Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you

Bye.

Thank you. Bye. Bye. So,

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the July 13th, 2026 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. Commissioner Hewitt, or Vice Chair Hewitt, I apologize.

Would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? Unfortunately, there's no flag here this evening. That is my mistake. Maybe we should think of it in our hearts. It's up to you. There is no flag tonight.

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

My apologies, I forgot we had no flag here tonight. Clerk, could you call the roll, please?

Commissioner Bruce Evans?

Present.

Commissioner Brianna King? Present remotely. Present via Teams. Commissioner Caden Grossi?

I'm here.

Commissioner Joe Colosimo?

Here.

Commissioner Sandra Griffiths.

Present.

Vice Chairperson Joe Huot. Here. Chairperson Ted Erb.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you, clerk. Good evening. My name is Ted Herb. I'm the commissioner for the Planning and Zoning Commission, or chairperson for the Planning and Zoning Commission, and I'll be presiding over tonight's deliberations and hearing items. The Planning and Zoning Commission sits in an advisory capacity to the Town Council. As such, the commission reviews planning and zoning issues and forwards recommendations regarding these important matters to Town Council. All members of the Planning and Zoning Commission serve in a voluntary capacity and are appointed by the town council. If you wish to speak this evening during the comment period or to call to the public on any matter within the town, you must have pre-registered in order to speak this evening. When recognized by the clerk, please come to the microphone and state your name and address for the record. I ask that you direct your pertinent comments to the chairperson or through the commission and the chairperson and not to individual staff or individuals within the audience. A three-minute time limit will be imposed and as such I ask that speakers tonight adhere to a three-minute time limit when speaking. Regarding the public hearing item this evening, proceeding will follow as such. First, I will read the public hearing item into the record. Second, staff will then present the agenda item and make recommendations. Third, the Commission will have the opportunity to ask questions of staff. The applicant will be allowed to participate and address to the Commission. This is not an applicant issue this evening, so we will not have any applicants speaking. We'll just have the presentation for the hearing item. The floor then will be open for comment. Regarding the hearing item, after preregistered comments have been spoken, the chairperson will close the comment period. After the public comment is closed, the hearing item will return to ourselves for comment and clarification from staff. Do we have anyone registered tonight for the call of the public?

We do not, Chair.

Thank you. Move to item five, announcements. Does the board or commission have any announcements this evening? I do have one that I would like to address. Longtime Commissioner Arda Rutherford passed away May 30th. She served for many years on this commission in a variety of positions. I would just like to take this opportunity for the record to express the commission's gratitude and thanks for her commitment to the town and the citizens she served. Approval minutes for June 8th, 2026. Is there any corrections for the meeting minutes, or do I have a motion to approve?

Yeah, Chair. I do have one slight edit on the paragraph of my recusal on that agenda item. As it reads, it appears to be my sibling's department. The reference to sister is a closely related department, not something of my... my close family or my sibling relations. So I just want to make that slight change. It's so noted.

Thank you. Any other corrections or a motion to approve? That's acted.

Chairman, I move to approve the minutes June 8th at a commission meeting with a reference change. I'll second.

Art, could you please call the vote?

Commissioner Bruce Evans?

Yes.

Commissioner Brianna King? Yes. Commissioner Caden Grossi?

Yes.

Commissioner Joe Colosimo? Yes. Commissioner Sandra Griffiths? Yes. Vice Chairperson Joe Huot? Yes. Chairperson Ted Erb?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Thank you. All right, tonight's public hearing item, development services draft three-year strategic long-range planning initiative for discussion only this evening. Presenting for the town is Stacey Bristow. Thank you.

