City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. Today is May 28th, 2026, and this is the City of Prescott City Council study session. Roll call, please.

Mayor Ruesing.

I am here.

Mayor Pro Tempreworth. I am here. Councilwoman Fredrickson. I'm here. Councilman Gamboge.

Present.

Councilman Garing.

Here.

Councilman Grady.

Here as well.

And Councilman Ruby.

Here I am.

Our first item is a presentation and discussion regarding the Facilities Assessment and Condition Report by Terracon Consultants.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Tim Legler, Deputy Director of Recreation Services. So Trent here, Murray is walking up. He's from Terracon. The city did a facilities assessment through Terracon, and he's going to go through the results in a little slideshow here. And if you guys have questions between him and I, we'll answer them.

Is this the first time we've done a facilities assessment, or do we do these on a regular basis?

The first time in recent history.

Wow, because I was going to say, I don't remember this.

I think the last one was done, the best I could tell, was prior to 2008.

Wow. Well, I think it's about time. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much for this opportunity to be here. I have to... Of course, do kind of a shout out to Tim and Pete with their amazing facilities team and the time that they spent in helping us collect the data and escort us through all the different facilities. You've got some wonderful facilities up here in Prescott and love to spend more time in them too, of course, myself and the surrounding area. Just as Tim had mentioned, my name is Trent Murray. I'm a department manager for Terracon out of our Tempe office. Terracon Consultants is, we do geotechnical, environmental materials, and then of course facility consulting. And so that's part of the reason, again, why we're here for this facility condition assessment. And look forward to your questions. So please stop me at any time if you would like. Happy to answer those questions, best of my ability here. If not, happy to get back to you just as quickly as possible with any questions I may not be able to answer at this time. So thank you again for this opportunity. As you're aware, we perform a facility condition assessment, which of course is to help the city of Prescott reach this goal basically of capital planning asset management over time. We've provided a very detailed report and more information that you'd be able to get in this presentation that's come in what would be a PDF kind of document, but then also an Excel document. And also an Excel document that's got all the information here that we'll kind of go over. We'll kind of go over some high-end kind of data, maybe dig down a little bit into a couple different things. But just know that there's a lot more to all this information that we've provided. So as you can kind of see here, just With the current current condition assessment to then just what we would say deficiencies and then of course any future Funding requirements that type of thing so you'll see all that here in the next little bit so just to kind of touch base on what we You all know kind of your facilities, but just to touch base on the high level here, we hit the 35 different sites. On those sites, 69 different buildings. Of those items, the inventory records that we gathered are, again, just over 3,000 inventory items. With what you would say deficiency is what we also call work item records. Those are, again, could be deferred maintenance, of 345 items specifically. And then you can kind of just see just a little bit here too, just the number of gross square footage to what those deficiencies or work item costs could be. And then we'll jump into a little bit also of what is FCI, which is a facility condition index. And just know that from the information that we gathered, the city is in whole. We find it in what would be a rating of good currently. And we'll go into that a little bit more as it is too. and dive into maybe a little bit of other facilities that could see some more love, I guess you would say, but have maybe a little bit deficiencies, a little bit more deficiencies than others. So as we jump into that, into this information, go a little bit more, I just want to, I know I kind of mentioned this in the overview as it was, but just to help you all understand just a little bit too of You know, why we do or why you would do a facility condition assessment, but specifically that scope, again, is to gather the information. We do a visual inspection. Okay, so again, as it's mentioned, non-destructive. So it is visual in nature. And we gather a lot of information from Pete and Tim and Pete and that team to kind of understand what their headaches are, you know, maybe some past information to help gather what that condition could be. Cause we're just kind of onsite for a short period of time. Um, as, as we see things, but, um, you know, we gather the information as a condition, you know, the age. We will go over kind of estimated service life a little bit more. But then we prepare, you know, budgets as it's related to maintenance and capital renewal. And then we have that 10-year plan, again, as part of this report that, again, the detail you'll see more, a lot more of that, again, in our report as it is basically. But diving into it, again, of kind of what our workflow is. This kind of just gives you an idea of how we went about this, assessing the facilities. One of the things that we do is we have a program called Paragon. It's a web-based application that we collect all this data in, which then also helps us with our cost estimating, data analysis, and that budget forecasting, and then, of course, the reporting side. The Department of Defense is kind of like a baseline, just so you all know. And then we also use what's called RS-Means, which gives us cost analysis and so forth. It's related kind of as an average across the country and so forth, and cost factors related specifically to Arizona. All within this system. So, again, this web-based system, it really helps us throughout the process.

Madam Mayor.

Yes, Ted. Go ahead.

A couple questions. How many man-hours did you put into this?

So, oh, gosh, going back. So I will tell you that we had a team of... roughly three to four individuals for roughly two full weeks, just collecting the data at the sites or in the field. And then outside of that, We had weeks of just going through quality control, making sure our data is where it needs to be, where we want it to be, making sure there weren't any major crazy errors, I guess you would say. And then we also had our review process. Terracon's review process basically is that we have what's called an authorized project reviewer that reviews everything. that comes through on the reporting side specifically, but even the data. So kind of hard to say without me going back and giving you specifics, but we had weeks to months, a couple months basically in this process of gathering this information and then finally doing a report out.

to Tim and his team. Throughout your presentation, even in an earlier slide, you talked about FCI. And I'm always looking for a scale, like 1 to 10, 1 to 5. And I see a number that looks just abysmal to me, and you say it's good. So do you have a scale for FCI?

I do. And if you don't mind, if you'll wait for just a couple more slides, I'll get right into that scale and how you can see that scale specifically to the city's facilities. And just remind me, though, if I somehow jump over that, I want to make sure that I answer that question for you. So what's important with this facility condition assessment is actually giving it what is called a direct condition rating. We use, again, a nine-point scale, which is, again, a Department of Defense kind of criteria that is used, and that helps us basically in scaling the condition, again, of of each one of the inventory items that we gather in the field. Sometimes you may even see this beyond service life that you see there at the bottom. And again, if you were to dig down into the data, that just means that there are items that have gone past its actual age or an estimated service life. And then it starts this beyond service life. So just to kind of give you an idea. But the nine-point scale going from yellow to red, and again, that's on each individual item. Once you get down into more of the yellow-red, that's where we come into recommendations of replacement, sooner rather than later potentially. Again, the reason why that's important is this next slide is because I give you kind of an example here of an estimated remaining service life. On the left, you'll actually see that in comparison of doing a condition rating to one that doesn't have a condition rating, And what that is is by giving it a condition rating, you're actually able to see potentially what would be the realistic estimated remaining service life of a unit instead of just going off of when the unit was installed or the age of the unit specifically, which you kind of see more on the right. So on the right-hand side, you could – let's just take a – you know, basically a rooftop unit that, again, 20 years old roughly, right? If you go off of just age, it could be that you have about 13 years left of that unit. But with the one on the left, when you do what would be the condition rating and having someone actually come out and just look at the item, then if it's given a Y+, which isn't necessarily in the good status, but there could be repairs that are needed, it actually could drop that estimated remaining service life down by roughly four years, which means you may have to replace it sooner than if you're just going off of age. So that's the reason for the importance of why I threw this slide in here, just to help you understand the need to do any condition rating. But please go ahead.

Yeah, Lois. Thank you. I actually did spend time studying this slide, and I got myself mentally there with the exception of PM factor.

Oh, the PM factor. So your PM factor, again, is like preventive maintenance. So yes, lots of acronyms, of course, in the facility world, but PM is your preventive maintenance type factor, right? Thank you. So moving on from there, as I explain this estimated remaining service life, you'll kind of see some other examples throughout. Just wanted to make sure to understand the difference between that and then just going right off of like an age-based assessment. So to your question earlier, and then to kind of go into A little bit more detail as it's related to the portfolio of all the facilities. So as I had mentioned, that facility condition index As you see, it's kind of a small number, right? What that number basically represents, again, to the right you can see, that's taking the total cost of repairs or your deficiencies, of course, divided by your current replacement value, which times it by 100. Madam Mayor.

Yes, Ted. Can we get him a pointer? Is this a pointer on here?

It may be.

There it is.

It highlights it. Okay. So this is where I was mentioning where the FCI number comes from right here to the top right. And you'll see that as we, what I mean by it's good is that majority of the facilities, when you take kind of more of an average or taking the information, we and or the industry actually looks at the, let's see if I can do that again, looks at it that if you have anything greater than zero, but less than or equal to 0.05, right, in that factor, you actually find yourself more in what would be in the good status. So roughly 17 sites and 45 building assets fall within that good section. Now, as you come up, you will find some in the yellow, some in the orange, and then even some in what we would call very poor, which, again, is only a 0.15, or you have a basically 15% what would be total cost of repairs going into what would be total replacement value. But some of those numbers can get up, can grow significantly depending on how much work and or, well, you know, repairs and or the PMs that kind of go into or the preventive maintenance that goes into the facility specifically. Just want to make sure that answers your question there to kind of give you an idea of that scale specifically. So with the, there are a couple of sites and a couple of buildings that we found that, or from doing the analysis, of course, that you're seeing that the cost of repairs is quite significant, right, to that current replacement value.

And when you go to the next slide, are you going to correlate the two?

