees related to our benefits. I'm happy to say that even

with the per 6% expected increase for our medical and dental we were able to b build this into our budgets. Um we are planning to maintain cost share um and the base plan continues to remain free for employee um post employees with wellness participation. Excuse me. Um something new that we have um and you have probably heard as well over the last number of years is parental leave and trying to continue to move the city forward with um increasing that benefit to our employees. Um, as part of this year's budget, we are recommending an additional two weeks to move for a total of six weeks paid time for our uh leave. Another benefit um that we are planning to um implement this next year is retirey health savings account. This is an option for retirees to invest in an HSA um upon retirement from the city. um it just gives them another option for their uh sick leave payouts, vacation payouts, etc. to have somewhere to put those um on a tax-free I think basis. Um we are currently working the team is working on what this looks like actually right now to try to have it prepared for actually a 71 implement. So this is a new benefit. Um, and then some other benefits that we have been able to continue funding in this proposed budget is um, the well-received citywide tuition assistance program. Um, there is never enough money. Um, but there is a a significant amount that we've been able to invest in this program that there is a share that those are interested that will get some assistance. The Eco Pass program, we are continuing this for another year. um supported by the general fund as well as some contribution from the sustainability fund. Um and I think probably later on later on today you'll hear about there

has been a significant increase this year in the participation in that program. So that is super exciting. Um and then again there is some funding available for the employer assisted housing program. Um this fund this year is um got some funds available due to some payoff of the loans on those. So goes right back into that revolving program for our employees. Is all I have any questions on compensation or benefits before I hand it over to Ryan?

So I couldn't imagine how this would be useful for staff, but I'm trying to get a better picture of how much the minimum wage is going to cost us. Do we have numbers uh general numbers even on how much the the minimum wage is going to cost us moving forward with your plan for the minimum wage which I agree with. I don't have the number off the top of my head but yes we have estimated calculations of what our recommendation is so I can um share those numbers with you. And council member, are you talking about in the future as well as we start to

or at least for this next phase that we can kind of base it off of that first phase, how many employees we have as how much?

Yeah, there's a there's a lot that goes into calculating impacts and what we have done um actually as part of this proposal because of our starting wage and Ryan's probably way better to talk about this than I am. Um but correct me if I'm wrong. um actually eliminating another pay range. So 05R in our regular pipeline and 05T in our pay plan, those are going away because of the creep on minimum wage and our starting wage. Um so we can put together estimates. It's also hard, right? Depending on CPI adjustment of what the true cost of this starting wages. Um but it continues to be a significant impact annually every year that we are bumping those up. And then when we get to the point of wanting to move our starting wage, that's an additional cost. Um, like I said, I can give I can share the numbers of this year's cost um for the 27 budget estimate. So, I'll just take me a minute to pull those up.

Thanks. If if you have them handy and ready, then it' be it would be greatly appreciated. But u mainly I think it's just to tell the story moving forward of how you know oftent times I get even myself I'm like, "Oh man, I got to pay more in taxes this year." But I knowing what I'm paying for would help me as a citizen understand that the everybody's paying more for everything for this part of the presentation. I think it's helpful and I'll bring that numbers up when I come up with the other fire numbers here on today. I'll follow.

I'm going to hand it over to Ryan. He's going to come and talk a little bit about the market pay update. Good morning, mayor, vice mayor, members of council. Ryan Saxby, your HR risk management director. Um, I have a couple slides here. I wanted to touch base on the city's efforts related to employee compensation, specifically related to market and market adjustments for employees. Um, the city manager's recommended budget does not include the same level uh same system that we've utilized the last few years as far as employee market compensation. But I think this is an opportunity and that's kind of what I want to talk to you about today. Um, so just for a little bit of background, the way that the city has operated is about four years ago, five years ago, um, the city took looked at all of our classifications. We have about 330 classifications today. Uh, divided those up roughly, this is kind of high level, um, into about 25% and looked at doing market analysis and then subsequent adjustments based on market analysis. about 25% of the classifications each of those four years. Um so over the last five-year period the way this says five is we study one year make adjustments the next study make adjustments. Uh all of our classifications were reviewed for market um from 2020 to 2026. Uh what that meant is if market uh dictated a change in our uh recommended recommended salary grade assigned to a classification that classification salary grade shifted as did all the employees within that uh classification as well. Uh what we did was we brought all classifications within 7.5% of the market average midpoint. So the way that we we did market assessments and we will uh continue to do market assessments in all likelihood is we look at our comparators uh in the market our benchmarks uh we look at what the range is for a partic particular

classification that most closely matches our classification here at the city of Flagstaff. We look at the midpoint we look at all of our comparators. Uh we average out that midpoint. We compare it to our midpoint. And if that average is more than three seven and a half% above what our as we make an adjustment to our class of or it its range assignment rather. Um we have invested it's about $12 million over that time period uh and four almost $4.5 million in the in this fiscal year. So July one of 2025. Um, of course, Heidi has mentioned this, but we have continued to invest uh millions in pay for performance and step increases, and that is built into the 5-year budget plan. Um, I did a little survey of some sister jurisdictions. Um, heard back from Scottsdale, Tempe, Tucson, and Surprise. Not a single one of one of those jurisdictions um has anything multi-year built into their budget plans related to employee compensation. So, Flag Staff is unique in the fact that we are uh we've built in, you know, up to four performance into our five-year budget plan, which is something to be certainly celebrated. So, I get here in August. Um there's an opportunity, we've just finished our four-year cycle with market, uh looking at the way that we've, you know, done market or done the analysis. And I certainly have some questions. Um and I think I also received a lot of feedback uh whether that from leadership EAC uh employees directly you know my members of my team uh and I heard some criticisms of our our existing way and methodology in which we do market analysis. Um and I think we have an opportunity to address that here moving forward taking this year to do that refinement and that assessment. Um the one thing that I think was most notable

is and I've mentioned it is we have to wait for a classification to fall greater than seven and a half% below market before our current methodology or our former methodology would necessitate a change in that uh classification's grade. So if a classification is for example 6% behind market, it's not going to get an adjustment in our current process and then we'd have to wait four years to restudy that classification and presumably it's going to be much greater than 6% behind market and to make that adjustment is a much larger jump to make. Uh the other thing is we reviewed classifications that were in what I call job families. So think of you know HR generalist, HR analyst, senior HR analyst. So groupings of jobs. We reviewed those in different uh years and I think the idea was we kind of wanted to spread the review across divisions um and not have particular impacts on funds. I don't know that for certain but um was needed but what it did do is it created compression within job families. So if a position using my example of HR, if our HR generalist was reviewed in fiscal year 22 that the HR analyst wasn't reviewed until fiscal year 24 and the generalist necessitated a change upward, we have a compression issue where you have which is a lower graded position sitting up against or sharing a grade with making it awkward for divisions and employees and and HR. Um so what uh some of the the compression groups that I you know I just came in I looked at we have this in housing with our specialist and lead. We have it in our library with our lead and our specialist equipment operator 123 attorney 123 HR I've given that example this this exists across our city. Uh the other thing is we use a large number of comparator organizations uh

when we do our market analysis. Um, and I'm going to say a very large number of comparator organizations. Um, and that is really just not necessary. Um, we are currently working with a compensation consultant. Um, that was one of their first recommendations was, "Wow, that that's a lot." Not only is it, you know, extra work to review that many, but it actually can grade our data. So the more data points you use, if they're not good matches, if they're not good benchmarks, it can actually make our data as far as what the market average midpoint is um not as strong, you know, if you don't you if rather than using targeted comparative organizations. So that's really not a best practice. And then um I think the big thing is this current process uh for market is really not budget sustainable. $12 million over a four-year period. um we just don't have that in the budget. So, we're taking this year this opportunity uh to review our process, revine refine our approach, and recommend next steps. So, what does that mean? Um we're going to improve how we review our jobs. So, we're working on a job description update uh process. Talked about this in a previous uh retreat and validate our market data. Um we're going to focus on roles that are the most behind market. So what I see us being able to do um is you know refining our comparators uh identifying you know identify which jurisdictions make the most sense come up with a standardized systematic process to to do market analysis uh and then hopefully uh be able to study positions more frequently. So rather than having to wait the four years, uh we'll be able to if we can come up with a more refined, a little bit more streamlined process, we can study our positions more frequently. Don't want to put a number on what that looks like, but it'll certainly be more

frequent than once every four years is the goal. Um but we will be able to rank our positions from, you know, at or potentially above market, although I think that's probably relatively rare in public sector, all the way down to the most behind market. And then we can adjust, we can group our group our jobs together in job families. So that's that second kind of sub bullet. And then those positions that are most behind market depending on budget capacity, we can make that adjustment that year. Keep uh reviewing those every year or two is kind of what my goal is is every couple of years. I I don't want to per say that yet because we're taking this year to work with our consultant to develop a process that makes sense. Um that said, our goal will remain to maintain a co to total compensation package that's internally equitable, externally competitive, and certainly within the financial capability of the city. Uh we're going to try to develop a plan to meet as many goals uh as possible and address those items um of points of contention, if you will, um that I've mentioned. uh we'll continue to work with our classification and compensation advisory team which is comprised of our finance or uh finance team so on management services members of city manager's office EAC uh legal and of course HR uh work with legal and EAC uh separately and then of course with our consultant we do have within this budget a recommendation for a little bit of dollars to continue some ad hoc work um to as check-in points so we're not outsourcing at all um our analysis for market. Just checking in with a consultant on does this make sense to you? What do you see as you know drawbacks or or considerations if we were to move in this direction? Um and then we want to recommend timely compensation changes that are beneficial to all and within our you know the fiscal responsibility of the city. So my goal is to be able to say these classifications are most behind market and then the city manager's office and

budget can look at that and say here's how much money we have and address those um you know based on that definition methodology and with that I will take questions. Yes sir. What I'm about to say may not be popular with my colleagues here at the table, but have elected positions been included in the market comparisons over the last decade, particularly the last four years. That is a great question and I I think that's set by statute, isn't it?

It is, but we actually did do that process. I'll have to look up the date. Um, but it's separate from this market analysis. Um, yeah, there's actually a a city ordinance that provides for how um elected salaries um are adjusted or modified and it goes through a process. Um so it's separate and apart from this, but it is compared like Shannon said uh to other cities when that happens. I believe that's how that worked. Shannon, want to double check on how it worked last time.

Yes. And um I'm just looking at the commission on council salaries to see the last time that we brought forward 20. I think it was 2022.

That's what it looks like. 22 22. Oh man. I I I really appreciate the hard work that you guys have been doing. I remember a time when things didn't look so rosy on the front of our employees payment structure and it was costing the city at that time um a lot of retention and a lot of other hassles that were in in place. So my question for you is do you have data on our retention rate since the changes has happened? I realize it's rather short sample size. So I understand if you don't but I think uh understanding that side of things will will help determine if if if it's even impactful that we're making these changes. Um because we have seen so much fluctuation in market rates when it comes to certain jobs. Um, so I I've seen the impacts like at public works how that has helped in certain cases, but another department question.

I can speak uh city as a whole to some degree. Um, I think for the first time Jen is in the back, so she can correct me if I'm wrong. Um, our turnover rate is dipping below 10% since the pandemic. Um, so we'll be reporting that out through our newsletter here uh in the coming days. Um so that was a good thing. So turnover I think is kind of the particular key performance indicator as far as retention is concerned. Um I think the last time I was confronted this body it was around we look at it on a quarterly basis. Um citywide we can dive in if needed on particular divisions but uh it is around 13 to 12 and a half to 12 and then this time this last quarter we saw it about 9.6. I I don't have the number exactly, but just below 10.

That's good. I appreciate that. And I would uh like us to keep a a lens on that year over year because I think the larger the sample size gets the better the picture gets for us. And um you know, these changes that we're making are kind of really financial since we did all the other things to to keep people in line with the pay rate of their work, their quality of life, and employee retention. just general happiness for working for the city which was hugely important but without the data I think looking at one side will be a disservice if we're not looking at the other side as well.

Absolutely. Um and we do have that that data goes back quite a ways. Um I was very pleasantly surprised when I arrived here at the city and saw that the team had done a really good job of tracking you know key metrics year-over-year on a quarterly well now on a quarterly basis. So, uh, I can bring back some of that data at the next time we meet for sure, if not sooner. Yeah, I'm just thinking on an annual basis, adding it to the slideshow would be great for future councils as well as myself. Thank you. Gota, thank you.

I make a just just a comment. I just want to say thank you to Ryan and his team for thoughtful approach. Um, I know it's not the best news, but I I think Ryan made the point and I'd like to just reiterate this that we are organizations that do have pay for performance budgeted um for five years and on some other organizations that I know I've been talking to, they're not even doing increases this year, you know, just so I just want to make that point that I feel like this is a really thoughtful approach to take a pause and and get get back to this. It may look different, but I just appreciate Ryan's on this.

Thanks for the opportunity to think about it. Yes, please.

Thank you, Ryan. Really appreciate all this information. I'm wondering um maybe this is a a general a communications question. How is this being communicated to to the the team? Um, in the the role that I serve outside of council, we're having similar conversations and and talking right now about how do we communicate this to the rest of the company if there aren't going to be large numbers of promotions because of some of the financial challenges, if there aren't going to be cost of living adjustments or or things like that? Um, has the team talked about like what that communication looks like?

We have extensively and and frankly we've started to a great degree um on that communication. Of course, we don't want to work too far ahead of you budget. Um, but about a month ago, I want to say March 23rd, I think, is when the city manager did similar presentation, you know, to all staff as far as what would be presented here. Um, and then within that, I I did a similar presentation along with Heidi uh to explain this. Um, two days later on March 25th, I presented the same material to our employee advisory council. uh shared a copy of the recording from the 23rd so that they could hear that messaging as well. Um and subsequently we have uh started the conversation with leadership. So we do know we have a group of employees that likely this next fiscal year would be expecting um an analysis and potentially an adjustment, right? If we were to I'll call it a phase two new four-year cycle um of the same way that we did the previous four years. uh and we're reaching out to those division heads directly to discuss and talk about uh the best methodology in which to communicate to their particular employee group. So whether that's conversations directly with the director and HR with employee employee employee or employees impacted whether that's a letter um and then I'll put it into our newsletter as a message from the you know my my role the HR director um summarizing to a great extent what was discussed here today. Thank you.

Anything you want to add on that? Well, yeah, and then I will be doing an all employee message at some point as well. I feel like the communication's been good. You know, it's important so we can try. Thank you. Thank you. I think it's great. I think a little coming back at 10:15. I'll come back at 10:10. 1010.

the bears. All right. Sorry, I just felt like the biggest break. Um, next, mayor council, we have our EAC reps presenting today. Do you mind introducing yourself? And

Jessica, I work in fire administration and I'm one of the co-chairs for EAC. Dan Carrick. I'm the other co-chair for EAC. I work for PROs. I'm a rec supervisor at J Lively Activity Center.

And for those of you that aren't aware, EAC stands for employee advisory committee. And so we do stand before you today representing a collective groups every division throughout the organization. And throughout the year, we work on various projects um not just the ones you're going to see on the screen today and various policies and initiatives which you're seeing today have a budgetary impact and so that's why they're part of this process and we're really thankful to have the opportunity to bring forward the employee voice in this budget process. Sure. How to go? Oh.

All right. Well, fortunately, uh, I get to follow Heidi and Ryan. Um, and they were able to provide a lot of information for you, some good context, uh, in the direction that we are moving forward. So, numbers one and two have been the same for EAC for several years. Um, number one is compensation. So, that's us requesting the city to continue to look at compensation for employees, right? So, the way we had originally requested it is we were looking to start that four-year cycle all over again, right? Brian had just alluded to the fact that we had gone from 2022 through 2026 and we were able to evaluate all the positions within the city. So, 100% of the positions had been evaluated. So, what we were looking to do with EAC was basically start that cycle all over again. Um, in working with HR and Ryan, um, the HR team in general, we've decided that the best course of action might not be to to stay on that same path of that four-year cycle like Ryan alluded to, should we say someone was 6% behind and then they're not evaluated for four more years. So, we do think that in working with the HR team, we will be able to come up with a better path forward um to be able to look at the positions that that are below that midpoint and able to get them to where they need to be so that we can remain a desirable employer uh for people and uh the Flagstaff community. Um and then our second um bullet point here is to be competitive with medical cost sharing ratios. So again, that's maintaining that same cost sharing ratio for the single employee, which means that the plan stays free as long as they complete all their wellness check-ins. Um, and then maintain that same cost sharing across the board, whether it's uh for the family or

whatnot. We just want to make sure that employees aren't being priced out to where they're having to fund the additional, say, 6% that gets added to their medical. We would like the city to continue to maintain that cost sharing ratio.

Great. And so, uh, the next two items, the third one is kind of a a twofur. So, there was a proposal to increase the sick leave payantly in our organization. You receive 100% of your vacation when you um, leave the organization and it's 50% of your sick leave if you have at least 20 years of service or you're retiring through one of the pension programs. So the request was to increase the amount of sick leave to something like 75% or 100% that was not funded in this year's budget. And the second part which I was particularly excited about because I was on this subcommittee is the retirey HSA program. And I know Heidi already really kind of spoke to this, but we hear frequently that a a common deterrent to retire quite frankly is the cost of medical and and getting getting them to that Medicare eligibility age. And so one of the ways right now we do have the payout program when you leave with your vacation and sick. And so this is an option where you can deposit those funds into an HSA. Um, like Heidi mentioned, we're still figuring out, you know, li limitations in the program itself, but this would quite frankly be a great benefit as um a tax, you know, a tax savings for both the organization and the member and uh would help be able to fund those medical costs in order to um get that employee to Medicare eligibility. The last one is the expansion of parental leave. So, you probably have seen this one on the list for a few years, and we're thankful. Uh, the the ask initially was the full 12 weeks of of paid parental leave coverage. So, the employee really doesn't have to dip into their vacation and their sick leave during the time of a a birth or adoption. But, uh, the addition of the two weeks now covers 50% of that 12-week FML period. And really excited to see that program expand. Some of these you've seen before and we'll continue to hopefully push for.

you may see new ones in the future, but um we're just thankful again for the opportunity to be included in this process. Thank you for serving. I know it's a lot of extra work. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you everyone.

I'm going to kick off the next section and Shannon and I are going to tag team this one. This is uh the new initiatives discussion. Um I did want to just provide a a correction just on the agenda. We have uh we'll see on here is a new initiative. I think we all know that housing is a continuing initiative. So we won't have this item and that will be replaced with budget process improvement. Um just to give some background on this item. So as we were going through the the division uh review meetings, there were several things that kept coming up as themes of divisions and I think you know you all heard it as well in the last retreat just this focus on core services. Um some of the items that continued to come up, we you know, we we talked a lot about um vegetation maintenance and custodial costs and um contracts for communication and website improvement. all of these items. Um, we we decided to really kind of focus on putting together opportunities to to fund new initiatives that I'm not going to steal Shannon's thunder because I think some of them they're they're it's a it's a big transition for the organization, but in the long run it will be pay for itself in the long. So, um, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Shannon, who's gonna start off with, um, our first.

Thanks. So, we're going to talk a little bit about the custodial team. Um, as Joanne alluded to, as a budget team, um, we were discussing the various budget requests that were submitted this year. Um and our budget section had actually identified a number of custodial requests and some of them were fairly significant. Um we've continued to receive these types of increases from the custodial contractor due to the annual um change in minimum wage um which was also touched on earlier. Uh as a team we started talking about the success we experienced with addressing the municipal facility security with the assistance of our police aids instead of private security. We wondered, could we accomplish the same thing if we started utilizing the custodial contractual dollars and brought a team internally and reallocated that money. We calculated the funding and determined it could support staff and still have a decent amount of money for supplies and equipment. We believe reappropriating the money for contractual custodial services to an internal team that would be led by facilities will increase the quality of services being delivered. The custodial contract will remain in place for some facilities where it makes sense from a service delivery standpoint. Some of these will be the airport, the parks, restrooms, and maybe others. The internal team will continue um to include uh facilities teams, but specifically for this group, a public works supervisor and eight new custodial staff members. Public Works is diving into all the details to determine what service delivery might look like should this be approved and begin to understand each of our facilities unique needs.

Just to um this does mean better toilet paper for city

at least that was top of mind for some uh rideofway team. Uh so again as a team we've been talking about rideaway maintenance actually for a few years now. Um when parks and streets were both part of public works many of the duties were shared given the number of personnel and the type of equipment that they had available. Pros became a separate division back in 2021. I don't know about you for me it felt like just yesterday and but it was actually quite some time ago. Um, we've been discussing growing infrastructure and the fact that some of them hadn't been assigned because we're just lacking capacity on both sides of the organization and also really trying to understand what funding sources are available and appropriate for this type of work. We had a few key meetings prior to the budget process and received a legal opinion about her funding that led us to the decision about creating a rideway team, which is what we're presenting to you today. The primary focus is to align each team with their primary purpose. Parks employees have been doing a great job, but this change will reinforce that parks employees are going to focus on parks and this will expand the streets group to work in additional right ofways. Um, so another change that we're excited to bring forward for your consideration today to communications. I this is a topic that um I know is very near and dear to um city council's heart but also to the organization as well. Um I think quickly after I joined the organization um it'll be three years in May. Um I I have just been amazed at the

amount of work that our communications our public affairs team does with the little resources that they have. And I think we're at a point right now where um we need to be building up that uh division and providing the staff that they need to to really do a better job of telling the city story. And I think this all fits together with um what we do as an organization. One of the requests that came forward this year from public affairs CCE Stacy's division is a request for a digital media specialist. And this this individual would be primarily focused on the website. So this individual would focus on website management and ensuring compliance, improving the user experience, and better utilizing technological advancements. And what we see with this position is that it not only enhances our external face, it also helps our our divisions by having somebody dedicated um to the website full-time. I think what it also does is it frees up the staff um in public affairs to work on other um other items, strategic outreach, engagement, highlevel communication initiatives, our social media presence, photography and video initiatives and digital accessibility. Establishing this position strengthens the city's communications program. It's of expertise and improves our overall quality um of what we're providing to our our city. And it also delivers the accessible userfriendly digital services our community deserves. Um we're very excited about this new initiative. I mean, obviously putting more money into an initiative that um that has, you know, just needs more staff and

resources, and we're excited to see what that team can do with a new position. Are there any questions?

