Council - Regular Meeting

This is a regular meeting, May 27, 2026. The time is 5.31. Welcome to the members of the public that are in attendance. Please join us for a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. A reminder to all council members to put on your microphone. Madam Clerk, will you please do a roll call?

Mayor Kidman?

Here.

Vice Mayor Farrell?

Here.

Councillor Hammond. Here. Councillor Roundtree. Here. Councillor Heddinger. Here. Councillor Preller. Here. Councillor Kojen.

Here. Community recognitions, we have none this week. Item number 4, 1, 2, and 3 of the consent agenda. Do I have a motion? Move to approve the consent portion of the agenda. Second. I have a motion from Councillor Kojen and a second from Councillor Preller. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. I hear from the citizens today we do not have any blue cards. Reports and announcement. Item 6-1 from the mayor's reports. I have nothing for today. Item number 6-2, city manager current events summary. Do we have anything from city manager?

Thank you, mayor. Just a couple of items. The light project at the sports complex is looking to be completed on June 3rd. And they'll hand us over the lights at that time. So... That's fun and exciting. And then on, again, like I announced last meeting, on May 30th, we've got the Sunset Country Music Festival at the Memorial Park from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. I assume that's 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sorry for the typo. And lastly, just a little brief introduction. He happened to be here. So our new Public Works Director, Tim Westover, is here. So if you can just stand up and say hi. So glad to have him on board.

He's been here one week, right? Today?

One week and he's still here, so that's good.

Is that everything? That's it, thank you. Quick question on those lights at the sports complex. Those are the lights that are red, white, and blue, right?

I believe so. And green.

I don't want green. I think they do all colors.

It's supposed to be a pretty advanced lighting system. Thank you.

Item number seven, boards and commissions. Any council members attend advisory board meetings since our last council meeting? Councillor Hettinger.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I attended the Youth Advisory Commission on behalf of our vice mayor last week. they had a couple of items the first one Brooke Whitethorn presented on her project activities for youth wellness and alcohol prevention in the community she also presented to the substance abuse task force and she invited the youth to provide feedback through surveys and social media feedback and she also invited our YAC to attend and possibly host her next stakeholder meeting and then the Youth Advisory Commission also Discussed their movie event that they had done previously and are looking to do additional activities and events in the future So they talked about potentially collaborating with other departments in the city like the library or the rec department And looking at more ideas there Thank you Any others here counselor Preller I

Yes, I attended a Substance Abuse Task Force meeting on the evening of the 20th. There were a lot of presentations and updates from a lot of different organizations. We had Canyonlands Healthcare give an update that they held a parent and teacher conference at Encompass with about 50 participants. Community Bridges Incorporated gave presentations on the statistics. and that the detox facility will hopefully be opening by the end of the summer. Coconino County Health presented the annual overdose fatality report. and there was a youth alcohol prevention presentation by Brooke white white thorn sorry and those are those posters you've been seeing on Facebook and the city app about substance abuse and whatnot they're great designs There's also a survey going around that's being advertised there as well. There's a link to click, and they're looking for input. And then they are deciding to design themselves. Sorry, the Substance Abuse Task Force has decided to design themselves a new logo. So I hope to see designs for it at some point here in the future.

Thank you. Councillor Hammond.

Thank you. Yes, the Economic Development and Advisory Board met yesterday. They had quite a bit of news. First, the chairman, Eric Stanfield, is likely stepping down soon due to a lot of personal things happening in his life. So they'll be looking for a new member as well as a new chairman. In reports that we heard from various sources, Good news, tourism is showing some signs of recovery, although large hurdles still exist to seeing levels that we've seen in the past. There's been really good reception in the community of the economic development newsletter and social media info that Adam's putting out, so kudos to him. The Tannarina Rezone is happening June 2nd. Sorry, I know there's a bit of overlap between economic development and planning and zoning with that project, but I wanted to make sure it gets mentioned for folks that are interested in attending that hearing. Judy Franz mentioned that there are lots of new businesses popping up in town. You all have probably seen a lot of them. These are signs of growth and moving towards a more healthy economy in town. So that's great news. We've got the new soda shop, new ice cream shop, new crystal shop, new book shop, the loves family travel station that's being built, and the new sports bar in town. So look for highlights on those businesses in the economic development newsletter. And then finally, we've got some news from Gintera that they're

grant that they're applying for to begin their housing project is moving forward not as quickly as anybody would like but it is moving forward okay thank you any others thank you i am going to change the order of the agenda for the next item i'm going to move item 9-1 up to right now so that the legislative update provided by Tom Dorn so that he can get on the road. This is under new business, so.

Mayor, council, thank you very much. I appreciate that. I was not expecting that, but very kind of you. So, anyway, I'm glad to be here to give you a legislative update on where things are and where things are not with regard to the Arizona legislature. It's just curiouser and curiouser every year down there. It just... It's been quite a year, especially when we're told from the very beginning of the session that there's no money. And it all came down, it all comes down to conformity to the federal bill and or to not to conform. Governor Hobbs did not want to conform to many provisions of the HR1, some people call it HR1, some call it the one big beautiful bill. It's the same thing. So the conformity issue is what they're still negotiating on. I heard today as I was driving up, I was calling staff at the Senate and House and asking, where are they on certain items? And they're still squabbling over the conformity. The other big issue in the budget is the funding for Proposition 123. As you recall, that happened several years ago. It was a settlement of a lawsuit, and Governor Ducey decided, hey, let's take the proceeds temporarily. Let's just borrow from the state trust. And once you open that can of worms, everyone thinks it needs to go on forever. And so the governor and her team have been pushing that we should continue that and go to the ballot again and get the voters to dedicate about $300 to $400 million of the trust proceeds of the interest. Instead of it going into the trust and building, it would go into one time spending for another 10 years. But there's going to be a lot of discussions, so it's not going to happen. That's off the table now. So it really comes down to conformity to the federal legislation. So we'll see how that goes. With regard to my, which button? Okay, wait, okay, there we go. So that's the governor's argument on the state budget, and I'm sure you may have read about this or heard about it in the media. So that's where we are. How does that affect page is the important thing. Revenues, because we were going in through the, Rural Transportation Advisory Council to try to get some funding, about $6.6 million, for North Lake Powell Boulevard on some utility relocation. That was what was submitted through the RTAC legislation. And then also we had Senator Tathley do a bill with regard to South Lake Powell Boulevard, the roundabout for that. And so, which we need to update that study because she ended up just going for $3 million because we didn't actually have the documents to show how much it costs. So that's something we need to talk about. Governor Hobbs, just to give you real quickly an update on, please interrupt me as I go or just tell me to hurry up and be quiet. Either way. The composition of the legislature continues to be a Republican majority. There's no attempt to redistrict in our state because we have a commission. So what you saw in other states that did not come to the Arizona Capitol. We have an independent redistricting commission and a Democratic governor, so it wouldn't have worked. So Republicans still have the control of the Senate and We'll see what happens. You don't know what the coattails are. I know from a political standpoint, I've been in a lot of political-type meetings that are unofficial, and it's interesting, the Republicans and the Democrats, they're targeting four districts, and they're targeting three districts, and they think that they can get it down to, Democrats think that they can get it maybe down to 15-15, and then the Republicans think they might be able to pick up two and make it 19-11. which is not a good thing because they end up splitting all the time and they end up losing the majority. So anyway, the House is the same thing. There's very targeted districts. We have very few districts in our state, as you know, that are competitive, just like the Congress and gerrymandering that has happened over the years. Montenegro, if the Republicans retain, he'll probably continue as the speaker again. And then Michael Carbone and Oscar de los Santos from Phoenix, all Phoenix Metro people. And we don't have any rural legislators in leadership. Which is, I have not, there's always been some rural, and usually the rural legislators will hold their votes in order to get someone in leadership. But this is like the first time we have not had anybody in the House or Democrat leadership that is from outside of Pima and Maricopa County and Pinal. I mean if you consider that kind of urban now. Here we are. This is today, day 136, 136 days over the constitutional limit. And I think I've told you this before. It's not good because years ago, a few years back, they increased the per diem. They continued the per diem. and they gave mileage, higher mileage for out-county legislators, which is nice, but what it's led to is people just kind of hang out. Not only do they make their $24,000, but they can make other money by just kind of making sure we're still in session. It's really, there's no one hurrying to get back to the store and the ranch and the farm or in the mine or whatever, their houseboat, like they used to. um general effect she her vetoes are down her record is 143 vetoes uh we're down to 100 down to 63 um and what that is i think a lot of chair the president the speaker said enough already just we're not going to send all these bills up for her to veto general effective date as you know and important for the city attorney to know 90 days after the end of session is when things become effective This is last year's budget, because we obviously don't have this year's budget yet. But because there's no money, it's going to look, this pie chart's going to look very much the same, but with lesser, you know, less numbers. So not much is going to change. One thing that the budget items that we're concerned about for Page, I already talked to you about the RTAC, the regional areas, so the transportation projects. The legislature is clawed back. I don't think they clawed back anything that we have here. But that's something I need to confirm. But a lot of the governor vetoed their budget, the Republican budget, because of the clawback of transportation projects. which came to about $26 million, and then also a $9 million HEERF sweep. And as you know, all of us that care in rural Arizona, it's the HEERF. It's all about the Highway User Revenue Fund, because Pima, Pinal, and Maricopa all have a half-cent sales tax for themselves. So when the HEERF is swept, we have a disproportionate impact on rural Arizona. And many transportation groups have been working hard to fight that. And so the governor actually put it in her veto letter, the hearth sweep. And they say, well, we're just sweeping it to give it to the DPS. No disrespect. But there's a lot of general fund money that should be used for DPS. We need the HEERF dollars to be used for the roads. And so I'm probably going to have bad luck on the way home, right? Hope not. I use cruise control when I come over the mountain. So I also want to mention WIFA. There was a clawback on WIFA. And so I don't know if Brian's here, but anything that you have in the pipeline, so to speak, with regard to WIFA funding or loan, because you did have a 6.6% million dollar, I think we had that loan a few years back, where the status of that is, we want to make sure that is not clawed back at all. And there's been a real fight at the legislature, especially from rural Arizona, to make sure the WIFA money is there, as well as GATA, the Greater Arizona Development Authority, which is more for economic development use. and for certain projects that you may do and you could apply for that. We need to make sure that those are, and that's, the governor's well aware of all this from the rural folks. We've all speak up a lot with regard to do not, this is disproportionately hurtful to rural Arizona, so we always ask them to watch on that. Moving right along, any questions so far on anything I'm talking about? Okay. Moving right along, well, our delegation, Senator Taffley has been helpful in doing the legislation that we asked for. Unfortunately, it falls into the same category of all the projects that people have been asking for, not this year. And it's just unfortunate. But whenever we needed something, we go to them and ask for their support on behalf of the city. With regard to, this is probably hard to see, and I apologize for that. I'll make sure you have a hard copy of it, unless you do have it.