Yeah, I'm going to go in and correlate the two, but also give you a little bit more information on where those locations or those sites actually are. Again, for a... Tim has a full report of this and can easily provide even more information to you or if needed we could provide more information as it is. So moving to this next slide, you'll see that of course on the left-hand side the ones that are kind of boxed in red are what would be a site or buildings that fall within that red category to then the orange, then to the yellow. As you see, that 1102 site, which is the 1280 East Rosser Street, that's the site of what would be the Simmons Community Center. And the reason why that sees such a high FCI is because and we can actually look into this a little bit further, or I may have a little bit of information on this. If I don't, I apologize at this moment, but it's related to the parking lot specifically. So there's, when you look at the replacement value of what would be the site specifically, the largest item out there is going to be your parking space. your drive lanes and your sidewalks type of a situation. And some of that we've felt when we were there on site need to be taken care of, replaced, whatever that may be. And so that's where you're seeing that large deficiency specifically for that site. So, yeah. So, moving to the next one. Next slide. Just to kind of make sure that everybody kind of understands the maintenance, there's the main kind of three budget accounts that we have within the system, and that is our preventative maintenance, or we calculate kind of what preventative maintenance could possibly be for the city of right, for the city, but it's not saying that we know exactly what that actually is, but again, your planned, your routine activities to then what would be, we also have a sustainment deficiency, which is your reactive work orders and so forth that take place, but then you also have your sustainment of your component renewal, right, and that is your estimated service life. So you could see those three budgets kind of come up within the report, and and then also potentially within different graphs and so forth as it is throughout the main report. So I just want to make sure I kind of point that out there to you. So as we did this, the full analysis across the board, we're looking at within the first year roughly of about between deficiencies and renewal, roughly about $5.5 million. Go ahead. Yes. Sorry.

The mayor has to recognize me first, though I appreciate you recognizing me. I see the hand and I just... I'm a little slow. I'm sorry. Just a question for Dallin, actually. In our budget, we have 5.5 million. Is that what this is? Correlates to that line? That's right. Perfect. Thank you.

Welcome. And then you'll also know or see the course over the next 10 years, potential of, you know, $23 million basically. And we'll kind of go into a little bit of what that looks like in the future slides of if you, you know, a zero-based kind of budget put towards the taking care of what would be deficiencies and renewals to a larger amount, basically, that could potentially help. But you'll also see how that affects what would be that facility condition index for the city as a whole. So just to... Yeah, not to belay it any further on some of that information, just this gives you a visual of what was just mentioned on that past slide specifically. And that's also the three different budget categories as kind of mentioned, so you'll So from our component renewal, you'll see the 23 million kind of coming across And we can jump into what some of those component renewals are going to look like or what you could foresee Because the detail is there just so just so you know, but just to give you kind of a visual They're wanting to see the number specifically I Some of what we call, again, the deficiencies or work order items. This is where I had mentioned, of course, that site, that 1280 Rosler Street, basically to replace what would be the roadway. parking lot, so forth. But these are some of the numbers that, of course, the estimates that we came up with through some of the, just the different items that you see there, specifically, of course, the higher cost and then the higher impact work items or deficiencies that may stand out to you a little bit more as you should go through the information. Madam Mayor.

Yes, Ted.

I've got two questions on this slide. Yes, sir. We have a new terminal and that old thing from World War II. How could we spend over $100,000 to carpet that old building?

So it may specifically be carpet, but it actually is more of your floor finish specifically throughout the building.

What do we use that for now, Alan? The old airport terminal, what do we use that for?

The old airport terminal has Susie's. The restaurant. The restaurant. There's a TSA office, I believe, still in a portion of it. And occasionally there are meetings in the building, but we don't have a lot of uses in that site.

And then we get a lot of grousing in the community for moving into this building. And you're saying we need to spend a quarter of a million dollars on a new air handler in this building? So that...

Sorry. With that situation, I'd have to look to specifically see exactly when that's looking to be replaced, if it's more of a component or if it was, again, an item. Sorry, I'm just looking. Yeah, new city hall, sorry, with the replace the air handling unit. All I can basically say to that specifically right now without looking into it further is that because it is considered a work item, that the condition... How it was rated, I'd have to go back and look at that specifically and even talk to one of my assessors a little bit more. Tim, unless you had some other information specific on that. I'm trying to remember some of the history specifically, though, too, if there was anything.

So I don't believe it's your... I think what you're referring to is the rooftop unit. Air handlers are all throughout every floor in this building, and I believe that that... plays into some of the air handlers that were already in this building when we purchased it. And that's a bulk item of them. So above these ceilings, they all have different air handlers that, you know, move the air around and stuff. And that's a bulk of those that are in there. These are the recommendations or what they're saying per the assessment and the service life. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to come to you and say, I need a quarter million dollars to do this or else it's, that's the assessment and the lifespan of these units.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you, Tim.

So, sorry, there must have been a little bit of a situation here and actually with this level two requirements over the 10 years. I don't know if you have the details specifically within the slide.

Yeah, it took me to the next one.

So I'm not too sure why that doesn't actually show up, but each one of the pie chart here actually has different items. So you do have it in front of you, which is nice, that detail. I'm not too sure why it's not showing up here right at this moment. A little technology flaw here. But of course, some of the larger items you're seeing there just over the next 10 years, interior-type finishes, Again, this is a broad base across all the city's facilities.

Try moving your cursor in that block or blue dot. Not the way. Above the pie chart is a little box, and to the left of that box is a blue dot. Yep.

Let me see. See if I can, aha, nope, that just took it.

It doesn't control the functionality.

Hey, there it came up there. I don't know why all of a sudden it decided it wanted to work, but hey, it worked. I know, there you go, yes, thank you. But again, yes, from your interior finishes to some electrical type upgrades, mechanical systems, some of your larger ones, right? And then even some site improvements specifically. Again, this is across all the facilities.

And how much does this add up to?

So this would be that roughly 23 million. This is over the 10 years.

Mary? Sorry, if we could step back one slide. The highest cost work items and then the list on the right is the highest impact work items. What is that calculated on? What does that mean, highest impact?

Yeah, so the impact specifically is going to be taking into consideration more of what would be a safety or environmental as you kind of see onto the right hand side of like that column. Sometimes they can be a larger, I wouldn't say a larger factor, but a larger concern, right, to take care of them.

Okay, so it's just an assessment of how important the category of type of deficiency?

Right. And again, these are, as Tim mentioned, these are recommendations and can be taken if it's decided that there's a different category that needs to be, you know.

Brought up on the list. Brought up, yeah. Okay. Type of a situation. Thank you. Patrick.

Thank you, Mayor. On that same slide that you're on, I see that there's several items under highest impact of what appears to be the rodeo property with the grandstands. Is that correct? And of course, the rodeo grounds warehouse. Dallin, is that a part of our responsibility under the lease?

Not necessarily. So it's city property, and so we include it in the assessment. But how we move forward is a conversation with the PFD. Thanks.

I have a question. Was the armory included? I didn't see. It's un-girly. I didn't see...

Oh, okay. Gray Sparks, because I didn't see that on here. Specifically on this slide?

Oh, there it is, Gray Sparks. Okay, I'm sorry. I was looking for the address. Thank you.

No worries. Any further questions on this slide real quick before moving forward? And just know that it did come back up with all the information this time, which I'm super happy for on this slide. I don't know why it didn't work the first time. But again, it's in the report. There are lots of details basically kind of going into this and numbers associated with this, of course, as it is. So wanted to just demonstrate what would be, again, a no funding scenario with what's been gathered so far to, Again, if there was no budget over the next 10 years of kind of where that FCI would kind of go, as you see in that far right-hand corner. Now that's, again, this is for all of the city's facilities. Okay, so you'd be going from that 0.018, right, to a 0.1, which would then fall into a different category of being more of poor, right, type of a situation. And then kind of give you a little bit of a different scenario here that if, understandably, this is a number that we just threw in there. This is not a number that we received from anywhere. You know, Tim didn't give us this number. I just want to make sure that everybody understands we just threw in an arbitrary number of like 2.5 million. Okay, and where... where things would head or where they would go basically with the money spent on these deficiencies.

Yes, Jim.

Are all of the columns on this exhibit increased by 3% each year? In other words, if you took 2035, it would be considerably less than today dollars because it's been advanced 3% a year for 10 years?

Uh, so, so looking at that in inflation, just to make sure I'm understanding, I guess the question though too, is just looking at, cause we can't predict exactly what it's going to be over year over year, right? We just put a inflation factor of 3% just to help hopefully, you know, plan. Um, hopefully there's not another COVID that runs that up even higher than 3% a year, but But it does just provide an inflation factor more or less. The only thing that doesn't necessarily change, as you can kind of see there, is that target spend of 2.5. That doesn't take that inflation factor in, right, as you see it there. I don't know if that answers entirely your question or not, or if I missed it altogether.

Well, so maybe you have... If you take the year 10, 2035, $2,417,982, what was that value today? Gotcha. I understand now. In other words, is it inflated 3% each of the 10 years?

So I'm, of course, kind of looking at it there. I would have to actually go back and look at that number. I believe what we're giving you right here is in what would be almost today's dollars potentially. However, we do have the ability to provide you more of what that cost burden or inflation could potentially be throughout. I'm just kind of looking just to make sure. Let me just go back one other slide real quick. to, because that.

Same numbers.

Yeah, and you're right. So yeah, so similar numbers just going off of what it looks like today specifically. And I'd have to, I could easily look into this information a little bit more for you and send information out to Tim so he can provide you specifically that information as it, about specifically your question. I would basically say that we've taken what we know today and have tried to just give you kind of an outlook, right? from today's looking at it today, potentially, of what you're looking at. But I'd have to, again, get back to you on that 3% increase.

It would make sense, though, to inflate each of those years by some accepted inflation number to get a real estimate of how how much deferred we're actually going to be at the end of 10 years, wouldn't it?

I totally agree with you. And I would basically say that, yes, that's normally the case. But again, when I look at this with your question, I do not necessarily see that inflation going into it. So I'd have to go back and run and look at the numbers again.

Okay. And then the $2.5 million each and every of the 10 years, that's not in our budget, is it?

That is a great question. I do not know that.

I didn't see it in the, you mean the five-year CIP?

Go ahead, Tim.

