Town Council - Regular Meeting

Well, again, good afternoon everybody. Thank you for joining us for the meeting today and thanks to the all the public works team that helped the Arbor Day tree planting ceremony. We're very grateful for that and that Paradise Valley commemorates that important day and commitment to to Arbor Day. We will now go into the study session following roll call.

Mayor Stanton? Here. Vice mayor LaBelle? Here. Council member Andean Keller? Here. Council member Liepman? Here. Council member Moore? Here. Council member Pace?

Here.

Council member Thomason? Here. We have a quorum.

Thank you. As a reminder, this meeting is being streamed on the Internet and will be archived on the town's website for future viewing. The first item on the agenda is the study session. These items on the study session are scheduled for discussion among the council, staff, and their designees. Votes will not be taken on any of these items at this time but may be scheduled for final action later in the meeting or at a future meeting. Members of the public are asked to hold their comments until call to the public scheduled to begin shortly after 6PM. Public comments will also be invited when the agenda topic is placed on a future agenda action item. And the first item we have on study session is item twenty six one twenty seven, discussion of the Ascension Lutheran Church spire preservation scheduled for thirty minutes.

Thank you, mister mayor, members of council. As the presenters

come

up and take the seats here from the spire group, I'll just refresh everyone's memory that couple of years ago when the Ascension Lutheran Church was sold and rezoned, we worked out an agreement with the developer to take possession of the spire, and that was in 2024. Since then, it's been safely kept in our public works yard. We know that a a independent group has been formed for the purpose of assisting in the figuring out what to do now in the next steps with the location of the spire and and their future plans and and thoughts about that. So they're here today to have that discussion. But, you know, the the Spire is part of the town's property here on campus, and, of course, we we wait to hear from the group.

So I'll go ahead and turn it over to them.

Welcome, mister Jarson.

Thank you so much. I think I'll get started if you're ready. We have some of our members coming in. So my name is Scott Jarson. I think a lot of you know me.

I'm a volunteer for the town at the Hillside Building Committee, but today I'm here as part of the Save the Spire Citizen Group, and, we're gonna give an update today on where we stand with the, the, spire that we have been storing and ready to erect. So mayor Stanton and council members, thank you for your time today. We're pleased to share this focused update on the Spire project and we're gonna highlight a refined installation concept, a proposed location, And I think we've addressed key considerations including scale, integration, and safety. So we'd love your feedback today. Our goal today is to ensure clarity and alignment as we move forward to the next phase for the citizen group.

So without further ado, we'll go through a few slides. It's alright. So the purpose today really is a concise update focused on the direction and readiness to move forward with this project. We're gonna share the current installation concept, review site and design directions, and confirm alignment on the next steps. And just a little bit on project context. You've all seen it before but this is such a beautiful piece of architectural art. It's significant. It aligns with the history of the town beautifully. It was conceived and started to be built in 1961, a key date. It was accepted by the town.

Thank you so much as a civic gift and direction was established to identify placement and pursue installation. And I think the slides just speak volumes as to the the level of thought and craft that went into this object that we have in front of us today. So our current focus and where we are now, the work to date has been robust. We focused on shaping a clear and practical installation on the approach, design placement, and integration of this within the town. The citizen group has deeply explored feasibility, location, form, and strategy.

And as you see here today, this is sort of the first unveiling of the most refined architectural concept of the placement of the spire. So let me talk a little bit about this because we we really worked hard on refining this concept for you today. This is the site strategy and sort of why this location. It's the heart of the town campus and we think it provides a perfect balance of visibility and identity, but it remains well integrated within the existing structure of town hall and the campus environment. So if you can see on the screen, it's a little bit small from from distance, but there's a little copper star in the center which would indicate roughly the site of the spire to be erected.

And you'll see some lines and arrows radiating from this center point, and I just thought that was important to understand that this fits so well with what's existent on the campus today. We've got the Marston Memorial. We've got the beautiful art sculptures. We have the memorial path. This becomes the hub from which all these radiate from.

It starts to make sense of this journey as people explore the campus. You'll notice on that other slide perhaps there were a few locations that sort of talked a little bit about where this would go and this is, you know, I apologize for the size of these slides. But the first view is if you were approaching the town from Lincoln, the spire sits behind the existing flagpole and centers right into the site today where the retention basin is. The second view is from along Invergordon where we just got to see the tree get planted. And then the third view is from Marston.

And one of the considerations that the the volunteer group wanted to make sure is that it was a location that the whole community and neighbors would feel comfortable with. So we think it's celebrated well in this site but it doesn't overwhelm. So here's two views of the same rendering with a couple of specifics. And I think this is sort of represents a current installation concept, and it's focused on proportion, placement, and overall relationship to the site. It is not it's not a small object but it is very well centered on this concrete plinth.

And I think you can see that the base itself becomes an anchor for this object that makes it attractive but not a nuisance and works well into the landscape. We've proposed that the installation, you make use of that retention basin which I'll talk a little bit more about in following slides. So the spire element itself, it's a clear and recognizable civic marker within the campus. I think this is just a view from illustrated from the front door of town hall. It's a vertical focal point.

It's an identity feature and it's a centerpiece of art, architecture, and history of the town and I think it works well. And from the ground, it still has human scale. I think that that we've had some great volunteers that have spent a lot of time considering this and this is an approachable monument that doesn't overwhelm and it is still pedestrian friendly and makes best use of the paths and retention basin that we have on-site now. Of course, public benefit. There's enhanced civic use with this.

I I think it's a great gathering space during the day. It's an informal public use. It supports daily activities. And I think the community use is wonderful for this object. It it's a great place to anchor civic events, public gatherings, existing programming support.

You know, you imagine at the Veterans Day auto show, this is a great place to set up a microphone, meet and greet proclamations, and, you know, scout troops, all that can gather in this spot quite comfortably. It makes a beautiful backdrop. So let's talk a little bit about the design in-depth. And I think this is a point of really great pride from the people that worked on this. We've integrated this really well in the concept, we feel, for the campus itself.

It's a consistent material language. The plinth itself, which is a concrete base from which would anchor the spire, is board formed, cast in place concrete, reinforced. What's beautiful about it is it speaks to the monuments we've already have on-site from the entry to the memorials. So we think it works really well. The other part of this is its inherent design makes it non scalable.

It's it's fairly high, and I'll talk a little bit about that now. It's not something you can approach easily. So design considerations, the elements that came together on this ensured the installation is proportionate, it's well integrated, and it's appropriately designed for public setting because we have take all these things into consideration. Let's talk about size and scale a little bit. You can see there's a blue line there.

The overall overall height of the spire itself from base of the spire to the peak is 92 feet. With the plinth and base incorporated, it's a 100 feet overall. That's the proposal. The base itself has got a a good 12 feet to the highest point and is eight feet at the lowest point, But it gets a little more interesting from that. Let me move to the next slide and and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

It's the important thing to notice here, and I'll talk about it here. This is set within the retention basin and that's almost six to eight feet below grade where this starts. So overall, the height of the spire won't hit that 100 feet visually. We're closer in the ninety, ninety two foot range. So I think it's a really thoughtful placement that doesn't make this object overwhelm but integrate.

And you can see that a little bit here with these design considerations. Right? This slightly recessed placement retains that retention basement and use of it, but it still lets us put kind of a beautiful object in the place. This space is durable, it's safe, and it reduces the overall spire height. So project approach, you know, it's an evolving estimate but so far we're in the half $1,000,000 range which we think that our group can successfully fund through contributions from within the community.

There's a lot of opportunity for that and refinement of this design will continue with funding and final design. There's a high low approach here. This is right in the middle range of an estimate and I think we can achieve that. And next steps, we're gonna talk a little bit here to confirm direction and to move on to our implementation planning. And as I close, I'd like to sincerely thank that the big group Save the Spire who came together for this.

Their names are on the screen and and more that didn't make the the slide today. But they've contributed time, effort, and incredible expertise to bring this forward in a very collaborative way. We'd like to thank the mayor and the council for your continued engagement and support through this process. And on behalf of the Save the Spire Citizens Group, we appreciate this opportunity to share an update and to look forward to your feedback as we move into the next phase. So that leads us to feedback and questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, mister Jarson. Thank you very much for your ongoing volunteer efforts for the town. We greatly appreciate you and the SPIRE team, the committee. It's it's an impressive presentation. I'll open up to my colleagues. I'll begin with Council Member Pace if she has any comments or questions.

Yes, let me unmute. First of all, thank you. That was a great presentation. Love to have the team members that are on this have been involved from the beginning. Love that this started in 1961, the the time that the town started and the architectural significance of it. It's not something we would have looked to do for an art project in the town, but it's a perfect fit with the history and everything. The only questions I had a couple quick ones. What is on around the base of it, are those, like, air vents or plaques or what is it showing in the pictures that what what is that signifying at the bottom level on the concrete base?

That's really a great question. While not specifically designated as a memorial space, we think it would function really well for that. So the those are illustrated just concepts of bronze plaques either in memoriam or celebration or key dates or history of the town. I think it'd be a great place where we could display that, maybe even elevate some of the memorials that are that are on the ground now to a more visual spot, but it's completely optional. We just illustrated it for a concept.

Okay. So that would have to come back to the council to figure that out, and I'm assuming that's maybe through the historical committee or something or through the council. Okay. So that's another piece of it secondary to this. Okay. We're not approving that. I guess let me ask you, Scott. We're not approving those plaques or the type as part of this approval for the location and the acceptance of this gift.

Yeah. Thank you. That's a great summary. Yeah. We're definitely not we just illustrated it as an option.

Perfect. I love it. No. I I was gonna suggest plaques for certain things. So that that works absolutely perfect. And we've got some things coming up for donations that might be a good place for that with the police station and all that. Perfect. No. I think it looks good. I support it. I think it's been a it's nice to see a community effort. Think through the history of our town, many times we have seen some unusual opportunities to build community and to do things different than what our normal roles are. We have the Barry Goldwater Memorial as a pocket park in there that's not usual. And, again, you know, we don't usually have parks. I think we don't always like heights. But this has a very special significance. It's very unique to PV. It's it's a

Yeah.

It has the benefits. So I yield, and I'm glad you guys worked so hard to get to this point. And I thank everyone for their volunteer efforts and recognizing this costs money and time. And I think, you know, the only the only suggestion extra that I heard, Rod Colum had a thought at the last men's club that maybe, you know, this could even be a little more expansive in the design, and maybe that goes too far for what you guys wanna look at. But, you know, to make this a little bit more with an amphitheater and a place for a meeting space to expand on what you mentioned, which was great, because now we would have, like, a spot where people can meet.

But maybe to see if there's a way to get a little amphitheater in there a little deeper so that more people can meet there. Maybe it anyway, that's just a thought. So thanks, Ayild. Great job.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, council member. Other comments or questions from my colleagues? Council member Leitman.

Thank you, mayor. I just would like to go on the record saying that thanking the Save the Spire group. I am a 100% in favor of this. I think it's fabulous as council member Pace said that the community is coming together to do something that is unique and significant to Paradise Valley. I do know that the builder who bought the Ascension Lutheran property, I was on the planning commission at the time, and the fact that he was willing and worked with the planning commission and the council to donate the spire and to assist with moving it, it it made it was really a lovely gesture, and I and I'm delighted that we are being able to save this part of Paradise Valley history.

And I think it's great to have kind of a centerpiece or monument in our town. So thank you for the wonderful presentation and thank you for everybody on the committee.

Thank you so much. Appreciate that.

Thank you. Other questions or comments? Councilmember Moore. Thank you, mayor.

Scott, thanks for your presentation. I'm glad to see that you're on this, citizen committee. I'm sure you're on as a citizen because you're on the other side. So, how how many people are on the citizen committee that have been working

on this? A big group, but we've got about 10 active, 10 to 12 active, and it's really heartwarming. Most of the people on the group are from town. They're residents. But we've had some outside people who work in the town regularly and have put a lot of effort into construction, architecture, and design. So they all came together to rally around us, and and it's been a a good solid working group.

Thank you. I see and you've got the dimensions in the one slide. But when you look through your slides there, the the first one in particular Mhmm. And then when you look at this one, there's a lot of inconsistencies on the trees that are surrounding it

Yes.

When it comes to proportion to the height of this structure, which is a 100 feet. Yes. And, you know, the base itself right there is a 12 foot base. And do you you know how tall those trees are that are next to it?

Those trees will run between twenty eight and thirty five feet in overall height, the most mature trees are. And one of the challenges has been to illustrate this with a sense of perspective. It's a little difficult when you don't have a three d scan of the as built exits and trees. But I think this is actually probably the most representative slide using the perspective of distance. So in the foreground, those trees will appear larger and, of course, as as the spires in the background, it recedes and it looks a little bit shorter in nature.

But overall, to put it into perspective, a mature palo verde will reach about 38 to 40 feet, Chilean mesquites higher. A Mexican fan palm in in a watered environment, you know, they'll hit seventy, seventy five feet. So it's gonna be exceeding that height.

Do we have palaverdes that are gonna reach 40 feet in height in that area?

Think there's some

trimmed ours down.

Well, that's, yeah, that's a choice a little bit to turn them. But in in nature, they'll go that high. But I think the the I I as I understand the point you're trying to make, I think it's a fair assessment that we're looking at artistic renderings and it's really hard to get the complete as builts. But we try to be as accurate as possible and we could kind of go through through some of the slides. There's a few that it's a little harder to to embrace the installation and then pull back a little bit and keep the trees in scale. And so that's always a challenge in art artistic renderings. But

I think there was talk early on about flying a balloon. So that people could see the height and that would certainly help with the scale of that. Are you familiar with the architect that did the work on our building here years ago?

Or Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, they I I brought one of their quote one of his quotes that he talked about when he did that, and it says, we wanted the building to nestle, which is a characteristic of living in the desert. Things that live in the desert truly nestle in, and so doing the building becomes a quiet statement of its purpose. So with that in mind, I mean, that's kinda how town hall was scaled and presented. You you touched very little on how this 100 foot spire scales in proportion to the existing buildings and structures that are around here. Sure. Can you talk a little bit about that, please?

Yeah. I'd I'd be happy to. You know, I I know the architect of record on the building. I know the actual architect who did the building firsthand. He's a good friend. And that's an absolutely beautiful quote and I think it's totally appropriate. But like Wright and a lot of other really good architects, when you're dealing with an element of design as opposed to the overall design. It it's it's it's appropriate to embellish the overall site with something that is uplifting and interesting and a piece of beauty. So this is, when you really think about it, it's not a building. It's a structure.

It's a piece of art. So when we talked about that internally, the idea was keep this base strong enough to be protective but small enough to not start to push into the design of the site itself. So it's pretty low. It sits in into that retention area intentionally to try to drop it into the site much like the description of that architect. So I think it it fits within that ethic of design quite well. It's it's a celebrative moment of design and art that isn't the whole structure itself. I hope that makes a little bit of sense.

It does. Thank you. And when you discuss about the citizen group that's been involved in it Yes. Does did the entire historical society committee work on this as well?

Well, Catherine's been embedded with us Catherine Kaufman, who's here with us today, has been embedded from the get go, and we've had really good communication and input. And this fits well. I think, you know, erecting this fits very well within the scope of the historical committee. I think they're they're behind it and celebrate it as much as we do.

Did they provide comments, the historical committee?