Thank you. Stacey Bristow, Development Services Director, Chair, Vice Chair, Commissioners, town staff. And I just want to do a couple quick thank yous. I want to thank Brittany for putting this PowerPoint together. last minute all day, so thank you for that. And for Creative Services for putting a few little fun things in there that you'll see as this presentation goes forward, so thank you for that. I also want to thank my entire planning team And the town manager. This is a very unique plan in the sense that we're doing all of this in-house. So it's nothing I've ever seen before. It's extremely ambitious. We're very excited. Be really kind to them. I'm trying to bake more for them so they'll stay for the whole three years to get this plan done. So I'm really excited to talk about it tonight. And if it's okay, I did receive questions in advance. Did not have time to respond back to the commissioner that sent them. So if it's okay with you, Chair, after I do the presentation, I'd like to address those questions, and then we can go and ask all the questions for the commissioners, if that's okay with you. That's fine. Perfect. I want to make sure that those get on the record, so thank you for that. So with that, I will get started. Oh, it's two clicks, there we go. So this is just an introduction slide, what Development Services does. I won't get into all of the details of the great things that we do. Tonight's focus really is about the long-range planning element, which often you hear about the general plan and those long-range planning items. So this is specifically to talk about all of those long-range items tonight. The question we get asked the most is, why does it matter? Why are we even doing this? Why are we doing these long-range plans? Why are we spending time with this? So there's a couple of bullets here. This isn't all the reasons why it matters. There's about 150 I probably could name, but these are some of the top ones. It helps target areas for development with opportunity zones, which we have some really exciting news about opportunity zones tonight. So Chris Norlock will be presenting that. It gives us some more flexible development solutions and working with our code. It attracts investment. We can have incentive programs and benefits. We enhance efficiencies by having guidebooks, and there's consistency and clarity for a developing community. It supports quality of life and sustainable development, supports job creation, and then, of course, the general plan of 2035, which was developed with the community engagement process. So just a few reasons why it matters, why we're doing all these great things that we're doing. With that, I just wanted to touch a little bit on what the critical understanding elements of what these plans are. There are a lot of case studies and evidence that emphasizes and supports all the informed governments and their communities about economic stability, how to do sustainable growth, the cost efficiencies with making sure we have good plans in place, and the vitality results from these long-range planning efforts. A lot of actually really good studies, and we've been reading quite a few of them. You might hear about a few of them tonight. These things include attracting investments, like I talked about before, helps us inform our budget. When we can go three years out, it helps us understand what those budget impacts look like. We can be strategic in our infrastructure, which as you know, infrastructure sometimes is five, 10, 20 year plan. So it helps us with that. We can optimize the land use. It brings community value. economic competitiveness. We have neighbors, and so we want people to know to come to Prescott Valley. It creates operational efficiency. We have an opportunity to have a lot more stakeholder engagement and connection. We can minimize risk. Ivan, that's for you. And then, of course, that brings better governance and higher quality of life. So just some really interesting quotes that you'll see throughout the presentation as well. That moreover, sustained infrastructure spending can produce economy-wide returns of close to $3 for every dollar invested over a 10 to 15 year period, which is quite interesting. Also, this is one of my favorite statistics, 49% increase in retail sales within two blocks of pathways for parks. Like, that's significant. So those are two quotes. There's thousands of them out there. So these are just some of the reasons and evidence and information of why we're doing what we're doing. So just wanted to share that with you. We took a couple methodologies. We've talked with you before about how we look at things, and that was a great question that you sent Commissioner Griffiths. And we can address what those details are later, but we don't do this in a box, we don't do this in a silo. There's reasons how we got there. So these were some of the approaches. We look at how we have our resources and what that looks like. We do logical sequencing, comprehensive inputs, of course, data-driven analytics, how many people we reach, what the impacts of those reach are. We do capacity assessment for staff. We organize based on necessity and efficiency and safety, and then, of course, alignment with general plan, community needs, and the vision of the town. A lot of things that we take into consideration before we just put a bunch of stuff to paper. So I just want you to know that we have a lot of thought in this process. More of an information budget. I found this to be the most exciting slide. I wanted to have Creative Services do an applause on this slide because I thought this was really cool. So an in-house estimated cost for this three years of all of these planning projects is $218,000. Most of that's like for legal support and those kinds of things. Outside consulting is about $1.5 million if we were to go to outside consulting, which is what a lot of jurisdictions do, and that's not good or bad, but there's awareness that we take a very thoughtful approach to be mindful to our budget. So that's about almost a $1.4 million savings to our budget. And when we look at that, we're making assumptions about inflation, population, economy, and those kinds of things, and this was based on a $150-hour consultant rate, which is hard to find these days. But just know that that is a snapshot in time. And if you were to look at this again next year or two or three years down the line, that number would be significantly higher. So, again, more savings to the general fund. So just want awareness to that. So conscious effort on the budget. So the strategic plan is set up in three tiers. So Tier 1 started in July. We've actually already launched it. So these are the bullets that came for Tier 1. And the ones that have the asterisk means that we've already started it. So the wildlife connectivity guide, you've heard a lot about the wildlife corridor. This is phase three of that approach. John Jacobson, our principal planner, is in charge of that. So he's already started that process. Community engagement plan, Brittany is in charge. She'll be project managing that. She will talk to you later about that. Opportunity zone, Chris Norlock is in charge of that project. He'll talk to you about that today as well. The building department accreditation, I don't know if it's public knowledge or not, but just like CAFMA got their accreditation, and you've heard police departments going through accreditation processes, Guess what? Building departments have accreditations too. And so it's rather unique. It's awesome. We're going for it. It's going to take us at least a year to try to get through it. It does a lot of great significant things. It was actually birthed out of Hurricane Katrina in Florida. about having the right standards, the best standards, and all of those good things for our community members and to keep them safe. So we're gonna be going after it. If we are successful, we will be, we will have that accreditation. We will be the first and the only ones in the state of Arizona to have a building accreditation department. So cool stuff there. The housing elements, Chris is gonna be working on that. That's one of his plans as well. And then there's a few other ones. I won't get too much into them because we'll explain the definitions to you and talk through them more deeply. But here's a couple other ones for the first year. And I will emphasize and say, if you looked back at the methodologies, a lot of this, you know, this is based on capacity, based on what the economy is doing. So obviously there's going to be factors. This is a fluid document. It's not going to be, you know, in time for three years. This is going to be something that's fluid. Priorities change, council changes, budgets change, needs change, all kinds of things change. We're looking at it from that perspective and with that lens, and we look forward to your feedback tonight as well if there's something that you feel maybe should be swapped or switched out a little bit. That's my vacation cough, sorry. Tier two, that would be starting in July of 2027. That would be some zoning code updates and review for signage and for parking. A community benefits metrics. That matrix, I'll talk a little bit more about that later actually. Some themed zones by design and then the general, and a piece of the general plan update to support some of these code changes. I won't talk too much about it, because I'll give you an opportunity instead to ask us questions. And then tier three, year three, providing all goes well, a town-wide design guidelines, a community corridor tool, which has to do with parking restrictions or less. Fairgrounds reimagined master plan, Highway 69 corridor master plan, and then a neighborhood partnership program, which ties into Brittany's community engagement plan. So these are the definitions. I don't remember if the definitions were included in your packet or not. Were they part of the packet? No? Okay. So they're up here. You'll have a chance to have a copy of this slide as well. So the Wildlife Connectivity Guide, this is about protecting areas for potential fragmentation for wildlife habitats. So this is going to be an update to the 13 zoning code and also a mapping for the plan. I'm going to skip Community Engagement Plan and Opportunity Zones because I'm going to let the two of them get into more details about what those two look like.