We can see it fine on ours.

Oh, you do? Oh, OK, good. With regard to, I just want to highlight a few of these, just trying to list as many as we can with regard to housing. These things have either been vetoed, signed, or they just are still in the process, but we don't want to call them dead, because the session isn't over. The first one on data centers, and I know data centers have been an issue up here, but they're all over the state. And so one of the legislature has been trying to work with cities and towns and counties to address that. and then trying to balance the economic development needs of the state, especially with TSMC and LG Battery and Intel's expansions and Raytheon and others in the Tucson area and the Phoenix area. The restrictions on data centers really haven't moved through the legislature. But some cities have done what they could to make sure it fits into what they want as a community. 2804 with the rural housing tax credit. That is something that Teresa Martinez from Pinal County was really pushing and all the rural communities. We were behind it and working it because you've indicated in your priorities that affordable housing remains an issue, along with short-term rentals, policies. All the short-term rental legislation died. Any type of ability for cities and towns to kind of rein things in and have a little more control. It's a very powerful industry that does a lot of campaign support for legislators. It's hard to beat. I want to also mention the state land department. The continuation, I know we've had a lot of discussions regarding the state land department and you guys had your meeting in February with the people from the state land department regarding the state trust land that's on the other side of the river. So there's a continuation of the department. Ultimately there's gonna be a modernization of the state land department that's really, and I've said this to you before, it was funny the first time, but I'll say it again. I mean, we're still funding the Pioneers home, and there are no more Pioneers. I mean, that was 100 years ago. We need to update the state constitution and the Federal Enabling Act. New Mexico, Arizona and New Mexico came in together, as you know, and the Federal Enabling Acts gave us all of our trust land. And they said, go make money on your trust land to fund your stuff. And New Mexico has gone back and amended theirs more for an environmental purpose to try to preserve. But I think Arizona, the business community, is starting to think, you know, we need to amend our Constitution and the Federal Enabling Act so we can maximize the value of our state trust lands. to help pay for services like education and transportation and other things. So that's kind of this coming thing that's going to keep coming along. And Paige, definitely with all your state trust land nearby, you would have an interest in that. Moving on, almost done, I've got a few more slides. Water, there's not much to report on water because it's going down and you know it more than, I'm not just talking about the river, the groundwater issues are a big concern. But the number one issue down there at the state capitol is about the Colorado River. Everyone just sees what's happening up here and it breaks everyone's heart and it breaks my heart and I know it's very tough to see. the economic impact that that has especially for you all and so that's a I just want you to know that the people at the Capitol they are paying attention and they know this is not good and everyone in their own district for selfish reasons but I just want you to know that they they I hate to say it, but feel your pain. But they have their own pain over what you're seeing, you see with your eyes. And so that is a huge issue down there. And I expect to see a significant number put into the litigation fund. that they created last year, because that's basically, as you know, they're trying to do the deal with Nevada, California, and Arizona together and see what happens. But it's going to end up in court, as you all know, and so the legislature knows that's going to have to be paid for. And on the next page, you see, I just wanted to show you, these are all some of the same bills. Representative Gail Griffin from the southeastern, Arizona. Who's a realtor? Who she's like the queen bee of water policy and but she carries the water for for the farming industry of the cattlemen the home builders and so they want to keep using water and All of her legislation kind of moves towards that. Some are just got some look like they're they're trying to help save and they are, but at the end of the day, the governor just says this is not good and she vetoes them again. Transportation infrastructure. He did want to mention, you know, it's not on this list here, but 1732 is a tap. Senator hathley's bill and that was a $3 million for South Lake South Lake Powell that we She just put a number in because we didn't have the exact number. I already talked to you about the rural transportation projects and that's 6.6 million. The Smart Fund, I don't know if the City of Page has utilized that, tapped that at all, but that is where you can, Max, if you're able to help draw down some federal money and you can get the money from the state through the Smart Fund and match the federal dollars to build your transportation project. And so while those of us that have been lobbying for for rural transportation, we're saying, okay, we get the projects thing this year, but please, legislature, put money in the smart fund. And the governor had, she had 10 million in her budget, and there was Representative Winn from Yavapai County, he ran a bill for 15 million, I believe, but we'll see what happens. That's where the rural interests are pushing, at least fund that, so if we have the money to step forward to match federal dollars, we have a place to go. Kind of like WIPA, same idea. And one of the gas tax holiday for HEERF purposes, everyone put, I mean, that sounds great in a campaign year, but it's like throwing all your medicine away when you're sick. You know, we need our HEERF money for our roads. And so that was stopped. And then the last one I want to mention, you probably hear this from the League of Cities and Towns, the HCR, House Concurrent Resolution, that would have gone on the ballot. It's still out there. We don't know what the legislature is going to put on the ballot, the Republican legislature wanting to drive Republicans to the polls. They'll put some red meat type things like photo radar, and they'll put those things on the ballot. This HCR 2052, which is a different number now, That would prohibit you from raising taxes or fees as a city. And it would just be a complete moratorium. And so the league in all the cities and towns around the state and counties are opposing it. But they, and I, hopefully there's enough Republican legislators that will tell the leaders, we do not want that to happen. It'll mess up my city. Ongoing issues in, oh, and with regard to transportation, I know ADOT was here, I'm almost done, ADOT was here, and you guys had your listening session, and I read their report, and I'm glad you had attendance there, and it was pretty consistent with what they're hearing, and It's something that we can follow up with the State Board of Transportation with all those comments. And that's all part of the transportation funding issue that's coming in, whether the 28 cycle or the 2030 ballot. With regard to ongoing issues, same issues I just kind of already talked about, those are gonna be here, be with us, they're always with us. And hopefully the revenues will turn and the economy picks up with our new tax situation and whatever the future holds and we'll be able to pursue more funding. And I just try to make sure that Mr. Marbury and all of you are aware of everything that we're aware of where there's like GATA and WIFA and RTAC, all those opportunities for you guys to get more funding to do all the things you need to do. And so I'd be happy to answer any questions. Try to go as fast as I can.

