Town Council - Regular Meeting

Amen. Good evening. I'd like to call this meeting of the Pinetop Lakeside Council to order. We do have a quorum. Please remember to silence your cell phones. At this time, I'd ask you to stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance, and please remain standing for the invocation.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,

Our Father in heaven, we're indeed grateful for the moisture thou sent to our dry lands and pray that thou would continue to bless us with moisture. We're grateful for this beautiful community in which we live. Thankful for this opportunity to meet together as a council here. We are mindful of the dedicated employees that we have here in Pinetown Lakeside and pray that thou would watch over and protect them and especially bless our first responders. Bless them and their families. We pray now that thy spirit will be with us as we consider important matters for the town and that we will have a spirit of understanding and do what's best for the citizens of our community. And we ask these blessings in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Item B is call to the public. This is a business meeting of the town council. The town values and welcomes public input. Please address the council as a whole and not individual council members. Do not address staff or members of the audience. Council action on item is brought up during call to the public is limited by the open meeting law. Council may direct staff to study the matter and reschedule for further consideration at a later date. Items on the agenda will not be heard during call to the public and individuals are limited to three minutes. I don't have any requests to speak tonight. unless somebody forgot to fill out a card. So we'll move on then to item C, which is our consent agenda. All items listed are considered matters and will be enacted by one motion of the council. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the town council requests that an item or items be removed for discussion. Council members may ask questions without removal of the item from the consent agenda. Items removed are considered in their normal sequence unless called out of sequence. We have several items on our consent agenda. Are there any questions from the council on any of these? Vice Mayor?

I move to approve the consent agenda items C1 through C5 as presented. I second that.

Thank you. We have a motion to second. All those in favor, please signify by raising your hand. Thank you. That carries unanimously. Item D is business before the council. Public comments shall be accepted at the beginning of each agenda item, following the mayor's announcement of the item and staff presentation. Any citizen who wishes to address the council may speak once for a period not to exceed five minutes on each agenda item, either prior to or following council discussion. Questions from council members may be directed through the mayor to staff or members of the public at any time. during consideration of the subject agenda item. Item D1 is discussion of possible action to receive the June 2026 financial report. We have Sarah with us tonight. Thanks for being here.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of council. Your June 2026 monthly financial report is in your packet. We will talk through our revenue first. So looking at our revenue for the year, our total TPT, or total revenue, excuse me, was about $7.4 million. It's broken up between our TPT collections, which represented about $5.1, $5.2 million for the year. Other taxes represented about $1.9, and then we had our non-tax revenues of about $327,000 for the year. Overall, our TPT taxes were down from previous year by about 3.4% for the total year. June, though, was a good month. That was actually up from prior June of about 4.8%. So we're starting to trend back in the right direction. You can see here the breakout of the different categories that were year-over-year variances, with construction being down about 75%. The big driver of that is that year-to-date adjustment that we had that was from prior period adjustments that we saw in the April timeframe, that that was about $130,000 worth of tax revenue that was reversed out.

So quick question, why are we still collecting residential rental tax, or is that actually short-term rental?

I would have to go through our look at the TPT and work with the state. I don't know if that's how they've categorized. It might be short-term rental and it's just calling at the residential, but I'll have to find out.

Okay, if you would, please, because the state took that away from us. So it's been on there, and I keep intending to ask you.

Okay, no, I'll definitely take a look at that. Thank you.

Not a problem.

Other than that, the other good news here is our restaurant and bars tax has gone up, and it's almost 11% up from this time last year. Moving into our expenditures. So our general fund expenditures, you can see here, we were spent through the year, we're about 76% spent of our total budget. We did have some divisions that were departments that were a little bit closer to their fully expended budget. But then we do have our general services, which does hold our about $600,000 of contingency that we had in the budget is sitting there. That's part of that variance there. So overall, with the fact that our revenues were down from budget, but our expenses were also down, so that helped us ensure that we were on budget from a total perspective of our funds. Looking at our other expenditures for our different other funds that we have, you can see here our capital expenditures were about 12% funded, or 12% expended, excuse me, streets was about 84%. Grants was only about one, but that's due to, we have to budget again a full possibility of our grants coming in and expenditures. And so that's really what's driving that there. Tourism promotion was about 85%, and then parks was about 63%. And then finally, looking at our cash on hand in our fund balance for the year. So general fund cash, again, just looking at our general fund for June 2026, we ended with $1.7 million of cash in the bank. That is down from the month prior by about $300,000. That's due to some of the debt service payments that we made. But overall, the good news is that year over year, we did see an increase in our cash. It's small by that $8,000. However, again, as I mentioned with the revenue that we had on that revenue slide, we did have $130,000 correction in our property tax collections that we had that would have helped make that much larger number. And then our actual year-end general fund balance is about $1.2 million.

Any questions? Any questions for Sarah? Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, and I will look at that and find out and get back to you on that.

I appreciate that, yeah. Thank you. Okay. Item D2 is a consideration of legal action to approve resolution number 26-1826, declaring and adopting the results of the primary election held on July 21st of 2026. Lisa.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of the Council. Arizona law requires the Town Council to candidate the election and officially declare results certified by the Navajo County Elections Department. Resolution number 26, 1826, fulfills that statutory requirement by declaring and adopting the results at the July 21st primary election. Excuse me. The primary election was conducted to elect one mayor and three council members. Based on the certified election results, each candidate received a statutory majority of the votes required for the election. Tabor Heisler was elected mayor and Sterling Buse, Jeffrey Phillips, and Derek Cady were elected to the town council.

Excuse me.