So the 2.5, so regular operating budget for facilities will cover a lot of the general maintenance. The deferred maintenance and the 5, what was it, 5.4 million or whatever, that's items outside like equipment replacement. But the general, I shouldn't say general, the maintenance fund for facilities will cover a majority of the maintenance just in normal operation. That's our operating budget.

All right, thank you. So somehow there's $2.5 million every year built into the budget for maintenance.

So I would say just know that this funding scenario that we're showing here just gives an arbitrary number. It's not a number that I necessarily got anywhere. It was just to show the difference between no funding being provided to what would be a more sustainable type funding scenario potential. just to help you see the difference in how it affects what will be your facility condition index and where it falls within that scale basically of going from good to fair to poor, to potentially very poor if nothing's done, right? Any other questions there just to make sure? But I'd be happy to get back to you on that 3% inflation, specifically on those different years, and let Tim know, and then he can report out again. This just gives more of a visual kind of comparison if you wanted to see it more and more in a graph, right? So again the no funding on the left to a sustainable funding scenario more on the right with your what would be basically your your FCI also in there as it is on what would be the right hand side, your numbers on the right hand side of each one of the graphs.

Same question on those bars.

Basically, if that inflation's affecting that specifically.

Yeah.

No, totally understandable.

So did anyone come up with a recommendation what an actual, what we should actually anticipate in funding annually?

Yeah, go ahead, Tim.

So, yes, in the report, and the report's like 1,000 pages long. In the report, it basically spells out what we should be doing each year. Part of the $5.4 million that it said in one of the previous slides, that's the deferred maintenance that should happen now. Granted, we don't have the 5.4 to do that. So we're going to take the top priority of items that are deficient and get those repaired and do – A little bit each year as we can get the funding to do that stuff. But it is listed out in the master report of what all the deficiencies are and what needs to be fixed or repaired or replaced.

But, you know, we have a five-year CIP. Correct. Should we have a number so we can get that in there?

Yes, and we do. And we've been working with finance on that. And Lars is going to come up and talk about that. We got the report right during the budget. Okay.

Yeah, Mayor, Council, Lars Johnson, Finance Director. In the next item of the study session, we're going to talk about that a little bit, but based on Council's feedback, we put in 1.5 million for the five years upcoming to take care of this deferred maintenance. Point two million roughly was identified as needs that are deferred deficient So we were going to tackle that as we have funding available the facilities fund doesn't have available capital for that So we were going to propose to council Excess revenues that are accumulated each year. We would allocate towards the facilities deferred maintenance program and This next year 1.5 million. We'll take a look at it each year to see how much we could do I

Mayor, okay, Mary, thank you. If I understand both the tables and the chart that essentially just shows the tables in another format, is primarily from my view, just to show us the difference in the rating, the index, that happens if you don't fund it at all, and in this case, just as an example, the 2.5 million sustainable funding, how, In this chart, it shows that if you don't fund it at all, the rating, the index goes south, I guess. But if there is some sustainable funding over the years, the index remains livable.

Correct, correct. Thanks. Yeah. No, great evaluation. Any other further questions on this?

Everybody okay?

Yep. So just more in conclusion, just again, just the opportunity to be able to provide you with the information related to a facility condition index. Again, this is industry kind of standard of what's kind of used in this index to get into your different type of scenarios that hopefully will help in making decisions in the future for the city of Prescott. We appreciate the opportunity.

And I think this will save us tax dollars in the future if we take care of small problems now before they evolve into larger problems. You can just use an example as your own home if you don't do preventative maintenance and repairs. So thank you.

Lois? I just have a question for, I guess, Tim. After you got the 1,000 pages, were you surprised

Not, no, not really. I wouldn't have expected. No.

Okay. Were there photos? Which is good, good to know. Were there photos to document everything?

Yeah, there's a full report of each, yep. If there's like, he talked about parking lots, there's pictures of the parking lots and what the deficiencies and stuff are.

Well, thank you for doing this every almost 20 years. I think it's always a good idea. Thank you, Trent.

Thank you, appreciate the opportunity.

Okay, thanks.

All right, our next item is presentation, discussion, and possible direction or action regarding a follow-up to the fiscal year 2027 budget workshops one, two, and three.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So as the clerk read, this is the follow-up From our three budget workshop, we've had and the goal of today is to get council direction on what Changes you'd like to make to our proposed budget so we can bring back on the on the 9th When we adopt the tentative it'd be a budget that you all can support Today we've also In between budget workshops and the comments and feedback that you all have given us, we've come up with some revised proposals. So there's, for example, the first one we're going to talk about is city court. We will be discussing a proposal that has been revised for your consideration. Today's agenda is such that if needed, council can make motions and take votes. But general direction and polling is fine as well. So with that, we'll jump right into our city court revised proposal and our judge is making his way up to start the conversation.

Well, good afternoon, Mayor, Council. I do feel like I'm starting after the deferred maintenance because that's what I feel like the city court has been. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but that is what it is. We're not an old car that's not running well. We're one that the wheels have just about come off. What I'd like to do is start with our numbers. We talked about... Why do you want this money? Why do you need more staff? Why do you need a facility? These are the numbers. This is what we're processing. We've gone up from 5,101 to 9,525, and we're gonna be over 10,000 this year for total filings. And that includes cases that are on warrant that come back because we have this huge bulge. If you could flip to the next slide, Lars.

Before we go to the next slide, I got a question.

Yes.

Yes.

On misdemeanors from 2021 to 2025, the growth looks linear. And then 2026, it's exponential. Why is that?

If you take a look, can you go to the next slide, Lars? And one more. This, this is what's causing it. Do you see how from 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, there were more filings coming in every year than terminations? So what it is is we have this enormous backlog of cases. And for 2026, the numbers include the total filings, so things that are still sitting there that we're now dealing with. I don't mean on warrant. Warrant doesn't count in these numbers. These are only the ones that come back in. The people are being processed. That's why these numbers are so high. We were falling behind all of these years. That's why I listed the lag and then the net change in filings. You see from 2021 to 2025, we're up 86%. And speaking to... Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Why is that?

It's just the changes in the demographics. Talking to the city attorney, he said the last business study they did says that daily, the population of Prescott swells to 125,000 as people commute into the city to work. That brings more cases. I actually went through and tracked the cases, the filings, and how they go. We have more filings that tie to when it's rodeo. to when it's fall break, to when it's Christmas, to when it's New Year's, and spring break. You can actually see the filings rise. But we have those events every year. They're growing. The Phoenix Valley is growing. More and more people are using this as a destination. So we have this influx that's temporary. Carry on. So if you can go back, you can go forward one more. So this is actually the categories subsumed together, misdemeanor criminal traffic, civil traffic, you'll see the growth. This is why we're asking for more staff. We simply don't have enough clerks to process. We process things in the courtroom, but then once we're out of the courtroom, we are now 60 to 90 days behind in finishing up those paperwork, that paperwork so that that case is totally closed. We simply are not able to keep up. That's why we're asking for more staff. Last but not least, can you go forward, Lars?

Mayor? I'm sorry. Yes, Mary. Your Honor, before we get off of that idea, is the lags that go from year to year, is that strictly the number coming in versus... Yeah. and the number of staff to process those increases? Or is there some other factor other than just not being able to get them through the process fast enough?

You know, in the courts, it can be a variety of factors. One of it is space and... Calendar space, how quickly can we set these matters? Administrative Office of the Court standards are every time a case is reset, it should be 30 days or less. The courts that are consistent in the time standards are resetting within three weeks. This morning, I'm setting cases out seven to eight weeks Because there's simply no room in the calendar. We have too many settings. That's why in the next courthouse, we asked for another hearing room. We could shift some stuff off so that we could have more settings. Of course, that requires more personnel, not just clerks. We have to have more attorneys. The city has to have another prosecutor, which they just hired.

So we're looking at elements that are being put in place that will eventually address the lag?

Yes. Yes. We are getting there, but we just don't have enough to get over the hump. To steal the words of the mayor, if you don't mind. Yeah. Because that's exactly what's going on. And unfortunately, it's something that I believe should have been addressed a few years ago had it been brought to council's attention. I don't think it was brought to your attention. But again, you didn't have a full-time judge. These are all things you put into place in the last year to say, hey, this is what's going on with these numbers. This is what the judge's job is, not just to be in the courtroom handling cases, but to follow the trends to bring it to you to say, this is the resources we need to address this in a timely manner.

Thank you.

Lois? Yes, what I also noticed, which in the pre-reading really shocked me, but then I went, no, I'm not shocked at all, because everyone's talking about how the last two years, speeding, all sorts of road rage, that they're seeing it, and it's all over social media, everyone's talking about it, and voila, there were the numbers. So I was not surprised to see how much that's grown.

Well, it is the post-COVID era where the interpersonal relationships have severely deteriorated. Whereas people would have just said, somebody yells at somebody, well, have a nice day. Something's wrong. As I have somebody works for me who says, well, have a blessed day and just kind of move on. Nowadays, people get in that confrontation. You know, somebody cuts them off. They go up to the car and they threaten them. I had a case like that just last week. So, yeah, that's exactly what we're seeing. And can you go to the next slide, Lars? Last but not least, Councilmember Gamboge, I wanted to address your concern about the space. We actually went through and measured everything. The actual court itself is housed within approximately 1,000 square feet. We are using Superior Court's courtroom. That's another 1,000 square feet. And then the chambers for the judge, that's 2,100. That's the space it's in now. We are, however, using the county's facilities, the waiting area, the check-in, the bathrooms, the jury room, the break room. We're in 5850. We go into a new building, we have to have those things. We have to have a waiting room. We have to have staff bathrooms. We have to have public bathrooms. And quite frankly, on that first floor, the city court is bringing in the most traffic.

How big is the waiting room you're proposing?