Well, I think through through Catherine, yes. We didn't have a formal meeting with all committee. No.

Okay. Yeah. Does the citizen group plan on advertising this in the PV independent so that everyone outside of the 10 member group would be able to see that this is a potential art installation at town hall?

Yes. I think that's a really good, question because that's a little bit of why we're here today. So we we'd like some guidance and feedback on that. We feel like it's a gift that the town has accepted, and now moving that gift forward, we're looking for guidance on best practice. We're not sure that we need much more input than this, but we're we're prepared to do it. It's gonna be part of our fundraising to be very honest with you. We expect to make this extremely public so that we can raise enough money to put it up. So I think there will be, by its very nature, a lot of public comment, feedback, and hopefully donation and support.

Thank you. I I think the only policy and direction that we received was that we would be responsible for owning it and storing it on-site. I don't think we've been asked to locate it on-site or had those discussions yet in a

I would, good question.

So I this is the this this was an update, and this is the first that I've been seeing it located in in discussion of it being I mean, there was talk of it being a town hall, but we didn't have any we didn't take a vote or set policy or anything

like that.

So Man, that's why why I'm humbly

here town manager helped assist with historical societies with a contribution of somewhere around 6 or $7,000 for a historical society party. Is there any intention for the town to to donate funds to this, or is this still a project that is looking to be donation based?

Yeah. So the citizen group feels that this can be donation based a 100%. If the if the town and the community wants to get involved at that level, we'd welcome it, but it's not necessary at this time. And maybe as we move forward, there's enhancements and things that the town would find beneficial that they would like to fund. But right now, the intent is it's a 100% community and, donation based.

Well, I might I'd I'd like to make the suggestion that I think it's a great idea to put it in the PV independent, but with accurate renderings that show it to scale. And then also, I think, a balloon out front at the location that shows what the overall height would be because I think it's it would turn out to be one of the highest structures in the entire town of Paradise Valley, if not the highest.

Yeah. And it's interesting because the history of it is just that. I mean, it it was certainly the highest, and and it was very interesting because as a as a childhood growing up here, I I predated this structure, but I don't remember a time when it was not there. Right. Agree. But we've had Right. And

we've had SUPs that have come forward, they have been restricted to 30 feet in height. And Oh, totally. Yeah. That's understandable. Includes some similar to this at one time. So that's what I remember.

Yeah. Good

feedback. I think it's important to be consistent with what we require out of our SUPs. Great. Is my opinion.

Thank you.

I mean, it is certainly a a piece of art that is worth saving and and finding the best home for it for sure.

Yeah. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, council member. I'd ask our town manager if you wouldn't mind leaning in a little bit and give us a a little background on I think we have a resolution that was passed and where that sits in terms of the the project right now.

Right. So the resolution which was passed in 2024 was primarily to allow the town to to take possession of the spire structure. So that occurred. We have it in our possession, as I mentioned earlier. It makes mention also of working with the citizens committee, with the historic advisory committee to to assist in locating or a suitable place for its display, which if I remember correctly, I'm going from memory, can include town property, including the Town Hall Complex.

So as I understand it, and I think what council member Moore said is is correct, is that there was no direction other than holding on to this fire and taking possession of it to expend town funds for any other purpose. And unless until that changes, our understanding has been that that fundraising would be 100% donation private based. Now, obviously, the ask or as the direction sought today would be that, in fact, that the preferred location would be on town property. So I think that that's part of the direction that's being sought today as I understand it.

Thank you. Other questions from my colleagues? Council member Thomason.

Thank you, mayor. Questions about location and the base. So as I understand the part of the discussion started with concern about the height. Concern might be the wrong word, but recognition that it's a very tall structure. So thinking was put it in a recessed place to mitigate some of the impact of the height that might not be desirable.

And I know that was a thought. That might not be the only thought. So one of my thoughts, and I have zero training in architecture design, so this is merely an uninformed opinion. A thought I had was to put it in the southwest corner of the property. And I understand from meetings that that was considered, but there was concern about that being too close to the neighbors.

My thinking about the southwest corner of the property philosophically is it's an open space. And if you're going to have a big beautiful dramatic piece of art, give it enough space around it and celebrate it. Don't try to hide it in a recessed basement. So if you could just address the thinking from the group on that location versus any other location on town property, I'd appreciate it.

Yes. Thank you. So we've been extremely open minded about location and we really thought about it, made several site trips. We we we really thought this went through. And I think that we'll just say Invergordon and Malcolm sort of location, it would be very standalone. We felt like maybe it would be a little overwhelming because there was nothing to put it into context. It was just an object placed in the site. There's not much there now outside of retention. It could go there, I think, quite easily. It had to be very easily construction spot.

But I also feel like to be and I was I was many of us were vocal about this, but I was concerned that if we're asking for the community to accept an Erectus gift, that we need should be mindful of immediate neighbors. And we felt that that placement would be a little bit too prominent for the people who live on that street. I don't think it's gonna be a view corridor problem for them, but I just think it's more respectful to say this is a piece of art and and we wanna put it in the more public accessible internal aspects of the town campus. And I think that that works because, again, kind of going back to some of the other slides, we gave a lot of thought to this. This kind of becomes that moment that anchors all the buildings on the campus site together.

And I think that's that's really the consideration that that drove this to that location. It just putting it in that in that southwest corner just feel like it was a little bit orphaned if you if you get me there. But we'd be happy to I mean, this what the beauty of this is, thanks to Eric and one eighty degrees and a lot of people who've volunteered their time for this, the concept today is extremely flexible for location. We can can put it anywhere we find is most appropriate. So thank you.

Thank you. My second question has to do with the proportion of the base and a and the height. And, again, untrained eye. The base still feels heavy and thick and clunky relative to the height and elegance of the spire. What was the thinking around the design as well as the practicality of that?

Me indulge me for a minute to jump back to early slide. If you look at the base of the spire on the structure that it was originally designed for, it's got heavy geometry and the massing is pretty heavy for that spire. It lets the spire be a little bit lighter in form, and and we thought it was appropriate to both echo its original design location by making the the plinth or base sort of reflective of the original structure. But then there are other considerations. Let me go to a slide that we can talk about a little bit more.

This is a good example. The key concern was to build the structure so that it is strong and safe and not inherently an invitation to climb or approach. We thought that the concrete base, and we really went around on this, gave us all of that in one place. It's strong. It's gonna be an anchor, and we're not gonna have any safety concerns with it. And that was really that drove the ultimate decision. It's also we had thought some other designs and other, you know, steel elements had come up. This is actually relatively cost effective and works well with something as as, weighty as a steel spire. So I hope that helps, answer that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My last question is about the Goldwater Memorial. What was the total I'm just trying to understand our town's history of private fundraising for pieces of art and important elements in our town. Do we know what the cost of the Goldwater Memorial was? Recognize there's inflation in time and all of that. I'm just trying to understand our town's capacity.

Good question. I don't know if the town clerk has a memory of that.

Mister mayor, I I don't recall off the top of my head that was twenty five years ago.

Twenty five.

I we can certainly find that information.

Well, we can Yeah. Research that that answer.

That's it. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Randy Keller.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you to the Spire Group. Really appreciate the Ascension Lutheran was a part of my childhood and I'm very happy to see that it was preserved, the the spire. Thank you for fighting for that and doing that. I spent many days I never went to the church there, but I spent many days inside the church and learning how to ride a bike and everything in the parking parking lot. So thank you. A question for you on the integration with campus slide. Okay. So what I'm gathering is that this is not to scale the right there. Yep. You just went past it. That one.

Yeah. Okay.

This is not to scale the people versus the base?

Again, it's a matter of perspective as it's foreshortened a little bit. The people are closer to us so they appear larger. Yeah.

Yeah. It's it's just it's a lot, but I support moving forward with this, especially I think it it would be a great pinpoint for our town. That's how I knew how to get home was I saw the spire.

It's amazing how that beacon worked. Right?

Yeah. You knew

where you were.

I saw you you're taking the cross off.

Correct? Yeah. And

then

the plaques, I think that's a great idea. Maybe some lighting or something.

We thought the most reasonable approach is to present it as an art piece. Yeah. And, you know, if if if council would like to move forward with other embellishments, it's easily accommodated. The construction's super straightforward. Everything we need is really in place. And so if if there was a decision to integrate plaques or monuments or lighting with direction, we could easily bring that into the conversation.

Yeah. And the maybe a description of what it is and

I think that is yeah. That'd be key somewhere. Maybe maybe even on the ground there should be some history. And and I think, if I may, it's just that's part of the excitement about installing this is that it's rare speaking as a citizen that we retain much in this beautiful town. Yeah. It's hard to find anything that's been here for a long time. And here's an actual object with roots back to to write in early days of the town and town residents that helped erect this and live their lives in and around that structure. I think that is a great celebration. And then we could celebrate that even a little more with with a plaque at the base. Yeah. It's appropriate.

So

Exactly. Yeah. I just I think it's a lot, but I'd I'd really enjoy seeing more pictures of it and slides and to scale of what we're looking at. I like the amphitheater idea. That would be more of our the towns. You wouldn't be involved in that.

Yeah.

And I think the picture below, we should we need to gussy up Joan Lincoln's fountain. I think she's getting left behind over there. Yeah. So, yeah, I support this project. I just you know, I think, like I said, it's a lot, but it it it definitely has a lot of

town

history and it's kind of a beacon to where, you know, the town community center is. So thank you.

Thank you. And council member, vice mayor.

Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, group, for showing up. I wanted to know if you wanted to call out any of our experts we brought here to answer any of those questions or if you had any commentary based on what you're hearing. I know we have Gird from Scottsdale Public Arts here to chime in if anybody had questions about public art because we don't do a lot of it here. Eric Peterson did all the renderings. I know we really browbeat him to death on these renderings again and again. Can you do this? Can you make the person bigger? Can you make the person further away?

Can we see it from the front? So all all gratis. This is all pro bono work. So I appreciate everyone who's who and Doug Jordan who really led the you know, reined everybody in. And and this group has been meeting for two years at least, shows up constantly, so respectful, so so from the heart, which is so nice to see because there's no gain or ask for anyone here.

So it's a true effort of collaboration. And aside from the history of it and Catherine Kaufman, is the chair of the historic, I know has been there as a representative for historic, but also as a citizen because the the Save the Spire group was private. We asked to keep everything, you know, within the group while we came to you. We want the the council buy in. I do believe that the resolution and maybe our town attorney can weigh in on this says on section two, the town council authorizes and directs the town manager to provide assistance to the historic advisory committee and the citizens group to locate a suitable display location for this fire, which may include town owned property.

And on section three, the town manager, the town clerk, and the town attorney are further authorized and directed to take the actions necessary to carry out the purpose and intent of the resolution. So I know we would we welcome and we want counsel input and feedback, but we've spent two years getting it to the place where we could hopefully hand it to you on a silver platter and say, we've looked at we could we could, you know, reinvent the wheel. But these experts in the room would cost us a fortune to hire, and they're all doing it pro bono. And so I feel like and correct me if I'm wrong, group, that this is a the finished product after much thought and process to to bring it forward. But questions about public art, questions about the scale, Eric Peterson here.

Questions about anything else, Doug Jordan's here, Catherine. My next thought is that the way I understood this process is once we get the green light or the head nods from council and our staff feels comfortable moving forward, the integration with the historic advisory committee would be ongoing. That's, you know, we are your group this group is pretty much the research arm and we bring forward the details and the specific and the tech and then it goes from there. So I yield. I'm speaking more as a Save the Spire person right now than a council member but of course I support this effort and we're we're lucky to have you all. Thanks.

Well, thank you. Yeah. I'm I'm hoping that our mission really was to lay on the beach and now with your support we can get this thing moving forward and we do have some great experts here. Gert Versterman was CEO of Scottsdale Arts. So if you have any questions for him about art in a public space, he's here to answer it. James Trahan from one eighty Degrees has been integrated on the construction. And, of course, Eric Peterson who's, you know, I'm gonna flatter him, you know, world class architect, very well trained, highly embedded in right intalleous and ethic, has been with us all along. So if there's any questions, it's great that we have the dream team here if you have anything you want answered. Well, don't know

if there's any specific questions for doctor Worsterman. Thank you, doctor Worsterman, for being here today. Appreciate you and the work that you do. Eric and the rest of the committee, you as well. It really is an an amazing effort.

If I can kind of synthesize where we're at is we do have the resolution and thank you vice mayor for regaling that. I think you have a couple of questions that we would like to get just a little more clarity on. One of them, Council Member Moore, the idea of floating the the balloon to and letting the council know when you're gonna be doing that. And then to Council Member Thomason's point, I think the idea of a little background on the Goldwater Memorial and how that fit into the town and how that twenty five years ago, I can't believe you didn't know that, Duncan, off the top of your head. If you wouldn't mind doing a little bit of recon on that and letting us know.

I do hear some thoughts and interest in in some rendering changes so they're more accurately reflect the dimensions and whatnot. I also think that there is some definitely sounds like the the group has some interest in potential lighting, what that might look like, how that would look like, and how it would it would work with the the town on a timer. It would be for the holidays, would be for special occasions, but I think there's just a little clarity that would help on that. And I think that if I'm hearing the group collectively, you're seeing some good encouragement here to move forward with those next steps. And I'd I'd ask the town manager and the town if there's other thoughts that we should be considering at this juncture.

Mister mayor, members of the council, just for clarity on what the next official step would need to be, the town facilities all sit in the SUP. And as you know, they're very complicated documents with lots of detail that, thankfully, this one has, quite some time ago, amended to say essentially that the appropriate uses in this SUP are what the council designates. So you have flexibility to do so, but you will have to take some sort of an action to designate this as a use if you are gonna authorize going forward. So there will be one more resolution or action taken officially by the council, that relates to the SUP. But other than that, we don't have anything technically that needs to be done.

Mayor, I

have one more question.

Council Member Pace, go ahead.

Yeah. I apologize, Mayor. I was I don't wanna jump in. No. I just I appreciate everyone's comments. I don't agree with doing a balloon. I don't think that was asked or supported by four more council members, and I don't think the group I think what's being presented, Scott Jarvison and team has done a great job. There's a lot of volunteers here.

Council member Pace, we're having trouble understanding if you your audio is a little garbled.

Is it better better now? Or should

I call it I think

that's better. Yeah.

I was just saying that I don't think we need to do a balloon test that wasn't supported by four or more council, and we don't need to be imposing on our, what would you call it, pro bono experts who actually are architects and professionals in their field when they put this together. So I don't see the support for extending it. I think they brought it today to say, here's our presentation. Do you as a council support it or not? I understand we have one or two from hearing today that are not going to, and that's fine. If there's four or more of us who do, then we're done. So I think we need to get it on the agenda for the next session. I don't need to see a balloon. I don't think there's any support for that from my peers. There's one person asking for it.

We don't need to keep burdening someone who's doing things for pro bono. I mean, they've already done a ton of drawings and items, and I just don't think we're not asking the applicant who's spending money. These people are doing it for free. The other thing is about the trees and the verticality. That's something that I have the utmost faith and support that our landscape department will put the size and scale of the trees and let them grow a little bit more if that's where the verticality comes from the the new art. That just happens naturally with what's around it. So that's that's a choice. And as Scott Darsen said, that that's fine. I don't think we need to wait to find out how much the Barry Goldwater Memorial costs. That's twenty five years old, but I'm fine about hearing the information.