The election included 2,946 active registered voters with 1,096 ballots cast for a voter turnout of 37%. Upon approval of the canvas, the candidates are officially declared elected. Their terms may be effective, sorry, their terms become effective on November 3rd, 2026. The mayor-elect and the council member-elect are scheduled to take oath of office at the November 5th regular town council meeting. Staff recommends approval of resolution number 26, 1826, declaring and adopting the resolutions of the primary election held on July 21st. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you, Lisa. Any questions? I move to approve resolution number 26-1826, declaring and adopting the results of the primary election held on July 21st, 2026. Second that.

Thank you.

We have a motion to second. Further discussion? All in favor, please signify by raising your hand. Thank you, that carries unanimously. Councilor Heisler reminded me that we need to have a motion on item D1 that I failed to call for that motion. Councilor Heisler, would you like to make that motion?

Sure.

I move to receive and file the June 2026 financial report as presented. I'll second that.

Thank you. We have a motion to second. All in favor, please signify by raising your hand.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Heisler. That was my omission.

Item D3 is consideration of legal action to adopt resolution number 26-1827, approving an intergovernmental agreement between the town of Pinetop Lakeside and Timber Mesa Fire and Medical District regarding fire and building safety requirements. I'm going to invite Frank Young to come up and present and then ask the Chief Fire Marshal.

I'm going to wait until I got invited, right? Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. This is an intergovernmental agreement between Timber Mesa and the town of Pinetop Lakeside. It's been in development for several years. Jeremiah and JD with Timber Mesa have done the latest work on it, and we finally got it where we think we'd like it. I would like to invite Timber Mesa to have a little presentation they'd like to show you. Don't go too far, though, Frank.

We might have questions for you.

Frank, thank you. You're welcome.

Mayor Irwin, members of the council, thank you for allowing us to come and present to the council tonight. This is, in my mind, a pretty monumental opportunity to talk about relationship building between the fire district and the town. As Frank indicated, this has been in conversation, and quite frankly, for a long time, since probably Timber Mesa's inception. Partnerships is something that's very important to me, I think if you know me, I think you'll understand that I am all about relationships, building the partnerships, and we're here to serve as one community. And there's so much value that I believe that we can have between the town of Pinetop Lakeside and the fire district that kind of revolves around fire code administration. Of course, fire code administration can feel a little bit clunky at times, and I think that's the power of having a strong IGA in place to work through, because in my mind what it's all about is supporting our citizens, we're supporting those contractors, homeowners, whatever it is, so they can get in the community and do the things they need to do appropriately for the community. So I'm excited for the opportunity. I must also say that working with Christy and Frank the last several months, working through this process, have been fantastic. And, of course, this IGA has been through legal review from our fire district attorney, Mr. Whittington, and, of course, the town's attorney, Mr. Sims. And so with that, without further ado, I'd like to invite J.D. Pepper to the podium, and we'll walk through a little bit of a presentation and then happy to answer whatever questions that you may have. Thank you so much.

