Town Council - Special Meeting

... ... you you so so Bye. Thank you.

It's now 5.30. I'm going to call this meeting of the Town Council to order. Can we get a roll call, please?

Council Member Lopez. Present. Council Member Keel. Council Member Freund.

Present.

Council Member Greer. Here. Council Member Schumacher. Present. Vice Mayor Zurcher.

Here.

Mayor Paul Gouda. We have a quorum.

Thank you. Moving on to item number two, call to public. At this time, members of the public may comment on matters listed on the agenda or solely on matters within the jurisdiction of the town. Any persons wishing to address the council must register their name with the town clerk prior to commencement of the meeting. At the conclusion of call to public, the council may respond to criticism, ask staff to review a matter commented upon, or ask that a matter be put on a future agenda. Such remarks shall be limited to three minutes unless additional time is granted by the mayor. Do we have anybody?

We have two registered, Elijah Snyder and Joe Colosimo.

Gentlemen, come on down.

Hello, council. Thank you guys for letting us talk. I just had two things I wanted to say to you. Number one, wanted to commend you and encourage you and congratulate you on doing the right thing. A couple of meetings ago and funding the chamber for however long, much longer has been extended. I had wanted to speak in their support and running around busy, didn't make it in time. But the Chamber is incredibly important to me. So many people in this community depend on economic activity for their livelihood, and thousands of working families cannot afford a town that does not prioritize economic activity and economic growth. And so I appreciate you guys standing by the Chamber and continuing to do that, and I want to thank you for doing an excellent job on that. The second thing that I saw on the agenda today is the wheelhouse, the building out in the old fairgrounds. And I just wanted to share with you, I grew up here, came here in 95, my family, and I remember a period of time when we had the county fair out at the old fairgrounds, that's why they call it that, over there, and that increased the likelihood that me and my family were gonna be able to attend, because we grew up in Prescott Valley, Didn't have a ton of money. I didn't spend as much time downtown 30 minutes away. My dad was working hard. And so just wanted to throw out there for you on this issue that whatever y'all do with this property, I would really hope that it continues to be a property that is dedicated to some sort of amenity or entertainment value for the community. because as much as entertainment can sound superficial, can sound like just out having fun, and sometimes it is, but very often what it actually is is it's making the community a place to live where working families, doctors, police officers, and nurses, and others who make this town tick feel welcome and feel like it's a good place to be. We don't want it to drive an hour and a half down to Phoenix. and spend a bunch of money to take our family out for a good time and we don't want to have to rely on the bar scene or something for a good time when you're raising kids and you need family friendly entertainment i hope the racetrack moves forward i hope that we can prioritize the benefit of the whole town over you know the complaints of a few and i hope that this building is dedicated in some way towards public benefits and amenities, because I think it's very, very important. And I think the the hard to quantify value is the way that young families feel in this town. Not all of them can be here. The reason why is because they're working late to be able to afford the exorbitant cost of living. We want to make sure that they're represented in the decision making. And I feel that you have done that by and large so far. And I look forward to seeing more of that from you guys. Thank you so much for your help.

Thank you, sir.

Good evening, Council. Boss man there. I want to take this time to Honor Sergeant Rick Lopez, also known as Arlo. And by doing so, I want to let everyone know on June 28th. Well, I'm sorry. I'm going to read this first on June 28th, 2022. Officer Down was heard across the airwaves and Sergeant Rick, better known as Arlo Lopez, went home to be with the Lord shot in the line of duty. Rick donated blood quarterly to Vitalant, totaling almost 10 gallons of blood. His wife, Kim, asks you to help honor Rick by replenishing blood used during life-saving measures in attempts to save her precious husbands and continue his legacy of giving to our community and by donating lifeblood on June 26th and on June 27th. So on June 26th, at 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., there will be the blood donation donating here at the library. And then on the 27th at 12, from 12 to five at the Pine Ridge Mall. And also, excuse me, there's gonna be a battle of the badges. The Team Fire versus Team Law are gonna have a battle to see who can donate the most. There's gonna be prizes for the donors, and it's gonna be a really neat thing. Most importantly, one of these guys gets to walk away with this really beautiful trophy in honor of Rick Lopez, and it's got his face on there and everything. If you get the chance, come and take a look at it, and I'm gonna leave it up there with Kim. The last thing, I did want to give some numbers here. Total number of donors so far, 69 with first-time donors. Four of the 69 were first-time donors. Potential number of lives saved, 200. Successful units of blood, 65. And then they have what's called the Power Red donors. These are people that donate platelets. I'm going to tell you that's not an easy thing to do if you've ever done that before. And four lives are saved there. And the last thing, and I apologize, I got this congestion thing going on. Just want to give a shout out to Bruce Evans with Project Links defeating the local PACs who are trying to divide Prescott Valley and disrespect our elected council. So great job there. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

Chief, we're not gonna allow the fire department to beat our department, right? All right. Moving on to new business. First item under new business is the classification and compensation study. Shawna, you have the floor.

Thank you, Vice Mayor and Council Members. Shawna Dechant, Human Resources Director. I'm here this evening with Deputy HR Director Mel Holcomb and our Project Manager from Evergreen Solutions, Michael Mizrahi. I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to him to give the presentation on the update for our classification and compensation study, and we'll be available for any questions after.

Welcome, sir. Thank you so much for having me this evening. My name is Michael.

I'm the project manager from Evergreen Solutions. Speak a little bit closer to the mic.