I got a question. When you had that roundabout up there, I was wondering how they built the perfect roundabout on the south end, and they messed that one up so bad on the north end. Every day when I go through, it's a joke.

Mayor, Councilman, you're talking about the roundabout?

He's not fond of the north roundabout, right? Is that what you're saying? It doesn't feel like a roundabout. It feels like a stop sign. An oval about or something.

I don't know. When the traffic is more of a stop sign, you can't just yield them. You should have seen the other day when a boat was trying to go through there.

Can we get those three councillors back on the screen? OK, I don't see any hands coming from them.

And Mayor and Council, those roundabouts come from not having enough money to do other things.

Somebody got there on my camera. OK, we'll see if that's the case. Hey, bring us some more money.

Working on it. Any other questions? All right, well, thank you very much. It's a privilege and an honor to work with you all, and we'll see you at the league. And thank you for moving me up. That was very kind of you and unexpected. Thank you.

Have a good drive. Okay, I will. Thanks for coming. All right, thanks. Okay, it takes us back to... Item 8.1, presentation by Norris Design on downtown project update. I guess that will be for, what are their names again? I can see it. Claire and Jason.

Hello, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council. Thank you so much for taking the time to hear us again. I just said I'm Claire Edelman Heath. I'm the project manager for the project and joining me tonight are Jason Kuklinski, who's the principal in charge, and Thomas Lampo, who is our project planner. And we're excited to share with you the results from public engagement number two. OK. Is everyone able to hear me and see the screen OK?

Yes.

Yep. Wonderful. Thank you. Great. Well, so we have just a short agenda for this presentation. I'll do just a quick overview of our timeline, just since it's been a few months since we've seen you. Then I'll get into the public engagement number two and that'll be the focus and then I'll share at the end our next steps and Which are really moving into the third and final segment of public engagement For that project timeline we has a privilege to be awarded the project about this time last year. And we've been working since then and are looking to finish up our public engagement about mid-summer this summer. That will also coincide with, in the kind of project delivery terms, 30% design. Then we are going to move into technical documents. We will be pushing through these. in order to prepare for delivery of project construction, which we hope to begin in 2027. Just as a recap, we've outlined three stages of public engagement. We finished the first stage in 2025, which was to have a kind of a visual preference survey. And really it was a moment to learn a lot about the project and first engage the community. This second stage that we just completed was really about sharing plan options for the project area. and now we're moving forward with the results from that and some other inputs we're heading towards sharing a preferred plan that takes all of that feedback and puts it into one consolidated plan to get additional feedback with the community one of the big things that we had talked about coming out of public engagement one was doing even more robust outreach to get our engagement numbers up. And so here's a breakdown of some of the ways that we went about that, and some of the results. In public engagement one, we had one in-person event. That's pretty standard, but we increased that to six in-person events for public engagement number two. We had a really outstanding response to the online survey in public engagement one, and we got an even better response in public engagement number two. We had 532 respondents. So we were just thrilled and thankful to everyone that participated to have reached that number. And then we also really bolstered the different methods of outreach. So we had five unique methods of outreach and public engagement one. And in close partnership with the planning Sylvia, Adam as the public information officer, Frank the manager, we really were able to bolster that and do much more types of outreach that were really successful in getting us our results. So 12 different methods were included. And so overall, we had a very positive reception of the options that we shared. 90% of the votes were all in favor of one of the options. Less than 10% actually didn't want to see any improvement. So we see a lot of support from the community We also feel, and I'll walk through what were the preferred options, but just as kind of a big picture, we also just saw a really good range and feel like we're striking a good balance between people that want to see even more robust options to people that want to see minimal improvements. We found that we think that we're striking the right line with the community and following their guidance. We also had just really incredible write-in comments. We had over 365 write-in comments with some very thoughtful and constructive feedback. So again, just wanted to express our gratitude. to the community and everyone that participated in this process, because it just gives us so much to work with that we can really reflect the community in this design. And we're just very thankful and excited for those results. Since we last saw you, I've also included we did have additional business stakeholder outreach. We had a meeting at the end of 2025 and then we had a survey that was out and available to take and we also had a meeting as part of the public engagement to process specifically focused on business stakeholders. And we've also had independent communication and outreach with with many businesses. So we feel that we're really getting in alignment with them and we're thankful for them taking that additional time as well. We did do some visitor outreach. I think that out of all the demographics, we saw an increase in the age groups that we were hoping to see, increase in business engagement. The visitor outreach is still a little bit low. The numbers out of the online survey, it was still over 80% were residents of Page, which is excellent to really hear from the community. But I know that's something that had come up in the meeting and something that we're still looking at for this final phase. So just as an overview of what we shared with the community, we shared design options and we broke the project into three areas and created options for each area just to make the level of detail a little bit more engaging. And the way we arranged the options were kind of the lightest improvement, lowest cost to the greatest amount of improvement and greatest cost. And all of these ideas that we included were generated from what we had heard from the community and city team. So these were all our best effort to reflect back what we're hearing from the community. So for the block 17, again, we had three options here. The most preferred option by far was the option C, the strategic improvement that really included the most level of improvements. This won't be its final form. We did get a lot of comments that we want to integrate. The most prominent comments that we heard were, really evaluating the number of trees we have included. Some people want to see more, some want to see less. So we want to... Claire? Oh, sorry. Thank you, Councillor Hammond. Yeah. I'm super sorry to interrupt, but can you go back a slide real quick?

Absolutely. Okay, so here I see option B is strategic improvements, C is pedestrian promenade. And then if we go forward, I think they're combined.

Yes, thank you for that clarification. I apologize, I'm not sure how that... title is incorrect but um to for accuracy and um to confirm it's it's this final option c pedestrian promenade okay so that's the one that people most preferred yes i i apologize for that type uh title error but yes thank you for clarifying absolutely um So another one is that, you know, in the background, we have been working to have a parking study to validate the quantity of parking. So that will be another layer that we're factoring in, as well as continued collaboration with the businesses to make sure that these improvements are really serving them and the intent of the grant and the project for economic development. um then our next area that we shared and put up to the community was the treatment of elm street um we have again a range from a lighter touch which was actually the middle option to the the heavier kind of changes and higher cost of the option a plaza street um the preferred option that we heard was option C, shared mobility way. I will say that what drew people to this option the most were the amount of trees and the bike lanes. But we did, it was a very close number between all three options. So I think this is the one that we are going to really revisit the most with the city team in terms of design. and look at what people liked in the other options and how we can combine them to get kind of a hybrid that most represents what we heard from the community. And then finally, we have the Page Plaza area, which is, much of it is private, although we have been having conversations with the property owner and the management team about extending improvements into this area, and that's why we included robust improvements there. And then the John C. Page Memorial Park. Out of these two options, the pedestrian promenade was the most preferred. People really responded to it largely because they liked the extended plaza space coming up and they liked the connection between the park and the Page Plaza Shopping Center. Some of the things that we heard that we want to study are that the way the amphitheater works, potentially adding more parking back into this scheme. So we'll see a little bit of a hybrid there and get that functionality of the parking. And then also of the two, studying the best type of crossing from the high school on that South Navajo Drive. okay and then moving into next steps so as I mentioned earlier we'll be developing a preferred plan that plan is going to integrate a few things and we have had a Alta and technical site survey completed by a land surveyor so we are going to be studying that to better kind of test the feasibility and constructability of all these options. So we'll also be integrating the parking study information. We'll be doing continued stakeholder outreach, including with the business owners that will all go into that preferred plan. Then we'll come back out with public engagement. We'll be getting any final comments and changes to the plan, and then we'll be coming back to you to share what we've learned and looking for a potential approval on that plan in order for us to move forward with technical documents. And then finally, after we get that approval with exceptions or changes, we'll be looking to do technical documents and that'll be working with a broader consultant team to help make all of this constructible and real. That takes us through the update and I'd love to take any questions.

I see Councillor Hammond.