Adam Mayer, vice mayor, council members. None of you know me. I'm J.D. Pepper. I'm the fire marshal for Timber Mesa. I've been with Timber Mesa since their inception. I started out as a firefighter. And thank you for having us tonight. So... The purpose of the IGA and why we're here, really it falls down to a memorialization of the agreement between the town and the fire district. Unified Code Administration, you have a building code official that conducts plan reviews on permits for building, doesn't matter if it's a commercial structure or a residential structure or what have you. He conducts those plan reviews following the IBC, International Building Code. We share many of those chapters, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 33, I believe are some of the chapters that have a lot of the overlap in our jobs and what we do. So unified code administration, wildfire resistance, collaborating on parcel level wildfire issues such as we get down to talking about single family residences, okay? I am not here to mandate fire sprinklers. That is not our view. That is state law, 9-807, says that we can't mandate fire sprinklers in residential homes unless the city has or the town has adopted that ordinance prior to 1989. And I want to say there's only two or three cities and towns in the state of Arizona that have done that. That is not what I'm here to do. That is not what this IGA states. However, wildfire resist or wildfire resilience for your homes, working with your planning and zoning department on homes, I can go out as a fire expert and say, hey, these are the things that you might want to do to your home or your property to better survive or state more resilient should a wildfire impact us. Wildfire is our number one risk in this area. It's a known thing. With the issues that are going on with insurance right now, that is an added benefit to your building department to go out and help them with what we know in our professional realm. Shared authority and shared responsibility. This establishes a formal and consistent framework between our agencies. Working together and in quite honestly, we've been working together for quite quite some time Whether it's a permit for the carnival that comes in for us to go out and look at And I don't know if anybody in the building department goes and looks at the carnival I have to go in and look at those rides make sure that they're insured make sure that they've had their safety inspections done and All that stuff comes through here first and then gets emailed to me so that I can go out and make sure that that carnival is as safe as possible. They have everything needed for our citizens and our visitors. or our family members to go out and enjoy that type of thing. So a shared responsibility and authority working together, it really is what we're after. The permit review process, how this works. Again, the town receives an application for a permit to build. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be whatever name type of construction on a new business, commercial business. The district I have a responsibility. I'm mandated by state law. I'm mandated by our adopted fire code to conduct business inspections and plan reviews, just like your building code official conducts plan reviews. The reason that we do those and the reason that we have a fire code is because of the hundreds of thousands of lives that are lost or have been lost from fires. And I'm just going to give you an example. The Station Nightclub fire in 2003 in Rhode Island, this was a nightclub that had a catastrophic fire inside the building. It was not conducted correctly on the inspection process, and 100 people lost their lives. This building here, I was looking around, this building here has sprinklers in it. These are all life safety systems that keep our citizens, all of us safe should something happen. Redundancy in our lights that come on should we lose power. So working with the building code official to ensure in our towns or in our town here that these commercial occupancies are as safe as possible with the life safety systems that are supposed to be in there because of the code is paramount. And honestly, we've been working really well together. The construction documents are shared securely. They're shared over the permit system civic review. I get an email on those. Once I get those in, I usually make a call to the contractor and say, hey, can I get a set of the electronic plans? I do the plan review on that. And quite honestly, my turnaround time on that averages about 72 hours. So when you have a business or a developer or somebody that comes in and says, hey, I want to build, my turnaround time doesn't take weeks on the norm. It's usually 72 hours when I get those plans back to them and say, you're approved. You're rejected because of this. or you are approved per comments. Most of the comments are you need to put fire extinguishers in by 75 feet to the door, stuff like that. Again, these are codes that are shared with your building code official. Once that review is done, I return it back to the town for our fire code perspective. Say, hey, we're good to go on this. The building code official looks at it and says, hey, we're good to go. And the town issues a building permit to conduct that new construction. or the town withholds the permit because it's either not passed the building code officials review or it's not passed the fire code review. Understand that my job isn't to stifle growth. The one thing that's always going to happen, we have changed. With everybody, and I say this, I've said it a million times, We've been found. The White Mountains has been found. We cannot turn that back. We cannot put that genie back in the bottle. But we are as leaders in our respective jobs responsible for positive change and positive growth that protects all of us, including our visitors and our citizens. So who does what here? The town would maintain and update the building code as normal. Share construction documents on agreed timelines with us. That's what the IGA states. Withhold commercial permits until district approval is necessary or needed. Support the wildfire outreach programs. These are outreach programs education-wise. I go out and speak to myself and my captain, my division. We on the weekly are talking to HOAs, schools, you name it. We're out there in the community speaking to these groups about how to be more resilient in fire safety. from smoke alarms to covers on your gutters so that they don't light up in an ember cast storm from a wildfire. Consult the district before enforcement on major violations. That hasn't happened, honestly. We had one incident where we were in talks together with this individual. For whatever reason, they didn't want to do what was necessary. And the town took action on that. Send a representative to district meetings when requested. We don't do that a whole lot. Every once in a while we say, hey, can you guys come over? And it's just because we want to share information with the town. Your representatives from the building department or whoever, please come to any meeting and you're welcome. But we invite them every once in a while to those meetings. What the district does is we review all commercial permit applications within the district boundaries. Commercial businesses, we have to do this. Mandated by law to do this and that again is to look make sure that these businesses are safe for our community members Reviewed residential occupancy plans for access water supply and identification I Understand, you know, I've been with Timber Mesa since the beginning Been in fire prevention for now probably five years. I took over as the fire marshal a little over two years ago. I understand some of the challenges and Previously, trust me, I am not that person or I am not that, this is not where I'm coming from, okay? Again, I believe in positive change and I believe in building when we do this with our citizens in our best interest, right? Access water supply, when I talk about residential homes and their access, if you have a home that's built and Only thing that I'm concerned in is how do I get my fire trucks to it? How do I get my ambulance to it? If somebody builds a home and they only have a three foot by 200 foot driveway, I can't get my medics or I can't get my fire truck up the driveway to them to either put the fire out or to save their life. So when I say access, I'm not there to say you can't do this. Here's my recommendation. Identification is an address. That's all I'm asking for is an address in the IGA. The address tells us where to go. When we get the call, it comes up on our computer. I have an address to go to to help those citizens. Water supply. I understand that the town doesn't own their own water supply. I understand that in areas we have challenges with water supply. But that's the necessary reason behind this for me knowing. And the reason for that, if I have an area that doesn't have water, I need to know that. Reason being, because I have to contact or build something out, and we've worked on this in the past, for our alarm room or dispatch and on our pre-plans, our plans on our computers and our trucks that says, hey, this area right here, the closest hydrant is a mile away. What that does is it says, you guys got to bring tenders. So tenders are dispatched. And that tender acts as a large hydrant, if you will. And we can have tenders shut. We can have several tenders in a row that show up so that we have water supply. That's it. I'm not saying you have to put this in there. I'm not saying that you have to put sprinklers in your home. If the home is a... Single-family residence is a very large structure, and they don't have a close enough hydrant that doesn't put out enough water. My recommendation is, hey, to the builder or the homeowner, you know, there are such things as residential sprinklers. You can put them in your home. I can't keep you from putting them in, and I'm not going to tell you you have to. But they do save lives, and my job is to save lives and save property. That is my job in this community. I take it very serious. But I'm not going to make people do in their homes what they don't want to do. I ask of the town, the IGA, to allow me to have information on access, what's there for my water supply, and my addresses. Conducting wildfire assessment hazards, we kind of covered that. I can work with the town on doing those things if they ask. Issuing stop work orders, red tags, or cease and desist. I'm no different than your building code official. He works off the IBC, I work off the IFC. I've only had to do that twice in the last three years. One not in your town, two on the other side of the hemisphere from over here. And provide fire protection, to provide fire protection emergency medical services within the district. Again, that's just to memorialize that within our district here in your town, we're the fire service provider. Wildfire risk reduction, again, we went over the parcel level assessments. compliance inspections. We don't have the WUI code. Timber Mesa has not adopted the WUI code. We can't enforce the WUI code. So that's it on that. HOA collaboration, we spoke on HOA collaboration and us going out speaking to the HOAs in the communities about how they can better protect their neighborhoods. And then community education. What we're asking tonight is that the council approve the IGA to formally authorize this intergovernmental agreement just to memorialize our partnership, which quite honestly has been going on for some time. Support our code consistency, which is already happening. Enable the permit workflow. That's kind of a big one, but we've been doing this for some time now. Civic review. I jump on civic review again, and I review the plans, and quite honestly, I don't think I've ever denied one. We've, my job is to find the solutions, and that's what we've been able to do. And invest in our wildfire preparedness, and again, we can kick that, you know, all day long. But, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, that's all I have, and I'm please open to any questions you might have.