My name is Michael. I'm the project manager with Evergreen Solutions, and we're the ones working on the compensation and classification study with the town. What I wanted to share with you today is a bit of a highlight of the summary of the study and what we've done to this point and bring forward to you both our findings as well as our recommendations related to the study. First thing I want to touch on is the overall goals of the compensation and classification study. With any study of this nature, there's really three main objectives. The first of which is to do a comprehensive review of your current compensation and classification systems, policies, and structures that you have in place today, and really to assess how well are they performing in meeting the needs of the town. And so with that, we looked over what are your current practices as it relates to compensation, what the current pay distributions are, level of pay progression that's occurring across the town the design of the structures any shortfalls that we saw more in a vacuum and just understanding how everything ticks today the second major objective is what most folks think about when it comes to a compensation study which is the external market survey with that we looked at assessing what is the overall competitive position of the town both at the classification level or the individual job level, as well as across the overall structure to attain an understanding of where are you in the overall marketplace, how competitive are you, where are some gaps that may be identified based on where you're standing is right now. And then lastly, once we had an understanding of your current structure, strengths and weaknesses, as well as the current prevailing market rates and practices, we've provided some recommendations back to the town on how you can amend your compensation structure to close some of the gaps that we saw. With that, as far as the overall project phases went, it began with a data initiation process as well as an initial kickoff with Human Resources, who was our main liaison throughout this process. We gave them a whole bunch of homework, and they got that turned around to us really fast so that we could do our homework on you all and get an understanding of what you guys have in place today. Then from there, we jump straight into the internal review. And that really was made up of two components. The first of which was an employee outreach. And actually I was in this room meeting with employees and presenting to them what the study was all about just a few months ago. We did that across orientation sessions to let employees know this is what the study is and set fair expectations. And then also we did focus group sessions with employees. Those were avenues for employees to provide us feedback on what they perceived as the major challenges right now within the compensation and classification structure. And so we asked them about a variety of topics related to study and got their feedback. And I'll share some of the highlights of that with you in just a moment. In addition to that, after we met with employees, we then left them with a homework assignment, which was to complete a job assessment tool. These job assessment tools are essentially a way for them to let us know in their own words, what are they doing today as far as their job task requirements go? What about the job description may be missing, may be lacking, may be out of date. They were able to identify that for us as part of this process. And that also was not completed just by employees, but also by supervisors as well. Then we transitioned into that external market survey. We submitted a list of peers for approval to the town on who we thought would be good comparator peers. Once we received approval, we moved forward with collecting that market data and presented our findings once we had that portion completed. and then that immediately brought us to the recommendation phase where we put together what we call our solution process of how can we amend your current structure to close some of the challenges we saw and basically improve upon what you're doing right now to play spoilers to my own presentation you guys are in a pretty good place right now on both what your current practices are as far as the market goes but i'll touch on today what are some areas that you can improve upon So before I get to that, though, I'm gonna touch on what were some of the highlights we heard from employees across those focus group sessions. First, I wanna talk on the positive. The major items that we heard from employees was first, accommodation for the strong culture, the work mission, basically, liking working in the local government, like servicing the community. It's something we hear a lot from local governments across the country, although we heard it a little bit stronger here than we do in some of the other jurisdictions, which is always nice. In addition to that, we also heard a lot about the work-life flexibility and work-life balance. The fact that it was a fairly family-friendly place to work as well. Again, a lot of the things we tend to want to hear and do hear from local government employees, we heard a lot of that. In addition to that, employees did cite on the benefits side of things that they felt like their retirement was a very strong benefit offered here right now by the town and a big part of what keeps them here and keeps them drawn to employment. on the con side or the concerns that employees expressed with us the number one thing we heard by and large which we weren't surprised based on the history of of the compensation studies at the town and what we knew kind of coming in was the concern about pay compression so a lot of employees definitely share with us both anecdotal experiences or just concerns about they didn't feel like they're in the pay range where they should be essentially that they feel like they should be further along or they may maybe shared a concern that somebody was brought in from the outside And they're now pressed right up against their salary almost immediately and they the individual maybe with the town has been here a little bit longer. So pay compression was the number one thing that was brought up by employees in virtually every session we conducted. The second thing we did hear quite a bit of though was also a concern about limited career growth or career pathing opportunities. that's not a surprise for us, given the size of the town and the in the workforce that you guys have that's something we seen a lot of small and mid sized jurisdictions like yourself. It's a challenge a lot of organizations go through because there's only so many jobs and only so much variation in levels of work that if you don't have a lot of turnover at the middle management, upper management levels, there's not a lot of opportunity for folks to move up necessarily if that's the case. And so a lot of that was expressed with us employees curious about if there are other levels that may be present with an organization that can be explored or other horizontal movement possibilities. And then lastly, on the benefits side of concerns that we heard, employees did cite a concern about the rising cost of health insurance, and in their mind, the decreasing coverage or quality of coverage of the health insurance itself. Not a unique challenge to the town, something that I can tell you I've been hearing every year of consulting with growing voices across the country for the past 13 years. So it's something that I think will continue to be a challenge for local governments in that space, as well as, you know, anybody who is administering health insurance plans. As far as the current system itself, your current mode of compensation your compensation structures we did a statistical test on how is it performing right now basically so in a vacuum if we looked at employees and plotted their salaries along the salary range what would we find and we found a few major takeaways the first of which is when we just simply looked at employee salary distribution across the range we found that about 64 percent of employees are in the first quartile of the pay range so that means they're either between the very bottom of the pay range the minimum and about 25 of the way through in an ideal distribution all things you know being equal you would typically want to see a bell curve type distribution where most employees are hovered more around the midpoint of the range since most employees usually have quite a bit of experience or at least fully competent in their role however you don't usually get that ideal distribution in local government but you guys definitely have more of a skewed curve than most So that what that does tell us is that there's