I always like fact oids, so I like that council member Thomason just asked the question. It has nothing to do with this project. But I don't mind it coming in. It's part of the information for the next meeting. But I would like to get this done before summer. These guys need to get working on it. I I appreciate vice mayor LaBelle reading the resolution. I hadn't looked at it. It should have been in the packet from our staff. So, guys, remember that for next time.

I love the description of the history on the plaque. Not so sure about lighting except special occasions. We like to keep dark sky here. And I'm just going to remind everyone one other factoid in history. So when the Ritz wanted to put in the 140 foot spire at the corner, I was the only one in PB and the only elected official who went to Scottsdale and fought against having it there because it would impact on our residents so much. And it wasn't historic. And all and I do agree with council member Moore. Lots of people come forward with lots of things. And I was able to get that successfully shot down. This was different.

And normally, wouldn't I'm always not for the heights. And the vice mayor and I have had this talk in the beginning. And I gave her that history. But this is a little bit different. And I think, as she so astutely said, it's from the heart.

It's from people who have come together as professionals and historical perspectives, even hearing council member Andean Keller tell her history of growing up here, which there's only, I think, two people on council who grew up here. And that would be our mayor and council member Andy oh, and I should say vice mayor LaBelle. And they they saw that history, and that's the part we're trying to touch is a tie back to the time that this town was given birth to in 1961 to today. And that's the only reason. I think it has this huge merit of the community heart, the community history.

And I think we need to get it on the next agenda to either approve it up or down so that this volunteer group who's putting the monies together can move forward. And I think we hear the other concerns, but I understand some people are just not going to be for it. And that's just the way it is. But I don't want to wait past summer to get these things going when we have so much effort for two years. So that's just a few points. So I think we can deal with oh, and the PV independent, I do like council member Moore's idea we should do articles. Think council member Mandean, it'd be nice if you wrote one of your history of watching it on your horse and walking and putting the deposits at the bank down here at town hall and all the stories I've heard you tell. I think it's great to have some of the committee members write stories about the history and the touching of the hearts and what we're trying to do here for a community effort. It's free. It doesn't have to cost money.

I didn't I heard council member Moore say a paid ad. I don't wanna put obstacles up to pro bono, you know, individuals in our town. I don't want that reputation. It's free every two weeks for 300 words. So I think Scott Djarson, you do a great job. Christine, our vice mayor, does a great job. Council member Andean does a great job with that story she just told about what why is this so relevant to the town.

So Council member, please. We need to kinda wrap it up a little bit here.

Yeah. I just get concerned, but the trees, I'm not worried about. The landscape committee will do verticality. So, anyway, we agreed on town property. I like it. Thank you. And I just would like to get it on the next agenda so we can move forward. And I think there's enough support from what I heard to do that.

Thank you, council member. And vice mayor, I'm gonna have let you have the last word before we wrap up and and move along.

Last one was first from Spire Group. This is as a council member. I would love to see this on the agenda. We've spent two years oh, I would like I would like to see this on the agenda coming up soon if that's necessary. If we have the votes to move forward, we do. And if we don't, we don't. But this group has donated so much of their personal time. I think they've offered to meet individual council members one on one to discuss some of the logistics we're hearing about tonight. So all the opportunities have been there as far as I understand. We brought somebody over from Scottsdale to help speak to these things and thank you for your time.

And we need to start fundraising before we do this. We have people waiting to be able to legally donate some money to this project and we can't do that until we we don't wanna start doing that until we get the green light. So if anybody else is in in in agreement with me that whether this is an admin situation or whether it does need to go to a vote, I would like to see it moving forward. I I don't I don't know what else we can provide you guys much, but aside from what we did. I want it to be collaborative. I want to have buy in, but I I feel as if, and correct me if I'm wrong group because you're here, we've we've presented you what we what we have. And, yeah, I yield.

Thank you. I would just for clarity sake for next steps. First of all, we have a little time between now and when we would potentially, the town attorney, we would take this as an an agendized action item that the council would vote on. Is that correct?

Yeah. The amendment to the special use permit is gonna require some sort of action. The council has to designate this as a use that's acceptable under that permit. So we don't have a council version of that. We've got a managerial amendment. We've got a minor amendment. We've got all those different varieties, but we don't have a council version. So I imagine we would probably run it through regular process where you would have a first meeting on the resolution ordinance, whatever it would be, followed by action at your next meeting. Typically, what we would do. I don't know this.

This is a PNZ item because there isn't really a role for PNZ to to provide you with recommendation. It's this is one of those things that doesn't have a home in your code at the moment or but it is the council discretion at

the end. Okay. So this would be an item that we could consider at the agenda setting for the next meeting potentially or meeting close to it. Is that correct?

Correct. It's likely a multi meeting thing like the your typical SUP approach, but I don't know that you have I don't know that you'd need a statement of direction or any of the things that we typically would have. We'd have to talk with staff to see how much process they feel comfortable with, but you need some sort of official action.

Okay. So I'll go to the agenda setting. I, and then I would ask. There's a little bit of information that I think I heard. Obviously, the idea of the Barry Goldwater, if there's that's not a big deep dive just for reference. I think that's fine. I didn't hear anybody else mention the balloon test. So not seeing any other comments on the balloon test. I don't think that's necessary, but thank you as I recall that did come up once before as I recall. Council Member Thomason.

Thank you, mayor. I I'm taking risk when I'm saying this. Not only am I supporting the balloon test, but I would like to see a mock up of the base or something to give us a sense of the scale. I know council member Andy Keller referenced the size of the base as well. And if there's not support for that, I understand. I don't know if it's chalk lines on the ground or pieces of plywood or something. That's something if I were doing something in my home, I would do a mock up. So at least there's vote two for the balloon and another request. One person.

Alright. And, sir, just to put on the record, I don't support that, and I'm happy to out and do some

All good council member base. I think that, we've got a couple folks that are interested in the balloon test. Doesn't seem to be a unanimous push for that. There is some thought about the scale, so I I think you've addressed that. We'll address that, coming back to us with some consideration.

I appreciate that. I think this is a wonderful project. I'm fully supportive of this project. And I have to give great kudos to our vice mayor who really did put a lot of soul and heart into working with this committee and and championing this. And I will tell you the great amount of public feedback that we've gotten supporting saving this fire and, of course, now interest and and I think good curiosity that will be solved with working with the independent and getting some a little more clarity and promoting what this could be and what will be.

And so I think with that, I'd I'm fully supportive. I think it's exciting. I am curious to see a little bit about the lighting too, how that may look, but that too could come back at a later date. I don't have any other comments or questions unless there's anything, mister Jarvis, that you'd like to add.

No. I would just like to say thank you so much. We we look forward to that direction. We we're ready to fundraise. I I we've got James Trahan here from one eighty degrees. I think if we need a mock up, we can we can do that. The scale's very easy for us to convey at least on paper two dimensionally. Start building models and things. We're we're talking about a big ask financially to people that are volunteering. And so I I but I think we can convey the dimensions very clearly and then those dimensions can be scaled on a piece of paper.

In other words, here's a here's someone standing. This is the the overall, you know, eight feet here and 20 feet there, etcetera, etcetera. So that's something we can do and provide and get out really quickly. So thank you very much for all your time today and your consideration.

Thank you. Thank you and to the committee as well. Appreciate it. Alright. Next item we have on study session is item 26 dash one twenty discussion of fiscal year 2526 landscape enhancement and revitalization program. And I believe Chris Martinez and Isaac Shavira will be guiding us through.

Mister mayor, members of council, Isaac Shavira, public works director, and with me is Chris Martinez, our public works superintendent. First and foremost, thank you for the opportunity to come before you to speak a little bit about the landscape revitalization and reinvestment efforts that we've been working on in public works. But before we get started and I turn it over to Chris Martinez, I just wanted to send out a quick shout out to our public works technicians. They have really stepped up and took ownership on revitalizing some of the medians here along Lincoln Road. And, of course, that ownership and that leadership comes from Chris Martinez at the helm and and pointing the direction and making sure that we're following the word that and and the initials VSC.

You'll hear that through his presentation, the visually significant corridor as well as the general pan plan part of his conversation tonight will cover those two items. Before I turn it over again to Chris, I just wanna make sure that tonight is really to get some feedback from mayor and council just to make sure and understand it. We're headed in the right direction or get a little bit of feedback and discussion. So I I look forward to having that conversation this evening. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Chris.

Thank you, Isaac. Thank you, mayor and members of council for the opportunity to present. And like Isaac mentioned, the goal of the presentation is to update you all with, what we've done so far and what we have left, to do for the fiscal year. So, again, the purpose of this presentation is to give you all an overview of what the public works department's responsibilities are for landscape maintenance and enhancement, update the council on the work we've performed up to this point, and then discuss future projects we have for the remainder of the fiscal year. So the public works landscape maintenance overview, the responsibilities of the department are town right of ways, Median Island specifically, tracks and open spaces such as the Bernal Channel and other areas like that, town complexes, the fire station, the court, town hall.

Some of the previous budget constraints that we have faced which have resulted in the limited enhancement opportunities. We've had manpower challenges trying to plant, replant while we're still maintaining a sweeping schedule and, you know, infrastructure repairs. That has also resulted in poor Median Island plant and tree replacement practices. So the recommendation from us moving forward is to continue budgeting for enhancements and and replanting of our town median islands and and open spaces, utilize contracted services to assist with maintenance and improvements throughout town, and then leverage technology to preserve water and make things more efficient. That was one of the comments made during one of the recent budget meetings and we've actually been working on it and I'll speak about that in a future slide.

So the project that we've completed so far, this map is coming directly from the visually significant corridor plan, which is in the general plan that was adopted by council and town management, I think, 2019. This map shows the visually significant corridors, are Tatum and Lincoln. The areas that I wanna point out are the section in the middle of the legend off to the right, the character zones of the visually significant corridor. From researching the the plan and talking to our planners who are involved with that, the goal of the plan was to make it an experience for motorists driving through Paradise Valley. So as you're passing through resorts, you know, you're seeing median islands that look like a resort finish, you know, lush planting, symmetry, even some artwork if if that's desired.

As you get into the zone of the police department, the fire station, the town hall, it's more of a patterns of nature zone, which is lush plantings, not not similar to the resort. It's a little bit of a different type of palette. And then as you get on the west end of town, where the residents are, it's more of that rural, zero escape type of feel in into those zones. So, I just wanted to point out that that's the plan that we've followed when we're when we've enhanced Lincoln. Those are those are the guidelines that we've been following is directly from the visually significant corridor.

And this talks about that. This is the overview and guidelines of that patterns of nature zone. In each zone, it gives a good, better, best recommendation depending on, you know, a lot of things, you know, where the best sometimes incorporates some metal artistic features or lighting or or walls where good and better is more of, like, plant coverage and what the color of the stone should be. And then also one thing that we've noticed when Isaac first started with the town, we drove around and we're looking at medians. We were looking at the Barry Goldwater Memorial, and it seemed like a lot of just green, you know, green shrubs and green trees.

And, you know, there there wasn't really anything that stood out and popped. And in the visually significant corridor guidelines, it talks about planting plants that will bloom throughout the year in each season. So we started incorporating those types of plants at the Barry Goldwater Memorial. During the winter, you'll see different colors that come out that weren't there before. So those are things that we've incorporated into our enhancement project.

Some of the guidelines are planting trees every 75 feet, which we're trying to, you know, hit that goal. In the good and better recommendations, it's 60% to 65 live coverage throughout the medians, which is something that we've tried to to reach. And then the the rock colors and bolder colors are, you know, more of the golds and browns to again, per the guidelines of the visually significant corridor or plan. So our project itself the scope of the project was to remove the damaged or stressed plants and prepare irrigation systems to incorporate new plants and trees. So that work took place over the fall and into the winter.

And then into the spring, we started planting new plants and trees. And at the end of project, we added new granite to the areas that needed to be refreshed with granite. Some of the numbers from this project, there was eight total median islands that came out to about 30,000 square feet of landscaped area. In total, there was about two fifty plants and trees throughout that eight median corridor between Invergordon and 56th Street. And at the end of the project, there was about 30 tons of new granite placed where needed.

So this map kinda shows the project limits from town hall toward Mountain Shadows, and this finishes off that patterns of nature zone and then we start getting into the resort zone where a different type of planting palette will take place. And that's the goal is in the future fiscal years is to continue that enhancement west towards, you know, Mountain Shadows, Montelucia, and then, you know, eventually into 32nd Street. So here's some photos of kind of what the median islands look like prior to the enhancement project. This one's right out front of of our police station. Just a sad median, you know, it's subpar, you know, it it doesn't have much plant life, you know.

It's clean, but it it just doesn't really, you know, pop for Paradise Valley. So then after the project, you know, it kinda shows the difference there of what a few plants and trees, you know, how much of a difference that makes. Here's another photo and I just have to set the record straight. I am the worst photographer of the town. Every time we go to ELT to do these dry run presentations, the comments are we need better pictures, you know, of the presentation.

So we had to borrow some from Google Earth to kinda paint the picture of what the medians look like. So this is pre enhancement and then this is post enhancement. Again, showing some of those plants that have color throughout the year, plants that are alive, you know, succulents that that look good, that that fall within the plant selection of the visually significant corridor plan. And then a little bit more of the same, you know, these medians that just are subpar in our opinion. This is, you know, in Paradise Valley, I think people expect, you know, a better product.

And so that's what we're trying to produce is something, you know, up to that standard. So then moving into planned projects for the remainder of the year, like like I mentioned early on, we have the smart irrigation systems has been a work in progress for the last couple of years. This is something that has been on our radar that we've, you know, reached out to a vendor to see what it what it takes to implement smart irrigation systems. We worked with IT to figure out what type of manpower is it gonna take from their end. So this has been a work in progress.

It just hasn't gone very far. It's been a lot of research more than getting quotes and getting, you know, budgetary items for for you all to see. Some of the highlights of this type of system are reducing water usage response time. So this all kicked off a couple of years ago. We had a leak on Doubletree that was called in.

We had to call in our on call staff. You know, by the time it took for the phone call to be made by the, you know, the staff member to to report to town, to shut off the water, that was an hour of of just lost water. So So that's what kind of kicked off this research is responding quicker where we could just shut off the water from our home if we need to. Some other highlights are automating the controls of the unit. So when we go into warmer months, we can adjust all the timers from our computer rather than going out to each individual station and and making the adjustments.

That reduces man hour, labor time. It's just more efficient. And then, you know, one of the key things that we realized was there's a monitor, system that'll check over watered areas. Right now, like, we don't even see it. You know, it's granite.

There's water building up in the medians. It it doesn't leak out into the road, and we won't catch that until our crews are on-site doing the maintenance and they notice that median islands are saturated, you know, and we don't even realize that. So there's monitor systems that that go with this type of irrigation control system that will tell us, you know, you're using too much water or you're not providing enough water. So there's controls that would be efficient for our program. Some of the other projects that we have for the rest of the year is a tree replacement program that we haven't we're implementing now.