Okay, open it up to questions. Councilor Fernandes?

Mine are probably more in the way of comments, and maybe amendments to this IGA. I know it sounds like there's been some time put into it, but I am an elected official, elected by the citizens to make decisions on behalf of them. And I mean, quite frankly, you're not, right? And so the interest of me in this town, guiding staff, is maybe a touch different than yours. I hear what you're saying. And actually, I'm going to stop real quick and go, you are absolutely correct about what you've said about your reputation. Your department's reputation has really improved in my world in the last several years, I think, since you guys have all stood there. I mean, even in talking to a couple other people who have built buildings outside of this town limits and others, they've specifically mentioned you, JD, as you worked with them to accomplish their goal. I bet you're going to retire someday. Or you're going to get hurt today, you know, and your next person may not be the same as you. And so it is important for me to protect our citizens, our developers, our development, and limit, it is my opinion that, you know, even what you said the town should do and the district should do, I don't think it's right that the fire department has an absolute stop to issuing of building permits or CFOs. I don't think it's right that you could stop construction. I love your input. As a matter of fact, I mean, when Pine Top was here, I might've said something wrong then too, but I encourage them to get out and come knock on doors more and tell people, look, we think, we know you love your trees, but you got to cut some, you know, and maybe even put it in writing and get it on their doorstep. I think that that, I would love to see you guys doing that more. But for me, the reason that I can't support this IGA is simply because of the absolute authority it ends up giving you. And we're not talking about just sprinklers, we're talking about road widths, cul-de-sac sizes, all sorts of things that, quite frankly, you could decide, or your predecessor could decide, and so I don't like that. That ultimately pulls the authority away from us, which is who the citizens voted into place. So, I mean, that's my comment to that.

I absolutely appreciate that, and I commend you for that. That's why shared authority is so important. You know, I work under the fire code. I work under the same fire code that the state fire marshal's office is under right now. And quite honestly, they can step in and do the same exact thing without me being here. The shared authority with Frank, again, those same chapters that we shared. Frank can come in and go, hey, wait a second, and he will. Hey, wait a second, that's not right by this chapter. My Chapter 9 says the same thing as your Chapter 9 on sprinkler systems, and this is not correct, and that's why this is important. I absolutely agree. Oversight, oversight in many layers of looking at this from the town's perspective as well as the fire district's perspective is paramount.

No, and I hear you, and I honestly agree. Two heads are better than one. I do think that, you know, I have spoken, you guys know my dad was involved in SHOLO, and I asked him, you know, have you guys ever, did you ever see any of this where you could even... back off on the code specifically as it pertains to different zones districts or even quite frankly go more strict for certain zones and the answer is an absolute yes and and he could pull up you know examples for us so so while this code does exist it is a blanketed code and and within our town we could amend it for our town um and so you know and i i do think the document here in front of me says the financial impact there's no financial impact and i and again i just totally disagree with that between our work session and this session i just talked to a developer that you know has a major stakeholder and his his concern it's not your department is that the other department would hinder plans that have been um passed years ago because today's standard has changed where if the old builder or developer would have just went ahead and built it. You guys would serve it or the other people would serve it. It's, you know, but in today's world, the whole plan would have to change and the density changes and then they start over, you know, hundreds and hundreds. Maybe it's not light to say millions of dollars of change and then lack of profitability, which really stifles our ability. So there's a major potential financial impact. And I would still love an agreement with you guys where we have the ability to let you completely recommend strongly what we're supposed to do, what the developer, builder, individual is supposed to do, but it gives that person the freedom of saying, no, I understand that, but I'm going to do it this way anyways. Sure.

No, I don't mean to interrupt. I apologize. Thank you so much for touching on something that really means a lot to me. It actually gave me a little bit of... Shivers when you mention it, right? But culture matters. Culture matters incredibly. And I don't know how to answer the question or try to make you feel better about what the culture looks like if J.D. Pepper steps away from this organization or I step away from this organization and who comes in next, right? But I believe the culture that we're developing in Timber Mesa is to make sure we're doing the right things by our citizens and the community that we serve. And I can't speak to that culture so much, what happened in the past, right? But I know it takes place today, and we're building that culture strong every single day. And what I would hope out of a town council, out of my fire board, is they're going to be putting people in positions that are that minded, civic-minded partnerships that are going to come together. guess I'd ask for a little bit of a leap of faith from that perspective is that we're gonna try to do the right thing all the time but I can't control that because I would have the same fear right if something happens with the town manager and we go a different direction with the town manager it puts us in a similar situation puts our fire board in a similar situation so I can have much appreciation for that but we're striving and if you didn't know and I think you felt it the passion that this individual has And he's willing to sit in any conversation with anybody and work through those challenges to make sure growth can happen Responsibly right and that's the other piece I'd like to touch on when we think about financial implications fire districts were predominantly funded through property tax. It would be crazy minded thought process if we want to stifle something right because primarily that's where our funding comes through is through property tax aspects of it right and so we want to make sure we can encourage that but we want it safe. We want to save for the citizens of all the communities that we serve and to our firefighters that might be responded into that emergency that might be taking place. But, Mr. Fresnel, thank you for mentioning, and thank you for saying it, because I think it has had an impact on having a guy like J.D. Pepper at Timber Mesa to work with the contractors, work with the communities. It's made huge benefits for Timber Mesa, so I appreciate that.

Let me first of all say thank you also. Things are much better since you two have been involved previously, as you said, and I thank you for that, and the citizens know that and feel that as well. But I too have concerns because of concerns of some citizens that have brought things up to me. And let me just share, I mean, I talked to somebody, and I talked to them a few years ago, and I followed up today just to double check, and so they paid $150,000. put a system in that the water pressure doesn't support the system. And I've had other people who, again, want to develop something, want to take one of these old vacant buildings and do something with it. But it's not worth them paying $150,000 for a water system that won't even work. And again, that's not your fault, but that's reality here. And I'll ask you, of the water companies that service Pinetop Lakeside, are any of them compliant with water flow necessary for fire suppression?

