Remarks by Cathey Rusing
222 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 9
Good afternoon, today is October 20th and this is the City of Prescott's special study session. Please roll call.
Well, thank you very much, Senator. We really appreciate you coming up and speaking to us today. My pleasure, ma'am. And I want to thank you for advocating for rural Arizona because, as you know, sometimes we do get forgotten up here. But I think that with your help, the state legislature will start paying more attention to us because we are growing and we are thriving and we are interestingly working together and supporting each other so that we can have a bigger voice down in Phoenix. So you mentioned roads. Roads are so important for us out here in rural Arizona and we have so many in…
Yeah. And also, thank you for supporting the trades and the workforce. We have Yavapai College here, and they are our pipeline for the trades and our workforce here in Yavapai County, because it's so important. Not everybody wants to go to college, and as you say, take on six-figure debt, and then they come out with a degree, and there's no market, and they'll never repay that debt.
Yes, I agree 100%. I don't know if you got a copy of our legislative platform. We just got a copy of this and I need to update it for you. Speaking of updating, on the bottom of it, we talk about funding priorities and they're in order of importance. NUMBER ONE, PHASE TWO OF THE NORTHEAST AIRPORT RAMP FOR WILDFIRE HELICOPTERS, CARGO, AND INNOVATION FOR THREE MILLION. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT PROJECT. IT WILL BE IMPORTANT TO OUR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, IT'S IMPORTANT BECAUSE WE ARE A FIRE CENTER FOR ALL OF NORTHERN ARIZONA. SO IT'S IMPORTANT THAT WE HAVE THE CAPACITY to…
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Speaking of the rodeo, I want to thank you for saving the $15.3 million from being returned to the state treasury with your BIRB, your budget reconciliation bill.
APPRECIATE THAT. THANK YOU. AND MR. GAMBOGGI, DID YOU HAVE SOME COMMENTS?
Okay, thank you. Is there any more comments? Do we have some public?
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
All right. Okay, thank you. If that's it, I want to thank you very much and we'll move to any public comments if we have them.
Okay. All righty. If there's nothing more, okay. I think this meeting is adjourned.
Good afternoon. Today is October 13th, 2026, and this is the City of Prescott City Council voting meeting. Roll call, please.
I would like to invite the friends to come up here and join me, please. Steve, do you want to join us? Oh, okay. Whereas the Friends of the Prescott Public Library play a vital role in strengthening our library by generously raising funds that expand and enhance the services and opportunities available to our community, supporting additional programming, essential equipment, support for children's summer reading, and special events throughout the year. Whereas the ongoing work of the Friends highlights the vital role our library plays as a cornerstone of the community, providing opportunities…
And I have one more announcement to add on. Did you know that Prescott is a college town? We have three facilities here in town that people don't really realize. We have Emory Riddle, we have Yavapai College, and we have our iconic Prescott College. So I am pleased to announce that Prescott College will be marking their 60th anniversary with a four-day celebration starting tomorrow from the 14th through the 17th. And you can go to their website and look at what kind of activities will be going on so that you can sign up. So I just want to say congratulations to Prescott College for their 60th…
Well, you better believe it. First of all, I'd like to comment on the recreation department. I didn't know this, but the Circle P Trail has been completed over there on the west end by Stringfield Ranch. So congratulations. And are we going to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony? Because it was done back in September, August?
oh that will be wonderful and then also for our library melissa orr is our wonderful director and i happen to notice that statistically we had an increase of 43 000 visits in the last couple of years so is melissa still here or did she uh did she leave i would like to ask uh what brought on that big surge
Well, thank you. It sounds like we might be outgrowing our downtown facility, and we may need to look at a branch up in the northern part of the community in our growth corridor in the future, the near future. Yes, thank you. Okay, thank you, Melissa.
Thank you, Ralph. And I'd like to direct the comments to our city manager because he's the one that makes the decision for the hiring. Thank you.
OK. I'd like to start the discussion with item 9B concerning the Evergreen Solutions Citywide Classification and Compensation Study. When I was reviewing the paperwork, I noticed that this company did Prescott. It did it about five years ago. We did this study by Evergreen. also and they included they studied Prescott Prescott Valley and Yavapai County and Flagstaff and I felt that maybe we needed to talk about this because I felt it was a conflict because our major competitors for employees are Yavapai County and Prescott Valley and to have the same company you know, doing the compensation…
OK, well, thank you very much. I have another comment, another question on page 151 of our packet. There's some bullet points, and the last bullet point reads, conducting reviews centered around gender and racial equity in compensation systems, ensuring their adherence to local, state, and federal laws and regulations. So I'm not an HR person, but I need some translation. I was thinking, is this when they mentioned gender, is this to make sure that women are paid the same as men for performing the same tasks?
And then, also, racial equity. As I understand, affirmative action has been kind of gone the way of the buggy whip. And is this to make sure that, like you said, everyone is getting paid?
I just want to make sure that we're hiring people based on merit and not because, you know, they belong to some certain group. I believe that's that's kind of against the federal laws.
OKAY. THANK YOU. DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE ANY QUESTIONS? OKAY. THANK YOU. LOIS?
Okay, thank you. I don't think there's any more comments. And then moving on, we'll need to take a vote on each of them individually because they were all pulled.
And now we can discuss item C. Okay, item C is a contract between the City of Prescott and Lifeline Ambulance Services Inc. for Ambulance Transportation Services. As you know, Our health care system is up here in Prescott. We're having a lot of serious problems. And it's very important that we work with our fire department and our ambulance service companies to keep our response times low. And we've had a longstanding relationship with Lifeline. and they've been doing a very good job in a challenging situation. So I would just like to ask a few questions. Lifeline is a global, provides global…