a high concentration of employees towards the bottom of the pay range. However, there's context to be given there. We did find that the average tenure in that for those folks that were in the first quartile was only about four and a half or five to five years with the town. So that does lend a lot of context for why you would have a high number of folks in that quartile is you've got a lot of folks who have not been with the town for a very long period of time. So that can also contribute to increasing that distribution. Beyond that, we also looked at the relationship of employee pay versus their supervisors. We found that there was very little overlap or compression between employees and their immediate supervisors. This is an area that we always check on. And typically, local government's not a problem. Local government tends to file a very hierarchical order when it comes to pay, where employees usually don't make more than the supervisor. We did check to see if there was any inversions present and you guys had virtually none. You had very healthy relationships between employees and supervisors, which means there's incentivization to promote up and to have those higher level duties in essence. And then lastly, to basically do a deeper dive on that quartile analysis, we looked at a projection of pay. So we looked at what are folks actually making within the range right now versus if we put a 20-year projection where if employees were with the town for 20 years in the same job, they'd expect it to cap out in that time period. So 20 years to maximum, 10 years to the midpoint of the range. When we looked at that projection, we found that about half of the employees within the town are within 5% of their expected pay point. It's not a precise approach. We're looking at it more from a zone, so like a tolerance level. And we found that about half of employees are right in line where we would expect them to be a little bit above, a little bit below, or right on. about a quarter of employees are more than five percent below their projection though and so this is the bullet point i would say is the big takeaway and likely is what is contributing to the number the concerns that were expressed to us from employees about compression this is the group that we'd be most worried about so employees that are five to ten percent or more below where we project them to be on a 20-year time basis um And then the last quarter, employees were at 5% or beyond. But what's important to note about this group and this analysis is that this was done without the benefit of knowing prior experience. And so oftentimes, this group is really employees who have been hired in based on past experience, who were negotiated in at more advanced points. So they could be here for just a year, but they've got a 20-year career behind them that we're not accounting for in this analysis. Whereas that is also not accounted for in that middle bullet point there towards the bottom. And that could exacerbate that sense of compression even further if they feel like they've got a long career behind them. But even at the time of the town, they're not where they should be. So the takeaway is about half employees are where we'd like to see them or really three quarters or more. And then about a quarter of employees of the area we would say is really compressed or below where we'd expect them to be. Now on to the markets chapter or market review portion of this. We did conduct a primary market survey. So what that means is we actually went out and collected data in real time as part of this process. This is an older data. This isn't from any particular source. This is something that we go out and collect directly from the HR departments at these other agencies. When we go out and collect data from these different organizations, we do adjust for regional cost of living differences. So there is some variation. This is done at the county level. What this does is it helps us understand what is the buying power or the spending power of the dollar that each organization is actually paying their employees relative to their local market. So if we look at a higher cost living area We're not automatically inflating dollars because they're at a higher cost living because they could be paid a little bit more but they could be in a vastly higher cost living area and make Nominally less than what your employees actually make so that's accounted for and converted back in terms of spending power and your employees have in this process What we found when we did that external market survey is Was that and let me take us one step back before I talk about figures here when we're doing this comparison we'd like to focus on the pay ranges themselves. This is not an analysis of average actual pay what i'm showing you here, this is on the range of pay that you offer for a given position, the reason we focus on this is because it's more structural nature and basically allows us to have. smooth out way of looking at any outlier pieces of data we can't control for. So an example would be if we're looking at a single incumbent position comparing that job here versus another jurisdiction. If yours is a brand new hire and theirs has been there 30 years, if you're looking at actual pay, we would expect there to be a significant gap. But most organizations can't report on years of service or time with the organization when they're doing these types of surveys. So by focusing on the salary range, we're really looking at what's the true minimum you're willing to pay for a role and what's the true maximum you're willing to pay for a role. So it really takes out the noise and it gives you an idea at the both the high, the low end and the medium or the middle rather. And so with that, we have separated out the result between general employees and public safety. On the general employees front, we looked at both the 50th percentile and how you compared against that amongst those peers, as well as the 75th percentile amongst that group. At the minimum of your salary ranges across a benchmark sampling of jobs, so roughly 80 unique positions that we looked at, and it's a cross-section of different types and levels of work within the organization, we found that your salary range minimums against the 50th percentile actually outpaced the 50th percentile by about 10%. At the midpoint of the range, that decreased down to about 7.8%, and at the maximum of your ranges, it was about 6.3%. we looked at the 75th percentile we found that you guys pretty much lined up right with market you guys were a little bit ahead at the minimum about three percent uh one percent ahead at the midpoint and just barely lagging at the maximum essentially zeroed out at the maximum uh to give you a little bit of context um anything within zero to three percent you can essentially say you're at market uh it's very little float at that point there's not really a margin of error per se but if there was it would fall within there essentially the reason why you see a decreasing uh competitive position from the minimum to the maximum is because your salary ranges are a little bit more narrow in design than your peers so the runway between the starting point and the ending point is a little bit shorter and so what that results in is that you don't have a symmetrical position versus your peers because they've got longer ranges, you start a little bit further ahead and you lose a little bit of market ground the further you go along the salary range in essence. So that's why you see a decrease of about 2.5% to 3% from the minimum to the maximum. With that, on the public safety side, we did find a little bit of a different trend from general employees. On the public safety side, we found that when looking at the 50th percentile, that's basically where public safety slotted in right now, about 2% behind at the minimum, dead on at the midpoint, and about 2% ahead at the maximum. In the case of the 75th percentile, there was actually a lag there for public safety of about 10% behind at the minimum, decreasing down to about 1.4% at the maximum. That range spread interaction of having different width of ranges has a much bigger impact on public safety, which is not because we're talking about just a couple of positions, and it's not unusual to see different structure designs across jurisdictions on how they may have steps or open ranges for their officers and sergeants. So there's a lot more variability that can come into play. But all that to say, we basically found that general employees across the board, on average, slotted in around the 75th percentile of the market peers. Public safety was about the 50th percentile, to give you an idea of where you're comparing in the market right now. One other...