So the answer, sir, and thank you, sir, for the question, the answer to that is yes, they are capable. I don't know all of them. We have multiple water systems in the downtown area. Yes, they are capable. When those plans come in for fire sprinklers, I send them to my planned reviewer. That's all they do. This is one of the changes that I've made at Timber Mesa. I don't spend 10 hours looking at plans. Quite honestly, I don't have the time. We don't have the money of our citizens money our taxpayers money to pay for that So I've changed that around and given this to folks that do this all the time They take these plans They send them or they review them from the, what's called the, we call them hydros, the hydrologist or the person that develops. It's not us. They develop the system and the plans, and they send them over to be looked at. They put all the calculations in it. They say, hey, this hydrant, and believe me, we do a lot of hydrant maintenance here. In my district, we do a lot of maintenance on our hydrants, and we ensure the flow, which is one of the things that we get from the building code official when they say, hey, we're going to build this. What's going to be required? Can we get a hydrant flow test? I go out, or my team goes out, or the firefighters sometimes, and we will flow test that and get the numbers off of it that tells us how many gallons per minute at 20 PSI. If you drive around our district and you've seen some of the fire hydrants, they're all yellow, but you've noticed different colored caps on the front. That's what we call steamer cap in the fire service. We call that the old steam engines and stuff like that. But that color correlates with how many GPM of water comes out of that system at 20 PSI. That's important. When we talked about water access or access to water systems, that's important because if I look on the map or my My engineers or my captains look on that and they know, hey, that water hydrant, and I'll get to your questions here on the sprinklers, but that system only puts out 400 GPM. My fire truck pulls up there. They know this. Hey, we can't. We're only going to get this much out of it. We're going to need other resources. I can't bring my truck PSI down too far because if I do, I'm going to collapse that line and cause damage to property. Again, our job is to protect property. When it comes to fire sprinkler systems, those numbers off of that hydrant, my GPM flow is calculated by the hydrologist. I don't know what business you're talking about. I would say probably not one of mine. It's not one of mine. I'm not aware of it because I go out and insure on every build or my captain goes out on every build that we do. part of my inspection process, to make sure that the PSI in the line is absolutely what it's supposed to be per the plans, that the system works along with the alarm system, and I don't issue or I don't ask of the town, hey, issue a CFO until that final is completed, and I ensure that those systems are absolutely 100% working. But to answer your question, the hydrologist numbers go into the plan reviewer. They review them based on there's a lot of K factor on sprinkler heads, a whole lot of numbers. But again, I ensure that those systems work. And I have specifically done that for the last two years. And the reason why is because my community and my firefighters And our visitors are of my utmost importance to save them and their lives. It's been my life's career. It's a calling for me at 34 years of doing this. Yes, sir, I will retire someday. And I hope that I will pass along my zeal and my passion for... You know, when you're doing this a long time, you see a lot of stuff. My job is to save lives and property. And so I take it. I take it up most serious. It's my job. So I hope that answered your question, sir. And if there is a system that's in my district that isn't working, please let me know and I will rectify that.

Let me follow. Are there alternative methods other than sprinkler systems? Which... you know, can work instead of, I mean, as an alternative. Are there, because again, what I'm... Are there alternatives to sprinkler systems? Yeah, because...

Sometimes, absolutely. So again, that's my job is to find solutions. I work with your building code official and the developer and the contractor to find a solution that meets the intent of the fire code. Sometimes that could be a fire wall that extends from the floor all the way to the roof deck. That slows fire spread. Sometimes it's fire separation. could be fire doors. I've done this with buildings that I've planned recently. We had a school go in, and they were just at the cutoff at 12,000 square feet, or just under where it would require sprinklers. They said, my plan reviewer says, hey, you've got to have sprinklers. I talked to the developer. They're like, man, that's going to cost a lot of money. I said, well, can we meet the intent of the fire code with fire separation? I talked it over with my plan reviewers. I talked it over with the building code official. Yeah, we can do that. We've got to make sure that these two occupancies here, because they're different occupancies, one's a school, one's a doctor's office, we can meet that as long as we put a fire separation in it all the way to the roof deck. in that scenario. They did that. They had the separation requirements in place. We inspected it. Absolutely good to go. The building code official came out. Sorry, not Frank. But he came out, looked at it, said, yep, they meet it. I said they meet it. That's good. They put a 20-minute fire-rated door, which was actually more than what was required. And we signed off CFO, and they're in business. So again, I stress to you, my job is not to stifle growth. My job is to help your town grow. Build, build responsibly, and build safely so that our citizens are safe.

And again, I believe you wholeheartedly. Again, thank you. I mean that. But I do have some of the same concerns that Commissioner Fernandes... And I think memorializing that is important.

You know, once I'm gone, this is an IGA that we adopt today. And I think it states in there we can change it after how many years? I'm not sure. I can't really have to go and look at it, but... But I think that's why it's important to memorialize it, because it's like, hey, this is written. This is what we do.

So I would like to go back to his first question. Now, I'm not sure you completely answered. You're talking about fire flow, and you started to say downtown Lakeside. But I think it's a well-documented fact that not all of the water providers up here have the fire flow.