Thank you. I just want to say I am so impressed and so pleased with the work you all have done and the way this is coming together. The amount of community input is driving a really phenomenal result. And so I'm just grateful and pleased for all the work that you are doing. The one thing that I would ask is that when we get to the next Final phase, I would really love to see this style of presentation your your observations about public feedback, how that drives design presented at our economic development advisory board before it comes to Council. The thing is, by the time that we review and we start thinking about voting. it's a lot harder to change things where if it goes through EDAP first, there can be additional community input. They're closer to the businesses and understand business needs. And if there's a little thing that needs to be tweaked, it can be done before it comes to us. So that's just my one request going forward.

Thank you very much. We will certainly follow that. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the kind words. We are so honored to be part of this process. It's very exciting to hear.

It's exciting to see it come together. I can't wait to see what this does for our town.

Yes. Any other comments or questions? Not from the dais. I don't see any other hands. Anything from Jason or I can't see the other name. Thomas.

No, thanks for the kind words. And we started out on an interesting path together. And to see where we are today, it's pretty awesome. I'm looking forward to the next steps in delivering a project you can all be proud of.

Thank you very much for giving us the update. It is exciting. Okay, well, if there's no other comments or questions, thank you for presenting tonight.

Thank you so much for your time.

Good night.

Okay. On to item number 82, golf course cost allocation. I'll throw that over to, that was an item in the budget that we had some questions we wanted to come back to council with. more of an information at this point, I think.

I think so, Mayor. Based on conversations, my understanding is that when you look at the budgets as a whole, that money is allocated in the utilities budget. So I think what we worked out with PUE was for this budget, we'll just make a note in the golf course budget that some of those costs for that pumping are associated with the PUE budget, if that's acceptable for council, but not actually do some sort of transfer or something like that.

Just a note. Councillor Cogent.

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I move that we do $50,000 in that transfer of the funds to cover sprinkler parts and repairs and stuff. I think there's a lot of information in that letter, but there's a lot of information that's left out that, like, they have to get rid of that water, so they might as well be spraying it on the golf course. Out of the 2,700 acre feet that we're allowed, that's almost 880 million gallons, and we're using 150 million gallons less than that right now, and just spraying it on the golf course, even if it's only 10%, that's another 25 million gallons that that we have, so to think that we need to spray it out in the desert is false. And the other part where they say that they give us 400,000 or 500,000 of sewage water is ridiculous, because if there's no demand for it, we haven't used any of that, sold any of that water since they finished N20. So it has no value at all, and they have to get rid of what's out there, so it might as well go on the golf course for the quality of life.

So are you proposing that we go ahead and add a budget item into the city's budget to transfer $50,000 for those costs?

Yeah, $50,000. He said he could do it somehow. Oh, I probably should have had a second before I said all that.

I have a hand from Councillor Hammond.

MS. I agree with Councillor Coggin's sentiment. I would just like to clarify that what Mr. Marbury is proposing is no transfer, a simple notation in the budgets, correct?

MR.

Correct. A notation to specify how much costs towards the golf course is actually in the PUE budget, just so that there's an accurate picture.

OK, I'm very comfortable with that. Thank you.

So did you make a full motion? Do we have a second for the motion? Do we need a? Please restate. Please restate your motion. Sorry. Fine. If you want to restate your motion, then we can give a second.

If you wish to do it. I move that we appropriate $50,000 from fund 52 to go to the golf course to pay for sprinkler repairs and parts.

Do we have a second for the motion? OK. No second for the motion. Councillor Hemminger.

Sorry for whatever I did there. Can you help me understand the benefit of having a note in the budget versus actually transferring the funds? That's an open question to whoever is the right party to answer it.

I can kind of answer it if you'd like. Please. There's a lot of people that have the sentiment that the PUE and the City of Page are the same entity in the big picture. And then there's another group of people that would like to have all the expenses of PUE at least listed where those expenses are used. And personally, I think that it would be fine to just put the PUE is okay at the time to leave it in their budget to pay for this. Those that would like the cost attributed to the correct place are as long as we have the notation. Just to give us a true cost estimate of how much does it really cost to run the golf course.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Would, and I apologize if this is in the budget already, but would it be possible over the next year to do the note but then also have a record so that during next year's budget cycle we can have a presentation on where both sides are seeing the money coming and going and see if it makes sense to keep doing it ongoing or if we should consider fund transfers.

I would agree with that. That's something that we can look forward to for the next budget season, correct?

Other than I'm not in charge of PUE's budget.

Right. We work with the PUE board. OK. We got a thumbs up from Councilor Roundtree. Councillor Preller.

I just kind of wanted to maybe tee off of Councillor Kojen's idea. I think it would be irresponsible of us to take a gigantic dollar amount and just drop a budget nuke on Jake. That seems unfair. However, it also seems unfair for PUE to be paying for sprinklers and valves and stuff over at the golf course. I personally think we can divide that up into the water costs and the everything else costs, and the golf course takes the everything else costs and PUE retains the water costs in their budget. I don't know. That's not a nice round $50,000, but I think it's kind of in that vein of what you were thinking, right?

I can perfectly see that for the next budget cycle. I think that for this current one.

We're a bit close on time.

It's getting close on time. It would be nice to be able to just put the notation in there and not have to worry about that detail and plan to do it in the future. That's my opinion. Councillor Hammond.

I was just going to say what you said, Mr. Mayor.

Okay. I don't know that we need to have any motion on this. It was more of just an informational item of what was being done until our next budget season that we can look forward to. Write it in your notes to watch for it, council members.

Yeah. So the one thing I will say, Mayor, is if that item is in the budget for golf course to transfer, we'll take that out and just work with PUE throughout the year maybe track some of the individual costs there and bring it back to council next budget year for consideration.

I agree. Any other comments on this one? I see a thumbs up from Councillor Hammond.

OK. Sorry, Mayor. I may have to correct myself. I hear Linda remotely screaming at me that if we make any changes like that, we may have to change the schedule. If we adopt the budget tonight with the remaining schedules, it may stay in the budget but just be an unrealized expense.

I thought if I understood right, she can reduce the budget without any problems as if we were to increase it, correct?

Yeah, as far as final. So you could approve the preliminary as it is tonight, and if we wanted to take it out, we could for final budget approval. Okay. I just didn't want to go sideways.

You got plans.

Okay. I just didn't want to go sideways of my... financial expert.

Okay. On to item number 83, potential assistant city manager position. This is also a budget item that I asked to come before the council during meeting because we were all over the spectrum on this during the budget meeting. Excuse me, my throat.

