City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon everyone. Today is January 27th, 2026 and welcome to the Prescuit City Council study session.

Mayor Rousing here. Mayor Prom Freeworth here. Councilwoman Frederickson here. Councilman Gambboji I am here. Councilman Garing here. Councilman Grady here. And Councilman Ruby here. All are present. Thank you. We'll now start our discussion. First item, please.

Presentation and discussion regarding automated license plate readers in the city of Prescuit. Well, good afternoon. Um, I think you know what happens when you give me a microphone. So, I will just remind you all that you asked me to be here this afternoon. [laughter] Um, but I do welcome this opportunity to spend just a few minutes um talking about our automatic license plate reader program. Uh, what it is, how it's used, and why it's an important investigative tool for modern policing. Uh we're discussing this today because there's been a lot of public conversation about license plate reader technology. Um not just here in Prescuit but statewide and nationally as well. In some communities, these conversations have even led to agencies scaling back or even eliminating uh the use of these tools which have proven to be effective in solving crimes and protecting our communities. Unfortunately, much of this debate around this technology is driven by misunderstandings or incomplete information. And when that happens, it's important to slow things down to make sure everyone is working from the same set of facts. License plate technology is used by law enforcement agencies across the country to help locate stolen vehicles, missing persons, and suspects connected to serious crimes. It does not track people and it does not monitor lawful activity. It captures images of license plates in public view and allows investigators to connect information after a crime has occurred. So my goal today is is pretty simple to very clearly explain what this tool what these tools do for us and just as importantly to explain what they do not do. So we can separate fact from fiction and have a productive and informed discussion. Um I would ask um we have quite a few slides and I have a couple um there's another speaker besides myself. So I would ask if you can it's very interesting information but if you would try your best to hold your questions

till the end because I think I'm going to answer all of them. Thank you. I hope I will answer all of them.

All right. So what are automatic license plate reader systems? Um automatic license plate reader systems are designed for public safety. They read license plates and basic vehicle attributes such as color, type, and decals. They are used nationwide by law enforcement agencies, and they're focused on solving and preventing crime. Your Prescuit Police Department uses several types of automatic license plate reader systems um from several different vendors, including Axon, which is the vendor for our bodywn cameras. They utilize we use them for our taser systems, our in-car camera systems, um our um monitoring systems, cameras in our um police stations as well. We use Vigilant which is a Motorola solution um and we also use a system known as Flock um which is part of our solution across our um community. So how do they work? Um, automatic license plate readers are cameras capturing images of vehicles passing through fixed locations. They read license plates and identify vehicle attributes. As we discussed, the data is then securely stored and searchable by authorized law enforcement personnel only for law enforcement purposes only. And that part is really important that you understand. We can only search um those systems by authorized law enforcement personnel. So people who have taken a statecertified test to be able to run the license plate information through the state system which searches um license plate vehicle information through a sieges which is also monitored and secured by the state. Um we use it in real time and investigative contexts. These images capture pictures of vehicles on public roadways. They do not capture images of vehicles in private property. And that's also another piece of important

information for you to understand. Um, access is restricted and monitored um by our police department. All right. So, a little bit about what they can do. So, ALPRs can identify vehicles associated with crimes. And I'm going to talk a little bit later about why this is so important. And I want to really make sure that you all understand the impact that it has had on the safety of our community because the discussions that I've had um as we'll talk about later is that each of these crimes that we have solved have made a difference to somebody. Whether it's a business owner, whether it's a victim of crime, whether it's a family, um that particular crime has made an impact on somebody's lives and we have been able to bring justice to that person as a result of the addition of this technology to our police department. Um they help us with things like locating stolen vehicles. They support things like Amber Alerts, SAFE, which is a seek and find. It replaced our silver alerts. You might remember that. So seek and find um is what replaced that. Turquoise alerts which are used to locate missing indigenous individuals across our state and missing person cases. Um and in a little bit I'm going to tell you a very very interesting story about a missing person case that was recently solved in the city of Cottonwood. I just spoke with um Chief Freud and of the Cottonwood Police Department this morning about a missing person case that was very recently solved in their their community last week. Um they help us provide leads in violent and property crime investigations and they notify our agency when a wanted plate is encountered. So I want to again highlight that these are um helping in investigations and it's just a tool. All right. So every

single lead that is developed as a result of this um technology is followed up by an authorized law enforcement officer. It is simply a piece of an investigation that helps us get to the ultimate conclusion of solving a case. It's not the beall and endall. It is not the judge jury. Um and and that is a piece of information that we use to help solve a case. So let's get to what it does not do. And this is probably one of the most important things because as we begin this discussion and as as these discussions have occurred across our country and and more importantly across our state and in our region, we've heard a lot of different things um and a lot of discussion about what people are concerned about. And so I think talking about this um is something that's really important. What they do not do, they do not perform facial recognition. So we've heard that a lot that we're tracking and surveilling people. It is not a surveillance tool. It tracks license plates and keeps pictures of license plates. Um, it does not identify or track individuals. We don't track people. They're pictures of license plate plates. ALPRs do not know individual details or ownership details. Um, it does not monitor speed or reckless driving or criminal behaviors. Now, there's a lot of people who wish it would, right? They wish, could you use them for speed? No. Can we use it for reckless or criminal driving behaviors? Absolutely not. It is not designed for that and it we don't use it for that. It is also not a data free-for-all. As I mentioned earlier, access is restricted and audited and that's a very important piece. I'll talk about in just a little bit. Um and it is governed by our department policy which I will review as well in just a little bit. Um our policy is very strict. um it is very um well defined and we have guardrails that are um our boxes are checked every month by audits and every search is logged. So

that's important as well. So we make sure that there are no abuses of that um and we we audit those every single month and this is very important um just for people to understand it does not track or identify people. There is no facial recognition ever. Um does not even have the capability for facial recognition. It only reads license plates. And I want to be very very clear about this. It is vehiclebased only. There's not even biometric um personal data that is collected. It does not have the ability to identify drivers or passengers and we can't even modify it to do that if it was something that we were interested in doing. So that's important to understand. It doesn't even have the capacity to do that. um it is strictly vehicle-based. So there are some legal things that I think you want to be aware of and I'm going to toss that to our legal expert because those are some other things that we have heard um from some concerned uh folks and I think it's important that you understand that this is legally sound. The use of it is based in law and I want Joe to explain some of that for you.

Thank you. Yeah, the basic principle when it comes to this type of technology and observations is is freedom from unlawful and reasonable search and seizures and the expectation of privacy. And the courts have repeatedly held that officers viewing criminal activity or any activity from a place the officer is legally or lawfully allowed to be does not implicate expectation or unreasonable expectation of privacy. So, as it relates to these types of cameras, we're dealing with cars on public thoroughares and that has been addressed repeatedly as well with the statement that automobiles uh per people traveling in automobiles on public thorough affairs have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Um, and if we can go to the next slide. Well, there's a couple of couple of cases that are sort of the uh landmark cases in this. Thank you. United States vers and United States vers Carol are a series of cases that deal with beepers that were placed on barrels of ether that was used during the process of um removing cocaine from clothing to be able to be sold. So, in both these cases, the question was whether it was unlawful without a warrant to put these beepers on these um cans of ether and to track that. And the courts did an analysis on that and said if you're tracking movements inside of a house, then it becomes problematic. But when you're tracking movements on a public rideway, there's no expectations of your activities, no expectation of privacy on those activities on public rights of way. And similar sort of different but relating to the right of police officers to make observations from places they're legally available to be are are the cases of um California

vari Riley. And those cases are both related to marijuana grow operations. One in California, one in Florida before it was legalized. and law enforcement received tips that there were grow operations in the backyards of people's homes and they had uh in Florida for example there was a greenhouse that had was open on top but was covered on all four sides and in that case an officer went up into a helicopter in the airspace above the property looked down saw that there was marijuana in California was a plane at 1,000 ft similarly looked back into the backyard they had taken steps to hide what was in the backyard but the officers were deemed to be allowed. It was lawful for them to be in the airspace above this property and therefore there's no expectation of privacy of what's happening in that backyard and they were both upheld. Now these are more kind of extreme than the case of license plate reader but it establishes these legal principles as it relates to the expectation of privacy

excuse me as it relates to technology in these operations. Basically the question is whether the technology expands the op the availability of information from what an officer would see. So for example with a license plate reader on a public street all the license plate reader does is take a picture of the back of the vehicle including the license plate information. There's no expectation of privacy and license plate information that's public. But if the officer is allowed to be in that location is lawfully in that could be in that location and observe that then the fact that the technology is getting that same information is lawful. The the way we see this come about is sometimes where uh for example if an officer was observing a home with their bare eyes or with binoculars that would be okay but if they use sort of infrared technology to see what was happening inside the home that becomes unlawful. None of that's implicated in license plate reader. Again, it's a public thorough affair. It's public information. It's what an officer would see. And so, you know, consistently the courts have held that there's no reasonable expectation of privacy for that sort from that sort of behavior. And then this is just wraps up what we talked about. There's no reasonable expectation of privacy on public roads or on the information within a license plate. License plates are public identifiers required by law to be displayed for the reason it partially for the reason for law enforcement to be able to identify that license plate and that information and what is visible from public view is not protected by the amendment.

So Chief, I'll let you take back over.

Thank you, Joe. Um all right, so I want to talk a little bit about why why we use this technology. um first and foremost to increase our investigative efficiency and one of the best ways that I have um heard of of the description of this is it really allows us kind of a surgical precision to investigate crimes. Um we see it frequently um I hate to mention social media because that's social media's um it's rotting us from the inside out anyways. Um, so but we see it on Facebook, right, where we see there's a large police presence in downtown Prescuit. What could possibly be going on? Well, one of the great advantages of a tool like this is it allows us to identify um a suspect in a crime, figure out, you know, where they might be and kind of apply our police presence to where that person might be instead of just, you know, throwing a net over an entire neighborhood and creating chaos in that neighborhood. kind of a precision way to to investigate crime. Um it supports our proactive policing strategies. Um allows us faster identification of dangerous suspects. And that's that's one of the biggest things. Um the the things I'm going to share with you in just a bit about um things that we have solved and crimes that we have have solved um are very compelling about about ways that we're keeping our community safer with this technology. um quicker response times. As we're going through our our strategic plan over the past couple of weeks, we know that response times are something that's important to all of us and especially important to our community. And this tool really does h help us to have faster response times. Um, in the case of say a burglary, a hit and run, or um an a sexual assault, or a domestic abuse, if we have some some information about the suspect's vehicle, we're able to quickly identify um that suspect vehicle and figure out where that

suspect might be, reducing our response time and also reducing danger to our community. Um, it also improves our victim support. And one of the things that I'm very proud of for our police department is we are very, very victim focused. We want to provide quality services to victims of crime. We want them to be supportive and more importantly, we want to bring justice to them. We want to come to a complete closure uh for them for their case. We want them to to be able to see that through and it really helps improve our service to the victims and it also brings us an enhanced situational awareness during critical incidents, right? We're able to see where where things are happening um and really bring us that situational awareness of where people might be when we're looking for them. um whether it's a sex offender in our community that we might be looking for that has absconded who might not have registered as they might need to be. Um and I think back over over my career and I think about so many times when when we might have been able to use this technology and either apprehend a suspect or bring um somebody home safer who might be a missing victim or somebody who had might been a victim of a um sexual assault or sexual abuse that we might have been able to prevent that from happening if we had access to this technology earlier. Um, so it really does help us with efficiency of our investigations um, and support of victims. So I want to talk a little bit about access controls and accountability that we have built into this system because I think that's one of the most important things about this. Who has who has access to this data, right? Um, only trained and authorized personnel have access to this information. Um, it is both factor um, two-factor authentication protected. So it's both password and you receive a prompt on your phone. Um, every search is logged and we are able to audit that. All right? So, every single search is logged and we audit it. Um, we audit that once a month. Um, and anything that is flagged and is not documented properly is brought to the attention of supervisors. I can tell you that has