This is through a one governmental purchase alliance, one GPA. It's an existing contract we have with that's out there with the city of Mesa. We've contracted with West Coast Arborist to come in and help us finish off planting trees where we lost due to storms, car accidents, or or any other, you know, reasons why we lost trees and we just didn't have the opportunity to replace them. So that's one program and then additional plantings throughout town. It's important for us to take care of all the median islands, not just the ones that are showing up on the the visually significant corridor.

So, you know, 52nd Street has been a kind of an eyesore. There is no irrigation. There's limited irrigation throughout those medians, so it's challenging, but we we wanna continue improving areas like that. Stanford, we get some complaints from the residents. You know, maybe we don't put as much effort as we would, you know, Lincoln or Tatum or Mockingbird, you know. So those are some areas that need a little bit of work that we plan on touching before the end of the fiscal year. And then to summarize this presentation, it's basically an update to you all to let you know what work we've completed and to receive any kind of direction that you guys have moving forward. Are we on the right track? Are we not? What are there things that we're missing that, you know, we should be adding to our program?

We're recommending a staff to continue investing in the median islands and the open spaces, the park, the complexes, and do that based off the visually significant corridor guidelines. And then continue continuing to research the technology that'll help improve our our, you know, our operation AI or automated systems or anything like that that'll help reduce labor, everything just to make more it more efficient for our crews to to do their job. So with that, I think that wraps up our presentation.

Great presentation, Chris. Thank you. And I I'll turn over to my colleagues, but I'd like to lead off by saying that, your work is by no means going unnoticed. I will tell you, there's a lot of residents that have, have called and sent emails and said, hey. We're doing something new with the medians? You know, it's like somebody gets a new hairstyle and they're like, well, you look great. It looks good. It's noticed and I'm very proud of the work you're doing, in particular with the water management resource that you're looking in, the technology that's vexed us as a town for a long time and I'm really grateful that you're taking care of that. So please let your team know how proud we are, and congratulations to you and Isaac and the and the team for continuing to make Paradise Valley look so awesome. With that, I'd open up for questions or comments from my colleagues.

And I begin with council member Pace.

And I echo everything the mayor just said. Absolutely perfect words. I think the water management, the beauty, it's starting to happen on those medians. When we had that truck, we destroy the brand new median you guys had just planted, like, a month before or something. You guys were out there fixing it. And, you know, people have been complaining for five years about how we don't look like Carefree and Cave Creek in Armenians anymore and what's happened. And you guys came in with Isaac and you, Chris, and you guys are and your whole team are doing a beautiful job, and we're really starting to see the results. So thanks to our peers on council who supported it last year to give them money to do that because there hadn't been any for the years before that. And I'm glad to see that we're seeing, so much improvement. So thank you. I yield.

Councilmember Andean Keller.

Thank you, mayor. Yes. Very excited to hear the results and what you guys are working on right now. Question for you. The Lincoln Drive enhancement with the eight media islands improved, etcetera, what was the time frame? When was this completed? Or what was the time frame that it took you? And Yeah. And when was this project started and when was it completed?

So the irrigation work started in the winter. That's just repairing leaks, inspecting, you know, apply adding new, you know, emitter heads and things like that. And then the bulk of the work, the planning the planting, it took about a month. We started it in late February and then they finished it at the March. So Yeah. Yeah. So it was about a month of our crews installing plants and and doing that work.

I think

it's great. Eight media islands improved, 250 plants and trees planted, 30 tons of new granite. That's that's incredible. Thank you. Yeah. For for you know, we're a a beautiful place. What did our one of our house representatives called us a mountain resort town. Mhmm. And it's certainly we get the feedback these days about the medians on Lincoln Drive, and I think it's great. I do 100% support the smart technology.

I think that also helps with water usage as well as, you know, over usage and ease of, you know, ease of use as well for you to look in your phone. And I don't know anybody here that doesn't have a drip system or an irrigation system at their house, but this is on a grander scale. I but I can change the watering schedule when I'm in California. So I think it's very important that we have these type systems because it helps make our staff more efficient and makes us more water conscious. So, I appreciate you bringing this forward. Thank you.

Thank you. You. Other comments or questions from my colleagues? Councilmember Leipman.

Thank you, mayor. I think the medians on Lincoln are looking ever so much better, so I appreciate the effort. And like my colleagues have said, it does not go unnoticed. I also have been hearing about an inventory of the plants we have and, which I think is fabulous. So I'm excited about that. I have a few questions and I'm looking at page 36, slide 36. Oh, it's not up there. It's the Lincoln Drive enhancement, the map with the different colors on it. Yes. Right there.

Now if you look at the very tip of Tatum that is in Paradise Valley, that little part that pops up. Why is that purple? I know the red is is the medical plaza, but that's why is that purple? That is a residential. For

the adjacent land use? Well, there's a medical complex up there so I don't know if that falls within

That's the red.

That's the red which is

At the very corner.

The purple you're referring to, I'm not sure exactly what it is.

Are you talking about the adjacent land use types Yes. Color?

Yes. So

the red indicates medium density residential.

Yeah. But that but where the red is this is my question. Where the red is is a medical plaza. Correct. Right south of that purple is the Frank Lloyd Wright Design Center houses as private residential.

And it also kind of covers my house, which is why I noticed it, but I don't think that's correct. If it is that the subdivision is really an SUP, then it would be the same like I think it's with Cheney or the old where it's the old Judson School has a SUP rather than an HOA? Yeah. Which I don't see here. So and the reason I'm asking is because Tatum north of Doubletree is a mess right now on the Paradise Valley side, East Side.

And specifically and there's also a median there. There's an access road and a median there that when you said some of these medians were ugly, it's just dirt. And I don't know if that's in Paradise Valley or if it is in Phoenix, but it's on the Paradise Valley side of the road.

Right. Thanks for the question. It is at those two medians are actually within the city of Phoenix.

So Those medians are within the city of Phoenix.

Yeah. So we the town of Paradise Valley, our public works team, actually, they spray weeds there so that they don't become so much of an eyesore. We pick up trash and litter in there, but we those two median islands are outside of our jurisdiction.

Oh, okay. Understood. But I do think we need to correct that purple or correct me. And my other question was oh, Right again on Doubletree Road, right where that blue spot is, which is a school on the corner of Doubletree And Tatum. There's like bent over signs and it's real ugly and there's all kinds of trash there. And I'm not talking in the medians. I'm talking just south of that. Is that also is that Paradise Valley or is that Phoenix because it's really ugly and

It needs help.

It needs help.

It south of the school. Right? On the South Side Of Doubletree Ranch?

No. The North Side Of Doubletree Ranch. Right in front of on the on the Tatum side of the school, the yellow part.

We're council member mister mayor, council member, we're more than happy to address those questions, directly if you wanna just give give us myself or Chris a call, we can certainly, you know, arrange that.

And my other question is how do concerned citizens know who to call when there's a problem? Because I drive by those bent over signs and I say, I don't know who to call and I should know. Is there a central number or a

We're right here to serve you. So feel free to give myself a call or Chris.

No. But I'm I'm saying if I didn't know

you Yeah. In general.

What would I what phone number would I dial to get

to it? Yeah. Again, any as with any resident, certainly can call our public works office and we can point you in the right direction. Okay. What

I guess what I'm understanding my question is is I would like every resident to know who to call. And that doesn't mean a name. It means maybe we have a centralized phone number or system that directs phone calls because it's like those in the know know and the others don't.

And council member, I think we they can Anyway, I there's places that we can manage that to just expedite. Other questions or comments from my colleagues? Council member Moore.

Thank you, mayor. Chris, appreciate all the work you and the devotion of your staff and you do on all all this stuff here. Just clarification. I I think it's funny that you were how you were describing your your abilities on presentations, but I'm right there with you. But, just for clarification, we we're talking about center medians.

But in your slides, you have landscape enhance enhancements in what could be private areas or right away that is maintained and watered by our residents. Is there a policy this question here or a policy ask for us to be looking at, you're gonna do additional landscaping within private property?

Thanks for the question. That is not the intent. Are you talking about the what slide Williams specifically?

The first one? The the Lincoln one and then the one afterwards. So the before and then the after. Yeah. And then go to the next one.

Oh, beyond, like, in the right of way side?

On the side that is not center the the the municipality maintains the center meanings. Correct. The right of way adjacent to the property is maintained and planted and watered by the Yes. Residents or HOAs that

Yes.

Maintain them. So just clarification on that. That's your slides. Go to your next ones if you wanna and then go to the next one. There's not plants in there

too. Oh, yeah.

So the intent is not to go in and do that. Correct?

That is correct. That is not the intent.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Thomason.

Thank you, mayor. Gentlemen, I don't think there's anybody at this table more enthused about median beautification than me. I'm super excited about it. Couple questions. Visually significant corridor, when we approved it we had different zones or character zones. So is it our intention to maintain those different character zones? And secondly, how complicated is it to keep three different zones within the town? Can't we just make them all pretty?

No. That's a good question. It's it's not all that difficult. We, you know, we just identify from limit here to limit there according to the plan. What are the guidelines and recommendations? And we just follow that. It would be easier probably just to do them all the same, you know, but because this was approved in the general plan, its guidance, you know, from from the town council and management, we decided to follow this this recommendation.

Mister mayor, council member Thomason, if I may chime in. The only challenge and it is one of our biggest challenges really is as with any other revitalization, whether it's the right away or your private properties, it's really the cost. Right? How much do you wanna spend, really? And and and with that, we wanted to make sure that we were here before you to, basically present and and, advise not only the mayor and council but our residents so that they have an idea of what we're working on and what funding we're working on so so that you understand moving forward, whether it's next fiscal year, you understand, why they ask on the landscape, budgetary ask.

Thanks. Mayor, if I may, I remember when I first saw the visually significant care corridor plans and the different zones, it struck me as a little more complicated than it needed to be over engineered. So for what it's worth, I might suggest so we have a wonderful public works team that is, a well put together team. They've worked for a long time. They know the town.

They know the medians, whatever. Generally, people that come up with landscape plans tend to be landscape architects and they don't know the plans as well, the plants as well. So my suggestion is that we ask our public works staff to recommend plants and palette that might be appropriate for the whole town, taking into consideration the objectives of beautification, practicality, cost, but I think I want to unchain them a little bit from the different zones, giving them a little more free rein. So I'm just putting that out there as a suggestion. Budget question, just clarification.

I know that the current year we are in, we had a budget, I think 153,000 to beautify the medians. As we're looking at a budget going forward that we're going to tentatively approve tonight, in that budget, how much has been put in the budget to move this plan forward if at all?

Mister mayor, council member Thomason, that's a great question. And, this year's ask in terms of, what we're moving forward with in terms of the revitalization of and the continuance of the medians along Lincoln is is really has stayed consistent with last year's ask. So we're probably looking anywhere from 25 to 30,000 reinvestment on the medians, give and take a little bit. Of course, as with any other challenge that we've been facing in public works is inflation and and it seems like, you know, we're impacted in all directions. So the $2,530,000 that we spent last year may not carry us that far.

The other point that I'll make to that is as we move towards the resort living, the next median islands, obviously, that's going to be a little bit more costly only because the the the patterns in the palette that's that's being asked in in those areas, obviously, a little bit more expensive.

Okay. So

I thought the year we were we're in had a $150,000 budget for median improvement and you're saying the budget ask for the one that's on our plate right now is 30 or 40 or another 100 another $1.50?

Great. Great point. And that's the point of clarification is really the total is a 161,500. But for the reinvestment portion of it is really only 30,000 that goes into the the median revitalization.

Great. Thanks. And process wise, tonight's discussion is to get general feedback on a long term bigger plan that assuming the positive feedback continues, they will come back to us with a plan x number of years, x number of dollars to get us to this new standard. Am I understanding that correctly?

That's a good good question. Is this is this a multiyear that we're gonna be seeing or is this a year at a time?

That is a very great question, mister mayor, council member Thomason. We are also along with these efforts, we are working on a, inventory of all of our landscape and plant plants and trees, etcetera. And really, it kind of the idea behind that is to truly wrap our hands around what we have to take care of. Once we have that, we can certainly come back to you and put together a five year plan in terms of what is it gonna take to reinvest and and bring up our medians and right aways up to par depending on, you know, where we're at in in the inventory.

Thank you. I'm done.

Thank you. Other questions or comments? Vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. Great job. Thank you for all you do. A couple questions. One is just, is there any effort at all? And I don't I'm not advocating for one way or another, but is there any effort to use native plants by any chance? Is that something that you look at or is it mostly cost driven or a combination of both?

Yeah. Definitely. A lot of the plant selection list is also within the visually significant quarter plan. So each zone has a large plant list and a lot of it is native plants. Most of it is, you know, drought tolerant trees and and plants that'll survive the heat and lack of water and or minimum water, I should say. So yes.

Thank you. And then to council member Thomason's point on the character zones, is that that's more suggestion. Is that that's driven by the general plan which is voter approved. But unless it's it's something that you you're required to adhere to, I would agree that while it might be nice to always make an effort to, keep those zones what they are because that was driven by the public when it makes sense. If there's you know, we have 17 bougainvillea's, but it doesn't fit into here.

I would advocate just doing what makes sense. Use it as a guideline, but possibly not, you know, something that, okay, this this is gonna be empty because we have to wait for more of the alloes to come in, if that makes sense.

Right. Oh, wow.

Oh, what's that? Oh, okay. Never mind. I yield.

Squirrel. Squirrel.

Mister mayor, vice mayor, I'll respond to that and sorry for the distraction. Really, the goal the goal behind the VSC is is really to follow the general plan and and what that means is really the preservation of desert, right, characteristics and and making sure that we're still taking care of of our mountains, our scenic views. And so we're we're really the idea behind this whole thing is to not only take the visually significant quarter, but also follow those guidelines that are set in the general plan and piece those together. And and please also keep in mind that we got a lot more landscape square footage than Lincoln and Tatum. But we the the reason obviously, as you all know, we focus on Lincoln and Tatum is because really those are the thoroughfares of our our town.

And so we wanna make sure that that those individuals that live here, those individuals that are passing through Tatum, Lincoln, they're noticing.

So And I know

I said thank you for the support.

Yeah. Know I said I yield, one more comment. I would say thank you also for paying attention to the underrepresented areas and paying I I appreciate that. Yeah.

Well, Chris and Isaac, thank you. I'm very supportive of the direction you're taking. I appreciate the adherence to the general plan and to to continue the voter approved authorization to and you're doing that and I greatly appreciate that. So I'm so very supportive and I'll be interested to see when you develop that five year plan how that may reflect on how we look at the budget and how we look at what the ask would be. And then finally, Chris, no one really talked about your photography, but I'm going to. And that is Ansel Adams. Just take a look at his stuff, see what you think. You got it's always a work in progress, but your heart's in the right place, and so keep snapping photos, and please keep doing the work that you and your team are doing. We appreciate it. Alright.

Thank you. Alright. Next up is item 26,080. This is discussion of statement of direction. SUP 26 dash zero two, Franciscan Renewal Center major special use permit amendment 5802 East Lincoln Drive. And we've got thirty minutes and I believe Brandon is going to be doing the hi, Brandon, that will be doing the presentation. So remember, we got about thirty minutes set for this.

Yes. Good evening, mayor and members of council. As stated, this, item is regarding the statement of direction for a major special use permit, application at Franciscan Renewal Center, s UP2602 case number. The goal this evening is to go over this application as in its entirety, field any comments you may have, answer any questions, moving forward with this statement of direction process. To better orient yourselves, Franciscan Renewal Center is a place of worship located East of the Northeast corner of Lincoln Drive and Smoke Tree Lane, fronting Lincoln to the South.