So when we talk about the fire flow, Fire flow requirements by the fire code itself, and again, the fire for residential, now again, we have two separate things we're dealing with. For residential, we have commercial. On the residential side, fire flow required by the code is 1,000 GPM. We don't get that. I have to work within that. that number, right, to make sure that we dispatch the correct amount of engines or tenders, that type of thing. If it's commercial and we don't need fire flow, we have to meet the intent of the code so that they can do business. And again, I just talked about the school. They didn't meet the requirements, so we found the solutions in the code both the building code and the fire code to come to a solution so that they could operate and do business as a school. Schools are important. I support it absolutely. It's necessary. So again, I think by moralizing this, puts it on the paper and says this is how we work together. To touch on that just a little bit more.

We're closer, so thank you.

I mean, as you know, there's probably 14 different water purveyors across the town of Pinetop Lakes or in the general vicinity. Some of them are not that great of water systems. And we're always going to encourage them to improve that water system. If there's a big new development coming in, it's going to need to meet certain standards. There's no doubt about it. Firefighters, it sounds pretty cliche, right? But we need two things to be successful. access and water. And so water is certainly a challenge in this community and we want to work with every purveyor possible to make sure we can improve that system where it meets their needs, our needs as a community to make sure it's going to function appropriately. But there is certainly some challenges that exist. But that's the beauty of the fire code. It gives us opportunity to have the conversations to see what's possible.

I guess I just wanted to make some statements as it relates to some of the comments that are made. I guess anybody that can answer this question, state fire code is adopted. International building code is adopted. The comment was made, we can amend that. Can we amend it less than the state code? No.

We can make it more strict.

Right, we can make it more strict then, but we cannot amend it to be less strict then. So the very fact that we're talking about plans... That's backwards of what you told me earlier.

I said that backwards.

We can be more strict than the state, but we cannot be less strict than the state. At 100%.

That's correct, yes.

Right, so the conversation about the plans that may be drawn up in whatever, wherever that place is, they still have to come up to 2024 or whatever the adopted building code is. They still have to come up to the 2024 state fire code I kind of feel like what we're talking about right here, and I guess to this point, Commander-in-Chief might be able to answer, do you enforce state law that you may or may not totally agree with all the time, but you're forced to enforce it because it is a state law? Chief's shaking his head yes. So in this particular circumstance, we're looking at the fire department and we're holding them accountable for enforcing laws that they have to enforce. There's no, I guess there's no option to do less than that.

And so, Timber Mesa has an adopted 2024 fire code. We recently readopted. We were operating under the 2018. We've since gone to the 2024. The state has a 2024 adopted fire code. If we did not have a fire code, that would still be the fire code that would be in place for all of us that we have to operate under. That would be true.

Thank you. I guess from my perspective, I guess that's what I'm wondering from my fellow council members, is whether this agreement is memorialized or not, we are still accountable to the state fire code, which is the 2024 fire code. Over half of our town still falls within the Timber Mesa Fire District, and the other half falls within the Pinetop Fire District. So we still are, to some degree, holding to that fire code. And I think... One of the things I found refreshing, and Frank was the building official at the time, but as I was remodeling my house, I think several times Frank came out, knowing construction and knowing what he was doing, he said, hey, you're missing this piece. And because of his unique knowledge of, I don't remember the exact topics we were talking about, but he offered me several suggestions that helped me meet the intent of the code for the purposes of the town. And what I've seen, and I was going to ask you about a couple of examples, but what I've seen is a fire district operations staff who's willing to go out and look for solutions. And so while we're talking about the water systems within the town, I know that there have been two dollar stores that have been built, one in White Mountain Lakes and one in Linden, neither of which is served by a municipal water system. And so I would ask you guys maybe to tell us a little bit about what you did for those facilities to help them get across the finish line since we're having that conversation.

I'll let J.D. Pepper touch on that. Just as it relates to the Linden Dollar General, I don't live too far from that area, and I don't have fire hydrants in my community. Water pressure is certainly a challenge in there, but we were successful in having that construction take place, and Pepper can touch on that.

So yeah, speaking to the Dollar General that is in Linden and the one in White Mountain Lakes, neither one of them have hydrants. Neither one of them have a water source. However, a lot of people go into those stores. There's a lot of combustibility inside those stores. We have to protect those lives. To meet the intent of the code, what we did, they did put sprinklers in them, but how did they get the water? They were able to build a tank on the exterior of the building that had enough water to support the system inside the building until the fire department or the fire district, I'm sorry, shows up to hook up to their fire, their FDC that supports their sprinkler system from our, from our trucks. Again, meet the intent of the code. They were able to do that and it's, again, it has worked, worked flawlessly.

I guess for one final point just for everybody here, Line number 18 within the agreement says termination either party may terminate their participation in this agreement for any reason Effective 90 days from the given from the given of written notice to either party at the following address So I guess from my perspective That provides plenty of protection for the town and the fire district both If the town manager changes if the fire marshal changes if we can't come to an agreement We issue notice and we terminate the agreement

Merwin if I might I think what we're asking for tonight is and as well stated I believe we're all in for relationship and partnership if there's any hesitation from any member of the council I'd request let's put a pause to this I'm certainly here to request and seek approval of the idea I believe that is the right thing to do for the fire district and the town of pine top lakeside and so that is a hundred percent my recommendation and I'm going to continue to drive for those pieces and That's part of our thought process as an organization is we're all about partnership. However, again, with that same statement, we're all about partnership. We're all about relationship. We'll come back to the table and meet at any time, talk about whatever building, whatever customer it might be. Let's talk about it. Let's get together. But I think that's the intent of this IGA. It memorializes that relationship to make it happen. So that is my request. I'd seek approval, but if there's hesitation there, let's get back together and let's talk about it further in depth because I want to make sure it's right for all of us together.

So let me just ask you this. If we choose not to do this, approve this agreement tonight, this relationship is going to continue and you're going to still review the plans with Frank much the same as the way you've been doing it, right?