happened very minimally. And when it does happen, it's because an officer doesn't put a proper description like they just put um drug investigation instead of ex we we require very very very detailed information, case numbers. Um we want to know exactly why they're doing what they're doing. We address that through um you know progressive discipline and it can include up to um termination if we find somebody who's could potentially be abusing that. Um so that that is included there. Um misuse is traceable. Um we haven't had any misuse of that. Um but as I said is including um up to and including termination per our department policy. Um I would also mention that when we perform a search in the statewide database we have what's called a system security um officer at our police department. That person, her name is Joyce Anderson. She is our record supervisor. She is identified um through our police department and is accountable to the state of Arizona. Um the state of Arizona Department of Public Safety um manages and monitors our access to the database which includes um a siegous information, Arizona criminal justice information system which has everybody's license plate information, everybody's driver's license information. And every time a police officer um enters uh tries to get information from that system, it is logged, it is audited, and Joyce is responsible for making sure that every single one of us who has access to that information takes our test every year. We have to take a test every single year to make sure we understand the rules and the laws of what it takes to be um able to run information in that system, which is what we do with the flock information when we get it. And also understand that if we misuse that system, if it is used for um anything other than a legitimate criminal justice purpose, it is punishable not only just by our department policy, but we can go to jail um prison for misusing that information or misusing that system. So it's very very serious. Um and we all understand that.

Um our data retention again something that's very important. All of our data is automatically deleted um after 30 days in our flock in our Axon systems. All right. So I mentioned those two systems. I did mention our vigilant system. That is the one we use for um parking citations. Our retention on that is a little bit longer just because of the court process with that. So I want to make that distinction for Flock um and Axon LPR's um data retention is 30 days on that um that retention period aligns with our best practices and privacy standards. So it's not just something we made up that is best practice in the industry. Um if that data is associated with the crime. So let's say we use that data to um determine that somebody is a suspect of a crime. Then that data is moved over into our evidence system where it is retained as evidence of a crime so we can utilize it in a court process. All right? But if it's not, if it's just regular pictures, it gets dumped every 30 days, never to be seen again. Um the other part of this information that's important to know is Prescuit PD owns this data. It is not sold to third parties. All right. Um, we are the ones that are responsible for the data. We decide who we share the data with. Um, we share the data with law enforcement agencies within the state of Arizona. Period. So with this type of information, privacy is our priority. Um, the system is designed, all of our systems are designed with privacy in mind. There are no personal identifying information collected, just pictures of license plates. We're not tracking any lawful activity and um uses governed by policy and law. So I want to talk to you briefly about what our department policy is so you understand that again this data is for law enforcement purposes

only. That means that I as a user and any of our people who want to use this information have to use it for a legitimate law enforcement purpose only. That means that if I'm curious about what my neighbor's doing at 2 a.m., I can't use that information to find out. I can be curious all I want, but I cannot use that information to find out what's going on. I have to have a legitimate identifiable reason for running that information. We have to have department approved training and state approved training in order to be able to run that data through um the AJS system that I talked about earlier. Um we have outlines for approved uses, right? we can what is a legitimate law enforcement purpose? We have that listed in our policy. Um and again all of our usage is audited once a month. Um those audits go from Tommy Dao who is one of our um TLOs's and system users um to Deputy Chief Brambilla once a month for his approval. All right. So that's our process there. Um this ensures compliance with legal and ethical standards and is accessed again only by authorized personnel. We do have a comprehensive policy on the use and access of the ALPRS and the data. And I do want to um let you know, I just spoke um this morning with um one of our legal representatives um down at the state who represents the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police. There is a bill that is moving through um the legislative process right now sponsored by Senator Fincham that's getting reworked holistically. But one of the things that they're addressing in there um is the um the public records requests that have been coming AC in across the state. Um and we've addressed it here in the city. And one of the things that's going to be in that bill is that no release of of public information is going to be allowed per the state law, which prohibits people from using this information through public information requests for things like domestic abuse or stalking, those kinds of things.

because we want to of course prevent that. So that's not through yet. Um but I I am interested in following that um to see what happens there. Um so again, what is the public safety impact to our community? Again, it supports proactive policing. Um deters criminal activity. And one of the interesting stories I heard from um Trevor Chandler, who's with with Flock in particular, he said there's a YouTube video, he's going to send it to us. Um kind of interesting talking about um there's a an organized crime ring, I believe, um who actually did a YouTube video about how um they can no longer commit crime in San Francisco because they get caught. and he's like it's kind of a reverse advertisement um about how they can no longer commit smash and grabs and vehicle thefts in San Francisco because they get caught with LPRs. So um it does deter criminal activity um and and what we know from um our region again I'm going to talk about this in just a little bit is how our solve rates have gone up um and and it is interesting to watch those things play out. It does enhance community safety, assists in locating um missing persons um subjects of um suspects in serious crime, stolen vehicles, hit-and- run vehicles. Um again, we have clear policies and oversight. We are committed to lawful and ethical use and we very much respect civil liberties. And so um I am going to call up because I am not a um IT person and one of the things I really want to address during our time is how securely the data is stored and some of the the mis um perceptions that are out there that I really wanted um to be addressed um by Flock in particular. And so we invited uh Trevor Chandler with Flock to come and talk to you all about some of those things that I know are interesting to you and that you would want to be

aware of. So I'm going to invite Trevor to come up forward. Thank you, Chief. Uh thank you, Mayor and Council, for the opportunity to Thank you, Trevor.

I'm the My name is Trevor. I'm the director of public affairs uh for Flock. Uh, and so to touch on what the chief said, excuse me, [clears throat] as we're getting started, uh, you heard about the use cases regarding DUIs, hit and runs, missing children. Uh, I think it's really important to note that these are not anecdotes. Uh, and one of the key, uh, one of the endorsements we're proudest of, two of the endorsements we're proudest of is one by NickMick, which is the National Center for Missing uh, and Exploited Children. This is the agency that runs the country's Amber Alert program. uh they have specifically endorsed Flock and LPR generally uh because of our ability to have helped them find well over a hundred missing kids across the country. It's probably actually several hundred at this point. Uh and also fully endorsed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I've just been incredibly impressed uh with your law enforcement here in Prescuit. Uh, one of the most impressive things that I've heard is how you have over doubled your clearance of hit and runs in the city utilizing LPR, which is just remarkable and it's one of the reasons that Mothers Against Drunk Driving also supports license plate readers. People know them for DUI, impaired driving, but another passion for them is stopping hit and runs because of how closely they're associated uh with impaired driving. So, uh, a couple of items as your chief said, uh, there's a lot of Tik Tok videos, there's a lot of YouTube videos, um, and that has created a lot of concern out there, and I want to address those head-on directly. Uh, and we have, uh, I'm here to answer any questions you have either at this meeting or in emails afterwards. Uh, importantly about transparency and accountability. I say this often and no one has challenged me on it. Flock is the most transparent public safety law enforcement tool in the country. Uh there is no other tool that has a permanent audit log that has transparency portals that has the ability uh to make sure that every single click within our system is auditable. Every single click that your

officers uh make within Flock is traceable. So if there is any sort of misuse or an accident, that can be tracked back to the individual officer. So that's very important to note. All of these are customizable uh for each agency. As you'll see on the screen, every single search uh requires a registered ID with that search and a reason or a case number. One of the things we've taken to the next level now is mandating NYERS codes. So, what NYUERS is is an FBI designation of the most common crimes in the country. So, burglary, assault, all of these items. One of those uh codes has to be chosen for every single time that this is utilized. So, as your chief said, if someone says they are utilizing a search for burglary, uh, but then your audit shows it was used for something different, you can hold that officer accountable. And so, that's very important. Uh, we encourage all of our departments that use us to have regular audits. You all have that here. Um, and also, it's very important to note we actually have proactive auditing coming out for your officers. Some people have said, you know, we love the fact we have audits, but why do we have to wait until our monthly or quarterly or yearly audits to wait to see if there might have been some sort of misuse? What proactive auditing is going to do is alert your system administrator, in this case, your your deputy chief, uh say there's a there's this activity looks a little suspicious, you should look into it. Doesn't mean anything bad has actually happened, but it's a it's a red flag to check it out. Things that that might include are uh a lot of searches by an officer after hours uh when they're not supposed to be working. Uh things where a description that's put in doesn't match that neighbor's code. Um all those different items will provide a proactive flag for your officers so you don't have to wait until the 30 uh day audit reports. And so these are all things that we built in at the very beginning. uh and they're things that we're continuing to in innovate on to make sure there's the the highest level of accountability and transparency in your system.

Now, this is a big one. There's a there's a lot of myths out there about data uh and how Flock utilizes data um and all these things. I want to again address these headon. First and foremost, Flock does not sell data. Period. We do not sell data. It is explicit in every single contract we have with every single agency that your agency owns the data. We store it on the AD uh AD AWS Amazon Web Services GovCVC cloud uh with the encryption that I'll go through shortly. Uh so we keep it protected. We are continually innovating this. We do not sell data period. Second uh you may look at articles or Tik Toks or YouTubetubes and say flock shared data this way. Flock shared data that way. Flock does not share data. Every agency chooses who they want to share data with. Uh as you all heard from your chief, uh you've restricted your sharing only to the state of Arizona. There are some people who choose to join the the nationwide lookup feature, which is a mutual sharing feature where if you want to be able uh if you have a missing child, you want to be able to search every other camera that's also opted into that. Uh that is opt that is a possibility. What we found is some folks didn't realize uh some of our customers didn't fully appreciate the mutual sharing relationship of Nationwide Lookup. And so you'll see an article saying, "Oh, there was a data hack. There was a data leak or something to that extent." Flock has not been hacked. There has not been a data leak. We're having important conversations about uh sharing relationships or whether people do want to share nationwide or share beyond their cities. Some cities choose not to share at all. Some choose to do as you you all do here, which is only share within the state. Some only choose to share with a couple of cities in their general region. Um, but that flock never makes a decision to share the data of any agency and we do not sell data and I'm happy to dive into that for however much uh however much you want to do. Um, private customers. So, Flock

does have private customers that utilize our technology for organized retail crime, uh, banks, uh, all of those things. Uh it's very important to note while those private customers can choose to share their cameras with law enforcement. So if a wanted vehicle happens to be in their parking lot, your law enforcement agency would be able to get an alert saying there's a wanted vehicle in this company's parking lot. However, those private entities will never have access to government data. Uh that is a a firm line. Uh legally, uh private entities are not allowed access to seizures, criminal justice, information services data. And that is a very important uh point to make. Uh as you noted, you all have a 30-day retention by default. That is the best practice across the country. Some folks choose to do longer. Some choose to do a little bit less. Um but by default, at 30 days, that data is deleted. Um in technical terms, it is sanitized to the highest government level of data sanitization. Um and happy to dive into that as well. Um also, as your chief noted, these are images of license plates and public view. Uh the flock system is not connected to DMV records. Um it it is not connected to social security numbers. It is fully separate from your agency's records uh that identify individuals. So again, these are looking for license plates. Um and as you know, even if a license plate is uh registered to a particular driver, that doesn't guarantee that the person registered was actually driving the car at that time. So again, to repeat what your chief said, a lot of people view uh mistakenly that these cameras are judge and jury that if if uh if your vehicle uh is uh searched for whatever reason, that because it's seen on one of these cameras that it's automatically guilty of something. Flock is a tool. Your officers are the ones doing the tough investigations to connect the dots of the the information that's collected. But there is no personal information um that is collected on these. And only