We're going to do something similar in size. We're still waiting for the plans from Tim because we're the ones bringing in all the people right now. It's not Justice Court. It's us. Their highest docket is evictions.

The county's waiting room is 1,000 square feet?

Yes, the main waiting area. There is a check-in area, and then there's another hallway to the courtroom outside. That's another 1,000 square feet.

So is 1,010 the total courthouse waiting room?

No.

What is it?

It's about 2,500, and we fill it with about 70 people per docket.

Are you going to have room for some entity similar to like Footworks that can process things right on site?

Yeah, we asked for some office space. It's a small office, but yeah, the people could go right there. Absolutely. The other thing that we're working on is MVD actually will allow us to have a terminal where people can go and print out an MBR or renew their registration. Same like they have at MVD now when you go, you can actually have one of those terminals in the courthouse. There's a fee to it, but again, if we can cover it through some other costs that we capture, it's the convenience.

Okay, good.

Yes, ma'am. All right, so now moving on to the budget, there were some changes. Lars will help me with these. There were some changes in staffing. The biggest one that we did was we took out the two full-time security personnel and the bailiff, which we're right now paying about half of the salary for, and we just went with an armed security guard. I will tell you that all of the courts that have done that statewide within one to two years bring that security in-house due to reliability concerns. meaning people don't show up for work, because if you got one and they don't show up, well, then now it's pushed it onto court staff because we can't just not open. So we reduced that. Also, some of the capital requests was reduced due to the fact that when we talked to the city manager, some of the resources, like, for instance, the cameras and stuff is what we would use in the connected courtroom. The numbers that I had, I had to rely upon what Superior Court paid. A lot of those resources are in-house in the city with IT, so we could bring those costs down and intend to. There were also some new fees that I have suggested, and I've talked to the city attorney about these. We can impose a capital improvement fee. Mesa did this about 25, 30 years ago when they built their new courthouse. If the fee is written correctly, we can avoid surcharges. That's very important because the state surcharges are 79%. You'll recall you did a civil docketing fee of $45. The documentation showed what actually went in that people pay is $80.55. The remaining money from the 45 to 80 goes to the state, not to us. So if we write the capital improvement fee correctly, we can avoid surcharges and that money goes directly into reimbursing the city for the improvements to the building and hopefully to buying the building.

Well, you know, it's only fair that if you're a perpetrator using this resource, then you should bear the cost.

That's correct. Don't come to court.

Using the resource, not the law-abiding taxpayers.

Well, it's kind of like they said for water. We found the best way to get people to conserve is the bill. The best way to get people to comply is the bill. And then I've also recommended a court sustainability fee. That one would have to have surcharges, but I would suggest keeping that low, like $15 on every single case. Right now, the two fees we have, the criminal fee, part of that money goes to the police for warrants. Part of it goes to the city attorney for processing. So this fee would be solely for the court, and the way that it's written in MESA is it increases, I believe, 3% every other year. So we can continue to make it. There were also some other fees that had been identified in the budget. I had mentioned that last time. Lars worked together with some other folks in his department. Things that were not categorized for the court, that's the reassignment. So that's where we came up with these numbers.

Well, I'd just like to comment in our strategic plan. Item number five is good governance. And one of the main elements of good governance is rule of law. So if we're going to have a well-managed community, we need to enforce that rule of law. And that's where you come in.

Correct. Because once the police do their job, if there's nothing to process the case, we haven't gained much.

Yes, ma'am.

Any other questions?

Any comments?

I have a comment. When I looked at this in the pre-reading this weekend, I did the math for revised fiscal year budget. And if you take out the one-time capital to set up a new building in a new court, you're... budget impact is $939,220, which is below what we're paying this year in estimated ending fiscal year 26. So thank you for getting, I understand I don't like one-time expenses, but we got kicked out. So thank you for doing this work, you and everybody and staff involved. I appreciate it very much.

I just like to make one last comment. Make sure all the improvements are ADA accessible so we don't have to go back. Oh, yes. And retrofit things.

Oh, absolutely. And quite frankly, looking at the revenue, some things have changed. We discussed the fact that the parking fees have adjusted. The defensive driving fees have adjusted. Looking at the numbers, I believe the revenues will actually be higher than we've projected for next year, but we're trying to be conservative. We don't want to come back and say, we need more money. We can't pay our bills. The idea is that we have the excess funds.

Any other questions? All righty. Any more comments?

How do you?

Okay, Jim.

Yeah, I think we're going to regret not including the security that the court's asking for. We can deal with that down the road.

The other benefit is we're probably not going to be in the building, depending on how quickly facilities can get us, November, December. So this issue may be coming up by June of next year.

Okay. All righty. Everyone done? Jay?

And this may be out of order, and you can send me to the quiet line, Sarah. Is there any update on the lease that we're going to get for this building, being able to have the first right to purchase it?

we do have the first right. That is how the lease is written. Also seeing the facilities because Tim was very good about negotiating this. Our air conditioners, all that stuff is covered in our rent while we're renting. So at least we won't be going into that money. But we do have first right of refusal. That is how the lease that was drafted by the city attorney and approved by council. That's what it says.

And are we getting any sense of actual cost in the future with the signing of the lease?

No, I can't, that's... That's unfortunate. Okay. Well, I'd much rather buy a building, but looking at the cost when we were looking at buildings, I would have been here standing to say, could I have four or $5 million please to buy a building? And I didn't think that was gonna fly.

Okay, Mayor, I'm sorry. Yes, Mary. Jim, you prompted me because I was also a little uneasy with your comment about cutting your numbers by doing away with court security and relying on an armed security guard, I'm assuming from some agency somewhere. It is. And you mentioned that, well, if that one guy doesn't show up, I guess we rope in some city staff or some court staff.

Correct, they have to be trained because they have to be certified by AOC, so I have to have at least two people that are trained that way. The other issue is to deal with Mayor Pro Tem Fuhrer's comment about the civility of people. Presently, I have a bailiff, a uniformed bailiff in the courtroom. We have people who sometimes become aggressive or upset and start to yell. Having the uniformed bailiff stand up and say, you need to calm down or you're going to have to leave. You lose that if you don't have that person right there.

Right. And I guess, well, I'm happy to hear you would be required to have some training for somebody on your staff to stand up. Are we speaking of all the way up to carry a firearm?

No, that's a different level, and I do not anticipate our staff would be doing that. The whole liability issue, I don't think that would be...

So they would be trained to say, now, now, don't be so mean?

Correct. I'm sorry, you can't enter the courthouse with that. And then if it becomes a situation where there's additional concern, we have to call PD. So that puts an extra.

So the first response in that situation, if you have a contract to provide security at a site, the first response is call the firm. It's their problem. They're the ones who are expected to deliver on their contract. And if they can't get anybody there at all, we need to have another conversation about our contract. So the first expectation would be that they could backfill when somebody calls in sick. And then having staff who also know security protocols and how to keep a secure environment is also helpful. And I think, like the judge mentioned, if we're, you know, we're, we're thinking we'll be into this building, you know, end of this year, very beginning of next year. So we'll have a few months to try it. And we'll see how the firm is doing. And if it's if it's not going well, we have an opportunity to come back next budget and say, Okay, we really don't think it's going well. Or, or the opposite of Hey, you know, it's working out okay. And we'll have a little bit more experience with it firsthand, as we talk about it next year.

Your Honor, have you already taken the step of having a couple on your staff trained up to whatever extent?

No, ma'am. We're literally running to stay in place. We sometimes don't have enough clerks to open the courtroom, and we're still having to try and borrow from the county.

You have not made me feel any easier, but thank you for the info.

Right. Well, and that's why I'm trying to be very candid. This is why the security issue, typically within one to two years, every court brings them in-house. just because it becomes an issue. But again, we actually finally, it was delayed, but we did finally have good response of trying to get both unarmed and armed security. Initially, we got crickets, but we did finally find some companies.

Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation.

Thank you. So this will be on the tentative adoption. We revised the budget accordingly to the revised 27 column. Just to be clear also, the budget includes three additional positions, a court administrator and two court clerks. We removed the three, so they'll still have three additional staff. Okay, then with that, I think we received council's input, so we'll move to the next topic, which is public safety tax initiative. This was council feedback wanting more of a deep dive on reconciliation of our capital plan versus what was talked about in their initial proposal, and Chief Dura's coming up to help us with this presentation.

All right, Mayor and Council, Dura Fire Chief, and then also in the back of the room is Amy Bonney, Police Chief, who will come up at the conclusion of the fire-specific items. This is just a quick refresher of the materials that we had when 478 was initially proposed. And we had three main windows, as you recall, immediate needs, short-term needs, and long-term needs. Most of those were, of course, capital-heavy in the short-term and personnel and operations-heavy in the long-term, which is how it was structured with a 0.2% of that tax with a 10-year sunset going to capital and then the remaining 0.75 funding personnel. Another thing that I think is very important here is to recall what we were scoped to deliver to the voters. And in essence, that is what you see up here. That has not changed. We're still looking at, on the fire side, a new station, a relocated station, and a major remodel, and I'll cover those in detail in a second. and the property and evidence facility. In the short term, we're looking at additional comprehensive safety and health remodels to the existing fire stations that weren't getting either relocated or completely remodeled. And then to begin the land and design work for a second new station somewhere currently anticipated in the North Prescott area. On the police side, there was additional facilities and enhancement that Chief Bonney can cover when she comes up. And then finally, in the 8 to 10 year longer term, is the opening and building of that second new station. The operational needs that come along with those same tranches right here are displayed for you. We don't have to go obviously into detail. But again, just to reiterate, these have really not changed. One small change that you see here is the emergency management staffing is something that is in our upcoming fiscal 27 budget that was in the four to seven year range. We've recommended that we move that up. Our wildfire risk exposure as well as the capacity of our staff mandated that we propose that earlier than we had originally projected. This is probably the biggest slide that I want to make sure that I emphasize somewhat on your behalf because these are the conversations we had with our community members. All of the capital as well as operational investments that are being made as part of the Public Safety Tax Initiative are community impact facing. there was not any additional projects that were only internal facing. For instance, we made a decision on the training center to defer that fairly major capital expense to the out years because we wanted to make sure that we focused on things that brought help to people in our community as fast as possible and that is really where these initiatives are really focused. The other component, of course, because we can't do that stably without people, is to stabilize the health and safety, the working environment, and the facilities that our personnel have access to and to deliver that service. And of course, that is the major initial upfront cost. The promise that we made, of course, is to improve public safety services. The number one goal over on the fire side, as well as on PD, is to get there quicker than we are currently able to do so. One massive component of that on the fire side is, of course, the investment of additional fire stations. But as you know, even in the last couple of years, we've already been investing also in more efficient dispatch technology, in more efficient fire engine technology. positioning technology. So it's not just plan A. We want to make sure we're doing a comprehensive plan on being efficient while also adding the necessary infrastructure that has been lacking for over 30 years.