In this, you're talking about... across the board, like a group average. But within that group, specifically for Prescott Valley employees, was the variation very wide? In other words, were most of the people falling within these ranges or was there quite a bit of variation that was taken out by averaging?

That's a great question. I was just about to stop myself and add one more comment on one thing that isn't, this is the overall average across all the positions, just like you're mentioning. What it doesn't cover is there is variation and that's typical. There are some jobs that even though we're talking about you being as much as 10% ahead, but at the 50th percentile, at the minimum, there are still some jobs in that instance that were behind at the minimum. So there is variation as much as 20 or 30% from your most competitive jobs to your least competitive jobs. And that's where our recommendations really target at is those areas that are falling behind the rest of the pack in essence. And the way that's very typical, no organization has the same competitive position for all their jobs. And even if they did in one given year, after a couple of years, they wouldn't anymore because the market moves for different jobs at different rates. IT tends to move more aggressively than jobs that are a little bit more mature labor markets that don't have as much change in demand or labor pattern changes. So all that to say, there is variation across the different jobs, but the majority of your jobs in the overall average was competitive with the 50th position or slotted in closer to the 75th percentile, but there are some that were further behind. Thank you. And then on the recommendation front where is a few recommendations that we have first off to start with something simple on the classification side you guys have a very good designed a very well designed classification structure. uh you guys have the appropriate amount of job titles for the amount of employees and positions that you have we did look very seriously into the concern from employees about whether or not there's appropriate career pathing for the type of work you have and really we did not find opportunities to create new levels where there weren't at once present and when we're doing that we're not looking at inventing new jobs but rather identifying jobs that exist that are not documented so If you have a level one and a two, but really there could be a three because somebody's really doing even higher level work than the rest of the twos, then creating that three and identifying the work that's being done. We didn't find instances of that by and large across the structure. There was very little that we had, which I could tell you we had more low-hanging fruit to grab onto, but in this case, there wasn't a lot to recommend on the classification side. There were a few title changes we'll be proposing, but it is really just a handful of things. Your classification structure is well built out and very well maintained. Continuing on with that our second recommendation relates directly to that which is that we're going to be working with HR and providing. Job description updates were proposed updates basically closing the loop on the job assessment tools that employees and supervisors completed for us. So they spent all this time, providing content about hey this might be not in my job description, what needs to be more out in detail or there's there's new things to add. We're basically carrying that forward and providing those edits, you know, through a lens of us doing some cleanup on it, but providing it back to HR so they can work with that and the functional managers on finalizing those description updates essentially as part of this process. And then with that we'll get into kind of the heart of the recommendation, so the first thing that we're recommending is related to the compensation structure design itself. On the general employee side, given that you guys are competitive overall with a 75th percentile, we are not recommending a fundamental change to the rate of rates of the structure. We're recommending no change to the starting point of the structure itself. We are simply recommending that you extend and standardize the width of your ranges. Right now, the width of your ranges varies between 40 up to 50 percent, depending on what grade we're talking about, and it's progressive. It grows as you move further up the plan. We're recommending that you make that more uniform, uniform and standardized. Would it be just 50% for all jobs? So really this will impact more the bottom half of the pay plan or the lower paid positions will see their maximums extend out a little bit further than they did previously. In addition to that, because there are still some jobs that are a little bit behind market or not in line with where the rest of the town is on its positions, we would recommend some updated grade assignments that we've identified and provided over at HR as well. This is basically just trying to make sure specific jobs that were falling behind market right now are closing those gaps and keeping parity with the rest of the town. On the public safety side, we do have some more significant recommendations given that they had a lower overall market position versus general employees. On the public safety side, we're recommending that they adjust the starting point to align with the 75th percentile, similar to where general employees are roughly. So it would be an adjustment from current market conditions to the starting point of the range. In addition to that, there are some modifications to the structure design for the step plan for the officers and sergeants as well. We're recommending a reduction in the number of steps from 13 for officers and 11 in sergeants down to 10 for both groups. And in addition to that, we're recommending changing the design of the step percentage increases to 4% across the board. Right now, you guys have a structure that is a regressive structure where you start at a 4% increase for your first few step years, and it goes all the way down to 2% at your later years in those ranks. We're recommending just doing a 4% across the board. It does not significantly change the width of the range from before to after, but it does make it just slightly longer. But essentially, even though we're talking about reducing the number of steps, we're not taking away top end pay as part of this process. Top end pay actually goes up again to align with market. And then lastly, one other adjustment we had to make is we did recommend truncating the bottom of the lieutenant range to ensure there's no overlap with the sergeant rank and the lieutenant rank so that there's not the case where a high paid sergeant is making more than entry level lieutenant. This is really, and while that may not necessarily happen in practice, this is critical to get on a structural level oftentimes because the number one concern I hear from police departments across the country is we can't incentivize our sergeants to promote the lieutenant. There's not enough of a gap between the roles, and you lose your overtime. It's a significant increase in duties and responsibilities. And so this is basically trying to create a little bit more structural incentive to promote up and building that into the structure itself and combat that. In addition to that, the follow up to basically admitting any compensation structures and what do we do about employees. And you guys have I guess two two considerations at hand one is adopting the recommendations to the structure where I just mentioned the last slide but, in addition to that. The other big challenge that we identified in this study right now is not related to market at all, but just where employees are distributed within the ranges themselves. That we do have, you know, roughly a quarter of employees who are off their projection or behind where we'd expect them to be. And so what we did is we ran a class parity analysis inside the new recommended structure. And we've basically proposed salary placement for employees within that structure based on how long or how much experience they have in their current classification primarily, with some minor additional credit given for any other experience they have at the town outside of their current role, as well as prior experience that they had before they joined the town as well. And so this model basically looks at placing you along that salary range based on that time in essence. again the emphasis on this would be on time in your current role which would really uh be directly aimed at the concerns employees brought forward of hey i'm worried about i've been in this job this long somebody's brand new and they make the same amount of pay as me this helps create that space across employees based on how long they've been performing that function for the town For public safety, it's a little bit different, given they did not have the same distribution challenges and just the nature of the different step structure. We're recommending that they go off what we call a comparatio-based approach for placing employees on the steps. Because we're reducing the number of steps, it's not so straightforward to simply say you keep the same step number you had it before. We're also changing the percentage between steps. It's fundamentally a little bit different structure. And so we're using what we call as a comparatio method. or comparative ratio what that means is we're looking at what is the relationship between an employee's current salary and the midpoint of the range that they're assigned to right now so if they make exactly the midpoint of the range that's a hundred percent ratio if they make a little bit above it's 105 110 etc or a little bit below would be 90 80 something like that we establish what everybody's current level of pay progression is in essence And we take that and we pick it up and we plop it in the new range. So you maintain the same relative progression that you've already achieved in your rank. You maintain that and transfer it over to the new range in essence. So it means you're not jumbling people about. You're not upsetting the current pay hierarchy or how you've established pay. You're just transferring it from the old ranges to the new ranges. but also your this helps account for the market adjustments necessary to the range itself that we made for the officers and sergeants one thing of note of course is that all officers and sergeants because it's a step plan and the way it works mechanically this means all officers and sergeants would receive an increase under this adjustment as part of that process as part of closing that market gap And then the only last thing of note is that for the general employees directors pay evaluation still something in progress that will be working with the town manager on. To determine the best path forward for them class parodies are not necessarily designed or well as well fitting. For director level positions which are more typically driven by current market demand and market conditions so that we're still identifying the best path forward for how to adjust directors in this process. And then the last few recommendations I can just skim over quickly are really just continuing maintenance and administration recommendations. This is more for HR than anybody else. But the only thing of note that I would like to highlight here is recommendation six, which is that you guys should try to stay on a good cadence of doing these studies every few years. It doesn't have to be the full comprehensive study like we did this time every single three years. But making sure you do a good market review every three years is critical. And then the bigger classification study more in the five to seven year timeframe should be sufficient to capture the variation in work and the advancements in different jobs across that time period. But you guys have done well to do studies in the past as well as going through the one this well. You guys have a structure that's performing very well and very well maintained. We just have recommendations to basically say keep doing what you're doing by and large.