All right. Thank you, Mayor, members of council. Yes, at the request of council, this was be brought back as an individual item before budget and i appreciate that and that it gave me time to really ponder more on on what i was looking for in this position and i think it's refined my thoughts and so some of what you might hear tonight might be different than what was in the budget meeting. But I think this is a good way to explain it. So I appreciate having a little bit more time to more thoroughly go through this. So as we walk through this, hopefully it'll help explain at least the situation that I'm trying to describe to council. So with the assistant city manager request, What we're looking for here, if you notice the ACM is assistant city manager, so very, very clever, I think. We're looking for alignment. We want to improve coordination and organizational alignment across departments. That's my biggest goal. We also are looking to increase executive capacity For those strategic initiatives and council priorities, we're getting bogged down in some of the day-to-day administration and not being able to fulfill some of these strategic priorities that council wants filled. Also with management, it'll strengthen operational management, continuity, and succession planning. For example, we have an assistant police chief and assistant fire chief, but no assistant city manager. You recently saw that. with when Darren left, if there was an assistant city manager, that would have helped with some of the institutional continuity as changeover occurred. What this slide represents is our current organizational structure. The best way for me to visualize it, I don't know if those that are remote ever had a shot of the entire area out here last meeting, but all those tables and all those people at those tables, those are my direct reports, every one of them, plus Tim that wasn't here. So I've got 12 departments, 13 direct reports. So it's a very wide, broad span of control. I've had some people refer to it as a stovepipe, that the city manager is a stovepipe. So my operational control, it all bottlenecks right at me organizationally. So what I'm looking at doing if we had an assistant city manager is relieving a little bit of that bottleneck. But let me first go over some of my notes. So what we've got in this organizational structure is if the budget's approved as it was written, about 205 employees, that's a lot of employees, but not really when you think about the size of the city. We're an $87 million budget. We have regional tourism destination and seasonal operational impact. So as everybody knows, we shop at a much larger population than the 7,500 population. We have significant infrastructure and capital responsibilities. I think our capital budget this year proposes about $40 million. That's a big chunk. And there's a lot of coordination between all of the tourism, the development. We sell our own land here as a city. That's unusual. A lot of infrastructure and the public services. We provide a lot of public services for the city with a base population as it is. So again, with the operational scale, even though the residential population is 7,000, we operate more like a city of 35 to 50,000 with our budget and tourism and really, as you can see this weekend, tried to go kayaking in the washing machine. That was fun on Memorial weekend. But executive coordination requirements are exceeding those typically associated with a regular small community. So our current executive structure, again, a large, wide span of control. There's a high volume of operational responsibilities and coordination, those day-to-day things. There's increasing cross-departmental initiatives and projects. We need to work as a team. I want us to work as a team. But that involves coordination between departments. There's growing a demand for strategic planning and implementation oversight. That's a council strategic priority, I believe, or at least a goal council hired me for, is they want more structured strategic plans, more accountability and transparency to the public. They want the master plans with the projects to go along with that and the schedules and the transparency and the accountability. There's a need for executive redundancy and organizational continuity. What that means is if you decide you want to fire me or I would rather say I get sick and need to leave or something, you still got that organizational control there with an assistant and that continuity. that you get. That's one reason our emergency management and public safety have those assistants in there is for that very reason, because it's that much level higher of risk in an emergency situation there. So here is the proposed structure that I would be looking at. One small note on this I will look at. right now and probably will be organizing regardless of the outcome of this, is right now Horseshoe Bend and the golf course report directly to me. I've been talking to Tim and I want to not throw too much on him right away, but once he gets his feet wet and gets in here, we might be looking at running those departments through Public Works. There's a reason for that. The golf course is pretty self-sufficient. Jake's good with it. There is some operational continuity there with the fleet of equipment and the mowers and things to where Public Works has that knowledge and expertise to help them. But also with Horseshoe Bend, we're looking at the manager of Horseshoe Bend retiring pretty soon. So Tim can provide that leadership expertise to whoever replaces her and provide that continuity of operations there that we may be needing as we look to promote or hire that replacement. for our long-term employee that I'm going to hate to see go, but she keeps threatening me with retirement. So that will probably happen regardless. So that'll help just with some of that span of control. But what we'd be looking for here is the way I see it right now, the assistant city manager would be looking at community services, development services, and marketing and tourism With the one caveat that the PIO always has a direct line to me. That's regardless of command structure. And I also put IT in there for some continuity and just to have that span of control. Canes don't want to... Well, I hate calling you out by name, but that department kind of runs itself right now. But that gives four... fairly integrated departments that span of control the assistant manager would also take on some of these special projects and help these council priorities proceed such as some of the housing initiatives that we're looking at with the lots or gentara depending on how council wants to go help coordinate some of the there's some cross department goals with the building facade programs and things like that, that that level of coordination would help. So not really, if I was speaking about outward facing before, Refine that that you hired me to be the face of this organization. I want to continue being the face of this organization I need to meet with the leaders of the other governments and And be that face right now. I'm in my office dealing with 13 direct reports seven bosses and nine boards and commissions that's 29 different ones if I meet with them an hour a week and I've got 10 hours in my week to do other things besides what overtime I spend. So I would still have direct oversight over police, fire, public works, finance, HR, the airport, my department, general services, and the assistant city manager. The assistant city manager, again, would have community services, development services, communications and tourism, and IT and special projects. And what are the benefits? Again, it improves organizational alignment and communication. It reduces the amount of time each department is spending with me so I can make sure to manage the city as a whole and make sure council's goals are being met in a timely fashion. It allows me to have greater focus on strategic initiatives and council priorities. It enhances coordination of cross-functional projects. Again, you have that extra ability for someone besides me to be able to reach across department lines and have them work together, even if they don't want to sometimes. I know it's strange to think sometimes people don't want to work together. But we can force that with that authority that goes with it. It improves succession planning and leadership continuity. It's additional executive capacity for regional partnerships and economic initiatives. And it increases responsiveness for operational efficiency. I know that's a lot of big words, but it just means that we run smoother and more cohesively. So in summary, it's driven by the organizational complexity, especially with the recent changes that have happened over the past year. Even after Darren left, there have been two new director positions created after he left. The PIO is a director level position created before I got here, and the airport was pulled out at a director level position. That's an even broader span of control that I'm sure Darren struggled with his span of control while he was here. It would strengthen the executive leadership capacity, again, with all those things I stated. It supports the long-term organizational sustainability. And it improves the implementation of council priorities while maintaining operational efficiency. So I think this is a really good way to do it. I know the biggest concern is over the price tag for the position. This would be a grade 26. It is a fairly high pay grade. Dollar-wise, it would be right in line with the assistant police chief. They're not on our pay grade, so I can't tell you what that pay grade is, but comparing the dollars, it'd be right in line with that. The position that we never filled once Greg left was a grade 22. So it's four pay grades higher than that. So I'm looking to replace that 22 with a 26. So that's the one caveat. But we've worked with our consultants, and that's what the market pay grade is for that position if council is willing to move forward with that.

OK.

So I respectfully request council approve that position for the budget.

Comment, Councilor Cogent.

Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve the assistant manager position. It's already in the budget, right? Yes, sir. Did leave it in there, I guess.

Councilor Farrell. I second that. Is that what the hand is for? Yes, sir. We have a motion from Councilor Cogent. And a second from Councillor Farrow. Did you have a comment or were you going to second?

I was just going to second, but we'll let Mike have it.

Comments. Councillor Hammond and then Councillor Roundtree.

Before we move to vote or comments, I just have a couple of questions. Because as we were going through the budget, we went line by line and things looked good. And then we got to the end and hit a couple of big snafus. So I want to make sure those snafus are fixed before I make a final decision on this. OK. So the $7.5 million in land sales, is that still part of what we're planning to spend? Or did we sort of fence that for future?

THAT IS STILL A REVENUE ITEM. OKAY. MAYBE, WELL, I DON'T WANT TO SPEAK FOR YOU.

No, that's okay. That's what I thought I saw in the materials, but I thought that we agreed during the budget workshop that we were not okay with that, that $7.5 million that's supposed to be reserved to repurchase property if our developers fail to develop as they say they're going to, Huntley. So I'm not comfortable that that is still part of our plan to fund this position and all the other things in the budget. And then second, I also saw in the materials before this meeting that the $2 million in city hall improvements is still in. I thought that we were in agreement not to leave that item in, especially in this challenging budget year. so i guess there's no way that i'm going to approve a 200 000 a year assistant city manager position when in my mind we're seven and a half million dollars over what we should be spending okay can i respond to that in this i wish linda were here okay um um could i yes maybe respond to that and then yes and then we'll go to council around um just to hopefully clarify the the huntley uh

land purchase contract is not in this, it's not part of that seven and a half million. The Tan Arena is. So I don't know if that, eases your concerns i'm not sure that it does but just i wanted to clarify that that part of that that seven and a half million was the tannerina and the desert ridge and some of the other properties that we thought would go through since the the huntley contract has 24 months to close We didn't plan that revenue item in this fiscal year.

And it still has almost eight years to close.

Well, I'm- To close or- That does help ease some of my concerns, thank you. Okay, so I'm- You're still eight years out. I stand corrected, eight years to close on that. So the reason I included Tannarina in there is they told me they would like to close, well, actually they told me in July, but it'll probably be August or September, I think, when they plan to close on that. And they need to spend a million dollars within 12 months of that date for us not to be able to buy back the property. So we would have time to budget next year to buy it back if we wanted to do that. But again, that's council's discretion. And what was the other one? Was the two million for City Hall? I apologize if that was supposed to be taken out or not.

I had a different recollection.

OK. Real quick, and then we'll go to, we'll come to you after council round. We'll come back to that one. OK. I think she can hear me.