Yeah, this is great news. um not necessarily a new initiative for the organization, but we felt it was important to keep this on the list to talk about that are currently um in the works related to technology. And if you recall, kind of the big discussion last year in our um our budget was application modernization and and CJ brought forward a pretty robust budget request last year to really jump in and um and upgrade our technology in several different areas. So in the works right now, we have um our computer aided dispatch, our CAD and records management software for public safety that is underway. fleet software, our procurement and contracts software, which actually launched I believe um last week and if you haven't used it, it's awesome. It's great. um and our pros software that Rebecca has been taking on. We're we're moving forward with Kaizen um software, but some of the new uh the next projects that we're working on are big ones. And I know I've talked to council about this um but that we're going to be um moving forward with a new enterprise resource planning software ERP um which is a big undertaking. This is what um it's our financial, HR, payroll, work orders, billing, budgeting, and cash receipts. So, everything we do as an organization relies on this ERP and a strong EIP ERP. And we're moving forward with that process right now. And the last item on the list, not last but not least, is uh looking at some new planning and development services permitting software that we're in upgrading as well. So all big items but I'm definitely committed to implementing. Yes, mayor.

Can you talk a little bit about the planning and development services software and will it will it um create efficiencies, speed up approvals, CJ coming to the front? And Michelle, do you want to add something to but maybe She was asking about the new planning services, the new permitting software.

And um actually CJ might be better to answer that what we're going to, but I can tell you that the current software we have is incredibly outdated. It requires an extensive amount of staff time um dealing almost on a daily basis with new contractors. So, they're new, but a lot of them are repeat contractors who are just trying to submit their permits and we have a lot of problems on the back end. Um it's not very forward facing, allowing the public to view where uh permits are in the process, which is very problematic um both from an applicant standpoint as well as the general public. Um, and it's not intuitive as far as it's being able to help, you know, send out reminders to people um that have reviews that are late. And so, we're looking at a software project that hopefully uh CJ can talk more about, but that will address some of those concerns. I don't know that all of those concerns will be addressed, but those are just some of the major problems we're having with our current system that we're hoping that a new program can either eliminate or um meet us halfway. Yeah, Michelle really covered a lot of it, a lot of the struggles that we're currently having. So, um, our steps that we're going to be going through is we've done a little bit of demoing just to kind of see what's out there and there's a lot of great products out there, but we're going to be going through a very extensive process where we're going to be kind of seeing what the pain points internally from staff are, but we're also going to reach out to some of those contractors, bring them in, kind of see what their pain points are, get that sort of requirements list based off of both internal and external concerns. use that list as in kind of that product selection to really nail down what's going to be the best product to serve our community, make this the most efficient process possible and all of that.

And I can just say one thing I'm super excited about this project is that we're going to have access to a firm that's going to help us really map out all of the different processes that we do have from a project review both from a planning standpoint and a building um building permit review process. and it's going to allow us to really get into a think how do we remove these bottlenecks with a third party kind of helping facilitate that. That's something that's long overdue. And so it's not only am I excited about the new software program, I'm just excited about the help and having that exercise.

And I think that's a really good point actually. As much as I'm an IT guy and I love new software, it's not about the software. The software is just a tool to make the business processes as efficient as possible. So for for all of these projects that we see up here, we've been re-evaluating our internal processes. Are they the right processes? Are they efficient processes? Those types of things uh where it's applicable as well.

Excellent. So, this topic um isn't going to be a surprise to anyone because we've been talking about it a lot here lately. Just had our most recent update to council on March 24th. Um but looking back, you know, this is a topic that we as staff have been working on for a few years. Um we went through a process specifically with our fire department where we realized we weren't going to have the ongoing um money available in general fund to meet their personnel needs and we knew we had some large capital expenses coming up especially with the John extension. Um so we began as staff talking about what could we do um as an opportunity and and kind of at that same time is when council started in 2025 talking about public safety needs to be a priority. Um we had seen what had happened in the Palisades and some other um catastrophic wildland fires and that certainly um caught not only our council's um attention but our community as well. So, back in 2025, council said, um, we need to consider what we can do to address those public safety needs. And we as staff have been working diligently since then. Um, as you know, we started a citizen committee. We began working with them in November after we went through a selection process um to select those committee members. They've been meeting almost on a weekly basis. Um, they paused for a couple of the holidays. They paused to give staff a little bit of time to do some background work for them and then we paused again most recently so that the community survey could be completed which we presented those results to them last night. Um so we are nearing the end of

this process where that committee is working talking about what a recommendation to council might look like. Um, we've invited the community to come and to share comment at all of these last meetings so that they can be sharing their thoughts that they have about public safety um or about uh potential funding mechanisms and even what they think about an election and if this is something that should be part of that. Um those notices that press release I believe went out last week. Um, and then Sarah um, also did some additional work on our site because the committee last night wanted to make sure that folks knew where could they get the most synthesized message that really talks about what our need is. Um, and so she added a part to our connect Flagstaff page where folks know that, hey, that March 24th presentation to council is the most comprehensive um, presentation that you can look at that basically synthesizes everything that we've been talking about for the last few months. Um, so what's the next big milestone? That will be June 2nd. Um that's when the committee will have their recommendation and we will be bringing that back for council's consideration. Um and this would be to decide whether or not we're going to be putting a ballot measure on the November 2026 election. If we are what that might include question um what is the deadline to put something on the ballot July something? June 16th is when we have it scheduled right now on the working calendar.

So, we're gonna get a presentation on the recommendation on June 2nd and have to decide tweaks or no tweaks in two weeks after that.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Council Member Matthews, I I mean, just there have been meetings that have been happening with this um committee and all of that information is available as well for council. I'm sure you get that before that presentation. I've been watching it. I'm just yeah, you know, I don't know that everybody else is and so whatever is presented on this second and then we wanted to make some tweaks or something, you know, we'll have to make sure it's on the agenda so we can continue to talk about it over the next couple weeks. Sounds like we might have a little

Go ahead. Uh, I'm just wondering, um, thank you so far for all of this information, Shannon and Joanne. Um, I'm wondering, particularly in terms of public safety, find it hard to imagine that we won't have a recommendation for this measure to move forward. But if it did not, what else are we looking at in terms of, you know, catching up and and ing different on public safety measures for the city primary outlet that we're looking at or are we continuing to investigate other pathways?

So, we did um Rick presented on the shift this morning. That is certainly um the largest new investment. It's $537,000 that we would be making in public safety. um what we've been talking about as a committee and I think it's pretty reflective of what we've been talking about as staff as well um is that you know do we continue to bring that item back because quite frankly coming up with millions of dollars in order to build a a new facility is not something that we typically have in our general hand um and so even if we hadn't done a citizen committee a bond would still be what we were looking for um and so I think you know we would continue to look at what new revenue sources do we have to bring into our general fund. I think Rick and Joanne touched on that. We've got that 14% um that we have available to us that hasn't been utilized over the past I think it's seven years. Um and then we would strategize like do we continue to educate on what the needs are for a plan to maybe go out for something again in a future year. I think something important for this um group to know and and we clarified it for the committee last night as well is that sales tax can only be done on even years, but bond requests can go every year. And so if we were unsuccessful, there is an opportunity for us to ask for bond dollars again in 2027 if 2026 was not available and we had the support of council. Um, what we also Heidi did a great job of reminding the committee that there's equipment and tools in those bond dollars even beyond new construction. Um, so even though we might not have the sales tax to have the new personnel that would go into a new fire station, we still are getting some of the tools and equipment that they

need for the staff that exists today if we were successful in a bond. Um, so those I think are some of the conversations that have been going on, council member house, but I can't say made a decision because we're not sure what's what the future's going to bring.

Kevin, thank you. And I think what I would add is um we don't have a lot of flexibility in our general fund revenue. I mean, I you know, I I've been I've worked in other organizations. um we do not have a lot of areas that we can make cuts to to get this revenue. So I mean it's going to take a lot of discussion and what this what the future looks like. I I think there's you know I keep hearing things in the community that you know the city has other revenue that dedicate towards public safety but it that's not accurate at all. So what Shannon said,

right? Downtown enhancements. Another item that you are probably familiar with because we've recently um reviewed and approved this contract. Um, again, something in January 2025 that council said, um, you wanted to be part of our focus in this year's budget was downtown enhancements. Um, so the team worked to define a scope of work, um, do a solicitation process and we now have a contract with the Flagstaff Downtown Business Alliance. Um, it allows us to provide greater support to one of our leading economic drivers. um as well as work with a group that preserves, promotes, and enhances the vitality of our historic downtown. Um so, just as a quick reminder, these enhancements include sanitation, maintenance, beautifification, and events and marketing in that downtown area. Um it's a three-year contract that we can renew for a year at a time for a total of five years. Um and and this group along with city staff will be presenting to you twice per year so you can see how we're progressing with these enhancements and what we've been able to accomplish together. Joanne is going to talk a little bit about our upcoming budget process. All right. Well, as we started this budget process, um I think I was reappointed as city manager on November and we made the decision over the Thanksgiving week, some of the the changes to the budget team, um changes to the budget process. Um, and one of the items that has continued to come up is our use of priority based

budgeting in the organization. And we've we've used PB I think for about seven years um is when we implemented PBV. And I think, you know, and I know I've I've heard um comments from council members and and community members. You know, I think when we put PBB in place, obviously it was a a tool that um was definitely needed for the organization at that time. And throughout the years, we we have evolved um utilized PB. This budget process um while looking at divisions implemented um their requests in PBB, we actually focused the budget priorities on council priorities. So, we had a a lot of different ways we were looking at requests this year. Um, we will not be using PDB after this year. Um, this will be a transition year that we're going to be looking at new uh new software for for budget and hopefully it will link into the plan is to have it link into our our new ERP. But looking at something and I know council member Alen, you brought it up, you know, ensuring that we continue to have a values values-based budget. Um that our community has input, that council has input. Um there are a lot systems out there that provide all of that and will work better for us as an organization. So the future is bright. Um and uh no PB after this budget year. Um, so this year we aligned our budget allocations with council priorities and I think we'll go in a bit we'll go through what that looks like. If you remember in February we went through and council um identified their priorities. Next year we'll be aligning our budget allocations with our future strategic plan which we'll be working on and

completing by the fall. Um so that'll be kind of in our transition year. Um, in that same time, Heidi and her team will be looking at revisions to policies and procedures. Um, one of the changes that we made this year was um, reducing the amount of midyear requests that come forward. Um, and that's been, um, kind of a big relief and I think saved us some dollars. Um, we're looking at how we handle budget adjustments and then also just looking at the historical capacity of divisions. So what divisions have available, what money they're not spending. Um all of that is going to be, you know, the process that we'll be doing in the in the next probably as soon as we adopt our budget. So right after um July se um and then again the budget section, they're researching budget software and we're hoping to to implement that that would work well with our so all exciting. Um I think it's going to to be um a big change for the organization but a good change and I think just that along with the addition of a budget section um it's continuing to move organization forward. Yes. Well, the um the new software so it streamlines the process, I'm guessing, and better talks to other areas of the city, ease of um filtering in um financial data for analysis. Um correct. any other like major improvements?

Yeah, I think and I'll let Heidi jump in kind of from the financial side. From my perspective, one of the big improvements is having an outward-f facing dashboard for the community. Um, also being able to produce documents outside, you know, that that are in the software that that all of you can get in and produce for your community meetings. Um, but just to be a better snapshot of where we are. um that you all can look at, the community can look at and frankly our divisions can look at. I do think there a lot of things that that they can't see within budgets. So I think all of them will be a benefit organization on the budgeting side. Um I think the ERP is important to the budget group as well. For example, payroll. When I do the personnel projections and budgeting in our old payroll system this year, we ran into a lot of issues with that vendor. The system was down. Um, it really makes budgeting for a thousand people difficult. Um, just the ease the technology that's out there. Um, there's hard to say because we are just like Joanne said going to start looking at this over the summer. um and with it as part of the ERP process. We don't know what system we're going to have. We don't really know everything that's out there. So, we're actually planning to put together some meetings with communities in the valley to see different systems are using. Um does their ERP system help with budgeting? Is it external? What can we do to help with projections? Rick is amazing and all his revenue projections, but are there tools out there to help us to better um look at trends and do all that analytical work? So, we're excited. There's a lot. It's hard, right? We have a financial system that's in one system. We have a payroll system that's in another. And all of that goes into budgeting and projecting and planning. So, know exactly what it'll look like, but we're hopeful that it really helps us

with the giving us better tools to do analysis sharing with the community, with council, with our divisions. Um, there's not great reporting in our current financial system, um, which makes it challenging for divisions. So that's another thing we're working on even in the transition period is how can we help our divisions have better we can update use throughout the year. So yes as soon as we adopt the budget we will be busy public facing part and anything to make it easier for the public to understand our budget. Um I'm in support of all of it. I'm just highlighting um some of the things and also um allowing staff allowing divisions to better track where they are budgetwise. I think that's something we know I continually hear.

Great. Council member House, um I wondered if you could dive Sorry. It's like, wow, time's up.

I wondered if you could dive a little bit more into a conversation around the decision making around uh priority based budgeting. I I know that it's been something that's been highly valued um within and the community for the time that we've used it. Um, and I also know that there are challenges with it. Like one of the the major issues that often comes up with PBV is that it's seen as as more subjective um and really kind of complicates the process um between different divisions and between teams having to essentially like validate how their their initiatives align with um align with those uh priorities. Um, but I'm wondering if you can just to what went into the decision and um maybe also just speak to one of the things that we heard through the um city manager hiring process and um some of the the interviews and that and typically conversations that were focused around the budget was the fact that while we've been using priority based budgeting for maybe the past seven years, years. We haven't ever fully implemented it and there are challenges to that as well. So, I'm just opening the floor for you to talk. Uh,

sure. Yeah. No, and and from the technical side, I'll let Heidi um handle that. I mean, I think um I think from my perspective, and I think you probably all know this, but I I taught a um a budgeting class in the MPA program at NAU. So budget is and and being able to explain budget from a a very high level is really important to me. So the idea of priority based budgeting is good. It's great. I mean it re it really is um something great for an organization to use to align your budget with community priorities. Set those community priorities. Um this decision was mostly based on the software that we're using. um you know the the software. I mean I I I got here and I think I was in my job maybe a day before um somebody came to me and said, "Hey, you know, have you have you looked at have you gotten into the PBB system?" Not not easy to navigate. Um we had a process where we had divisions actually having to enter things in a couple of different places. our finance and budget team were also tracking requests in two different places. So, you know, I think we did everything we could to build out PBB with the system that we had in place with our current ERP and it just wasn't working. And I think the idea of priority based budgeting is something that I would still support. Um I think it's just getting the right software to implement um priority based budgeting. That makes sense. And I I don't know if you want to talk about the the technical side of things um your perspective.

So we've um been using resource X was our consultant and the programming that we've used for a number of years. And when we began, it was really just the program inventory and how we have all the things we do in the city and how they align with all of those goals. And then um that consultant created um what they call a budgeter tool, which is where you can actually input your requests into the system. Um our first year um we were hesitant about going because that we were the guinea pigs. Um but we persevered and we pushed through and we did it. Um and really every year since I think three years, maybe four. Um we've been helping essentially the the consultant with creating the program. Um but it hasn't been it's yes, we're still doing things in two places. We track requests in their system. Then we still have to download them and get them into our financial system. So there's a lot of um extra work on the budget section side to actually get things done. And um I think it's improved over years, but we still don't have not perfect and now they've been bought out by Tyler. So I think their organization changes are changing a little bit and unfortunately we lost our public facing website this year. they're supposed to be working on a new one and implementing that. But um so it's been a little bit sort of to add to that is we we have centralized finance at the city of Flagstaff. A lot of other business manager folks,

we don't have that here. So we have been expecting staff to it's a lot of work to enter the PBB. So I think we can come up with something that has the same you know it can be PBB just different program um and it's just easier for us to implement and easier to manage.

Thank you both. I I just think that was a an think can fall forward because the way it it may look or sound to like the community in general is that we're abandoning our priorities. But that's not what's happening. What we're talking about is really finding a a system that better allows us to implement those priorities um into a streamlined and more efficient budget process and makes it less burdensome on the different divisions of the the city that are trying to implement all of these things. Website is really important too. making sure that we have that public facing um access and availability of this information that's really answering questions that can be updated. I know that was a challenge over time with uh updates that were going into the the prior website that we had. It it wasn't always up to date or easy to navigate and and see where things were happening. So, um I think overall the message to the community is that this is finding ways for us to better align with and uh implement our priorities. It's not an abandonment of them.

And then in the and then implementing our new strategic plan that will budget priorities. Council member Matthews

Mayor um comment first about that before I get to my question. I just am happy to see that we're changing. I'd heard these comments about how burdensome this program was just to say we had this system which as you already pointed out we can still focus on community priorities without having you know this this named process because it was a very labor intensive effort. So, I'm very thankful that we're getting away from that and sort of just trying to hang on to it just so we can say we had it because we can still provide it in a different sense. Um but my question is um and before we get into new budget appropriations um the new initiatives the custodial team rightway team and um maybe not so much communications but um I I was hoping to see like are are we net cost savings or um is this going to um increase on our budget? there.

Can I before she um Heidi H answers that question, I do just want to recognize team that work so long. I mean, I feel like we gave it all you had. I just want to make sure I recognize, you know, Rick and Heidi and the the budget section. Um Chris Roie, I think, was the one that worked on it quite a bit as well. But and now you can answer the question but I just want

the last original stand for seven years. Um but yes let's talk about first of all the custodial team. So that actually is a net um savings to the city. Um Sharon mentioned we have every year been having significant increases to those contracts minimum wage as well as supply costs and everything else. So, as we looked at it, um, we were able, we had been funding for a number of years, all those contract increases with one-time volume and we actually were able to, it's a new team hopefully with what we've talked with facilities in the group, the positions and the ongoing funding that we already had in everybody's basement, but it should cover the cost of that program. And then that that money we have been in eight years been funding with one-time money. We took that as if we would have had to fund it again in fiscal year 27 and we used that to kickstart the program. Buy the vehicles, buy one time equipment, things like that. In the long run, it should be saving us money because we aren't going to be funding those ongoing time increases with just one-time dollars. We have funded the program with what was already in base budgets. So, we're hopeful um that we're successful in that. And so that one actually could long-term savings to the city. Um the ride ofway team is a little bit more of a it has an overall I think cost to the city. We have added um some additional positions in the streets um in her fund for this program because as we mentioned we weren't able to get that work done with the staffing that we already had. Um so overall I think there will be a little bit of a cost. Um but prior to

this recommendation we had funding was transferring money to general fund to help pay for the work that pros was doing and then beautifification is another contributor to that program because of the beautifification medians in um streetscapes. So beautifification was funding. So, we had funding happening everywhere and hopefully um that what we have recommended in this budget can actually um meet our needs and help to pick up some of the work that hasn't been done. Um so, there is I think overall a little bit of an increase. I think it's two positions more than what we have today.

And is that um since it's coming out of public works, the new crew is going to be housed Yes. in the streets in her. So is that covered by the enterprise fund?

Um it's a special revenue fund and yes um portion of that is covered by um our HERF taxes and then beautifification is continuing to contribute to that too. So they for their any of their projects um that have been done were done with BBB tax um when they have those new beautifification or medium projects then they will contribute to um the cost of the crew that's doing work on those as well. So, and I don't know if you get the same feedback as I do, but I was gonna say as a frequent complainer, um I really really um appreciate this. Okay, great. Turn it over to Heidi. Budget appropriations. Thank you. So before I actually step into the new budget appropriations, I did want to answer a couple of the questions from this morning. Um so the first one, Council Member Matthews, you had asked kind of what for our police and fire do we have um with our we say ongoing onetime dollars, right? So onetime dollars that are funding our actual ongoing needs. So, in the fiscal year 27 recommended budget before you, um, for fire, we actually have $662,000 of items that we approved that are true base needs, um, that we have funded with onetime dollars. And then for police, we have approximately $826,000. Um, not to say, they did ask they have needs above that. That is what we were able to fund um, during this process. Also,

just to clarify that we funded those with one-time dollars when they're ongoing. Correct. Correct. Um and then as you have heard Rick's presentation on property tax shift, um we did shift um $537,000 of items that used to be in that ongoing one funded bucket into a true ongoing um so in the base budget as part of that recommendation. Um I did want to touch just a little bit as well that is truly just fiscical year 27 requests what we were able to fund um their needs as we all know with this public safety ballot measure um are much higher than that. So just to share this includes emergency management, fire, wildfire management, airport and police. So all of the different areas that we're looking at as part of the public safety um our annual costs that are true operating needs current not new things um is approaching $5 million a year that is unfunded. Yes, that's not just general fund. It's overall all of them. Um but looking over the next 10 years, that number does include the inflation, but you can kind of get a feel of that. Um it's over almost approaching $2 million a year for fire. um and about $2 million a year for police. So, they are the two largest pieces of that. So, hopefully that answers your question. Fine-tune it. I heard you say that the 662 for fire and 826 for PD is what you approved, but that doesn't necessarily mean what is actually needed for the current operating request. Correct.