Immediately north and west of the church are r 43 zoned lots, Most of them or all of them rear yards of the Lincoln Drive Vista subdivision. To the east is the majority of the Franciscan Renewal Center Church which resides in the Maricopa County jurisdiction. In terms of process for this major amendment application, the application was submitted on March 20. The statement direction which was in process tonight's study session and then potentially coming back before you for action on that statement of direction on on May 14, which will then be forwarded on to planning commission for their review and recommendation potentially in June and then back to town council review and action after the recess in 2026. Again, this application request is to have the installation of four roof mounted solar shade canopies and the SUP amendment criteria for a major amendment as for any proposed amendment that does not qualify as a managerial minor or intermediate, which this does not.

But this request does constitute a major amendment as it does increase more than 40% of the floor area on the site. This application increases it by a 156 upon the existing because of the minimal floor area that does reside on the lot. To summarize the request, again as stated, they're proposing to add four new parking lot shade structure canopies in the West Northwest portion of the parking lot. Array one would be roughly 3,700 square feet. Array two, forty three hundred square feet.

Array three, around 4,200 square feet, and array four closer to 7,000 square feet. Totaling 19,200 square feet of addition, which is 9.42 increase in floor area ratio on the roughly 5% that resides on this on the lot today, the 12,281. The applicant is proposing this to provide power and shade to their campus. The array itself does fall and constitute does fall in line with the religious facilities of the of the use on the special use permit. The solar shade canopy is compliant and is found among other religious campuses within the town.

For example, First Southern Baptist had a similar amendment back in 2023 and Temple Solil back in 2017. The rate will also meet accessory structure guidelines per the special use permit. The guidelines at 16 feet in max height which again does align with our 43 accessory structure height limits. The arrays vary in length and width, but all maintain similar heights at that 16 feet, which you can see on the slide. They are also compliant with open space criteria and height requirements also found in those SUP guidelines.

In terms of setbacks, SUP guidelines for accessory structure, not primary structure is 60 feet adjoining residential and 40 feet adjoining public street. The proposed setbacks, I know it's a little difficult to see. Array one would be approximately a 115 feet to the closest property line. Array two, which is south of Array 3, they're kind of they're they're adjoined. It's roughly 99 feet from the closest property line.

Array three, again, 99 feet from the closest property line. And then Array 4, which is the one furthest to the west, is approximately 43 feet to the closest property line. Ray 4 does not meet that 60 foot setback guideline as it covers existing parking, but it's still compliant with height and open space criteria requirements. The array itself is proposed to be a black matte finish, non reflective material. APS proposed bidirectional meter will be installed in parallel with the photovoltaic system.

The no new lighting is also proposed with this. No lighting under each canopy. The applicant is proposing two light poles that are to be underneath Array 1 to be lowered and still be functional underneath that the existing outputs are compliant with that point seven five foot candle at the property line requirement. This slide, you can kind of see the paint materials matching current other steel structures that are on campus today. The picture on the right is on the east side of the sanctuary building.

The next few slides consist of renderings provided by the applicant. This is a depiction of Array 1 looking north with Arrays 2 And 4 in the background. This kind of is looking east or north. Sorry. Continuing with the renderings, this is array one from the west. Again, you'll see that 16 feet is directed north toward

north.

This is a overhead bird's eye of all four arrays as they sit. You'll see the the the bottom portion is is to the west adjacent to those R 43 lots. This is another rendering of all our four arrays looking south. This is another view of all of the arrays, again, looking north, with the mountain in in the background from Lincoln. Again, this is Arrays 2, through four looking Southeast, and then I think finally this is Arrays 2 through four looking, Northeast.

Removal of 16 trees, will be necessary to install the four arrays, but the applicant is proposing to add an additional 20 pollinators and milk and milk milkweeds in those planter areas to supplement some of that. They're also proposing to add seven new trees along that western edge to help buffer those r 43 lots that may be visually impacted by the the arrays. In your packet, you were also provided a draft statement of direction, to review. Staff is suggesting that the council, direct the planning commission to focus on use, height, and setbacks, very similar to, what was provided to First Southern Baptist back in 2023. Again, for the use impacting the shade structure to surrounding areas and the use of landscaping to help again mitigate the height and visually visual impact of those structures.

Height, to have the planning commission evaluate the proposed height and view sheds based on the visibility, again, from off-site from Lincoln from those r 43 residential lots to the north and west. And then finally, for the commission to evaluate the setbacks and what should be appropriate with these new four shade structures. In terms of next steps, staff will update the statement of direction based on feedback provided tonight and look to bring this again back on May 14 for potential action and then moving on to planning commission for work session and action on that recommendation back to council. With that, I'm happy to, take any questions and comments, and thank you again.

Thank you, Brandon. Questions or comments from my colleagues. Let's begin with council member Pace, please.

Thank you, mayor, and thank you, Brandon, for the presentation. Couple quick questions. The process for notice to the residents, I'm sorry. I don't remember the PowerPoint number, where they're gonna be affected by possibly the Viewscapes and pass there it is. One more back. 19, I think it was. For the trees. Oh, you had it. 19. 19 was good.

So where we're putting it, it looks like they're gonna take out a bunch of trees, and then they're gonna add in more trees, which may or may not because when they bring them closer to the backyard, it may block those mountain views. May not. But what is what are the thoughts from staff's perspective on how you're gonna provide notice to the employees to or the residents to get feedback? And have they already get have you heard any comments yet from those residents?

Thank you, council member Pace, members of council mayor. The box of acacias will not be, I think, over 18 feet in in height, so they won't be blocking above a 20 foot tall view view of the mountains. In terms of notification, the potential citizen review for this process is on is tentatively scheduled for May 28, and they will be noticed for that up to fifteen days prior as well as the Planning Commission recommendation hearing, which is tentatively scheduled for June 16. So those those notices will go out. As far as additional notices, their staff is not aware of any additional notices.

They will be I'm assuming that the church has been in contact with some of those residences prior to submittal. I think that's what was stated in the pre application. So they are aware that this application is in, but as far as formal notice, those will be those will be the two opportunities as well as noticing again once this comes back to council.

Okay. So will there be a letter sent from the town? Because there's only there's only a limited number of of houses over there. So is there gonna be a letter sent to remind them about that, or are you hoping they just learn about it? Or are you giving direction to Franciscan Renewal to contact those houses to get feedback? Because there's nothing in the packet. I looked in the staff report about any feedback or direction or thoughts from the residents yet.

Council member Pace, members of council, no. There has not been any formal instruction to preemptively notify those neighbors. Again, there will be the citizen review meeting, and the the three other opportunities to be noticed on this this project. The applicant is here this evening to also answer any of those questions.

So I don't know if

Well, and they can do it through the process. I'm just it needs I would like to see before it comes back for, you know, for us to see again from planning and in the statement of direction as someone's definitely reaching out to each of those residents. Those trees that you're picking or that are put in there go 20 to 40 feet tall and half as wide. So the it's gonna be it's one thing to have those trees are taken out in the middle medians there with the parking. That's further away, so it doesn't block their views. So I just don't know the impact. I mean, it's up to those residents. But those are pretty tall, trees that are gonna be there, and it may be what they want because they don't wanna see the church and the and the, you know, the solar array. Don't know. But it's something that needs to be pointed out.

It's not they're not 18 feet. And the other thing that is concerning, when we've done when you mentioned, Brandon, I know you weren't here, when we did the one on First Baptist Church, and I don't know about Temple Soleil, but the First Baptist Church, those residents were all notified. That was my former neighbor. So we that was notified all around there to get the resident feedback or whether or not it would bother them and be a concern for their site views. Their site views there did not from at least one portion of it from to the north did not bother via Vista in the same way this might to the mountains where it's gonna have a view.

So we just need to be sensitive to that. And when you're dealing with planning to do the statement of direction, just wanna make sure, you know, that's thought about. The last thing I like the milkweed. Great. We're supposed to all be doing milkweed for the butterflies. That's all good. The other question I had, I noticed when you show the picture, there's one more where is it at? Can you go backwards to the where it shows the SEP versus the county property? There's a there's one. Yeah.

I apologize. That was it. I should've wrote that down. And I know the town actually spent money to help the frontage there on the road on Lincoln for the sidewalk and some of that connection there because otherwise, it's part of it's a County Island, and they chose not to be part of Paradise Valley. We asked them at that time. And then the other part is Paradise Valley where we're talking about for this solar array. Correct?

Yes. That's correct.

Okay. But the town, just so history, did some work there on that frontage be because it made sense to bridge the area in Lincoln even though it wasn't there on County Island. My concern is when you look down there, they just put in a new Vegas style sign that's, like, over the top size, and it's on at night. Did that get brought to you guys in planning? Because the residents are asking about it, and they're gonna wonder about this solar array at the same time because that just showed up a couple weeks ago. Did they have any conversation with the town about size and scale of signage and lighting at night in our dark sky?

I'll

have the applicant speak to that.

Yes. Thank you.

Hello, councilwoman. My name is Mike Slivers. I'm the director of operations and the applicant.

Thank

you. Just wanted to respond that the sign was permitted through Maricopa County. That was a that's on county on the county parcel.

I do see that, but that's not in keeping with PV. So I was curious about why you didn't talk to our staff and then why I see where you put it. You put it on that side because you knew that kind of a sign wouldn't be approved. But, you know, one one request we're already hearing is people would like it off at night, but, you know, it's just it it just shows, are we into the character of the community we're in for Paradise Valley? And we would like to ask you to be in that character, And it has been noticed. And so I think you're gonna see residents concerned on the West Side for the for the array because of the same you know, that's not part of our general plan, not part of anything we would do here. So can you just speak to how you would integrate that and commit to that for those residents on the solar array for what's in keeping with Paradise Valley?

Well, one comment that I would like to make is that that sign has been there for going on thirty years, and we just renovated it. So it's not brand new. The permit was for renovation. And as far as we were concerned, we were doing the right thing by working through the county.

Okay. But the lighting is all new?

There is some added lighting as we consider it pretty low key.

Okay. Well, no, it's just that I think if you wouldn't mind just on the side looking at our dark sky rules and our hybrid, we don't do lighting, and we don't do that on science. So just it's just an aside. But if you can look at also talking to those residents on the West Side on that solar array, that would be awesome to get feedback on through the planning process and for us.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And Brandon has issued me a list of neighbors that we need to send letters to so that they all are very aware of this project.

Okay. And and please communicate the type of trees. I just when you move trees to the back of the wall, which may be exactly what they want, which is fine then. There's no issue. But those are big trees that are gonna block all the way that way, and they may love that or they may not. So just I don't I don't have opinion either way. It's just really up to them. Okay. You. I yield. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mike. Alright. Other questions or comments from my colleagues? Councilmember Randin Keller.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for the presentation, Brandon. So if I'm looking at Franciscan renewal from Lincoln Drive, these are new structures that are going to be to the left of the buildings that currently stand there to the West side.

Correct.

And they're new. They're not they have never been there before. Correct. Okay. Let me see. What is my I had a question on the citizen review, and that's May 28. Planning Commission's going to take a look at it. I've I have concerns about the neighbors with this being a new structure. You know, the viewscape, them maybe perhaps losing their view. But, you know, we can't protect those, but I I think it's something to work with them on.

And I I also had written down billboard. So the the sign is quite striking when you are driving at night and see it. It's a very different signage than used to be there. So I don't know if you can turn it off at night or do something to maybe turn it down, but it is quite a big billboard. I yield.

Thank you, council member. Other comments or questions from my colleagues? Council member Leipman.

Thank you, mayor. I echo my colleague's questions and concerns about the view, and I have a procedural question. Is the one side the array four set backs, are under the which are 42 feet rather than 60 feet, which is recommended. What action is required to approve array four? Is that something this council does? Is is that the planning commission? Because I do feel it's a little close, but I'd have to go out and look.

So Yes. Council member Leibman, mayor, members of council. Per the SUP guidelines, again, are guidelines. They are covering existing parking spaces.

Mhmm.

In terms of open space and height, again, they meet those requirements. But, again, it does not meet the 60 foot. So, I mean, that's at the discretion of counsel or moving that toward the planning commission to to to look further into. So

Okay. Thank you. Do we know how high the wall is on the west? Again, I'm I'm concerned with those houses being so close.

Council member mayor, I do not. I can, do some more research and and bring that back to you when this comes back and see exactly. I would assume that it's the maximum six feet, but, I do not know for sure.

Okay. And I was on the planning commission when we went through the first Southern Baptist, And one comment that never crossed my mind but may be applicable here is the concern that people up on the mountain looking down had concerns about how that view or how the new structures would fit into their view. So I don't know if there's any houses up there that look down onto the top of these proposed structures. I'm I'm I was looking through the maps trying to see, but just there was there was a lot of discussion at the planning commission level about what colors they were, whether the solar arrays would be reflective into into the windows of these houses and and so I I would like that to be looked at. And that's it.

Thank you. Oh, and I'm all for solar rays. I I I mean, I support the concept a 100%. I just wanna be sure that it doesn't affect the neighbors or the people up on the hill with the reflection or with their views of the mountains. Thank you.

And council member mayor, it is a non reflective map finish. There won't be any kind of reflection up or out.

Okay. Thank you.

Council member Thomason.

I'm supportive of the draft SUP moving forward as drafted by staff. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Moore.

Thank you, mayor. Thanks, Brandon, for the presentation. Just, for some clarification. Is there a reason why there wasn't any north arrows on any of the exhibits to kinda help, for clarity? And, that also goes for the pitch of the these roofs. As you were even confused yourself, I was looking through the exhibits, what we're looking at.

Yeah. I can

I think what we're looking at is the high side of the pitch on the west? So we'll have we would have a 16 foot height up against those neighbors to the west. But and then the so tilted inward, and then the other one is tilted towards Lincoln. I it's hard to tell, but it looks like it there. So could you just maybe clarify that?

Yes. Council member mayor.

Add that to the exhibits and then have the planning commission look at, how that affects the height, not only the the height, but the solar panels to, the view corridor of of the elevation the higher elevations to the north of this project. And I ask our town manager if he would clarify the majority council support moving forward on this before we end this. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Other comments? Vice mayor?

Thank you, mayor. I think my colleagues really covered all the questions I would have had, in a thoughtful way, so I do appreciate that. The only extra thing I would emphasize is I, would definitely want to know, make sure that the neighbors are notified if they haven't been already, even if it's not required. And then also the citizen notice that I think you said May 28, Just it's coming up on summer and and graduations around there and everybody's leaving. And if there's any way to legally or just voluntarily expedite that process as we get more information about where we're going with it after it comes out of planning to try to get that information out before the, you know, so many people leave town.

That would be my my hope. So I yield. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you for the presentation. I'm very supportive of the concept of using solar as well. I think you heard some great feedback. I think the pitch of the roof is important. I think you hear undeniably that we're looking at the neighbors, what their communication is gonna be And even though we we didn't have any communication on the on the new sign on the county land, I urge you to have really good communication with the neighbors going forward with this potential array. And I do support the SUP has suggested to go to the planning commission. Alright. Anything else, Brandon? Nope. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council. Alright. Thank you.

