City Council - Regular Meeting

THIS IS THE CITY OF PRESKET'S VOTING MEETING. VOTING MEETING. ROLL CALL, PLEASE.

COUNCILMAN GERING. I'M JUST BARELY HERE.

Please join me in a pledge of allegiance to the flag of our country.

Would someone like to speak from the Celtic Society?

And I wanna say that our city attorney, Mr. Young, is wearing a family heirloom who was passed down by his family. Thank you.

Until we get going, I would just like to comment that this presentation is a courtesy, and it doesn't mean that we support or oppose it one way or the other. This is for community information only. We felt that this was a good thing for the community to hear about. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Tenney. I see one of your slides here. PUSD bond needs 2026 HVAC boiler replacements. Our boys went to Lincoln about 35 years ago. And I remember the boiler would go out every winter and those little

Just so I get straight in my head and maybe others in the audience are wondering the same, having the two on, override and the bond, do I understand correctly that the override just allows us to go and increase the tax levy for the bonds?

And so where it says up to 15%, and what is it that you are going for?

Are you looking just from a management standpoint to keep that very nice spread between admin costs and operational classroom costs? You're not looking to...

I did some research before your presentation. Yes, sir. And your numbers on New York City are a wee bit low. Well, that's for the state of New York, actually. Oh, okay. Well, New York City is about somewhere in the vicinity of 40,000, 30-something to 44,000. It's very possible within that city it's higher than the state numbers there. Yeah. So they're the number one expensive school district in the country, and they rank in the middle of the country. You mentioned that we're in the top 20% in Arizona. Do you know where we stand nationally?

What's the impact? of charter schools on PUSD?

And not just Prescott, but nationally. Yes. We seem to hear this story over and over. And this has been a country that's dedicated itself to education. I mean, you look at how many people from foreign countries come here to go to college. Yes, sir. Yes. Is there something that's happened in the country that has us divert our attention away from education?

Well, Clark, that was an excellent presentation. Thank you. Thank you.

And I'd like to add one more thing. Speaking of the general plan, tomorrow at 3 o'clock here in the chambers, we'll have a meeting of the general plan committee, and we'll be reviewing the results of the open house that took place at the armory on September 3rd. So if you're interested, please join us or tune in online. Thank you.

Bonnie McMinn. Thank you, and I'd like to direct our city manager to look into this and maybe start a culture of spirit of yes instead of no.

OK, thank you. The reason why I pulled this is this is a pretty hefty contract, $1.75 million. And I was looking at this. It says for five years, but it's actually for nine years, if you count the extensions. So I was concerned, is it wise to enter into nine years with a contract that this B&W, which they've been around a long time, we've used them, they have an excellent reputation, but we only received one bid and it was B&W. And I don't know if that's a wise thing to do, give them a nine-year contract when we only have one bid, would it be wiser to maybe just say, okay, we'll have a five-ye

Okay. And our AEDs are checked by Centus, right? Okay. Are you comfortable with a contract that can be extended kind of automatically to nine years?

And I assume if there's someone else out there that wants to bid, then they can put it out to bid if we wanted to. Yeah. And, you know, I did go online and I couldn't find anyone locally that offered this service like B&W.

Do I hear any comments? Do I hear a motion?

Madam Mayor, I move to approve Consent Ordinance 10A.

Are there any representatives from the Betsy here that would like to speak? Any public comments? No, Mayor. Okay, thank you.

Pass the 7-0. And I'd like to thank the owners of the Betsy for investing in our beautiful community. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Would the ROTI like to come up and make some comments?

I'd like to hear from the public, and then we can have a discussion afterwards. Okay. Carter Labarge.

Truly, I think your time's up. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

That's all, Mayor. Thank you, Daniel. I'd like to make a few comments. We got a 20 pages of public comments compilation and an analysis. We just got it recently. It was in a format that we couldn't read, but we did finally get a easy to read format. And I just wanted to bring up a couple of highlights here. There were a lot of comments about animal waste and runoff. and drainage. The Auto Club is concerned about a ramp impeding access of their facility for the antique fire truck. I found that something that we need to look at. Someone else commented on handicap access from the parking area if

Yeah, this is a question for the city attorney, because there's been issues brought up around the structural integrity of the grandstand. If anything there were to go wrong and the public were to be injured, who would hold the liability for that?

so there have been concerns brought forth that we haven't done a real structural analysis of a grandstand that's aging if we're both legally liable for any damages that could happen there that seems like a critical thing to have in the plan to address

Thank you. Is a representative from GH2 here to comment? Apparently not. Do we know why? I mean, this is kind of an important hearing, why the representative isn't here, the consultant isn't here to address concerns.

I have, I have a concern, uh, speaker number four, Bonnie McMinn brought up some, uh, concerns about our, uh, contract with GH2 and that they had, uh, WE'RE OBLIGATED TO DO SEVERAL THINGS IN THIS CONTRACT WHICH APPARENTLY THEY DIDN'T ADDRESS. I WAS GOING TO ASK LEGAL DO WE

Okay, I would really like to get a vote on this next month. Is there any way that we can clear up some of these questions and get this voted on and move ahead with the lease?