That's their needs um as what's included in the public safety ballot measure. Um fire is about 1.8 million a year and police is about 1.7 million a year. So you can see we are not able to even fund with one-time dollars enough to meet what they consider their current operational needs. We still have a gap. Um the other question I had was related to now I guess I left my notes. Great. Um the minimum wage. I think minimum wage was about um 30,000 total. That impact it's very small and it's about $130,000 was the impact for our starting wages. Um just as a note the minimum wage it was a little bit smaller than a 3% in impact because we are estimating a CPI adjustment of 3% but remember we are already ahead with our starting wage. So we already have a portion of that funded because all of our positions in 26 um are already budgeted at the 1850. So ongoing that impact could be more. So hopefully that helps to answer kind of with a very limited resource in ongoing capacity. You can see that in the general fund a big chunk of that was eaten up with minimum wage and starting wage. Hopefully that answers those questions. Now I will actually get into our new budget appropriations. Um so before we move into the specific budget recommendations, I did want to share some information really at the total city level. Um so this slide is the total budget requests that came forward as part of the 27 budget process. Across all funds, the total requests came in above $72 million. So almost $73

million in requests ongoing in one time. Of this total, 19.1 million of them were related to grant requests. So the true overall operating um request was about $54 million if you take the one time grant funding request out. These requests include person new personnel, operating capital, and then just the general operating needs of the organization. These requests do not include the capital improvement for big projects. The capital projects are not. This is truly just our opportunity. The total general fund requests were about $34 million and all of other funds were approximately 39 million. Um general fund includes requests for 42.48 positions with all other funds having requests of about 27 positions. So you'll see we still have a large need um for positions within our organization. Just had a good conversation about PB and our priorities. Um I think it's interesting. I know that Joanne mentioned we did as a group not only look at our community um priorities you can see here on the screen, but we were looking at council's um priorities that they shared with us in February. Um, and on this next slide, you'll see how interesting it is, how actually all of that really aligned really well. Um, as Joan mentioned, PBB was used for budget requests um, this year. Um, which allows it is a good system for allowing to see how new requests align with the priorities. So that is one piece I will miss. Um is it does allow us to quickly run reports and see oh you have this request you're saying it's for this program and how does that program align with the priorities we see here. Um these requests were then presented with

their alignment to the city's um community priorities. So, this slide shows you um all of those requests that we received, how they actually align with community priorities and objectives. The dark green bars you see in this graph represent the total budget requests of 72 plus million dollars and how they aligned with the key community priorities. The light green bars represent the $54.5 million in requests that are included in the city manager's recommended budget being presented today. As you can see, approximately 75% of total recommended requests that are being recommended to move forward are most aligned or more aligned with priorities. We did focus on what council's priorities were, but those do align with the community priorities as well. Um, so it was all said and done and this again does not include the capital improvement program. So those true operating requests Next, I would like to walk through the positions that are being recommended um for approval. So, um as I mentioned, the general fund requests um included 42.48 FTEES. Um we are recommending um to approve 18 FTEES in the general fund. Um, as Joanne mentioned, I think earlier today, most of these positions come with an offset. Um, there are three of these total positions that do not include a full offset to their costs. So, while it seems like a lot of positions, um, there was a lot of work that went into how can we fund these? Do we have revenue offsets? Do we have, for example, you'll see the, uh, custodial team is up here. So, we do have a 100% offset in our

contractuals and commodities. Um, the total offsets, the cost of these positions is approximately $1.5 million ongoing and we had offsets of 1.2 million. So, the net true ongoing to the general fund is just over 300,000. Um, these positions include offsets um by reducing approximately 2.84 84 FTE group um in areas that we felt um we had needs in others areas and we were able to repurpose those positions um to help fund some of the new needs um in the organization. We had significant reductions in contractual and commodities, for example, for the custodial group um to offset the cost of positions as well as there are a few positions that were approved with um new or increased revenues. Um, for example, the short-term rental fee increase that you heard, that's what we were able to use um to approve the code compliance officer position, which is directly correlated with the need um because of short-term rentals and the increased work on that team. So, we used that related revenue to fund a new position to help in that area. Um, another position that has associated fees is the um, approved fire inspector. Those positions, we do collect revenues for our fire inspection fees. So, the hope is is that as we have enough staff to be able to do more inspections, um, that we will continue to have an increase in those revenues to offset the cost. going to look at some of the non-general fund. As I mentioned, there's about 27 positions that were requested. Many more of these are able to be approved. These have all kinds of different revenue streams outside of the general fund. Um, but just to share, uh,

library, we did have two requests. Um, they did request a some library clerk temp positions. This is for the bookmobile and Forest Lakes. So non city library services these were requested ongoing. We did not have ongoing resources available in those different libraries and so um our group has presented to the county requesting increased funding so that next year we can approve those positions ongoing if that gets through the approval process that they have. Um this is where you'll see the positions um related to uh the new rideway team. So you'll see that they have three maintenance workers, one maintenance technician, and one supervisor. Um, not all of these positions are new. So since we are shifting some from pros into here, some of these positions used to be general fund and now they are um in in the HERF group. So they're not all new. Um, as well as we have approved two street opts and a street opt um road repair and street safety fund. So, this was a request of public works to bring on a project management technician to help with our road repair street safety projects. So, there's a lot of work in inspections that our PMs have to take the time to do. So, they're planning to bring a position in um and that is fully funded by that tax on to beautifification um and arts and science. They are requested a beautifification arts and science project administrator to help move their projects forward. Um and this position is fully funded between the beautifification BBB tax and the arts and science water services has the um three positions we're recommending to move forward. The plan a plan reviewer an industrial pre-treatment inspector as well as an electrical and instrument

instrumentation program manager. Solid waste um they have a few needs for positions. Um the one that the team is recommending moving forward at this time is a bin maintenance technician. Um as Rick mentioned, this fund is going through a rate study um in this calendar year. They do have needs that we can't meet with um their current capacities. And then last and but not least is the Flagstaff Housing Authority. They requested um essentially three um maintenance worker one temp positions. are having um problems with hiring from the outside contract services. So, we are spending the money on an outside service. They're bringing it in house. The city manager recommended budget also includes a number of reclassifications and retitles. Um, so this year I know that there was a lot of conversation in February of can we look as an organization to repurpose positions, use them elsewhere, what can we do to try to meet some of our needs. So um there were many divisions that actually looked into that and how can we take positions that may be vacant, repurpose them to other um needs um to fund them. And through that came um there's some positions where uh the organization we felt that we could actually reclassify them to a different position to meet needs or to help meet higher needs. Um and so here you'll see those positions. So in the general fund we um have a public record specialist which is a reclassification from an admin specialist. We have a collection supervisor and collection specialist. Um the collection specialist does a reclassification of a senior customer service representative which is actually the same grade so there's no cost um but repurposing um with all the changes that are happening customer

service um to an area where we need that and then the supervisor is the refresh of a collections administrator position um in planning and development services there's a reclassification of an associate planner to a planner um and then a retitle So again just a change of a title and scope of the senior a senior planner to the preservation officer. Um this position or this is a retitle but this one also um DBB is actually helping to pick up some of the cost of this because of the nexus with those um duties that that position does. And then the last um in the general fund is a open space supervisory classification to an open space manager. This is a continual part and I can't believe it's been since 2021 that pros became a division. Um, but Rebecca and her team have been progressively each year looking at that organization and trying to get the structure into place and this is one of the last supervisors um to actually kind of move into a section role and for the library included one request to a library administration manager. Um, I have to say this is key role. We work with this position a lot for budget. So, um, super important. And then, uh, last but not least is the parking fund. Um, we are actually looking to reclassify three of the parking aids into parking aid 2 positions. And with that, the parking aid lead position um, actually has to be reclassified into the next grade. Well, as that's all impacted by our starting wage. So, we have a lot of shift in the parking. This actually was planned as part of the rate study that we just completed. So, this is actually just following through with what was um planned as part of that study. That's kind of the personnel and I think

we're ahead. So, if you all want, I'm happy to keep going and maybe we can get out of here early. Question from Council Matthews.

So, Heidi, I have a question. Um, I'm going to ask it in two parts just to make sure what I'm getting at is covered. So, um, and again, I'm still trying to get over the new information or new look information I obtained by watching the public safety meetings, but I was surprised not to see um any new authorization for staffing for public safety. So, I'm curious. So, this is my question, but in two parts. Um, We have vacancies in fire and in DD and um like we talk about this whole public safety issue that we have that we're we've got some new forward thinking what we need for the next five years but we also are running a deficit. So I was just surprised not to see like at least something in there to try to keep up with the loss right that we're running behind. So have vacancies in these divisions and their request from those departments for FTE that just weren't

Yes. Um, so yes, I think have vacancies. I will have Shannon and probably the chiefs um in fire and police currently. Although police I have to say for officers I think they're pretty darn close to full at least going through um FTO and everything like that. Um so there there is vacancies. Um but I don't that is not I don't think why we didn't approve positions. Um, I think it's a multi-prong approach for public safety because of we're going through the whole public safety ballot measure process and we don't really know how that's going to come out and end. Um, I think the divisions we had asked a lot of them to to hold back their request for that. Um, there were a number of professional positions I think approved or requested through police. Um there were boots on the ground I guess firefighters requested through fire. Um I think to start mention seven and I'm looking at the chief just to make sure I'm saying this right. Um but again we did not have the ongoing resources to approve those positions. Um so I think it was just strategically and like I mentioned we were look most of the

right were shifts within divisions of repurposing um things like that. I don't know if something to add. Do you want to Shannon, do you want to cover the positions?

Yeah. So, I went back to this slide because there's actually two positions on here um that are specific part of that public safety initiative. Um council sector as well as the animal control supervisor. Um and then I also can tell you um what positions they asked for um that were not included. Um because I I figured it might be a question that comes up. So I pulled it um to have it ready for today. Um there were uh two captain positions, one a training captain, one a logistics captain. Um we have continued to fund um through the police department dispatch captain um which Casey Gonzalez has been filling that role for I believe a couple of years now. Is that right? They also asked for arson ad, SWAT medic, ADP pay, um a fire captain, paramedic, EMS, um a firefighter, paramedic. Um so 12 of those positions they were proposing doing the safer grant. Um that's the station seven that that Heidi um mentioned a little while ago. um three or the dispatch captain uh we did already cover that but through the PD budget so that's why it's not listed here because it's currently funded um police asked for the police administrative specialist the police physical health and wellness coordinator shift differential pay addition of three spot ad pay assignments contracted personnel services of 75,000 that they use in dispatch an evidence that we did not fund. Um and and Heidi already touched on the fact it's not

that we didn't want to, you just don't have a whole lot of ongoing resources. So, um, and and I I get it that we'll have a more in-depth conversation when the public safety tax, uh, discussion comes up, but when I look at the tax shift, if we do that, I think it's a great idea, it's going to bring to our general fund 537,000 more dollars. But right now currently without adding the future needs of fire and and PD there's about one four 1.5 million in deficit. So even doing a tax shift is not giving us the operational money into the general fund to cover that. And so I'm just I'm I'm just surprised that we're just kicking that can more down the road because that is just getting bigger, right? that need. Do

you want me to? Yeah.

Okay. Um I think the difficulty is is that we don't have ongoing funding. And so the reason that we chose to take what we're currently funding with onetime dollars is to try and balance that need, but we didn't add anything new because 537,000 isn't going to cover those positions that we talked about. It's not enough. Um and and even the fire inspector, that's one of the positions that we have offsets for because we're able to charge when they're actually doing that that inspection work. Um so it's not that we don't want to, and you're right, we still have many unmet needs, but you have to have ongoing dollars to do that. And that 537, we basically started chipping away at things that they have ongoing right now that we've been funding with funds, but we didn't add anything new. And I think that just u confirms to what we mentioned earlier this week about looking at all these things over time that that the city funds to different agencies and and just other things that we've done um because they're part of what we want to do and we don't have the money in general fund to pay for this but there are things that we're paying for that aren't critical services and I'm not suggesting any one of be eliminated. But I think it's worth it to the citizens that we look at those things that we have elected to support outside of our basic operations and take a hard look at, you know, do we can we still afford to do that if we can't afford to pay. So,

I think just to add to what Shannon said, I think just because of our structure and our tax structure in the state of Arizona that we're never going to fund everything funds. I think we're we're we're going to be always funding some portion of public safety with one time. Um, so I I just think that's the reality and I thinkunities in Arizona say the same thing. Thank you. I appreciate Shannon bringing that up. I think in general in this budget we looked at current. We didn't add new. So even all of the other divisions we really were a new software. This a new program that's going to come with new ongoing needs or is it expanding? We tried not to approve any of those. uh they're really um kind of just getting us by as you know too we only had $1.5 million when we started in one time money. So that's when we have $24 million in ongoing one-time needs every year. So um look at that across the board as we

questions on council member Garcia then council member Spence there. Um, so while we talk about uh shuring up some of our one-time needs with some general funding or playing with money, which I support, I think it's a great idea. Happy with Rick's work. We're not leaving uh one-time grants off the table that are upcoming, are we? U it seems that they've been advantageous to us now and we've found a way to keep up with them and to an extent sure that we're continuing to push those one time grants even if we don't have the money to fall back on.

Absolutely. $19 million of citywide requests there are grants did have to look at some grants a little bit more closely those that have a much higher match of prioritywise is the match for this grant a higher priority than else um but I think there was very few grants um the safer grant was one we recommended not looking at that um this year because we aren't quite ready for that um new station crew to come on and right? That does have an ongoing impact because it helps to cover cost of um firefighters up front shifts over to the city within two to three years. Same with the cops grant. That's another one we had made a decision this year. It's not time. We don't have a way to fund that long term. Um but overall, we really do look at as part of

you're becoming more strategic as to what is feasible in in our alignment. I appreciate that. Thank you. member Spence.

Thank you. Um question overall question about our budget process integrating with and dialoguing with the county's budgeting process. I'm thinking of uh our joint operations library dispatch center that serves the USFD and the county sheriff. Um, is it a formal um discussion that goes on uh our budget and the county's budget? Just uh informal conversations.

Um related to the library, it's a little bit more formal. I know that Heidi and library team, they present to the county um what the needs are um either for the city library um needs, right? Because we do get a library district tax portion from that. So, if we have needs, they do present that as well as since we oversee um a number of county libraries, so they do present those needs. Our budget processes don't align perfectly. Um so, we don't meet together. Um and if Heidi wants to bring up her discussions a little bit more. And then um for like the dispatch services that is a city provided services. So we really do our budgeting needs um and with the police department. They come up with their needs and um then we share that with the county of what they might be seeing for increased needs. Um if there's a big like CAD system or um something like that. So it's more of a city process and then we share the outcomes. Um and kind of for the other leaf shared services, the county does the same. They do the custodial and things. They do that budgeting and the needs on their side share the impact that the city will see. I hope that answers that.

Just add to that. Uh, Mayor, Council Member Spence, uh, with the library, they just had the, uh, library, we just had the library county budget meeting yesterday, and we did request, uh, those positions that Heidi shared to be, um, be budgeted as well as a percentage increase. And so, we're going to wait to hear back from them to see if any of that was granted. We do that each year after we've sat with uh, finance and budget to see where we have gaps. And basically we do that for all of the county libraries. We tell them specifically what those libraries need as well as what is happening with our own libraries here because there's been times in the past where we have to raise uh for instance uh compensation for employees and all those employees are city employees and the county isn't raising their employees at the same rate and so we have to have those really tough conversations. So, we'll we'll be hearing more about how that meeting went.

I can see that you've given uh thought and attention to this and um sure there's a good working relationship between the city and the county.

Can I just something? I think one of the items that we're continuing to talk to the county about is um getting uh flood control district funds for city projects. Um many years ago the cities will get an allocation of flood control district funds. There was a county attorney ruling that changed and we're still trying to figure out the best for those of those funds for city projects. Um the city of Flagstaff is the largest contributor you think of flood control district fund to the county us and then uptown Sedona. So just know that we're continuing to have those discussions. I have a meeting county manager tomorrow to discuss that. Any opportunity I think to bring that up would be helpful as well.

I think that that's it. No other questions. Now, um I'd like to shift specifically um and have some conversation around the general fund. Um this slide before you is a very high-level summary of the resources available um through the budget process this year and how um those funds were allocated. Uh so as you may recall in the February retreat we shared with council that we had approximately a million dollars at that time in available ongoing resources and $1.5 million in one since the February retreat. We did utilize a number of funding set aides um during this budget process to fund many of the requests that you'll see. um these included we as we've mentioned we've set aside money for our pay for performance and step increases. So um you'll see those um are included here to increase our um ongoing capacity because we have set those aside in the in the fund. Um we have a lot of one-time funding set aides that we have included um in previous years knowing and anticipating operating expenses and needs um as well as a number of infrastructure needs. So you will see um one-time set aides. Um we have a number of these in the general fund. For example, election. We know every other year at least um we have an election. So we actually set that money aside within the entire 10 year five 10-year plan. Um so that we have that capacity every other year and we're not searching for those costs. Um we have as mentioned earlier that we um it is working on the software modernization project. Uh CJ and that team brought forward a five plus million dollar three to fiveyear project um last year. We knew we

couldn't expend and complete the project in a year. So we took one-time resources we had last year and set it aside for the next three to five years to get us through that entire stepped project. So you will see there is another additional $1.5 million in this year's budget for software modernization but we had set that aside last year so it's not taking away from our gossip. Um we also have annually facilities um pros has some parks and recreation set aides for operating capital needs. We set those aside in the five-year plan or in the five and 10 year plan. Um, so when they have those needs each year, we're using those set aides that we've already taken one-time capacity that we've had in past years to give us those resources that we know we need. Um, and then over the years, as you've probably seen, we have very significant infrastructure needs um, at the city. We have lots of facilities that need a lot of um, and so we actually had put aside $2.5 million for a number of years for those infrastructure needs. Again, we can't deliver all those things all in one year. So, we took one-time capacity we had and set that aside. Um, unfortunately, fiscal year 27 is our last $2.5 million. So, we um have recommended a number of infrastructure projects to to utilize the last of our sets on the funding set aside. The 2.1 million is what we set aside for the pay for performance and app. and the 11 million is the combination of all those different set aides I just talked about. Um, another change and new resource that we actually have ongoing is Rick mentioned in his presentation earlier this morning is the BBB um cost allocation. So, we did step um this in as the first year in the process this year, and that is gaining us about

$126,000 in ongoing resources by having those funds start to contribute to the ongoing costs of those shared services. Um, another one is the short-term rental fee that Rick mentioned that gained us about $115,000. That shift itself was the 503,000. And then we had some other small um sources and changes that give us about $67,000. So um for ongoing resources anyway, we ended up with $3.9 million through all of those changes I just shared. And then um in addition to the set aides for one time, um we did have some year-end savings, projected savings, salary savings in some divisions that have had some significant vacancies. So we were able to use some of that to give us a little bit more money in the one time. Um so we ended up with about 13.9 uh 7 million um in those funds. So our table ongoing as I mentioned 3.9 and total one time of 13.7 um what we share um you will see so in our re I will talk in a little bit more depth about investing employee infrastructure um in the coming slides but um everyone's always interested and to know that general fund is still supporting um different funds outside of the general fund. So, if you're interested in that, um so the ongoing um $33,000 that you see um for the general fund support to other funds, this is actually for a shift for the downtown enhancements. So, this is the portion that we used to um have for pros had portions etc. Um but now that contract is in the park flag fund. So, we are shifting that um resource to pay help pay for the general

funds portion of that contract. So, that's what that piece is. Um and then the $1 almost $2 million. Um there's a variety of funds that are receiving benefit of this. Um the airport is receiving about $400,000. Um this is to support ongoing airport operation needs as well as they do have some infrastructure needs um at the airport which I will talk about on a coming slide. It's about 17,000 for sustainability for our ESCO contract. We have about $400,000 for the housing um fund for housing incentives. RIP, so the water resource infrastructure protection fund. We do have a $200,000 grant match. Um this is for a potential grant for additional funding for the training facility. Um so we thought that was great money spent if we can get that facility which is not fully funded currently through a $200,000 grant match to finish out that. So example of looking at a grant and saying what is the benefit of um and then the last portion is 157,000 going to finish out the USGS renovations and just a note that money is um reserved in the general fund through their rent and lease um fees. So that is exactly what the purpose of that cut is. Moving on um to talk about the employee investments. Um as I mentioned earlier, this continues to be a high priority and you can see these are the costs to the general fund. Um so pay for performance million the starting wage adjustment um 32,000 19,000 year critical adjustments I talked about earlier. We set aside 160 thou7,000 in the general fund for those covering the metal medical and dental insurance increases. You can see that's a big impact. The ongoing to

maintain that cost share ratio with those increases of 6% that's about 370,000 ongoing. Um and then the parental leave. Um there are cost impacts in other funds, but general fund has the biggest um in fire and minimum manning and staffing, right? As well as those are groups that tend to have um the younger population of people taking advantage of those benefits. Um so that's why you'll see a bigger impact the general fund than we would in most of our other funds. Overall general fund impact was about $2.9 million for investing in our employees. Now shifting over a little bit to our infrastructure needs. As I um mentioned, we continue at the city to have a number of them. Um the recommended budget includes a total investment recommended of $6.8 million. Um of this, many of these are set aides. Um for example, fleet um fleet vehicle and upfitting is about $2.6 million this year. Um we do have a set aside um of about 765,000 I uh set aside annually for per fleet replacements which is never enough um especially when you have a cost of $2 million for one fire engine. That makes it um very difficult. So this replacement this year of 2.6 million includes $1.8 million in replacements which is 15 vehicles. But to note 1 million of that is one fire engine. So, um we do have a very limited resource available for um there are recommendations to add to our fleet um of 300,000 in there which is partially grant funded. So, we do have some grants that potentially can help us with purchasing some police vehicles. Facility improve 2.7 million that you see here. Um there are a number of projects. I'm not going to list them

all. Um, but big ones of con of of note this year is city hall roof replacement. So, this is a big project that I think we've talked about since I've been working here. Um, there's continues to be issues with that. So, it's exciting that we're actually able to move that forward and that's a big project. It's estimated of this total 2.7 million that's 1.5 of the total projects there. Um, also we have a number seemed to be the thing of the year. So, we have um costs for evidence warehouse roof replacements. Um there are some roof replacements or not replacements, but repairs out at the airport for hangers. Um we also have um some uninterrupted power supply or UPS replacements at city hall. We found that we have some needs for that with recent events that have occurred at the city hall. Um and then there's a various number of smaller projects um throughout the city. Um there's a number of things like carpet replacements at fire departments. Um they do have needs and things that get in that carpet. So they're going to be replacing that at a number of um facilities as well as some other small projects. Um there's also anticipated um airport having some issues with their HVAC. If you've been out there, they have had temporary units for quite a while. So, we actually took some of our set aside out of the general fund to um do those replacements and repairs, hanger roofs, and then there's also some critical airfield lighting repairs at the airport that need to be done. So, we have funding for this year. As mentioned, the IT software modernization 1.5 million set aside, this is year two um of that. So we um are nibbleizing that to fund their request to continue moving that project. And that is all I have. If anyone has

any questions before I hand it over to Joan and Shannon or lunch is in 15. So do we want to just want to break early for lunch? Is it here?