Just real quick though. Just that is the consensus. The draft SUP as it was in the packet will be what moves forth on May 14 for council consideration approval. Yes.

Okay. Anybody opposed to that? Okay. Thank you. Okay. And so, mayor, may I

Yes, please. So clarification on the council comments. How how are you addressing those?

I took them to be clarification comments that we can use to clarify the draft but not change the substance of the draft. In other words, the concerns about proximity and, directional sort of, clarifications on the tilt of the will all be exhibit clarifications that we can then have updated when we come back on the fourteenth as opposed to adding a condition or or substantively modifying a condition of the draft SUP.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Alright. Move forward, we have another study session item 26 dash one one eight, discussion of fiscal year twenty twenty seven tentative budget, and that will be a thirty minute presentation. I believe the town manager will be.

Correct. Thank you, mister mayor, members of council. I will be assisted tonight, and I wanna give full credit. Unfortunately, our CFO, Leslie Duresh, is unable to be here tonight, but she, has asked our finance manager, Christine Capitae. I don't know if you've met her.

She's joined our team about two years ago from the town of Clarkdale, right, up in the Verde Valley, but she's now with us. So she's ready to run through the presentation. I would suggest that given the proximity and time to the council meeting at six, the presentations are the same. So, certainly, I know that that this being your first time presenting to council, you'd love the opportunity to give the exact same presentation twice, and we're certainly willing to have her do that. Or you can say, let's do it here.

And unless there are some significant points you wanna have for the the regular meeting, we're happy to to elucidate those if they come up. So she's here to to to move through the the the presentation. We we made sure that we had this opportunity to to certainly field any additional last questions from counsel prior to the vote on the tentative. Certainly, one of the important things in that occurred since the last time we met was that last Wednesday, April 15, we had our second community budget forum. And it was attended, at least in person, by a similar amount of of of residents.

We followed the same format as written questions were submitted. We read all of the written questions. There were a number of them. I'd say maybe about 15, after, mister Resch's presentation. The like the first, community budget forum, the video of it has been available on our YouTube channel. It runs about 45 long. So, I hope you've had an opportunity. I certainly hope members of the public, take a look at it. We had a variety of questions. It's the first time that we've done this.

I think that, absent perhaps having a bit more people, certainly, the the the lack of in person, attendance by residents was not a deterrence to the number of questions. We we certainly had a robust number of questions, and I thought they were good, fair questions. And I I I give our our staff, especially Leslie, a lot of credit in being able to effectively answer those questions. So without further ado, I'm gonna go ahead and hand turn it over to Chris, to run through the, the PowerPoint unless there's anything you wanna do before that.

Welcome, Chris. We're excited to have your presentation.

Thank you. Good afternoon, mister mayor and council members. I am Christine Capite, the accounting manager here at the town of Paradise Valley. So I'm just gonna do a brief overview of what's already been presented to council, and then if there's any questions, then we'll try to address those as possible. So, basically, we are asking that the council approve, for we've this is already the budget calendar.

So, obviously, we're at April 23, and the action item is to the tentative budget adoption. And we are asking that the council consider the resolution 2026 dash zero four to adopt the fiscal twenty seven tentative budget. The tentative budget includes the capital projects total of 15, just over 15, under $16,000,000, and a one time salary adjustment of 3% based upon compensation study plus a five percent merit and market increase. This slide just talks about Arizona revised statutes and the requirements and the forms that, will be provided to the auditor general. And this slide just talks about what the budget is.

It shows a percentage of change between fiscal years '26 and fiscal year '27. I'm not sure if there's any questions on this slide. This is the revenues by source, and it shows where the amount of the total budget is represented by the different revenue sources. And this shows where the revenues by funds are being allocated. And this slide is about the expenditures by fund and the percentage of the total budget.

And this is the contingencies, which is included in the expenditures. And then this is the part of the interfund transfers and by fund and the amount that will be the transfers. So we are asking that the council consider resolution twenty twenty six dash zero four to adopt the fiscal year twenty seven tentative budget.

Alright. Right to the point. Appreciate that. Obviously, a lot of work behind the scenes to get us here and thank, mister Resch for all the work she's continuing to do with your team. So thank you for that. Let's open it up for questions or comments from the council, and I'd lead off with council member Pace.

Thank you, mayor, and thank you for the presentation and all the hard work. I had, two questions. One, on the alarm fund. We mentioned the last time we were gonna get some data on that. You know?

And and maybe what the the ask is and maybe the appropriate thing is if we approve the budget to get that, phased out in the next fiscal year, we can just approve it if if people agree, if my peers agree, but with the intent that it would be phased out in this next fiscal year. So that gives plenty of time for notice to the the, residents. And, we didn't get what I thought was hoping today was the was the amount of people on it. And we said last time there's a 50,000 loss, and it's taking a ton of the police time to deal with it. And it's affecting the town's reputation because of the failures in the systems.

That's a third party system they're using. So I just wanna make sure we've got that clarified because I don't agree with it going forward. I mean, we have to go forward in this fiscal year, but I was hoping we had the data so we could all make that in a more educated decision with a little bit more data other than what we've been told. So I support a lot of parts of the budget. I don't support continuing with the alarm past the next fiscal year, so I don't know where that fits in. And maybe the town manager could explain. Because you said last time we were gonna get some of that and then make that decision, or is that kind of scheduled for the next fall? Or how do we do that?

Thank you for the question. The way we I spoke with, chief about this. He's looking at the alarm fund. We believe that, you know, that although there is funding for the alarm program in the '27 budget that the decision whether or not to continue providing the alarm service would be the subject of a larger presentation. And we were planning on having that presentation be separate from so in other words, you know, if if there's, you know, a desire to approve the tentative budget, there's no reason why if we get direction afterwards to sunset the program that that wouldn't be a barrier to the to the to the sunsetting of of the alarm program.

All it would mean is that if there was funds allocated to the continuation of it, those funds would just simply not get spent. So Okay. Rather than sort of piggybacking it into a a budget discussion, it was more of a policy related question about whether or not the town wanted to continue to to do this. And so we we decided that we want to, obviously, per direction, to bring this back to you, but not bring it back, you know, within two weeks, when it's a larger, more detailed discussion, and would require more research and preparation by our police department.

Okay. And that's fair enough. I just would rather us all have a heart to heart with real data and facts, and we don't quite have all of them yet. So if that's the intent, then that's fine. And as long as we can, you know, address whether or not we continue or sunset in next fiscal year once we have data. So alright. If that's on the agenda for later, I'm fine with that. The only other concern I had is we discussed the raises of the market rate, And then we had the COLA and the merit. So I think one was the COLA and merit was, like, 5%, and then there was a 3% market adjustment. Is that correct? That you're you're proposing as the town manager in okay. So 8%.

8% total. Correct.

And that extra 3% is based on the market study that hadn't been done in nineteen years. Correct? Yes. Yeah. So my thoughts are that it's a little bit robust to do 8% this year. I think I'm I'm okay with the COLA and the MERIT. It's really a 5%. I think I can live with doing half of the market this year, and then I'd be open minded. I know it may be a different council for sure by then, but I'm more supportive of at least half of it to show, you know, we're all being fiscally conservative and phase it in in over two. But those are just my thoughts.

And if nobody else I'll support what everybody wants to do. At that yield, that was my only other comments on the budget.

Tom, Andrew. I appreciate that. I would make an an alternative suggestion that I think gets us ultimately to the same place over time, which is that you can approve the 3% but delay its implementation until January 1, which would mean that the fiscal impact of the three percent would be cut in half. So it would still kinda maintain the intent and spirit of the study, but you could delay the impact until January 1.

Okay. That's another idea. Yeah. I'll see what my peers wanna do on that. I did I forgot there was one more. There was one more question we had, and I thought we had a lot of discussion on our with our peers on whether to add that extra FTE. So there's an FTE out of the legal department, and then there was a discussion about whether we wanna transfer that as a new restructured FTE. And where did we land on that in this budget? What is the because I think we're gonna talk about job description in detail or are we dropping that FTE position. So what was the end result of that in this budget?

The end result of it is and again, and I semantics are everything sometimes and sometimes they're nothing. In this case, I think the truth lies somewhere in between, which is it is a existing FTE but with a new job description. So the use of new and existing, I think, in our conversations got a little bit more garbled than I would have hoped for optimally, but the current 116.9 FTEs that the town carries on its budget is not affected by whether or not this particular position is repurposed. To move forward would be to move forward to to okay, if you will, the repurposing of it out of the town attorney and into the town manager's budget cost center. But it does not result in a net increase in expenditure because the expenditure would have occurred regardless.

That being said, we're again, and I would turn to the minutes and any other recollections, but my understanding is is that I asked at the end of the meeting if there was direction from counsel to to modify, amend, or to remove that position, and there was not. So it's in the budget in the sense that it is not removed, therefore, to reduce the budget, but it exists as a position that has existed in previous budgets. So it's already there. In terms of the the job description, things like that, I think I wanna say that we provided a list of job duties. The job description would be, similar to the existing job description, but with duties that were in, that were used to be related to town attorney work would then be within the areas identified previously, which would be HR, clerk, and public works.

And I see that, our HR director is here to clean up my mess. Thank you.

No. No. It's fine. No.

It's okay because, you know, like I said, it's it's the lack of clarity here. I take responsibility in that pointing out something that existed and then moving it, I think, created a lot of conversation and and intent towards you're looking for council direction to potentially either say continue to have the position or remove it. You know, it was the you know, since it was already a budgeted FTE, the authority already existed to to staff the position. In other words, we could have, if we had chosen to, move it. But because it was moving from one area to another and because we try to air on the side of being transparent, we put it into the discussion so that there would be a full vetting and so that this council and the residents in the community would have a full understanding and knowledge of it.

It was it was in addition to what would normally be in a budget discussion because it's the moving is budget neutral. But it certainly was significant enough that we thought it merited this kind of conversation, and we're grateful for the conversation. It's a good conversation. We should have these kind of discussions. It's okay. But it did it did create, I think, a larger converse a larger understanding or or a need for more clarification. And for that, we certainly are always better when we clarify. And I'll turn it

over to I'll

turn it over to miss Monger.

Oh, okay. Go ahead.

And I didn't necessarily have anything further to say. I just wanted to be here in case there were more specific questions directed at the town manager. So I'm happy to answer any questions as well.

No. Thank you. And I and I think it was really healthy to the to the town manager's point that you guys did raise that about that position and allowed all of us to evaluate it. You know, there yeah. There was a little bit of a confusion on the transfer or the how to repurpose.

But all in all, it helped us have a healthy discussion about the number of FTEs we had, and there was a lot of misinformation floating in the community, and it wasn't as high as people thought at all. And in fact, we had higher FTEs five years ago. So it was good to understand it, but then I think it also brought us in the opportunity to talk about what people are doing. And then we brought in the whole technology piece, which I know you've had you and I've had quite a bit of talk on that to the town manager and I. And I think there are some ways to to you know, as you're looking at that, I know I've sent you some classes.

I'm, like, fostering the clot approach and using some of these things that are secured to reduce the administrative time for some positions. And so I would ask that we try to keep doing that, and I feel like one way of doing that is not approving this position and going down to one fifteen point nine because it's gonna force our hand in the town, which is my incentive to do, to use some things that can do the administrative positions, such as doing minutes and and doing some clerical steps while we repurpose people to hire and better uses in communications at a concierge level for our residents. So I would rather see us go down one FTE to one fifteen point nine. If I don't have support, I support my peers if they don't agree, and they wanna keep it like it is. But I just those are a couple things I think that show, you know, we're already very fiscally conservative.

We already have done the best we can with a lot of pieces of our budget and the limitations we have and now the threat that we have with the legislature with that going to the initiative about not being able to raise fees limitations and all that. But I just feel like in this next year, you're gonna see the value of Claude and all these to repurpose some things. So those are only my comments. So I just wanna make sure we've got the alarm on the agenda that we are actually I like your concept on the market rate. I could live with that on the way you're doing it to split it over to kind of in the way you're doing it. And then I'd like to see us eliminate that position and go from one sixteen point nine FTEs to one fifteen point nine. And, again, I defer to my peers, and if no one agrees, fine. Thank you. I yield.

Thank you, council member. Council member Thomason.

Thank you, mayor. I agree with miss miss council member Pace's comments. I have two sticking points on this budget. One is the additional staff member and one is the pay increase. I think 8% is asking a lot.

I appreciate the rigor behind the work, but I just think it's a lot. So my proposal, which I think making it effective January 1 has the same effect, an alternative proposal is to move the rates one and a half percent now and one and a half percent later, which would take this year's budget from 8% salary increase to six and a half percent. So I'd like to put that on the table for consideration. Relative to the additional staff member and I will not waste counsel time and semantic discussion, but we made a decision to outsource the town attorney's office which included the town attorney and I'm assuming some commensurate staff. So in my mind it is a new position.

We did receive a list of job duties, but in order to evaluate that position I also asked for job descriptions from the surrounding job positions. The administrative assistant to the town, a job description of the person that's vacating, and other adjacent staff. And I think between the use of potential job redesign, potential use of volunteers, potential use of new technology, we may be able to provide the same necessary services to our residents and to our staff without adding a new position. So my suggestion to solve that problem is that we take the cost of that position. Let's say it's a $100,000 for discussion and we move it out of the town manager's budget and we move it into a contingency budget.

And at such time at which council is comfortable with the definition of this new position, we could move it back into the town manager's office, but not until then.

Thank you. Other comments or questions? Councilmember Andy Keller.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for the presentation. Nice to meet you. And I had a couple questions in looking at in the resolution. Do you want to bring that up? The resolution?

We'd have to yeah. Let's Duncan has that.

I'll just start. My quest one question is is I see that the Paradise Valley Mountain Preserve Trust is in here and aren't they separate from the town and why do we have them listed?

Mister mayor, council member Randy Keller. It is true that the Mountain Preserve Trust is a separate legal entity. However, for accounting and financial and auditing purposes and legal purposes and staffing purposes and public meeting purposes. It's treated like a part of the town.

Okay. So And then the next let's see. This is on page schedule c. The next line below the trust is the substance prevention response, and this is for revenues. And I see we're we're receiving $50,000 for that. So we're receiving more money for the opioid?

We're still in the opioid. We're one of the of the communities that receives opioid settlement funds.

And how long is that for?

I'd have to defer to the chief. I don't think there's a time limit on it. Okay. But there is a purpose behind it. In other words, the intent is to use it for for, you know, substance abuse, opioid abuse, prevention, and treatment.

Okay. But we need we don't have any plan for for that?

I'm hesitating a little bit because we think that potentially out of the current community services social services RFP process that we may get responses that very well could be the types of of nonprofits that could present plans and programs that might be better suited towards the dispersal of opioid funds. So we cast the wet the net wide enough so that if the right types of of of, charities respond that in addition to the 265,000 that council could potentially, you know, on the agenda look at at at the types of charities that actually do this type of work in the region that could in fact be eligible for those funds. So we we did that with some level of intent because we understood that we keep accumulating, but we're not dispersing because of a lot of reasons. One is because Narcan is now handed out free, and it used to be that a lot of agencies thought if we purchase Narcan, we could use the funds for that, but it's the price of that has fallen to the to free Yeah. Because of a lot of other programs.

I've heard you around.