again only your agency decides who to share with, not Flock. Um to go over some of the encryption standards, happy to dive into these specifically. I know it's a a lot of letters all put together. Uh but really the most important one is the FBI sieges standards. That is the standard necessary to hold encrypted information um and uh and sensitive information. And while we again while we don't collect while we don't have information on social security numbers, uh addresses all of these things, we protect it as if we do. And that's very important. uh we we are protecting these images that are taken of publicly available images of uh the rears of uh vehicles with license plates, but we protect them as if they were some of the most sensitive information out there. Um including uh the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. Um and so uh we have I'm happy to dive into those encryption standards as well. But again, key takeaways here, Flock has not been hacked. Uh there has not been a data breach. We do not sell data and we never make a decision to share data. very important points. Oh, uh, and actually, uh, I know, um, very briefly, I know the chief wanted me to address some other YouTube videos that were out there regarding, uh, you know, there's a YouTube video saying we hacked into Fox cameras or any number of things. So, I want to address that head-on. Again, happy to answer questions afterwards. Uh, so there's this one video where you have an individual who takes a uh, one of the flock cameras out of the box and says, "Look at all the weaknesses this camera has. look at everything I can do with it. Um, these are not secure. Um, these, etc., etc., etc. Uh, I I that it's really necessary to put that in context. That's the exact same as if I were to take my iPhone out of the box, uh, not connect it to any sort of system and play around with it because it has absolutely none of the patches and security patches that come when you actually activate it and connect it to a network. uh that camera was a dumb camera because it wasn't connected to our system with all the patches that come around to it. So, you have someone

who's technically knowledgeable, who's able to go in, um do some what I call magic tricks on an unconnected camera because it doesn't have any of the patches that come with it. And so, uh that camera that was not a hack. Um that was someone who simply doesn't believe in license plate readers as a public safety technology looking to make a point through this. Um, but that's very important to note that um, that was an outofthe-box camera, not connected to our network. Um, and it was simply not a realistic test case. Every single one of the issues that he brought up uh, that YouTuber brought up in that video were issues we had already fixed uh, well long ago and had it actually been connected to the system, which he's not capable of doing because it is a secure system, all of the things that were pointed out would have been patched and fixed. So, I want to address that uh, directly. I know there's a lot of other um you know different Tik Toks and YouTubes out there. If there's anything specifically you'd like me to address, happy to answer those questions as well.

Thank you.

All right, I'm going to bring this home real quick so you have a couple minutes at the end for questions. Um so I want to talk quickly about um our department statistics and when this came around. Um so in 2024 um our license plate readers were credited with assisting officers in cases which resulted in 353 offenses charged. So 2024 was our first first full year of use. Um in 2025 our LPR systems were credited with um assisting officers in charging 874 offenses. So you can see how this is impacting our community. Um in um 2025, our Prescuit Regional Communication Center assisted in 8,898 searches resulting in um for calls for service um including um attempt to locate missing children, suicide threats, hit and runs, uh motor vehicle theft, uh DUI drivers, and felony flights. Um, and because not all of them were Prescuit PD, we serve regional um, partners. We know that this is also a community um, of community value, of regional value. Um, and does help keep our region safe. Um, and I do want to talk about some of our success stories. Um, Trevor already mentioned, you stole my thunder. I know it's okay. Um, that we have doubled our clearance rate for hit and runs. And I just want to reiterate, these are individual members of our community, right? These are your neighbors. Jersey, these are your friends that we helped um bring justice to that got resolutions to their cases. Um just a few of the success stories, we arrested a fentanyl drug dealer who had 200 pills of fentanyl in his possession. Um we located an overdose victim uh a vehicle that had loaded had been loaded with um uh somebody who had been transporting cocaine and we arrested

that suspect from somebody who had overdosed um on on that product. We located a sexual assault suspect and arrested that suspect. Um, located and arrested and identified a stalking and drug suspect. Um, prescription fraud suspect. Sexual exploitation of a minor. Um, assault, domestic violence, and arson suspect was located and arrested thanks to your LPL LPR technology. um sexual assault, stalking, um a felony construction theft ring, which means that we were um able to return property to owners who had had thousands and thousands of dollars of property stolen from them that we were able to return from to them. Um hit and run, shoplifting, um and and those are just to name a few. And I mentioned that I would highlight some of the cases. Um I did speak to the Flagstaff police chief this morning. Um, as you know, may know, Flagstaff recently voted to remove their flock cameras. And I said, um, chief, can I mention some of this to our council? And he said, please do. Um, he is adamant that his community is less safe because of the removals of this technology. And he wanted me to mention that they were able to track and identify a suspect who had um, hit and killed an a member of the indigenous community in Flagstaff and had run from the scene. They had no witnesses. They had no cameras in the area. Um, and they were able to identify, locate, and arrest that suspect within 10 minutes thanks to LPR LPR technology. I also spoke with Chief Freudenthal of the Cottonwood Police Department um who just last week they were able to um locate and arrest a suspect who had um apprehended a 16-year-old female victim in the Valley area at Knife Point. She had originally agreed to go with him. Um, I don't know the exact circumstance, but they traveled up to Flagstaff. Um, and he took her against her will at Knife Point. They were in Flagstaff and then they made a wrong turn and went

through Sedona. They ended up in Cottonwood where the LPR technology hit and they were apprehended and the female victim who is 16-year-old was able to be returned safe to her family thanks to LPR technology. Um, and these are just some stories um that that I want to relay to you and again hit home and and just remember that each of these stories are our friends and our family. Um, I will tell you unequivocally in my 28 years of law enforcement, this is one of the best tools um that I have run across to keep our community safe and our officers safe. Um, so to wrap this up, um, you know, it's it's not a violation of our constitution. Is it mass surveillance? Absolutely not. Does it track people? No. Our data is safe. Um, it is monitored. We take very um good care of it. Um, we understand the seriousness of it and we take it um to heart. Um, we own the data and we we monitor it very closely. So, um, I will show you very quickly um why we designed the system the way we did with with Flock. Um, this is a map of where our fixed cameras are. This is out in public. Um, so I'm not letting any cats out of the bag here. Um, you'll notice it is on the major thoroughares coming into and out of the city of Prescuit. Why did we design it this way? And we did design it this way. This was one of the theories that I've heard that it was designed with AI. Um, it was not. Um, unless you consider Lieutenant Jason Small AI. Um, I don't think he is. Um, we designed this in cooperation with Flock. Our contract does say Flock has the final say, but I'll tell you they have the final say. If the location that we've chosen um has like a tree in the way and they know that the camera won't work at that location, they'll move it to a different location in the intersection. It is done in cooperation in partnership with our agency. We wanted the areas into and out of our community to be covered like a net. Um and we do this in partnership with our

regional um neighboring law enforcement agencies as well. The town of Prescat Valley also has LPRs as does the town of Chino Valley. Um, and our hope is that we again continue to keep our community safe. Um, catch, identify, and apprehend people that, um, have ill intentions for members of our community and do our best to keep this community safe. So, um, that's all I have for you. We've got a couple of minutes for questions if you have any. I do appreciate this opportunity to to help educate y'all. Um, and I thank you for the time. Um, thank you, Chief. Really appreciate it. Uh, I'll start off the discussion. First of all, I want everyone to know that this is a study session. We won't be taking a vote. Uh, we put this topic on uh, short notice and we have two other agenda items after this. So, unfortunately, we won't be taking uh, public discussion today, but we have received all of your uh, emails. So, I want to thank you very much for all of the interest. Um, I would like to read the fourth amendment because that's been uh one of the things that people have felt has been violated. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. So, the courts have upheld uh the use of these cameras as no violation of the fourth amendment. And then also I'd like to read the first

amendment. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceibly to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. So, under the first amendment, we are allowed to have cameras in public places. I have a question for Trevor. I heard about Flag Staff in Sedona. What was the rationale for the city councils to discontinue the flock program?

So, in both cases, um I I would leave that specifically to the law enforcement agencies there. Overall, the conversations about balancing privacy and public safety are important ones and they can be very tense ones, especially in a heightened political environment. And I think that was the case uh with those conversations as well. Um the the story that the chief shared of the fact that both of these cities had these their cameras turned off um and this young girl who was abducted went through those cities and they didn't find her until they went to Cottonwood who did have license plate readers. Um that struck me as incredibly powerful. Um but uh yeah, the the conversation between public safety and privacy is an incredibly important one. it raises significant tensions and in any given political environment like we're in today um I think that was kind of the catalyst for it. Um and mayor if I may on the fourth amendment aspect just because something happened today u regarding that uh there was one case called Norfolk uh it's been the big LPR case across the country. It's been pointed to by groups like the ACLU is be be wary of LPR because look at this big case in Norfol. uh Norfolk was decided today uh and it was decisively decided that license plate readers are fully constitutional under the Fourth Amendment. And so I just wanted to add that into the the Fourth Amendment conversation. Well, I would just like to add that um in view of uh today's agenda item, I spoke to um several law enforcement officers this week from different agencies and they just enthusiastically definitely said flot cameras were very good in fighting crime, save time and it uh gave them evidence to use in court

because without these cameras and the visual evidence placing the suspect at the scene of the crime, cases get dismissed and then the offender just keeps repeating it over and over and over. So, uh I'd like to um start with Mr. Gamboji and we'll just uh go down the line. Amy and Trevor, I wanted to compliment you on an excellent presentation that educated us on LPRs. I think uh two things that struck home with me is that we broached the subject of what happened in Flagstaff's and and secondly, there was a comment in one of your later slides that said it does not replace the officer's judgment or standard investigation. I think that's important for everyone to remember. So thanks a lot.

Great presentation. Thank both of you. And uh from my perspective, this is a public safety issue and we need to keep this system. Thank you. I agree with um the other two council members and that was an outstanding presentation. I read all of the emails that came to our office um raising concerns and I think that in a very professional manner you answered all of those questions today and thank you for that.

Uh I have one question for Trevor. Uh, one of the emails had a picture of a a uh playground at night that was vacant and said it was a unattended playground that was somehow on a flot camera. Do you know anything about that? So, this is uh probably in regards to our pan tilt zoom cameras which the city of Prescuit doesn't have. Correct. We have some unfixed. We have a few uh uh unfixed ones. The portable ones.

The the portable ones. Uh yes. So on a limited number uh there was during the testing phase to get these cameras qualified to use the network and a bunch of technical jargon uh they didn't go back to being encrypted and so uh we were that was brought to our attention and it was fixed and so we have several thousand of these across the country and there were approximately 40 to 80 that had this issue and when we were made aware of it we were able to lock them back down so they were no longer accessible. Okay. So, we're not monitoring playgrounds.

Well, we do have several that are fixed cameras on high um high usage intersections, which we do use to monitor for traffic crashes um and those kinds of things in case we need real-time information about things going on in those intersections. Okay. Thank you, Lois.

Thank you both. Today, uh was looking forward to learning some more. Um I have done a lot of uh listening to the community and and searching out there in those various YouTube videos. So thank you for busting some of those myths. Um the one thing I was worried about given our role as council is um [snorts] uh you know fiduciary responsibility and and Amy, my understanding is the cost of this um equates to a police officer give or take.