What?

Sorry, say that again?

They were in the packet. Okay, great.

Great. Building accreditation, I just talked to you about what that looks like. That's a deep dive into our goals, our policies, our procedures, permitting inspections, plan review. and the safety of our staff, as well as the community. So that's a deeper dive into that. Chris will speak to housing, the town campus master plan and specific plan. This will speak to things like concept, theme, vision, and design guidelines that the ULA had studied, and that plan was brought forth last year. We're also looking at potentially an art ordinance program. This is something we would partner with our Parks and Recreation Department with. It's a program that I ran when I was in another jurisdiction that was really exciting. People love art. There's all kinds of really good benefits to art programs. And so right now we just have that specifically more related to capital projects and not necessarily townwide. So we're going to be looking at it from that perspective. And we have a lot of good definitions. Multi-use master plan. Master plan for non-motorized users that is physically separated from motorized traffic to ensure safety, help with recreation efforts, as well as giving the community another option for transportation. We'll be working with a variety of other departments on that. All of these are collaborative efforts with all across departments. We're already sending email outreaches to the other departments to talk about where these align, where they cross over, and how we can be efficient in moving these forward. We're looking at redevelopment area zones, plans that can include infill or adaptive reuse for a site building. It can help the town reimagine certain areas. You might recall one that could fit in something like this, but we didn't actually have to do a redevelopment area for it. was the Addis project that came forward. I don't know if you guys heard about the Addis project. It was very exciting with council. So we're looking at maybe doing a public auction with some properties so that we can develop an area. So that's very exciting. That'll be coming to council in the next few months. We're also looking at wayfinding signage and gateways. When I say the word signage, sometimes Brittany has... her heart flutters when we say signage. You would think signs would be the easiest thing, right? They tend to take a long time and they tend to be technical and people are very passionate about signage. So signage is a big deal. So there's going to be more conversation about what signage maps, colors, symbols, all that good stuff looks like. So that's still part of tier one. And now I am going to pass it over to Brittany and she's going to talk about her community engagement plan as she's the project manager and about the case studies that we're utilizing to support that program. So stand by.

Thank you for having me and listening. You're going to be hearing a lot about community engagement plan for me in the upcoming months and years because it's something that I'm passionate about and also it's something that kind of threads through all of our work, whether it's current zoning projects or these long-range strategies that we're presenting to you today. Community engagement really is at the core of it. It's our role to ensure that we're aligning with the community's priorities and that we identify and remove barriers that stand in the way of us hearing all of the voices of our community. We recognize that relationship building requires and deserves intentional investments, thoughtfulness, and creativity. There's no one-size-cure-all, and this plan will be uniquely Prescott Valley. We've already started looking into a wealth of best practice resources available, but I wanted to highlight these three in particular, as I'll be applying them to the design of our community engagement foundation. The first being the International Association of Public Participation, more widely known as IAP2. This is an international organization. They advocate for best practice in public participation. They cite that they are a home and community for people who believe good decisions can be made together. They provide a range of trainings on public participation, design, methodologies, things like that. I've personally taken two so far and I plan on taking two more, two and four day workshops, so they're pretty intensive as you can imagine. I wanted to identify some benefits that that organization in particular lays out as a benefit to a really well thought out public participation plan. A good public participation plan will help build buy-in and ownership of key issues, increase understanding and education of important issues in both directions, will generate new ideas, suggestions, and input provided by the diversity of perspectives that the public has to offer. It will make the project better. Building planning capacity by tapping into the assets already within the community. Perception of the organization is improved as we build a trusting relationship through accountability and consistency. And it also fosters a positive momentum. The next one that I wanted to provide is actually something that I came across recently that I find is really interesting for its use of metrics. It's just a case study. I'm diving into a lot of different case studies and resources and kind of plucking out what I like to bring to the table to discuss once we start implementing this plan. But the Memphis engagement framework is really interesting because they really, it comes from a general plan update effort out of Memphis that was a drastic shift. from process metrics to influence metrics. The white paper that I read that they published lays out a process of consistent and transparent data reporting and reasoning as a key component in building a healthy relationship with the community. And the third one that I have up there as an example for another case study that I'd like to take some pieces and implement, it's a guidebook that outlines a best practice model framework that comes out of the Harvard public administration team. It's a best practice model framework that emphasizes internal alignment and quality assessment when considering a scope and objectives for engagement, which is a common theme I'm finding in all of my research. I didn't provide this one in the packet because it's a really big guidebook, but I did provide a link for anybody who's curious. So with all of that context, my initial hopes for this long-range community engagement effort is to create some ground rules and foundational guidelines for how the town of Prescott Valley engages meaningfully. Currently, I have about three guiding objectives. One is raising the bar on our public participation plan making and data collection, creating traceable metrics for consistency, accountability, and purposeful engagement practices. Two, identifying and removing barriers to engagement and discovering the best ways to reach all voices throughout the community. And three, identifying long-term programs and investments that will create long-lasting partnerships and consistent channels of communication. Like Stacey said, this is very ambitious, but I'm excited to start chomping at the bit. With that, I'll introduce Chris to talk about his case study.

Thank you.