Thank you. Do any council members have any questions?

I thank you for this study and I did kind of take a look at your public safety aspect because obviously that's pretty near and dear to my heart, so thank you for addressing the fact that they were that far behind and getting them closer, so my question actually is to Bob Bob is this what is this what you see for your public safety.

Vice Mayor, Council, thank you for having me. I'm sorry for the delay walking up here. Councillor Shawna from HR gave us a very detailed presentation this morning prior to today. And what I heard, and we also have our association president here, but what I heard for officers and sergeants today was really a good step. I believe it was very good for those two ranks.

and it's a good start for what we need to get to, because I know it's pretty competitive out there for you guys.

It is competitive, but you saw that We with the presentation the gentleman just presented. We were behind, but what I saw today in the presentation in in consult with HR director is I look like there are some very good steps moving forward for officers and sergeants. From what I saw, I thought going from 13 steps for officers and 11 for sergeants going to 10 really gets a lot closer to parity with what other standards are in professional policing agencies in the state. What I've seen, so I think that was a really good step to get it down to 10.

Perfect, thank you.

Thank you.

I have two related questions. The one is, in doing the survey, how did Prescott Valley all within the other communities as far as competitiveness and were we significantly behind, above, were we close? What kind of variation do you see between the municipalities? And then the second part of that would be, could you estimate overall what percentage of cost, how this will change the cost of the payrolls?

Well i'll touch on that first piece, so we found that you know across the board again, it was a little bit of a dichotomy for public safety in general. But for general, we would say you guys are paid roughly at the the top quarter amongst your peers right on that periphery of that top quarter group so you're not the highest paid amongst the group. But you're in the top four you know that top quartile of the peers essentially at that 75th percentile. So overall, we would say that's a good competitive position to be in. Not all of local governments we work with have the luxury of saying they're anything more than average. You guys are beyond the average right now, which is a good thing. It's a good place to be. It's a position of strength to be able to make decisions from. On the public safety side, though, that was that gap where they're closer to the average being at the 50th percentile. But the recommendations we've proposed would bring them up to be where the general employees are closer to that 75th percentile or that top quartile amongst that peer group overall. And then Shauna, did you want to touch on that second question?