Give or take. Yes. it's about 153,000 um plus about 35,000 for some of our other like the fixed cameras. So yes, I would argue and I could make a very valid argument in my opinion um that it does create efficiencies. I we're talking about a time when staffing is extremely challenging. We're looking for more efficiencies um and it does equate to a lot of time savings, a lot of efficiencies. Um and so for the cost of of that which does equate with full-time officer salary and benefits um we are saving ourselves a lot of time and a lot of energy and resources with the system.

That answer um the other question I had related to the same thing is um you know from the public's point of view this is AI AI is always sus sus suspect. Um, you know, people have said, "Well, my car was blue and it this flock said it was gray because it was at night." So, there isn't it isn't perfect. It's not perfect. It may misread a digit on the license plate. So, um, because we could be dragged into court for misidentifying something. Um, I think you've answered my questions, Amy, but anything more that you could h how your processes um make sure that we're responsible for the outcome of a case just like we are if we didn't have flock technology to help us,

right? I would just remember it is a tool, right? It's one thing that helps us come to a conclusion in an investigation. And so it is the same um concept as like a photo lineup, right? I mean, and and so it's one thing and we still have to com complete the investigation and come to our own conclusions using all the methods that we're taught to establish probable cause and come to that conclusion to make an arrest or charge somebody with a crime. So if you know I mean the system is flawed but we are still charged with conducting a complete and thorough investigation that's within the concept or confines of our policy and within the confines of the law. Thank you. I'm very satisfied. Thank you

Mary. Thank you. Uh, I have two questions, one probably smaller than the other, but one, you mentioned the pending litigation that's currently making its way through our legislature. uh to the extent that I've read a bit to the to the point that it relates to flock cam cameras or LPRs, uh it seems to me that included in that litigation was the idea that there would be a 90-day retention policy after which deletion would happen. If that continued to be part of the legislation and gets passed, is there any thought from Presca PD or from Flock? You've both said that you guys have a 30-day standard of uh standard practice in the industry. if the state allows for 90day retention before deletion. Any have you had any thoughts yet as to whether or not you would keep the 30-day deletion policy or move to what the state would then be allowing which is a 90-day?

I'm glad you asked that question because I asked that question this morning. Um, so it is just moving through the process. It's my understanding that it's going next week to either a committee, maybe Don knows a little bit more about this, but it's going to get completely rewritten because there are several things in there that I think AOP, Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police were uncomfortable with and so it's going to get rewritten. Um, and my my question about the 90 days was we don't want to keep it for 90 days. And the way that it was written, I don't know what the inversion will be, is that it's up to the discretion of the agency and my recommendation um in discussion with our legal team would be that we retain um or continue to keep it for 30 days. Thank you. I appreciate that. The other u maybe a bit bigger of a topic. Uh I don't know if this slide came up uh during your presentation, but it references the 32 fixed LPRs and the two flex LPRs, which I'm assuming is um mobile related to uh parking tickets. I'm I'm guessing uh but al also reference to 11 cameras. Uh, and there's nothing specific here in the presentation, but my understanding is those would be the pan, tilt, zoom cameras. Uh, and you did mention something about they are located in high uh high traffic or concerning intersections um anywhere else in the city.

So, we have two that are are mobile and those are ones are portable, I would say. So, those are ones we can use during specific investigations if we need to use them. So, for example, if we know that we are tracking like a burgl a construction burglary ring and we need to keep an eye on a a high-profile construction site, for example, we could use those in that specific investigation. And then the other ones um we have on fixed intersections and fixed locations that we know are um have a propensity for high, you know, um accidents or or intersections that we want to keep an eye on. I believe I got some information in regard to for example the parking structure uh on granite.

Yes, those are vigilant. Those are Motorola solutions and those those were in place. That was one of our first LPR products that we used within the city of Prescuit because we were getting complaints about behavior within um the parking garage. So that would be LPRs. Yes. Yes. Not not pan tilt zooms. We do have I'm looking at Tommy. There's one pan tilt zoom in there. One LPR. And any pan tilt zooms like for example in the parking garage. Yes, we have one pan tilt zoom in the park. No, I can't I can't read your sign language.

Tommy, can you come up? Come up to the microphone. Tommy's Tommy's shy. Sorry, [laughter] Tommy. Don't be shy.

Um, so the city put up in I want to say it was six to eight years ago. Six to eight years ago, they put up cameras in the parking garage. Those are city-owned cameras. They are not owned by the police department. We do use those for investigations for hit-and- runs. They happen all the time in the parking garage. Uh, but they are city-owned and they they were put in there. We've had cameras in there since 2008, 2009. Um, they were upgraded, like I said, six, eight years ago. I'm not exactly sure of the time frame. The biggest reason that that camera coverage was increased was because of the public outcry of how unsafe they felt in the parking garage. So, we installed those cameras and they're there.

Thank you. Uh, li say hey. [laughter] Uh, uh, library. Did I hear something about cameras in the library? Is that for the same kind of reason? City owned. The city owns those cameras. The library determines where they want them. We don't have that. Yeah, just internal. We have internal security cameras in our building too. Here in city hall, I understand. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ruby.

Yes. Thank you for the presentation. I think it's really good as we're like evolving as a society in the surveillance age to understand some of the protocols. I'm just going to summarize some of the concerns that I've heard to give you a chance to explain the I think there's concerns around the data which you addressed and you mentioned the deleting of the data. I is there any scenario where that data would be copied before it was deleted that you can see and how are you dealing with that? So the only time where data may not be fully deleted in any sense is for the machine learning. And the way that works is say I was watching my cousin Vinnie on AMC last night. Uh and the big distinction my cousin Vinnie is the Pontiac Tempest for versus a Buick Skyllock, right? And so I'm glad I'm not the only one who got that reference. Uh, and so, um, if our cameras are having difficulty differentiating a Buick, uh, Pontiac chemist and a Buick Skylark, our, uh, engineers will look for specific examples of where that happened and we'll pull that image without any metadata. So, let's say it was um, the Buick Skyllark was found here in Prescuit. um that image that single image would be pulled without any identifying information about what agency it was pulled from um location, time, date, any of that and it would be used for machine learning. That is the only case uh so that it is in increasing accuracy uh but not uh giving u any sous data any any sensitive data as a part of that. Other than that, once these images are deleted, uh they are hard sanitized according to government standards and they are irretrievable and cannot be accessed or or um or retrieved ever again.

And is there any capacity for human error in that process? Um in the deletion process um you know the the hesitance in me says there's always room for error anywhere. What I can say is what we do is up to government standards of data sanitization. Um, and we feel very confident in it. Also, I noticed I mean, we're sharing with the state, but we're not sharing at a federal level. I'm curious what the choice is for that. And I know that this community is very sensitive to federal intrusion. So, I think that probably makes sense, but I just wanted to hear the rationale.

So, right now, that's what makes sense for us. Um, I can tell you that um it that is just the the decision that makes sense for us right now. Um, if that needs to change in the future, that's a a further discussion um based on what the needs of our community are. Um, at at first, you know, it seems at first blush it's like, yeah, we should share with everybody. That seems like the right thing to do. Um, but right now sharing statewide is what makes the most sense for us. Um, I can tell you, I mean, just anecdotally, um, we by the grace of God have not had to use it for a missing child in our jurisdiction. Um, I will tell you, if we have a missing child and we know that that child has left the state, would I come to our our city manager and our city attorney and say, "Can I please turn this on?" I'm going to tell you, I would ask that very quickly um, as a as a mom, but I'm just using that as an example. Yeah, I guess that was my question too is if we had data and the and there was a federal request for it, is there a way to use it retroactively? But like once it's deleted, is it gone or can it be reawakened?

Once it's deleted, it's deleted. [clears throat] Thank you. I um I wasn't aware of Senator Fincham's bill, but as I understand, it's to prevent the release of flock data by a public information request. So, it's to protect the data sort of more belt and suspenders. That That's my understanding. Yeah. Okay. Does anyone know the number of that bill? Because if not, we can find out.

Yeah. That's SB1138 and it's drafted now. It it includes more but what it basically says is every agency in the state should run their LPRs like Prescuit does. Um it the just the the guidelines are what we do or in some cases looser than what we do and so we're not concerned there. Um for example, we have a 30-day data dump. The bill called for a 90-day data dump. So, we're being more restrictive or more careful um than that bill, but we'll see what happens as they um as they work through the edits. But um but as drafted originally, we're in compliance easily with with what they've written.

Okay. Thank you. Any more um any more comments? Um I want to thank everyone for for coming here today. Uh our job is to um keep everyone safe here and to uh discourage the bad guys from doing bad things here in uh the city of Prescuit. So uh I completely support this tool which is uh a very useful cost-effective method to apprehend those bad guys. Thank you. So, uh, next item, please. Presentation and discussion regarding the road to centralization for the city's wastewater treatment.

Good afternoon, mayor and council. Gwen Roage, public works director. And with me today, I have uh a couple of co-presenters. Tim Sherwood, capital project manager in the blue suit, and Steve Olers, our utilities manager in the black suit. I was so thrilled they came today in a tie. I was just right.

Yeah. So, today we're going to talk a little bit about centralization. And centralization centers around the city's wastewater treatment plant or plants. We currently have two wastewater treatment plants here in the city of Prescuit. Uh the Sund Dog wastewater treatment facility and the airport water reclamation facility. get my clicker going here. There we go. So, uh, centralization was approved by resolution 4284 in April of 2015. Um, it's a council-driven goal that involves multiple projects that are designed to consolidate our wastewater treatment system into a single large treatment plant at the airport water reclamation facility. I'm gonna let Steve talk a little bit about the two plants because they are uh quite a bit different. Go ahead, Steve.

Our Sund Dog wastewater treatment facility uh was constructed in 1955. And I'll show we'll show you a picture here just shortly where it was located in reference to the city. It was way out in the middle of nowhere, but now the city has grown into around us and and they continue to do so. Uh we've upgraded that facility several different times as you can see a couple times uh in before the turn of the century and one after. Uh it has a treatment capacity of about 3 million gallons per day and essentially treats anything that is uh put into the collection system pretty much in the main city areas south and west part of city all the way down into uh Yavapai Hills and the ranch area. The this produces what is known as class B+ effluent which is used directly on golf courses and for construction. The airport water reclamation facility is essentially the endline plant. It was built in 1978 as a itty bitty little package plant and has been expanded to its current capacity in 2020 and 2014. Many of you have had the opportunity to come and visit us out there. It has a capa treatment capacity currently of about 4.75 million gallons per day and it produces A+ effluent which can be used in any and all different uh uses for effluent.

A+ Yes, ma'am. And uh so that there's our sund dog plant out of the middle of nowhere. uh with the train tracks still there and the active landfill. So this kind of gives you an idea 1996 that we are out in the middle of nowhere and now we're in the middle of the city and unfort people have views of our beautiful ponds and come out and watch birds and all those things. So this is this facility. The goal is of centralization is to remove this facility from service and allow it to be used in other city uh facilities. Oh, we found a picture. This is the first time I've seen this picture. Um this is our airport facility. What you see uh the majority of what you're looking at here are percolation ponds. And every drop that we collect from the collection system either goes to a golf course, a construction site, Mart Marietta for materials or is placed back into the ground using these percolation ponds. So this is where we bring all of the effluent and our surface water recharge comes to this facility to be allowed to soak into the ground.