This is called the team approach. I did want to touch base. I told Chris too, but I'll go ahead and do it. An example of an innovative and creative community outreach process we actually utilized recently. We're doing a conditional use permit for an applicant that has come in. We were trying to get the community engaged, and we did a community event, which was not well attended, especially in certain areas. And so we actually came out with these really cool flyers and door hangers, and it had the QR code on it so that they could take a survey online. And Chris went out with some of my building inspectors and other staff and literally went door to door in a community for hundreds of properties to make sure all the community members absolutely knew about it. Because many people said that they actually didn't get the information, either through their email or a or in their community center, so we made sure we did that. So it was creative, innovative, it was pretty quick, only took a few hours. But those are the kinds of things that we're looking at of different ways to approach community engagement and connection. So just wanted to share that. So John's not here tonight. This is near and dear to his heart. Hopefully he's not watching, because I won't do it justice, I'm sure. But you know about the wildlife connectivity. It's about conservation economy in America. This is a snapshot with Fish and Game and Wildlife Association investments and economic contributions. It talks a little bit about how much money, $55.3 billion of direct spending generated towards the economic activity. And then the conservation's economic contributions included over 575,000 jobs, which is pretty amazing, and then $48.8 billion of income, salaries, and wages, while adding billions to the gross domestic product. The wildlife collectivity The next step really is to get more into the mapping so that we understand where this is going to happen, reaching out to landowners and having those conversations, more community engagement for that process. So you'll see more coming forward for that. And please know that each of the things that we're talking about tonight, whether it's housing, community outreach, wildlife connectivity, each one of those has its own action plan. with its own 50 steps of the things that they have to get done and that the processes that we have to go through and the collaboration that we have to take. So this one is John's baby. So you will get more information on this coming soon. So that one has already started. We just received the scope of work for the consultant. We're just reviewing that now.

So with that is the next one. Am I done now?

Okay. And now I'll hand it over to Christopher Housing. Something near and dear to all our hearts, I think.

Thank you, Stacey. Thank you, Chair, Vice Chair, Commission. I appreciate you guys' time. I know it's volunteer, so I do appreciate you guys coming out to this. So with that, with the housing, so Tracy and Neighborhood Services actually had a housing plan, and so with their consultant, and these are things that came out of that. With our housing action plan, it'll be more of an implementation. It'll be more of actionable items, so potential things that you might see are financial incentives, potentially ADUs, Potential code changes, such as we did change the last code update minimum lot sizes from 10,000 to 5,000 square feet. So smaller lot sizes, different code changes, definitely looking at holistically everything that we could potentially look at to reduce the cost of things. Also potentially looking at permitting process and what we could do there, whether that be fast-track certain homes or things like that, but really looking at everything as a whole to figure out what we can do. So that will be the housing action plan, will be the implementation of really what came out of the housing study, and we will work closely with the community as well as Neighborhood Services and Tracy with their expertise. So this is the Opportunity Zone. It was first created in 2018 to stimulate economic development and job creation. The zones were selected based on low income and high poverty census tracts. In the Opportunity Zone, you can invest your capital gains from the year. After five years in a rural Opportunity Zone, which the town of Prisca Valley is in, you can reduce your capital gains by 30%. And after 10 years, you can actually have your capital gains not taxed at all. So this is a massive incentive to get developers in our area. And actually, the area we're talking about for our Opportunity Zone, it's not all of the purple there or pink fuchsia. It's actually just the southern piece that's kind of highlighted there. So around the Civic Center, those areas, we have some land that's not developed. So some infill can come in there. So with that, for Opportunity Zone 2.0 this year, which will be for the next 10 years. We worked closely with our economic development department in submitting something to the county. So what we had to do was we had to put a package together for the county on our opportunity zone. There were 13 tracks that were eligible in the county and they only selected three, only able to select three towards the state. So we presented the county, the county then presented to the county board of supervisors and who voted on three of the 13. and Yavapai County to put forward to the Arizona Commerce Authority. The Arizona Commerce Authority then trimmed it down to a list of 125 from the state and submitted to Governor Hobbs, who then signed off on it. So great news, the county picked us as one of the three and we went forward through Governor Hobbs' office as well. So it's going to the federal and it looks like we will have an opportunity zone for the next 10 years, which is fantastic for our potential growth and economic development here in the town. So as Stacy had mentioned, each one of these will have an implementation guide. I actually have mine with me, which is great. It shows you kind of step by step what the action items are, who's involved, what you're needing to do. So these are going to be very helpful for every single one of these initiatives going throughout the year to kind of check those boxes, make sure we're on track with these. And as Stacy said, these will be updated to the town manager Gilbert while we're going through this and we will include coordination collaboration with all departments agencies and stakeholders and kind of gets back to. Brittany's community engagement is really weaved through every single one of these plans and. on here, like it says, we are the project leads for these. So one of us four, me, John, Brittany, or Stacy, will be project managing every single one of these. So with that, we're excited to get this going. We have already started, so excited for this.

Thank you, Mr. . Oh, wait.

He forgot the last slide. Wait. Wasn't that cool? Did you see it? One of our core values in our department is also to have a little fun, so, and that was creative, so thanks to Tom's for that, or creative services. So with that, I did have, so thank you both for that, for the presentation. We're here to answer any questions. I would like to share our commissioner's questions and respond to those, if that's okay with the chair, and ask the commissioner if that's still what you would like, the desire for me to go ahead and answer those questions, or do you feel like you had some of them answered? I just want to ask that. So, Commissioner Griffiths, would you like me to go ahead and walk through your questions and answer them?

That would be fine. Thank you, Stacey. Sure.