Thank you for the question. I did just want to add to that a little bit and say that, again, when we look at this, we're looking at the difference between our pay structure and where our employees fall into that pay plan. And so while we have maintained a very competitive position in the market with our pay structure, the challenges that we've identified through this study really lie in where the employees fall within that. So we have that first quartile and roughly 25 approximate percent of employees that are behind their projected salary when we look at that pay structure and the experience they bring in that classification. So that is the focus of the recommendations in terms of where those dollars will be spent. Your question as to the percent of payroll that we would look at implementing with some of these recommendations, That's going to vary a little bit depending on the solutions that we finalize based on this strategic direction. But we are looking at the police department or our public safety range. I believe it was roughly 3.5% of payroll as we do that comp ratio and move them into the new step plan. And then we're closer to the 4% range for those employees that would be impacted by any compensation adjustments based on the recommendations for class parity. In total, we have the $1.5 million that we had set aside for compensation adjustments, and that includes any benefit load that will go on top of that. Our commitment is to remain within that as part of the ongoing dollars. So we look at the solutions that we're bringing forward to the table. We take that burden rate off the top. We make sure we set aside a little bit of a contingency for some of the unknowns that we still need to evaluate at the employee level, and then we would apply those changes. I did also want to just note that we're looking at approximately 310 employees. When we take the 81 public safety employees out that are all receiving an increase, our PD employees are about 26% of our employee count. with that, and when we consider the lateral pay adjustments that we made as part of the MOU, we're roughly applying 26% of that compensation adjustment here with these recommendations. So we're keeping on track with our employee splits as well as making sure that we're addressing that market competitiveness.

Thank you both.

Thank you.

Shawna, I did have a question. When was the last time we actually did a comprehensive compensation study here in the town?

Absolutely. So the most recent previous study was roughly 2022, and that was the first study that the town had done since the early 2000s. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that was a significant change in the pay structure at that time, which is where we saw a lot of this compression come from. It took a lot to take those pay structures and the employees up to the new pay plans and the minimums. And so now we're really looking at that maintenance and how we address the employee experience throughout.

So we were definitely due for another one?

Yes.

Any other questions for staff? All right. Seeing none, is there a motion?

Mr. Vice Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve the classification and compensation strategy set forth by Evergreen Solutions and staff as part of the classification and compensation study and town council recommendations by electronic vote.

Is there a second?

Second.

Vice Mayor, that passes unanimously.

Thank you. Next item is item 3B, revised human resources policy manual. Shana, take it away.

Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor, Council Members, Shana Chant, Human Resources Director. I do not have a presentation for this, but in front of you, you have our recommended policy changes as part of our annual review of the human resources policy manual. Last year, we had a significant overhaul of our policy manual. We went through almost every policy and made modifications based on industry standards and our processes within the town. This year, we have a much more strategic approach. We had very minor modifications that are administrative in nature. We also had a couple of legislative updates in terms of the traumatic event counseling changes for some of our professional staff and public safety employees. And the largest changes that are substantive in the policy manual address the premium pay for employees specifically with holiday worked and callback pay. So when employees are called back after hours for an emergency to respond to, we have made an adjustment and we're recommending A two times the base wage for that, that would be consistent with what our police department is also going to realize in this next year. That will create some consistency within the organization and also puts a cap on stacking the pay. So an unintended consequence last year is we ended up with multiple pay effects that could stack on top of each other. So with going to a flat two times base on these exceptional circumstances, that will resolve that issue. And then we also had an update for our payout upon termination for both our seasonal employees under the earned paid sick leave law and our general leave for our regular employees. With that, I will take any questions you may have.

Any questions? I think that I just wanted to say, Shauna, thank you for all your hard work and your staff's hard work on both of these items. I know that the study took several months and I know just on an annual basis you have to update this policy manual. I know that's not and easy task, so thank you. Thank you. With that, do we have a motion?

Mr. Vice Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to authorize the mayor or vice mayor to sign resolution number 2026-2453, adopting a revised human resources policy manual by electronic vote. Is there a second? I second. All right.

Council Member Freund. That passes unanimously.

Thank you. Item number 3C, the Barlow-Massix House Fire Restoration Project. Bob, you have the floor.

Thank you, Vice Mayor, Councilmembers. The item before you is an update to the remediation efforts for the Barlow Mastix after the fire we experienced. Excuse me. Through this presentation, I am going to be joined by Ms. Amy Ness from our risk coordinator from HR and also Ms. Kay Clock, the president of the Historical Society of Prescott Valley. Barlow-Massix is a pioneering home that is a gem and a jewel within this community. As you can see in the slide before you, there's the house in the early 70s, and then on your left-hand side, that's a picture of the home back in March. This is a testament to what a pioneering community we are here in Prescott Valley. Its architecture and just what it really represents within this area, is something that we could speak volumes on. So experiencing a fire and then remediating that damage and moving forward is what we'd like to update you on. Current efforts after the fire, we secured the site to ensure that no additional damage would happen. The entire site's been fenced off and the structure has been boarded up so it's been secured. We had site inspections from our building officials to ensure that it's structurally sound so we can enter it and continue remediation efforts. We've done stakeholder meetings with the Historical Society, the State Historic Preservation Office, and others, working with the previous tenant's family to return those personal items that may have survived the fire. Remediation efforts for the first level fire debris that's still in there. We're working with contractors to get numbers so then we can get the rest of that out of there. And then we've also been working with our insurance provider to coordinate on steps moving forward. With that, I'd like to welcome Ms. Amy Nussop to provide an update on that piece.

I'm not used to speaking in these. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Good evening. So I handle the insurance for the town. So I just want to talk about where we're at right now. And there's some options that we can have moving forward. So currently the coverage we have is only $83,000 for this property. When it was originally put on our policy, it wasn't correctly valued or identified. We only became aware of this in March when we had an overall town-wide appraisal done by our insurance. So at that time, we were able to get that appraisal done on that, and then the fire happened. So since we're part of an insurance pool, They will allow us to buy more coverage to kind of buy back coverage That would be going back to 2017 so we would have to pay these premiums back to 2017 the two standard I'm sorry the two options we have are the standard coverage. So if we cover just like any other property then We would have to pay in back premiums five fifty thousand one hundred and three dollars and And when we do that, the insurance will give us a check for $1,062,100, give or take. They haven't done the final assessment on that, but that's what they're expecting. And then going forward, we would need to make sure we are paying the annual premiums appropriately, which would be the $5,567.00. If we decide to keep it as a historic property on the historic register, then the town would need to pay $272,664 in premiums to get us up to where we would get insurance payout for $2,634,100. And then moving forward, we would have to maintain that premium appropriately, and that would raise our premium costs by $30,000. So the decision is up to you guys, and I'm going to turn it back over to Tommy.