All right. So how did the um the idea of centralization come about? Um it was in the early 2000s the city was um highly driven by development. We had a lot of new developments going on. Um in the late 90s and early 2000s um up until the the recession in 2008 2009 things were booming all through this region not just here in the city of Prescuit. And our wastewater treatment plant, our Sund Dog wastewater treatment plant was reaching it what's called its committed capacity. So we have the actual capacity which is the flows coming into the plant on a daily basis. And then we have the committed capacity which is what we've promised to new developments. Every time a final plat would come through we would say it's going to generate this much wastewater flow into the plant and we would subtract that from how much capacity was in the plant. and we tracked that through a permitting process with ADEQ as part of the city's permit to operate the plant. So around 2010 2012, I can't remember, it's been a long time. Uh ADQ said, you know what, city of Prescuit, you're out of committed capacity. You can't you can't approve any more plat until you uh have a solution to how you're going to address you're not over capacity. Our daily flows into the plant were well under what the plant could um accommodate and treat, but our committed capacity was almost at its end. And so it was around that time that our uh wastewater master plan was being updated with Corollo. That's the pictures you see there on the screen. Every 5 years we update our water and wastewater master plans uh with Corollo engineers. And we said, you know, we have to either um expand Sund Dog or expand airport. And that's when they started exploring the option of centralization because

also along that time we now had Prescat Lakes right across the street from our beautiful treatment plant. We had Cliff Rose right across in proximity to our beautiful treatment plant that was no longer on the outskirts of town. It was right in the middle of town. And so we were exploring the option of centralization. and uh the city performed a study and came up with a document called the roadmap to centralization. Now the road map is a series of decision-making points um where the engineers came up with a plan on how we could reach a combined uh two plant to one plant centralized system. Um it wasn't uh you have to build this exactly like this. It was if you build this part you can do this and this. if you build that part, you can do that that and so the engineers worked on that for quite a while until we came up with what we thought was a good plan came out in the road map to centralization. So by the time the 2018 water wastewater master plan came out, we had projects we had projects in our 5-year capital improvement program. And in a couple of minutes, I'm going to show you the projects that we did and what years we did them in. But the city council um adopted a a resolution in 2015 that said we would like to uh centralize our two plants. We feel that's the best thing to do and I'll go into some detail on that for you. So the roadmap to centralization came about in 2015 as you can see here and we had several study sessions and council meetings in 2015. One of them culminated in a resolution which was included in your packet that kind of talks about what we've been talking about when the plants came online and the reasons why we were going to centralize. And some of the biggest uh benefits to

centralization was a reduction in capital investment, the production of A+ quality effluent for all reuse and all recharge purposes, the avoidance of full reconstruction of the Sund Dog wastewater treatment plant, the elimination of recurring odors, you can imagine how good it smells, from the Sund Dog treatment plant for more compatible land uses, the streamlining of treatment operations, and the decrease in operating budgets. for one plant versus two. So those were some of the reasons why they adopted resolution 4284 in April of 2015 and directed staff to move forward with centralization including the projects that were included in the 5-year capital improvement plan. You can also see here on the road map that um we proceeded through 2017. And you can see there were study sessions related to centralization where we bring projects forward to let council know the direction that we were going with centralization from the road map. And then in 2018 in January of 2018, council um adopted an ordinance which approved a whiffle loan or water infrastructure finance authority loan to finance a good portion of the uh beginning stages of centralization. And those monies um were hugely beneficial to the city because they came at very very low interest rates with 20 or 30-year repayment time periods and in some cases they even had loan principal forgiveness um attached to them. Not in all cases but in some. Um, as we proceeded with centralization, uh, we did have some difficulties either acquiring the land that we needed for the direction we wanted to go or an easement to go through lands, um, that were not possible. And so the road map was altered over time. We started with one plan. We're going to show you that here in a minute. We started with one plan and we ended up with a with a

little bit different plan. Um but eventually it it was the um centralized project that would get us to one uh one airport water reclamation facility. Unfortunately in 2023 um we had a series of storms between January and March 2023. I'll never forget it. All four dams topped on the same night. Um we had water everywhere in this city. We had people stranded. Uh roads washed out not only here but in nearby communities that we washed out. Whoops. Somebody can bring me back. There we go. Um, and we unfortunately our sewer system, which handles dry weather condition flows just fine, surged during those storms on on more than one occasion. And we dumped raw sewage into Granite Creek. And as a result of that, we received what's called a notice of violation and eventually a consent order from Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. and they came and said, "What are you doing to fix this problem because you can't keep doing this?" And we said, "We actually have a plan. [laughter] We have a we have a roadmap to centralization and we're building it and the next piece is going to fix this issue that we just had." And so, um, we'll talk about which projects on the list are going to correct that particular issue. Uh we also in 2023 received a uh correction notice from Arizona Department of Environmental Quality for the effluent line break on SR89 inside the granite Dells. That was not a violation notice, but it is a correction notice. So we've been put on notice uh through a state agency that we must correct these things. So without that, I'm going to let Tim come up and talk a little bit about the road the actual alignment of the road map and how we got where we got.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So as Gwen mentioned, um the both the roadmap document and and uh the council resolution uh identified a series of projects to get to centralization. So what you're seeing on the map in front of you is the different colors are different projects that were identified um at that time. So, it starts in the upper leftand corner all the way up at Miller Valley Road um up there. Then the lower section that's green goes down through um Granite Creek Park and ultimately ends up at the VA or the red box is there and then down Highway 89 eventually through the Dells and then the airport truck main projects that go out um all the way to the airport. So, every one of these different colored um lines indicate uh a project associated with centralization. So, what have we done so far? Um, as I indicated on the last one, uh, with the different colors, and the next map will show you what we've done. We've, uh, completed a series of projects out at the air, uh, in the airport area, basically from Keyffer Ranch, um, out to the airport. So, airport trunk main phase one, uh, phase 2 A and phase 2B. We've done the Sund Dog lift station and the uh the pipeline that went with that was Sunro trunk main phase A that currently runs along 89 and empties out at Lillian Lane. Then we also did Sundog trunk main phase C1 and you'll hear C1 C2C3. C1 was predicated on uh the Creek View apartment project along Miller Valley Road. That trunk main runs through that property directly. So rather than have them build that apartment complex and then have to come back in and put a trunk main in, we put the trunk main in as part of that uh development project, um we did the same thing with uh airport trunk or uh yeah, airport trunk main phase 2B. Went through uh commercial development out by the airport. So rather than tear that up after that development was finished, that portion of the line was also

constructed there as well as um 2A was done through Walden Farms. So on the map you can Whoops, sorry.

That's okay. So on the map you can see what we've completed so far. So um in the upper leftand corner is the line I talked to you about along uh Miller Valley Road and through the Creek View Apartments. The um Sund Dog uh lift station and Sund Dog phase A line um runs from the existing Sund Dog treatment plant along the I'll say the east shoulder of uh SR89 till it gets to Lilian Lane and then it empties into our 24-in gravity main that runs through the Dells. um the airport trunk main projects. Um the stuff in yellow was stuff the city did um over a period of time. The magenta section or lavender section that you see there that was done through Walden Farms um in conjunction with the development that went on there. That line starts out as a u uh I'm sorry a 18 inch or 36 in uh trunk main and ends up as a 48 inch main after it crosses 89. Um part of that project was boring um that 48 inch line under Highway 89 just a little bit east of Larry Cwell Drive um which is pretty significant in itself. And then like I said as it goes out to the airport it is a 48 inch trunk main that currently um goes out to the airport. So we're able to take a million gallons a day right now out of Sundog and use the lift station and pump it out to the airport currently. So that gives us some options at this point. All right. So, those projects that Tim's talking about uh were built between 2017 and 2022 at a total cost of $26.5 million. So, projects we have yet to complete and I will show you some of these on the on the next map. Uh Sundog phase C3 which will be coming before council fairly soon. uh the airport solids handling facility project is uh currently almost at the 90% design level. Uh the SR89

effluent and wastewater pipelines um which everybody's aware of. Um and then the projects are a little further out will be the expansion of the airport treatment plant phase two uh the Sundog equalization basin and plant decommissioning uh the effluent tank at Watson Lake Park and a Lillian Lane lift station upgrade. So, as I mentioned, uh, Sund Dog phase C3 is the big red line you see going up, um, on the left hand side of the map. That will start around, um, Granite Creek Park. Um, the city's acquiring a parcel, uh, on the current KYCA radio station property for the lift station itself. The green line you see there will complete, um, what was in the original road map, will be the gravity line that feeds into that lift station. And then we have about 25,000 ft of force man to build. Um the alignment will kind of go through the Dexter neighborhood up along Roo Street past the high school then across uh Tamarak and Deleno intersecting at Roser and then eventually into Highway 89 to Prescat Lakes Parkway. The um then the next section that we have to complete will be the SR89 effluent and and wastewater lines. Um the blue line you see there is the uh will be a new gravity main through that corridor. At one time the the road map uh contemplated anywhere from a 36 to a 48 inch gravity man. We have a current 24-in gravity man that's in there now. There's no reason to tear that out of the ground. It's not that old. It's basically a teenager in the lifespan of of its uh of that that type of pipe. So we'll put another 24in main through that corridor. And then the other line you see that's going to the round circle, that is going to be the new effluent line. Um once we start making effluent at the airport, we got to be able to get back into town. Um so there will be a new tank located at Watson Lake Park and then that will complete our our uh

everything that was identified in the road map. So you can see we still have a number of projects to do. Um the budgeted amounts are based on estimates in our master plan, our 2023 water and wastewater system master plan. Um a few of these are in the 5-year CIP. Uh all the way through the airport expansion are in the 5year CIP and then beyond that, those are in the 10-year CIP. And that's why some of those don't have dollar amounts associated with them yet. Um the but uh the last two pipes projects Lois has a question. Sure.

Yeah. Gwen um the water rates that we approved two years ago. Two Yes. We're under two years ago that we were going to have three years of hikes. Most of these items that you've got listed there are all part of why rates have gone up in the community. Correct. They are. and as well as development impact fees. Um most of these projects are associated with growth and so some percentage of them is in the infrastructure improvement plan and we collect development impact fees for every home that connects but they're also it also does affect the rates on on the rate side. Yes ma'am. Thank you.

Any other questions? Okay. So once we complete all of these projects, we will have a single wastewater treatment facility at the airport that will be producing a plus effluent that can be transported to wherever we put pipes. It can be used in any situation that we would use effluent, whether that be the golf courses or construction or or any type of uh usage. the uh as you can see the with the C3 which is a big yellow line in this map once we're able to have that we'll be in compliance with our compliance or or I'm sorry our uh our order our consent order and Sundog will merely be a facility that will be decommissioned over time. The only thing that will be working there is the Sund Dog lift station and that collects everything down into the ranch area and Yavapai Hills and up on the the tribal property and brings it down to the lift station to be sent out to the airport. So at completion you'll have a single uh plant that's approximately 8 [clears throat] million gallons per day of treatment capacity and A+ effluent.

Thank you. Um I just want to make a comment that collection of our sewage or black water and storm water is very important for public health, safety and welfare. And I want to thank our public works team for all they do as far as this project and all the engineering that went into it. Uh, one reason why we're having this conversation today is to educate ourselves as to what we need to do. And before we can do this, proceed with this project, we need to decide as to what we're going to do on the surface with Highway 89 through the Narrows. So, that's why we're here today to start the conversation because we need to make that decision on Highway 89 uh pretty soon. Do you have any idea when that's coming? Uh, Madame Mayor, we'll be coming back on February 10th uh with five alternatives for the roadway portion of the SR89 centralization project.