And, Chair, that's acceptable? Yes. Okay, perfect. Did you change glasses? Okay. Okay. So, one of the questions was, if this is a draft, does it ever convert to an approved implementation plan? It's currently in an in a draft implementation plan status. It's always going to be sort of fluid and open. We will be going to council about every four or five, six months or so to provide updates to see if there's changes or those kinds of things that need to happen. So there'll always be flexibility. So it's not going to be formally adopted. It's going to be in draft form at all times. Let's see. Oh, I see that you've made a statement it will be reviewed quarterly. Does that mean it will come to P&Z and council? Council, yes. We hadn't anticipated coming to P&Z other than maybe just for and maybe a biannual update. We certainly can do that sooner if there's a desire or a directive to do so. We're happy to do that as well. And I did want to point out this also went to YCCA a few months ago. The results from the methodologies, we did not include those. Also a lot of information, but I'll wait until I answer all the questions, but I am happy to go back and explain all the different elements to those methodologies and how we came up with those. And who established the resource impact hours? So in part, myself, an analyst, and we work with a consulting firm to kind of work through what the consulting hours would be. So, for example, some of them, like the wildlife corridor and some of the other projects, we reached out to the consulting firms to say, okay, if we're gonna do this plan or adopt this plan, how many hours and what does the resource allocation look like? I was a consultant for six years and I've done 35 of these plans, plus a few more before that, so I had some rough ideas. But then I also used an analyst and then I also used some consultants to give us feedback to make sure we were sort of on track with the hours. Let's see, under the Opportunity Zone, I think, did you answer, I don't know if you answered this one or not, under the Opportunity Zone, $80,000 based on 150 per hour, where did that hourly rate come from? So the $150 per hour is sort of a low and standard consultant rate for most projects, so that's sort of where we grabbed that number from. You mentioned about that that's over 500 hours, timeline established as three months, that was, we didn't overestimate because we actually didn't know what the opportunity zone was going to look like. So it was sort of a, let's see how this goes. And it was throughout the next three years of what that time would look like. So right now, a lot of the heavy lifting has been done. Chris put a lot of time and energy with our ED teammates to bring that forward. They did presentations, PowerPoints, research, all that stuff. They probably already have put in about 150 hours. So it's probably a little overestimated. We're not sure what the future holds with that one. So Are the tier one items based on a specific order? Yes, they're an order of priority in tier one. But again, that's fluid. That can change. We welcome feedback from you. In fact, things have already changed just a few days ago. We're going to be adding a water conservation project element to that as well on tier one, which I'll be project managing. So that's going to be added to tier one. So now we'll have another item on there. We'll be saving more money. So that one's on there as well. Tier two. community benefit standards. So we're actually exploring, it's something I had done in another jurisdiction before, but as we place conditions of approval, often developers will ask us questions like, well, what do you want to see artistically? Or what do you want to see from water conservation? Or what do you want to see in this realm or this realm? Or design guidelines or different things. And so sometimes it's helpful to have a sort of a community benefit scorecard. We did this for a where the developer actually has the opportunity to say, okay, well, I have to earn 100 points, and there's 70 options on that score sheet. And then they are able to pick and choose which things they want to do. Maybe they have a passion for art. Maybe they have more passion for design. Maybe they have more of a passion for water conservation. They wouldn't be able to use the score points in all one category. They have to spread it out because we want to see a balanced approach. But that's what the scorecard is. So it's something that we've developed and used before that was really beneficial and the development community typically liked those kinds of things, but again, that's a project to outreach to the development community to have conversations about, come up with some drafts and see if it's something that could work here or not. So that's what that project, that particular item is. Commercial guidelines and community corridor and Highway 69 should be in Tier 1. So thank you, good input. And just so you know, all of this, although Gilbert's probably listening to the meeting, but once I gather all the information, we will be bringing it back to the town manager as well to share if there's any interest in shifting or changing things based on your feedback tonight. Under citations on page four, no attachments to those items. So I might need clarity on that. Was there not a link to the citations? Was that the question?

There is a link, but it also says attachment, so.

Okay, and we didn't attach, yes. I think we changed our mind because some of them are so huge, 85 pages and 70 pages, I think we, yeah. So, but thank you for that clarification. Not sure on page four, the following item task will affect the SLUR-PIP timelines, but not as effective, how will the timeline be affected and maybe there should be a range in timelines? Sometimes we put ranges in timelines. I think what we're trying to figure out from a budget perspective to nail down the timelines as best we could using the consultant and myself for those timelines. So we didn't put a range in this time, but we'll see how well we do this first year. We might end up switching that in tier two. I feel the housing code update, design guidelines, Highway 69 master plan are more critical than other items and should be in tier one. So again, good feedback for that. Good information there. And then did you also want me to go into a little bit of the methodologies and some of the items behind that? Or should we move on to other questions for other commissioners?

Let's do some other questions from the commissioners.

Okay.

Thank you.

If you're okay with that, Chair.

I am, yes. Let's kind of go through the list here. I'll call on each commissioner to see if anyone has comments. So Commissioner King, are you still online?

I am.

Do you have any questions for the presentation tonight?

I have some comments and then I do have one question. I wish you could see my face right now. I'm falling out of my chair. This is so wonderful and so exciting. Just a couple of talking points for me is that you have my full support on this proactive planning approach. What I do for my day job day to day is legal operations. And so when you're saying things such as operational efficiency, minimizing risks, saving money, right? These are all really, really key in order to be able to run a successful town. So I really, really appreciate this forward-looking approach. I really also like the creativity. This building department accreditation that we're looking into and being the first town in Arizona to have something like that is absolutely incredible. So I really appreciate that vision and that foresight. Something that really always tickles my heart and my commissioners know that I'm huge on is the community engagement. And so I'm really encouraged to see that community engagement being identified as a tier one priority. And I think that's gonna be so helpful to build trust and produce better long-term outcomes for everybody. And then my last just comment here is I also do have much appreciation here for how we're balancing not only economic development, but also kind of joining that with our community character, right? Because we're not sitting here saying we're solely focused on growth, we're saying, there's many other things that we're looking at, the wildlife connectivity, public art, neighborhood partnerships. And so I think that balanced approach really helps ensure that Prescott Valley grows thoughtfully while preserving its identity. So job really well done here. My question, we kind of deferred from just what we were saying was the methodologies. And so because this plan is going to be reviewed quarterly, I have some curiosity as to what performance metrics, I normally call KPIs, key performance indicators, will the staff use to measure if these initiatives are on track successfully? I do think you mentioned the community benefits scorecard, but are there any other KPIs that you have in mind understanding also that this is still a fluid document?