I'm not here yet. I have a comment and that is um you going through the thought processes and and tradeoffs and balances is so helpful in us um understanding all the different pressures on the um budget and um and and understanding I guess where um additional attention um needs to be and I just so appreciate all the elements that go into the decision making over you know whether you do this or you do this or can you be part of this um it's really helpful

mayor just to add to that I mean I think one um we asked divisions to prioritize their requests as well so that was really helpful during the process. We did go back to some divisions and fixed there was one specific example with the airport where the airport came back and said yes related to a position. So it was a it it was a good process where I feel like the divisions did have a good back and forth. Go ahead. I was my brain is slowing down because I'm getting hungry. I'm trying I was trying to write this down fast but missed it. Um you mentioned an ESCO contract.

Yeah, it's an in and I don't know if Nicole's still here. She much better. There she is. Um what it propels, but the the ESCO contract, right, the um environmental management fee can only pay for certain um activities and that contract has to do with savings, right? uh which is not an eligible contract or eligible item for the EMF fee. So the general fund has to pick up that cost of that contract. I will let because I don't know enough details on that one.

I think you got it pretty pretty well. Uh good morning mayor and counsel. So that annual fee is for the duration of the contract and that's the measurement and verification of performance. So it allows us to analyze all the data from all the improvements that were on to ensure that our um the company that we contracted with Nesco is actually performing. They are liable if they don't meet those performance measurements in every year annually they actually have to reimburse the city. So it's a really important element of the metric verification. What was the cost of that? 16,000 16,600 actually.

Yeah. And that is that's the fee for the duration of our contracts.

Council member Garcia. Thank you. I had a I had a question that's not necessarily um this police department. now be a good time to talk about it or should we wait you have a better part portion for that? Is it related to something that we a request or is it related to the general request prior to this uh section of uh slides? It was more on that topic and then we just moved past it. I was like well it's it's not really a relevant question and I just figured if we had a little extra time we could we can kind of I could talk through it a little bit with the chief. um

being some

make something up, I'm sure.

No, I would this is this is really just a a point of conjecture, I guess, for for the most part, but my mind goes to like relevant criminality. Now, I know that that's subjective, uh, but when I when I think about budgeting and and the capacity of employees, well, we could take one easy one off the top, and that is the legalization of marijuana there. Like all of a sudden, you didn't need five employees because of that. And this is leading to a bigger a bigger point and that is um like for instance now without saying too much I think it's a fair assumption have a lot of a lot of patrol units on the street making sure that everybody stops at every stop sign for instance because we have bigger issues and we don't have the capacity for that at the time. Um, is there a metric that says that we need more patrol uh doing traffic stops because there's um, you know, more vehicle accidents? You know what I'm saying here? Is there instead of like funding a a bigger police force to like do like micro prior prioritizations on things that may not necessarily that maybe as a a society we have moved out of the criminality aspect of that in like traffic stops versus people getting hurt in traffic accidents because they're not being penalized for their the mayor ever like we're good, we finally got enough cops. We're finally covering all the criminality in town. Or is it a process that we're kind of always trying to develop because we have been so far behind for so long?

Yeah. Um, mayor, members of council, council member Garcia, first of all, I value um the strategery with which public safety. Um, couple things and I'll try to get through everything you said. Um, first and foremost, you know, we always talk about there's no finish line in public safety. So, there is no fourth quarter or no shot clock or we're in the end zone and we celebrate the win and it's it's over. So that's an a neverending endeavor of public safety that is constantly evolving. We always talk about to the solutions for public safety uh today and into the future will not be accomplished the way of thinking of the past. And so to start with the marijuana conversation um we have seen pivots in society on some things related to marijuana. Um, first and foremost, the legalization has streamlined a lot of the cases that we had to manage. Now, our our 14 detectives manage just under 200 cases a year, which is about almost a hundred cases over the national standard, how many cases they have to service victims. And when you pump a bunch of small possession of marijuana cases in those, that can bog them down. It can bog evidence down. It can bo bog down courts. So, we've seen that create some efficiency on the back end and not so much in this community, but in other communities, they've had to respond with uh additional concerns related to illegal grows and the black market still being present. So, that's kind of the marijuana issue. to your other points around efficiencies. Um, you know, there's been a tremendous almost tipping point post Floyd, post pandemic, of us having social conversations about we've been saying for so long that there's so many things we do in policing that come into our 911 center that don't involve

sometimes even EMS and and police, but community has been conditioned. You know, if I were to ask all of you, what is an emergency? I think you'd all give me a different answer. Um and so we've worked really hard. You know, an example of that is the deflection program where we have a member from Solari Health in our comm center um deflecting, you know, three to 400 behavioral health calls a year and a police officer is not even going. Um as it relates to the staffing, you know, when we talk about the baseline, the the old archaic way of looking at a resource allocation in policing was taking population per capita and very simplifying per officer. What we've realized is in our approach to civilianize and professional staff more and our approach with the complexity of the demands of a police officer and downloading, you know, we'll download, you know, just around 5,000 body warn camera videos and the management of that. Um, it's not just per capita and response times. That's why we embarked and you afforded us a budget opportunity to spend some money uh with PFM and we did a workload assessment. We have that data. Um that data we held on our requests this budget cycle trying to see what happens with the lay of the land on the ballot measure. Um but you know in that number that's 24 additional professional staff and 20 more sworn per that baseline today's needs not 10ear strategic today's needs staffing workload assessment said we held on those requests in this budget cycle. appropriate direction and approach to see what happens with the ballot measure. Um, so I hope I answered some of your questions.

Yeah. Yeah, Chief, I really just wanted to get I'll let it breathe a little bit and and you brought up a good point that was in the back of my mind while I was trying to, you know, articulate what I was saying earlier. Um, and that is, you know, we have Don Wesley Pal Boulevard coming in and while we're watching the budget, I'm like, well, how do we, you know, we got to wait for a lot of that tax money to come in before we can get it started.

Even while it's getting built, we still need officers to respond, you know, fire department to respond and and such. So, mentioning that you're thinking about the community needs before we actually get there is important to the conversation. And I think um digging into a little bit of the finer points and details, it helps me at least understand that uh you're you're not just wanting to have more police force to uh to arrest more people. It's genuinely to keep the community safe, the modern day police uh abilities.

And I appreciate that. And I want to be clear in front of my peers and my boss. You know, this is not a a public safety PD specific approach. I look at my peers out here and they all have needs, staffing needs on some things. The one thing I you know, I'm responsible for the police department. You know, this number of 119 sworn has been around here for decades, the same number servicing this community. And I think each one of the divisions can speak to some of that. So, how do we take pressure off of this general? I think one of the interesting to understand is we want to be more engaged in our community and spend more time humanizing and letting officers engage is right now we're running just just under 10% available time. So, if you're a police officer today going out in this city, um you're going to run call to call to call for nine straight hours and not have any available time to say, "Okay, I'm going to go do some traffic enforcement because I got a traffic complaint by a school or I'm going to get out and engage a business owner house that might be selling drugs in our neighborhood." They are literally going from they're report writers and call takers, not problem solvers and police officers. And so building a staffing model that allows what I like to see is about a 40% available time. So of that 10-hour six or call to call to call but then four hours to program in partnership with community or other things to solve additional problems. And that's where these additional numbers get us to a model of much greater health.

I really appreciate that. And thank you mayor for giving me the time to kind of just free flow with the chief on this one. Tuesday's council meeting, Chief Conway will have his 2025 annual PD report. And I would love eventually too if we can figure it out, you know, be between now and November, having PFM come in. This is a group of worldclass retired big city police chiefs and academics and mathematicians and statistitians to really give you an assessment of what they did in this great work for our workload assessment. That'll set the tone for our 10-year strategic plan. Thanks again, Chief.

Well, lunch is here. So, mayor, I think after lunch, we'll come back and do the the council priority,

budget request, focus, and then we have our CIP update, which I think may take a little bit longer. So, I'm glad we're a little ahead of schedule. They'll have a lot of a lot of questions. If you recall, we've been capital to council and council meetings and we um this is uh just a presentation on a few projects that um would be needed to bring to council for an update. Um and then we'll have a discussion on um parking lot items and then just some input from you if there's something that that you want to discuss and something that you think is uh potentially missing from the discussion today.

Um any final questions or comments before we break? So we have half an hour correct. Let's give an extra three minutes. Okay. And come back at 12:30.

had an extra 4 minutes and 12 seconds.

Counting what they were originally gifted, so they're ready to go. I hope everybody had a nice lunch. have to say that loudiefie fire chief you say

we're gonna go ahead and get started um so we are gonna start with a discussion on um align priorities and just as some background if you recall when we had our retreat in February February. Um, sounds good. Oh,

January when we brought in Jeff Kennedy and we had that excellent day where we had our leadership team, we had council and we broke into groups um and the council identified um aligned priorities. So, um I'm I'm going to turn it over to Heidi Hansen in a minute, but these are the priorities that council identified in that priority session. Um and what we have done today is um aligned the budget items in the city manager's recommended budget with these priorities. And I will say um I know several of us who were in that room were kind of constantly making sure that you know everything we discussed and approved fet fit into one of these buckets. Um, so I'm excited to to have Heidi kind of walk through and show you what that looks like. Um, but just as a reminder, uh, core services, we talked a lot about, um, our employees, employee compensation, personnel, uh, public safety also included in core services. housing um kind of all on its own vitality which we had tourism, business expansion and small business uh capital investment uh pros forest health sustainability and infrastructure. And again, um, these are items that we will further refine in our strategic planning process, but it really gave us a good start in this budget process to not only look at our PBB priorities, but also these priorities. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Heidi.

Hello, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Council members, Ted Hansen, intermediager. Um, I think I get the fun part today because we get to take everything that all of the divisions have been asking for and to show you what we're hoping we're recommending to you to be funded um that go along with your priorities. So, I'm going to try to not take too long, but I think that sometimes in some of the categories there was a long list of things that the city manager's budget team took into account. and I think that you should hear about them. Feel free to stop me at any time and I will and ask a question and I will have somebody that's really smart in that room come up and answer it for you. Um because of course I only run one division in the city. So um I don't run all. We have a lot of leaders here today. Um before I start though, Council Member Spence, I want to get back to you. I heard the results from the library city budget and we didn't get everything we wanted but we are going to be receiving $40,000 um to help continue to administer the library district program and also Tuba City the bookmobile and forest lakes uh libraries are actually getting the funding that we requested as well. So, um, we didn't get everything, but we got something, but we also didn't get everything because we have what we call growth funds at the library, and those actually have revenue in it, and so we can continue to use those growth funds as needed. So, I wanted to get back to you on that one. Um, okay. So, good start. Your first core um, services priority is for personnel. And I was h I'm happy to share that Heidi Dairberry already covered this. So um basically she is showing that on this slide that we are making a huge investment um in our personnel and then also while investing in employees that line that

again accounts for pay for performance step increases any um market adjustments that still were going to be done and of course the benefit package that we give to our employees. So you can tell these really huge numbers and I think the budget team took thoughtful consideration um for um employee training. Uh when it comes to training, we had several requests for ongoing educational training. We actually need more CDL training. We want conference training. We have educational and certification training that has been asked by several groups. Um, and we also have to take into account when we offer training, we have to include registration, lodging, and meals because those have all increased. And I know that you've all been taking your own conferences and trips, and you're seeing that. So, that has been taken into account. When it comes to the line item of tools and resources, we are actually um been asked by different divisions to up our uniform budget because there's a lot of needs there. And this includes really necessary things like our gloves, our safety toe boots, our vests, our heavier jackets. We're also investing in power and hand tools, traffic prices, um background checks for recruitment, HR's in there, and we also are looking at our uh subscriptions, uh cradle points for vehicles, and last but not least, a surveyor drafting and survey supplies. So you can tell there's a lot of divisions in that tools and resilience area. And like Heidi had mentioned earlier with the Eco Pass, we continue to want to invest in it because we had a 75% increase in wrership. So people are now taking the bus and they're not driving the cars. And so we want to continue to um have that available for our team. When it comes to the public safety core priority, we are

uh looking to fund paramedic ad pay, public safety cancer insurance, medical cancer screenings, redemption metal mental health re uh services, postcancer diagnosis screening, animal control staffing, and overtime as needed because of course we can't predict that. Um for training, we're looking at paramedic training classes and certifications. super important. Um, we're looking at our engineer and captain academy and we're again increasing travel and lodging and registration expenses that have gone up and we're also always looking at professional development and so there was some professional development asked and that's going to be happening uh for supplies and equipment. This is a lot happening over here. I just need you to know this is um including maintenance funding, replacing of turnouts for wildland inspection, cleaning, repair for our hazmat suit testing. We're looking at equipment for new engine and water tenders having we have multiple care unit requests that we're going to be funding. Again, we're looking at a specialized software for background checks. Um, we're going to get an evidence warehouse scissor lift, cameras for live animal traps, um, bomb squad supplies, console radios, and last but not least, SWAT ballistic vest and rifle rated plates. Huge list. I think I could go on. That was just some of them, but I just want to let you know we're covering it. Facilities were funding for station maintenance cost academy training, burn room repair, and construction. And again, you all talked about this earlier in another council meeting, our uh relationship with the gun range operating costs that are going to be something that we're partnering on. As far as technology, facilities, and communication, we are funding a human resources senior

analyst. You saw that earlier. We have several application modernization projects. Again, that was told you in great detail. And we are also going to be doing work on software replacement throughout our organization. Again, we talked on that earlier. To maintain technology, we are going to fund annual increases to several of our softwares. We talked about that. Neo gov enterprise. Um even something as as simple as Microsoft is having to be looked at. Also going to be doing SCADA upgrades, neighborly grant and loan management software, budgeting, and more. I think Joanne touched on all of that. We're also looking to further uh further our server infrastructure maintenance, our conference room technology, especially our staff conference room. We all talked about it. Um PC replacements because they reached their age and we have to do that. We have licensing needs. We have cloud-based web services that we have to take care of. We're looking at our fleet management software and we're also looking at our software for smart irrigation, our smart irrigation system. When it comes to facilities, we did talk about a lot of this. We're going to be doing HVAC maintenance repairs and purchases in a lot of our facilities. We talked about the airport for one. We actually had, I believe, six units go out at the airport. So, um some makeshift things to keep things cool. and uh we're hoping to fix that. Uh we also have uh facility improvements that we're going to be doing here at the public works campus. We are going to be looking at the city hall metal roof replacement and uh PD evidence warehouse roof replacement. We talked about that carpet that was talked about. We're going to be looking at our library entrance maintenance. We have that beautiful library and we have a beautiful beautifification project that happened there to make sure it continues

to be beautiful. We're going to be looking at increased chemicals to maintain cooling towers at the ice rink and we are also doing overall prevent preventative maintenance in several more facilities and we're also looking at a heritage preservation uh easement for the Oreium and that was something that's been talked about council meeting so we haven't forgotten about them. As far as communications, we are going to do funding for the digital media specialist that Joanne talked about in public affairs. We are going to look at our state of the city second event mayor and we're planning for it so that we can make sure it's all that you want to see you and Joanne. We're going to have um our improved social platform we talked about with set plus. We're gonna have additional posting postage for meeting notifications so that no one can say I didn't hear about it. Right, Stacy? Uh we're going to have our newspaper advertising is needed. We're going to have printing for postcards for required notices. We're going to have outreach for youth programming and increased connections with our sister cities. We've had great success with our sister cities board this year. And as you uh know, we now have a relationship with Navajoa and the fire department, and they're going to actually go and travel this year to um reciprocate because they came and saw us. When it comes to housing, uh we continue to support personnel requests. Also, the incentive policy for affordable housing is at the tune of a million dollars. Um we have an fire inspection services and our employee assisted housing program that is still intact. Uh when it comes to the last cap, we are looking to fund a consultant to assist in code writing to implement it. That will be very important. And for the water services impact studies, this supports a water services plan reviewer. It will assist with increased cost of contracted services for water and sewer impact

analyses and our overall system modeling. Uh for Flagstaff Housing Authority, that's listed. We'll have funding for maintenance, heating and cooling, our heating and cooling contract. We have to continue to worry about our garbage, trash collection, plumbing, landscaping, overall maintenance, and um that's going to be included. And then our staff is training for the choice voucher program. So, we're I think checking some boxes here. Economic vitality might spent too much time on No, I'm kidding. Um we're very excited that we are going to be funding for code compliance officer position uh managing uh helping to manage illegal dumping property abatements per property care standards purchase of graffiti removal supplies and equipment because we want to make sure we look pleasant. Um for business expansion it's kind of a lot of different categories. So beautifification, we told you we were going to fund for another beautifification arts and science project administrator. His team has slowly been growing over time and I can tell you every time we continue to grow it, more and more projects are getting done. And we did 28 projects in the community last year. So I can tell you when you have the people that can continue to do the work, things get done. We will increase the flower program. So had lots of areas besides downtown asking what about me? So we continue to have a plan with street some of the other outlining areas and we wanted to add to our beautifification action and grants program. We have a lot of people that are now asking about wanting a grant and so we're going to be providing that to the community hopefully. When it comes to business development and support, we want to continue our to increase our business incentives for our businesses. So the

ones that might want to do a relocation change or they want to add technology into their business, they can apply for these grants and we can help serve them that those ways. We're also going to be doing some continuing green business boot camp, the hackathon and green initiatives with sustainability and gravity labs that's in town. For tourism, we want funding for video creation and distribution. Everybody wants to see video and so we need to continue to update those. We're going to increase our search engine optimization. We need more people to come to our site to want to stay on our site and spend more time. And we want them to um we want them to build their itinerary so that they can come here and have the best time possible. We're also going to increase our festival marketing. We have tons of festivals in this community and they're asking to have more marketing to back them. Another thing that we've been doing, but we're going to do it a greater degree is helping the North Pole experience. Um Scott Pace, the owner of that experience, is working with Little America, but he feels he needs a lot more support to stay in this community and not take the program somewhere else. and there have been um some talk that he was looking in prescuit. So we have asked because we feel like this is something holistically that helps the community especially during the holidays. We have asked to um be able to back that program a little bit more. And so we have some fun things in store. We do need to do a new visitor intercept study. We need to know who our visitor is. It's been a while since we had our last one. We're working on that. We're going to continue to increase holiday decor, especially in downtown, so that we make ourselves as welcoming as possible. And then last but not least, um the Flagstaff Visitor Center uh needs our love because we have a train station and track that also utilizes it. So,

we're going to be doing some parking lot repair, an HVAC replacement, and some window sealing. When it comes to the airport operations, uh this is for aircraft operations tracking software. We need to know who's coming into our airport, right? Don't we want to know that? And then we also going to continue to do our maintenance, our wildland hazard mitigation and removal. Um talked earlier about hanger repair. We're talking about those HVAC systems. Again, important know is we have got to keep the animals off the runway. So, we have to look at our fencing. We have to look at how they're coming under the fencing. And that's what we're trying to remedy. uh for airport rescue firefighting uh it's just for ongoing education and training certification that they are required to do and then um some communication services tire replacement on some of our vehicles and again those HVAC systems that we're talking about and then park flag uh this is for snow plowing uh our public lots it's to maintain our flowird app phone and plus our passport report software that we use that has been increasing. So, we're definitely going to be doing those changes. We have to do card reader replacements. We have more people wanting to do um you know, you put your debit card or your credit card right up there and it recognizes it instead of having to shove it into the machine and hope that it comes back out. Well, we're going to be fixing it. So, um that's what we're working on. And of course, Park Flag has monies that will be going to the enhanced services contract that Shannon touched on for the downtown business alliance contract. Next slide. Capital investment for general infrastructure. That's going to uh funding will include title appraisal environmental reports on city properties. Uh third party plan review

and building inspection services, a surveyor position, um relocation of our East Flagstaff Library. If you haven't heard, we're going to be asked to be moving um before May of 2027. So, we're actively looking for that spot. Um, we've actually offered to somebody who waiting with those negotiations and Bryce Dodie, our real estate manager, is helping us. And we're looking at a new project management technician in this category. For parks and recreation infrastructure, we're looking at funding for increased organic fertilizers and herbicides, future upgrades at the athletic fields. I think we'll all appreciate that. Uh, Bushmaster Skate Park, expanded concrete. We have storage yard fencing, uh, turf spraying equipment, Ramada concrete replacement, Thor Park is looking at dugout shade structures. Uh, I will have to say Rebecca and Amy have done a very healthy list here and I appreciate it having um someone that actually knows how much our visitors as well as our locals come in here. They're also going to be doing some work at the Aquiplex, at the Josie Montoya Center, and at Hal Jensen Recreation. And of course, they want to always maintain our open space. So, they have put some very well thoughtout um requests in there as well. For water services, uh funding for things that you can only imagine that Lee Williams is having a lot of fun with. Um small pumps, motors, bearings, they have to have roof repair. They need to paint. Um they have a new forklift for chemical delivery of their generator for chlorine dioxide maintenance shop roof, conference room replacements. Basically, he went down the list. We're checking the boxes. We're taking care of our water services. Sustainability is funding for social media and community engagement, materials, and supplies to support expanded volunteer events. I think you can say Steven Thompson has done a heck of a job getting us involved, and they

have uh hundreds of people that volunteer for sustainability, and we're going to continue to keep them busy. Um they have a Flagstaff food action plan implementation as well as an urban agricultural initiative and they are actually looking at interactive data visualation tool to track and share progress on their climate action plan that you all been actively supporting. And this will help them plan their goals, their targets and their actions. and can they also going to continue to look at the electrical vehicle um maintenance and more of the areas that we can actually put our vehicles and get them powered up. And then last but not least, Wild Resilient Home Initiative. This is funding for that initiative. It's year two and this will help assist residents with home hardening. through all that. Um, now we are on this, but before we go on, do you have any questions? Sorry, Council M.

