City Council Formal Meeting - Regular Meeting

Before the monsoon season starts, which is right now, residents should start assessing their trees, especially the one with large trees that next to their house or close by. They should go out, take a look at it, you know, kind of look for major limbs that's heavy or tree that's leaning into the house or the street side and, you know, maybe contact an arborist to you know, do a proper assessment. Our first priority is to clear all the major streets. We have to clear that out for, you know, traffic. And then after that, we'll go into secondary street to clean that up. And then after that, we'll go into parks. Be aware, you know, be aware of your surroundings. you know, check everything, your house, not just tree alone, but, you know, patio, anything, you know, just to make sure that, you know, everything is secure and properly tied down.

The Community Assistance Program is a group of specialists that respond out to calls for service. We respond out for calls for service with fire and police. We provide crisis intervention, emotional support, resources, referrals, behavioral health services, behavioral health resources. The Community Assistance Program is striving to be that support for residents of Phoenix. We continue to engage community members out in the field, including our unhoused, We do provide Narcan to those that need it, family members that might want to keep some Narcan in their homes for safety. We're there to provide them that if they choose to have it.

Everything you see here, whether it's the overhead truck, whether it's robots, whether it's the drones, they're carrying the various technologies that are shown right here on this table today. They're helping us with fire mitigation season, monsoon readiness season, which is a year-long process for us. Almost every day, we're out flying some type of line, we're out scanning some type of substation. The other 40% is going to be some sort of a reactive type inspection such as could be anything from Wickenburg Rodeo to PIR because the NASCAR race is in town. These tools also get used in emergency responses as well, responding to storms, trying to be that first bit of information that is needed from a planning stage, from a public safety stage, and ultimately just giving us that vantage point of what's going on out in the field and how are we going to make it right.

Any kind of situation that can occur in this public right-of-way, so streets, sidewalks, things like that, we get out there and we try to clear those as soon as possible. Well, when monsoons happen, street flooding and debris washing down from mountainsides is quite common, so we have our grater here which we use to clear that debris from the road. Another common issue is street flooding, which can be caused by obstructions in the drainage systems throughout the city. We have a vector here, which is effectively a giant drain snake. So the attachment at the front is like a drain snake that'll go through and help break up the obstruction in the storm drain. And then we've got this vacuum attachment here that'll actually pull up all the water and any of the debris associated with that obstruction. We do have some areas where we know we have some water crossings that are low, we call them the low flow areas. There's no bridge there, so we know they're going to flood during rain events. We have signage that we put out in advance of that and get those areas closed off so that folks don't travel through them, become stuck or anything like that. Pay attention to the road signage, right? If we have something that says, you know, do not cross when flooded, please don't enter that area when it's flooded. Water is a very powerful thing, right? It doesn't take much to actually move a car. The most important thing is if you see something, say something.