Madam Mayor, may I?

Yes, Ted.

So, Holger, what year are we into 478? That's a great question.

We're technically in year two. Is that correct, Lars? Yeah. And we're glad you bring that up, sir, because one of the things that the initial projections anticipated is that we would have some of these personnel already on board. And we're, of course, waiting to only hire the personnel that we can currently utilize, which is also helping us put more money, cash, instead of debt, right to the capital expense. And Lars will cover that in greater detail later.

Now, you said you were going to cover it in more detail, and maybe I'm being preemptive, but where and when is the first fire station?

We are looking at summer of 2028 opening all three of these proposed facilities. We're currently in the CMAR selection process for the contractor. PD is also in the same phase right now, and we're past the 30% design phase, so we are on target for what we learned when we actually put the design proposal out for bid.

And did you say a location?

Yes, so Station 76, that is the new additional station, will go to Sundog Lakes and Prescott Lakes Parkway, sorry, Sundog Ranch. Station 73, which is currently the airport fire station, the ARF component will remain on airport property, but the structural engine, We'll go closer to the Constellation Trailhead. And then the other major project that we're talking about is Station 72 on 6th Street, which as we got into this learned that it needed a full remodel, and I'll cover the details of that later.

So 73 won't move for eight years?

No, sir. No, no. That additional station is actually Station 77. So currently we're at five stations. Station 76, the one on Sundog Ranch, would be the sixth. And then Station 77, the seventh, is contemplated to go somewhere north of 89A at this point based on development patterns. Thanks, Holger. You bet.

I WAS GOING TO ASK, I SAW YOUR ELEVATIONS POSTED IN YOUR DEPARTMENT AS WE GO TO THE MEETING ROOM. HAVE YOU PICKED WHICH ELEVATION YOU'RE GOING TO USE?

NOT YET, BUT OF COURSE WE'RE ALWAYS OPEN FOR FEEDBACK.

WELL, I WOULD JUST LIKE TO SAY I LIKE THE TERRITORIAL STYLE MAINLY BECAUSE THE ROOF LOOKS LIKE IT WOULD BE THE BEST DESIGN FOR OUR SNOW LOAD AND PROBABLY A LITTLE MORE COST EFFECTIVE TO BUILD. And I'd also like to comment that if possible, I'd like to see the capital expense part of the tax retired as early as possible. Perfect. We've got that on an upcoming slide. Without compromising safety and efficiency.

Yep. Appreciate that very much. Obviously, the budget is a means to an end. As a reminder, those original estimates which we created in support with many of you were intentionally done on a compressed timeframe, and we do appreciate the support that we got, but that also limited some of the diligence that we could have done with more time. It is always a question of do you have more time or less time. We are at where we're at right now, and I can tell you that we are exactly where we need to be. considering the initiative that we're undertaking right now. The biggest thing is the commitment to community. As you know, we hired some firefighters so we could put a 40-hour daytime engine in service before the station ever got built. That engine is currently in service, delivering service to the citizens as part of 478. We weren't gonna wait because of those commitments that we had made. I already mentioned that we're prioritizing the capital infrastructure up front that's on purpose. We want to make sure that that capital infrastructure gets built, and Mayor, to your point exactly, the quicker we can retire that portion of the tax, the quicker we can keep our promises to the taxpayers and make sure that we're as efficient and fiscally responsible as possible. And as you mentioned there, the goals, and these are confirmed by our boss, Dallin, who said, absolutely, if we can end the 0.2 tax increment early, that is what we're looking to do. And currently, with the projections, Lars can cover the details more briefly. Specifically, it's looking that way. But of course, I don't want to stand in front of you at the dais as a non finance director as a fire chief and tell you we can do that. That's not my SME. But I also want to invite the city manager at that point, if Dallin wants to add anything to this particular point at all, or if you'd like me to keep going.

Red on target, big fan.

Excellent, okay. Okay, talking about the promises kept in delivering the scope. What you see here is the coverage map, and I apologize, this is not meant for a map review slide. This is only meant to be illustrative of what this investment that I just covered, those first couple of stations are going to do. And as you recall, we had significant areas of red in the prior map. With the sharpening of the pencil, the location of the stations, the availability of land that was buildable, suitable, and in the right location, these are locations that gave us the optimal coverage that we possibly get. And as you know, one of the biggest problems is since Prescott is not built on a grid, I sometimes envy the Phoenix Fire Chief that gets to build fire stations in square mile sections. We have to really do our job with GIS analysis, expected call volume and development trends to locate and site these stations. And as you can tell, a lot of these Prescott Lakes as well as Rosser Drive areas are now receiving the urban level of service that we expect, as well as the areas north of that are also starting to see that. And of course, when Station 77 gets built, we're going to make sure that we locate this appropriately. The other thing that I want to mention, any time we talk about capital investments on the fire side, we balance our locations with CAFMA. CAFMA currently owns a piece of property at Glassford Hill and Santa Fe Loop. We make sure that when we look at our projections, that future station is considered in terms of where we place our stations. So we're doing that capital investment in a coordinated manner so we don't have either coverage gaps or overlaps that can be avoided. Finally, we're definitely value engineering. I want to make sure that I cover some of these things while also assuring you that we're not changing the programming that we promised the taxpayers. So first of all, I mentioned the timeline to prepare the projections were not meant to be architectural conceptual design phases. We were really just making projections that would not put us in a place where we were behind and Lars assures us that that is still the case. The primary driver in station cost increases that you had brought up are, as we mentioned, an increase in square footage, first of all. One of the things that's important is when we did the assumptions for the new fire stations, we were looking at a 14,000 square foot fire station model that were available at the time, which was 2023, 2024. At that time, those stations, if you think about the capital construction pipeline and you go backwards, were built or designed somewhere between 2012 and 2018, prior to the COVID pandemic. The COVID pandemic changed station design. We have a lot of cross-contamination issues that new standards that have evolved include, as well as more research on cancer prevention that also have increased the square footage of fire stations. And that is one big driver of the increase in fire station square footage. The other component to recognize, and all of you have been in our fire stations, our current stations are significantly undersized in terms of utility and storage. Currently we are storing one fire apparatus outside at our training center because we don't have enough base space to put a roof over the head of those significant investments. We're making sure that we're building U50 to 75-year capital facilities, and that includes making sure that we can relieve some of the pressure from the existing stations in a manner that we don't have to continuously come back to the trough and building ahead just a little bit. The other component here that I think is very important is, again, we are focusing on direct community service level improvements. I did mention just now that we are making sure that the additional stations can adapt and accommodate the logistics and storage needs that we have. The other component is just to understand there are remaining needs. We've talked to you about the public safety training center facility. We've gotten your feedback on the current location, where it's currently at. Is that a long-term place that we can have a fire training center and a police training center? That's a policy level conversation that we need to engage with all of you. And those are not things that are currently completely covered by PSTI. It was also not intended to, as you recall. So I just want to make sure that I put that out there because somebody watching this might say, well, then the fire department should be good after this, right? It is definitely a longer term story. And right now we're focusing on making sure the community comes first, which is in our mission statement. The capital plan itself, and Lars can cover this in greater detail at the end of the public safety slides, there's some justifications in here. I think the one that I really want to make sure that I emphasize is Station 72. As you recall, initially, it was our goal and our hope that we could remodel that station significantly and potentially save a significant amount of capital money. Once we get the architect on board, did a full true site assessment, including the overhead utilities that are on that site, the asbestos modification, as well as where the structural members of that station currently sit. I'll explain a little bit more in detail here. It was not possible for us in a fiscally responsible way to do the remodel that we had hoped. And it was pretty apparent quickly that the architect said, you're gonna save money by just doing it completely from scratch. We have that documentation that we're happy to provide to you from the architectural firm that we hired on contract to design those stations. We're about to receive the design for that conceptual station at the beginning of June. It does sound like, in order to make that happen, it has to go two stories in some portions, which is okay. That's fine. The lot is very constrained, as you all know, but that is the primary driver of that delta. in the variance of Station 72. It was an assumption that I was hoping we could make. I did feel that we could be fiscally responsible by not completely rebuilding it, and we learned something new, which is part of this process. But at the end of the day, I own that. It was a decision that I made at the time with the information that I had. Like I said, it is the fiscally responsible path forward at this point to build a new station at less cost, rather than try to remodel something that we're going to be living with limitations on for the next 50 to 75 years. Before I go off that slide, are there questions?

I was going to say, that's been a lot of people's experience when they start to remodel a house, and by the end, with all the costs, they probably wish they had just started from scratch.