So so yeah. So the point of all of this being is that we we I wouldn't call it a plan, but it's a hope that we get the right types of response or responses that could give counsel the opportunity to actually start dispersing those funds for regional programs that actually directly touch and concern opioid addiction and and treatment.

Okay. And then I go went to ClearGov and under the town council budget, it says, you know, we're budgeted for 500,000. 265,000 of that is the human service organization contribution.

Right. That's the the process I just talked about.

Yeah.

And then I see that we have a council recognition events and it's 85,000. Yes. And that's for

That's the that's the annual event where the town recognizes and appreciates its volunteers and

staff. Okay.

Wow.

My It has gone up. That budget item has gone up over time.

Yeah. I'll say.

Yeah. But there's

I mean, we can go into more detail if you like. But it's we're we're trying to to accurately reflect the realities of the increasing cost of scheduling those events here in the town and what what the resorts pay or charge and so that the budget reflects what the actual cost of the event is.

Yeah. I'll go back to my spire comment. That's a lot.

It is. But but, again, you know, my understanding of sort of the policy underpinnings of this is that it's meant to recognize and appreciate a significant number of town residents who freely give up their time as volunteers and that rather than having to pay for judges and, you know, have a paid counsel, this is the sort of a a partial recompense and a recognition that it's okay annually to do this as a way to recognize volunteer service. That's the way it's been described to me in the past. Okay.

6% comes back anyway.

I think

go ahead. That's my understanding. So it's been in the budget. It's increased over time because the cost of producing these events has increased over time.

Yeah. Okay. Back to what my other council member colleagues have honed in on the the merit in or the 8% increase is is it's a lot. I I guess I keep saying that today. But and I've really I really have a problem with our merit increases. It's really not a merit if everybody gets the same 2%. I'd like to see a restructured system where it's a pay for performance kind of system, but I I don't think that you're gonna see that in a government town. But I I support what council member Thomason was saying about the one what was it? One and a half? Yeah.

Spread over two years. I would support that. And additionally, it doesn't matter to me on the FTE. I mean, that's a budgetary item. So I have been harping since January for us to look at technology and to find ways to have our staff members working more efficiently, and I haven't really seen anything change.

And so it it it worries me that it's going unnoticed because we could be more efficient and have our staff out with our residents and being have having great customer service. I haven't seen a customer service survey in a very long time. So those kind of things that my big sticking point is the 8% increase and I'll yield from there.

Thank you council member. Other questions or comments from council? Council member Moore.

Thank you, mayor. I just want to point out a couple things that, you know, in over ten, eleven years they've been doing this. Most of our budget questions that we ask in work study, we receive back from our former town manager within our agenda packet, it goes out and it's posted and our residents can see it and stuff like that. And I'll talk specific about the the position. It was brought up in this work study that that position was a eliminated position that was no longer needed because, we have hired our town attorney and his firm, and they don't use that position.

So I don't take a floater position, a 6 figure position lightly within our our town budget. And we it was asked that, you provide a very specific job description to that, and we did receive some information. It was the same thing that you said in here, which was very generic when it came to that position, and it was brought to us through a private email that is not private, but it's to our council emails, and it's not really part of the packet and posted for people to see. So I think that's again, I when when we have work study and we ask questions in here, I would assume that our questions would be answered in the next work study. Otherwise, why do we why are we doing work study?

It's not here to give opinion or to give direction or to argue with another colleague, but to ask questions and then receive answers back from our staff. And I've have seen a a lack of that through this entire process, which is disappointing. So I I don't wanna see our staff overworked, and and there are some that are I I in this room that I know, work really hard, work weekends, and and work more than they should. And I would love to see something come forward. If you feel that you need to add a position that it's done very thoughtfully and brought to the council with clear direction of what that job description is, you have a someone copying paper.

I don't see that as a $100,000 a year job, but if that's what your floater position description includes, then I would wanna understand that and put that out to our public that that's something that you're presenting. So I would like to see that removed from the budget to support this tentative budget. When we talk about the salaries and the the merit increases and things that we had a yes. We had a private, consultant that provided us information who said we were about 3% lower than some municipalities, and it was brought up by me that it was larger municipalities that typically pay higher. But when we looked at what the League of Cities provided, we were right in line with what the League of Cities is.

So, again, I wanna be supportive of our staff and being the most competitive, in the market, but I didn't see that as, again, the information coming back in our packet to discuss in public with our residents being able to see it to really understand it. And I and I would question how many of the CEOs within our town would take such vague information and that's been provided so far and give an 8% increase, staff wide within their own organization. I mean, I think it's it's it it's it seems bureaucratic to me. It seems that it should have more thought to it. And, I can support my colleague's decision here to to just kinda do a a phasing or a step process of that.

But, I think it's important that the information between these two studies is put in our packet and is posted so that our residents can see and understand the merits behind the ask. So, it's been those are a couple things that that, for sure have have been lacking, but I I do wanna point out that, in the past, I've I've seen more information come forward after council work study than I than I have in these past two years. Last year, I did not support the tentative budget and because of lack of information. It wasn't because of lack of support for, certain things. It's just I I would like to see this stuff, put out to where our residents in in there's more transparency to it.

I yield.

Thank you, council member. Other questions or comments? Council member Leitman.

Thank you, mayor. I think my colleagues have pretty much covered everything that I wanted to say. And the two big issues, of course, being the I'm gonna call it the 8% raise even though we know it's got three different components and the changed position, whatever we're gonna call it. And I would support my colleague's decision to phase in the 3%. I do support our employees.

I do not want people to not want to be here or not apply because we are below average in compensation, and I think our staff does an excellent job. I've never heard of a place in all my years of working that gives merit based compensation without any evaluation that everybody gets it as opposed to it being given to people who do outstanding performance. But I understand it's government, and if that's how we've done it, that's fine. With respect to the position, I have I understand that the town staff, the town managers surveyed the people in the town to see maybe where there are holes in what departments need, and that's how you came up with this job description. I agree entirely.

I was expecting a new job description, and I have communicated privately from a citizen viewpoint where I see holes as well as as a council member where I hear over and over again for asks. Because I don't to me, it makes no if as long as if we're going to repurpose a position, let's look at what the town needs and what the citizens need, and my list includes social media, better communications. The website needs to be updated frequently. The news and events, the managers weekly needs to be I mean, you've heard this. And certainly, maybe explorations into AI to streamline processes or have a town concierge to answer the phone or do a 311 system.

I mean, those are things that I'm hearing over and over again, And I'm conflicted whether I say whether my feeling is to put the money into the general fund or to leave it for an employee, but explore the position for that employee because I agree a $100,000 is not a copying position. And I do think that the council over and over has brought up new technologies moving forward, better communication. I think our communication should be as good as the police departments. And how we get there is up to the staff. But So I yield.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council member. Vice mayor.

Oh, goody. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. I think these were all excellent comments. There are options and solutions being brought forth that I haven't heard before.

Couple things. It it it overall, if you pull out, you do a macro look at this budget. We're at what 2.9% increase year over year. That's in alignment with inflation or less than. If we dive super micro on it which is happening and that's fine and I appreciate that viewpoint also, there are some things I'm noticing.

One would be had we not reallocated that position to a different department, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. I think it brought shed a light on it and shed a light on other issues such as you know what how do we support staff that's asking for more support and show them that they are valued. I'm sure there's not an ask if there's not a need from the people that that I know on staff. But the question or the ask I would have is, you know, what is that position gonna look like? And I think I'm hearing that across the room.

So if somebody has not a hill, I'm gonna die on. But I do think that if there is a way to put a placeholder on those funds for that position until there's maybe a more clear outline on whether it's an admin position, support for counsel, a gap position that you know used to exist but has morphed into something else. I don't know where where to go with that. The other item I heard brought up was the enterprise funds. I agree.

I'd like to see that looked at next year. Again, it's not anything that's gonna make me vote against the the tentative budget. I do wish that some of these clear asks were made earlier. I know we had meetings on March 12, March 26, April 9, and here we are on the twenty third. And I feel like it would have been a better process had we been able to collectively coalesce on some of this stuff and come up with it rather than on the night we're gonna vote, but that's a different story.

The only thing positive one of the things I think positive is coming out of this, what I'm hearing right now is there is some sort of a consensus or alignment or compromise within council itself which I'm happy to see even if I don't agree with all the points. So I would pass this budget tonight and not because I'm not fiscally responsible or conservative, but because I think that a 3% catch up over nineteen years of not looking at that in one position and that I think that was what we had $450,000 to do the one time catch up. I'm fine with that. But if my colleagues, you know, if the line in the sand is one and a half, one and a half, I'm always about collaboration and trying to reach some kind of consensus so I'm not gonna get in the way of that. I don't think it's terribly important.

I think it's an you know, it it it made the optics might look better for the for the for the residents or citizens who are concerned. To that point, I wanna say we had two meetings for these citizens to show up and express their their concerns about these things. And I think at my count, we had nine, six. So I think that the options were there to have these conversations. So as far as recruitment and retention, I again, that's not a hill I'm gonna die on.

But if the rest of my colleagues feel it's really important to take those two items out, I will do so or I will support them doing so. Again in the in the macro picture I think that we're fine but I yield.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. A lot of good information, a lot of good details. I think when it comes down from my opinion, the increase in the salaries, the comp study, a little bit embarrassed that we hadn't done that in nineteen years and now we're sort of in this catch up phase, which is hard, but I appreciate that Gina and I appreciate the effort and the time that went into that. I do concur that it's hard pill to swallow all at one time. So I would support phasing that going into the final budget adoption and how we do that.

And to the town manager, I'm fully respectful of that that idea that we we do it. We split it in half and we we phase it. I think that's I think that's a good compromise, and I'm comfortable with that. The other, this FTE. I have to say I never really saw this coming to be the the issue that it it clearly is.

And so I think that, again, you are the town manager. I respect your authority and your leadership and how you wanna build your team out, and I'm certainly not going to nickel and dime or play play that with you. But I do think, and think I council member Thomason brought up the idea of, potentially putting that in a contingency and keeping it, not doing away with it, not taking it out, but putting in a contingency until you feel that you've got the comfortable space that you wanna move forward to say this is who this person will be in a more detailed format, I think that's what I'm hearing from my colleagues and that's how I feel as well. So I I I don't wanna remove it. I just think we sideline it in a contingency and then clarify what that will be and how that's gonna work.

I think that's more of an organizational question than it is a one individual, but I think that'll be inclusive of that. I did hear a lot of consensus from the team on on the enterprise funds. I think that that's something we've looked at before, and I applaud the fact we're gonna take a good look at that again in more detail. And I know the chief's working on that, and we've looked at that before. But I think it's good to put fresh eyes on it and take a look at how we're managing that.

And again, I think that to the vice mayor's point, I don't see it being an overwhelming increase in the budget. I think it's what you're saying is manageable. We've seen the detailed budgets from the departments and I'm comfortable with where those are. But I do appreciate looking at it again. So if I'm not mistaken, tonight will be if it is past the tentative budget, that's the ceiling. It could go down from there based on feedback or input from the council or staff, but this is the ceiling budget that we'd be looking for for this year. Is that correct? Yes. That's correct. Oh, okay.

Alright. So with that, is there any other comments mister Tom Energy you'd like to make to this point?

Just to kind of recap what I'm hearing and and make a suggestion or a couple of suggestions. With respect to the the increases, for compensation, The reason I suggested a 3% but delayed implementation until January 1 is that to give direction to do it over two years makes a lot of assumptions about the financial condition and binds what will ultimately be a future counsel to a one and a half percent sort of baked in presupposed amount that may or may not be true. So to do the three, but really have it be a net one and a half in this fiscal year achieves the same result, but does not bind future councils and does not create sort of a and I see we're thinking like attorneys, I guess, or municipal attorneys together simultaneously on why sometimes, doing that has unintended legal effect that may or may not be ultimately enforceable against future counsel. And the last thing I think this counsel, which I think to a person cares about and respects the work of staff, is to say, we'll spread it out over two years and then something happens and then you can't or won't or the council composition changes and then that creates, you know, enmity that didn't otherwise exist.

But if you put it in the budget, but with this proviso that it doesn't get implemented until July, January 1, it maintains the spirit of the of the study, but it doesn't bind future councils in it. It has the same net foot fiscal effect. It reduces the burden by half of the 3%. That's my ask to you, to counsel, to consider. With respect to the merit increase that that the 2% that we're talking about and your thoughts, I know we had this conversation.

I don't wanna belabor the point because we're coming upon the hour. There was a significant and, you know, some of this you inherit and some of it you try to do better. I inherited a a merit based performance system that was delving into a level of minutiae some people might get a 2.1 and some guy get a 1.9, and it was mysterious and hard to justify. Let me be very clear. We're not just handing it out to everybody.

The way it works is that if you don't meet the expectations of the job, you don't get a merit increase. I think it is a credit and a testament to the types of supervision, the people we hire, that the people here who aren't otherwise eliminated because they they either leave or they are asked to leave because they don't make probation or they're terminated meet the expectations of the job. Right? We have a program that certainly we can argue about the robustness of it, but we have a program to recognize exceptional performance. It was geared so that we wouldn't tie exceptional performance into an ongoing permanent increase to someone's position because someone could be great one year, not so great the next year, but you're still paying them over an a course of the entire career here for that spike of that year.

So instead, we did it with limited one time bonus type funds, which has the effect of recognizing it within the fiscal year, which by all accounts is the more fiscally responsible way to go. Because otherwise, you you run into, you know, other issues down the road. So I wanna get back to this idea of fiscal responsibility and this notion about this position. There is nobody in staff or around this table who doesn't understand how technology changes the way that we do business. There's a reason why laptops are docked on everyone's desk instead of IBM's electrics.

We understand how that works over time. Right? And we know that the wise use of technology is important. But I think, again, because I got to know her and you all know her, it would be a little bit, I think, misleading on the record to say that when Gus Rosenfeld was hired as the contract counsel for this town that that position ceased to function. That was in 2021.

Okay? That position was budgeted by the two budget years three budget years prior to my starting. No one suggested to, miss Whelan that she be repurposed or eliminated. And the reason for that is because she still performed valuable functional work for the town on a lot of levels, including in the town attorney's office. Let's remember that the town attorney's office, in addition to having the work that that mister McGuire and his firm does, has an in house prosecutorial criminal wing made up of full time and part time employees, of which Diane was certainly very valuable to them.

So I don't want the record to in any way infer that her time in that position that we're looking to to, repurpose was somehow not valuable taxpayer dollars spent time. She is sorely missed by this community, and I wanna make very clear that that is not the case. All we did is that when she retired and she made that decision, we thought it was responsible to look at whether or not the next best use of it was there or purposed somewhere else in the organization. We brought it to you as a transparent courtesy of an existing position. It has always been counseled.

If you want to park 20 positions in contingency, you can. If you want to park this position in contingency, you can. If you want to tell us, remove it entirely, you certainly can. But understand that part of the management of this town has to be, for any manager, myself or anyone comes after me, has to be able to take a budget that is budgeted and be able to make some discretionary decisions. One of which is a discretionary decision to open the budgetary kimono a little bit and say, we have this position. We're doing something different with it. It's not an ask. We're not increasing the size of the organization. We're not increasing the budget as a result. That type of transparent dialogue, I think, is is where you want to air.