Okay. Thank you. And I just want to add uh in the news recently, there was a massive uh sewer line that broke in Washington DC and dumped a huge amount of raw sewage into the Ptoac River. and it was due to delayed maintenance is what they said. So, we certainly can't let that keep happening here. And not only are we centralizing, but we're uh increasing capacity as I understand. Yes, mayor. Yeah. Okay. Any um any comments? Ted, you want to start?

As God is my witness, I want to go on record [clears throat] at every council meeting. Tim Sherwood has shown up with a tie. He [laughter] is by far the most satorly splendid staff we have. [laughter] Jim, do you have any comments?

Uh, this is really a a heads up comment. It's not a question to be answered today. Uh, and I'd like to start with for legal in the future to tell us whether this project is subject to Prop 401. And then when we see a total of 143 million, it looks like we might be at risk of going through Prop 401 spending limits. And I to me it would be very much worthwhile to do a complete Prop 401 analysis to see where we are because I know some of these projects are exempt but some are not and I'm not sure which are and perhaps public works can straighten us out on that. Thank you.

Thank you. That's a very important question. Does our legal have any uh words?

I always have words. Um, no, but it's a very nuanced question and one that I think we need to or I'd like to see a complete analysis as it relates to Prop 401. And the issue here is the exceptions to Prop 401. And so, the exceptions to Prop 401, and for those who don't know, Prop 401 requires that large projects go through a voter approval process. And right now, that amount, I think, is around 60 million. I don't know if Lars is here and can correct me, but it's in the $60 million range because it was 40 million and it moves up with the CPI. The issue here is the exception. So, replacement and repair of sewer and water lines are exempted from Prop 401. Replacement and repair of water treatment system, wastewater treatment systems are exempt. And where we are ordered to do so by law or a court order, that's exempt as well. Now, we do have a court order that's referenced here on sudden dog phase three that we have to do. Um, and and so that part would be exempted. The SR89, I think, is a really good example of the difficulty here. SR89 has to be replaced. That's a replacement of one of these lines. And then there's all these kind of related cost. And part of the discussion was, for example, widening of the road, whether we widen or not widen. Well, widening wouldn't be related to the project. So that would be a cost that would not be a portion a part of the Prop 401 analysis. So there has to be because of the exceptions and how kind of nuanced this analysis is ultimately there has to be a determination I think by council rather than a strict legal one because there's interpretation here beyond the regular legal. We believe that we're in compliance with Prop 401 having looked at it. But I I we plan to get you a more detailed analysis of how each of these projects relate and that will take some time quite frankly. And like I said, we have looked at it and we believe that we're in compliance,

but council has to make determinations based on how these exceptions apply. And a previous council in 2015 made that determination. They looked at it and they believed that they were under the Prop 401. That doesn't excuse this council. We still have to make that determination as we go and and [clears throat] determine whether we have to. But the primary costs in all of these projects are repair and replacement. They're not the new costs, which is why I say we think we're in compliance and the fact that this is ordered under a consent decree with the state. Um, but yes, to answer that question, we we plan to get a more detailed response. We believe we're in compliance, but ultimately council has to opine on that.

Thank you. Good question, Jim. Uh, Mr. Grady. Yes. Thank you, mayor. Um, [clears throat] I just want to say we a number of us were on a tour out at the plant and the work, the expertise that and the commitment that you all make to that plant there. I think it's just eight or nine of you is just outstanding. And we were really imp impressed throughout the whole tour. the technology. Um, again, folks being on call, checking regularly on the technology, if there's alerts, etc. That was a real eye openener for me and I just want to thank you for your commitment to our community.

Thank you. Yeah, I was on that tour and I was impressed with their enthusiasm and dedication to their job. Uh, Lois,

thank you. Um, great presentation. and I learned a lot. Even though I've only been on council two years, this had never really been covered in depth. So, I appreciate um the work. What was covered in depth two years ago was some of these uh capital improvement projects. And so, we agreed at that point in time, I distinctly recall asking, can we kick any of these projects down the road? And you said they've been kicked and kicked and kicked. And so that's why we have breaking lines, you know, [snorts] and that's why we've gotten ourselves in these situations. So we bit the bullet two years ago and approved new water rates. And I've been seeing a lot of social media things about the water rates. We had an increase last January. You had a really big one this January. There'll be another one coming next January. Whether you use the water or not, you're going to be paying these rates because we have to pay off the infrastructure, the millions of dollars that are being invested. It it has it's an enterprise fund. We can't be stealing money from other buckets. So, if you're wondering why, and I know there's a lot of discussion in the community, I was gone on vacation for a month and my bill was still, it's the infrastructure we're we're charging everybody for, not just the water. So, um, just hope that helps and I'm supportive of what you guys are doing and, uh, real professional operation. I appreciate you all.

Yeah, good, good statements, Lois. And I just want to emphasize that your money is being reinvested back into the community for your benefit, Mary. So, I want to [sighs] have you help me get it clear in my head as far as that consent order related to the sewer outflow largely in Granite Creek Park

from 2023. And if I understand correctly, both from what um our attorney just said and from I believe what you mentioned to me earlier, that that consent order is um not a shield, but is one of the aspects that allows us to say 401 is not applicable to the centralization project because now we're under a a consent order. we are being required to do something about what had caused the uh sewer overflow in Granite Creek Park. But I guess what I don't have straight in my mind is how that sewer failure that flooded I think several parts of the city, not just Granite Creek Park. How that relates to the need for the centralization uh from the Sund Dog to the airport. I don't know that there was that kind of sewer failure in 2023 that the consent order is requiring us to address. So in my head, I don't see a a way that those two things connect up the whatever is c whatever caused the sewer failure in 2023. I mean the rain caused it. We can't control that. But what it was within our sewer system that allowed for that failure to happen and how that failure of our sewer system connects to the centralization from the sund dog to the airport

and part of it I could address is that there was a finding that we didn't have sufficient capacity and so the increased capacity is part of the centralization. doesn't address all there's kind of multiple questions here, right? That's why we said it's nuance, but the increased capacity, which is part of the centralization process, is mandated by the consent order.

And do we have a the the consensus that the lack of capacity along that route where the centralization is going to be happening was at least part of the reason for the sewer failure that caused the raw sewage spill in 2023? It absolutely was. It absolutely was. In dry weather conditions, we have we have adequate capacity in the pipes today. But what we don't have is capacity for those surges when storm water enters the sewer system. The city actually operates a separate sewer system from its sewer. In other words, our storm water does not go into our treatment plant. They they go into a a storm water system that ultimately dumps into our creeks which ultimately flows into the lakes which is why the lakes overtopped during that time as well because of a series of storms that happened on top of each other and we couldn't draw the lakes down fast enough. But the water also gets into the sewer system during those extremely wet weather conditions. And during that time period, we had had s we had had rain saturation. Then we had snow. Then we had rain on top of the snow. So the the meltoff from the snow was so quick that it surged. It got into the sewer system through the manholes because they're near the creeks. The creeks overflowed. They overflowed the manholes. We got water into the sewer system and the pipes couldn't handle that level of capacity. So centralization, while it wasn't designed initially to address storm water, it's designed to address the ultimate buildout and the combining of the two uh systems out to the airport treatment plant. Um if it had been there at that time, we probably would not have overflowed into Granite Creek. I hope that answers your question.

Thank you. Okay. I wouldn't. We got Hold Keep your fans going over there. Okay. So, [sighs] [laughter] thank you. Um, I guess the second thing is there was uh talk and it was 8 point something million gallons a day I think I heard once the whole thing gets done. Does that um number allow for the capacity once the permitted houses that are already in the pipeline get built out? Is that 8 million whatever uh going to accommodate all those new houses that aren't on the ground yet but but will be? The

short answer to that is yes. Thank you. Excellent. Okay. Alrighty, Mr. Ruby. Uh I want to give you all an A+ for moving us from a B minus to an A+. Thank you. [laughter]

Okay. Is that it? All right. Thank you. And we have one more topic. Is Mr. Bird here? There he is. Presentation and discussion regarding Watson Woods riparian preserve inloo fee program and conservation easement. And before we get started, I just want to say because we had such a hefty uh study session, our voting session has been pushed back to 3:30. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor Prom and council members. I'm Brian Reese. I'm the water resources manager here for the city of Prescuit and the community development department. So, um with me today, executive director for Prescat Creeks, Michael Bird, and we're here to uh give you an update on the influ program and conservation easement for the Watson Woods Riperian Preserve. So, I know that we are uh short on time and you've had a lot today. So, I'm going to try to power through this as fast and as as uh steady as I can and Mike will do the same thing um so that we can give you an update on this and then we can uh fill your guys' questions. So, um I'll start off with an a very quick overview and background. Um I'll turn it over to Michael. He'll give us an update uh give us a an overview of the Enlue fee program. then we'll go right into it and talk about the key components that we're working on and the next steps and then um we should have some time for questions and answers. Okay, so just very quickly um I think you guys all know where Watson Woods is located upstream of Watson Lake. Um uh a quick overview and background. Uh pre-1940s it was mostly native land and the native creek in this area. Uh in the 1940s with the railroad construction, we had the industrial u industrialization of the area. By the mid 1950s, um what they call midcentury landfill areas um were included in the areas. By the 1970s, quaries and gravel mining um uh came into the uh into the preserve area uh significantly altering the vegetation and the creek itself. Um by the 1990s the um those operations were were gone and uh Prescuit Creeks came in and started the preserve area and started the rehabilitation that we see there today. So this is uh shows the general location

of the preserve kind of as it is um uh proposed today about 160 acres just upstream of of uh Watson Lake. And the main emphasis on this uh slide is just to show that there are a number of city facilities and infrastructure that are in the preserve. So um um trying to maintain and have a coordination and the ability to do what we need to do with that infrastructure while running uh the preserve and the inloo fee program as needed per that program is um is the bulk of the work that we've been doing. So uh work completed to this point. Um so uh uh the bulk of the work that we've done is to try to do our due diligence and understanding the utilities, the infrastructure and the uses within the city um within the preserve area. So, we've worked extensively with our public works utility department, with um our environmental services, with um um with our recreation services, and with Prescuit Creeks in order to try to try to accommodate that. Um the hydraologic evaluation, we wanted to make sure that there was not going to be any significant impact to uh to the water supply of Watson Lake because it's part of our our water supply. We did that hydraologic evaluation um to prepare a study on the current conditions at Watson uh at Watsonwood Preserve and what the proposed conditions would be after the project was done with their wetland development. And um the uh results of that study is no significant change. Um, if anything, there might be a a slight benefit actually because with the restoration of the flood plane, slowing the water down, letting it seep, um, instead of just moving into the lake quickly where it's subject to mass evaporation over the large surface area could be a slight benefit actually, but we were just

looking to make sure that there was no unknowns that we didn't know of. We did an environmental site assessment for this um as part of uh the um um the conditions of the um inland fee program to understand if there is any uh environmental liabilities uh before this program proceeds. Did I go too over? Okay. So, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Michael now so he can talk about the ENL fee program.