I can't. So Cindy, were you able to give everyone the copy of my letter? Did Councilman Farrow and Councilman Hammond receive it? Yes, I did. All right, so you guys all have the letter, and it's public record for the public to read. But basically, I just want to be clear about my intent in submitting this letter. I supported hiring Frank as our city manager, and I remain committed to helping him succeed in this role. And I genuinely like Frank, and I believe he has the potential to become an effective leader for our community. I gave you guys all the transcript of what he said budget meeting, which would have to have heightened all of our concerns about him feeling overwhelmed. So my opposition to hiring an assistant city manager at this time is not the lack of confidence in Frank, but it's a belief that we have a better way to support him. As a first-time city manager in a new community, it's completely natural to feel overwhelmed. Rather than immediately adding a $200,000 permanent position to our budget during uncertain economic times, I believe we should explore cost-effective alternatives that address his immediate needs while giving him time to fully settle into his role. I'm advocating for solutions like organizational restructuring, which was common. If you have a flat line reporting structure like that is to have others report under someone else and others be replaced, put under someone else. Like our airport used to be under Public Works, those type of examples. Expanding his administrative support. professional development opportunities and allowing our recently hired public works director time to lighten his workload, which he's probably been doing public works plus that. So these approaches can provide meaningful support without the permanent physical commitment. My goal is that we should help Frank be successful while being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. I believe a six-month check-in and thoughtful evaluation of alternatives will serve both Frank and our community well. This is about finding the right support at the right time, not questioning whether Frank is the right person for this job. So when you read through this, I sincerely believe that I presented some really great ideas. You know, he's still living. His permanent residence is still in Flagstaff. He's still having to travel back.

That's not true, Counselor.

We've got to stick with the... And I have a year in my contract to establish residency here, so I would prefer you not... say things that are not necessarily accurate.

But I think it's accurate that once you do get the opportunity here in the next few months to have permanent residency, the stress for some of the things that you're facing. So I'm not saying that in a negative way. I knew that you still had time to speak to that.

Debbie, I need to pull us back to the budget item.

Well, you described my residence as a small place. How is a three bedroom, two car garage house a small place in Page?

It's not about whether how large the place is.

You described it as a small place.

Let's pull back to the budget item.

What I'm trying to state is I believe that there's a lot of extra stress, and it has to be, overwhelming for the first time for you to be a city manager and I believe that there are other ways that we could try to support you under the stress that you're feeling without hiring an assistant manager at this time especially under the economic things that we're facing putting on another employee when we're facing some possible really economic trials ahead of us as a city but I don't think it's the time for us to be expanding

ALL COUNCIL MEMBERS, YOU DID GET A CHANCE TO READ THAT BEFORE THE MEETING? YEP. OKAY. COUNCILOR FERRELL.

I JUST WANT TO CALL A POINT OF ORDER. WE NEED TO STICK TO THE SUBJECT LINE, AND THAT WAS TO INCLUDE THIS AS MOTION, THIS POSITION IN THE FY27 BUDGET, NOT GET INTO HE SAID, SHE SAID.

THANK YOU.

Councilor Headinger, you had something about the – well, you had a question that we were going to come back to.

Yes. So in related to the land sales concern that Councilor Hammond brought up and then the $2 million for city hall improvements, my recollection from the budget meeting was that we decided to keep the $7.5 million in, knowing that we had some large capital improvement projects that we could hold off, that we were planning to hold off anyway if we needed to – My thought is I would rather have the money there available to spend if Tanneryna closes and they spend all of their money and the money is available to us. I would love to have it in the budget as the option to spend knowing that I believe our city manager is in agreement we all want to be very fiscally responsible with the money and so If the money isn't there and we have significant concerns about it, we just wouldn't spend it on some of those larger projects. I also just want to express support for the assistant city manager position. I think the comment about having it available, we know that our city manager has to travel to conferences. There are obligations he has outside of this city in his role as city manager. Having someone here that can keep things running smoothly while he's gone makes a lot of sense to me. But I think it also makes sense – I mean, we pulled the airport director position out for a reason. I think his thoughts to move Horseshoe Bend – and I believe it was the golf course – under Public Works was very thoughtful. But I would hate to see us consolidate departments to get our city manager to a more reasonable number of direct reports. I think that this is a very thoughtful, reasonable way to approach that problem of having way too many direct reports, but they really are all functions that our city needs to have. So I'm in strong support of it, both for the succession, the being able to have someone here who can run things while he has to be gone, but also just making things run more smoothly. So thank you.

Councillor Hammond. Councillor Hammond.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So first, I want to say I'm glad to hear from our city manager that regardless of whether or not we move forward with this assistant city manager position, the PIO will continue to have a direct link and be managed by the city manager. That was one of my concerns when I originally saw this proposed restructuring, that the PIO would move farther down in the hierarchy and farther removed from the public. That person should be responding directly to the public, feeding information directly to the public. And so I just want to make sure that that continues. So thank you, Mr. City Manager, for alleviating that concern. I do still have concerns about the fiscal responsibility of adding this position at this time. It's not a $200,000 one-time cost. It's a $200,000 permanent position. So every year we're committing to this increased cost. And as I expressed to the city manager, I would feel comfortable doing that under a few different circumstances. If we had a banger revenue year, and preferably several good revenue years, If we could demonstrate that we were cutting this cost somewhere else. Either of those would alleviate my concern, but that's not the case. And so, for me, I would prefer to see. All of this new staff work together a little bit longer to try and. Revise the structure I agree this pancake org chart is not great for an organization. I think a pyramid structure makes a lot more sense. And I think that there could be some alignment there. I would prefer to go down that route first. And then I would probably feel better about approving this position in next budget year. So for me, this is going to be a no.

Councilor Roundtree? Yes. Is that a new hand?

Yes, it is. So I have to agree. I still believe that just being on the job for just a few months, that the level of feeling overwhelmed that anyone would have to, even if someone had already been a city manager, would be feeling would be, I need more help. I would feel more comfortable because I believe that putting this position in when we should be, I think we should be more conservative this year in our budget, which we have not been. I believe that in six months, to a year is a time after he's been in office for longer or in his position for longer so that he can really, after he's settled in more, evaluate whether or not we need an assistant manager. So I just don't believe this is the time to be expanding our budget. And I think that he needs more time in. And I'm totally sincere about adding things in that could support the, this, that he's filling at this time, but I think we should wait.

Councillor Hettinger.

If we were to approve this motion tonight, I know that we did make some cuts to the hiring recruitment budget. Do we feel that, again, if we approve this motion, do we feel that there's enough in there to

accurately go after this position or do we need to look at adding more money there to spend if needed well thank you for that counselor the the other cut to look at is the um the old economic development at the grade 22 would be cut out so it's that's a it's not it's still currently in there No, I took it out as part of the proposed budget to offset this increase. So maybe if this one doesn't go through, we talk during the budget item about that position. But this one is about Assistant City Manager, not the other one.

I recall there are other budget items that we did eliminate. Today, we're going to be able to take out the cost of the golf course, which was

170,000.

And then there was the reduction in the HR one line item that brought that down. And in that, there were several items in which we reduced it down to a more reasonable level, if I recall.

I can try and find that email that Linda sent out. I think I forwarded that to council. That would describe the changes.

We'll go to Councillor Preller and then Councillor Kojen.

Sorry. Before we go to Councillor Preller, I don't think Councillor Hedinger's question was fully answered. Oh, sorry.

The question I had was, is there enough money in that HR line item that we decrease recruitment and retention by 45,000 because we didn't want to have to go hire as many directors again? That's another one where I would hate to see us need that money. If everyone wins the lottery and we have to go replace all of our department heads again, please don't do a lottery pool bid, city. I don't, like, that isn't a line item that we're planning to spend it, but it's one that I see the value of having in case we need it. So I wonder if it's worth adding that $45,000 back in, knowing that we're cutting golf course funds.

We'll get to that on the other budget item.

All right. Strike my comments.

Councillor Peller. The good news is that on the agenda later is changes to the personnel policy so we can put lottery pool on the banned list and that'll insulate us from that. I thought the old economic development monies position was what we used for the PIO position and we've rolled that over. Is that not the case?

If I wasn't here, but I've been told that when that position was advertised, the economic development director was still employed.

OK. I might be mixing up timelines there. But I swear I talked to Brian about that at one point. And that was a thought being thrown around. But if we have the money, then that's good. I'm just.

Councillor Kochen. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Yeah. Mr. Mayor, if you read that recommendation, Right at the top, that's exactly what we're supposed to be supplying as a city. The municipal city, that's our directive to do that. The rest of the stuff is all like quality of life. So if you think that anybody, no matter who's at the helm, is going to make any of these projects happen that have been stymied forever, you're wrong. We need to help with the system manager to get this stuff going. And we've got more projects going this year than ever. And the money's not there, we're not going to spend it, so why are we making a big deal of this? Call for the question. Thank you.