We are going to maintain a relationship. I hope that to be true. And we have great partnerships, right, between town staff that exist here and the fire district that exists. We have great partnership with Chief Livermore and the Pinetop Fire District. That's going to continue. But I don't think it should negate the fact that an IGA is a great way to memorialize the relationship. But yes.

And I do hope. And I really appreciate that. I mean, one of the worst ways to get somebody to walk away from a sale is to force them, right? And so thank you for that. one other little amendment that I would love if we could do, and it sounds like maybe you kind of talked about maybe it is the 21 day thing that you're guaranteeing your response within 21 days. That's a killer to people. I mean, if there's any way we could shorten that up, I mean, and I know you said that you generally are 72 hours But I mean, that's maybe an amendment that we, that I, you know, as somebody who's built homes and deals with developers, we have a 21 day thing in there and that's a long wait when.

We can do better. But we can go. Code is generally the minimum. We can go less. I talked to Frank about that. We can go less on that one. Again, that's within our purview, yeah.

So what would you suggest, changing to 10 days?

14, two weeks? I mean, you know, that's, like, it seems perfectly reasonable. I'd be comfortable with two weeks. I mentioned that to Frank earlier, too. But you guys do the turnaround, so that's not a problem. I just, let's make it shorter so it's not out there for somebody to drag out.

We don't want to cause unnecessary delays. I would ask for a little bit of a caveat, and we can support a shorter time frame unless otherwise stated or agreed upon. If there's extremely circumstances that we truly can't fit within a, 14-day or 15-day or 10-day, whatever it might be, right? We at least got to be able to communicate as to why. I would ask for something to that effect.

Yeah, and I think that's actually in there. I believe that's in there, I think, Frank, isn't it?

Well, ultimately it's all about partnership, working together and collaborating no matter what, so yes.

Okay. So any other questions, comments, motion?

I guess I have another comment, I guess. And so I'm sorry. But all this discussion to get to this point has happened without me knowing about it until it plopped into my agenda. And I know we've been working on it to some degree. So I don't know. I know staff has been working on it. And you've had your attorney. We've had our attorney working on it. For something that has to go before a vote, I mean, this is a lot. with a short amount of time to consider it and to hear what you guys are talking about. I mean, like, I might have been the strongest opponent to it, but I'm feeling a little soft on it right now. But yes.

Would council be willing to table this and let us schedule a work session so that we can go through this with a five-tooth comb? I really do want to keep a partnership with them. They've been great to work with. And that way everybody understands everything in it. It's a lot of information. I understand it's a seven- or eight-page IGA. They offered that. I think it's a really good way to go. If you guys are, I think it would be great. I don't want to let... I know that the partnership is great already, but I would really appreciate if we could keep that partnership up as we're trying to build partnerships with all of our community partners.

All right. For one, I would support that. And again, I want to see an IGA with you. I do. I think we just need to look at it. Yeah, I'd like to see them come back.

Yeah. Maybe something that isn't so cut and dried that they have absolute authority to stop it. Maybe they could recommend... Because, you know, that is his document. It's his permit that we're talking about. So I think the buck stops there, not with you. Anyway, that's my opinion. Okay, go ahead.

Maybe just a clarification for me. Any enforcement is actually done by the town, right?

You make the... Sir, I haven't written a citation in 15 years. Okay. Yes, sir. No, we work through the town's attorneys or your code enforcement official. They're the ones that take the action. Okay. That's how we work on our partnership.

That was my understanding. Thanks.

Okay, so we need to vote to table this and hold a work session. I'm looking at the calendar because we need to set a date to table it until. So our next council meeting is September the 3rd or September 17th.

I would try to push it to later in September, if that's okay with you. Council has the lead conference the second week of, or next week, so it would be hard for us to schedule a work session in that amount. Of course, yeah. So if we could go.

Just to the 17th, maybe? Yeah.

Yeah, we could take it to the 17th meeting if we can make a work session and work with you guys.

Do we know that all the full council will be here on the 17th? Because that's awesome. I do not know that yet. I know there will be one absent, for sure. One absent. For sure. Okay. So at this point in time, then, I would move that we table this agenda item until September 17th, 2026. And we will hold a work session to dig into details. A good date for you, I should have asked. I'm sorry.

Madam Mayor, I apologize for that. September 17th, if I have my calendar, let me pull my calendar up one more time here. September 17th is, yes. So we're headed to Colorado Springs. Of course, we've had the three firefighter fatalities. Two of our firefighters are being added to the wall in Colorado Springs. All of us will be headed towards Colorado Springs. So we will be gone on September 17th. I apologize for that.

Do not apologize. Do not apologize. That's far more important.

But, Mayor, I mean, we can still do the work session and then do... Do the IGA at the next meeting or something?

If we're going to table, we just have to name a date to bring the meeting back. So we could move to October 1st for the regular meeting, and we can hold a work session somewhere in between there.

Right. So it's just the action item that would be then October 1st. Yeah. Would you be available October 1st?

I believe so. I apologize for that.

No, that's more important, I feel like.

I should really be having my wife look at my calendar right now. She said I'm good.

She says you're available. Thank you. Okay. So are there motions to have a second?

I'll second that.

Thank you. It's been moved and seconded to table this item until October 1st. Further discussion? All those in favor, please raise your right hand. Thank you. That carries unanimously. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. We appreciate it.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you very much.

We're open for any conversation. Thank you.

Okay. We'll move on then to item D4, which is a presentation discussion and direction regarding the proposed dog park project. Frank, that's you again.

So this presentation, you've seen part of this before. And so I just kind of stole it.

And I added a few things to it.