Perfect. We appreciate the opportunity to be back in front of council presenting again. We were here in um May of 2024 talking about this program. And so just some details u Brian if we could advance to the next slide. Uh kind of overview of the ENL fee program is really a continuation of a 30 plus year relationship that we've had with the city of Prescuit. Uh Prescat Creeks is a notfor-profit organization here in the community. We have a mission to achieve healthy waters and clean water healthy wersheds and clean waters. And um you know really the organization was founded around uh the Granite Creek Trail that's now known as the downtown Greenway. Um, so we're pleased to see that has has progressed through the years. And then since 2007, we have uh operated the citywide Granite Creek Cleanup in coordination with the city of Prescuit, bringing out thousands of people to collect tons and tons and tons of trash out of our creeks. Um, along the way, uh, Prescuit Creeks and the city of Prescuit came together to create Watson Woods Riparian Preserve with a lease agreement in 1995. So Brian, if we can go ahead. Um kind of the the biggest activities that have happened in the preserve since 1995 is um a large-scale ecological restoration project that was really focused on functional aspects of how that ecosystem works. Uh looking at Granite Creek specifically um and the riparian habitat that's there. uh creating additional riparian habitat, cottonwoods, willows, the cattails that are pictured on the on the slide here. Um and then involving the community in all aspects of that project. Uh folks came out, they collected data, they helped us do planning, uh they ran shovels and planted cottonwoods and willows and then after the fact helped us collect data to

understand did we meet the goals of that project. Um so it was a 5-year project went from 2009 to 2013. Uh about a million and a half dollars in funding to implement all of that with um funding coming through two primary grant sources, the Arizona Water Protection Fund and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. And then of course the city was was u involved financially with inind services and some cash along the way. Um [sighs] so a little bit about the way the inloo fee program works is it's really a program that provides mitigation credits for permites that are causing unavoidable impacts to jurisdictional waters uh under section 404 of the clean water act. Uh all of that is administered through the US Army Corps of Engineers and Presca Creeks has been involved with the US Army Corps of Engineers since about 2002 2004 um working to provide mitigation um which fuels restoration and mitigation projects at the preserve. Um so requirements as that program has evolved over the years uh are that we need to have a site protection instrument in the form of a conservation easement. And so that's what we're working on right now. Okay. And before um Michael continues um Michael provided a um a financial uh letter and a credit ledger back in 2024 to council. Um, and he's also provided me some examples of how the credits have been used and I'm going to forward that information to council right after this meeting.

Perfect. So, um, we presented this slide and another, um, back in May 2024, just really trying to help, uh, folks visualize how the the ENL fee program works. Um I I think on kind of the inner the graphic portion it it shows kind of in the upper left hand corner uh we've got train stations and buildings and roadways. U those represent the unavoidable impacts that may happen through uh development within our society. um in an effort to kind of balance or or lessen the impacts of those unavoidable impacts, uh mitigation fees can go to u a place like Watson Woods Riparian Preserve that is an established inlue fee mitigation site um where restoration and mitigation work in the form of creating wetlands or other functional improvements to the wershed can occur. Um, and then those those credits that that come about through the fees go back to the permit so that they can have a full and approved permit. So there's a there's a a little cycle there that's got kind of three three or so main elements. Um, and then the players are represented in the gray boxes. The US Army Corps of Engineers, that's really the regulator of the program. They work with the permit. They work with the ENLU fee program. Uh the enlu site is prescate creeks at Watson Woods riparian preserve. We work primarily with the US Army Corps of Engineers interact with the permit through the transfer and of fees and credits. And then we've got the permite developer who can be any anybody from u private corporations to municipalities to government agencies. So everybody is subject to permit permitting under the

clean water act 404. Um so all of this is contingent on the the inloo fee site having an approved uh site protection instrument i.e. conservation uh easement and that again that's why we're here primarily today. Um the inloo fee program comes with um a lot of required elements. We've got 13 of those shown on the screen here. Um, and the site protection instrument, the conservation easement is number three on this list. Um, so without a site protection instrument, it doesn't make sense to finalize all of the other plans. So that's really a foundational element is getting this approved conservation easement before we move forward with other elements of the program. Um and and kind of to give everyone an idea of um what the on the ground component would would be uh this work plan which is number six of the required uh elements of the program really shows a lot of activity and I know this is a very complex map and it's got some very detailed tables at the bottom. We don't expect you guys to re be able to read and interpret all of that. Um but really it's showing specific activities that um involve channel and flood plane improvements and some structures to kind of help hold the system together. Um wetland creation. So the blue light blue polygons are um new wetlands that would be built throughout the program to capture water or detain water as it flows across the surface, clean that water and slowly release it downstream to the lake. Um and then that comes with a variety of benefits that range from uh economic benefits, recreational benefits, um environmental and biological um benefits as well as nuts

and bolts kind of operational benefits for the city of Prescuit. So there's a lot of work that goes into this. Uh we've worked with our our partners at natural channel uh natural channel design engineering to help put these these uh plans together and um we are looking forward to taking the next steps and Brian will talk about some of the details there.

Okay, thanks Michael. Yeah, so I wanted to go right into the key components so we can talk about the things we've been working on and trying to finalize so we can kind of package this up and and get it to you guys at a voting meeting. Um, so I'm going to start off by talking about joint management plan and where we're at on that. Then we'll go into the lease and the conservation easement and then um u a little talk about APS coordination we've been doing. So um the joint management plan. So really this this is the key document um that is is needed for this project. Um, you got the riparian preserve. Um, you got an inloo fee program um that has its own requirements, regulations, and restrictions. Um, it's a recreational site for um for the community. And on top of all that, you have a lot of infrastructure that the city has to maintain and and is accountable for. So, that joint management plan is uh those are the reasons why we're going to be putting this joint management plan together. um the differences in um in requirements, regulations, and how we can do things within a conservation easement compared to our lease areas. I'll get into the difference on that in a little bit later, are quite significant. So, you need this joint management plan to come together and kind of bridges the um the management efforts in both of those parts of this same contiguous preserve so that somebody knows what they're doing in the various areas. and we want to manage it as a preserve too. So um moving through um you know the goal of the joint management plan again is to is to provide city staff, Prescat Creek staff a combined understanding of how we're going to manage this this this place together so that it works and it functions for both parties. Um we want the preserve to be fairly seamless through there. We understand in the

areas where we have infrastructure that the city has that the city needs to be able to do some things to maintain that that infrastructure and we've worked with um with our utilities department very extensively to understand what those needs were so that we can understand um you know what is allowable uh what what would uh encumber their ability to maintain these things but what would not so that we could try to incorporate the aspects of vegetation and things like that to give a seamless appearance through this through this project, but again allow them to do what they're need to need to do. So, a lot of work went into trying to figure that out. Um, again, we worked with the recreation services for the same reason. They have trail systems, there's bridges, there's signs and fences that they maintain through there. Fire management, the uh uh the Prescuit Fire Department um um coordinated the fire management plan. That's part of the joint management plan. Make sure that we can um we can deal with small fires or large fires um through the preserve as best and as efficiently as possible and again identify responsibilities um for all these structures, utilities and everything in here. Um this uh next slide shows a excerpt of the responsibilities list that we put together um um in coordination with Prescuit Creeks and with everybody else I just mentioned. So, um, there's 75 items in total on this list at this point in time. We believe that we've got everything that's in the preserve. Um, we've designated them into kind of a different areas, structures, utilities, um, um, trails and roads and irrigation facilities. And then we labeled them and and and um, and then came up and with each one of them, we've we've coordinated and figured out who's going to be responsible for their maintenance and how that and what's the procedure for that. So um

in conjunction with that we created the four joint management plan maps uh one for utility structures, roadways and irrigation facilities. So um each one of these cross references the the uh responsibility list and provides easy um easy understanding of what the facility is, where it's located on the site. Um so you can distinguish um if something is in a conservation easement or is in the lease area and then it can um and then utilizing the the the uh the text within the joint management plan determine what the protocol is for maintenance. So that's how these things work together. Joint management plan is getting close to being completed but it wasn't completed. So we didn't want to put it in your package as an uncompleted document. might create more questions than it answered, but we're getting very close to getting it completed at this point. So, um I think uh just want to make sure I didn't miss a key point here. Well, the key point is is that we're going to complete it and then we're going to get it to you in your in in the next goound that we come back to you so that you can view it in a whole and um and so hopefully the information we ped provided at this time at least helps you get a good understanding of what you're going to see coming up next time. Okay, going into the conservation easement. So this is this is the important document for this particular inluff program. This is the uh this is the enabling instrument. Um, why is it needed? It's a a comp uh compensatory mitigation must be permanent. As Michael just talked about, people have wrote a check to allow basically the transfer of the obligations of uh of mitigation of their uh uh work that may in fact impact

wetlands or other sensitive areas to this site. And that has to be permanent. Um so the conservation easement is that instrument that allows that permanence for it. So for the city what does that do? It reduces uh some flexibility of what the city can do with the land. Um it it uh limits how you can develop that land. Um what ex what facilities you can expand on that land, how you can modify its land use. So, as we're going through this process, we carved up the conservation easement um and and created these lease areas in between where we thought there was facilities that we couldn't in order to do what we needed to do, they couldn't be in a conservation easement. So, um that when you see these maps and they're carved up, that's the reason why. Um and then the city has to make has to look at the benefits versus, you know, uh what they're giving up for this conservation easement. So those benefits on my end of it, those are those flood plane improvements that Michael was talking about. The ability to restore the flood plane, spread this water out, slow it down, that uh impacts water quality to Watson. Watson's uh and it does it in a couple different ways, but slowing the water down and spreading it out drops that sediment. It doesn't get into the lake. Um and we don't have to deal with the the loss in storage capacity. um the um vegetation that is in the preserve itself as that water is slowed down can take up uh some of the contaminants and pollutants before it actually gets to the lake helping with water quality in general. Um like I said there there could be some uh slight increases to volume in the lake because we're not reducing evaporation and waters coming in. um you know other benefits um conservation, the rehab conservation or uh habitat conservation obviously as a recreational service but those are the things those are the benefits that we

weigh against um what we have to give up for the conservation easement. So when we had to update the lease um the lease was covering the whole area but now we can't have the lease cover over where the conservation is uh excuse me where the conservation easement is. And um uh also the lease uh you know made uh started 20 years ago or whatever it was um didn't speak to the conservation easement, didn't speak to the Enlue fee program, didn't speak to the joint management plan. Um all these things are going to be a component of this preserve now. So the lease needed to be updated. Um it' be reduced to about 34 acres um with uh with the new lease. And um uh once again, why doesn't the lease cover the whole area? The conservation isn't it needs to be in perpetuity. So other encumbrance encumbrances over that complicate that matter. The easiest way to do it have lease areas where you're going to have lease areas, have conservation areas, we're going to have conservation areas. So and that's what's shown on this map right here. So, um, conservation areas are shown, um, as they were drafted up and they're each given a legal description, and we use a record of survey or a result of survey that will turn into a record of survey to do that. So, um, they carved up all of these areas. All of the lease areas that kind of fragment the conservation easements were, you know, over the last five or six years were determined uh through various various [clears throat] people um to make sure that we have enough area to accommodate future potential infrastructure for the city and that we have enough area for access and to be able to do what we need to do for our existing infrastructure. Okay. APS coordination. So, um, just real quick on this, APS had a project where they have an existing power line

that goes through the preserve and, um, they were going to upsize that power line. So, about a year and a half ago, we started talking to them, uh, with Presca Creeks and coordinating with them. And through that coordination, um, we were able to find a pathway for that new line that went around the perimeter of the site down to the south end and then back around up so that it kept the new lines out of the main area of the preserve. Um, as you can imagine, as a power company, um, they have a a very regulated need to for fire control and for vegetation control within the easement and their power lines. So, this new sorry, this new location um really uh benefits the preserve by not having that going through the middle of it. Um I think uh APS um it it it serves their needs for their maintenance. It creates a p it'll probably it'll create a fire buffer along the southern boundary because they'll be they'll be mitigating that um vegetation below them and and they'll help with some uh with some fire concerns for the area. main takeaways. We wanted to make sure that we had a path that worked for APS but worked for the future for the preserve and they also agreed that they would take the existing power lines all the way down to ground level so that there was no um no no uh you cannot see the lines they were after they're done which will help with the preserve in the future. So with that um next steps and um this slide's confusing I apologize for that. So, I'm going to walk you through it and just real quickly on it. Um, we're going to finalize our APS coordination hopefully in the next two to three months. Um, and then we're going to finalize our lease and our J uh joint management plan and the conservation easement. And then we're going to come back to you and ask you if you'll vote on it. Um so because in order to