You wanna do it for the council as council members. You wanna do it for the public, and you wanna do it for staff, quite frankly. And so I wanted to make that incredibly clear because to do otherwise, I think, would leave a misimpression as to what happened here. We could talk about new and all that. I get it. And I will leave that up to you. Okay? I agree. Councilman Leipman and others have talked about there may be needs in this town that we are could do better either with existing staff, positions, contracted service, etcetera. The only thing I would leave you with is that if the position either gets eliminated or part, that we would be able to come back and talk some more about what that position might do if it is part.

It's eliminated, it's different. But that some of the things that we need to kind of make sure that our clerk and our HR director and our public works director have the need, the support that they need, I would at the very least have a not a obligation or a consensus, but an understanding that we may come back at some point and say, there may be a need, say, for contracted services or some third party assistance so that, you know, and somebody mentioned it that we do have people working evenings, weekends far beyond their hours. That's okay. You know, they're FLSA exempt. But we wanna make sure that their time is spent valuably and in the service to making sure that they want to feel like they're being that their time is being managed and utilized to the best of their ability.

And it should be a combination of technology, volunteers, and potentially contracted services. That's exactly what I said the last time we had this gathering is that we're taking a hard look at all those things. So that's, I guess, what I wanted to sort clarify. My hope is is that with this clarifying discussion, if in fact, you know, doing the the January 1 implementation and the parking or some other consideration of this existing position that's being proposed to be repurposed gets everyone to a comfort level with this budget, I would appreciate that. My impression and, we're all part of the record that gets recorded and transcribed and minutes are taken is that this is in fact a fiscally responsible budget and that the vast majority of the increases you see year over year are actually coming out of capital projects and our commitment to things like pavement preservation and not because we're adding positions or spending money in ways that isn't consistent.

I think it's a remarkable effort on the part of Leslie and her staff that we were able to do everything within the existing expenditure limitation and not come back to you with the assistance of Stifel to look talk about bonding. Everything is within the money that you're currently raising. That's actually a a an an area to feel a certain degree of pride about and to say, this is a collaborative effort between our elected officials and our staff to do fiscally responsible things, a, at the same time as understanding some financial pressures that everybody has in terms of of of of inflation and other economic forces beyond our town and to to make sure that the staff, you know, understands and knows that we that we, you know, with the classic comp study that it is in fact not unreasonable to say that that we should be somewhere near the midpoint of our comparison cities. And, you know, I I appreciate as much as as the rest of you what's in that the league survey. But when we go out to market on a position, we're not competing with 92 municipalities throughout the state of Arizona.

Our competitive class is reflected in the long standing seven cities that are actually part of that. So that's the reason why we have that. And I think there's valuable information there, but there's a reason why that competitive class exists and we've explained that to quite a a length before that. So that's all I have to say.

Well, thank you. Appreciate that. I'm, close to time. I know council member Moore has asked for a a comment or a question.

Just a comment to his what he just said. May I? Yes, please. Thank you. I I just wanna say as a council member, it's not my role to to look at personnel in whatever position that that person does. I do know that the that position was a legal clerk in the legal department, and you have now changed that position to a floater position. You were asked to bring forward a specific job description of exactly what you were asking for. Nobody said no to it. They just asked for a job description. So I'll go back to the same thing I said.

For me, your follow through with what the council has asked in a study session has been lacking. If you would have brought that forward and that position would have been something that is you felt is severely needed and you wanna call it a floater position, you should be very specific in what that position is going to be. And and I appreciate your comments, but I'm not a I'm not here to overlook your staff and tell you how to do the job. We overlook what you do, and I take that very seriously.

Thank you, council member. So our business meeting is about to begin. We're gonna take a few minute break to regroup and we'll meet at the dais and robust discussion. Again, this is a tentative budget adoption and if that moves forward then we move from there to the next steps and maybe Tom, manager you can just quick recap where that what the next steps are gonna be. Okay. Thank you. I mean, now. I mean, right now, what are we what are we

next steps would be that we're we're prepared to the resolution to adopt the tentative budget is on the agenda for the regular meeting that's about to start. Certainly, in the motion to approve any of the things that were discussed can certainly be part of that motion to approve. And as has already been stated, the the tentative creates a ceiling. And so the final would be either at that ceiling or below, but not above.

Alright. Thank you, sir. Alright. Let's take a quick break and get back to work. Well, good evening.

Thank you for joining us. We're a few minutes behind, but the town council council meeting for 04/23/2026 is now called to order. Would the clerk please call the roll?

Mayor Stanton? Here. Vice mayor LaBelle? Here. Council member Andean Keller?

Here.

Council member Liepman?

Here.

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

Thank you. Next on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance. And I would like to invite mister and missus Jonathan Wainwright to come up and lead us in the pledge to long standing volunteers for our community. Thank you for leading us in the pledge. Alright.

Next up, our presentations, and we have a special presentation tonight. National Crime Victims' Rights Week is a program created by the US Justice Department to support crime victims by providing leadership in changing attitudes, policies, and practices to promote justice and healing for all victims and crimes. At this time, I would like to invite the Paradise Valley victim's advocate, Melissa Raj, to come forward, and we will present the proclamation. Alright. Whereas, crime affects individuals, families, and communities in profound and varied ways, often leaving lasting physical, emotional, and social challenges, and whereas crime victims and survivors deserve to be heard, respected, and supported with dignity and compassion.

And, effective responses to crime require active listening to victims' experiences and to to their voices to ensure meaningful and equitable access to justice. And whereas communities are are strengthened, where individuals, organizations, and institutions take action to address harm and hold offenders accountable and provide comprehensive services to to the impacted residents and the criminals. Whereas, advocacy is essential to the advancing of victims' rights, improving systems of response, and enlisting, ensuring that all victims, regardless of background, race, fair receive fair treatment and practices that are important and in constituent with the law. And whereas protecting victims and serving communities requires collaboration among law enforcement, victim services, providers, healthcare professionals, and community leaders, and whereas National Crime Week Victims Rights Rights Week provides an opportunity to reaffirm the commitment to their the prince these principles and to raise awareness about victims' rights and services. Therefore, I, Mark Stanton, mayor in the town of Paradise Valley, do hereby declare April the twenty fifth two thousand twenty six is National Crime Victims' Rights Week.

Congratulations. Thank you, Melissa.

I

just would like to, express my gratitude to counsel and everyone involved in acknowledging the importance of, like, proclaiming this, National Crime Victims' Rights Week for this week on behalf of all victims of crime. Thank you.

This is for you. Thank you. And Duncan.

And, mayor, while you're walking back to your your space, one of the things that we never really recognize fully until we have somebody in a role is just how much we were missing. And Melissa has not only shown us all the things that we might have been lacking before, she takes the position to the next level each time. She is a one person wrecking machine when it comes to getting things done. And all of this is a result of her efforts. The rest of us really just do nothing but watch her fly around the room. So we're very thankful to have her on staff.

Agreed. Thank you, mister Town Ternie. Thank you, Melissa. Alright. Next item is the discussion of possible action to recognize 5828 North Casablanca Drive as a historic property in the town of Paradise Valley and I would recognize council member Ellen Ann Dean Keller, liaison to the historical committee, to introduce the next two items.

Hello. Good evening. The town council created the historic recognition program in 2018 to allow residents to apply to the historical advisory committee to have their homes recognized for their unique historical or architectural character. A historic property must meet one of the following criteria. One, be at least 50 years old or two, represent an important part of the history or architecture of the town. This recognition does not impose any new regulations or future development restrictions on the recognized property. Tonight, the historical committee will present their recommendations to recognize two properties. Mayor, I would like to introduce Historical Advisory Committee Chair, Kathryn Kaufman, to present the committee's recommendations.

Thank you, Member Council. Thank you, Council Member Helen and Dean and Mayor Mark Stanton and all the rest of you councils. All right. On 02/18/2026, Jonathan Wainwright presented his home located at 5828 North Casablanca Drive to our committee for consideration under the town's historical property recognition program. Constructed in the 1920s by an unknown builder, the home was originally a modest two bedroom home built with adobe bricks from the Indian Bend Wash and vigas fashioned from repurposed telegraph poles.

Although the home has undergone multiple expansions and remodels over the years by many owners, its most notable owner was William Bill Toll, an artist, architect, designer, and builder. Mister Toll purchased the home in a late excuse me, in the early 1970s and undertook a comprehensive remodel that incorporated his distinctive design elements while preserving the classical southwestern character. During this period, patios were enclosed, the original front entrance was relocated, a cantina feature featuring Toll's signature stained glass window was constructed, and a casita was built to serve as his art studio. As with his other properties, Toll named the home Casa Benita and placed a tile plaque on the driveway entrance. Prior to completing the remodel, the Tolls concealed a wooden plaque behind the refrigerator wall, documenting the home's history and renovation, dated September 1973.

The Wainwrights purchased the home in 2014 and undertook an extensive renovation focused on preservation and restoration. Original features such as bancos and chimeneas were repaired or salvaged. Ceilings were sandblasted to restore the natural wood grain, and Mexican tile was thoughtfully incorporated throughout the home. During the renovations, the Wainwrights discovered the plaque left by the Tulls and added their own time capsule, including a copy of the October 1997 Phoenix Home and Garden magazine featuring the home. A letter and enclosed a letter reflecting their on their life while living in the home.

On behalf of the town's historical advisory committee, I recommend the Wainwright Wainwright home located 5828 North Casablanca Drive to be recognized by the town council as part of the historical property recognition program.

Thank you. And I'd ask all in favor of approving the historical advisory committee's recommendation to recognize 5828 North Casablanca Drive as historic property in the town Paradise Valley by unanimous consent by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Congratulations. Okay. We'll go ahead and present the flag.

Okay. Thank you.

Chair Kaufman?

Yeah. I was waiting for Duncan to flip the pictures. Perfect. Thank you. Okay, great.

On 03/11/2026, Marsha Sibella Bonnet and her daughter Paula Sanders presented their home located at 5200 East San Juan Avenue to our committee for consideration under the town's historical property recognition program. The home was built in 1956 by Ray Wise as a three bedroom, three bath spec home with a three car carport. Situated East of the Praying Monk and just below Echo Canyon Hiking Trail, the home is among the highest homes on the North Side Of Camelback Mountain and was the second home to be constructed in Stone Canyon. When the property was initially on the market, a large boulder came down from Camelback Mountain and damaged the kitchen roof leaving a gaping hole. This was of no concern for Marsha's parents, who were thrilled, thinking that now nobody else would be interested in purchasing the property.

In 1957, after Ray Wise fixed the roof, the Sabellas purchased the home. Constructed with brick and wood framing, the home features a wood shake roof and original wood frame windows. Redstone sourced from the mountain was incorporated into the front gate pillars, retaining walls, living room fireplace, and the mailbox which is located on Solano Drive. Ray Wise did build a staircase stairway down to access the mailbox. The design emphasized the views of Mummy Mountain, the McDowell Mountains, and the Phoenix Mountain Preserves with large sliding glass doors in the main living areas and two of the three bedrooms.

The kitchen retains its original cabinetry, scalloped valances, a new tone copper cooktop and vents, tile work, and period details such as a breakfast nook with wainscoting and wooden shutters. The den, with its wood paneling and built in bookshelves, along with all of the bathrooms are still original condition. In 2005, the original carport was enclosed and a two bedroom, one bath guest house was added above it. Marsha and Paula have carefully maintained the home to its original condition and have expressed their intent to preserve its historic integrity. On behalf of the town's historical advisory committee, I would like to recommend the Bonnet Home located at 5200 East San Juan Avenue to the town council for recognition in our historic property recognition program.

Thank you, chair Kaufman. And I ask all in favor of approving the historic advisory committee's recommendation to recognize 5200 East San Juan Avenue as a historic property in the town of Paradise Valley. By unanimous consent, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Congratulations. Let's all head over for the photo op. Alright. Thank you again and congratulations. Next on the agenda is the call to the public.

The call to the public is an opportunity for residents to address the council on items and matters that are not on the agenda. In conformance with open meeting laws, the council may not discuss or take action on any of the items raised. However, the council may respond with criticism after all public comments have been completed. Ask the town staff to review the matter or the ask to be placed on a future agenda item. Speakers are asked to state if they're a town resident and if they are and asked to keep their comments to three minutes.

There's a little indicator on the on the podium there. And if you're interested in addressing the council and call the public, please fill out a sheet at the, at the podium on the way into the council chambers and, deliver fill that out and deliver that to our town clerk, and we'll call upon you as we receive them. Mister Town clerk, do we have any requests for call to the public?

Mister mayor, have not received any requests. Not seeing any at this point.

We'll move on to the next item, which is consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda are considered by the council to be routine and normally enacted in a single motion. If a member of the council or the public would like to discuss any item, it will be removed from the consent agenda and considered separately. Would the town manager please summarize tonight's consent agenda?

Thank you, mister mayor. We have four items on tonight's consent agenda. First is item 26 dash one one one, approval of the minutes of the town council meeting of 04/09/2026. Item 26 dash one one five, discussion and possible action to approve Pamela Georgios to serve as chair of the planning commission. 26 dash one one six, discussion and possible action to approve Hope Ozer to serve as chair of the board of adjustment.

And 26 dash one twenty six, discussion and possible action to approve the first amendment to contract CONDash23Dash022DashPBW with Powertech Contracting LLC for maintenance, repair, and replacement of traffic signal equipment. Thank you. Thank you,

mister Towne, manager. Would any council member like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Would anyone in the audience like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Alright. Not seeing any. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Mister mayor, I move we approve the consent agenda as submitted.

Thank you, been moved by council member, Andean Keller, is there a second?

Second.

Seconded by the vice mayor. All right, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Awesome. Consent agenda passes. Alright. Next up, we have public hearings scheduled, but there are none for this evening. So we go to action items, and there's one action item tonight regarding the fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty seven tentative budget. Mister Cheng?

Thank you, mister members of council. We just exited a a robust study session, where we are presented. We had miss Kapiti from the, finance department run through a PowerPoint. Certainly, if it's counsel's pleasure, we can run through that again. We can certainly answer more questions. We're happy to do that, either one or both, if you like.

Thank you. Would any of the council members like to review the presentation? Alright there. And are there any questions from council to the town manager regarding the tentative budget this time? Council member Thomason.

Thank you, mayor. Mister town manager, I know we have talked many times about a financial report comparing budget to actual. We've received one for the first quarter, but not the second quarter or third quarter. When I understand that's in development. When might we see that?

Thank you for the question. The second quarter is available, and we were planning on sending that out tomorrow. Third quarter will be available when miss Duresh comes back, and she'll be back in the office next week.

Thank you.

My thought would be that when she gets back, we just send out both as opposed to two emails.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Pace. Councilmember Pace. Alright. Not seeing councilmember Pace. Any questions? Any questions? Any other further questions from the council at this point? Alright. Does anyone on the audience would like to speak on this item?

Alright. If there's not any further discussion, I'd ask if there is a motion.

Mister mayor, I move we adopt resolution twenty twenty six dash zero four approving the tentative budget for fiscal year twenty twenty six twenty twenty seven with a with how do I word the set aside for the one with one amendment for the

I'm sorry.

Staff raises from one one and a half percent effective July 1 and the next staff raise effective 01/01/2027. Is that correct?

That would I mean, that's I I would defer to the town attorney for