Thank you, Emma. Thank you, Amy. So with that, yes, council, in addition to the update, we're also putting before you a directive and an action to direct town staff which way to go with this project. Prior to that, though, I would like to invite Ms. Kay Klockup, the president of the Historical Society, to present on this next slide.

Welcome. Oh, excuse me. I want to thank the council for considering rebuilding the castle. I look at the Victorian home built by Thomas Bartle Messick in 1893 and view this as a centerpiece for the Prescott Valley Historical Society. It has been our logo for many years, placed on our newsletters, brochures, and most recently on banners in front of Old Town Prescott Valley.

And here is our logo.

I feel like I'm talking with my back to the audience. Okay. Logo. We have already lost historical places in Prescott Valley, which has me very concerned, and I was very thankful to hear that you are considering rebuilding this. Mr. Massick's built a town for the miners that he hired. It was close to the castle. All that remained of the town was a chimney that belonged to the combination store, stagecoach stop, and post office. Even that has fallen over. Many years ago, the town ripped down the old buildings in the town of Massix and no pictures were taken. If you're going to take down an historical building, please take pictures first and leave something in its place to say that it was at one time there. The Historical Society has been looking for pictures for many years and have not been successful. Another historical place was the Prescott Valley Motel, and I know that was in pretty rough shape, where people stayed when they came to look at their building lots in the 1960s, and that is gone. And the new people that move here have no idea that that ever existed. Our society has been waiting decades to turn the castle into an historical museum. Over the years, they have found 57,000 artifacts and bones that have been sent to the Charlotte Hall Museum or the Museum of Indigenous People. Because we had no place to put anything here. We didn't have our own museum. Right now, all we have is a 10 by 10 storage unit. And you can't have any events in a storage unit. If the castle is restored, this would give us an opportunity in the future to hold historical events in that location.

Hey, can you speak a little bit closer to the microphone, please?

Oh, it's echoing in here. That's why I... Okay. It would be way too expensive to use original materials to get it back on the national list of historic places. But option A is good, make it look like the original without using original materials. We do have some historical documents to share during this process of rebuilding, and we would like to be involved in this process. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kay. All right, moving on, I wanted to highlight milestones for this project. It's going to take us some time to move through remediation, securing the site, and then working through the next steps. Currently where we're at is that damage remediation, investigation, and assessment milestone. Moving forward, council approved through the CIP in the upcoming fiscal year, a master plan for the historic site. And with that, we'll have the citizen engagement, obviously historical society, other stakeholder groups, and any other touch point that we can to be able to get citizen input for the Barlow Masks or the castle. Then we'll move into engineering design, budget and funding strategies, final project and budgeting approval through council, and then finally the project implementation and reconstruction. That concludes our presentation on this item. If there are any questions, I'd like to answer them if it's time.

Thank you. I know Council Member Freund has something.

Sure.

Thank you, Bobby. I think that you and your department has done a great job of dealing with this in a timely and prompt manner and in a well thought out manner. So I compliment you on all of that. And I'd like to add that the reconstruction of the historic Barlow Massac House by Fane Park could be the beginning of a great opportunity. Keeping the exterior original in appearance while designing the interior to house the historical society and a museum could lead to new tourism possibilities or opportunities. My idea could work in conjunction with the building reconstruction. We could create an adjacent group of early frontier style buildings seem to the historical context of prescott valley as a whining and ranching and agricultural area. With a working title of prescott valley heritage village, it could include a variety of recreated buildings. The location is near Old Black Canyon Highway, which was once the main stagecoach and transport route between Prescott and Phoenix. This rugged but heavily traveled road was rough on wagons, stagecoaches, and travelers alike. Wyatt and Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday no doubt passed this way between Tombstone and Prescott. This lends itself to a blacksmith and repair and wagon repair shop, along with a farrier to repair horseshoes. Travelers needed food, drink, and rest. A small, recreated stagecoach stop typical of the area could be built also. There could also be miners' cabins, perhaps an assay office for the Lynx Creek Gold, and other affiliated structures. Morse code was becoming popular, and a telegraph office could be part of the mix or placed inside the stagecoach stop. The proximity to the Fitzmaurice Native American ruins could tie in with some recreated Indian shelters of the type used locally. Volunteer docents from the surrounding area, including tribal members, could provide guided tours, gold panning demonstrations, and interpretive information. exhibits could be designed to appeal to all ages, this could be a great destination for school trips to teach children about our local history. We may be able to fund parts of this project with grants and contributions from business and individuals, it could be built in stages as funds become available. It could be tied in with other local attractions, such as a heliograph point on glass for hill to create a heritage trail of adventure. The possibilities are only limited by our imagination. Thanks. Thank you.

Any other questions?

On the insurance policy that we're going to be paying on the payments, does that include liability for if it's open to the public in the future? But it includes things that we would need also at that time.

That's a great question. Amy? Yes. I mean, it's our standard insurance coverage. So just like this municipal, you know, this facility is covered by that same insurance coverage.

So if it goes from a residence to a public building and we have the public in there.

This is resetting it to. Any other questions?

I just want to state that I completely agree with Council Member Freund. The Barlow-Massax House, it's a treasure here in Prescott Valley. It needs to be rebuilt. But I think there's definitely other possibilities that can be incorporated to really just celebrate our heritage and history here in Prescott Valley. Yes, sir. We do need to provide direction to staff in terms of what direction we want to go in, in terms of option A or B. Um, session on that.