And I have really smart people in the room that will answer their own questions. So, if you guys hear it, come on up. Council Matthew. Oh, I'm sorry. Because it's the vice mayor suite. Um I I just wanted to highlight what caught my it all caught my attention but off the list that I wrote down and then I do have a question.

So I think that this is the first time and maybe I'm wrong but the first time where I'm really seeing clear picture of what we're doing and what I can bring back to my constituents of you know might have some gripes but look at what we're doing. So, I just want to thank everyone in the room who worked hard on this. Our personnel, the investment, um, I know that that means a lot to all of you, but to council as well. Public safety, that's what I want to come back to. Um, core services, the heritage preservation for the ORM. Thank you for keeping that on the list. And all of the roof repair and communications housing. I cannot believe that we got the incentive policy to 1 million. thought it is wonderful. So, thank you. Economic vitality beautifification. So, I'm on the BPAC commission and I can tell you that things are certainly getting done. Hopefully, you all can see it when you drive around town. And, you know, I I vend a couple of the festivals and I can tell you that they are really community-based. I know we get a lot of tourism for our festivals, but they are really for our community. And I just think thank you for helping them increase their visibility in the community support. Thank you for reminding me about the animals that are on the runway.

Always forget that that want them on the big safety issues. So thank you. Um cart flag I you know all of the the services they do. The one thing I I just want to bring up the Flowbird app. I don't know if we're looking at like changing the app, but as someone who is downtown every day, I can't tell you how many people complain can't get it to work. And I know you know all of the issues, Heidi, it's not better. It's I feel like I hear it more. My promise to you is if it doesn't improve like they said it's going to, we will be getting a new app.

My words. I've had the same complaints and I've talked to the staff and I said enough's enough. So, I promise we will be looking into fixing that.

Parks and I'm almost done. The parks and wreck, the infrastructure with um their team, they work so hard and I'm glad to see that we've got their infrastructure needs top of mind. Same with water services. I love that Lee is just going down that list and making sure that what he needs is on there. sustainability, the volunteer events. I I try and attend those and I know they have a small but mighty team. So, I I'm glad to see that we're helping foster that. And my last one, the wildlife um home initiative, home hardening. I had that assessment. I believe the mayor did as well and possibly council member. And you know, luckily I didn't have a ton on my list that I had to to address, but great program. And I went to a a community meeting in my neighborhood less than a month ago and they they talked a lot about that. And you could hear everyone in the room was like, "Oh, I didn't know that this was an option." And I just love that they're out there in the communities really neighborhood to neighborhood and explaining that we are offering that and what a what a benefit it is. My one question and thanks for allowing me. My one question with the cancer screening for public safety. I hear a lot about that and I just want to shed some light and see what are we funding, is it ongoing, is it one time and and how are we making sure that we're addressing what they need here after

Shannon or I'm going to send it over to one of the chiefs. or maybe Heidi's coming up. He's going to answer your question. We had a lot of discussion about this.

Yeah. So, if I recall off the top of my head, um with all the numbers we went through with the budget, um I really think we funded a portion of it ongoing. So, I think it's the initial screenings um and blood work that and stuff that we funded ongoing with part of that property tax shift money. And then there is a portion that's one time and that's the followup pieces. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, Chief, because I he's shaking his head. Yes. Um, so we weren't able to fund all of it ongoing, but we were able to shift part of that to the ongoing some of the logic that we ongoing expense because we didn't follow up entails um cancer diagnosis screening. Yeah, that's the one that's not ongoing. Okay,

just uh program implementation of this is such that we will do about a third of the department a year through three years good results and um and a good result can also be early detection for a firefighter. So that's one of the things that we're excited to get our our team. it's kind of best practices and we're starting to see uh more carcinogens in the work we do, not less. And so we're really um pleased with the opportunity and hope we can that for our members.

Just want to I I hearing how important it is and I'm glad it's in here and I I just want to put voice to it that in the future I hope we can continue to enhance this for you all. Um, it's important. You You basically are saving us and saving lives and I want to make sure that we're doing the same for you. So, um, housing

and I too really appreciate this breakdown. So I had a for a second council. I just want to tell you it is the brilliant work of the team that is bringing this forward and Shannon made this super easy for me to give you this detail to the people that deserve. So just so you knowbody go ahead. So Michelle McNelte might want to be back. Tiffany and Talis Young.

Tiffany ask. So, um, Tiffany and Michelle and I had a conversation, um, a month or so ago about, uh, incident policy for middle market, which I brought up in a fair and it was, um, discovered then or or realized then that our incentive policy for affordable housing actually allows for 150% AMI for home purchases. um that a developer would qualify for. The problem was our zoning code only allowed for 100% AMI. So was a there was a disconnect. So that was like a a unicorn buyer, right? So when we talked about it, we talked about just changing the zoning code cap to meet the affordable housing. Um and so we wouldn't need two separate incentive policies. So, um, when Michelle gets back, I'd like to know where we are if if that was changed. So, that million dollars, I think the million dollars is great. We need it because last I heard it was $ 250,000, I think. But I would like to know if we change that in the zoning code so that builders can also build or purchase homes with an AMI of 150% and and take advantage of this incentive policy. Um, so that's probably to

Can I actually Justina's here and I think Justina baby picture on the social

I love that

Maril or Maril mayor council Justina Costa your housing investment director. Um, I'm happy to answer your question. Uh, specifically you're absolutely correct. The current incentive policy does allow developers to access the incentives um when serving up to 150% of the AMI. Um what we decided as staff after meeting with you, we had several internal meetings is to address some of the smaller aspects of the zoning code um that Michelle would be best to speak to on this. Um wanted to wait until after the last cap recommendations came forward and so we're very close to that. The minute we have those, we're going to be revising our incentive policy. And so with that, we'll tackle

top of mind. So the really quick fix outside looking in, but um I think that would be really impactful for market housing. Thank you, Justina. So Heidi um on the beautifification was 204,000 I think. uh one time ongoing. Oh, it is ongoing. Um so is that comparative to last year? I mean is it an increase or is it what we fund and is this coming out of general funds? BBB. Okay. So is this an increase or is it the same

has to do with the position ad and then of course some of it has to do with some of the operational things that we've asked. Do you have anything you wanted to add? No, I was just going to say uh most of it is the position half of it and then a large portion of it is increasing that flower program. It's actually ongoing funded you'll find in your capital's budget comes out of BBB. And then um park flag uh the 96,000 is that out of um park flag fees?

That's out of I believe that our our balance in the in the fund balance, but I'm going to let Heidi go too.

Yeah. So that 900,000 it includes the contract. So there is funding that's coming into park flag. um education, tourism and general fund that are funding the actual total cost. So I think about 700 and something I can't remember the total contract off the top of my head um of that is related to that contract. So majority is covered by the fees but if you recall there is contributions for areas that we used to pay for funding elsewhere that is coming into the fund to pay for it as well.

Okay. Thank you. I have what I think is a quick question. Um, under sustainability, I don't remember where that was. Do I understand correctly that sustainability is taking on the recycling education? Nicole.

So, thank you for that question and you're actually teaser alert going to hear a little bit more about this next week at council, but in the new fiscal year, sustainability will be taking over education and outreach uh regarding recycling and we're really excited to share some of the highlights of our planned work in that space. um require uh specific to this budget that does not reflect uh the funding for that. Um so I believe that and Heidi please correct me if I'm wrong. We're going to reinstate the transfer out from solid waste to sustainability. Yes, that is is included in the budget. So solid waste is contributing to that program. So yeah.

Okay. have uh some outreach funds and again really excited to share our plans with the council on the 28th. Thanks for the question. A whole hour. You told me you don't have any more questions as we don't have any questions. You did a great job. You did a really great job. I I was equally impressed when I saw all of this. So, um I think that everybody is getting a little something and I think that we're checking a lot of boxes that have been needed to be checked. So, thank you for your time. Thank you.

Thank you, Heidi. So, Heidi stepped in the last minute to do that. So, thank you Heidi for stepping in. Um so uh Shannon and I are going to cover the um check request focus and the limitations go through um so you know the lens we were looking through when reviewing budget requests. First one is that we funded one-time ongoing budget items from the last few years first. And I know this makes a lot of sense. Uh, basically what this means is that we time ongoing requests that were funded for several years from divisions. Um, that they would just keep submitting them every year. So, um, Heidi and her team did a great job of pulling out those items so divisions did not have to resubmit them. Um and so those were kind of all taken off the top before starting process which actually made things a lot easier. Um we also didn't allow any um items under a thousand submitted either. So that was helpful as well and asked divisions to find those within find those items within their budgets. We funded increases to contractual and commodities for existing programs. Um that was something that we looked at. Uh we also um did not approve any new items that had any ongoing expenses. So we were very careful about looking at items with that lens. You just see from what Heidi presented, we had a big focus on council priorities and um we all had a a list of items that we, you know, had been brought up in the past and made sure that we um discussed those and did our best to to approve and

and items forward in the process. We maintained existing in infrastructure and then we provided tools and resources to get the work done. I think in one of those slides, the personnel slide, you'll see that we actually broke out um all of the things that that we staff for them to to do their jobs, which is also um a big expense for the electric. I think we've talked about it quite a bit um already that um we um had limited resources going into this this budget and we focused on realigning staff and contractual resources. Um I think Shannon had a the example on the janitorial services that pretty much right away we started recognizing that divisions were submitting requests for increased costs related to janitorial and the team still come up with, you know, a potential ultimate way to address that, not only for this year, but for um years going forward. Uh we use new revenue to pay for additional staffing. Um and again, I think we only had two positions that did not have offset. Um you know, we short-term rental fees that's coming to council, I believe, on May 5th for that fee increase. Um we're using that to fund the um code enforcement position, but don't tell the legislature. Um we're also um offsetting the costs uh for the new fire inspector um with fire inspection fees. Um we also um there there was a surveyor position approved and that was actually a an assistant um real estate manager that we um are using that that salary line for that position because it was a great need in our in

our organization. So really tried to to be creative in in this budget. We reduce set aides that do not replenish. Um, and Heidi Dairberry just reminded me that 2.1 million ongoing is actually our comments and step plan increases. Um, we've talked a lot about the property tax shift and how we we're looking at ongoing revenue and dedicating that um to public safety ongoing needs items of that just over 500,000 that will all be dedicated to public safety. And then we limited grants approval to those with little to no city match. And Heidi already went through some of the grants that I think just in general just grants that um fund positions are um are ones that we likely will not it's an ongoing cost to the organization. I'm turn to Shannon. We've heard we were able to accomplish a lot presenting to you today. New things that we've heard from council is that you want to understand what we're not able to fund. Um and so that's really what this slide is focusing on. I just some general categories. Um and and wanted to to let you know that every year we have to decide based on what what we have to accomplish what our priorities are going to be because we typically every year since I've been with the city don't have enough funding to cover what the needs are. Um and so so we've done our best effort in that. Um from a staffing perspective um we're unable to fund about 29.6 FTEES. Um, some of these, uh, have been in

information technology. We talked about the ones specific in fire and the police department this morning. Um, we also had some in public works that we couldn't fund. Um, we did do a lot when it comes to uh, training and to providing tools and resources to our staff. Um, but we weren't able to do all of the training. And so that's why you see that on this slide as well because there are some things um that we were unable to cover the entire request. Some of our uh facility maintenance um an improvement to an a building. It might have been $20,000 set aside for folks to make sure that they have money to do preventative maintenance on their facility. Those were some of the things that we couldn't get to um with the funding available. Um, also some new software subscriptions. Um, this might have included monday.com, Canva, um, risk management, some additional AI licensing or AI call taking, um, digital subpoenas, um, some specific e-learning systems, um, Paragrine, the ability to connect with a police department from a riskmanagement perspective, um, not risk management, emergency management, I apologize, the wrong management group. um and records requests. Um and then lots of folks had computer accessories, things that they need um that go along with their basic computing system. Um we were unable to get to some consulting services, some planning documents. Um we weren't able to fund all of the radios, the safety equipment, the training equipment, and other public safety tools. So, I don't want to go through every single thing that we didn't cover, but these are some of the examples that we couldn't um extend the money um to be able to include in our recommended budget presented to you today. Um, and then the

last piece that I'll cover for you in this particular section, um, and Council Member Matthews, you talked a little bit about this, um, this morning with the service partner contracts, um, is the city does, uh, provide funding, um, to, uh, companies in our community that provide services, um, that are of benefit to the city of Flagstaff and the community members that we serve. So in this year's recommended budget, you will see um High Country Humane. Um they have a contract increase that's written into their contract, so that will be honored. Um we did not do CPI increases for service partner contracts where it was not required. Um we did have a new renewed contract, I think it was actually just this Tuesday on the Black Live experience. So we would honor the dollar amount that you would have seen as part of that conversation. And then if you recall back in December of 2025 at the retreat, um we talked about the uh service partner request process, um we used that request request process this year as part of the budget and we did receive two new ones. Um one being the family food center, um which we did fund um and then the other um again we did not have enough to achieve that as well. Um, so that's what I have for you as far as our service partner contracts and certainly uh get to our next section if you have any questions for Joanne and I.

Yes, council member house.

Thanks Shannon. This is great information. Um the reference to high country just reminded me of a message that we saw come in not too long ago about um I think it was asking the animal control uh services between high country and humane. I don't remember the full nature of the the email, but it was talking about how with High Country as the primary partner, them being essentially overfilled right now, um having that contract fully with them is only contributing to that overfilling or overflow. Um, and I don't know if that's part of this consideration at all or if that's a separate conversation.

Yeah. Um, so High Country Humane and Cookanino Humane Association announced today that they're merging and um Yeah. Um Okay.

Yeah. So, so I I don't know all the specific details about um whether I didn't read the release that closely um whether the contract comes in under country. Okay. So it still comes into high country but they are combining um resources and I thank you for asking this question because I wanted to remind us all that that this we are legally um required to have an animal control contract by the legislature. Council member Matthews.

Thank you. Um, is it in a different category? Um, when I'm looking at this list, I know that we have a line item for shelter as well. Would that just get left off or did we category? They would be included in the no CPI increases for the service contract. So, there is several um contracts that are included in that. So, we're just continuing to pay this year what we paid last year shelter services as part of that. It's a h 100,000 that we pay them. Do we have a a total dollar amount for all these service contracts? Off the top of my head, but we can find that out for you. Might have it.

Council member Matthews, I um I know you've asked this on Tuesday. Um I want to work with the team and kind of give his life of um outside agency service contract council as well. Council member Garcia. Thank you. Mayor just messed us when you were discussing it the new funding for Flagstaff Family Food Center. Did you mention the request that was nonfunded? Mention the name of it. It's quality connections.

And the reason being is they actually receive funding from the city um as one of our our direct service providers and I believe they also might get money through you way. Is that accurate? Yes. Looks like we're good.

One more question. I apologize. I It just came to me and I think this might be the right place for it. We talk about housing um in in funding services that help people that housing need help with it. We don't talk about land acquisition for future housing reason. Justina, do you we we do have funds set aside for old acquisition for housing.

I don't think it's new money. It's last year um city council allotted 500,000 for our land acquisition pod. So we have that from last year piggy bank essentially to use when opportunities arise. I'm curious more about that. So our next one meeting if we can have that discussion I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

And also just on the housing discussion um we're coming back to council. I think we're we're going to do it um first weekend in September. seen us yet. Um to have that discussion about the ongoing housing fund still doing kind of some due diligence and then our I think our team has been you know pretty focused on safety discussion but um I think the timing of that will be really good to have that discussion that housing fund.

Thanks for bringing up our the priorities the council is is bringing forth. I've seen that since I've got on council a priority. It's tackled by the management department very quickly and then the next year we have another priority. So maybe and during our budget meetings you also see sprinklings or smatterings of what's going to be coming up on the horizon and I think that that housing component is just one of those ones. So it is perfect timing. Thank you. Are we ready to get started with capital improvement program? Promise I am not going to present on this section other than to kick it off. Um so before we h I hand this over to Paul and city engineering and his team to present as well as pros and Rebecca and her team. Um I did want to just do a very high level summary um to share the um fiscical year 27 budget is currently um estimated at $286 million for our capital improvement program. Um you can also see we do have an estimated um program cost of about 151 million for the current fiscal year. Um we just um recently that carry forward process and all those are were due a couple weeks ago and the budget section is working on those. So um a number of the projects that are included in that 151 million are likely going to have all or part of them carrying forward into the 27 budget due to a variety of reasons. Um the total 5-year capital improvement program you see here before you is a total of $826 million. So a lot of money is being invested into um our capital improvement instru infrastructure. Um you could see the different areas. Um this includes general government, streets and transportation which are various as transportation taxes, BBB projects,

water services is a big component, solid waste and airport. So, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Paul to take it off for the rest of you got it.

Um, um, to the engineer, um, thank you for having us. We've been asked to present on just, um, major projects that we have going on. We have a lot more than what we're going to show today going on, but we have our senior senior staff that um you probably seen that council before and you've seen a lot of these projects before as well. Um last summer we had a lot of construction going on in town. This summer it's mostly the Butler and Lone Tree Christine. If you see we have a lot of projects that are getting close to breaking free. They're under design. So the next next few years, but you will see a lot of construction. Um we've also had big challenges with the cost of projects. Costs have been increasing immensely. The prop 419 projects were approved back in 2018. So we're like six years from that. So we're seeing a lot of cost increases. Luckily, we've been very good at getting grants. That's been kind of saving us. Uh but yeah, we continue to to go for grants and I'm going to turn over. She will go through her project.