HOW IS THE PUBLIC BEING UPDATED ON THESE CHANGES, LIKE THE MINUTE, SMALL CHANGES THAT YOU MENTIONED?

Because I think a number of concerns are resulting from the fact that there's not a sense of knowing what is in there with the changes. I think the people in the city of Prescott like to know the details and in fact, There might even be a discrepancy here. I think Mayor Mangarelli mentioned this is like a general plan. It's a broad vision. But I think for a lot of people, the devil is in the details. And they really kind of want to know, if this is a plan, what is going to be executed from this plan? And that's the sense I get where we're not completely congruent on what it is.

Okay. Any more comments from council? Mr. Gehring?

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, I have some concerns. I'm wondering why the neighbors don't think the new sound system is any better. It should be better, and the reports I'm getting, it's not. So that needs to be looked into. I'm wondering about the ADA audit. We didn't get an ADA audit that I know of, nor did we get accessible routes to all amenities, as far as I can tell. And we need that. Whether it needs to be part of the master plan or not, I don't know, but we do need that.

I just want to say I live about a quarter mile away and the sound system this year was a great improvement for the radio over previous years. So I do want to acknowledge that improvement.

Okay, let me continue because I have a number of comments. So on the environmental side, Gwen has promised that we're not going to discharge water into Miller Creek that exceeds state surface water quality standards. And I'm going to ask, do we have an idea of the footprint of the process that's going to fix that?

Okay, thank you. And then Mr. Young, I'm thinking that we can deal with the issue of requiring identification of overflow parking in the lease and how that's handled.

Yeah, my preference would be to at least require... acknowledging that overflow parking is required and it needs to be legally entitled and the rodeo has to have shuttle service for it. You know, I did find out something today that surprised me. I've long thought that we were talking about 123 maximum competitors, but I was told there's as many as 900 competitors come through there. I'm curious why GH2 didn't look at that traffic flow and how it's handled and where those guys park. They don't all arrive at the same time. They don't all leave at the same time, as far as I could tell. And I thin

Did I get a point of clarification? I thought we were talking about having more public input later. We're not? We're going to close it and keep it out now?

Yeah, there's a motion to close the public hearing on the table.

Well, I think this is very exciting to have this donation, and I just wanted to remind the public that the city is a nonprofit. So if you're planning on doing some tax planning, maybe some estate or legacy planning, and you have some tangible assets, please talk to your tax advisor and have a little meeting with us, and maybe we can... encourage further donations and possibly a tax deduction. Thank you. Any comments from the public? Do we have any comments?

Yes. Yes. Thank you, Lois. I said I forgot to push the blue button. No worries. This is getting a little long.

I move adoption of ordinance number 2026-1962, approving city contract number 2027-065 and adoption of resolution number 2026-2008. Second. Please vote.

Thank you, Sarah. Yeah, the reason why this needs to be discussed is last Thursday I was getting ready for a radio show, and I thought I was doing some research, and I went to yavapivotes.gov and printed out the sample ballot, and I was very surprised at the brevity of it. And if I was just your average person off the street getting my mail in ballot, I would look at these seven amendments and they really don't. There's really a very brief description. There's a lot of boilerplate legalese. that really doesn't help you out unless you go to your, there's supposed to be a voter brochure that's g

Yeah, October 7th. So I think that in order to be successful in our charter amendments, We need to realize that there's different state statutes for different entities because if you look at the ballot language for POSD's override, they have basically a novel compared to ours and also the county tax increase for the jail.

Point of order, Madam Mayor. This is a conversation between you and the city clerk. I don't think this has to be a full council meeting.

Okay, thank you. Good night. What I'd like to say is, is there anything that we can do to help the voter understand these charter amendments?

Thank you. Also, is there a way to make sure that if somebody just Googles, you know, on their search engine, City of Prescott propositions, to make sure that your sites come up?

Excellent. And then also this Thursday at eight o'clock, Bonnie McMinn and I will be on the radio with Senator Ken Bennett discussing the proposition. So it will be an interesting conversation and very informative.

VOTER EDUCATION IS REALLY IMPORTANT. I JUST DON'T THINK THE BALLOT IS REALLY THE PLACE TO DO IT, SO I'M VERY GLAD THAT YOU PUT THE PUBLICITY PAMPLETS OUT THERE, SARAH. I DO THINK THERE'S A TYPE OF MALAISE THAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE TOO MUCH INFORMATION ON THE BALLOT, AND I'M GOING TO JUST SAY We're going to need to educate our friends and families and our neighbors about what is in the propositions. And I think that's where it should come from. If it's on the ballot, I think it's going to just be deaden people when they go to write it out.

Okay. Thank you. And then in closing, I'd like to thank our charter committee for all their hard work and also for legal doing all the extra work with these charter amendments and also for city council for getting them on the ballot for our wonderful voters to decide on. Thank you.

Okay, we'll take Councilman Grady's comments and then the public.

I just wanted to echo what the Mayor just said, and also thank the Mayor and Lois. I know, and I think Mayor, you are as well, doing some public speaking as well on this issue around the community, and I want to thank staff for all that extra work, because you don't want to simply rely on the package that's coming to us, and so this extra work that we're doing and that Danielle's doing, that's really important, so thanks.

If there's no more comments, this meeting is adjourned.