complete all those other components that are talked about on the next bullet point um we'd like to make sure that this is a project you want to move forward with um before putting all that work into it and there and also um and also timing. So we'll bring that back to you assuming that we get the the go-ahhead to keep moving forward. um Michael and Presca Creeks and his team will will finalize all those 13 required documents and they'll submit a draft um plan to Army Corps for to start review as they're doing their review and we're getting feedback from them. Um at some point an update to the environmental assessment uh will be needed because that document needs to be um needs to be submitted within six months of the approval of the program. So there's some timing involved with that. So we'll have to coordinate with Army Corps, see where they're at in their review process, but we'll we'll do that. Then in reality, skipping over the next bullet, final development and mitigation plan. So once we start getting an idea from the Army Corps that this is all coming together and we're getting close to getting it approved, then that's when the city needs to come back and execute execute the final lease, the conservation easement, and we get the record of survey um recorded. We want all these things to happen almost at the same time because we don't want the lease floating out there if there's no conservation easement or we don't want the vice versa because they all work together. They're all different fragmented parts now. So the timing is super important as the program's getting approved. We want to bring all those things together and that's why we come to you kind of early in the process because there's a lot of moving parts at the end of the process and we kind of need to speed them up, get your approvals now so we can get them executed, get them all together so that

the whole thing goes seamless. And then at that point hopefully uh uh you can uh Michael and Presca Creeks can begin their implementation in their and their work plan and that's how it would go. Um you have some basic timelines in there but a lot of work in 2026 and and with a little bit of luck it would move forward in 2027. So with that um I have uh various experts uh in the in their fields here from the city. Um Michael and myself would be happy to ask for questions. Yeah, Brian, could I interject in Mayor if if we've got time? Um, I I have a short story that I think may tie together a lot of the themes today um and help exemplify the importance and the benefit of the on the ground work associated with this program. Uh just two minutes for additional information.

Of course, Mr. Bird.

Okay. Thank you. Um so with the with the um uh sewer treatment or the wastewater treatment uh centralization project u the storms in early 2023 were referenced um and at the time my daughter was a student over at the middle school uh and there were some acute problems in the parking lot and some of the common areas at the school there. So I was very aware of what happened. Uh Brian and I were working. I think we had some deadlines um during that time period that got pushed off because public works was just so consumed with addressing those issues. And when Brian and I did have a chance to talk, we compared notes. He he filled me in on some of the details what was happening downtown. And he he said to me, "Oh my gosh, you know, it's been such a headache. How do things look at Watsonwoods Riparian Preserve?" Um, and I didn't fully appreciate the question at first, and I think the context was that the problems in the downtown area were so egregious that further downstream where more water had come together that we may have had significant problems in the preserve. And so once I understood the nature of the question, I said to Brian, I said, "Oh, it looks great at Watson Woods. It's wet, but it did exactly what it's supposed to do with functional riparian habitat. [laughter] We've got functional flood plane where the water can spread out and slow down. And so, we had a couple of localized spots of erosion, but um with the restoration work that was done between 2009 and 2013 and the growth that's come in since then, um we really saw the benefits that additional work can kind of uh amplify within that area. So, we're not proposing to do those all over town or upstream to solve all the problems, but u I just you know that I think is the these two being

presented at the same time. It was a great way to kind of bring that together. So hopefully that that adds to the conversation. Well, thank you. I just want to say that Prescuit Creeks has a lot of public support here in Prescuit and thank you for your dedication. You've been doing this for what? your whole life pretty much. C couple of couple of years at least. Yeah.

Well, um and as you can see, there's been a lot of moving parts parts with this project. It's been in the works for several years. Looks like we got still another year to go, but we're moving forward and today was very helpful. Uh the conf conservation easement is uh pretty uh I read that pretty boilerplate. Uh I want to thank APS for working with everybody and relocating their power lines to the benefit of the project. That was wonderful of them. And uh of course we have a lease and I noticed that it's a one of those uh dollar a year leases if I'm not uh wrong. I was wondering if our um legal team might have a few comments about that because we have been working with the rodeo which had a dollar a year lease.

Yes, it does have a a limited and I think it's a dollar or zero dollars and so that has been one of the things and I guess Brian wants to address that. No, $1,

but it is part of the consideration as we go through this. What do what does the city get versus what the city gives up? And in terms of where we're at now, we have a lease uh for $0. Prescuit Creeks put a lot of effort into managing the property. Um and so is that even? We needed to make that determination. And then in terms of a conservation easement, you give up a lot of stuff. Brian pointed that out. How what all the things you're giving out and in return the city gets management and in perpetuity. Um, is that even? Is that clearly disproportionate? That's part of the determination we have to make.

Okay. All right. Thank you. So, that's something to think about. Uh, does anyone have any comments? Uh, do we need to go down the line or it looks like Lois and we do have a lot of comments. Okay.

Um, so you hit my first question, Kathy, about the dollar lease is are we giving, you know, proper value in return for the citizens of Prescuit. So something in that regard, balancing the puts and the calls would be helpful when you come back for the final. Um uh I talked to Joe last night about a couple of little concerns on page five of the lease, but those are all fixable. Um the other one for me was kind of like who are we getting involved with? Are they a uh healthy and long-term health of an entity that we're getting in business with? I actually went and checked you out on the Arizona Corporation Commission and checked out the depth of your board. Um, and so those are the kind of things that, you know, the succession plan, making sure that that you are a, even though you're a 501c3, that, you know, we're giving you an asset that we need you to manage. And so that'd be one of the things that we're going to want to even understand a little bit more about. Um, and then my concern is I absolutely mean no disrespect, but um fulfilling our fiduciary responsibility um understanding the um fund balances, how they're used, how they're planned. I don't know if that's a detail in the in the manage joint management plan, but it's something that we're going to want to understand. What does the past look like in terms of money coming in and money getting spent and then how do we project that going forward? So just that I think you're going to need to do anyhow if we were to continue a dollar lease. So we need to see the financial aspects of that. And then um so my last question um that I spoke to Joe about last night, you know, we learned this through the whole open space um [snorts] uh bill is should we be having separate parcel numbers for each one of these? because as I look at the GIS parcel numbers,

they pick up all this other land north, south, east, and west of this. And I think for purposes of uh getting crystal clear, we were able to not have to have all the parcel numbers for the um uh Prop 484, but I just think understanding crystal clarity whether that's something that we should potentially look at doing separate GIS numbers. And those were my Oh, one more. That's it. Those were my questions. Thank you.

Very good. Lois and Mary's next and then Jay. Thank you. Uh you've explained the need for uh breaking out the repairing preserve into the sections so as to allow the city to do what they needed to do for various infrastructure needs. Is there anything in the lease? And I didn't spot it if there was uh that puts some guard rails around what the city can do when they go in to do whatever work they need to do for the infrastructure so it doesn't conflict excessively with what um Prescuit Creeks would be looking to do in those areas that they are managing.

Uh yeah, I I think that's where the joint management plan really comes into play. Um so sort of what was featured today in the presentation were uh infrastructure that currently exists both underground above ground gates you know fences those sorts of things. Those are the 75 items that are included there. Uh but there will be sections of the joint management plan that address exactly what you're getting at. Um should a sewer line break or be um scheduled for for maintenance. uh how collectively will we approach those things? Um obviously in the event of an emergency situation uh action needs to be taken immediately and so lots of planning and notification all all those sorts of things would be different than a planned scheduled activity in advance. So that's really the intent with the joint management plan and that plan would be updated on a 5-year basis. Um so that we don't end up 30 years out going what does this represent? It's not like reality at all. Um and I think that kind of brings the relationship of the parties together where we're working cooperatively cooperatively on an ongoing basis.

Thank you. And I guess the other question that popped into my mind when talking about the APS movement of their lines uh underground and around the south end of the preserve. I'm assuming that is on preserve land as opposed to moving into the private parcels that are on the other side of the boundary south end. Correct. That's correct. And just as a point of clarification, all of the APS infrastructure would be overhead. Um, so no underground uh power lines that I'm aware of.

So for clarification, you might have I said that they were going to move remove the existing line that's no longer going to be needed, poles and um base down to below ground level so that it couldn't be seen in the preserve anymore. So maybe that's Thank you. My mistake in in interpreting what you were saying. And I thought you were indicating that the new line would be below grade. Thank you. That'd be that'd be cool, but that's not the [laughter] situation. Yeah. Thank you. Mr. Grady, did you have a comment? I'm sorry. Mr. Ruby, did you have a comment? Because we have Mr. Grady here, too.

Yes. So, first I want to the presentation I thought was really good. I thought there was I loved the amount of foresight and coordination. And also just want to thank Prescuit Creeks because I remember seeing that place when I moved here in the '9s. and you've built a beautiful sponge to clean our water as it comes into the lake. So, I'll give out my second A+ of the day. Thank you. Mr. Grady.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Um yeah, I just want to echo what Lois was talking about um or referring to and and that is you know having some information on so what does the inloo credit what's that look like in terms of dollars that you don't have to do this today but in future presentation and then getting a better understanding of how's that money flow to projects how does that money flow to the operating cost of prescat creeks and I just like to echo Jay's comment as well. This is a this is a a beautiful kind of iconic um site and preserve in our community, one of the few that we have and to protect it with a conservation easement is really a great next move.

Perfect. Thank you, Mr. uh Gambboji. Any comments? Great job. Thank you. And Jim, we're going to get a lot of work out of Prescuit Creeks and it's a win-win project. Thank you. I just have one um last question. The care and feeding of conservation easements can get very expensive. Are you going to be paying all the fees because I think you're the one that's going to be managing the conservation easement yourself or are you going to have a trust come in and do it?

Uh no. Prescate Creeks will be the grantee in the in the two-party transaction. The city city will be the grtor of the easement. Prescate Creeks will be the grantee. And so we will have that responsibility for annual m annual monitoring. Okay. Um of the easement itself and and all of the improvements as part of the inloo fee program are kind of related but separate to that. Um so part of um I guess just to speak briefly and in generalities about um the fees that come in um all of those fees are highly restrictive to u the activities that are described in our mitigation and development plan. Um so we can't go you know uh do staff retreats to Aruba or whatever with those funds. um they're very specific to on the ground activities and administrative asso administrative costs associated with that. Um part of our responsibility is to report annually to the US Army Corps of Engineers where we describe credit transfers and amounts and all those sorts of details. Um and as we get into active construction projects with restoration work, we'll have details about that. So I think um our as we envision the future presenting to council on an annual basis or semiannual or whatever the right schedule is um we want to make sure that council understands what's happening. Uh we'll be working closely with staff on a day-to-day basis but um you guys don't want all those gritty details. Um, so we we'd like to come in periodically and provide the overview so you understand what's happening. Um, and we can jointly celebrate and the successes that are happening over time.

Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that the city was not going to be surprised with any conservation uh management fees. You'll be taking care of all that work yourself. Yeah. That that's part of what is built into the program and we don't anticipate that. Mayor. Okay. All right. Thank you. It's uh 3:19. We'll be back at 3:30. So, we got about 10 minutes. Perfect. Thank you.