And this has kind of been on... kind of been looked at for a couple of years now. So back in, I think it was 22 or 23, there was community survey and part of that pretty high on the list was a dog park. So part of the, there is benefits to a dog park. I mean, My sister, I would go with my sister to take her dog, and it's fun to watch them, and they play, and people get to talk. It's kind of just a gathering. There are some parts of a dog park that there are health concerns and like that. A lot of that was discussed. Most of this you can adopt signage that people, it basically lets them know the dangers and there are benefits. So when this was previously presented, PubWorks did do a cost estimate. The site construction costs, parking lot upgrades, And then towards the end, the site operations. And the total cost of this was just unbelievable. It just wouldn't be doable. So what I'd like to propose is something that I did when I was working in Anthem about 20 years ago, maybe a little longer. Kind of the same situation. We have residents. that one of the dog park that was not one of the amenities put in by the people but there was some property set aside that was not being used so the council decided to fence office section and i don't even remember how big it was but basically that agreement was it would be operated by the residents the community and the council would provide Some stuff. Our proposal is basically, my favorite option of this is where it was originally proposed at Woodland Lake, right next to the upper, the north side restrooms. It would be a good spot for it. There's really nothing around. There's a playground farther down from it. But it would be an area that we could easily make parking. The restrooms are right there. We can get water right there. There were some suggestions of putting, this is the area up at the woodland. There were suggestions of using the retention basin there by Pub Works, but as you can see, This was even before the rain. It stays wet down there. That's not one of my favorite. There's no shade. You can just see how much water it holds. That's the area right there. There was another suggestion that it put behind the PD over there. I don't think Commander in Chief would be real happy with that. But that was another option. Again, I go back to thinking about woodland. I did look at some other dog parks. I looked at, oh, by the way, Christy did some real nice artwork and did some concepts for us. This one has wood chips, which would be nice. It does create a problem with, you know, splinters and like that stuff, a little harder to control. This one is over in Holbrook. And as you can see, it's a fenced dog run, basically. This is Show Lowes, right here. And you can pretty much see its basic bare ground around the trees. This one is over in Flagstaff, Fort Park. And that's a big area. This one's probably about... an acre and a half. But all of them pretty much have the same thing in common. It's bare dirt, no grass. You can't grow grass around a dog park. So what I'd like to do, I forgot to take that one out. So what I'd like to do is get a recommendation from the council to either pursue this. It would have to be next year's budget. The fencing alone for the size that was proposed originally is about $29,000 just for fencing. So that would have to be a budget item for next year. What I'd like to find out from the council is do we pursue going after this, maybe doing a budget item, or do we not do anything further with it? One other option is... We have the group, group of residents that have volunteered. If they want to apply for some grants or something like that, maybe they can come up with the funding for fencing. But I would just like to find out where you guys want to go with it.

So other than fencing, that's the primary need?

I mean, it would get it started, OK? We get it fenced. And if we put it up there in the park, that would be part of the routine of the guys. We would put dog bags there. We would put a trash can there. The guys would pick up the trash can every day.

If it doesn't get cleaned up, we just lock it up because they're going to have to take care of it.

I think we could start with that. If they want to raise money for like agility tools and stuff for the pets, that would be fine. And maybe we can add to it.

What are the dimensions of the area you proposed?

So the area that I looked at was, I think it was 120, it came up to 800 lineal feet of fence. which is a pretty good area. We've got a quote for doing a 30 by 60, which is about $7,000, but that's not a big area for dog park.

All right, questions here?

Could the dog park group, could they get, if we decided to allocate that property for that use and we want to have that in our town, then could the dog park group raise funds to, do the fence even so that they could get it sooner than our budget.

Absolutely. If they want to do that, I'm all for it. Okay.

Councilor Heiser?

I guess from my perspective, I'm not opposed to having a dog park at all, but I am in the position that we're in and are in. I mean, we were just talking earlier about making sure that we have the funds to be able to do the projects within the town that are necessary. And so I guess from that perspective, I'm not opposed to selecting the land, but I don't think that any staff time or funds should be expended on this project until we have a solid plan of I believe there's a community group. I know Mr. Kale is very passionate about getting it done. And then my second concern is that I don't want to sanction something before it actually becomes, we're not involved with the Pickleball Club. They're not a town organized group. They raise funds and then we partner with them to hopefully see their projects get across the finish line. And I think we should do something very similar with the dog park project.

I just wanted to add I do know that Frank Naranjo and Frank Young did look at there's water available up there because it's near the bathrooms the town would need to bring water to that so there was a watering system for the animals did you guys happen to get a quote on what it would cost for the town to run that?

It's less than 80 feet it's something that would be pretty minimal actually.

I just wanted to add that so you guys knew we had that.

And that is Again, that's my preferred spot because there are restrooms there already. Some shade would be nice. Or shade, right, yeah.

What is the council's direction? I mean, it's not an action item, but we do need to give some direction.

Yeah, that's what I'm basically asking for some direction on it.

I think what Tabor said, I mean, I think the town group can do that, the citizens group. And we can partner with them for, you know, well, we'll provide the land, but I think we could partner with them too in getting grants possibly or something along that.

I would agree.

And I would be amenable to us, I mean, spending some staff time for a grant or something, but yeah.

And I would like to encourage Mr. Kell, I know he's spoken at a lot of council meetings about going to Purina and asking them for funds and reaching out to companies like that that may help your committee, help us get that fence built so we can get something like this for our community.

Thank you. Is there anything else? So I think the direction then is to go ahead and proceed as long as NILS raises the money.

Okay. There's a motion on this item as well. I don't know. Is that on purpose?

Why is there a motion?

There's no... Is it a motion just to give them direction? Receive the presentation.

Thank you.

And direct staff. Direction. Yeah. Okay.

I didn't read the motion then. Councilor Heiser?

I move to receive the presentation regarding the proposed dog park project and direct staff to continue evaluating the feasibility of the project as part of the 27-28 budget development process. And return to executive session. Pursuant to ARS 38-431.