Yeah, yeah. I think when the architects first looked at that lot, I believe the paraphrasing of their response was, oh boy. So, and we knew that, but the thing about Station 72 on 6th Street that we have to make sure we emphasize, it is in a very good location for response coverage, which is why we're sticking with the site. Ultimately, that's the number one driver, and we already own that facility. So, any other questions?

Okay. All right. Lois, do you have a question?

Yeah, I have more of a comment versus a question. As I was going through the package, and this is directed to Lars, I really appreciated the city budget, court's budget reconciliation. It was crystal clear where things changed, how they changed, why they changed. As I got to fire and police, this is a different template. And the reconciliation isn't as clear, so you can see I started scratching all over it trying to reconcile. And there was points where the original estimate, then what was presented to us on April 27th versus what's being presented to us on May 26th, the numbers have changed. And so it was really hard for me to understand. And I'm not going to sit here and take us down that rabbit hole. But I really need a full reconciliation. We started that the week before I left on vacation. I would like to before we get to June 9th. I really want to get a reconciliation on all of this. public safety, tax initiative-related items, and A, so we can be fully transparent with the public, but more so that we all understand, as I've been saying even on interviews, there's going to be puts and calls that are going to be made, and we're going to do them for all the reasons you are articulating. But then we need to figure out How do we true this up with the public? And how do we have confidence? And so one of the things I continue to worry about as a five-year CIP is the fact that our station 71, 75, 74 remodels haven't been looked at yet. And I understand. It's because you're busy with the ones you got. But I feel not good having plug numbers from two years ago that are wrong. I know they're going to be wrong because every other number has changed. So I don't know why those wouldn't change. And so I think we need to really think through, if we don't have time to do the work right now, we at least need to put some kind of what has been the inflation factor that we've seen on the other projects and put it in there so that we're at least acknowledging this is a better plug number than the numbers from 2024. Because I just think when we get to our five-year CIP, something's going to have to give. And I know all the other departments want what they want to. So I just want to make sure that we're putting more realistic numbers in. So that's my request from you and from Dallin, is that I really need a reconciliation. All the changing templates are driving me nuts. And I don't know how to explain this to the public. Does that make sense, is that fair?

Yes, I think that's a good point. I also wanna clarify, if we go back to one slide, Chief, that the original estimates is the estimates that were proposed during the proposition development, so not what was in the workshops earlier. My apologies, there we go.

Be slide 17, yep.

There we go. So the original estimate column is the, slides that were presented to council in 2024 as the costs and then current is the five-year plan as we know it today okay we didn't revise the numbers from what we presented you did and i'll i'd be happy to take you through it well we'll double check that wasn't in our intent the intent was it's the same budget we're explaining and reconciling on this information provided

Yeah, so that's why for me it's like, well, I'll just give you one example. Station 76 on April 27th, it was 15.9 million. Now it's down to 15.2. I go, hooray, but then I'm like, really? Really? Is it 15.9 or is it 15.2? So that's what I just want to make sure that I'm clear. Other ones went in the other direction. So I'm happy to pull out all the papers. You know I'm a paper hog. But this is why, because I just need to be able to explain this to the public and reconcile with them and keep them confident, even though the numbers are changing. I think we can get them. to be confident, we just have to have the reconciliation versus these templates that were all over our presentations back two years ago, I think we're still going to be able to, to come in, like you said, not only on time, but under budget. But I just think we need to be transparent and crystal clear. Thank you.

Any other comments?

Okay, looking at one thing that we wanted to cover is what are some things that we have reduced versus what is needed? Obviously, I mentioned already the additional space for decontamination zones, separation of what's called hot and cold zones by the NFPA, National Fire Protection Association standards, which govern fire station construction. And we mentioned that adds just about 2,500 square foot over the 2024 projections. Some of the reductions that we're making right now is secondary spaces. We're looking at things like reception areas. The community room at Sundog at the Peabody Trailhead has been reduced by about 33% from 24 to 16. And you can see this is actually a screenshot of the actual drawing of Station 76 or a component. That's not all Station 76, don't worry. But it really highlights very well how we're actually doing that work with the architects of sharpening a pencil and really just making sure the programming matches what we actually need.

Let me just say, we've only got 30 minutes, and we still have a couple other divisions to present.

Perfect. And we're almost done with the fire component. I think station 73, 76, where I talked about one big component is drive-through bays. They've been standardized in all designs. You would be amazed, unfortunately not amazed, but shocked at how many backing incidents fire departments have, including fatalities. It is definitely not an option for us not to build drive-through bays because of that experience in other fire departments. I mentioned already some of these reductions that we've made. And then finally, firefighter safety and health. We are maintaining our commitment to make sure, because of recruitment and retention, that we are focusing on physical fitness facilities as well as making sure we're building fire stations that are healthy. And with that, I'll turn it over to my partner in crime.

Thank you for your presentation and the updates on paring a few things down. Appreciate it. Partner in crime, I don't know.

Excuse me. Thank you so much. So I think Chief Dura did a very good job of teeing this up and helping explain how these numbers have changed. But what I really want to focus on is, again, the scope, as he mentioned. What we are seeking to deliver is what we promised to our community, right? We talked about... a new police substation, as well as a property and evidence facility. And where we have ended up, because we think it's the most responsible thing to do for our future, is actually combining those two facilities. So that's what you see there, the additional facility. You see 28 million there. We zeroed that out and added that to the property and evidence facility. So that's how that number has changed. with some variances, because I do want to be clear and kind of echo what Chief Dura said, and that when we started this numbers, started gathering these numbers, time was really compressed, and they were estimates based on educated information that we had gathered from around the state, from agencies that had done projects similar to ours, but they really were estimates, and so as we Worked with our architects that we have chosen. We, similar to FIRE, did a space needs analysis. And really what we asked them to do is help us see into the future about what growth we're going to experience in the next 30 years, where we needed to put attention in the building so that we weren't coming back in 10, 15 years and saying we needed another building or we needed more space or to add on. And so where we are, we are just at 30% of our design with our current building. And as I mentioned, it does include property and evidence and it does include a police substation. So moving patrol out of our downtown location so that again, we can increase or reduce our response times and increase service to the community. And when we chose that location, I think that's important for me to mention that that location is very central to where we anticipate the growth. We talk about growth further in the, northern Prescott area, the location that we have chosen is going to help us reduce those response times, put our primary response, which is our patrol bureau, situated more towards the north in our community where we know that the growth is happening, we know that we see an increase in traffic crashes on State Route 69, 89, and 89A, and we can really focus those responses out of that building. So that building is designed at 30% to meet the needs that we have for at least the next 30 years. And they really were very thoughtful as we walked through this, anticipating growth, anticipating the future of police departments. And that's where we landed with that. Additionally, as I mentioned during our last update meeting, We had built in about $6 million for remodeling our downtown facility. We don't think it's going to cost us quite $6 million, so we reduced that to four so that we can get closer to the number that we need for the building that we anticipate building. Additionally, you'll see some changes there in our public safety tax for our additional vehicles, and that's a direct result of a recruiting and retention program that we're building very intentionally to build a take-home car program, which is industry standard not only in our area but across the state. We want to do that sooner rather than later, so we're making big infusions into our budget for police vehicles so that we can get those vehicles into the hands of our police officers sooner rather than later. So you will see a variance of what we anticipated there. which of course we didn't want to see but we know that things have increased in cost over the past couple years and I do want to be cautious and just let you know again these are also just guesses we're not going to have a final number about what these things are gonna cost us until we get our construction manager at risks on board till we make a lot of the final decisions about what design looks like and then lock those things in and then we can certainly come back and give you much clearer pictures of what that's gonna look like yeah

Chief Bonney, I'd just like to make a comment. These are great projects, but I have a question. Okay. You know that 48 million for the property and evidence, that's a huge number. And I'm having a hard time with that number. And then I went out and walked a lot yesterday, and it is very steep. And why... didn't we decide on property that we already owned next to the adult center on Rosser. It's a huge piece of property, easy build, great location. It's only about five minutes away from the from the court, the new Justice Center out there. And I mean, I could see PRCC out there. I could see the substation. I can see the evidence warehouse. What's the deal there?

So we looked at every piece of property that the city owned within the city of Prescott that we could possibly use for a building like this. And we looked really hard at that location. However, this building is going to be, the community, the forward-facing part of this community is going to be very, our building is going to be very, very minimal. And by that, I mean, there's going to be a very small lobby, probably not much bigger than where I'm standing right now for somebody to come retrieve their property and leave. The rest of it is going to be completely operational and quite frankly, pretty industrial. So one of the things that we're going to be moving to the new facility is our property and evidence storage yard, our vehicle storage yard. So with the With moving patrol into that building, with the needs of property and evidence, it's going to be a pretty light industrial use building. That location on Rosser Street is surrounded by residences on all four sides to some degree. You're going to have police vehicles coming and going, lights and sirens throughout the day, throughout the evening. You're going to have tow trucks coming and going throughout the evening. destruction of property and evidence, including potentially burning of drugs that needs to occur as a result of resolution of cases, storage of animals there for our animal control team. And it just didn't seem like it was a conducive area to put it next to a residential area. are conducive to that.

What about, are you anticipating increased costs putting all this structure? I mean, it's a pretty steep slope. It is, and we've gotten... A lot of grain is going to be needed.