Fantastic question. Thank you for the feedback. We appreciate it. Actually, recently we had a job switch out. We eliminated our deputy director position for this department and got a business analyst. And so it's going to be this business analyst's job is to come up with the KPIs. As Chris was mentioning, each of these is going to have its own strategic plan, and we'll be putting KPIs to each of those. So we're just starting to draft each of the plans for all of the Tier 1 items. And then we're going to be sitting together as a team to talk through how do we best measure this with, you know, we have metrics for our budget. We have different metrics everywhere for everything. We're going through a new process about results-driven metrics and those kinds of things. So we're going to be, in the next 30 days or so, we're going to be sitting down and adding a column for KPIs for each of the strategic plan because they will be a little bit different depending on what the plan is and what that looks like. So I don't have it formulated out yet, but my analysts and I will be sitting down and walking through that.

Understood. OKAY. THANK YOU FOR THAT. YOU HAVE A GREAT TEAM BEHIND YOU. YOU GUYS ARE DOING WONDERFUL THINGS. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE TIME. I CAN TELL YOU GUYS ARE PUTTING IN A TON OF WORK HERE. JUST ANOTHER CALL OUT THAT I REALLY LIKED WAS THAT WE HAVE, YOU KNOW, PROJECT MANAGERS ON EACH OF THESE INITIATIVES, WHICH REALLY HELPS TO DISTINGUISH WHERE WE'RE GOING TO PUT OUR BANDWIDTH, RIGHT? BECAUSE I KNOW IT'S SO EASY THERE. SO VERY WELL DONE. THANK YOU.

Commissioner Evans, any comments?

Yeah, just a couple. Incredibly ambitious, and congratulations on coming up with this. I'm not sure when you're going to have time to analyze rezoning applications, but I'm sure you'll fit those in. I was, in my business career, I've never seen like 20 priorities, but you guys in this area face a lot more communities than I would have in a business situation. And I kind of narrowed it down to the five most important that I saw for what that feedback is worth. Housing for me was number five, not because it's not important, But Chris, you're taking on a heck of a job because housing is the Gordian knot of communities and trying to figure out affordability, how you do it, who pays for it, and good luck with that. The specific and the redevelopment plans for me were number four and three. Number two was community engagement. And Brittany, I was incredibly impressed with... The whole process that you're forecasting for community engagement, this isn't just like three meetings before a rezoning application. This talks about community engagement of the whole community, the business people, the economics, the impacts. Very far-reaching. You're to be congratulated on it. And boy, oh, boy, have you ever got a job ahead of you. But thank you for putting that together. It's incredible. My number one priority was the town campus master plan simply because a lot of other stuff flows from that. Before I wrap up, we all want to get home. I've been involved with the P&Z Commission off and on now for about four years. No disrespect to prior incumbents, but the transparency, professionalism, creativity, and dedication have been on just a straight-up curve, and this is evidence of it. This is a... An incredible plan. It's going to be very challenging, but we thank you for it, and thank you mostly for the transparency, not just for this commission, but so citizens of Prescott Valley know that their opinions are very much appreciated and required. So thank you all.

Thank you, sir.

Commissioner Colasimo, do you have any comments for this evening?

Yeah, I have a couple. First of all, you guys are outstanding. You obviously put a lot of hard work into this, so great job in doing that. The term affordable housing and rent gets thrown out there a lot. I mean, what's affordable to you may not be affordable to me type thing. So do we have an idea of what... we're talking about when we're saying affordable. Affordable to who? Who are we talking about there? That's my first question, so go ahead.

Well, I'd say it's a great question and one that people grapple with all the time and something that they're going to be having discussions about. I don't know if there's anything else you want to add to that.

Go ahead. In the housing study, actually, on the very back page in the end notes, the U.S. Department of Housing or Development actually defines affordable housing as housing for which the occupant is paying no more than 30% of gross income And then it has attainable housing as well. Also referred to as workforce housing is defined as housing that costs no more than 30% of the gross incomes of households earning 80 to 120% of the area median income. So those are defined in the housing plan that neighborhood services did, so we'll be using those.

All right, I will definitely give that a closer look. Opportunity zones, I love that. However, what we're seeing a lot lately in this town are every time we have the opportunity for an opportunity zone, we get referendums. How are you going to be handling that?

Case by case basis.

Okay. I mean, I understand. I mean, I guess that's how it's going to be. I just see...

I think the community outreach portion is going to be huge in this, just so that everybody has sort of understanding, education, and everybody gets to have their vote, whatever that is. And so our job is to make sure we put all the right information out there that we can. And then as applications come forward, we make it the best application possible. And then the commissions and the council vote, and then the community has their opportunities as well.

Okay. My last question is... Has your hard work taken into account that we could have the possibility of a new mayor and council on board that could basically shoot this thing down? I mean, or definitely want some bigger changes. Has that been taken into account?