I think that option a is the clear winner. Uh, I think it's a very intelligent solution to this unfortunate situation. And I think that probably the majority of townspeople, if they were informed of this, the situation would agree that that would be the way to go.

If we were to choose option a can we still get grants to cover any deficit that would be in there to build to rebuild.

vice mayor council members that we would still have opportunity to get grants however if we're not going to be proceeding with it staying on the historic registry it would eliminate us from some of those grants however there's a number of opportunities out there for request even more additional patrols pd is always out there to ensure that all of our citizens are safe within our parks that's great and reassuring thank you sir any other questions

Seeing none, is there a motion?

Mr. Vice Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve the attached contract with Earth Resources Corporation bid through Prescott JOC contract for Mountain Valley Park storm drainage system repair in the amount of $99,469.60 by electronic vote. Is there a second? Second.

Vice Mayor, that passes unanimously.

Thank you. Our final item this evening, 3E, Fairgrounds Reimagined Update. This is just a discussion-only item.

Mayor and Council, it's a pleasure to be with you once again. It's been several months since we gave you an update on what's happening out at the Fairgrounds site or Racetrack site. So we recently concluded a request for qualifications or a request for proposals on the building out there. We received three proposals. One was to operate it as a sports complex. Another was to operate it as a private canine training facility. And a third proposal was from a national firm that wanted us to pay them to do a feasibility study. so what we're looking for from these proposals somebody who had experience in operating a similarly sized facility somebody who had the financial resources and were sufficiently capitalized to be able to run that facility successfully we had a committee of town staff that reviewed those proposals unfortunately we didn't feel that any of the three met those minimum qualifications so those were all rejected So we're not actively marketing that building at this time. There are some other uses happening. Our police department is actually using it for some canine training on these hot days to get out of the sun. We will be potentially storing some town equipment on the inside to get it out of the Arizona sun, and we'll also be using it to stage some of our surplus auctions. So other activities that have been happening out there, you're aware that we signed a five-year lease. with the Advanced Project North out there. I was out there just a couple of days ago. They have 180 youth that are a part of that business, so it's very active. We signed another five-year lease with Mingus Mountain BMX on December 11th. They're actually getting ready for their state tournament, which is happening next week. So I'm sure they would love to see you all out there to see all the activity. These are people that are coming again from across the state. We'll be helping to generate economic activity in Prescott Valley. Our police department has their own small canine training facility there on the southwest corner that they use to train their canines. One of the other things that we've talked about, and I wanted to show a picture of our existing public works complex on Long Mesa. It's approximately 4.7 acres in size. As you can see from that graphic, it includes public works operations, fleet, parks, Jacobs, who's our utilities contractor. You can see there's not a lot of room there for any expansion or improvement. So something that we talked about. Are there any operations that we can move out to the land that we purchased to kind of decompress that site? So we took some funding that we had budgeted for, and I'll go back just a little bit. So we had some money budgeted to buy some state land this year, 40 acres out near the Big Sky Business Park. When we got the appraisal, it was way more than what we had budgeted for. So we pivoted, again, looking at how we could utilize those funds to move an operation out to this site. So we began the move for our parks operations. There were two modular buildings that were on the south end of the property that we've been working on rehabilitating. You can see what the inside looks now. Our facilities department has been doing an amazing job at bringing those up to current standards. We are also building a park shop out there. This picture was taken last week and it's already outdated. They've got the front facade complete. They've got the roof trusses on site. And so that is moving forward very quickly. Another project that has happened out there, thanks to a grant from the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority, we were able to gutter the entire building and water that will rain on that roof is now being directed to an underground cavity there where it will be able to sink into the aquifer and not be lost to runoff. So with that i'm happy to answer any questions you have any questions.

I understand that on the water project of reclaiming the roof water that those tubes I forget what they're called weren't weren't turned out to not be successful, could Mr Davidson could you brief us on that shortly.

Mr. Vice Mayor, Council Member Freund, there were two stormwater recharge projects that we were moving forward with. One was the one Mr. Judy just highlighted. That is in place and operational at this point. So not only was the wheelhouse building modified with that, but our library complex, as well as our police department, all of the rain coming off of those facilities are going into those underground structures. the one that you were just asking about was called the parjana project and that was going to be a stormwater recharge project in the pronghorn area and it had a sister companion pilot project in red rock and the test results that were coming out of from that pilot project were indicating that it just was not producing the recharge that we had hoped for. So we are not going to proceed with that particular project. We're going to be looking for other opportunities for stormwater recharge. But we do have the one that is already in place that was highlighted by this picture, and we'll be looking for other opportunities for innovative ways to capture stormwater. And what we're ultimately trying to do, and for the public, stormwater, once it enters into a drainageway, that water no longer belongs to us. It will have a downstream water rights holder. And more likely than not, that's gonna be the Salt River Project. So once water gets into our drainage systems, that now belongs to someone downstream so we need to be finding creative ways through our detention and retention basins roof capture systems reimagining kind of storm water capture that will get that water beneath what's called the evaporation zone Over 95% of water when it falls as rain in Arizona is lost to evaporation. So even though you can have several feet of wet soil, the power of evaporation in Arizona, it will just suck that water right back out. So we've been, that's what these projects are about is how do we get water beneath that zone so that it can then start to fall back towards the aquifer and it's not lost. So we'll continue to keep doing that.

Thank you Mr. Davidson for the update and explanation thing.

Any other questions for staff? Seeing none. Come to the last item, adjournment. We stand adjourned, thank you.