Let's do one last Councillor Roundtree and then Councillor Hammond.

If you call for the question, you can't do anything.

Oh, because you called for the question? Yep. Oh, I'm not familiar with that.

Calling for the question only works if everybody agrees to call for the question. One person can't just stop the conversation.

Oh man, do we need a second that? Actually, I think you do.

Let's do one last quick comment from Councillor Roundtree and then Councillor Hammond.

Okay, so just two quick points, probably won't change anybody's mind, but I think going back to Councilor Headinger's point, if we approve this assistant city manager position, then do we need to go back and put the money into the HR? So when we consider the total cost of this position, it's $220,000. The old economic director position was $90,000, plus we need to put in the new hiring bonus, so more like $260,000.

We can talk about that, though, when we get to that other item.

Could I maybe correct the dollar amount for the economic development at $90,000? He was a great 22. He made about $130,000, I think.

I think 90 was his base, but with benefits, I think you're right, 120 plus.

Yes. Apologies, Councillor Hammond. I was told today that his salary was about 130 without benefits. I could be wrong, but that's what HR told me.

I'm going off the 2025 budget.

Okay. Okay, I can... Well, I don't have HR. Councillor Roundtree?

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Yes, I agree with Councillor Preller. I was definitely told that we would not be replacing the economic development, that we were hiring people, and that that wasn't going to be rolled over. So I don't believe that this money is available. So when you're trying to state that you're going to take the $120 or $130 and subtract it from the hiring, I do not believe that's accurate. So I would have hoped, because we brought that up before, that that information would have been made i mean that we would know factually if it is or isn't because i agree with tom preller i even looked back in my notes and found where it said that we the economic development was not going to be rolled over okay so um so i so i stand firm on that and then i agree with counselor um hedinger that we do need a put that into the budget. But I would hope before we go out and hire with a professional organization that we would open up within, because I stand against this, and that's where my vote will reflect. But if it does move forward, that we would try to attempt to hire within to save those type of funds so we weren't spending the $45,000 to go out and hire someone. and take months to do that, that we would open it up to the public, the citizens of Page and our current employees first before we would go out to a professional hiring agency.

I would be happy to answer that real quick, if I may.

I was just wanting to go ahead and go to the vote. OK. Let's vote. We have a motion from Councilor Cogent and a second from Councilor Farrow. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay.

Nay.

The vote is five to two.

Sorry, Mr. Mayor, who were the nays?

Nays were Councilor Roundtree and Councilor Hammond.

OK, thank you.

Okay, we already did item number 9-1. Item number 9-2, Intergovernmental Mutual Aid Agreement for Fire Protection at Big Water. City Attorney, this is over to you.

I don't know if Jeff wanted to present anything. Pretty straightforward. This is just a kind of your standard run-of-the-mill mutual aid agreement. This is for fire services only. We're working on one that includes EMS ambulance services, but we don't have that one ready yet, so this is just for fire services. Mutual aid between Big Water and PAGE.

Councilor Preller? I'd like to move to approve item 9-2, the Intergovernmental Mutual Aid Agreement for Fire Protection at Big Water.

Second.

We have a motion from Councilor Preller, second from Councilor Hettinger. Any comments or questions? I just think it's awesome that we're being neighborly and can help each other out in times of need. Thank you. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Item number 93, resolution 1342-26, amendments to city personnel policy. City clerk, will you please read the resolution by title only?

A resolution of the mayor and city council of the city of Page, Coconino County, Arizona, amending certain provisions of the personnel rules of the city of Page.

CHRIS JERRAM, JR.: Councillor Preller.

move to approve item 9 3 resolution 1342-26 amendments to the city personnel policy second i have a motion from councillor preller and a second from councillor headinger any comments or questions all in favor say aye aye aye aye any opposed nay city clerk you got the correct people councillor hammond councillor hammond wasn't yes Item number 94, resolution 1344-26, fiscal year 2027, preliminary budget adoption. City Clerk, will you please introduce the resolution by title only?

A resolution of the Mayor and City Council of the City of Page, Coconino County, Arizona, tentatively adopting the estimated revenues and expenditures for the fiscal year 2027.

I move to adopt resolution 1344-26.

We have a motion on the floor. Do we have a second? A second. And we have a motion from Councillor Cogen and a second from Councillor Farrow. Comments, questions? Councillor Headinger.

Hi, Mr. Mayor. I was wondering if we have enough money for retention and recruitment in the budget this year. I know we reduced it by $45,000. And knowing that the motion passed earlier, I was wondering if we had any concerns about that not being enough.

Now I can answer that. Now you can answer that one. For these purposes, I agree with Councilor Roundtree that I've talked to my HR director, and our plan for this is open this position not right away in the budget year anyway. I've got things to do first. But our intention is to open this internally as well as externally. And to try to advertise it ourselves first without going through a consultant. So we think we could try and do this one ourselves through recruitment efforts and see how that works first. And then as a backup plan, see about a consultant. But we would try to not recruit this position through a consultant. Councilor Hettinger.

I had one more. I know that our finance director brought up concerns with Updating the housing CCC Gentara to council directed infrastructure projects and I apologize for not bringing this up sooner But I was wondering if the rest of council Knowing that if we get too vague, it's hard to remember what the money is used for I wonder if it's worth it to say council directed infrastructure projects hyphen how you know potential housing CCC just to keep it clear what that money was intended for and even if we don't decide to use it for that.

Yeah, I'd like clarification of what was our reasoning for pulling the specified name off of that one? Was it so that it could be used for others if we decided otherwise?

To not give some sort of an implicit approval of that, because that hasn't been presented to the council. And so it was just to leave it more general. But it could be housing projects or housing infrastructure or something like that to remind you what it is.

so so rather than because if we do put the specific name of ccc gentara in there and they're slow to get this project going it's budgeted just specifically for them yes we would or would we be able to just move it to a different project anyways you can the budget doesn't obligate anything right so just because you budget the funds

And quite often is the case they may get moved to a different project or whatever. So really it's just kind of an internal housekeeping issue and what you're most comfortable with. But even if we tag it as Gen Terra and they come and do a presentation and the council says, you know what, we don't want to do this, we're not obligated to spend that money on that project.

So keeping the name in would at least help you to remember what we had initially planned it for.

Yeah, I would hate to see in six months we see that we've got X number of millions of dollars for council-directed infrastructure, we spend it on something else, Gen Terra comes and presents in February and we say, oh, dang it, we forgot that we had set that money aside. And so I think having the hyphen potential housing CCC Gen Terra just helps us remember that the money is intended for something, whether or not we use it there.

Okay, I like that. Councillor Roundtree and then Councillor Cogent.

I think it's important that we are clear and transparent and that we should not be approving major projects that have not come before the board in budget items. This is one of those concerns. I do not believe it follows with correct procedures, and I am not comfortable with air tagging it for anything except for what Frank has done. So I think that that's just something that we're going to have to be responsible to remember that if they come before us and we look at their plans and we approve it that we'll have the funds to be able to work within that but i do i'm not comfortable with how we set precedent this year approving large items that not that did not become the before the board in our budget meeting we complained a few years ago about some of those practices i am not comfortable with that counselor roundtree the city attorney just said that even if it had the name on it that they were not obligated to that

that it can be used for anything.

I kind of understand that. But I also believe that we shouldn't set a precedent that our staff or that we get comfortable with these type of items because we couldn't approve them. It's not the time or place to have lengthy discussions about whether these projects are correct or not for the city. That should come on a clearly identified agenda item so that citizens are aware of large things like this that we are addressing. It shouldn't be happening in a budget. And so I'm not comfortable with these type of items. Not that I'm not comfortable with the project. I'm not comfortable with that kind of a process.

CHRIS JERRAM, OK. So Councillor Roundtree would like to keep it the way it had been suggested, the change.

DAVID BURRAGE, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to keep it where we don't tag it either. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to feed about $2 million. So just leave it untagged.

CHRIS JERRAM, Just leave it untagged, and we'll just have to take our own personal notes. I think most of us are starting to feel that way.