Yeah, it's a fluid document. I mean, there's going to be a change of regime throughout this document. And so after 35 plus years of doing this, there will probably be some changes. You know, we'll see how it unfolds. I think a lot of things will probably be the same and there'll be some changes. And so we'll just see how that goes. We won't be going back to council with an update on this probably until winter or you know, we've got to get some time and get some traction under our belt of, you know, the things that we're doing. And then we'll represent whoever that ends up being, and then we'll share that. And if they have some pivots or questions or different things, then, of course, we'll listen to that and go from there.

Okay. I'd like to see your hard work be honored, no matter who's sitting at the council. So thank you.

Commissioner Grassi, any comments? Yeah, just a simple comment and a question. I do want to note the reason I joined this body here was to be a part of the strategic growth. In times of question that that's the mission, seeing this tonight reaffirms that. It truly gives me confidence, not just in the town and its town people, but my role here. this group next to me. It's very reassuring, thank you, and I'm really excited to see what you guys put out here. A few of us have talked about housing. I do have one question on the initiative of the employer support. Is there an initial target industry that's being pursued to support this program, or is this just kind of a whoever will support it, we can take it?

I think the latter, but that's more of an economic development question. Yeah. And I don't, you know, I also want to be mindful because as we target and have discussions and those kinds of things, you know, we don't want to always let the cat out of the bag too soon. But that's more of an ED question. But I'll make sure that I sent your question to Jamie and he can get back to you. Sure.

Thank you.

Vice Chair, if you will.

Yes, this is really cool. Super ambitious. I love it. You had said something earlier, Stacey, that no attack against consultants, but you said saving money, good or bad, it's always good. It's always good when we can use resources in-house to, again, not taking anything away from consultants, but it's always good to see that proactive move. I had a similar question. as Commissioner Grassi there, about these targeted areas for employer, the way I understood it, maybe employer-initiated housing situations, and I know that I've heard in the past Teachers, nurses, specifically traveling nurses, things like that. Things that where they come into the town and their income isn't enough to support even a rental in some cases. So there's some areas to look at there. I had a a question about the affordable housing side of things. And I appreciate the reference to the federal guidelines. But, you know, sometimes in communities, those may not always fit. Like, you know, the glass slipper, you know, may not be the Cinderella, if you know what I mean. There are communities that that fits really good. Financially wise, these kids are able, or these young people, or people in general are able to afford housing based on those numbers, but some areas just grow and have such a high demand that it's very difficult. And I understand that you guys, the town has adopted the home of your own concept that the county does. I think that helps. It's a step in the right direction. Is it those kind of things that you're kind of looking at? Maybe ways to cut costs? for the application process to the build process.

There's a lot of them coming forward. I know you're chomping at the bit. And so they're actually the neighborhood services director. She has a matrix that we've been working through, which is sort of like a mini action plan that has like 30 different items on there about different ways or their code updates are there. incentive programs. So there's a variety of different things, partnering with like Habitat for Humanity or those kinds of things or whatever that looks like or whoever that is. So there's a lot of elements. It's like a big tree. There's a lot of branches to that. But those are some of the things, but not all. And that's Chris's job is he'll be doing a deep dive. I meet with her at least every two weeks, Tracy, to kind of go over some of these things. And now Chris will be meeting with her and her team regularly to kind of dive into How do we prioritize this? Where does it make the most sense? Where do we incentivize first? You know, it's a big apple, but there's a lot of good opportunities for us to have some traction in this first year.

Yeah, you know, I think it's important because, you know, for me, that's kind of the heart, is to keep our young people here in our communities, right, that can be productive and kind of give back. And it's just difficult. And unfortunately, if we don't have a mechanism, we might lose them to other towns where they're going to prosper and do well and, you know, so forth. And then the opportunity zones, I think, incredible to your point, Mr. Colesimo. The referendums are problematic in some instances, but I think community, that's all a part of what we're called to do, right, is to get the information out. And if we have that true sense of community, then we're going to get the buy-in. Obviously, there are going to be naysayers in everything that we do, but Just really appreciate the effort. This is going to be a heavy lift. Commissioner Evans said that you're going to have the bandwidth to do these other things. I think it'll be fine. But super appreciative. Can't wait to see what the next steps are.

Thank you. And before I make any comments, Commissioner Griffiths, anything else you would like to add?

Thank you, Chair. Yes, to Stacy and the team, thank you. This is extremely exciting. Brittany, tonight I did not come to the meeting with a clear vision on community engagement plan. And I appreciate your clarity and what that plan, how you're going to work it. And I think it's going to be amazing. So thank you for doing that. There's 11 items in Tier 1, and five of them had the asterisk that they have commenced. Correct. So if the other six, some of them have a very short timeframe for completion, do you see additional tier items being completed within the fiscal year?

You mean like tier two?

Yeah, no, tier one.

Yeah, no, that's our goal, or at least to start them. So some might carry over to the next year. So for example, if, you know, depending on our pursuit with like the art ordinance, I've done that several times. We have some of that already in-house that's done. So that's not going to be as big or as heavy as a lift from that perspective. So that's a shorter window. That's a 60 to 90 day kind of a project. So a little easier to tag that on as things progress. And The fluidity of it depends on how many applications and projects are coming forward. So capacity will change as we go through this. We could be light for six months and really get a lot done. We could be really busy and half these roll into tier two. So we're just going to sort of go with the flow and see how we can do.

If I had my say for priorities, I would have agreed with Commissioner Evans on housing and the Highway 69 master plan. I would also add in the code update. I think that those are three critical components to look at. My personal opinion is, in as much as this commission is invested, I would love to see this come back to us once a quarter for an update and a review. I mean, you just can't leave us hanging now that you brought this forward.

Duly noted.