Good afternoon. I'm Christine Cameron, senior project manager with capital improvements. The project I want to talk to you about today is the Alone Tree overpass. Um this provides a great separated crossing of the BNSF corridor and the Rio flag. um extends and widens Lone Tree Road up to Route 66. It is funded, as Paul said, by uh 420 and 419, and those were passed in 2018. Um design is complete. We did get started with the corridor portion last summer and uh we're working on the remainder of the corridor portion this summer. So, uh, Ames is our contractor and they are anticipated to be done with Butler Avenue. Have that, um, fully open to four lanes of traffic in late May, rest of the Lone Tree, um, corridor south of there. Then we hope to, uh, start the overpass portion in late summer and that's bridge, the above and the bridge. Um, that is Sterling. You can fill in the blank here. waiting on I have a theme of all my projects waiting on agreements between the Army Corps and VNSA and the city of Flagstaff. So, but legal is working very hard on those. I'll pause here for any questions. Okay. Second project is the downtown mile safety uh and connectivity project. This is a cooperative project in between the city of Flagstaff and BNSF. It includes construction over our local projects such as pedestrian underpasses uh in the downtown area, Milton Bridge, um also track improvements for the railroad. The design is at 95% currently. Um it is funded from an INF grant with contributions from city of Flagstaff, BNSF, uh AOT and Metro Plan. Uh currently we're working with FRA, Federal Rail Administration, uh and BNSF

on some coordination on construction delivery and we hope to get started in the spring of 20 on construction. And a portion of this project is also the Amtrak platforms and that's funded by a Chrissy grant flag. Um this is a cooperative project between the city of Flagstaff and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Um they are the lead agency. It channelizes and reduces the 100red-year flood plane uh through central portion of of town um through a series of open open channels and box coververts. Uh the design is 95% complete. Um and we are finalizing agreements with BNSF and the Army Corps um and the city of Flagstaff and hope to get uh started with construction in the spring summer of 2027. And this shows a rendering of um of the Rio. Uh the uh the rendering on the left is uh the the lower reach which is phase four. And this is kind of by the BNSF um property. It's an open channel with a maintenance road. Um and then the um the rendering on the right is closer to uh it's about element bonito. So it's right across from like Flag High and um the old public works yard. So it just shows kind of what uh the finished product will look like. want to add anything from your trip new exciting news for the Rio?

I was gonna ask about laundry. Okay. First, so are we um Paul mentioned that we're things are just costing more projects. What What is What are we looking at for the long overpass project right now? How much are we want to be over what you predicted the the project would cost? The bond was worth I believe it was 73 million and the cost uh total cost estimate uh today is 143.

Oh thankful. If there was something I could do about it I definitely would. And we have looked at areas to reduce cost, cut out scope. There's just when you're building a bridge and roadway, there's not a lot uh really that's substantial funding that you can um kind of claw back. So, and that raises the question of how we're paying for the difference. Heidi, do you want to take this one? My finance guru, we just have a chair up front. Yeah, I don't know about the money tree. It's um guilty. I think the question was how are we paying for the gap is that

so a big fortunate portion of it is that when we did the initial estimates of the bond we are outperforming that with the tax. So um a big chunk of the gap is that we are exceeding the revenue projections that were in the original bond. Um, as well as there is, uh, right now a pretty significant portfolion. I think it's about $14 million of Prop 419 funding that is actually going to help to cover that estimated gap. Um, it's been it's a little hard planning because we plan to have to issue debt. We know once the bridge starts that it's going to come quick and big for dollars. So, we've been really working every year. Rick and I spend a lot of time of have to issue that debt, right? We only have revenue to pay that debt back until the end of that task. Um, so it's been a little bit tough, but knowing that we've had really good revenue and now we have quite a bit of money sitting in that fund. So the last couple years we've been earning great amounts of interest on that. So um, through a combination of all those things is what's helping to cover the gap. I am a little nervous as every time I talk to Christine I think it's new numbers that there so we're running out of options of how to continue covering those but hopefully have that it would be big dollars to try to continue find the rest of that question Joanne you want to update on the Rio meeting that we had in DC or do you

Sure. I would love it. Yeah, sure. So, um I cannot remember her um what her title she's like deputy chief of the army. Assistant Secretary, Deputy Chief Assistant of the Assistant Secretary of the Army CSA. Here you go. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Very important. And this is

and she is uh the highest up the chain I believe that we've ever met with. So we were lucky to get a meeting with her and it was in the Pentagon. um and she seems like a nononsense person and gave us some suggestions for um ways to kind of break apart the project so that we ensure that we have the funding when we need it moving forward. So, we'll be doing all of those steps. and you may want to make this more um official language than what I'm using, but um I thought it was a productive meeting and um I was appreciative that she gave us her time. We expressed our extreme frustration that we have been waiting so long and that the city has accomplished every objective and we've overcome every obstacle that has been put in our way. and we would appreciate um a little bit of muscle getting some movement on it. She seemed ready to do that. Yeah, Mayor I don't have anything to add, just that she um reached out right away for additional information and I think not breaking the project apart but making sure that we can continue to move forward with construction. uh

because we were told that we needed X, Y, and Z all in place before construction could start and she said, "No, not necessarily. We can do this and get started and then do these other parts." That's Yeah. Yeah, that's a better way to say. There was something that just went into the core a couple of weeks before. Infrastructure, not paperwork. Yes. PP and you already know the acronym. Yeah. And I'm talking to the district about the feasibility of um moving forward with that. So is Bob. So hopefully we can get going. And um I just I want to see that thing built.

Does she have access to her attorneys? Could she talk to them about building language? It's uh on the list of one of our assets to her. Okay. Good. Thank you.

Sloppy explanation for me. No, it's all good.

Good afternoon, mayor and council. My name is Ben Marker, project manager, senior lead with capital improvements. happy to talk about a couple of Butler Avenue projects today. The first is Butler and Fourth, which extends essentially from I40 to just east of Fourth Street, as well as along Fourth Street from Creststone North to Sparrow Avenue. This uses Prop 419 funding. There's a $19 million build grant for construction. Uh it's going to be a four-lane uh roadway with off- streetet bike and pedestrian facilities, signalized midblock crossings, new mountain line bus stops, modified roundabout at uh the Butler and Fourth Street intersection with a bike and pedestrian underpass. I'll be able to show that on the next slide. And our 60% design is completing uh essentially this week. I'll move on to the details. So on the left side here, we've got a graphic of the uh roadway proposed cross-section. You may have seen this already. Uh two lanes each direction. Uh approximately 15 foot 16 foot median. And you can see we have separated pedestrian bikeways. Uh approximately five foot buffer from the back of curb to those pathways. Uh we might call that a parkway or a landscaped area. And on the right graphic, we show a two-lane roundabout uh modified slightly to have a right turn slip lanes throughout. And the intent is a pedestrian uh as well as drainage underpass from northwest corner down to the southeast corner. Any questions on this project?

Councilman Matthews, for clarification, the roundabout, is that on the intersection of Butler and Fourth? I mean, not the roundabout, the uh pedestrian underpass. Yes, it'll be underneath this roundabout for Butler and Fourth.

All right. And moving on. Next, we'll talk about Butler Avenue complete streets project. This been an ongoing project, so you may have seen these graphics uh in the past. Uh the project will include separated bike lanes, protected intersections at Beaver, San Francisco, and Sawmill, enhanced crossings. Uh so we're upgrading uh the one at Humphrey's and installing a new one for Oiri uh coordination with Lone Tree Corridor and Overpass Improvement Project. Of course, the budgets at $12 million. Uh we have a safe streets for all grant of 9.6 million and an easy smart grant of 2.4 million. Uh we're currently working on the design and construction is expected to begin in spring of 27, last about a year.

Any questions on that one? Such great news. This has been a great project.

Hand it off. Thank you. Get the new guy in there. Vice Mayor, council members, Trevor Henry, new guy. A little bug in my throat this morning. So, I'm trying not to sound like Peter Peter Brady. But I'm going to talk about this wash drainage. So I'm just going to hit the highlights because before our A team will be before you on May 12th give you a deeper dive and update on the project. So I'm just going to hit the highlights. Proposition 441 was November of 2022. It was voted on 76% approval. So the following day our TAC team the tech public advisory committee got together and started planning how we are going to deliver these mitigation measures the sunnyside area. So that started there and the commitment from the TAC was to be complete by monsoons of 2026. So almost a little over three years roughly of what we wanted to do. And so that was a a huge feat um a great undertaking by this group of people and just an amazing feat and you'll hear more about that on May 12th. But again just trying to trying to hit the highlights. So if you think about storm water, you think about concrete, think about um gates, stuff that looks pretty standardized. Trying to do here from my my thought was we tried to add some beautifification, make it look a little nicer. So on some of the photos you'll see on the next slide, we tried to add a few things that

made it look a little nicer. So, the spruce wash project when we're done, we're going to have some beautifification projects that will come through to make that look a little nicer. We have some safety fencing that is going to separate the public from the drainage. And normally, it's just chain link fence and these really nice looking safety fences. Again, we just tried to make it look a little nicer as we were moving this forward. The budget currently is a little under $40 million and we have Proposition 441 at 26 million. Other funding sources at about 14 million. This program is completely funded. Some of those other funding sources are drinking water, waste water, street safety, some of Proposition 419, and then we did have several grants that helped us out construction. And what we did is we had seven GMP packages come before you. And each of those GMP packages had portions or phases of the projects itself. So that was just kind of a strategy on trying to complete the program within the time commitment that we made. On the left side of the screen, you see the map. We've shown this before. We started with seven projects and now we're up to 10. And again, it's just how we evolved and how we decided to to complete the strategy of of the program. We had five designers, so we used our on call. five designers on board and each of them took a a discipline. So there were some with hydrarology and hydraulics, some with roads, some with um fencing, just again

just taking use of what we have before us. And then we went out with an RSOQ and we got a Seamar construction management at risk which was Eagle Mountain Construction. So they delivered Eagle Mountain delivered all seven GMP packages and so right now we are in the very end ending stages of the we hope to be complete by June of this year and that's the commitment to be done before the monsoon start in 2026. And we started construction in June of 23 202. So if you really think about it, that was about roughly seven months after the bond proposition was approved and then again we started into construction.

So again a year after the flooding correct correct. So that just shows the commitment that this TAC had to complete this program our citizens. Trevor, I have a just a a point of clarification. Um this project was necessitated by the fire correct that caused the it wasn't poor planning um back in the day and it was because of the fire.

That is correct. So the museum fire which happened upstream on the spruce wash corridor there was some un some areas within outside of city limits but on the forest land that had to be mitigated as well as part of what we did for spruce wash within the city limits. Yes, it was all part of the the fire the museum fire that took place. So here are some pictures of recent pictures of some of the programs or or the projects that we did. On the left side is the wedge plate with the wedge itself. We're waiting on the gate inlet. We're waiting on we're waiting on the control panel. So that's why you see the pieces of equipment in the center because they're still working there. But essentially it's 98% complete. In the middle is the Linda Vista crossing. This is where we added several sandbags barriers, but now we have a crossing. And there's an example of the safety. It's nicer looking than chain link fence. Then on the very right side is Dora Avenue channel just south of Dora going towards Aoyo Seiko. So those are just some recent pictures of what we've done. again you'll get me.

Any other questions?

Just wanted to add a comment. Um I was figuring out what needed to be done in this area as far as fencing was concerned and I know that we went back and forth. I just want to thank the your department for being so open to new ideas because there is some safety risk and without great teamwork between all of the departments we wouldn't have had such a good finished product. So, thank you guys for being so amendable those changes on on the side on Sunnyside um because we didn't want that to look like chaining fences and stuff like that like a place that excluded people but we also wanted to be safe and it was because of that partnership that we were able to get what we wanted in that neighborhood. So,

thank you for the comment council member. So one of the one of the biggest commitments again from the TAC was try to make this a project that keeps the measures against the flooding also looks nice and we also had a construction manager at risk on board. That's one of the advantages we talk with them give them ideas they give us ideas what can be constructed and do that within our budget. can you talk about the u final striping that's going to be done on cedar after school gets out? Uh yes. Yes, I can.

So here here's our map again. So number four is Cedar Crossing and with that program we added road uh we we added a mill and overlay scope which was from West Street down to Fourth Street. So we improved that road. We applied a temporary striping package or a scenario and that was around the fall winter of this past year. So now we need to do the final strike. So what we're going to do is May 29th close Cedar Avenue and then through the through the weekend. So Sunday the May 31st with the striping. There are different applications of striping that need to go down. So 3 days, two and a half days is is required. And this is very similar to what we did when we did the the temporary strip while we closed the road for a day and a half and we applied the temporary striping. But now we have the final striping which needs a little more time to

it will never be closed again. Fingers are crossed. Sterling has a question. But you told me no in the chat. Give me thumbs down. I know. leaned over and told her I had a question. She said, "Put a Q in the chat." No, I just back to that other slide. You talked about the fencing. I noticed the fencing or the gate within the channel. How does that work when there's flow on the right in the Dora Maroyo channel?

So, there is a controller. It's all um designed by hydraulics elevation. then a lever is is hit or actuated and then the gate will close electronically. So then the water will continue to back up in the storm drain all the way to Linda Vista and then should it get to a point where we're higher than certain storm event it'll fill up go into Linda Vista then down Grand View. So, what we've done is mitigate some measures. It's not quite solving the entire flooding storm water issue because if we were to do that, we'd have bigger improvements, but we have space. We have a corridor that we need to work within. We have residents that we need to have a quality of life still that we need to design around. Vice Mayor, members of council, Damian Peterson, project manager with capital improvement. Personally thank whoever got rid of starting with a joke this year. So when you woke up on Monday morning, you didn't think you'd have the blessing of hearing about John Hall twice in the same week. So we covered a lot of the bullets on this slide on Tuesday. I'll just cover briefly some of the ones I didn't cover. We are funded by Proposition 419. One thing I didn't mention too is if you've been on John Leon Powell between Lake Mary Road and Lone Tree, it's going to have a very similar feel to that. Currently designed with the 10 foots on the east side and four and a half foot bike lanes on both sides. So, southbound

and northbound. Wanted to touch a little bit on the bike and pedestrian facilities. And then we talked about the Brio crossing with that conceptual exhibit 60% design. We just did our comments from the city. Just submitted those today to our designer and doing construction through 2020. All projects that we do in capital, but we also do vertical projects. So we have the opportunity of building things like fire stations, the aquiplex. We have to build those too. So I've been asked and very thrilled to take part in being able to help build the wildland training center and the management fire station for that. So I get to work with the fire department. Great group there. We've had several tours with partnering agencies looking at some of the facilities that they have uh components of equipment inside and outside different ventilation systems. Uh it's been really fun to learn. It's I'm excited to do vertical. Here we have two different buildings with serving two different purposes. Very open floor design. They like having a meeting center in the area. There's a lot of meetings that happen, a lot of coordination that happens. It's fun to have a common area where that collaboration can happen. As far as the wildland training center, this would be entities that come from all over northern Arizona to utilize this facility. And as you recall or may not recall, we got the grant from the state from Arizona DFM who also funded their basin to help build this facility as well. So the wild training center will have that large conference room, classrooms to bring in those organizations for training as well as kitchens and restrooms. Uh we had RSOQ so statements for statements of qualification. We had seven that submitted on this one was open for a little over a month. That committee is currently convening. Hopefully we'll get back to council in June or before break so we we can share with you the selected contractor for that. And then the other one, the Thomas Appal

Boulevard Housing Master Plan and public safety complex, sometimes referred to as the Shark Bite because it's a lot faster to say. Um, this is a conceptual drawing of that 27 acre parcel that's along just John Johny Pal. So, this is John Musley Pal. Loan Tree is just off of here. The cemetery property is just off. Go back to your previous slide. Yeah, that's a great idea. Our criteria. Thank you, Paul. Right where John Wesley Paul dead end basically. Why is it called a shark bite? I don't know. I don't know. Because if you look at a shark's teeth, they're very jagged and rough. And this is very smooth. Just a bite out of the hole.

Yeah. Probably sounds better than the chunk. While we're Well, we're paused there. Um you want to go back? Sorry. Yeah. the construction 26 through 28. That's just for our portion. That's correct. Yeah. I sorry I don't have any update to share on I do the other the other the other two um Pine Canyon and Canyon Del Rio. They're they're in their final approval for construction plans. So they're they're close.

Okay. But don't have contract. Uh so on these 27 acres, this was an interesting uh RSOQ because we needed to partner planning for housing on this 27 acre parcel along with our public safety campus. So we are in this conceptual exhibit. We've dubbed this section here the public safety campus. So on that public safety campus, we're going to be constructing a fire admin building uh and also a fire station and a police substation. Working with the police uh police department and the fire department to make sure that we're satisfying the needs, future needs of their departments as we look forward to how it's going to lay on this land and how we're going to bring in our housing master plan to this area too and working with housing as well obviously. So, this is a great committee that's on this uh to make sure that we're serving our community in the best way possible, both from a housing perspective and a public safety perspective. This one again was open for about a month. We had six submitts here. This hopefully will come to you and I'm going to be seeing you guys a lot in June. This will be good. Uh coming back hopefully in June.

David, can I ask a question? Yeah. So with this and then the model training center that feels like a lot of proposals to me submittals is it? It is a lot. I never done vertical so I don't know how many is normal for a vertical submission. It's a sol it's a solid amount. Okay. And on both committees 13 is allowed to read that. Um

the Schultz six or five or six there as well. I think we got six on John Los Pal. It's a good amount. It's good to see the the breadth of contractors that are coming in with lots of good experience, a lot of applicable experience, which is what you want to see. It's also great to have a committee that can review that. And usually the committee is made up of people that are directly tied to that community. Question all three. I kind of zip through all three. Pause for questions. Yes. Council member question.

Proceed concept here is did the RSOQ or um do the proposals include any like particular type of housing with that development like is it aiming for missing middle versus single versus multifamily? I think in the RSOQ I don't remember the specifics of it workforce and I think it spoke a lot to density based at this point. Yeah.

Um but part of that RSOQ committee is composed of housing and making and planning and making sure that we accommodating those needs. Yes and no. Fair. Is this council member Matthews? Thank you. Um, this is one of my favorite topics. JW extension and I've spared our new city manager from usually prior to her every meeting that I had with the city manager was where are we? Get that done now. Ouch.

Whoa. You're right. Um but to that end um okay so we 2026 to 2028 we'll finish our bit we're assuming the other property owners will be working at the same time or close to it would be your best guess that that road is open says I think three years from the date of the date of the development agreement like I think right at December of 25. We're looking at the end of 28. Oh, happy.

Obviously, the roads need to match up, but but they're gas company. So everybody has to be coordinated and we're doing that really well with we we have an engineers meeting between all three groups once once a month we everything

I think that might be it.

All right. You know where to find me back again. Um we have I have a couple specialty projects I'm going to talk about and then we're going to turn it over to pros. So this is the downtown safety improvements phase one. Um it's actually installing ballards from Laru at Laroo in San Francisco to kind of um you know make that secure when we have these events right is this is new in this year's budget. It's half it's we roughly estimated $400,000 18 and a half tag. We're going to do ballards. We don't know if those are going to be in ground where you can just lift a a cap and pull them up or if it's going to be a hole and we have to bring them and lay them in. Um our big concern is cinders getting in there. So, we want to do a lot of research on that. Um got a lot do a lot of work on utilities where we can place them. And then, you know, we also have other considerations like something at the in the alley like that. So, we're going to we're going to get a design firm on board right after the budget gets approved. If there's in there, we'll be we'll be working on it over the summer. Um we'll be going we'll be um coordinating with the CEC and and the Downtown Business Alliance. They'll be heavily involved. Another big component of this project is um traffic signal timing. So when those ballards go up, we're going to have to have tra the traffic signals programmed to like not have certain turning movements allowed or or more timing in one direction or the other. So that's that's a big component as well. Um in year two two years from now in the 2728 program, we have the downtown safety improvements with Ballards from Sick

Greavves to uh to Aspen. Um, we have the, you know, the farmers markets. We have, you know, some big events in Wheeler Park. Um, we'll have to really look at this one because if you and somebody technically could come through the library, right? We leave the library open when there's the farmers market, things like that. We'll have to do traffic signal timing on Aspen. We'll learn a lot from the first phase and then hopefully move on to this this second phase. Um, last project. You might have seen some construction equipment at Woody Mountain. We've just mobilized this week for the Woody Mountain and West Route 66 traffic signal. Um, we did an IG with council um to do the design or to get the money from the state. They appropriated $1.9 million for the construction contract items. The polls were roughly 16 weeks to get. So that's why we haven't been doing a lot of work out there yet by the end of June. So moving forward with that Matthews,

this is a good time to ask my question.

And I've talked to um CH city manager about it, too. So with this conversation coming up and the celebration that this is not even on ADOT's radar to do these improvements and I know it's one of um um Morley's plan um projects but still looking for funding and stuff. Um lot of discussion from the community about high level of accidents that go on throughout this road. And another one is a Thompson and 66. Um I know you told me earlier, Paul, that some of the extra leftover money that we have to um sidewalks and stuff, but I want to put the plea in now to do a temporary light um on Thompson and 66, especially with the federal courthouse going in. I can't believe that ADOT hasn't changed their time frame. Um and the community especially over in um Springs they've already you know gone through a lot of trauma and stuff and that's I mean every single person that I spoke to out there that was their one and only thing they wanted to talk about is just how dangerous and how serious the accidents are. Not as many fatal but very serious accidents. Have those conversations. Let's see what we can do. I know it's just extra worth of time, but this is a really dangerous road and I think we need to look at it.