Yeah. Granite. It is, and, you know, that's the challenge in Prescott, right? I challenged somebody to find a 20-acre flat parcel somewhere in Prescott. And that's not what we found. We found a 13-acre parcel and we bought approximately nine and a half acres of that, I believe, is where we landed. And yes, it is going to be terraced. Our architects have gotten very, very creative. And unfortunately, I'm not comfortable right now showing those to you. There's a lot of security things in that building that I don't want to make public right at this moment. But it's going to be a very nice facility that will blend into the hillside, be very useful for our operations, and condense a lot of our operational needs into one building. And how many square feet do you need for property and evidence? Off the top of my head, I don't know exactly what the square foot is for property and evidence, but I can tell you the building right now as it's being designed is about 40,000 square feet. Okay. It's big. But also, again, we're building it for the future. We need the space now, but we also are going to need it in the future. So we're being very strategic and very diligent about that. We're not asking for more than we need, asking for what we need now and well into the future so that we can position our police department and our community for ongoing success. So you'll have room to move PRCC in there, too? No. Nope, we will have room for a backup dispatch center, but we will not have room for a full communication center. Because that was part of the plan was to move PRCC. We talked about it kind of early on, but abandoned that just because of the amount of money that we knew it would cost us. Okay. Could PRCC be moved out to the Rosser property? I mean, we could do anything for any amount of money. Well, we already own the land. But our PRCC building is very well maintained right now. We continue to invest in it. It's in a great location. I don't see any need right now for continuing to, or asking for the community to build us another dispatch center right now. Okay, that's a good update. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, so I want to talk a little bit, I did talk about this, just the increases modestly, and we're talking about large dollar amounts, so when I say modestly, that's, you know, take that as it, we're talking millions of dollars, but as I said, we're going to lock in those numbers as soon as we possibly can, and part of the CMAR process, excuse me, is establishing those concrete numbers and those hard lines with the contractors. We did talk about what it would look like if we reduced the size of this building to approximately 50% so that the number wasn't such a big number. And I said, okay, just cut it in half right now and tell me how long it will be before we outgrow it and we need to come back and ask for more money. And they estimated about five to eight years and I definitely do not want to be back before you in five to eight years asking for more money or asking for you to build me a new facility. And so that's how we came up with these numbers. Again, the 20 to 30 years build out so that we can reduce those longer term costs, build what we have or build what we can now and reduce the further expansion or renovation needs. We do have additional site and facility improvements that we are planning beyond this original construction project, including the potential for an indoor shooting range. You know that part of our facilities include a shooting range out there at the end of Sun Dog Ranch Road. We don't know how long we're going to be able to use that facility. With all the regulations that are coming, we hope to hang on to it and continue to use it well into the future, but we also have to explore some other options. So we have the potential plans for an indoor shooting facility, potential plans for a canine facility, as well as a large vehicle storage facility for our SWAT team and our tactical team.

Chief Bonney, going back to your shooting facility, I know it's very important that we have well-trained officers. You mentioned other agencies using it. Are they going to be asked to contribute to this new firing range if they're going to be using it?

Well, if we were to build an indoor range, we would probably look at some sort of cost share model. Right now we do it. We share our facilities just as a matter of good relationships and partnerships with our regional partners in this area. But if we were to build a new facility and it would require the usage of, say, electric or personnel or something like that, we probably would look at something like that.

Yeah, because I really think it would be great to have something that would be – used by all the other agencies so that everyone's not having to build their own facility? So you're talking about what the Sheriff's Department, Prescott Valley, or who are we talking about using this facility?

It would primarily be us, but absolutely. We in this region can't operate in silos. We have to work together. And so if we were to have a resource such as an indoor shooting range, we certainly would look to partner with other agencies and help them be better as well. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. All right. That's all the slides I have. I'm going to turn it over to Lars, unless you have any questions of me.

Thank you, Chief Bonney. This slide gives a 10-year summary of the initial tax program. So we know that's 0.95% for 10 years, which is intended to be capital intensive and then drop down to 0.75 after that. So taking both police and fire capital plan as the top row, the total capital plan. Originally, the estimate at the time of the proposition calculations was $110.5 million. Adding up both now, we're at $137.2 million. So the variance is $26 million. So the chart below that then tells us how that can be funded. The first difference is the sales tax estimates. So I looked back on what the calculations were in preparing that tax proposal and then compared to where we're at today. So that tax estimate has additional capacity. It's still very conservative. I used a 2% year over year increase. I have a note down below that gives us kind of a sensitivity analysis of this assumption. I went back and looked at the 10-year historical sales tax growth in the city, and it's 5.9% over the last 10 years. And the 20-year average is 3.2%. However, we know the last two years have been relatively flat. So 24 was a 0.6% increase. 25 was 2% if you take out residential rental. So I went with the most conservative approach here with 2%. But we know if economic development happens, if sales tax increase, this is sales tax driven, so it can definitely fluctuate. So that's 2.5 additional capacity. Then we had impact fees come into the picture. We talked about that earlier in the previous workshop. About $9 million was estimated at the time of the tax proposal with the revised impact fees amounts. The studies that were done project $12.5 million for these facilities. So we have additional $3.5 there. Then there's some general fund share of capital, particularly there was the American Rescue Plan Act purchase of 76. That wasn't in the tax proposal. It was kind of missed, I guess. This dedication was done years ago, so we wanted to continue with that promise to use that money for that. Although it's not a promise to the federal government, it is sort of an internal commitment. The next is that our debt service is expected to be much lower than we anticipated. Because the original plan had a very short time window to get all of this built, that was intended to be done with debt proceeds. Because of the more phased in approach or the more years that allow us to get it done, the tax comes in and we don't have to borrow as much. So I did an estimate that brings another 5.6 million of capacity. And then as the chiefs talked about, because we are wanting to build these facilities first before we really ramp up operations, there's capacity there as well as the challenge we've had with recruiting the new positions in police department that we have approved. So that adds another $15.6 million. Altogether, we're at $27.8 million of additional capacity that can be essentially allocated towards these increased costs of the capital plan.

Madam Mayor?

Yes, Ted.

Both the police chief, the fire chief, and you talked about retiring the sales tax early. And a lot of this is just impressions. I'm not so much talking facts, but repeating what I think I heard. So we got an increase in the construction of fire stations, price, and we got an increase in the construction of the facility on Sundog for the police. And in this slide, you're saying that we'll cover that by these revenue sources?

Correct, and decreased operational spending.

Okay, here comes the somewhat vague impressions. I was of the understanding that our sales tax by way of hotel and tourists is down. Is it down or is it up?

Current fiscal year to date, if you take out the impact of the residential rental decline, we're at 3.4% increase over last year.

It is increased. Yep. Okay. And impact fees, you have to build something to charge an impact fee, don't you?

Correct. Yeah, development has to happen.

Now, I have the impression that down in the valley, construction has ground to a halt. Is that a correct impression or not?

Here at the city, it's not. I think our residential rental permits are still coming in as we've seen the last few years is what I hear. Does Dallin have any further comment?

Okay, thank you.

Okay. You have good points here in that these are all in flux. All of these assumptions are in flux. And we have to monitor this every year, every quarter to see where we're at. And that's what we intend to do.

Just note as well, when we think about specific new growth and we look at, you know, there's new neighborhoods going in in Deepwell Ranch, you look at the new commercial development in Deepwell Ranch, and you anticipate that, you know, three or four or five years down the line, that's constructed, that's bringing in additional revenue. We know we've got requests for other commercial properties around the city. I think even just from that perspective, there's reason to think that there will be more retail in the city, collecting additional sales tax. Some will be transferred, but some will be new. And so there's a reason to be, maybe cautiously, but optimistic that the revenue picture is going to be enough to sustain the cost, but also enough to hopefully retire some of that tax a little bit early.

Oh, one question I forgot to ask. On your next slide, it says the city is positioned to sunset or reduce the 0.2% tax increment earlier than anticipated once the facilities are built. But the fire chief is not building that last fire station until 10 years from now, right?

That's correct. It's sort of an unknown time frame for that one, towards the end of this 10 years. The thing about that is we could have built up fund balance that we can project that, okay, we can lower the tax because we'll still have the 0.75. So we're talking about the 0.2 increment. Okay. My initial estimates are that, you know, we're positioned to do that early.

Thank you, Lars. You know, we're kind of running out of time. It's quarter to three. I'd like to hear from the solid waste division here, give them a few minutes, and then we can adjourn for the next meeting.

For sure, we can jump right to that. The slides that we had in the packet were repeated from last week just to have them for reference. But I'll jump directly to the direction that we're hoping to get today from council is which way to go with a solid waste fund. We talked about the fact that there's an operational deficit anticipated already at the end of this year. We're expecting the fund balance to be in a deficit position by the end of fiscal 27. if nothing is done. So we want to provide an option here that was discussed last week and that we could get some rates adopted with an internal study. We talked about scenario two last week, which had an increase of, well, let's go to that real quick. The residential base monthly rate would go from 24 to 31. Commercial would be a 16% increase and then a tipping fee increase to 125. That would bring us in a position to eliminate this deficit, get us out of a hole that we're you know, become further and further behind if nothing's done. So we have two options we thought we'd want council to give us direction on.

Scenario two looks good.

Is this like a Band-Aid approach? Because it seems to me we need to look at a more comprehensive approach, like hauling fees and maybe chat with the county.

It suggests this is... Some of their obligations. It suggests a little bit of both, right? So this is like an interim, like a bridge.

So just kind of a band-aid to get those...

It's a bridge that buys the time that we need to do a larger analysis.

For the long term.

Okay, thank you.

And the real benefit of option A is that it gives us more time to do a study. We're not under the gun. We can have more council dialogue, community input to see what the long-term outlook looks like for the service. Either way, we would recommend going through a consultant-led full rate study.

Yes, Lois. I definitely like option A. We need to stop the bleeding with the internal study and put it in as fast as possible and then spend the time to do it right with all the implications that you were talking about with the county and others to figure out what can we do. You know, as I'm more and more looking at what's happening in all the other areas, municipalities, everyone is dealing with this exact same issue. And this is a fund that's supposed to be solvent. So we need to have it stay solvent. Otherwise, we're borrowing from the general fund to pay for trash. And I like the opportunity of the internal study being able to take a look at things that right now we do for free. And not everybody takes advantage of the Christmas tree pickups or the hazardous waste pickups. Those could be potentially down the road a la carte, you know, and how does that affect down the road these, you know, your option, your scenario to the 4% increases down the road? You know, I think if we spend the time to really think through the possibilities, we might be able to do some things a little bit differently benchmarking with other municipalities with how they're thinking about it because we're all struggling with the exact same issues of hauling and tipping fees and those kind of things that are just going through the roof. So I do like option A.