So I would love another study session and another update from the team just to stay abreast as to what's going on. But great job, exciting, and... We're ready to support you, so thank you very much.

Thank you.

I understand, Vice Chair, you have some additional comments? Just one I missed, and I'm sorry. So the community involvement or engagement, a lot of this stuff is extremely ambitious. There are other agencies and jurisdictions that are around and surround the county. Will that include those agencies? I know you brought up some work with Yavapai County that you'll need to do for some middle on those opportunity zones, but will that include, because again, this sort of planning process It doesn't stop at the town line, if you will. I know I've had an opportunity in what I do to engage with John Latere over some things. Incredible, by the way, the town should be very grateful for this man. He is an incredible, incredible addition to the town. But that's my question generally, is that going to include that as well?

Yeah, so as we're still forming the vision of what, because there are so many different things that you can attack, right? There's processes that are internal to us, daily planning. There's long-reaching partnership building, things like that. My initial thoughts on the first phase of this is to get as much information as I possibly can, which will include going out to the other local jurisdictions and the local clubs, communities around here and pick their brain on how they want to be engaged and how they want to participate.

Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. That's wonderful. Thank you.

And I think just to expand on that, any project that we're doing, any of these items, You know, we're always looking for what is the region doing, and even sometimes statewide. So my analyst will be doing, participating in a lot of this, part of why she came on board. She's a rock star, by the way. You know, half of her time is going to be spent doing analysis work, and she's already started doing a lot of those kinds of things. So we have an application in her project right now. So she ran a comp analysis throughout the whole state and came up with just tremendous data that helps us with conditions. It helps answer questions, you know, to share with the community. So that's literally what she'll be doing. So she'll be supporting that effort as well. So each one of these projects know that there's this really wickedly smart business analyst right behind them gathering all the really good data and the facts too.

Commissioner Grassi, I understand your additional comment.

Yeah, much like Vice Chair, I had one that I left out. We looked at the comparison of the in-house versus the outside contractors, essentially. Is that taking into consideration very black and white? We do 100% contractor, 100% in-house, or is there a combination? I know there's a lot of notes in the matrix of the town support versus potentially projects that we can fully contract out. Wanted to see, is that really what we're looking at, a blend of using both services, or are we looking more black and white?

I mean, most of it's in-house, and I'm grateful that I have the expertise and experience and passion for the people that want to do it in-house as well. Really, the outside consulting is going to be really for something specialized. Obviously, if there's specialized legal support or if it's a capacity thing with legal, there's not a lot that we have to go out of house for, but there's going to be like the wildlife connectivity. That's not something we've done. We don't have an expertise in that. That was actually a separate budget line item when we made this plan, so that number's actually not in here. because that was supported by council separately. So, but typically if there's going to be, there's certain ones that have certain elements to it that we need an expertise that we put, you know, $20,000 towards because we need somebody to do this kind of modeling or something that we just don't have. So there's little pieces of that. Dare I say that we might run into a few things and go, ooh, that might be something outside our ability, or we're almost at the finish line and we're really busy and so we want to get this wrapped up. Do we have capacity and, you know, do we have, ways to fund this appropriately and thoughtfully. So yes, also, and I didn't mention this, but our business analyst is also a grant writer and we've already, we applied for one grant. It wasn't something that was necessarily in our realm. So it was a far stretch, but they loved hearing from us. They love what we're doing. And so she's got a few other grants lined up in the next couple of months. So some of those things we're hoping that we'll be able to have some grant support. So not only would we get, not have to pay for it, but we could have grant support that would help capacity with staff and have some additional expertise. So we'll see how those unfold, but she's got that passion and she'll be working on that as well. So don't hold me to it. I don't know yet. You know, grants are tough to go after. So we'll see. Everybody gets excited about them until we have to keep track of them and doing all that good stuff and reporting on them. But our hope is to at least get one this year. We'll see.

Wonderful. Again, I just want to make sure that, you know, cost savings is fantastic, but I want to make sure that we're applying the correct SME knowledge to achieve these goals. So, great. Thank you. Yes.

And I should mention, just for transparency, so besides the wildlife corridor, the building accreditation, which was pretty inexpensive, that program was funded this year with the budget as well. And I think it was $16,000 to pay for the accreditation, which was pretty inexpensive. But that was funded also, and that was separate. And that was done at the same time we were doing this plan. Okay. Thank you.

Sure. I'll close this part. Before we go to any public comment we have on the matter, I want to make three comments first. Stacey, I think the city did the best thing by hiring you, first of all. Thank you. You fostered great communication and development of your staff. You've brought on some expertise that I think was – Not necessarily lacking, but the city needed, right? And we've done that. And I see it in the communications such as tonight, the information coming to us in our packets. I have your staff reaching out. I'll speak for myself. I get phone calls by your staff asking if I have any questions relative to the information tonight. And they've done this at other meetings in the past. From my perspective, we didn't get that in the past. At least I didn't, and I really appreciate that. And I think that that can go a long ways, that communication, especially when we talk about referendums and things that, items that have come forward both to us for rezoning and there's been some heavy opposition on some of those things. And my personal opinion on the matter is that there's opposition usually when people are scared or don't understand. And I think that the communication you bring and your staff brings to this body, if brought the same way to the community, I think will lessen some of those. At least that's my hope. So I want to commend you on that. And I don't have anything else. If anybody else doesn't have anything, I'll open for public comment. Okay, open for public comment. Clerk, do we have anybody registered this evening for this meeting?

We do not.

Right. We'll close the public comment period. Action items for tonight. Do we don't have any on the agenda? Does anyone have anything to add or anything for tonight? No? Okay. Then I look for a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

I have a second. So adjourned.