Yeah, definitely. Um, so the the money that's left over from this traffic signal project really just needs to be used on West Route 66. That's just called the West Route 66 improvements so we can really, you know, do whatever we want with it. Um hopefully Senator Rogers did another appropriation for $3 million this year budget. So if we get that our plan is to work with ADAT and MT metro plan the entire corridor and then start going after grants. Just I mean I know the vice mayor I think was in Phoenix this week a lot has been on this project

talked a lot about it and um reception was good. I believe that we're getting the word to the right right folks on it and uh this is a a metrop plan project and um everyone that I spoke to understands the need. They're seeing it. Yeah. Our plan is to get you know a design done for those grants and they were ready to go. Time frame for that. Yeah. That would take a while a couple years. So you're talking about a

temporary signal because all these things being a government it's it's 5 10 years out and I don't think with all the development going on on West Route 66 and the federal um courthouse we can't wait 10 years conversations is up next bathroom. Me or him? It's for both. It's for both.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council, Amy Hagen. I get the opportunity to be our assistant. Parks, recreation, open space, and events director. always stuck talking about bathrooms and I'm not really sure why. But anyways, this is the Heritage Square restrooms renovation project. We've talked about this for a couple years. We're finally moving the needle a little bit. Feels really good. Yes, this is a concept drawing of the space. If those that know that space, it's currently two separate units. So those are those two separate units within the light gray walls combined into one and then we're able to add a third toilet. So we would be able to go from two toilets to three, which is ideal to serve our community with a public restroom like this. And I'll point to it that may not help our online folks as I'm pointing on a screen. So the two units today again go into one unit. We're able to create like a a janitor closet mop sink, which is important for the cleaning of this, including possibly multiple times a day, and then an exterior, one sink for the three toilets. But the three toilets are inside their own partitions, if you will. And it's uh for anyone that's been traveling recently, you might be seeing, including in parking lots, the red green light scenario to tell you if something's occupied or being used. So that's what we would like to implement here. So you would know in front of each of these three doors if that unit's occupied. You'll still be able to see 12 inches off the ground that there might be feet in there, but the light may help too, except if you're color blind like Dave McIntyre. Um I'm sorry.

Unit is the ADA unit. It also includes an adult changing station, which is required by state law in Arizona to have an adult changing station within at least one of your public restrooms. So, it meets all those needs. And then there might be a lot of chatter about what is a rolling gate uh door enclosure. The idea there is if you've been in some of our larger older cities on the east coast, can it be a cool decorative door that comes down, locks at the bottom, and that's how you seal this item up at night. We may need also some type of insulating shield on the inside of that gate door, if you will. Um, don't want to do like a garage door or anything like that. That could really give a nice canvas for some graffiti. Um, but we'll come up with some other things on that and may get an opportunity to work with beautifification arts and sciences on something too. So, it's currently at this stage this concept drawing um $250,000 of the BBB uh recreation special revenue and we're really hoping that we can start some construction um or bids at least in the summer of 26 and maybe some construction in the fall of 26. We have worked with the downtown business alliance getting this concept design in front of them as well as uh Hopi trust economic development group and so things are tracking moving forward.

Machines restrooms has a comment about restrooms. Put a C in the chat direction. Um I just wanted to in team I this has been through and it is not an easy project much conversation but they really do and you never gave up. You have come up with a great plan and I just wanted to thank everyone involved. This is very needed and and I appreciate it.

We appreciate that. It doesn't go without hesitation that capital engineering is assisting with this with Geneva in project management. So, a lot of that thank you should go to her too. Questions on council member Matthew? Yes. I was walking out to get my water when I heard something about bathroom doors go all the way to the ground. They would not. Correct. So similar to partitions inside the bathrooms even right here in the hallway. It would be yes.

So when I travel international bathrooms are go ahead whatever the term is but the stall doors are all the way floor to ceiling. So there's no invasion privacy for somebody that's maybe hanging out there. where we have you know around feel very uncomfortable to have that space. So what was the reasoning behind leaving a gap like that? Leaving the gap was a reason for safety in case someone is in there and is is on the ground, but I have a feeling with that red light, green light scenario, and I don't know if you were outside using the restroom when that was going,

maybe that can be in place of and getting the partitions all the way to the ground. We've had issues inside these bathrooms when police and fire cannot see if is down scenario. So, we want to try to avoid that as much as possible. Now, granted, these partitions are much smaller with the exception of the ADA one with the adult changing station for possibly that to happen for someone to be laying on the ground and needing assistance. Um, so it's not a done deal. can adjust anything on that, but the intention was to at least have a 12 inch and maybe it can be shorter. Uh small inch.

Yeah, it's really just for that safety aspect. We can adjust too. We can always pivot. Any other questions? Right.

Okay. Jensen recreation center HVAC in the gymnasium. So we designed the entire recreation center. It's about 10,000 square feet to so the design has air conditioning going everywhere. We're currently today air conditioning's only in the uh game room and the office space and restrooms but nowhere else in the facility including the mezzanine up on the second floor. So full design done and we're about ready to start phase one which is then installation for the gymnasium that begins on April 27th and we'll probably be done before the end bay. Super exciting. And then there's a design sitting on the shelf in case if there's funding to implement those other phases space to the rest of the facility, which at some point in time would be great to accomplish. This one's almost done. So, super exciting to get that one going. Any questions on cold air for teenagers in a gymnasium? Okay. uh say this one really fast. The Indigenous Community Cultural Center or as we've given it the acronym of the IC CC. Uh an agreement is currently in negotiation with an identified partner uh the Indigenous Circle of Flagstaff, another acronym ICF. Super exciting for that. $200,000 has been available in BBB recreation special revenue. um we've sometimes have referred to it as seed money or money to utilize in some way once that partner is on board to collaborate and say here's what we're here's what we all think should happen first. Um there's certainly some needs you can tell by some of these

images if you have not been to the facility of how in the world do we get this facility so it can be occupied. No, not an easy measure at all. The $200,000 is not going to get you there either. But again, seed money or start money. Uh we met on April 3rd with our current Joocc contractors, those vertical contractors to tour the facility with them and give an idea on here's the highlevel scope of work that we want. give us a rough estimate on what it would take to make just the western bay occupiable. And that western bay is what's in this image on the upper right. And then um it's about 3600 square ft in there. There's currently two restrooms that don't meet accessibility. as we go back to restrooms, some office space, and some other features. Um, $200,000 will not get that 3,600 square foot to an occupiable space, but it's a start. And then we'll have these estimates from our JOC contractors and it'll give us a better idea. I'm sure there's going to be questions on this one. Questions? Yeah. I was just curious uh where did the EPAC step up to and um if you don't have the exact answer the reason I wanted to kind of mention this and highlight it is uh during the time that I was on that commission um so we might see we s we saw future projections for for beautifification science that increasingly time that people don't quite always understand the dynamics of the beautifification fund. So I think it's always important to highlight that there's been for at least

the last 10 years time periods when BPAC has set money aside as much just this if not more in certain situations to take care of problems when they when they come up that that we know are going to but just haven't yet uh just to just to further communication really um understanding that be you know the BBB fund is going to come up a lot at times and work with us that it's because of that savings or that preparation over time. So the question was just simply is this pretty recent or did they put this money aside a little while back? So, not not BPAC or beautifification, but pros put the money aside. Uh, shortly after December of 2022, after a community and public outreach, there was an adopted concept design for this portion of Thor Park that includes the indigenous community cultural center. And at that time, there was an original $100,000, Council Member Garcia, to utilize for some further mitigation of the site. And then there was this $200,000 that we've been holding on to waiting for our partner and then working with Rose THI and to make now the rest of this happened. So we're still kind of baby stepping it a little bit but we do know as I said 200,000 won't make it happen and unfortunately there was not an escalation feature in that when these were first identified. Thank you and especially for myself, but just every time we get a chance to kind of redefine what or define what the BBB tax is doing for our community, I think it's important to shine a light on it for those like myself who are still working their way through which department has what and how that

highlight those from the community. Thank you. Absolutely.

Mentioned it just now. Um about the level of sight or land mitigation that's needed at the site. Has that been assessed or is it under assessment or

Great question, Council Member House. So that original $100,000 I was just mentioning to Council Member Garcia uh was used. There used to be a 8 foot tall perimeter fence around the 8 and a half acres that was removed. We had a facility assessment for this specific building knowing it was going to be the future community. A private utility location performed and then placed in the GIS because we're dealing with a property that is 75 plus years old. There's lines going all over the place. Two other items uh outside of just this specific structure and facility. Pros does have $5 million. It's in fiscal year 203233 for the rest of Thor Park in that area. So I wouldn't anticipate any of that happening until that time frame unless Flagstaff's billionaire appears magically is going to be most important to get this specific project off the ground is that seed money that estimate to get that western bay occupiable and then what fundraising opportunities does um the partner the indigenous circle flag staff have to start to create and generate the fundraising and or donations to make that part happen. That $5 million in fiscal year 203233 is not for this facility at all. I do want to make sure that that's understandable. It's for the other part ground that surrounds this.

Um I mean we've had these discussions before being on the indigenous commission. Um, but just to clarify, um, because I remember last year this $200,000 pros, would you say that you're setting out a site every year or that's just sitting there and we haven't added to it? We have because we have 100,000 100,000 that was expended on a handful of those items. No, it's one time $200,000 that we've been carrying forward awaiting this opportunity

because I know that the commission was so excited when they saw that number and then I was the buzzkill to explain to them what really you get from that which is nothing. um the um internet nest that the city uses. Has that been removed?

Has. Yes. So, that was another item that the $100,000 was utilized for. Sorry for missing that. A new microwave tower was placed up on Elden that services uh Flagstaff sustainability offices, the park shop and I believe assists with how Jensen Rec Center and Aquex. So that way that internet hub that's actually in this western bay is no longer attached to the city's network.

Last question. and we've had these conversations before. Um, and we've had a few events outside, but the the the parking area there needs some improvements. Any consideration like if if we give money to occupy the Western Bay, that's mainly just office. That's not going to be an event holding space in any scale. Um, has there been any discussion on resurfacing the outside area because we share that space with sustainability's office um to make it a little bit more accessible and easy to have outside um events. appropriate question and that's one of the considerations that I asked the JOCC's to include in their estimate because there needs proper access into that western bay as a part of making that occupiable probably in that upper area there's roughly maybe 10 to 12 kind of striped parking spaces um which doesn't help out much to host a large event. Sustainability has done some amazing improvements out there to a lower parking lot that's along Moion and Dale. They've striped half of it for their staff and their team as well as uh they're working on some accessibility parking spaces closer to their building, but I do think some of that needs to be incorporated in um to even getting the Western Bank occupied. Building department's going to require that without a doubt.

Thank you.

Yep. Anything else on Indigenous Community Cultural Center? We talked about that one longer than bathrooms. Okay. Um, Highland Mesa Park, formerly known as That always makes me think of Prince. Formerly known as Westside Park. This is a neighbor neighborhood park on the west side of town. Um, it's about 5.6 acres in size. It's in the Boulder Point neighborhood area just behind the Staples Commercial Center off Woodlands Village Boulevard and then I40 also bore uh borders it. Uh we did a a outreach gosh a year ago. Wow. A year ago to find out what in the world the neighborhood like to see in this public city park. Um, and then there's been a a couple shifts and changes. So, we're currently partnering with the uh city engineering division on some off-site improvements that were considered when we started the design review process because PROS takes all of our projects through the city's IDS design review process so we can field those needs and any red flags. So, there are some off-site improvements needed and um a little bit of a realignment of the existing urban trail that flows through the park today. Um that is a project that engineering just I believe went under contract. Gosh, if Paul Mood's still here, maybe a couple weeks ago, Paul, at city council, maybe three weeks ago,

somewhere in there. So, those off-site improvements are being designed today and we'll incorporate those into the actual on-site improvements of the park. So, we still have this concept design and we have 1.47 million for the development. Um, and we're excited to hopefully move this project forward as those offsites come to fruition and get designed and incorporated. Any questions on Highland Mesa Park? I look at Council Member House.

Okay. All right. Cheshire Park Track and Field. Uh it's expansion of parkland at existing Cheshire Park 9.3 acres in size. It is our location for a future 400 meter running track with a multi-purpose field in the middle. It's going to need a parking lot when you develop an amenity like that. going to need a permanent restroom. Back to restrooms when you develop a park like that. Some special revenue fun balance around. Thank you. budget section. We've now created a $1.5 million balance on that. And then we're looking to leverage $1.5 million with land water conservation fund grant application coming soon. So, for a total of three million, that would be exciting stuff. Um, any questions on that? It's literally at this kind of concept stage, I'll get a grant application in and according to state parks and um with LWCF review times are taking about 9 to 12 months right now on grant applications, especially of this size. So, I wouldn't expect any movement or construction activity this summer, fall, winter of uh 26, but coming soon, I hope, you know, I got to put a

city manager. Go ahead. So Amy, you know, you and I have talked about this, but in other communities, you've seen the private sector step up similar efforts. Have you gotten any kind of sense if there might be any private interest in in helping with this just to to build a community track? I appreciate you asking that. So something that was came to light in speaking with state parks about the grant opportunity. If we go for the grant opportunity, there cannot be private involvement in conjunction. So, we've got to pick one or the other. And knowing that 1.5 million was the maximum on an LWCF, my heart says go there because it's a feels like it'd be a pretty solid project for that. um does not mean though that private partners in our community could not fund raise outside of that for other features, benefits. Uh you know, I've been asked would there be or spectator seating and I'm currently not showing that. So maybe some different smaller amenities could be ideal for that.

Bathroom. Yeah, bathroom possibly. Yeah, I know. Bathrooms. Um so hitting that knowledge that was pretty impactful. I was very appreciative of receiving that. Um so

more to come on that. Um I have also met with Northern Arizona Museum last month showed them this concept drawing because you will notice there's this concept shows taking access off the museum's existing parking lot. parking for two large events per year for the museum is incredibly difficult for them. They loved this. They were like, "Whoa, wait a second." So, you could relocate our trash and recycling dumpsters. I'm like, "Yeah, they're actually not to code right now. We'll deal with that later." Um, but you might have an opportunity to have some additional overflow parking. Sounds like right now for their two large events, folks are parking across the street at the Colton House and crossing 180. I know. Yeah. So, this was a little bit of excitement when I met with them last month, which was cool to check that off the list, too, and uh foster that partnership. Any questions up is the one. Oh, no, he's not. Robert, do you want to do this one?

He's not up. I have one more project. Giz, that's exciting.

This is exciting. This I wish was paired right after uh what Trevor was talking about the spruce wash uh suite of improvements. Ponderosa Park Reconstruction that is at um the end of the line there of those the suite of storm water improvements that have occurred as a result of the museum fire. We are ready as you saw on uh capital engineering slide. They're hoping to be done June the 26. That's when Pros is hoping to begin. Um there's also some additional acreage that was acquired to the north of the existing park and we're hoping to pro begin some neighborhood outreach in May of 26. Maybe that's June of 26. We'll see. We're trying to get back on the agenda with the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association as we engaged on a quarterly basis over the last few years on this. And then we want to do some neighborhood outreach onsite and bring in with that um it's kind of a unique opportunity with a large uh park and playground manufacturer and company where they take all aspects of a park and say at this park and in this neighborhood we've got multigenerational. We've got this, we've got that. Here's what all the options that can fit in this park to make this a really cool and neat and unique space for that neighborhood. Um, there is $500,000 in the BBB recreation special revenue and we're also hoping that we get a CDBG grant opportunity. I know that was spoken at council on April 13th and we'll come back here in a few weeks to leverage some of those funds and then I think we have an opportunity with that manufacturer that does that full scope review of a park that is in a community like this. We're really hoping that it's

up to 1 million total on that project to deliver something that says wow.

Council member Garcia. Yeah, just briefly. I didn't realize you were how in-depth you were going to tell the story. So, you uh pretty much said everything I was going to say, but I wanted to make sure that city manager's office and mayor's office knows that, you know, council knows how um proactive pros has been throughout the whole process for the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association as well as um the the other uh capital improvement teams have been with the storm water. still show up to field questions from new people coming into that meeting. way ahead of the action item um in that in the neighborhood association meetings. Uh and has really made the neighborhood feel valued and has um trauma scars from the ba the past of not being heard healed now. And uh that is equally as impactful as the amount of forward thinking you guys are putting into letting the community decide what park amenities we're going to need and things like that. That stuff we can is tangible. We can see that on the surface, but the the wounds that are being healed by staff's um participation things that you don't normally get to speak about in public or even know about say thank you especially for that over the past three years you guys have done. shovel.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Anything else on Ponderosa Park reconstruction? I have one more. I'm sorry, Robert. What do you mean

the anticipational park uh the regional park design that's 86 plus acres north of current continental park which has five ball fields going all the way north up to I40. Some council members have had an opportunity to go out on tour and see some of this. Uh it's huge. It's wild. So, it's a regional park when you're getting upwards of a 100 acres when you include the current 15 acres. Um, we've always we're going to need multiple access points when you have something linear like that. Just I would assume at least two if not more. We need a girl softball complex. Y'all have heard that from me before. We need more multi-purpose fields. There's easy opportunities for foots connections. Possibly an event space might be kind of neat out there. There's a pretty cool wall along the state land piece. Not going to say it'd be similar to something in Colorado, but very cool. There's Big Lake Improvement Incorporation with our partners in water services that we're taking a look at now. And then there's the most amazing space to the north on the other side of I40 with Picture Canyon Natural and Cultural Preserve. we could create a connection there. A really neat space. Um, this has just recently changed. Thank Thank you, Amir, but I didn't catch it by the time of this slide. Instead of 1.5 million, it's 1 million um design and probably some outreach because we're really hitting some success when we're doing outreach with the community and doing that listening. Um, and then in some future years there's additional funds for further design, further outreach or possible opportunities to leverage because my guess is talking about 86 acres. We're

going to need 50 million plus for something like that. Um, it is on pros unfunded capital list and we'll just see what happens as the time comes. But it'd be kind of neat to get a little bit of color to paper on something like this and generate some interest in the community on this too. Any questions on Continental Regional Park?

The bottomless pit. The bottomless pit is outside of city's ownership. So what's highlighted there in yellow is city of Flagstaff own property. bottomless pit is it's where this little tiny blue starts right there. So currently not considered in that and then there's two grayed out parcels there that are under private ownership. Um so that's also not considered right now in that 86 acres. Would it be if we could get acquisition of that?

Possibly. It'd be nice. I think it would provide a little continuity if we could get acquisition of that. It make things a little bit easier. It feels a little weird to have this really thin linear connection and then kpow more's face. What's that? But the roller derby or second she dies the bottomless pit. Um, any other questions on cutting metal? Thank you. My turn. Do you all want to hear from Robert? Do you want to make me keep going? Mr. Robert Wallace

stand in the wings there making Amy nervous. Just excited to get up here. I'm Robert Wallace, space supervisor for the city of Pike Staff. And it's a pleasure to be here with you today. Um, I'm really excited to get up here because this is our first year for our CIP projects. Um, I'm sure council remembers that uh we took the ordinance for the BBB special revenue for an allocation for parks and recreation to allocate a portion of that to open space projects. So, up until this point, we've been doing all of our projects with grants, volunteers, or a base budget. We have a quite a list of projects that are being going to be coming up in the next few years. This is our first one for this fiscal year. The McMillan Mesa Natural Area. Um that's the area just south of Buffalo Park. If you take the pedestrian bridge over, there's about 300 acres between Forest Avenue and where the Church Rise lies. And this project is going to be looking at uh completing trail repairs on that property, new ditch installation, restoration of vegetation along the trail and some unauthorized trail routes. And uh one of the parts that I'm very excited about is doing some ADA improvements on the trail. Parks just completed an ADA project with the help of Arizona State Parks at Buffalo Park. So this could extend those trail opportunities using the cedar um at grade crossing. trail all the way down to the church and making a loop. So, I'm very excited about that. Um, we just met with Arizona State Parks this week and did a walk through there. So, they think this is a pretty nice and viable project for improve safety and accessibility and hopefully long-term sustainability of the natural area. 150,000 of this will be coming from the recreational special revenue fund. And then if we are successful in obtaining that grant from Arizona State, it'll

contribute another $145,000 close to 300,000 for this project. Questions about this project? Council Garcia was just curious. We talked earlier about the new department of like maintenance and whatnot that's going to be housed in public works. Will they be the people that maintain this area rails and stuff?

He is responsible for maintaining all the foots trails. So we actually are really grateful to be relying on them to maintain trails. So we are working with Gino and his team on this project as far as doing the assessment what needs to be done and then we'll probably help they'll help us with implementation as well. if you opportunity, please throw it out there. Shiva. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify, we're still working out a lot of the details with public works, but I think one detail is pretty clear that parks will still maintain the pits.

Thank you. That actually is the only CIP project for this year for open space. But I did want to throw this out there too to just a taste of what we're going to be having coming up in the list on the east side of town kind of back behind the mall off of old Route 66 near the Wildcat Wild Cap Reformation there. We're going to be working with engineering to provide a foots connection to Canyon. We're currently working with our partners in real estate that we're really grateful for to gather the easements and acquisitions for this. It will come in from Route 66 following the Riota flag and then over to the trail head um where which is the red square which is our current location. So this will complete that foots connection. It'll work on realigning some trails in the preserve. It'll add some parking improvements including looking at providing some ADA accessible parking locations. And then we hope to provide two new ADA trails at Picture Canyon. One going out to the deep water pond and one potentially going out to the Petetroglyph overlook. This accessibility and then recreation and natural experiences over at Picture Canyon. Again, we have 200,000 coming from the recreational special revenue fund um in fiscal year 28. And then we are looking into grant opportunities for the recreational trails program grant with Arizona State Park to help supplement that. So on that

right well thanks very much. Thank you. want to take a quick break. Yes, the slide tells us

then I thought we could come back and have a discussion about what we what what's on your mind. Well, we're 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Um, so be back at um three.