How about you, Jay? Any comments? A or B?

I'm in favor of option A. Mary?

I'm going to join the chorus. A. A.

A.

A. Ted?

It's unanimous. Thank you.

OK, I think you got your direction. Another thing we were supposed to be talking about is going over the authorized expenditure list. I don't think we're going to have time to do that. So are we going to have to reschedule another meeting to go over that?

My suggestion is that council can give feedback through to the city manager's office or to finance just an email. Let us know of items that you'd like not on that list and then we'll just compile it all and give you a revised version when we adopt the final budget. Okay.

All righty. Good idea. Thank you.

If we had a few minutes, there's one other thing that area we really want a direction on because we didn't have it in the budget and that was community development. The operations study proposed some positions to be added and we heard from some council members that they'd like to consider this earlier. So, Mayor, would you have a few minutes so we could talk about this one real quick? Of course. Okay. So Will West here from Community Development is prepared to present.

Thank you. So these are brought to you, as Lars said, based on the results of the operational analysis that was presented to you guys the day before the budget. There were three positions that were recommended in that, one for water resources as an analyst, a second as an administrative specialist, and a third as a management analyst for the department overall. We can go ahead and what we would propose, if you guys are going to think about this, is a phased implementation of the three. As you can see in the slides you have in front of you now, recommendations that would be affected by this personnel addition are shown on the right-hand side of the slide. And then how each one of those positions would affect the outcomes is in the checkboxes. So what we would propose, if we were given the opportunity for additional staffing, is the water resources analyst first, brought in probably in September. We feel like this would have really addressed the most critical needs that were addressed in the operational analysis, and that's being some deficiencies in how their processes work and how we've been interacting with them, and then also getting through the backlog of the development agreements and the water service agreements that we have. The second position that we would phase in would be our administrative specialist. That would help out with the land development code update. It would help out with some of the long-term water management plan. But it would also help free up these technical staff in the department to do more of what they specialize in and handle some of those administrative tasks that would be handed to the administrative specialist. just to free up some of that workload. And finally, the third position was an overall management analyst. And we were proposed phasing this in in fiscal year 28, bringing that, and this person checks the most boxes for filling in what the operational analysis identified as gaps. But a lot of what this position is going to be able to do is really help us develop long-term, better data-driven management for the department. So, yeah, we really feel it's less critical than addressing the water resources component first. So as you go ahead and consider this, that's what we're thinking.

Were these recommendations from RAF TELUS? I seem to remember they recommended increasing personnel.

Yes, that is correct. They recommended three additional personnel for community development.

Okay, because the taxpayers are keeping a close eye on us and one of the concerns is, you know, new hires, but if we can justify this on the basis of growth, you know, we've added a large amount of new people. And we're going to have to increase services if we're going to keep up a level of efficiency.

Yes. Are there any other questions?

Lois? I don't have a question as much as I have a comment. I don't have a problem with the water resources analysts because I do think it's needed. We need to get done with our long-term water management plan and we also need to process people's requests in a timely fashion. But this picture of our staffing over the last 20 years is not a great picture from day one of this. And we have since 2020, you know, grown, about 120 and this is another three. There comes a point where I'm just saying can we tighten our belts in other places and prioritize whatever it is you think beyond water resources needs to be done. Let's find it from someplace else and be more efficient because I don't know anybody's income that's going up at a level like that. So that's my concern and I'm not aligned to the three over the two and a half years you've outlined.

Any additional questions or comments for me?

Good point, Lois. Thank you. Okay. It's almost three o'clock.

So just in terms of direction, so that we're clear, I'm hearing that we should continue with the water resources analysts and not the other two. Is that the direction from the council?

You know, water is such an important, huge thing. I mean, we're a water provider, we're a water importer, and I think that's one department that we really, if we bulk up on, I really think it should be water resources and we can save money in other ways. Any other comments?

What are the positive impacts from the administrative specialist and management analyst that could save us money?

I think with your administrative specialists, you're talking about having a clerical staff person doing clerical work so technical people can do technical work. And it's efficiency from the perspective of you don't have people that were paying a lot more money to do technical work doing small clerical assignments. The analyst is sort of similar, but it's also more into operations. And your management analyst is somebody that you can ask to do a research project, ask to fill in, ask to run a program. They're a little bit of a generalist within the department. Again, these were recommended by Raftelis as positions that will help the entire department to operate more efficiently and effectively. But we can take the recommendation. Their recommendation was to do all three now. We suggested the phasing. We could phase it over a longer period. We could, any way we want to arrange it. We could decide we don't need a couple and move forward without them. It's really just whatever council would want. We had expected to have to come back in the future for this request. It was council at that meeting that said they wanted to have us consider it in this budget. And so we're just trying to be responsive to that request.

And community development needed some help, and I'm glad that we got the Raftelis study done, and they made 17 recommendations. And if we're going to hire a consultant to make recommendations, I think we should take them seriously and follow them. That's why we hired them in the first place.

Lois? I agree. I know we've asked for the Historic Preservation Master Plan to be redone, the Land Development Code to be redone. And with the Raftelis study of last week, it's crystal clear that we have a lot of work to do on our internal incoming processes to improve them so we can help the public help themselves and help us. So I'm not saying these roles are not needed. I'm just saying, can we find efficiencies in other departments to be able to staff these? And can we look at other things that we used to do, a lot more temps, you know, for things that aren't quite as technical as the work that's done in CommDev. And so that's my push, is to not just roll over and say, yes, another three people on top of the however many we already had approved up until this point in the budget. It's like, can we find where one or two other departments can go down a head or two so you could get it all for CommDev? This is not against CommDev. I get their need. It's just coming to the table very late in the process. And so I'm just not feeling really confident that this is what we should be doing versus pushing you all to come late to the party also with an alternate plan other than just increasing our head count.

Mr. Grady.

I agree with elements of both what Lois and the mayor are saying. And I think if we're expending dollars for the Raftella study, and this is their recommendation, we need to take it seriously. I'm more inclined to agree with the mayor's last comment to fund the water resources analyst and then push the admin specialist and the management analyst into the process earlier next year for our next fiscal year.

Any other comments? Mayor?

Yeah.

As much as I am concerned always about taxpayer dollars, I was most struck by the Ruff Tillis assessment on the fact that a lot of the things that people complain about trying to move projects through the CommDev processes is because there are, as the manager just pointed out, technical people spending their time doing clerical work, we're paying them technical money to do clerical work, slowing down the process. And I was frankly most alarmed about the idea that number 14 and 15 on this chart for the technology user group and the IT capacity pushed off into fiscal year 28 when the management analyst comes on, when it is that problem with, I think it was Central Square is the name of the software, that is just not being used effectively, either because it has not been built out by its capacity, or the staff hasn't been trained up. The idea of the mobile functionality for inspectors out in the field, all these things slowing down the process If Raftelis has told us after the months and months they spent with CommDev looking at the processes that there are efficiencies to be had that fix the very problems that people in the development community, from the large guys to the small guys, can be fixed with efficiencies, but they don't just manifest itself out of thin air. We need people who can do the work. We need people who can fix the problem with the software that is blocking us from the efficiencies that that software should be able to provide to us. So I don't mean to be the outlier and say, oh, no, we have to protect taxpayer dollars by not adding these people that have been recommended to us to fix some of the problems in the process flow. is chasing pennies and letting dollars go out the door. So I'm not even for pushing it off into further years. I think there are lack of efficiencies in that department that could be addressed with the proper software and the proper personnel to deal with it.

Madam Mayor, may I?

Yes, Ted.

I think Mary makes a very good point. And if ever there was a case of stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime, this is it. We're nitpicking on three staff and this city council is throwing away $30 million on not widening 89 today, but we'll do it in six to eight years. So this is minuscule. And if it brings the efficiencies that the city manager says, then we ought to do it.

Okay, I think.

What is the actual cost of these positions?

I have that for you, Councilmember. So the fiscal 27 proposal would increase the budget by $113,000. That's prorated, so the full two positions would be $177,000. Adding the third one in in fiscal 28 would total $291,500. So that's a full annual impact for all three positions, the $291,000.

That seems like a good investment towards efficiency for me.

Well, we can continue this discussion in our next budget. Or do you need direction now?

We'd prefer to incorporate this into the tentative budget. You can take action throughout the year through future council action.

Well, let's do it. We'll start with Jay. What do you think?

I favor actually getting these three positions on board because I think the need is there and it'll pay off.

That's my position.

Lois? The population of this town has grown from 2020 to 2025 by 5.4%. The staff has grown in only three years of that from fiscal year 22 to 2025, plus 10.7%. Does ComDev need these roles? Yes, they do. Am I leaning to staff one with extra dollars? Yes. I think the other two should come from somewhere else in the city. I think We need to look for efficiencies. This came in late. We need your help.

I'm for just getting the staff up and running. So I say do it now.

Yeah, I'm for the one water resources analyst and pushing the other two positions to next year's budget.

I agree with the mayor.

What was the mayor's position?

Do it now.

I think it's disingenuous to compare the population growth to the staff growth. I mean, one of the reasons we have Proposition 478 is because we fell behind. So I'm in favor of what the city manager has proposed and that we hire all three.

Okay. Yep, we have our direction. Thank you. Alrighty.

Okay, it's 3.04. Let's come back in 15 minutes. So that'll be about 3.20. Take a little break. And thank you for your patience out there. This meeting is adjourned.