Okay, Councillor Preller. Yeah, I just want to say that two weeks ago I was pushing to lower the hiring budget on that. And two weeks later, I voted to approve the assistant city manager position. And I didn't realize that one of the directors was about to retire and that we might be tapping into that very rapidly. So that might have totally been an oversight on my part. If I have any of those mistakes in the future, please call me out on it as it happens. So I can avoid the foot-and-mouth moments. But other than that, let's pass this Little correction on that.

She's a manager not a director. Okay. Thank you Thanks. Thanks for cutting me off and correcting me, but but no less valuable to the city And I don't know if it's appropriate now, but I do want to maybe give an update on the Gentara and Sylvia and her team have worked with Senator Kelly's office and Senator Gallego's office And they are putting forward in the federal budget to request congressional directed spending for this project if council approves of this project. So if all goes well and council wants this to move forward, it may be done with the majority of federal money instead of local money if we can work it out. And again, this is council approval. I'm not saying that it would go forward without council approval. Again, that's just one thing that our team has worked on that might help the budget, too. So you may not have to spend that money even if the project moves forward.

CHRIS JERRAM, OK. Well, I'm going to go ahead and call for the vote. All in favor of passing the preliminary budget? Say aye. Aye. CHRIS JERRAM, Any opposed?

NAY.

CHRIS JERRAM, That was Councilor Roundtree on nay. Okay, motion passes six to one. Item number 10, potential future agenda items. 10.1 is land sale revenue management and buyback provisions. Councilor Roundtree, we got your description of this. I think you're asking for us to request recommended best practices through our financial department on how to handle these land sales with buyback options. Is that what you're asking for us to request?

Yes, and that was one of the main reasons why I was not in favor of approving this budget. I don't think we should start a practice. If we are proud of the fact that we're doing these buyback purchase options, then we need to address the conditions that are going to arise because of them. And so I think that it needs to be an agenda item for us to discuss how we want to handle this and how it's going to affect the city budget and the city, what we'll do with these.

CHRIS JERRAMSEN. OK. Council members, can you show with a hand those who would like to have this recommended best practices come back to us so we are informed and know how this is going to move forward? Clearly in the affirmative. So we will say yes on item number 10-1. Item number 10-2, Beautification Grant Matching Funds Program and Business Facade Improvement Initiative. This was also brought by Councilor Roundtree. And this, if my understanding is correct, this facade program was practically complete and ready to be implemented somewhere.

Yes, so it was. And we have two citizens or business owners in town that felt they had met the requirements and they were just waiting for it to come forward. And then it fell through when we had an employee leave. And I think that the beautification project has some requirements for, I believe Josh told us in the budget meeting, was $1.5 million where businesses have to make improvements. And so I think that this program was going to help encourage that. So I think that we should bring it back to the table and discuss if we want to further this project or quit leaving these two businesses, thinking that there's a possibility they're going to get refunded for the money that they made improving the looks of their businesses to meet this program that just fell through the cracks. CHRIS RODGERS.

Councillor Hammond?

CHRISTIE WOOD. Thank you. I'm in favor of it. CHRIS RODGERS.

It's not really a discussion.

Go ahead. Sorry. I just want to make one quick note, because it's from the Economic Development Advisory Board. They also asked to hear this.

OK. So. Hands from the council, clearly in the affirmative. OK. We will ask that staff see if they can locate that. We know it exists somewhere, or it did. From 2019. Sylvia is an expert on this program. It needs changes. It needs changes. It needs changes, and those changes were never. We don't have to necessarily reinvent the wheel.

Well, no, it kind of needs to be reinvented a little bit. So that's where we never reinvented the wheel because we just, it wasn't something that staff, that the management asked to be done. But we can do that. Okay.

And that's where if it goes through EDAP first, it'll be a lot clearer when it gets to us.

Okay. Yeah, it's really legal issues more than legal.

yeah but how to get it legally spelled out okay item number 10 3 potential future agenda item of the restoration of biannual bulk waste collection services that also was brought by councillor roundtree to see if we would be i already see some thumbs up we may not have to discuss this one

Yeah, so basically for like four months, I had hoped that by March and April that this program would have already been in place to go along with page attacks, trash. But seeing that it wasn't being addressed when I was asking for it, I thought the council as a whole should be aware of the fact that we have a contract where we can have waste picked up twice a year. And I think it supports our code enforcement, and it's proactive. And I think our community is wanting it. And so I encourage council to put this on the future agenda, Ida, to look at doing a community-wide.

Have staff look into the contract to see what's in there in this regard. It's in there.

It's in there. It's in the contract that we can have two pickups per year in conjunction with city-sponsored cleanup days.

That's what the contract says. So we can have staff bring that back to us so we can figure out how to get the public involved in this and do it.

Correct?

Okay.

Definitely in the affirmative here.

Thank you.

Item number 11 is executive session. If there are no number changes on this item, which is resolution 1343-26, the development agreement with premium builders, if... If all members of council are fine with us leaving this out here in the public, because I think we have discussed this item several times, I would just like to leave it out here. Do I have any councillors that feel they need to go into executive session? Okay, I will leave it out here in the public. Item number 11-1. Clerk, will you please introduce the resolution?

A resolution of the mayor and city council of the city of Page, Coconino County, Arizona, authorizing and approving the development agreement and waiver with Premium Builders LLC.

This, of course, is the Jared Edwards project. Councilor, I didn't see who it was. Councilor Cogent.

Mr. Mayor, I move to adopt resolution 1343-26. Do I have a second?

I have a second. Motion from Councilor Cogent and a second from Councilor Farrow. Any comments or questions? Councilor Prowler.

I've got two kind of questions. Um, first one about the deed restriction, um, having a minimum of a six month lease term. Uh, I think it's not terribly uncommon to have a rental agreement with like a one year lease. And then after that lease is up to not renew it and go month to month, would that be legal within this deed restriction?

Yeah, because the initial term was a year. So if it rolls over into a month-to-month, that wouldn't be a problem from my perspective because the term was a year.

Okay. And then the other one, this isn't necessarily regarding this contract, just contracts we do in general. I noticed that the builder warranty on public infrastructure is really only one year. I would hope that any... curb, gutter, storm drains, that sort of stuff would last more than a year. Do we, down the road as we do land sales, want to think about changing that amount any?

That's pretty standard for all of our infrastructure is typically you get one year. On your buildings, sometimes you get a little bit more than that, two years on some things. But typically on all of our road work, all of that kind of stuff, we get one year is the warranty that we get.

And I'll add on that, occasionally you will see a two-year on some municipal projects, but it doesn't usually go before that because the concrete and the asphalt will settle and any displaced cracks or anything, you can take that year or two to see if anything needs repair or replacement in that time. And by that time, it's usually settled. But if you add on additional warranties, I have seen toll roads and things have warranties for 20 and 30 years. And it's really a dollar amount at that point to the contractor. They're going to add costs to the contract for those warranties. And you'll pay for that warranty if you want more than that. But industry standard in Arizona is between one and two years, depending on the project.

TODD BANDUCCI- OK, totally fair. I appreciate you answering that.

TODD BANDUCCI- Councilor Roundtree? I'm not Councilor Roundtree. Councilor?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to just understand the financial impact. I know it's got the budget line item on the overview sheet, but it looks like the city is going to go out to bid and then work on approving all of the roads, or putting the infrastructure in. So if that bid amount comes back higher, Does it automatically fail? Does it come back to council to potentially move money around in the budget for it? Or do we just go with the highest bidder even if it's slightly over?

So the way that this is going to work is that actually the city's cost is fixed. OK. We have no risk of going over. All of the risk is borne by the developer. The reason that the city is going to go out to bid is because, by law, any development that has public funds as part of the funding source has to meet our procurement rules. So in order to ensure that it meets our procurement rules and we can make the reimbursement that we're saying we're willing to make, the easiest way to do that is because the contractor wants one contractor. He doesn't want the city to go out to bid on the stuff that we're going to reimburse and him to go out to bid on other things. So what we said is we'll take all the plans, we'll publish it as if it's our project, but we'll make clear in the bid documents that it's actually going to be contracted with the development company. And then whatever that comes in at, it comes in at. And then as the developer goes, he's responsible to pay for all the costs, and then he can seek reimbursement from us up to $1.5 million and change.

Thank you so much.

Any other comments or questions? We have a vote on the floor. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Aye. Thank you. Finally done. The sun's still up. Finally done with that particular project. With that, I will adjourn this regular council meeting. The time is 7.22. Our next regular scheduled meeting is Wednesday, June 10th.