All right, we are back and we are ready. You're okay. Um, stay over here.

Yeah. Um, so this is the opportunity um to circle back on any items that were brought up um from council. Shannon and I just connected and I think we've answered thing that's come forward. Um we're planning on putting together that that service partner history. One item the main things that I had obviously quite a few questions I wanted to do now was just open it up to council on any items that um that are on your minds, things that you didn't see included that you would like us to look into. We really tried our best to include everything that was included in um council priorities and the needs of the organization, but um also recognize that there might be something out there that um is either new or that we might have missed.

I can bring up something. Um so to keep our international dark skies designation we're required to to do a certain number of outreach events and and kind of compliance events. And so we met with the Dark Skies Coalition and they have been fulfilling that for us all this time since the time that we were um designated. And they've asked whether we could designate some money to help them do the work that keeps our designation. And some of that would be compliance and working with our team on dark sky compliance.

Yeah. So, so working with code compliance on um where we might need some work in terms of compliance and then the outreach stuff like the the light bulb um you know they give away free light bulbs to residents, amber light bulbs and their um their event in the square um and the events they do at Buffalo Park. So, not necessarily paying for all of it, but pitching in because they are doing um work for the city on behalf of the city. Mayor, you'd be so happy to know that it's in the budget. Uh Discover Flagstaff, their tourism BBB, they asked for um more money and um we will be doing helping um we already created the logo for them as you've seen. So going to be supporting them on all the events and working we are working with the dark skies coalition. Um when it comes to some of the code compliance things we can't cover that with the BBB but we will be doing all the other stuff um to kind of enhance um so they're promotional stuff but in terms of like buying the light bulbs and whatnot that would need to come out of a different

Yeah. Yeah. But we could help with getting that outreach out and integrate that because we also have our Flagstaff local campaign. So I can utilize the Flagstaff local campaign to see if there's others that can help us with that type of um outreach as well. So I could just have um Lori reach out to them, Lori Papis, and we can talk about how we can use that other campaign to help with that. Okay. And I'll we'll send her a note right now. Thank you. and then we'll look we'll make sure we've got the code compliance piece covered. Thank you, Council Member House.

Yeah, I have a I think related question um is you bringing up especially with the code compliance. I'm remembering when I worked in property management directly, there were occasional uh site inspections that that happened because of the exterior lighting on the property. Was that I I never really remembered or knew to be honest if that was dark sky or if it was actually the city compliance team. without knowing and just guessing, I'd say it was dark skies because I think that they've had um in some years more funding, less funding, more volunteers, fewer volunteers. Um and so I think that it was probably them, but if anyone knows Shelle, are you here? Yeah.

But have they ever Well, did they inspect and give you light bulbs or did they just say you're out of compliance? Yeah, they would just notify us if we were out of compliance. Oh, that could have been our code dark sky compliance. Having a little problem hearing all the way in the back. So, if you could just repeat what the exact question you had. It was just the question of who um for like site visits and and letting a property particularly in multifamily know if they're out of compliance for dark side. Um do you know who who would have been leading those?

Um so currently that is Rob I think it's the city. So good thing is we have a joint uh and you'll be seeing this I think June we have an IGA with the shared position with who is our co- compliance officer who's al our dark sky compliance officer so currently that is us um we do work with Mark Stento at the county um but primarily that is Rob who goes out um and he has been extraordinary he's been in that position I think now for less than two months and the amount of work that he has been doing with Danielle and Chris with the Dark Skies Coalition um and Mark and really just trying to get a lot more education out to the community. It's been incredible what he's doing, the excitement that he's bringing to it. So, I don't know if that answers your question, but um he will be giving a presentation, like I said, in May or June, everything that we have been doing and everything that he plans on doing to really help boost that program in the education component. And we've talked about some fun things to do with like um different neighborhoods, maybe having like some HOA conversations about start doing stickers to say we are in compliance and um you know maybe even friendly compet um so yeah there's a lot of great ideas but he is the one that leads that program. Council member Spence, Council Member Alen, Council Member Matthews.

Thank you, Mayor and Manager. Um, I have a request suggestion for funding for housing. And if I can be forgiven this in the form of a mayor's proclamation. Whereas affordable and available housing is a council priority. And whereas the 10-year housing plan to address the housing emergency calls for a funding stream for affordable housing. And whereas the BBB tax is paid largely by our visitors who to a great extent or to some extent occupy um housing stock short-term rentals that would otherwise be available to our city residents. And whereas waiting until September to hear this housing presentation to council, waiting till September puts us behind schedule on this coming year's budget. I therefore now, David Spence, council member and member of the study group that's been working on uh housing as part of economy for the good um project here in town. I therefore request a modest amount of BBB funding be allocated every year to a dedicated fund, perhaps a lock box similar to park flag, but be dedicated to affordable housing. Thank you.

Well, thank you, council member. I don't think I've ever had a request in thatation. Answer it in a proclamation form. Um, so I think a couple things and and what I wanted to do first was have Sterling talk about I'm I'm putting you on the spot, but what we would need to do to change that allocation. So whereas and therefore September 1st may not be that far away what we might need to do but can you talk about what

yeah there's there's voter approval required for BBB funding to be allocated to affordable housing. I'll just be pretty blunt. Um I won't use any where's or now therefors. Uh that would be a very significant climb but that's what it would take. Sterling, are you saying we would have to go out to all the people that voted for this and say, "Is this what you want?" Wasn't one of the original reasons that it place, you would have to have voter.

Was that the process that was followed with regard to allocating a portion to pros in the past year? when when it went to pros, it was for a beautifification purpose was within the scope.

Thank you. And if I'm I'm wrong, if I'm misspeaking on any after it had been originally formulated in the 80s and then that's when parks and returns was added to it. And the reason we immigration was added to it is because they actually serve the visitor tourism visitor actually uses those amenities. Thank you, council member. I will say I mean we are um I know you have um your called it the donut hole but it's the donut economy

donut economy. I uh we are looking at every possibility on how we could fund an ongoing housing um ongoing housing costs. So we feel like right now we're in pretty good shape on that process. September 1st is probably the earliest we can bring it back, but if we just given the summer break, um but just please know that we're still continuing to work on this and come up with other ideas. Thank you. Sorry I didn't put it in a whereas now therefore henceforth henceforth now therefore we are disappointed in you

asyn.

Thank you mayor. Um so a couple conversations going on around this. I just want to put it out here in a public forum uh to make sure that it's part of the broader discussion. Uh I recently sat down with Kim Katabi of the uh literacy center um to just strategize and talk about what they're up to and and all the great work they're doing and um how tight their funding is. I see your literacy center sticker on your water bottle there. They do a lot of things in town and they're pretty strapped. Uh, I'm I I've dedicated myself to um representing their interests here on council and just trying to see if we could find a way um strengthen those partnerships and make it sustainable. Uh at the CBDG conversations were just around the corner. So that that was sort of up the mind and we talked about that a little bit and I mentioned that at a council meeting. little late to the table for them this this time around. I'm sure they're going to be prepared to to pounce on that next year. But just in addition, um I think I think uh that's the sort of organization that we nonprofit here in town that that could really use some some ongoing um strategic partnership. Um, I'd be willing to propose some funds from our council initiative fund to help them out, but I think they're looking for something far more sustainable. And as you know, I my philosophy on the council initiative fund is it should not be used for ongoing support um long term for for projects. So, just want to put that in the parking lot.

Do you have a an actual request from them that you can send to me? And I I do. Yeah, they're they're they're looking for around5 to$10,000 and

Matthews. Thank you, Mayor. And um thank you, Council Member Spence. um for this morning when you said I'm going to say something unpopular and then when you were thinking out of the box this afternoon um just for the record I do not feel comfortable in for lack of better word cominging BBB is a burden on our hospitality and stuff and to have it go into other sectors I think might be problematic but in the theme of talking about our budget constraints um our public safety deficits and stuff. Um, I just want to say this out loud because I think that we need to take a hard look at things that we have done in the past because we could. Um, and so Nicole, if you here still have a question for you. So I remember I don't think it was on the deis but um one and I've never been a fan of of um energy tax credits. I don't think they do what's any good here. Right. So we we give a h 100,000 give or take to New Mexico for their enjoyment of clean energy. Right. On the same breath, you and I have talked about well because I've asked about what about the forest and the carbon sinks and you said well our carbon neutrality plan is focused just within the city limits but we do send 100,000 over to New Mexico and I'm kind of so I'm going to circle back around to the 100,000. So, you know, I'm reading about all the great partnerships, private partnerships that Babbot Ranch,

I did the math right, it comes out to uh what they're doing uh reduces the emissions by,77 metric tons. Our annual goal is 557. They're right next door to us. I know that our carbon neutrality plan does not look beyond the city limits yet we send 100,000 to New Mexico. So that's where I'm going with that. So given our to take a hard look on things that we just have been doing because we could um I just want to put it out there and I know already the hair is off people's back of their necks going up that maybe reconsidering that 100,000 that doesn't actually impact the good of within our city limits to improving our carbon emissions city limits. So I just it wasn't really a question but I just wanted to pose that this is happening we do this for that justification and this and and 100,000 is another FTE for public safety or somewhere else. Um and so I think that these kind of at least uh questions or discussions because I I whenever we conclude with the public safety tax um I don't think the public is going to um it's fair just to say and we're going to put it all on you guys even though what Rick proposed is a net net and really not a big change but I think that we owe it to the public and ourselves to at least talk about is that still realistic? Is that moving the needle for us um in Flagstaff? So, I don't mean to I'm not trying to pick on you, but I not at all,

but it's I was also asking about all these agencies that we're giving money to to the tune of 1.5 million, which could also make a huge and none of us here want to take that away from any of those agencies. just like a lot of people are very um u passionate about our carbon neutrality goals. But I think step back and at least talk about it,

right? And if I may, um another teaser alert. So on Tuesday, uh I will be bringing forward a conversation for the council. Um, I've been working with the Navajo Tribal uh utility authority um to bring forward a proposal for council's consideration uh that would significantly reduce our expenditures on renewable energy credits and actually partner with a TUA rather than APS um at a tune of almost $40,000 savings a year. Uh in addition um something for consideration is the way that we have funded those renewable energy credits currently are based on electric. So water services pays lion share of the expenditures right now for those renewable energy credits. It's not a general it's not all general funded. It is parsed out by consumption. Um so and so you'll see on Tuesday um and it will be in your agenda packet tomorrow slide deck does break down like how are we spending that um the way that we are focusing our Hoover energy contract um we are buying a very small percent of our renewable energy from Hoover directly. um the cost savings there and the cost savings with our current power purchase agreements will bring us to essentially a net zero. So it isn't a like forlike swap, but I really appreciate because it is about it's the philosophical question. Um but I really do hope that the conversation that we have with council on Tuesday night will allow some additionality and how we're looking at that, but also bringing forward a package that will save the city money. Yeah. So, thank you for bringing that up.

Giving it spoiler alert. No, I've had two today. I love it. And I think and and I had no jokes. I'm just Well, jokes. So, I got teaser alerts. I'd have rather have a teaser. Yeah, but if you had a joke, if you didn't I don't I didn't prepare. Maybe Tuesday. Thank you. Was there any anything? No. No. Great. Thank you, Council Member Garcia. Thank you,

Mel. Uh, so I I've seen a trend that leads us in a very positive direction over time. We council prior to my time on council saw an issue with needing to level up payraises and get up to market rate and think our employees long time things are moving along swimmingly. Um, I got on council. We talked a lot about the public safety thing that automatically this year. I think the transition to new city manager and all the processes around that is kind of have been our focus and I'm happy about that. So, um, but I haven't heard a lot of talk around like their existing council priorities that need robust uh funding apparatuses or ideas around getting the moving forward on. So that's where I'd like to add my two cents and and and hope that uh that that we could see more outputs. So today during the meeting I overtalked about my time on BPAC but it was because I was considering it for this meeting when we were when we were uh budgeting back in those days and it was a very different looking department because there wasn't much of a department there. We were building the city was building it out. We were pretty steadfast on a on quite a few projects. some that haven't even come up yet, but we made sure that there was money when that when they did come up. And up till now, it's it's re it's reached that time period where we kind of saw the future when other when other where maybe the city wasn't ready for it yet or couldn't see the pathway towards it. Well, now we have funding set aside for those projects. Um, I think it was it was the due diligence and the creativity of of of that commission body

at the time. I think I see the same thing happening here with council when it comes to these ideas and and that that's where I want to put my weight in on. So earlier we discussed um having land set aside for housing and you talked about a half a million dollars which is a great start. I think that one of our greatest assets is that shark bike piece that we've needed to develop on for so long. We've had it there for it. We don't have a housing department that that puts up stem walls and drywall and everything else. We figure it out in a different way. But if we don't have the land, then we can't necessarily figure out how to put the houses on it. with um movement of the shark bite and we're learning through that land acquisition and development for housing. I would like to see um it's only a half a million dollars a year, which I know is hard to shoehorn out of a budget, but I don't want to see just a placeholder with a half a million dollars saying, "Look, we did our job." That's not my opinion. I think we need a good $10 million in that budget for when the right opportunity comes. We don't even know where that's going to be right now, but if we don't have So, so far for um one of our main goals is housing. We've seen that we could additional and those type of things and we have partners that we work with and we have funding for those. But one part I think we're missing out on hugely is the land acquisition specified for housing. Um, and I think that by chipping away with a little bit every year for this, it would be uh more advantageous than for us to wait for the time when we need it and then trying to figure out a way to get it through the budget. Um, so that's that I think those goals kind of align with what David was mentioning,

Council Member Spence. Um, as as far as his idea is concerned, maybe this is equally as controversial as his. Um, hopefully it's it's it's more doable or at least more feasible. So, I know I'm only one council member, but we want to start working on our priorities because I think we're all the little details and all the bumps in the road. We've really kind of leveled those out along at a nice clip. So, focus on land acquisition for housing. Great. And council member, I think, and maybe Heidi can correct me. I think we had some money in that land acquisition fund,

correct? Over half a million did last year. Yeah. And and council member, I completely agree. I mean, I think, you know, some of the strategies right now with getting some of these properties out, you know, the Schultz, the Shark Bite, we're going to have the Lone Tree property. The goal is that that's going to maybe others that that's going to generate some revenue that can be put into um housing. I mean, that that is the goal that that all goes back into um land acquisition. You're you're specifically talking about land acquisition or just building housing in general

land acquisition because I don't think we have the capacity for building. I mean I I'm no expert in the fields but when I look at just basic numbers it would it would be catastrophic the money we would need to start a team that would put build houses. But I think um the shark bite was always I remember the conversations around it. How is this going to be on the pages for I think since we're at the poe to start on that project we're going to learn enough from it. If we keep talking a little way if we can when we can then we will uh we'll positions to the opportunity opens up for us as opposed to trying to seize an opportunity and not be prepared for it.

And just to jump in on this quickly, I would see that as part of a larger strategy discussion about where we get the biggest bang buck. um just to make sure that we've evaluated um housing affordability um in its totality so that um the strategies that we're using are um rise up to the level of priority. And since there's already money being allocated every year, perhaps that discussion since we've been on council, um we did not allocate any money this year to position that was that was last year saying there's still money and there are other projects in the the pipeline that we feel to increase that font and we didn't Okay. But um yeah, I I love that we own some land that um where housing can be built and um so I'm not arguing that that's not a great place to put money, but I'd just like to have a discussion about what the most effective use of resources would You're right about that, Mayor.

And I think what I will She's the mayor. I think what I will sit back and I like the strategy idea is is council being open to us getting rid of some property as well. Property. It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah. That we could then use. Yeah. Uh Council Member House.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, so I wanted to go back to first uh what council member Spence was raising and just ask the question of comment here uh in terms of what we can do to keep pursuing creative options and opportunities to create those unique urban strings for for our housing goals. um forget exactly how long ago it was, but I was talking about the the concept of social housing and just looking at how we can advance concepts like that in the community, whether it's P3 development, partnerships that support land acquisition, uh as we were just talking about, or land trust for diverse workforce housing options or other things along those lines. Um I have been in touch recently with the uh abundance movement. Um and they have been doing a lot of work on the on the front lines of advancing housing uh initiatives for communities of of all shapes and sizes. And one of the things that um they've kind of been talking about now or at least have contacts that our community could reach out to you and and talk about how they've advanced some of these housing initiatives. um was the the social housing concept and just how that creates some of those really creative options um for communities to expand uh housing options um create more uh density in housing um really support neighborhood development and investments and and all of those

sorts of things. So, I think it's really worth looking into as we can. Um, the next thing is just going back to what Council Member Alen was raising. Um, I'm really supportive of a proposal um ways to support the literacy center. I think the work that they do speaks a lot to the um the question of quality of life for many of our community members. Um, I'm wondering if we don't want to uh considering the relatively small amount that's being sought right now, if we don't want to pursue council initiative at this moment while we're also looking down the line through the budget process to see what ongoing partnerships or could be initiated and sustained over over the long Um the last thing for me is just going back to the conversations that we've been having about um public safety, the public safety um potential bond measure and and all of those things. A lot of the conversations that I've been having with um our some of our police officers, some of our firefighters um really got into this conversation in really interesting ways when I got to do a a ride along um recently with the fire department is the need for um increased focus on police, fire, and first responder and frontline safety team members mental and behavioral health efforts. Um, I don't recall off the top of my head how much that's included in the public safety uh bond measure or or funding considerations, but I just know that it's been a very rapidly growing

concern across the nation. um the number of first responders that are essentially whether it's they're retiring and suffering major cardiac incidents because of the stress that they've carried throughout their careers um or just suffering in silence through their current work uh in the field. Um there is a growing concern about um just the capacity of communities to offer that type of care for for uh a lot of our frontline workers and that's including not only police officers and firefighters but also EMT and umly blanking on the term now but the people who answer the phones when there's a

dispatchers the they carry so much of that weight as well. And so just thinking through how we can bring that focus um continue in in some of those conversations. Um, I I know that part of the work that NAH is doing in their mental health awareness month, one of their first programs I think is focusing specifically on first responder um uh needs and and mental health. Um, so I just think it's something to call forward as part of our ongoing considerations

that the um redemption the the contract with redemption is included in the budget, right? And then in the potential possible bond, you had mentioned a wellness coordinator.

Yeah, we're strong. Would that be for fire as well? your resources.

Great. Thank you. Good point. Thank you. Anything else? Council member Alley. I

just wanted to bring this up again as well. Not the first time I've mentioned it, but I do think that um we have an opportunity to improve the coalition building around this bond and making sure it gets passed. Uh if we can put a little bit of attention to detail on a forward-f facing database uh experience that makes it easy for the public to understand what's going on within the police department and uh provide a sense of transparency that we're all looking to to offer. Um and obviously I know that involves a lot of data entry. It involves a lot of software. There's there's so much that goes into that. a lot of conversion of of data into different things. Um, funding that's never going to be easy or popular, but bond could provide an opportunity for small wedge or fraction of some of that funding to to accumulate towards that goal, which is an ongoing goal. It's ne it's one of those things that's never going to be done. Um, but our community is asking for that kind of interface and I think that would even more support bond moving forward if we could have that as part of the conversation.

After had a discussion about it, Shannon and I spoke. Can you share about the CAD? I mean that is as you saw today that is one of the projects that's going on right now and I think having a record system um that allows for easier reporting um will make the job easier but only produces a report right now on a regular basis and so I don't is that posted on your transparency side or maybe talk to the forward facing piece I don't know yeah the goal is See

real updated every 24 hour real time dashboard the button and look at the last shift and performance and then all the data and then twice a week in that report. So we have to be completely honest it takes Lori and some staff with the current system it's a pretty affirmative extraction but I think as we move forward at this more dynamically with you that I'm available to you that you desire the mayor and I meet monthly on conversations where I'll share that data that so when you go into commun with your constituents I'm happy to schedule into my schedule a regular cadence where I'm it's a it's a

are you going to be showing that at your update on Tuesday we

measure um We'll pause. Can I add to that just because flag and or flag PD and fire are requesting aren't going to equate over to we had you know 57 crimes this week handling the law some good information on the website where you did a presentation on why and what we need now and over the next five years that doesn't say why you need $200 million, right? Um, so I think maybe if we could put that data of from the presentations that they've done over the last couple of months and emergency services and and showing what the committee saw on why they need this and what they need moving forward, I think that would be moreformative because if if I saw what the the trends were or the arrest were, the types of crimes, that doesn't tell me I think I think it's important as I was talking to the community part of my constituency who was very straightforward looking at me telling me there's no crime in your neighborhood. It would I think it would help if they

had some sort of metric there to show that there is crime happening and that's getting solved. We might pick up a vote from that person because to them that seemed like it wasn't that big of a deal to them because it seemed fine and that neighborhood probably is no crime. All right. Anything else council? Thank you. check our parking lot. Comments. Yeah. So, move on to

We're good. Thank you for the feedback. Um, circle back on these items that you brought up today. All right. So now we have um public comments have um anyone in person or online comment. I'm not seeing anyone once going twice.

All right. Um, thank you everyone. This has been I would say this has been the best I've been a part of. Thanks to the great Thank you all of you participating and being part of this process today.